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Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: self-control by precommitment.

Dan Ariely1, Klaus Wertenbroch

  • 1Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02142, USA. ariely@mit.edu

Psychological Science
|May 15, 2002
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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People willingly set costly deadlines to combat procrastination and improve task performance. However, these self-imposed deadlines are not as effective as externally imposed ones for maximum performance enhancement.

Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Economics
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Procrastination is a common human behavior where individuals delay tasks.
  • People often recognize their procrastination and attempt self-regulation strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if individuals self-impose costly deadlines to overcome procrastination.
  • To determine the effectiveness of self-imposed deadlines on task performance.
  • To assess if self-imposed deadlines are set optimally for performance enhancement.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental studies were conducted to examine self-imposed deadlines and procrastination.
  • Participants' willingness to set meaningful deadlines and their impact on task completion were analyzed.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Individuals are willing to self-impose costly deadlines to manage procrastination.
  • Self-imposed deadlines are effective in improving task performance.
  • People do not set self-imposed deadlines optimally, indicating a suboptimal performance enhancement.

Conclusions:

  • Self-control problems are recognized by individuals who then use self-imposed deadlines as a strategy.
  • While helpful, self-imposed deadlines are less effective than externally imposed ones for maximizing task performance.