The Procrastination Equation

A business professor has come up with a formula for procrastinators. It’s designed to help them figure out if they can overcome the failing. Piers Steel from Canada’s Calgary University decries theories that blame them for laziness or being too careful. Steel says up to one in five of us is a “chronic procrastinator” living with the mistaken notion that we can’t complete a task that we don’t care about. That separates the serious procrastinators from those who are simply lazy. The later don’t care if a task is finished or not.

Here’s Steel’s formula: U=EV/ID

Use a rating of one out of ten, you multiply your expectation of success (E) by the value of completing the task (V). Then multiply the consequence of failing to complete the current task (I) by your previous tendency to delay tasks (D). The first total (E x V) is then divided by the second figure (D x I) giving the likelihood of completing the task in hand or the utility (U). If you come up with a score less than 3 then you are, according to Steel, an official chronic procrastinator.

He says, "When we procrastinate, it's almost always about long-term objectives. 'Instead of attending to those, we go with what is more pleasurable or less painful right now."

Steel offers more details in his book The Procrastination Equation: Today’s Trouble with Tomorrow.

Stephen Goforth