Procrastination = ^{Expectancy*Value} ⁄ _{Impulsiveness*Delay}

As a loyal reader, I’m sure you never procrastinate anything. For those of us in less lucky circumstances, however (no more than 95% of the world, I’m sure), procrastination is ever-present. The average American employee sends 77 texts per day: the total cost of responding to those annoying pop-up email notifications while at work uses up – per person – about a month of productivity a year. Some distractions may be unavoidable, but good workspace design, careful planning, and removing access to easy temptations can make a big difference.

Piers Steel introduces what he calls the procrastination equation: the greater the expected value of the activity (probability of occurrence*value of the activity), the less likely we are to procrastinate, while the more impulsive we or our environment is, and the longer the delay until the results are felt, the more we do.

He makes a number of good points: he wisely differentiates laziness from procrastination, for example, pointing out that the lazy never want to get a task done, while procrastinators do plan to get it done, just not immediately. I’m not sure I find his central procrastination equation quite satisfying, though: it’s not structural, as an economist would say. Does value mean the reward from doing the activity, or how unpleasant the activity is to do? Does delay mean the delay in reward, or delay until the task needs to be completed? He fudges a number of concepts for the sake of simplicity.

He has some good suggestions, beyond just the usual turning off email notifications. Creating a separate computer user profile with a completely different background and icons for work, for example, can help you reduce access to tempting distractions and clearly delineate when you’re supposed to be working. You can also try to create success spirals, racking up small victories that can inspire you and lend you strength when you face harder tasks. Hardly revolutionary, but a solid addition to an extensive literature on procrastination.