
Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability - gwern
https://pdf.yt/d/D_56sQA2ad-fIZeL
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ChrisNorstrom
Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems
aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people,
but rather themselves.

Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.

~~~
Xcelerate
This is an interesting point, and brings up a kind of weird philosophical
issue I've often wondered about.

Suppose that genetically, someone is predisposed to have very high motivation
and discipline. Born into whatever environment, they have the aptitude to
improving their life. Now imagine someone who, genetically, is predisposed to
very low motivation and discipline. Born into a poor, or low-class
environment, they are going to have a hard time moving up. However, someone
with little natural discipline born into a high-class environment may still do
okay in life (not great), by sheer virtue of the fact that they were born into
fortunate circumstances.

Similarly, what if we find that most criminal behaviors have a genetic
component? What distinguishes mental illness from "evil"? A serial killer is
clearly not right in the head; do we lock them up or treat it as an illness?
Is the distinction simply based on the whims of the majority at a particular
point in history? (Note the history of homosexuality.)

A lot of times, people will complain about "lazy, uneducated people" and that
if they'd just work harder, there wouldn't be any problems, but that's easy to
say when you have an innate ability to work hard. (Ignoring, of course, all
variables other than "hard work".)

In another vein, it's easy to be a good, moral person if being a good, moral
person is easy. That's a tautology, but I think it really highlights my point.
Similarly, losing weight is easy for some people but much harder for others.
Everyone projects their natural aptitudes and weaknesses on everyone else, and
then makes political decisions on the basis of that projection.

Anyway, I don't know what the correct answer is. But these thoughts bother me.

~~~
sah88
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

One of the oldest questions in philosophy to which I don't think there has
every really been a good answer. Or at least I haven't read one.

~~~
cottonseed
I use what I like to call "environmental discipline". (I think there is a
technical term for this in psychology, but I can't find it off hand. Any
psychologists know?) Suppose I need to study, but I don't really feel like it.
I can will myself to go to a library or coffee shop with just the books I need
to study and no distractions. Once I'm there, there is little choice but to
work. However, had I stayed home, where there are myriad distractions, I might
have gotten little or nothing done. Packing up and walking to another location
is easy compared to sitting down tody study, but once I'm at the new location,
sitting down and studying is now surprisingly easy.

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mindvirus
A little bit off topic: Setting goals is something that I'm pretty bad at - at
work, I set obvious goals like "finish project X by Y.", but other than that,
I have a hard time setting goals in my life. I have some higher level goals -
eat healthy, exercise, read a technical book every quarter, but barely
anything approaching SMART goals. Because of this, I feel like I lack ambition
sometimes. How do you identify goals? What do your goals look like? How do you
measure yourself against them?

~~~
cottonseed
Make a timeline for the next 10 years. Where are you trying to go? What are
you doing to get there? Try to be specific about your plans and actions and
how they will realize your goals. This is not an easy exercise. Making a
timeline of your past can be helpful for getting perspective. I'm relatively
planful, but I have trouble planning more than about 3-5 years out, although a
few times I've had pretty clear 8 year plans (some of which actually came to
pass). A friend with ADHD got this exercise from his therapist. I think this
is a great exercise for anyone.

~~~
ohquu
That sounds terrifying. Can you give some examples of ten year goals? I don't
even know where I want to be a year from now.

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cottonseed
Every time I bring this exercise up, someone says this. What's terrifying
about thinking about a 10 year plan? Realizing that you don't have one?

My wife decided she wanted to be a professor when she was in high school.
She's three years into a tenure track job. She's been working towards this for
nearly 15 years.

Building non-trivial skills or things of value takes time and usually requires
a plan. All my startups had multi-year plans, even if things didn't work out
as we'd envisioned.

At one point I decided I wanted to learn to speak other languages. I studied
Japanese for a year, got a chance to move to China, and studied Chinese
regularly until I got conversational. I wanted (and still want) to study
others, but things went in another direction.

Another time, I decided I wanted to get better at math. It took me about a
year to formulate a clear plan: I decided to get a PhD. There were some
barriers (I had dropped out of my undergrad, for example) and it took a while
to get on track. That was 8 years ago. I graduated in July.

I'm still working on my next plan.

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jrapdx3
As a clinician not surprising that procrastination, impulsivity and poor goal-
direction could be genetically linked. Combinations of such behavioral
attributes (along with other manifestations) are associated with certain
behavioral disorders, for example, these behaviors are common among adults
with attentional disorders.

Of course, just having those traits is not sufficient to establish any
specific diagnosis. Digesting the article more thoroughly will take me some
time. However, it does seem to show these traits appear to have common genetic
roots, but the traits also cut across nominal diagnostic categories.

That last point has merit. Behavior has to be considered along with its
complex context in order to determine the significance of the behavior. It's
difficult to figure out connections among the many contextual variables, far
too many to glean quickly. "Explanations" whether applied to self or others
bear risk of being wrong.

OTOH, procrastination or impulsive action may have non-trivial consequences.
If these really are causing problems finding solutions is imperative. If self-
help doesn't solve it, seek professional help. Most places, it's not hard to
find, and it can make a big difference. If you need it, go get it.

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goblin89
“Procrastination” is such a weasel term when used without an object. Whenever
you do _anything_ you’re procrastinating everything else you could’ve been
doing instead.

Doing your job may mean procrastinating asking for a raise, looking for a
better position at another company, starting your own business and many other
things.

~~~
icegreentea
One of the scales used to measure procrastination in this study is linked
here:
[http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/prcrasts.pdf](http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/prcrasts.pdf)
(The study did not use any of the star marked questions). Basically, they
found that there is a strong link between your genetics and how you will
answer this questionnaire.

The questions tend to cluster around things with firm deadlines, or otherwise
of more or less known time components to it, and which furthermore have more
or less the same costs to you. In your examples, things being put off have
unknown time components and a relatively large degree of risk. Putting off
those actions is in many ways the result of a pretty rational calculation.

In contrast, typical things that we 'procrastinate' about (like returning a
library book, or washing the dishes, or doing some assignment) are things with
little or know risk, as well as relatively well known time and effort (or we
believe to be well known) costs.

~~~
goblin89
Thanks for linking to the document. I can’t argue with the evidence regarding
genetics, and I agree that real procrastination likely indicates troubles with
goal management, but I strongly disagree that what these questions indicate is
in fact tendency to procrastinate (by Wikipedia’s definition[0] and my own
understanding of the word).

My main objection is that what appears as procrastination to an outsider may
not necessarily be procrastination per individual’s plan.

Moreover, I think the common attitude to this is unfortunate, because avoiding
externally perceived procrastination may actually go against individual’s own
interests. Such conflict could be enough to induce actual procrastination in
those sensitive to public pressure but not willing to fully cave in[1].

Meanwhile, the majority of questions in the document judge the procrastination
by this “external” standard.

[0] “Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in
preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of
less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time…”

[1] “I want to go freelancing (fire my client, etc.) but when I lurk and read
up on this topic (polish my resume, etc.) I feel like I’m procrastinating, so
I’m writing Hacker News comments instead” is roughly how I imagine this.

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Houshalter
I have bad ADHD. Every day is a battle against myself that I usually lose.
It's definitely genetic; my dad is pretty much the same as I am.

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JoeAltmaier
I didn't see where they separate 'nature vs nurture' in their twins study. Was
that done? Is it hasty to label these correlations as 'genetic'?

~~~
icegreentea
They compare the degree of correlation between their identical and non-
identical twins. If in both groups, twins show on average the same level of
procrastination/whatever trait, you can infer that the trait is not strongly
genetically linked. If the identical twin group shows more correlation between
siblings than the non-identical twin group, then you can infer that the trait
is strongly genetically linked. You can read more under the first few
paragraphs of their data analysis section.

~~~
legacyfruit
Just thinking out loud here, but if identical twins were much closer in, for
example, appearance, couldn't this induce more similarity in other traits.
That is, if being identical made twins have closer relationships, might that
not result in higher correlations in certain traits, which weren't due to
genetics.

Do people tend to know if they are identical or non-identical twins?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure! If one is a guy and the other a girl, they would guess pretty quick.

Just kidding. But in my experience, parents of identical twins go in for the
"isn't it cute lets dress them the same and treat them the same and tell them
they are just the same". That has to be a strong influence. I'm not sure the
twins-identical-or-not goes near far enough to untangle the nurture question.

~~~
icegreentea
That may well be true in general - twin studies are certainly not the end all
of distangling genetic and environmental effects. But if you read the studies
results, I think the difference in correlation effect size speaks for itself.
In general, identical twins correlate with r value of ~0.5 and non-identical
twins with <0.1.

The authors interpret the low correlation in non-identical twins as evidence
that the traits being studied are weakly (if at all) influenced by
environmental factors that non-identical twins are subjected to. They then
infer (assert, w/e) that this level of weak environmental influence also
extends to the set of environmental factors that identical twins are subjected
to. Now, obviously as you point out, there are environmental factors that are
more or less unique to identical twins, but I feel that its unlikely (and so
did the authors) that these identical twin specific factors contribute
significantly the vast difference in correlation between the two classes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It could just be that they underestimate the degree that identical twins are
driven to duplicate one another's mannerisms. Did they try to measure it? Or
just dismiss it.

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iribe
I wonder if this lack of being able to set / keep goals correlates to math
which often involves goal setting then working backwards to find the right
steps to reach a solution. Are procrastinators worse at math?

~~~
jacobolus
Anecdotally: I’m one of the worst procrastinators I know, and also one of the
best mathematical problem solvers. Some of the most organized and diligent
people I know are terrible at logical/mathematical reasoning.

I don’t think there’s a strong relationship. If anything, mathematical problem
solving requires a lot of drifting around in the problem space and doodling
that can be difficult for someone who approaches work/problem solving in a
start-working-now-and-work-until-it’s-done kind of way.

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md2be
I'll post a comment later.

~~~
socceroos
I think your joke was lost on many people.

~~~
gwern
Maybe they're just tired of it. I'm personally a little sick of how every
single article I post on willpower or procrastination to Reddit or HN or
anywhere else will attract the _same damn joke_. Like, do you really think
anyone hasn't seen that before? Or that everyone doesn't think of it in the
first second? (By this point, I've come to see it not as a genuine attempt at
humor, but basically like posting 'First!' or pissing on a wall - it's just
doing something to mark your existence.)

~~~
md2be
Maybe you need to chill out, eat some healthy food, enjoy nature.

~~~
gojomo
I am only in favor of Gwern doing such things if he meticulously journals and
statistically analyzes their effectiveness against alternatives, as is his
wont.

