Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action

In addition to incentives, workplaces harness, among other things:

1. Reciprocity, and commitment/consistency effects. You accepted the job; they did their part by giving you money; you feel now like you have to work. (As an example of the power here: I recall a study in which individuals who were sent a survey, with some money inside as a "thank you for filling this survey out", had a much higher survey-completion rate than people who were credibly promised that those who returned the surveys would receive a larger sum of money after their surveys were received. Even though the first group had no incentive-structure (since they already had the money), only reciprocity.)

2. Work-conducive contexts. Workplaces try to set up a context in which the pieces needed to work are all available, distractions are relatively unavailable, and working is the expected activity for a certain set-aside portion of one's week.

What I'd like is not so much a boss hanging over me, but a fellow colleague that needs my work. I think that triggers my "do stuff to avoid social status loss" behaviour.

There's one thing that really fights akrasia, and that's being both observed and painfully accountable.

Akrasia typically acts via future discounting. Sure, it's worth doing, but it's not worth doing now; it can be done later. Having a boss who will yell at you (or fire you) if you miss a deadline or a supervisor who will chew you out for playing minesweeper takes away the future discounting problem, because the bad event is something that happens with high probability right now. There's nothing special about employment in this context; anything that makes the pain of procrastination immediate will fight akrasia effectively.

I'm just pointing out that taking employment as your example is overly narrow. There's a very clear mechanism (present infliction) by which employment fights akrasia, and it's how to use that mechanism that really deserves attention, in my opinion.

This post made me think of this clock.

Akrasia can strike anywhere, but one place it doesn't seem to strike too often or too severly, assuming you are employed, is in the work place. You may not want to do something, and it might take considerable willpower to perform a task, but unless you want to get fired you can't always play Solitaire.

Akrasia struck all the time back when I was working at (gasp!) Burger King. There were employees and managers that would follow this behavior. "Well, I should do this because it is what my employer wants, but..." The trick is to do as little as possible without getting fired. Lying helps.

This is the biggest issue I have with some of the punishment/penalty systems suggested in the comments is that they teach people not to get caught instead of doing whatever it was they were supposed to be done. The clock Alicorn linked to is a minor example, but the workaround is to turn the clock off and sleep anyway. Most punishment systems have similar problems.

This post made me think of this website.

A year ago, I hired Alicorn as a manger, to tell me to do the things I want to do. I am still employing her. I am externally motivated--I don't think we've yet tried giving her authority to pay my "salary" yet. This is mostly because I'm not sure what a reasonable motivational system would look like in that case. If anyone has a suggestion I consider reasonable, I'll give it a try.

I think the issue you raise here boils down to that of having a credible commitment to punish in the event of defection. It is very credible that the company you work for will indeed fire you if you don't do your job. Roland in the comments suggests "Find a romantic partner who is willing to give you a kick in the ass if you procrastinate." This is another external source of commitment, although it might or might not be credible - will your romantic partner want to inflict enough harm to get you motivated?

The key is to be able to generate a credible commitment with yourself, and from my own personal experience I think this is possible. I take promises very seriously - if I make an agreement with someone, I will fulfill it, which means I don't make a promise unless I am serious about keeping it. So far, anyway, I have yet to break a promise.

In order to overcome akrasia, I hijack this obligation system for my own use. I can make a promise to myself to do something. But where is the loss aversion? After all, can I credibly punish myself if I decide to break the promise? The reason it works is because if I make this explicit promise to myself and then subsequently break it, I can no longer say I have never broken a promise.

Unfortunately, because the stakes are so high, I only rarely make these kinds of commitments. I still struggle daily with akrasia for small decisions.

I agree that most people don't experience so much akrasia at work (though I have some nagging doubts in the back of my head), but I don't think this is the mechanism. I don't have much of an explanation, but I think that it is more about social expectations. or maybe attaching activities to places.

So I don't think these methods are as effective as workplaces. But that doesn't say how effective they are, or how to harness the other effects of workplaces.

This is a good specific distinction, but I'm afraid at least partially it's circular: many of the people who inquire for the techniques to fight procrastinations, talk about their work. They manage to do the bare minimum, but they don't advance as much as they could if they found a way to effectively precommit to doing more.

"If you aren't so lucky as to have someone come along who will volunteer their time and do a fantastic job for free, you are faced with accepting mediocre free work, offering prizes, or paying someone. Since prizes are usually inefficient, it appears that offering to pay someone is the best option, so long as you are able to stipulate that there will be no or reduced pay if the work is not done on time and to specification."

Are they really so inefficient? Worth noting that in at least a few ways, Robin Hanson thinks they're much more efficient than other methods; see http://hanson.gmu.edu/whygrant.pdf and http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/prizes_versus_g.html

sware box

Do you mean "swear box"?. In any case, I think you should explain this term.

For most of the past three years, I have been without a regular job, mostly doing contract work. Ever since I quit my job, my goal has been to be part of a successful software startup. This requires a lot of work, and I still have not spent any significant effort on it, all the time believing that I some day would have the industry to see it through.

Last Saturday, after reading Fix it and tell us what you did, I decided I would once and for all determine whether or not I am able to work on a startup project full-time. If I am unable to spend 40 hours the first week, and 160 hours each of the following two months, I will inform my business partners that I am not sufficiently industrious to carry out this kind of work, and return to salary based work.

This is an efficient motivator, since it leaves zero time for procrastination. And should I fail to put in the required amount of work, I still won't be procrastinating, since I will cancel all my projects (giving up my dreams in the face of reality).

The last time I had a job, I spent most of my time "not working" and feeling guilty about it. I decided to solve the problem by leaving the job, and I've been job-free since September 2006.

For some reason, I almost never end up regretting putting things off or simply choosing not to do them at all. Don't want to do homework? There's an easy solution to that problem. Drop the course!

(Advice to anyone reading that's currently in college: take as few courses as possible each semester, so you have more time to focus on each one that you do take. Graduating in five or six years is just as good as graduating in four.)

As it turns out, the only reason I managed to get through college was that my parents were very determined to see me graduate and were willing to micromanage my life in order to make sure that I did. As far as I'm concerned, the only significant benefit I've gotten from not having dropped out of Rutgers after my sophomore year was continued financial support from my parents...

Find a romantic partner who is willing to give you a kick in the ass if you procrastinate.