The Akrasia Effect: Why We Make Plans, but Don’t Fulfill Them
People often procrastinate. It’s easy to make plans and add dates to your calendar, and yet it’s almost inevitable that you’ll let some deadlines fly by recklessly. Our brains simply prefer instant gratification over long-term gratification. Given this trend, we often have to resort to crazy strategies to get things done.
This post originally appeared on James Clear’s blog .
By the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was faced with an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the famous French writer had signed an agreement with his publisher to write a new book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame .
Instead of writing the book, Hugo spent the next year taking on other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying writing. Hugo’s publisher was disappointed by the repeated delay and set an impressive deadline in response. The publisher demanded that Hugo complete the book by February 1831, less than six months later. Hugo devised a plan to defeat his procrastination. He gathered all his clothes, pulled them out of his chambers and locked them. He had nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking the right clothes for going out, Hugo no longer wanted to leave the house and be distracted. Staying at home and writing was his only option.
The strategy worked. Hugo remained in his office every day and wrote frantically in the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks earlier, on January 14, 1831.
The ancient problem of Akrasia
People have been putting things off for centuries for centuries. Even prolific artists like Victor Hugo are not immune to the distractions of everyday life. The problem is so timeless that ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle coined a word to describe this type of behavior: akrasia .
Akrasia is a state in which you act contrary to common sense . This is when you do one thing, even though you know that you have to do something else. In simplified translation, we can say that akrasia is procrastination or lack of self-control. Akrasia is what keeps you from doing what you set out to do.
Why did Victor Hugo decide to write the book and then put it off for more than a year? Why do we make plans, set deadlines and strive to achieve goals, but then fail to meet them?
Why We Make Plans but Take No Action
One explanation for why akrasia rules our lives, and why procrastination pulls us in, has to do with a term in behavioral economics called “inconsistency over time.” Timing inconsistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to value immediate rewards more than future ones.
When you make plans for yourself – for example, set a goal to lose weight, write a book, or learn a language – you are actually making plans for your future. You envision how you want your life to be in the future, and when you think about the future, your brain easily sees the value of actions that bring long-term benefits.
However, when it comes time to make a decision, you no longer make a choice for your future. Now you are in the present moment, and your brain is thinking about your real self. And the researchers found that the current self really likes instant gratification, not long-term gratification. This is one reason you might go to bed feeling motivated to change your life, but when you wake up, you find yourself falling into old habits. Your brain values long-term benefits when expected in the future, but values immediate gratification when it comes down to now.
This is one of the reasons why theability to delay gratification is such an important predictor of life’s success. Understanding how to resist the pull of instant gratification – at least from time to time, if not all the time – can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
The Antidote to Akrasia: 3 Ways to Defeat Procrastination
Here are three ways to overcome akrasia, overcome procrastination, and accomplish what you set out to do.
Strategy 1. Develop your future actions
When Victor Hugo locked his clothes to focus on writing, he was creating what psychologists call a “commitment mechanism.” Adherence devices are strategies that help you improve your behavior, either by increasing the obstacles or costs of bad behavior, or by decreasing the effort required for good behavior.
You can limit your eating habits in the future by purchasing foods in separate packages rather than in large quantities. You can stop wasting time on your phone by uninstalling games or social media apps. You can reduce the likelihood of reckless viewing by tucking your TV in a closet and only taking it out on big game days. You can voluntarily ask to be added to the list of prohibited in casinos and online gambling sites in order to prevent gambling in the future. You can create an emergency fund by setting up an automatic transfer of funds to your savings account. These are commitment mechanisms.
Circumstances vary, but the basic idea is the same: adherence devices can help you plan your future actions. Find ways to automate your behavior ahead of time rather than relying on willpower at the moment. Be the architect of your future actions, not the victim of them.
Strategy 2: reduce starting friction
The guilt and frustration of procrastination is usually worse than the pain of getting the job done. According to Eliezer Yudkowski, “getting work done from moment to moment is usually less painful than putting it off.”
So why are we still putting things off for later? Because it is not at work, which is difficult, he starts his work. The friction that prevents us from acting is usually centered around the beginning of the behavior. When you start, getting the job done becomes less painful. This is why it is often more important to develop a habit of starting when you start a new behavior than worrying about whether you will succeed in a new habit.
You must continually reduce the size of your habits . Put all your effort and energy into building the ritual and make it as easy as possible to get started. Don’t worry about the results until you have mastered the art of public appearances.
Strategy 3: Using Implementation Intentions
Implementation intent is when you declare your intention to implement a specific behavior at a specific time in the future. For example, “I will train for at least 30 minutes [DATE] at [LOCATION] at [TIME].”
There are hundreds of successful studies showing how implementation intentions have a positive effect on everything from exercise habits to flu shots. In the flu vaccine study, researchers looked at a group of 3,272 employees at a Midwest company and found that employees who wrote down the specific date and time they planned to get the flu shot were much more likely to follow in a few weeks.
It seems simple to say that planning ahead can make a difference, but as I said earlier, implementation intentions can increase the likelihood of an action being taken in the future by 2 to 3 times .
Fight against Akrasia
Our brains prefer instant gratification over long-term payoffs. It is simply a consequence of the way our mind works. Given this trend, we often have to resort to insane strategies to get things done – like Victor Hugo locking up all of his clothes so he can write a book. But I think it’s worth taking the time to create these commitment mechanisms if your goals are important to you.
Aristotle coined the term enkrateia as the opposite of akrasia . While AKRASIA refers to our tendency to fall prey to procrastination, enkratiya means “power over him.” Planning your future actions, reducing the friction associated with starting good behavior, and using implementation intentions are simple steps you can take to make life easier for an encratia, not akrasia .
The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Do What We Set To Do (and What to Do About It) | James Clear