Procrastination, artificial intelligence and creating things April 12th, 2024
By Rob Tyrie founder Ironstone Advisory and The Grey Swan Guild
“Why do you procrastinate?”
After being on the planet for a long time, and having received lots of professional feedback, experience and advice from entrepreneurs, VCs, bosses, clients and counsellors... I know that everyone has had a procrastination problem at some point in their career and in their lives. Some researchers think that because there is procrastination there must be some evolutionary positive element to it. One of the reasons I love evolutionary psychologists and their practice is that they can instantly prove anything by showing that a human has behaviour and is alive. This of course makes evolutionary psychology pretty wide open and alarmingly subjective.
Others believe that it’s linked to laziness, but that’s been proven to be quite incorrect. Dr Dan Price in his book “Laziness is a Lie”, thinks we’ve got to re-evaluate what we think of productivity before we jump into ideas of procrastination. In his thesis, he thinks that we’re just tired and we need to rest more to be more productive. So procrastination is just a symptom of overwork or burnout.
I think that I procrastinate because I say yes too often. I need to learn to say no much more. The perennially overcommitted and pleasers are likely to be procrastinators or seem to be such.
So what is procrastination? I define it as avoiding doing stuff that needs to be done for some reason or another. Sometimes it’s harmless and doesn’t mean a lot. Other times it can be bad and grow into a pathological behavior that is a diagnosable medical condition for which some people seek medication or talk therapy. Because it is human behaviour, it is necessarily complicated.
The Oxford definition of procrastination is as follows: the act of delaying something that you should do, usually because you do not want to do it.
I like this idea because it gives the human some agency.
Here is another definition. I like it because I generated it using perplexity.ai invoking the spirits of John Ralston Saul, Ambrose Bierce, and Oscar Wilde. The stochastic parrot wrote this:
Procrastination, noun: A sophisticated art form practiced by the ambitious yet indecisive, wherein the practitioner defers actions indefinitely, ensuring a perpetual state of planning and a scarcity of execution. It is the thief of time, clad in the guise of contemplation, often mistaken by the artist as a necessary prelude to perfection. This temporal bandit is best friends with regret, each promising to visit the other tomorrow”
According to Miriam-Webster, the origin of the word is interesting too. It “ comes from the Latin prefix pro-, meaning "forward," and crastinus, "of tomorrow." The word means moving or acting slowly to fall behind, and it implies blameworthy delay, especially through laziness or apathy. Of course, this means I’m adding crastinus to my lexicon because it so closely sounds like crustiness. Based on the Latin, one could define procrastination as moving tomorrow forward… with the trickiness of timelines, that either means moving things ahead or moving things back. Perfect.
Let’s agree we will use your harshest critic’s definition of procrastination that we will work with for the rest of this essay. The goal here of course is to try and reduce the behavior.
The Temporal Bandit
Although procrastination is not a disorder, it does figure in the DSM-5 and has been connected to ADHD and other disorders as a symptom. In good tradition clinicians have built a questionnaire to identify progression and how severely it can manifest. In this research study, 10,000 students were surveyed to see if the researchers could identify the tardy behaviours and help them be more self-aware. We’ve included the questionnaire they used in the appendix below.
Even though it is not in the DSM, the doctors in the study worked to define something called “pathological procrastination” which sounds severe indeed. One of the basic elements is to figure out if anything is painful to you. If you do a self-check and nothing hurts in your body... you don’t have a procrastination syndrome, but nonetheless, you can still do something about your procrastination.
As part of my job and practice I build systems methods and procedures to develop programs and software applications for Enterprise. To do that I also do market research and product design to create strategies and tactics to increase Revenue and results for those software companies and the return on investment for their customers. That measn I must get my work done. As I was exploring another project, I came up with the idea… basically to procrastinate by using artificial intelligence to help me with procrastination. I know it’s kind of funny right? AI-powered meta-procrastination.
Meta-procrastination
I was in the middle of my assignment, and I noticed one of the nudges that appear at the top of every ChatGPT session ostensibly to help novice users get started with their first prompts. This is a chat feature that I think caused the “thinking about Romans” trope, but, I digress (also a procrastinating trick). Back to the topic at hand. I click the ChatGPT prompt about procrastination and this is what gets generated based on my custom instructions for ChatGPT, what follows is the generation done by AI. There’s one place I changed it and I’ll tell you at the end of the generation why I did that. Basically, the generation shows a good set of common techniques useful for someone with a systems background to overcome procrastination and complete work.
I like it of course because it’s a series of steps that have both the biological basis as well as a set of theories based on science and research. In this particular generation, I did not seek to get references because I was testing for errors. If I want to test this I will just run this through perplexity.ai to get references to each of these items however I know there’s a fact basis for each. If you want to do a deep dive into procrastination and its biological basis I suggest either Kahneman/Tversky’s work on Decision Theory or Spolsky’s work on the biological basis of being a human.
Overcoming procrastination is a common challenge, especially in fields requiring high-level thinking and strategic planning, like yours. Here are some tips tailored to your background and needs:
1. **Prioritize with a Business Canvas Approach:** Utilize your expertise in creating business canvas diagrams to prioritize tasks. Break down your projects into components (like Key Activities or Key Resources in the Business Model Canvas) to identify which tasks are crucial and which can be delegated or postponed.
2. **Set Clear, Achievable Goals:** As someone who appreciates clear and concise ideas, set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your tasks. This will help you focus and reduce the overwhelming feeling that might lead to procrastination.
3. **Use Time Blocks:** Dedicate specific times of the day to work on tasks. You might consider the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break. This can help maintain focus and prevent burnout.
4. **Leverage Systems Thinking:** As a systems thinker, consider the interdependencies of your tasks and how delaying one can affect others. This perspective can motivate you to take action sooner rather than later. Make a sketch or system drawing of the system at hand.
5. **Build in Accountability:** Share your goals and timelines with a colleague or a mentor. As a professional consultant, you understand the value of accountability. Having someone to report progress to can be a powerful motivator.
6. **Reward Yourself:** Set up a reward system for completing tasks. As someone who understands incentives in financial and software systems, apply this to manage your own behavior. For example, if you complete a challenging task, reward yourself with a short break or a treat.
7. **Visualize Success:** Since you think visually, try to visualize the benefits of completing tasks. For instance, imagine the satisfaction of crossing items off your to-do list or the success of a launched project.
8. **Reflect on Resistance:** Sometimes, procrastination stems from a deeper resistance to the task itself. Reflect on why you are putting off certain tasks. Is it fear, uncertainty, lack of interest, or something else? Understanding this can help you address the root cause.
9. **Adjust Your Environment:** Enhance your work environment to reduce distractions and boost productivity. This might involve organizing your workspace or using tools that limit your access to distracting websites.
10. **Seek Inspiration from Favorites:** As someone who enjoys the works of Richard Feynman and Daniel Kahneman, reflect on how they approached their work and managed their time. Sometimes, drawing inspiration from figures you admire can provide a motivational boost.
11. **Use Humor:** Lighten the mood by joking about your procrastination habits or imagining a humorous consequence of not completing your tasks. This can make the task feel less daunting and add a bit of levity to your work.
Procrastination is often a sign that we need to rethink how we're approaching our work. By applying some of these strategies, you might find it easier to stay on track and maintain productivity. How do these suggestions resonate with your current strategies?
[the thing I changed.. on the suggestion about systems thinking I added the part to draw something, because that’s what I do to help move forward my work I sketch it out]
Well, this is a great set of 12 strategies. I do appreciate the humour that I invoked along with the spin and behaviour. Truth be told, I just wanted to do something this afternoon that included research on using artificial intelligence tools and business, and I landed upon procrastination and his psychology. I think I just experimenting in the beginning to look up something interesting with ChatGPT, and then wrote this while joking around with procrastination. Now, here we are.
Hopefully, you are a little further along and understanding how AI works, how humans work and how they can work together. One thing to be noted: robots and artificial intelligence are not able to procrastinate therefore they are not human… at least in my opinion. 🧠🤖
Now, back to work.
Rob Tyrie is a professional advisor, consultant and computer scientist who creates new things for his clients and friends. He can be reached at rob.tyrie@gmail.com or on @robtyrie on Threads, his current social media drug of choice. For work stuff go see www.ironstoneadvisory.com
Appendix
The procrastination questionnaire
This is one of the instruments that doctors developed in this study
IN the last 6 months
A. On at least half of the days very important tasks were delayed past the adequate point in time even though there was enough time available.
B. Procrastination interfered strongly or very strongly with reaching personal goals.
C. In addition at least three of the following six criteria are fulfilled:
C1) More than 50% of the time available for completing the task was spent procrastinating.
C2) On at least half of the days other, less important tasks were preferred, even though one wanted to start working on the important task.
C3) The delayed tasks caused at least half of the days aversion and animosity.
C4) At least half of the plans to be completed within the last half year were finished only under great pressure of time or not at all because of procrastination.
C5) Due to procrastination at least 50% of the achievement potential is impaired?
C6) There are at least five bodily or psychological complaints due to procrastination.
D. The problems are not better explained by another physical or mental disorder.
For the diagnosis “Pathological procrastination” Criterium A and B must be fulfilled, additionally three of the following C-Criteria in accordance with the Questionnaire PDCQ-8.
Bibliography:
Books that influence me in my thinking about the human mind and it’s biases and heuristics.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman
- Laziness Does Not Exist, Price
- Behave, Spolsky
- How the Mind Works, Pinker
- The Systems View of Life, Capra
