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Delay discounting

Our tendency to devalue money and other goods based on time is called delay discounting.

This is an important aspect in procrastination because the completion of the project happens in the future. Finishing a project is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away a deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.

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@zachary_pro

created an idea from a article:

THECONVERSATION

The psychological origins of procrastination – and how we can stop putting things off

theconversation.com

MORE IDEAS FROM THE SAME ARTICLE

Procrastination and subjective value

Our choice to work on a project is guided by how much we value finishing that project in that moment. Psychologists call this "subjective value."

Increasing the subjective value of a project

Attach the work you have to do to your self-concept.

A trick to defeat procrastination

Find a way to increase the subjective value of working in this moment, related to the value of other things.

Effort makes a task less attractive

Mental effort is costly, so we generally prefer to work on an simple task rather than a hard task. We procrastinate more if we expect a certain task to be hard.