Myopic procrastination

What is myopic procrastination?

Myopic procrastination means putting off a task because the discomfort of starting now feels more important than the consequences of waiting. Tomorrow looks like a better time to begin. Then tomorrow arrives, and starting still feels unpleasant.

How it works

O’Donoghue and Rabin (1999) model this problem using present-biased preferences. Their model distinguishes people who anticipate their future self-control problems from people who underestimate them. Immediate costs can encourage delay; immediate rewards can encourage acting too soon.

Why it matters

The student who keeps postponing an essay may be responding to the immediate effort of writing, rather than making a considered choice to work through the night. Calling that student lazy does little to explain the pattern.

This points to questions about the task: how hard is it to start, when will the work happen, and what else is competing for attention? Implementation intentions make the timing more explicit through an if–then plan. A plan still has to fit the person’s available time and resources; present bias is one explanation for delay, not the explanation for every missed deadline.

Making the essay easier to start

Imagine an essay due in three weeks. Instead of keeping one distant deadline, the student chooses to send a one-page outline to a study partner next Tuesday. The outline turns “write the essay” into a smaller, visible piece of work. Arranging the review in advance adds an external commitment: another person has reserved time to read it.

The student could pair this with an if–then plan: “After Tuesday’s first class, I will sit in the library and draft the outline.” Each change addresses a different problem: task size, a start time that is easy to postpone, or a commitment that is too easy to ignore. If the student lacks the necessary sources or has no free time that day, another deadline will not fix the obstacle. These are planning options to try and assess, not methods guaranteed to prevent procrastination.