Procrastination is such an annoying word, don't you think? At least it is to me, because whenever I hear this word, I feel so called out. Funnily enough, I learnt about this in university, so thank you to the person who gave this word, because it will allow me to geek out about my favourite subject of all time (behavioural economics) and explain to you about intertemporal choice. 

Gurl what is that and what does that have anything to do with procrastination? I will explain as I go along.

An interesting paper I read (on a last-minute basis upon knowing my exam was in a few weeks' time) is on procrastination by O'Donoghue and Rabin (1999), “Doing it Now or Later”. This paper introduces us to three types of individuals when it comes to how they spend their time. The first type is time consistent (TCs), where individuals have time consistent preferences and implies that TCs will optimise today’s behaviour given today’s preferences. These are the people you would normally be envious towards because they actually stick to the plan. But chances are you won't get to see these people in real life, or if you do, let me know. You need to introduce me to these disciplined people. So much respect to them.

The second type is Naifs. Naif are individuals who attempts to mimic TCs, however they are unaware that they have inconsistent time preferences, known as the present bias. 

Present bias is when you are more biased to doing certain things immediately, which disrupts your initial plan. For instance, you plan to do a calorie deficit throughout the month, then BAM! a chocolate is placed on the kitchen table. Your present bias is to consume that chocolate and ignoring the fact that you were trying to pursue a calorie deficit.

Similar to the TCs, Naifs will optimise today’s behaviour according to today’s preferences, believing that they will behave in a time-consistent manner and ignores the fact that they will eventually procrastinate due to their present-biased preferences. Naifs are really scary because they are not aware that they are procrastinating. 

For instance, you want to do your work tomorrow, then tomorrow comes but your crush invites you to a Netflix party, so you decide to do your work the next day, then the next day comes and your family members requested you to bake cookies, then these 'distractions' become a recurring theme and you are left having to do things last minute, resulting in a lower utility (happiness level) hence stressing yourself out and pulling an all-nighter to finish your work. Which then results in a low wellbeing and mental health state.

Lastly, sophisticates are individuals who are aware that they have time-inconsistent preferences and will optimise today’s behaviour while correctly predicting their future behaviour. In layman terms, these are mindful people, who are aware of the fact that they will procrastinate. Thus, they are more likely to have preferences for commitment devices. 

Commitment device is something you would "invest" in to keep yourself accountable for your actions. 

For instance, a sophisticate who wants to lose weight understands that they need to exercise. Hence, they will sign up to a gym membership, knowing fully well that because of the financial expense, they will have to commit to going to the gym to make their money’s worth. If like me, you want to start a habit of writing more, I have set up a question on IG to gauge my readers' interest on what they want me to write on. With this initiative, I keep myself more accountable in putting out my writing on this page. Eventually, sophisticates will most likely have the highest utility (happiness) level as compared to naifs (we don't count TCs in because they are pretty much unrealistic). 

If all these information makes your brain go a little bit wonky, what I am trying to say is that procrastination is bound to happen. So what you can do is to be more mindful about your procrastination and to discipline yourself by keeping yourself accountable. To do this, you can set up your own commitment device.

Hence, to wrap up this post, I have some questions for you as a food for thought; 

1) Are you a naif or a sophisticate? 

2) What is the one thing you've always wanted to do but have been procrastinating on?

3) What is your commitment device that can accommodate you to achieve your goals?

I, too, am working on tackling procrastination, it's part of my self investment. Please share with me your answers, as I love talking to people about these (and behavioural economics stuff really hehe). Hope you find this useful!