
The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination - da5e
http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/07/10/the-procrastinating-caveman-what-human-evolution-teaches-us-about-why-we-put-off-work-and-how-to-stop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
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BoppreH
I'm sorry, but I'm unconvinced. It's just too easy to use "human evolution" to
explain all sort of behaviors. I think the problem is that you don't have to
validate anything, you just tell a convincing story.

The nearest the author got to validating it was:

 _"[...] only a small minority of the fifty hyper-organized students I
interviewed reported procrastination as a serious problem"_

I don't know how this study was carried down, but it seems as self selecting
as it could possibly get.

The author went from "early humans' advantage was complex planning" to
"procrastination is your brain silently rejecting your ideas" in little more
than a handwave. Here's what I think was lacking:

a) Why does the idea selection characteristic had to be an unconscious
process?

b) If it had evolved to save lives, how can we be sure it would still kick off
when lives aren't at risk?

c) Why would it manifest itself as a lack of motivation instead of more
efficient alternatives such as fear, or simply losing interest?

d) If the brain is rejecting the idea, how do people cling to them for so
long? Are we consciously overriding our brain?

~~~
bluekeybox
The arguments in this article are indeed poor, but just because someone uses
poor arguments to support X doesn't imply that X is wrong. I found the main
point raised in the article to be very interesting because it supports a view
that I arrived to independently, by thinking about why I myself was
procrastinating in college (I was a pre-med student and of course I had a
heavy course load -- but I never deep down wanted to be a doctor -- my real
love was math, technology, computers, and believe it or not philosophy).

a) The entire consciousness/unconscious separation is somewhat bogus (our
"unconscious" is simply the part of our brain that evades introspection, but
degree of introspection is hard to measure for obvious reasons). The main
point to gather is that there _is_ a process of self-criticism that manifests
itself as lack of motivation, at least as stated by the article.

b) Our lives are always at risk -- being outcompeted by others of our kind is
equivalent to being trampled upon by a mammoth.

c) I don't see how lack of motivation to do X is a less efficient alternative
to fear. Fear is rarely an efficient mechanism (except in very time-
constrained situations) -- it forces us to focus all our energy on a single
task, it prevents us from thinking broadly and seeing new opportunities, and
finally it forces us to make decisions towards increase of security instead of
increase of opportunity. And the "loss of interest" you mention is technically
the same as lack of motivation.

d) It makes perfect sense that we are conflicted about complex decisions for a
long time. If we made up our minds quickly instead, it would prevent us from
gathering enough information to make the aforementioned complex decision
correctly. Complex decisions are complex for a reason.

~~~
TeMPOraL
b) Unless it's subconscious, I disagree. I procrastinated my way through the
high school and at this age I had zero fear for my life or competition with
anybody. Things do change when one gets older, but at that point I didn't
cared about being outcompeted by others (actually, right now, I don't really
care that much either).

c) Sometimes forcing us to focus on a single task is beneficial. Multitasking
is usually bad for productivity, at least from what I've seen so far both in
my life and on discussions at HN.

~~~
bluekeybox
b) Yes, i meant that there likely is an effect different from fear of loss of
life, but an effect nonetheless. You can call it subconscious.

c) Unless you are very intelligent with enough life experience (not plenty --
just enough), and have a carefully thought-out plan, wholly focusing on a
single task is rarely beneficial (and could have been detrimental in the
prehistoric times to other important tasks such looking out for
predators/danger and finding mates). If you have a great idea for a startup --
go focus on it -- but just to put it in a perspective, great ideas/plans are
so rare and hard to come by (as demonstrated by 95% of the population not
being entrepreneurs) that 95% of the time your brain is probably justified in
critiquing your commitment to anything. At this stage in my life (I'm 28) I
feel secure and confident in myself to wholly immerse myself into the tech
business, but before that I went through a long period of low motivation which
was most likely due to not feeling confident enough about any particular
career decision.

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jayzee
I said this before in another post, but this article that I read in the New
Yorker really hit home for me:

The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination
most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no
single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic
form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether
anything is worth doing at all.”

In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination:
the kind that is genuinely akratic and _the kind that’s telling you that what
you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point._

And when you are in school often you are given tasks which seem to have no
discernible purpose or meaning other than perhaps to take you off your
parent's hands while they go make a living.

From:
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101..).

~~~
markbao
> _the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep
> down, no real point._

Kind of like when I watched the Atlantis space shuttle launch and then go back
to working on the code for a social bookmarking service.

All joking aside, is he talking about an existential crisis, or something
else? A common cause of existential crises is some kind of negative experience
that prompts reflection and thinking as to why it happened, which sometimes
leads to questioning the _meaning of it all_. The experience of which, if you
went to school, you probably know pretty well. Most frequently after walking
out of class after bombing a test.

Working link for the aforementioned article:
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all)

~~~
sliverstorm
_... then go back to working on the code for a social bookmarking service_

SpaceX is proving that if you want to do more than make a social bookmarking
service, you _can_ get involved in the future of space. Just sayin :)

If you can't get them to hire you, figure out what they need. Contract out for
them. There's possibilities.

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nostromo
If there's an evolutionary cause for procastination, I'll offer a much simpler
one:

It's best to conserve your energy unless you _really_ want/need to do
something.

The author's example of spearing a mammoth works perfectly: only bother if
you're actually hungry, or if you think you'll be very hungry in the future.

~~~
zyfo
Except that it doesn't: His point with the example lies in the difference
between going straight at it and risking ones life verus figuring out a safer
alternative.

If it was just about energy, both methods would be deemed just as valid, and
they'd work for both sapiens and erectus.

Also we don't really need bridges and tv and space shuttles. I'm not saying
his reasoning is flawless either, but this doesn't seem to be more convincing.

~~~
Retric
Except that cavemen can't preserve food for long periods of time. Cat's spend
a lot of their time asleep because hunting is risky behavior and hunting at
the wrong time can easily waste energy. Granted I think the amount of time
early humans spent hunting is over estimated by most people, but even still if
there is easy energy sources to scavenge going hunting is a bad idea.

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darnton
The best thing I've read on this topic is The Procrastination Equation by
Piers Steel ([http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Equation-Putting-
Thing...](http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Equation-Putting-Things-
Getting/dp/0061703613/)).

He concludes that different people procrastinate for different reasons and
that those reasons boil down to:

\- learned helplessness (you have a low expectation of success)

\- boredom (you don't value the task), and

\- poor impulse control.

He then gives specific advice for working out which applies to you and then
for dealing with each of these, which is far more useful than either saying,
"Just do it," or telling an impossible-to-apply just-so story about mammoths
and frontal lobes.

~~~
goblin89
Here's a quick summary of scientific research on procrastination by the same
author: [http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Ste...](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Steel-The-Nature-of-Procrastination.pdf). No specific
advices for fighting it, but interesting nevertheless.

------
skarayan
I think calling it evolutionary is a guess, however, I do see a link between
procrastination and being uncertain how to proceed. In my case, I am very
determined when I have a sound plan and tend to procrastinate when parts of my
plan are questionable. Good read.

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markbao
Are you rejecting an option just because it's simply _bad_ , or also because
there's a better option available? So in essence, you'd reject the idea of
charging the mammoth, because you could throw the spear. Likewise, you'd
reject the idea of sitting down in the library with a quadruple-tall mocha
(and probably your study materials), because it doesn't seem viable. So, you
procrastinate. But what's the better option, in this case?

The alternative route (procrastination) is also not a better option. Everyone
that procrastinates (so that means everyone) knows when they're
procrastinating, and have that 10% of their status quo thinking about the fact
that they're procrastinating and shouldn't be procrastinating. I don't buy
it—that means your brain thinks procrastination is better than just trying to
do the work, because in the long run, we know procrastination is worse than
just doing the work.

My argument only holds if you believe the brain is functionally logical,
which... probably isn't true.

~~~
astrofinch
"Everyone that procrastinates (so that means everyone)"

When I find myself unable to work, I generally make a conscious choice to take
a break so that I can be rejuvenated by my down time to the greatest extent
possible. Does that count as not procrastinating?

"My argument only holds if you believe the brain is functionally logical,
which... probably isn't true."

Yes, of course it isn't true. The best example of this is the fact that people
sometimes give up (succumb to learned helplessness). If people were purely
rational agents, having their plan fail would be an indicator that they need
try something new. But in real life, they tend to do things like feel
depressed and watch more TV.

------
convulsive
This is not the 'evolutionary perspective' as you claim it is. This is just
your perspective dressed in evolutionary terminology so that the reader will
believe that if you accept human evolution, you MUST accept this conclusion.
But the fact that you came up with a possible evolutionary past and thought of
a constraint that could've pushed us to develop the adaptive behavior of
procrastination doesn't in any way imply that this is actually the way things
happened. Procrastination might've been a fitness-maximizing adaptation (or
even just a spandrel [1]) for so many other equally convincing reasons.

It's really strange that while for molecular & morphological phenotypes we use
rigorous methods to measure evolutionary relatedness so we can determine
possible sequences of evolutionary adaptations that led to them, when it comes
to behavioral phenotypes people think that conceivability arguments coupled
with very inconclusive evidence are sufficient to demonstrate that some
evolutionary story is true.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)>

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jamesbkel
Not to be a jerk, but if you're going to start offering opinions on evolution,
at least get it right and not refer to the "Homo sapien" species.... it's the
"Homo sapiens" species. Again, not trying to give you hard time, but at least
for me, that stuck out like a sore thumb.

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sanj
Procrastination is the basis of one of only two optimizations that exist:

1\. Do it late (because you may not need to do it at all).

vs.

2\. Do it early (because you _know_ it'll need to get done, over and over, and
you've got the data onhand right now).

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nazgulnarsil
these are known as "just so" stories and have plagued eve-psych since its
inception.

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sehugg
You say procrastination, I say lazy evaluation.

~~~
TeMPOraL
There's something in that concept. I sometimes don't do things people request
immediately, knowing that they most likely don't really need it. Then either
they repeat the request (forcing the computation ;)) or (more often) realize
it was superfluous.

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JamieEi
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptationism>

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AlexCP
Damn, I am procrastinating right now

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ignifero
Doesn't seem like an evolutionary adaptation from his remarks. It seems more
like a physiological balancing act. Could be a slow homeostatic process to
prevent certain brain cells from burning out. And I will present my data when
I m done customizing my terminal color theme.

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gbeeson
Very good article from a very good site. I WILL read the whole article later,
of that you can be sure.

