I explained. Together, these papers would constitute much of their final grade.
“And what are the deadlines?” asked one of them, waving his hand from the back. I smiled. “You can hand in the papers at any time before the end of the semester,” I replied. “It’s entirely up to you.” The students looked back blankly.
“Here’s the deal,” I explained. “By the end of the week, you must commit to a deadline date for each paper. Once you set your deadlines, they can’t be changed.” Late papers, I added, would be penalized at the rate of one percent off the grade for each day late. The students could always turn in their papers before their deadlines without penalty, of course, but since I wouldn’t be reading any of them until the end of the semester, there would be no particular advantage in terms of grades for doing so.
In other words, the ball was in their court. Would they have the self-control to play the game?
“But Professor Ariely,” asked Gaurav, a clever master’s student with a charming Indian accent, “given these instructions and incentives, wouldn’t it make sense for us to select the last date possible?”
“You can do that,” I replied. “If you find that it makes sense, by all means do it.”
Under these conditions, what would you have done?
I promise to submit paper 1 on week ———
I promise to submit paper 2 on week ———
I promise to submit paper 3 on week ———
What deadlines did the students pick for themselves? A perfectly rational student would follow Gaurav’s advice and set all the deadlines for the last day of class—after all, it was always possible to submit papers earlier without a penalty, so why take a chance and select an earlier deadline than needed? Delaying the deadlines to the end was clearly the best decision if students were perfectly rational. But what if the students are not rational? What if they succumb to temptation and are prone to procrastination? What if they realize their weakness? If the students are not rational, and they know it, they could use the deadlines to force themselves to behave better. They could set early deadlines and by doing so force themselves to start working on the projects earlier in the semester.
What did my students do? They used the scheduling tool I provided them with and spaced the timing of their papers across the whole semester. This is fine and good, as it suggests that the students realize their problems with procrastination and that if given the right opportunities they try to control themselves—but the main question is whether the tool was indeed helpful in improving their grades. To find out about this, we had to conduct other variations of the same experiments in other classes and compare the quality of papers across the different conditions (classes).
NOW THAT I had Gaurav and his classmates choosing their individual deadlines, I went to my other two classes—with markedly different deals. In the second class, I told the students that they would have no deadlines at all during the semester. They merely needed to submit their papers by the end of the last class. They could turn the papers in early, of course, but there was no grade benefit to doing so. I suppose they should have been happy: I had given them complete flexibility and freedom of choice. Not only that, but they also had the lowest risk of being penalized for missing an intermediate deadline.
The third class received what might be called a dictatorial treatment: I dictated three deadlines for the three papers, set at the fourth, eighth, and twelfth weeks. These were my marching orders, and they left no room for choice or flexibility.
Of these three classes, which do you think achieved the best final grades? Was it Gaurav and his classmates, who had some flexibility? Or the second class, which had a single deadline at the end, and thus complete flexibility? Or the third class, which had its deadlines dictated from above, and therefore had no flexibility? Which class do you predict did worst?
When the semester was over, Jose Silva, the teaching assistant for the classes (himself an expert on procrastination and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley), returned the papers to the students. We could at last compare the grades across the three different deadline conditions. We found that the students in the class with the three firm deadlines got the best grades; the class in which I set no deadlines at all (except for the final deadline) had the worst grades; and the class in which Gaurav and his classmates were allowed to choose their own three deadlines (but with penalties for failing to meet them) finished in the middle, in terms of their grades for the three papers and their final grade.
What do these results suggest? First, that students do procrastinate (big news); and second, that tightly restricting their freedom (equally spaced deadlines, imposed from above) is the best cure for procrastination. But the biggest revelation is that simply offering the students a tool by which they could precommit to deadlines helped them achieve better grades.
What this finding implies is that the students generally understood their problem with procrastination and took action to fight it when they were given the opportunity to do so, achieving relative success in improving their grades. But why were the grades in the self-imposed deadlines condition not as good as the grades in the dictatorial (externally imposed) deadlines condition? My feeling is this: not everyone understands their tendency to procrastinate, and even those who do recognize their tendency to procrastinate may not understand their problem completely. Yes, people may set deadlines for themselves, but not necessarily the deadlines that are best for getting the best performance.
When I looked at the deadlines set by the students in Gaurav’s class, this was indeed the case. Although the vast majority of the students in this class spaced their deadlines substantially (and got grades that were as good as those earned by students in the dictatorial condition), some did not space their deadlines much, and a few did not space their deadlines at all. These students who did not space their deadlines sufficiently pulled the average grades of this class down. Without properly spaced deadlines—deadlines that would have forced the students to start working on their papers earlier in the semester—the final work was generally rushed and poorly written (even without the extra penalty of one percent off the grade for each day of delay).
Interestingly, these results suggest that although almost everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognize and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilize available tools for precommitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it.
SO THAT WAS my experience with my students. What does it have to do with everyday life? A lot, I think. Resisting temptation and instilling self-control are general human goals, and repeatedly failing to achieve them is a source of much of our misery. When I look around, I see people trying their best to do the right thing, whether they are dieters vowing to avoid a tempting dessert tray or families vowing to spend less and save more. The struggle for control is all around us. We see it in books and magazines. Radio and television airwaves are choked with messages of self-improvement and help.
And yet, for all this electronic chatter and focus in print, we find ourselves again and again in the same predicament as my students—failing over and over to reach our long-term goals. Why? Because without precommitments, we keep on falling for temptation.
What’s the alternative? From the experiments that I have described above, the most obvious conclusion is that when an authoritative “external voice” gives the orders, most of us will jump to attention. After all, the students for whom I set the deadlines—for whom I provided the “parental” voice—did best. Of course, barking orders, while very effective, may not always be feasible or desirable. What’s a good compromise? It seems that the best course might be to give people an opportunity to commit up front to their preferred path of action. This approach might not be as effective as the dictatorial treatment, but it can help push us in the right direction (perhaps even more so if we train people to do it, and give them experience in setting their own deadlines).
What’s the bottom line? We have problems with self-control, related to immediate and delayed gratification—no doubt there. But each of the problems we face has potential self-control mechanisms, as well. If we can’t save from our paycheck, we can take advantage of our employer’s