Tag Archives: Procrastination

Macro Goals and Micro Quotas: How to Beat Procrastination

A few months ago, I saw a YouTube video from Tim Ferriss answering a question on a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). If you’re unfamiliar with AMA’s, they’ve become a rather common way for famous (and sometimes anonymous because of where they work or what they do for a living) people to answer questions from fans. Even Barack Obama did one.

Anyway, Ferriss did one of these a while back and for at least one of the questions, he did a video response. The question boiled down to procrastination. People look at Tim Ferriss and think that he mustn’t have to fight procrastination given that he’s just turned 36, but he’s published 3 best-sellers, is a polyglot, has travelled the world, and is an angel investor or advisor to Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Uber, etc. Apparently, these people would be wrong. Tim Ferriss has to battle with procrastination just the same as you or I. In the video below, he offers some really important tips for dealing with procrastination.

A couple things I want to highlight: he’s just like you or I, as I’m sure many people you’d think were “other-worldly.” As the saying goes, he puts his pants on one leg at a time.

The second is the idea of macro goals and micro quotas. He absolutely hits the nail on the head that many people are paralyzed with anxiety in the face of an extraordinary goal (write a bestseller, climb Mount Everest, play professional sports, etc.). The key to hitting these macro goals is to set micro quotas. Ferriss shares the anecdote from a friend of his who has ghost written 60 (!) books:

“Two crappy pages. That is my quota. Everyday, I have to write two crappy pages. That’s it. If I write two crappy work pages, that day is a win.”

You can make your dreams come true. You’ve just got to know the mechanism, first.

Conscientiousness in the Classroom, Conscientiousness in Completion

I teach organizational behavior (OB) at the undergraduate level. Well, to be more specific, I’m a TA for OB at the undergraduate level, but because of the structure of the class, students rarely see the professor for the class and spend most of their time interacting with me as the person at the front of the classroom.

This past week we talked about individual differences — personality. Naturally, we spoke about the Big 5. In reviewing the dimensions of personality we read through some scenarios together and had to identify which personality dimension was implicated. In one of those scenarios, we read about someone faced with a dilemma:

It’s Friday and her friends have invited her out to a concert and she also has plans for Saturday/Sunday. However, she has assignments that are due on Monday.

For folks that know about the Big 5, this example is clearly implicating the Conscientiousness dimension of the Big 5. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because this happened to me this weekend. It’s not completely surprising that this would happen to me because I usually score very high on conscientiousness, but I thought it was rather coincidental that it happened the same week that we were discussing this concept in class.

Both of the classes I have this semester occur on Monday (afternoon and evening). For both of these classes, I’ve got quite a bit of reading to do, which is okay, but since these classes are outside my field of expertise, some of the reading takes longer (as I have to look up words — from time-to-time — to contextualize my understanding).

If I think back to my days an undergrad, I’d often find myself reading on Sunday night/evening, to make sure I was prepared for class on Monday morning. This weekend, something different happened: I spent most of the day Friday and most of the day Saturday working — really hard. As a result, when I sat down to dinner on Saturday evening, I felt relaxed because I knew I had very little work to complete on Sunday. This feeling… is wonderful.

The Science of Procrastination and How to Manage It

Almost two months ago, I wrote a post about how much time you waste at work. I thought it would only be fair if I then wrote something about how not to waste so much time at work.

I came across a short two and a half-minute video detailing the science of procrastination and — more importantly — how to manage it. The techniques espoused in the video aren’t off-the-wall and they probably are things you might have heard. Though, take comfort in knowing that many people have used  The Pomodoro Technique with great success!

Adding General Managers to the Organization Could Improve Ethical Decision-Making

I’ve mentioned that I’m working at for the summer. As I don’t currently live in , I take the to get to work. As I don’t yet have an iPhone or an iPad (with which to read something on), I’ve kept my subscription to . As I was reading , I got to an article from called, “”

At first, I was a bit skeptical, but as I read on, it may me think of the post I recently wrote about . Here’s an excerpt from the Schumpeter [emphasis added]:

But is it wise to be so obsessed with speed? High-speed trading can lead to market meltdowns, as almost happened on May 6th 2010, unless automatic breaks are installed. And is taking one’s time so bad? Regulators are always warning people not to buy things in the heat of the moment. Procrastinators have a built-in cooling-off period. Businesses are forever saying that they need more creativity. Dithering can help. Ernest Hemingway told a fan who asked him how to write a novel that the first thing to do was to clean the fridge. Steven Johnson, a writer on innovation, argues that some of the best new products are “slow hunches”. Nestlé’s idea of selling coffee in small pods went nowhere for three decades; now it is worth billions.

These thoughts have been inspired by two (slowly savoured) works of management theory: an obscure article in the Academy of Management Journal by Brian Gunia of Johns Hopkins University; and a popular new book, “Wait: The Art and Science of Delay”, by Frank Partnoy of University of San Diego. Mr Gunia and his three co-authors demonstrated, in a series of experiments, that slowing down makes us more ethical. When confronted with a clear choice between right and wrong, people are five times more likely to do the right thing if they have time to think about it than if they are forced to make a snap decision. Organisations with a “fast pulse” (such as banks) are more likely to suffer from ethical problems than those that move more slowly. (The current LIBOR scandal engulfing Barclays in Britain supports this idea.) The authors suggest that companies should make greater use of “cooling-off periods” or introduce several levels of approval for important decisions.

I fine this rather on-point with what I was saying in the . By having more layers of approval (by way of the general managers), there would, undoubtedly, be more time factored into the process. As a result, this *may* result in less of the instances of poor decision-making that what we’ve seen recently with companies like Barclay’s and JP Morgan.