The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow

Prof Piers Steel, from the University of Calgary, explains that "chronic procastinators, who make up 20 percent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others." I find it hard to believe that its only 20% of the population procrastinate, and I also have some issues with his findings. But, the equation is pretty interesting.

The equation is U=EV/ID.

The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.

According to the article that discusses the new book, "The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow":

Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.

So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.

Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.

I'm not sure if I agree with the first statement, simply because it was all of the perfectionists in school that spent the most time on their work. They couldn't stand producing something less than perfect. Those who did procrastinate generally didn't care about producing a perfect product, so it didn't make any sense to them to start early. (Of course, it depends on how much you care about the product. I procrastinated as much as I could in school, but I don't procrastinate on a product that truly care about.)

The second statement is straightup wrong and illogical. We procrastinate because we don't care about the assignment. The decreased time to do an assignment forces us to do it more quickly so that we can get it out of the way. So, its not tomorrow that is the problem. Tomorrow is our friend.

I could be completely wrong. After all, he spent 10 years study procrastination and did a study on 250 students. I don't know if the equation is right, or can even be considered "right", since a large portion of it is subjective. But, it does seem that this has suffered from "analysis paralysis". What do you think?