MemeMachineGo!

Good K5 article on procrastination:

There’s a TV show on that my girlfriend and I love. Nanny 911. These classic British nannies choose a family in trouble and work their magic on them. They spend a day or so observing the family and learning all their poor behaviors and triggers, and then set about fixing the family.

A lot of the show is tough love. Just as easy as it is to reinforce positive behavior, you can reinforce negative ones too, and they’re easier to reinforce. Ask any behaviorist and they’ll tell you that randomly reinforcing a behavior works better than reinforcing it every time. Every time you put a dollar in the soda machine you get a soda. There’s no need to check that. But putting a quarter in a slot machine doesn’t always get you a prize. People get obsessed waiting for the chance that they’ll get some prize money, even once they’ve put way more quarters into one of these things than they could ever hope to get out. Gambling is addictive because while it operates within a set of rules, it’s unpredictable.

And that’s what happens all too often in these families. When the baby cries you say to yourself, “no, I have to stick this one out and not give in,” but after a while, you break down and give in. All this teaches the child is that crying more and louder works.

Where in your life are you randomly reinforcing negative behaviors? Where do you need tough love?

So what do these nannies do to turn around all this negative behavior? They take away all the rewards. When the rewards are always available, there’s no need to do the work. They take away television privileges, and make the kids and parents go cold turkey with any negative habits they may have (like pacifiers).

Procrastination is the reward for not doing work.

If you work hard all year, what can you look forward to? Your vacation. Procrastination is like taking that vacation right now. If you can’t take a vacation at the end of a year of hard work, you might as well take it now because there is no reward for finishing your work. […] If I work 9 to 5, I don’t work when I get home, yet much of my day at work is wasted too. Why? Because there is no reward for completing the work. If I complete the work, I’m still at my job, so what incentive do I have?

Well, what would Nanny 911 do? She would take away everything you use to procrastinate, and not give it back until you finished your work. No exceptions, because an exception is a random reinforcer.