This is just wrong: the remedy doesn’t follow from the formula. A deficit in any of the four variables can be corrected, per the formula, by an increment in any of the four variables. It doesn’t have to be the one that’s unusually low (or high, in the denominator) and seen as “causing the trouble.” Therefore, you may address any procrastination problem, regardless of how this typology classifies it, by any of the methods, regardless of the variable it addresses.
The information the self-helper needs regards which variable he is most able to raise (or lower, if the variable is in the denominator), not which one is particularly low. Is there a correlation? I don’t know, but I’d guess it’s negative. If a variable is low, that’s probably because you have little control over it. If a project sucks, you can’t do much about its value unless you’re willing to lie to yourself, but you might modify the delay.
Lukeprog obviously wasn’t a problem procrastinator before he started using his “algorithm,” and his uptick in productivity is probably better explained as the natural result of getting a challenging job and, let’s not omit, a placebo effect due to lukeprog’s believing in his “algorithm.”
Yes, if you add the same quantity to each variable, but often you can add to one of the variables that’s already large more readily than one that’s small—one general reason for this being that, functionally, the process of incrementing one of these variables is more like multiplication by the same constant (such as in psychophysics) than addition of the same constant.
Even the formula doesn’t follow from the formula—there is no actual multiplication going on. The pseudo-mathematics is just a way of presenting the idea that “motivation” isn’t an unanalysable atomic blob that you can’t do anything to change beyond giving yourself pep talks, watching Courage Wolf, and moaning about akrasia. The article is suggesting that one can break it down into these four components, examine them separately, and find ways of improving that one would not find if one merely labelled the problem “procrastination”.
Maybe the Law of the Minimum applies (“growth is limited by the scarcest resource”). Or something else. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t mathematics. It isn’t even science, it’s self-help advice, and while I’m sure that lukeprog could have stuffed it as full of references as his review postings, its usefulness is as a generator of ideas for action, not as a discovery about how minds work.
Maybe the Law of the Minimum applies (“growth is limited by the scarcest resource”). Or something else. It doesn’t matter.
Of course it matters. These theories prescribe different remedies. If the model requires assuming that some law applies, as you suggest, or that “incrementation” is functionally additive, as EY implies, these postulates should be explicit in the model, as they’re crucial to deriving the remedy.
But as the model stands—and as it was probably intended—it exemplifies a fallacy: failure to optimize at the margin, substituting the most “important” aspect of the scenario for the result of an analysis at the margin.
A kind of law of the minimum presents a good analogy. The factors of production are classically said to be land, labor, and capital. A law of diminishing returns applies to investments in each, such that the most needy factor is the best target for investment.
Now apply this law to the problems besetting a given country. Throughout most of U.S. history, labor was the factor in greatest shortage. There was always plenty of land. Yet, the U.S. embarked on a policy of expanding to the Pacific Ocean. Although it had tons of land, acquiring more land was so much easier than acquiring labor or capital, that it dominated the course of U.S. history.
To evaluate this kind of situation, you can’t look at which factor is low based simply on relative levels when you consider where to invest—or where to apply remedial efforts—because it can look much different when you make a marginal analysis.
The framework here presented isn’t a suitable basis for a marginal analysis. You need mechanisms, not a facet analysis of motivation, to tell you where you can effectively apply your attention.
The formula’s variables, by themselves, are a priori. They are a way of classifying facts about motivation, not distinct causes in any instance of procrastination. This is pjeby’s point: at root is a reification of akrasia (or procrastination).
When you say procrastination can be broken down into these four components, this would be a useful approach if procrastination were a single thing. Defining it, per the formula, as a shortfall of motivation gives you an outcome, not its mechanism. The variables are conceptual aspects of the shortfall, not the components of any mechanism, presumably a conflict causing the shortfall.
Recently, a lot of the useful analysis of mechanisms has been done, under the paradigms of ego-depletion theory (decision fatigue) and construal-level theory. But these are ignored in the offered remedy, which applies general (long-known) principles of motivation. This is the business schools’ not-very-cutting-edge approach to applied psychology.
Of course it matters. These theories prescribe different remedies. If the model requires assuming that some law applies, as you suggest, or that “incrementation” is functionally additive, as EY implies, these postulates should be explicit in the model, as they’re crucial to deriving the remedy.
I don’t read postings like the original as asserting models, although lukeprog might disagree, and to the extent that he would, that’s the sort of thing I generally just tune out. I regard them as being more like things such as MBTI or astrological types—schemas for imputing structure to some Rohrschach blot of a phenomenon as a method of generating ideas about it. And it doesn’t matter where such ideas come from (which is what I had in mind when saying “it doesn’t matter”) if one gets practical use out of them.
This is just wrong: the remedy doesn’t follow from the formula. A deficit in any of the four variables can be corrected, per the formula, by an increment in any of the four variables. It doesn’t have to be the one that’s unusually low (or high, in the denominator) and seen as “causing the trouble.” Therefore, you may address any procrastination problem, regardless of how this typology classifies it, by any of the methods, regardless of the variable it addresses.
The information the self-helper needs regards which variable he is most able to raise (or lower, if the variable is in the denominator), not which one is particularly low. Is there a correlation? I don’t know, but I’d guess it’s negative. If a variable is low, that’s probably because you have little control over it. If a project sucks, you can’t do much about its value unless you’re willing to lie to yourself, but you might modify the delay.
Lukeprog obviously wasn’t a problem procrastinator before he started using his “algorithm,” and his uptick in productivity is probably better explained as the natural result of getting a challenging job and, let’s not omit, a placebo effect due to lukeprog’s believing in his “algorithm.”
Remember calculus? If you’re multiplying four positive variables, the largest change in the product will come from incrementing the smallest variable.
Yes, if you add the same quantity to each variable, but often you can add to one of the variables that’s already large more readily than one that’s small—one general reason for this being that, functionally, the process of incrementing one of these variables is more like multiplication by the same constant (such as in psychophysics) than addition of the same constant.
Even the formula doesn’t follow from the formula—there is no actual multiplication going on. The pseudo-mathematics is just a way of presenting the idea that “motivation” isn’t an unanalysable atomic blob that you can’t do anything to change beyond giving yourself pep talks, watching Courage Wolf, and moaning about akrasia. The article is suggesting that one can break it down into these four components, examine them separately, and find ways of improving that one would not find if one merely labelled the problem “procrastination”.
Maybe the Law of the Minimum applies (“growth is limited by the scarcest resource”). Or something else. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t mathematics. It isn’t even science, it’s self-help advice, and while I’m sure that lukeprog could have stuffed it as full of references as his review postings, its usefulness is as a generator of ideas for action, not as a discovery about how minds work.
Of course it matters. These theories prescribe different remedies. If the model requires assuming that some law applies, as you suggest, or that “incrementation” is functionally additive, as EY implies, these postulates should be explicit in the model, as they’re crucial to deriving the remedy.
But as the model stands—and as it was probably intended—it exemplifies a fallacy: failure to optimize at the margin, substituting the most “important” aspect of the scenario for the result of an analysis at the margin.
A kind of law of the minimum presents a good analogy. The factors of production are classically said to be land, labor, and capital. A law of diminishing returns applies to investments in each, such that the most needy factor is the best target for investment.
Now apply this law to the problems besetting a given country. Throughout most of U.S. history, labor was the factor in greatest shortage. There was always plenty of land. Yet, the U.S. embarked on a policy of expanding to the Pacific Ocean. Although it had tons of land, acquiring more land was so much easier than acquiring labor or capital, that it dominated the course of U.S. history.
To evaluate this kind of situation, you can’t look at which factor is low based simply on relative levels when you consider where to invest—or where to apply remedial efforts—because it can look much different when you make a marginal analysis.
The framework here presented isn’t a suitable basis for a marginal analysis. You need mechanisms, not a facet analysis of motivation, to tell you where you can effectively apply your attention.
The formula’s variables, by themselves, are a priori. They are a way of classifying facts about motivation, not distinct causes in any instance of procrastination. This is pjeby’s point: at root is a reification of akrasia (or procrastination).
When you say procrastination can be broken down into these four components, this would be a useful approach if procrastination were a single thing. Defining it, per the formula, as a shortfall of motivation gives you an outcome, not its mechanism. The variables are conceptual aspects of the shortfall, not the components of any mechanism, presumably a conflict causing the shortfall.
Recently, a lot of the useful analysis of mechanisms has been done, under the paradigms of ego-depletion theory (decision fatigue) and construal-level theory. But these are ignored in the offered remedy, which applies general (long-known) principles of motivation. This is the business schools’ not-very-cutting-edge approach to applied psychology.
I don’t read postings like the original as asserting models, although lukeprog might disagree, and to the extent that he would, that’s the sort of thing I generally just tune out. I regard them as being more like things such as MBTI or astrological types—schemas for imputing structure to some Rohrschach blot of a phenomenon as a method of generating ideas about it. And it doesn’t matter where such ideas come from (which is what I had in mind when saying “it doesn’t matter”) if one gets practical use out of them.