I work in finance (trading) and go through my daily life quantifying everything in terms of EV.
I would just caution in saying that, yes procrastinating provides you with some real option value as you mentioned but you need to weigh this against the probability of you exercising that option value as well as the other obvious costs of delaying the task.
Certain tasks are inherently valuable to delay as long as possible and can be identified as such beforehand. As an example, work related emails that require me to make a decison or choice I put off as long as is politely possible in case new information comes in which would influence my decision.
On the other hand, certain tasks can be identified as possessing little or no option value when weighted with the appropriate probabilities. What is the probability that delaying the payment of your cable bill will have value to you? Perhaps if you experience an emergency cash crunch. Or the off chance that your cable stops working and you decide to try to withhold payment (not that this will necessarily do you any good).
I work in finance (trading) and go through my daily life quantifying everything in terms of EV.
I would just caution in saying that, yes procrastinating provides you with some real option value as you mentioned but you need to weigh this against the probability of you exercising that option value as well as the other obvious costs of delaying the task.
Certain tasks are inherently valuable to delay as long as possible and can be identified as such beforehand. As an example, work related emails that require me to make a decison or choice I put off as long as is politely possible in case new information comes in which would influence my decision.
On the other hand, certain tasks can be identified as possessing little or no option value when weighted with the appropriate probabilities. What is the probability that delaying the payment of your cable bill will have value to you? Perhaps if you experience an emergency cash crunch. Or the off chance that your cable stops working and you decide to try to withhold payment (not that this will necessarily do you any good).