Procrastination

What it is

Delaying tasks despite expecting to be worse off for the delay, often because present comfort outweighs future benefit.

Related

• Hyperbolic discounting bias
  Procrastination is hyperbolic discounting applied to effort: the present cost of work outweighs a bigger later benefit.
• Information bias bias
  Gathering ever more information is a respectable way of delaying a decision.
• Zeigarnik effect bias
  Unfinished tasks nag at us; starting a task is a way of clearing the nagging.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#85: Procrastination

References

• Wikipedia: Procrastination en.wikipedia.org
• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

More in “Deciding and acting: incentives, loss and commitment”