The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

See also Endowment Effect (ch. 23); Scarcity Error (ch. 27); Loss Aversion (ch. 32)

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85
WHY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS DON’T WORK
Procrastination
A friend, a writer, someone who knows how to capture emotion in sentences –
let’s call him an artist – writes modest books of about 100 pages every seven
years. His output is the equivalent of two lines of print per day. When asked about
his miserable productivity, he says: ‘Researching is just so much more enjoyable
than writing.’ So, he sits at his desk, surfing the web for hours on end or immersed
in the most abstruse books – all in the hope of hitting upon a magnificent,
forgotten story. Once he has found suitable inspiration, he convinces himself that
there is no point starting until he is in the ‘right mood’. Unfortunately, the right
mood is a rare occurrence.
Another friend has tried to quit smoking every day for the past ten years. Each
cigarette is his last. And me? My tax returns have been lying on my desk for six
months, waiting to be completed. I haven’t yet given up hope that they will fill
themselves in.
Procrastination
is the tendency to delay unpleasant but important acts: the
arduous trek to the gym, switching to a cheaper insurance policy, writing thank-
you letters. Even New Year’s resolutions won’t help you here.
Procrastination
is idiotic because no project completes itself. We know that
these tasks are beneficial, so why do we keep pushing them on to the back
burner? Because of the time lapse between sowing and reaping. To bridge it
requires a high degree of mental energy, as psychologist Roy Baumeister
demonstrated in a clever experiment. He put students in front of an oven in which
chocolate cookies were baking. Their delicious scent wafted around the room. He
then placed a bowl filled with radishes by the oven and told the students that they
could eat as many of these as they wanted, but the cookies were strictly out of
bounds. He then left the students alone in the room for thirty minutes. Students in
a second group were allowed to eat as many cookies as they wanted. Afterward,
both groups had to solve a tough maths problem. The students who were
forbidden to eat any cookies gave up on the maths problem twice as fast as those
who were allowed to gorge freely on cookies. The period of self-control had

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drained their mental energy – or willpower – which they now needed to solve the
problem. Willpower is like a battery, at least in the short term. If it is depleted,
future challenges will falter.
This is a fundamental insight. Self-control is not available around the clock. It
needs time to refuel. The good news: to achieve this, all you need to do is refill
your blood sugar and kick back and relax.
Though eating enough and giving yourself breaks is important, the next
necessary condition is employing an array of tricks to keep you on the straight
and narrow. This includes eliminating distractions. When I write a novel, I turn off
my Internet access. It’s just too enticing to go online when I reach a knotty part.
The most effective trick, however, is to set deadlines. Psychologist Dan Ariely
found that dates stipulated by external authorities – for example, a teacher or the
IRS – work best. Self-imposed deadlines will work only if the task is broken down
step by step, with each part assigned its own due date. For this reason, nebulous
New Year’s resolutions are doomed to fail.
So get over yourself. 
Procrastination
is irrational, but human. To fight it, use a
combined approach. This is how my neighbour managed to write her doctoral
thesis in three months: she rented a tiny room with neither telephone nor Internet
connection. She set three dates, one for each part of the paper. She told anyone
who would listen about these deadlines and even printed them on the back of her
business cards. This way, she transformed personal deadlines into public
commitments. At lunchtime and in the evenings, she refuelled her batteries by
reading fashion magazines and sleeping a lot.