Perseverance of Energy
A bug in our brain?
Our brain wants to perserve as much energy as possible. It wants to be efficient. When you are in the process of creating a routine, it feels like time is going slower. But when the routines have been made, and you follow them without any change, time goes faster.
The brain likes routines. But what about when you want to study or do a new hobby? Would it then prefer spending that energy? Or would it rather manipulate you like a puppet master, to sit in a comfy sofa or chair and scroll YouTube, for a period until the procrastination equation tells you to do otherwise?
Let’s talk about the procrastination equation. It’s made by Piers Steel, a scientist who has been studying procrastination his whole career. It goes like this:
$$\frac{Expectancy \times Value}{Impulsiveness \times Delay} = Motivation$$
Lets have chatpgt give a quick explanation:
| Variable | Meaning | Description |
| Expectancy | Confidence / probability of success | How likely you believe you are to succeed at the task. Low expectancy → procrastination increases. |
| Value | Reward / enjoyment | How rewarding or meaningful the task or its outcome feels. Higher value → motivation increases. |
| Impulsiveness | Distractibility | How prone you are to distractions or short-term temptations. Higher impulsiveness → motivation decreases. |
| Delay | Time until reward | How far away the reward or outcome feels in time. Longer delay → motivation decreases |
Yeah, so I have a few examples:
(Expectancy) If you believe you won’t finish the assignment today, you procrastinate.
(Value) If you don’t find the subject interesting, you procrastinate.
(Impulsivity) If you are easily distracted by impulses, like app notifications, thoughts, dopamine, you procrastinate.
(Delay) If the deadline is 1 month away, you procrastinate.
So going back to the main point. Our brain likes to preserve energy to stay efficient. What can we do to bypass this natural behavior, because we want to work towards our goals?
I honestly don’t know yet. But what I do know is:
We can increase the expectancy of success and value of reward variables.
We can decrease our distractability from impulses and deadline variables.
We should ask ourselves how to do this. In my previous blogpost about being "Like a lion” falls into the impulsiveness category.
This should be investigated further. If you have any, please comment them below! Till next time.
