Chapter 4: Procrastination Procrastination is the opposite of consistent self-discipline. Procrastination is the reason people fail to achieve their fitness goals. Procrastination is the reason people fail at anything. Procrastination is deferring an action to a future date. The Popular Myth: You procrastinate because you are lazy, shiftless and weak-willed. The truth is you procrastinate for two reasons: 1) Lack of a pre-planned thought control mechanism in the face of an impulse, 2) Lack of training and energy to implement the thought control mechanism. YouTube reveals something about your own behavior you should have noticed by now. Something which keeps getting between you and the things you want to accomplish. If you know how to use the “save for later” function in YouTube, you tend to gradually accumulate a cache of hundreds of videos you think you’ll watch one day. This is a bigger deal than you think. Take a look at your queue. Why are there so damn many documentaries and dramatic epics collecting virtual dust in there?
Mary Bellavita -Unleah Your Bigger Butt By now you could draw the cover art of “Fight Club” from memory. Why don’t you watch it straightaway? Why do you keep postponing it? It is no longer a mystery to psychologists, why you keep adding videos to your ever-growing collection of dramatic epics. You do it, for the same reason you believe you will eventually get around to doing the work; meticulously accomplishing every goal you have ever set for yourself. Needless to say, you rarely do. In a 2008 University of Denver study, researchers Loewenstein and Clarkson had participants pick 3movies out of a selection of 21. The selection consisted of an assortment of low-brow and high-brow movies. Among the low-brow, you could find action flicks such as “Kill Bill” or “Collateral”. Among the high-brow were movies such as “Million Dollar Baby” and “Aviator”. In essence, the researchers were offering the participants a choice between movies which promised to be exciting and forgettable or engaging and requiring effort to appreciate.
Mary Bellavita -Unleah Your Bigger Butt After making their selection of 3movies, the participants were required to watch one movie, straightaway. They then had to watch another in two days and the third movie was supposed to be watched two more days after the second one. Most participants picked “Million Dollar Baby” as one of their selection of 3. They knew it was a splendid movie because the reviews world-wide were nothing short of glowing. The movie had been nominated for the Oscars, Golden Globe and MTV awards. Even though, it was in their selection, hardly any of the participants watched the movie on the first day. Instead, they went for the low-brow movies on the first day. Out of 600participants, only 44 went for the high-brow movies on the first day. The rest went for comedies or action flicks like “300” or “The Departed” when they had to watch a movie forthwith. When participants crafted their plans for the future, high-brow movies were picked 63percent of the time as the second movie to be watched and 71percent of the time as the third movie to be watched. The researchers decided to repeat the same experiment. Only, this time, all three selected movies had to be watched back-to-back. “Million Dollar Baby” was 13times less likely to be chosen at all. The behavioral pattern of the participants, confirmed the hunch the researchers had had all along. People will go for the junk food first, but plan healthy meals in the future. Over the decades, a wide-range of studies has proven; that you tend to have time-inconsistent preferences.
Mary Bellavita -Unleah Your Bigger Butt Given the choice between a fruit or cake one week from now, you will opt for the fruit. When the week comes around and you are again presented with the choice of either a slice of Italian pie or an apple fruit, you are statistically more likely to go for the Italian pie. This is why your YouTube queue is full of great films you keep passing over for “Collateral”. The YouTube-movie choices, you make, of what to watch right now, or what to watch later, is like chocolate pastries versus cucumber sticks. When dealing with the present moment, you go for what tastes good. When planning for the future, you reserve the healthy and nutritious meals for later. As marketing psychologists, Julia Bergman has pointed out; this is why grocery stores display candy on the shelves right next to the checkout. Present bias is the scientific term for this tendency. Present bias is the failure to recognize; that what, you want now, isn’t what you’ll want later. What you want; tends to change over time. This tendency is persistent. Have you ever figured out; why you buy grapes and spinach, only to throw them out later, because they rotted, before you came around to eat them? Now, you know. It is because of present bias. Present bias is the reason, why you have made the same resolution for the seventh time in a row; but this time is different.
Mary Bellavita -Unleah Your Bigger Butt This time, you mean it. You are going to work off your body fat. You are going to sculpt a six-pack set of abs so ripped, they could deflect spears.
