Speed Procrastinators with Completion Times

Some Erasmus University researchers asked online study participants why they delay doing tasks they’re asked to complete. The responses were sorted into 13 general categories. Concerns about how long the task would take ranked as tenth in frequency among the 13. But then when another group of participants was asked to rate the degree of importance of each of the 13 in their decision to delay a task, consideration of task duration was ranked as the fourth most important reason.
     This apparent contradiction led the researchers to suspect that people will take task duration into account, but only if it’s specifically brought to their attention. A corollary is that including an estimate of task duration in a request to complete a task might reduce requestees’ procrastination.
     Subsequent studies by the researchers supported this conclusion, with completion times ranging from three minutes to one hour for a variety of tasks—submitting a form, making a health care appointment, writing an email. Based on their data analyses, the researchers’ explanation for the effect is that a statement of task duration moves thoughts from deliberating about whether to undertake the task toward contemplating how to complete the task.
     In reporting their results, the researchers take note of other tactics which have been identified for overcoming procrastination, such as setting deadlines, fostering prioritization, issuing reminders, and monitoring progress. They point out that specifying the completion time is simpler to implement than those others.
     A likely difficulty in using this tactic, though, is in calculating a completion time which will hold for a spectrum of potential respondents. You might handle this with a lesson from a whole other area of consumer behavior research called tensile pricing of discounts.
     Tensile pricing presents a range such as, “Save 20% to 45%.” Consumers are, by and large, an optimistic lot. If they see a 45%, they’ll tend to think that the item they’re wanting will be one of those tagged for the maximum discount. Applying this idea to the estimate of task completion time, if you say, “This will take about 15 to 20 minutes,” in order to increase your odds of being accurate, prospective respondents will tend to figure they’ll be among those who will take only 15 minutes. An even lower estimate could come in the minds of those who, when driving, consider the navigation app arrival time estimate as a benchmark to beat.

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Estimate Participative Consumption Durations 

Promote Procrastination Protocols 

Advertise Tensile Pricing Selectively

Image at top of post based on photo by Anders Wideskott from Unsplash