Does caring more cause procrastination: no one knows.
Does caring more cause procrastination is a question the lab study cannot answer. Its tasks were meaningless, its stakes small, and its participants students in one American city. So the effect might be stronger for your business, or weaker, and nobody can honestly tell you which.
Greek is not your business.
The participants transcribed nonsense syllables and finished somebody else's Tetris for seven weeks. None of it was theirs. Your business, however, is the opposite of meaningless, which is why it frightens you. Nothing in that design shows how the mechanism behaves when the task carries your idea of yourself.
Does caring more cause procrastination or protect you.
Procrastinating on meaningful goals might be worse, because wanting something badly is no obvious defence. Also, a task that matters is a task that can fail properly. However, the effect might equally be weaker. Anybody who claims certainty is stretching a seven-week study about Greek into a claim about your life.
The delay nobody has measured.
The author searched for a published critique of how present bias gets measured. He found only a working paper and a meta-analysis he could not open properly. So treat the numbers as solid for what they measured, and unproven beyond it.
Also, nine searches found nobody who counted the time from idea to first action in a general population. The literature only measures people who already started.
Your own data on does caring more cause procrastination.
Write the date you first decided to start this business, as close as you can remember.
Write the date of the first thing that left a mark outside your house, or leave it blank.
From the book.
And here is the gap that surprised me most, because it is your gap. How long is it, on average, between somebody deciding to start a business and doing the first thing that leaves a mark outside their own house? Nine searches, and not one of them found anybody who has counted it in a general population. What the literature measures is people who already started.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 8: Why later always wins
Questions about does caring more cause procrastination.
So does caring more cause procrastination for people building a business?
Nobody can say from this evidence. The study used meaningless tasks, so it is silent on work that matters to you.
Is there a critique of how present bias is measured?
The author was told one exists. However, he only found a working paper and a meta-analysis he could not open properly.
How long do people wait between deciding and starting?
Nobody has counted it in a general population. The research only measures people who already started.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 8, “Why later always wins”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Present bias for effort: why Thursday shrinks.
- 02 Hyperbolic discounting explained: model, not data.
- 03 Commitment device psychology: why 59 per cent chose it.
- 04 Does caring more cause procrastination: no one knows.
- 05 Are entrepreneurs more impatient: about time, yes.
- 06 Accountability partner for goals: one line tonight.
- 07 What if I still don't do it: read the result.
- 08 Augustine on akrasia: the garden and the Greek.