Here's a report from the Economist on a psychology experiment about procrastination. If it seems a bit of an effort, maybe come back and read it later:
To some there is nothing so urgent that it cannot be postponed in favour of a cup of tea. Such procrastination is a mystery to psychologists, who wonder why people would sabotage themselves in this way. A team of researchers led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz, in Germany, reckon they have found a piece of the puzzle. People act in a timely way when given concrete tasks but dawdle when they view them in abstract terms.
Dr McCrea and his colleagues conducted three separate studies. First they recruited 34 students who were offered €2.50 ($3.30) for completing a questionnaire within the subsequent three weeks. Half of the students were then sent an email asking them to write a couple of sentences on how they might go about various activities, such as opening a bank account or keeping a diary. The others were asked to write about why someone might want to open a bank account or keep a diary.
For their second study, Dr McCrea and his colleagues recruited 50 students, who were offered the same sums and timespans as the first lot. Half of these students were asked to provide examples of members of a group, for example, naming any type of bird. The task was inverted for the other students, who were asked to name a category to which birds belong.
Finally the researchers asked 51 students, who were again offered cash and given a deadline, to examine a copy of “La Parade” by Georges Seurat, a 19th-century French artist. Half were given information about pointillism, the technique Seurat used to create the impression of solid colours from small dots of paint. The others were told that the painting was an example of neo-impressionism in which the artist had used colour to evoke harmony and emotion. Both groups were then asked to rate the importance of colour in 13 other works of art.
As the team report in Psychological Science, in all three studies, those who were presented with concrete tasks and information responded more promptly than did those who were asked to think in an abstract way. Moreover, almost all the students who had been prompted to think in concrete terms completed their tasks by the deadline while up to 56% of students asked to think in abstract terms failed to respond at all.
And that's it.
My hypothesis: people procrastinate because they're lazy. If that seems too judgemental, let me admit that I procrastinate because I'm lazy. Nearly everyone does. If you have a list of tasks to be performed, the ones to be done first will be the ones requiring the least effort – and those will be the ones where there's a straightforward answer requiring little thought. It's like a quiz or an exam: you'll answer the easy factual questions first – what's the capital of Ethiopia? – before you tackle something like, "What effect did the writings of Tom Paine have on the American Declaration of Independence?" It's a question of using your limited amount of energy and willingness to cooperate in what you take to be the most efficient way.
I don't see that the experiment here has done any more than provide some evidence for that: for the obvious idea that concrete thought is easier than abstract thought, and that we're all a bit lazy – or, rather, a bit economical with the effort we'll spend on certain tasks. For €2.50 would you bother to answer some stupid psychological test by writing about why someone might want to open a bank account or keep a diary? Can't they work it out for themselves?
Mick Hartley 
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