You're probably starting this class thinking that you're going to do all the
work. You're going to be a great student.
You're going to start by watching all the videos.
You're going to take the quizzes. You're going to do readings.
You're going to take the readings quizzes.
And, you'll be 100% with the class. Except that you're human, just like all
the rest of us. So probably, you'll procrastinate.
You're about to do the readings and your friend calls you at the movie you've been
hearing about, or the trampoline gym, or just wants to go out for drinks and hang
out. It happens to all of us.
But, procrastination doesn't have to be counterproductive.
For example, as I'm making this video, I'm thinking about finishing the quizzes.
I really should finish the quizzes. A big contributor to procrastination is
what Kahneman and Tversky would call the planning fallacy.
Basically, the planning fallacy says that even when we have a lot of experience
with something, we still tend to underestimate the amount of time it'll
take us. This explains a whole lot, for example,
why are they running 10 minutes late to everything this week, even though, I go
to these places all the time. Think about the last time you had an
assignment to do or a trip to pack for. Did you find yourself right up agaist the
deadline, did you find yourself staying up all night to pack, and forgetting
something like an adaptor? This is pretty common.
So, the next time you have something to plan for, an assignment or a quiz for
example, try estimating, it'll take you twice as long and then it might get done
on time.
>> Deadlines are important. Now, of course, you already knew that.
But, I'm going to really drill it in for you by telling you about some researches
that Dan conducted with Klaus Wertenbroch.
This is actually in one of your assigned readings for week five on self-control.
But I'm just going to give you a little preview.
This study basically looked at whether people spontaneously set deadlines for
themselves, and if they do, how optimally they set these deadlines.
Dan and Klaus let some students choose their own deadlines for three papers that
were going to be due at the end of the term.
And for the other students, they had to abide by these preset deadlines that were
spaced evenly throughout. For those who are allowed to choose their
own deadlines, the rational thing to do would be to set them all on the due date
and not a minute earlier. After all, they can always turn in their
papers early and this would give them the maximum amount of time to work on each.
But, the students had some intuition that they would run into self-control problems
and probably procrastinate. And, so they, they sort of distributed
their papers throughout the term. So far, great.
But, did they distribute these deadlines optimally?
Not quite. If we take a look at the performance of
those who impose their own deadlines and those who are given deadlines, we see
that on average, the second group scored higher on their papers.
So far it looks like self-imposed deadlines are just not as effective as
externally imposed deadlines. But, when we look a little closer at the
group that set their own deadlines, we can see that the students among them who
set evenly spaced deadlines actually did just as well as those in the other
condition. It doesn't really matter who sets the
deadlines, just that they're evenly spaced.
So, bottom line, in the face of self-control problems like
procrastination, smart deadlines help.
>> Are you a Sponge or are you a Roomba? We really want to know what approach
you're going to take to this course. So we're asking you to sign a commitment
contract. That means, some of you will choose to be
more passive sponges. You're going to watch the lectures and
not much else. Some of you will be fully engaged in the
course. You're going to complete all the
assignments, watch the lectures, participate in the discussion boards.
There is not a right or a wrong choice, but we'd really like to know what
approach you're going to take. So, please go to the About the Course
section and look at the timeline. There, you'll have the opportunity to
make a commitment contract to one of the categories.
One way we'd like to help you manage your time is by posting an online calendar.
This calendar has all of the assignments and deadlines you need to complete this
course. It's also something that you can easily
upload to your own online calendar in whatever format works best for you.
You'll notice that all the assignments are due at 11:59 p.m., EST, that's
Eastern Standard Time. We're at lovely Durham, North Carolina
and real cities like Washington DC and New York City are located.
You'll have a full week to get to know the material before the quizzes due.
But, since this is about procrastination, you might want to finish those quizzes a
little bit earlier.
>> The last thing we want to talk to you about is how to spend your time wisely so
that you get the most out of this course? One way to do this is thorough testing.
Now, testing has pretty bad reputation, especially in some circles, but when it's
done, right it can really help you retain information.
So if you take the passive sponge approach that Susan described to you, you
might feel like you're getting all of the information, that you're understanding
everything. But, until you put yourself into a
slightly vulnerable position, you might not realize that you haven't picked up as
much of it as you thought. What the research suggests on this and we
supplied you with an article in the Pre-course Recommended Reading, is that,
when we're passively absorbing information and everything seems to make
sense, we're not aware of those gaps in our understanding that really only reveal
themselves once we try to retrieve that information.
So our brains go uh-oh, I guess I didn't really understand that, as well as I
thought I did, and we try to fill in that information.
And, once we try to fill in those gaps, we start to learn more.
So, it turns out that highlighting is mostly a waste of time.
I can't get sued by the highlighter companies for that, can I?
Unless you just want to add some color to an otherwise drab piece of paper, it's
not going to get you very far.
>> We know you want to learn, so test yourself.
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