Why people procrastinate | Motivating minds | The Economist
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12971028

"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."

People act in a timely way when given concrete tasks but dawdle when they view them in abstract terms.

contentment

Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

who could wait only thirty sec

The marshmallow test -- longitudinal studies show that it may predict future success better than intelligence

The ability to delay gratification is a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. "Intelligence is really important, but it's still not as important as self-control."

In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she’s now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatine. “I know I shouldn’t like them,” she says. “But they’re just so delicious!” A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.

Don’t! The secret of self-control.

Author: Robert Fabricant Content:  Over the past several months, I’ve been fortunate to meet and talk to a number of people — among them Jan Chipchase of Nokia, Peter Whybrow of UCLA, and Caroline Hummels of Delft University of

Great Article on User Centered Design

Robert Fabricant asks how designers can influence behaviour.

Here are 10 insightful studies that give a flavour of what has been discovered about the dynamics of group psychology.

Good tools for learning groups/management techniques.

Well worth the read http://bit.ly/J9ctr [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/3385969448]

If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly. This perhaps should make us cautious.

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in tr

The more we study dolphins, the brighter they turn out to be. By Anuschka de Rohan

I ask [clients]: “What do people have to do in order for you to be successful?”. Simple question. Now, the answer might be that people need to click on ads or install software or create/save social objects or buy a product. Each one of these answers is fine, but it often takes a little bit of digging to find out the real actions that people need to take. For example, if the initial answer is “click on ads” then I have to dig deeper to find out why someone might be on the site/app in the first place…people just don’t randomly visit to click on ads. But the resulting behavior is what I design for. That’s it…once I know what needs to happen for my client to be successful my only focus is on eliciting that behavior. It really is as simple as that.

If interaction design isn’t about supporting & influencing behavior…then what exactly are you doing?

Demystifying Interaction Design - Bokardo

We design to change, guide, support, elicit, constrict, and control behavior. The products and screens we create are about getting others to do something, using or buying or donating or otherwise taking some real-world action. Good design elicits the right behavior, poor design does not.

task in mind. This means their tunnel vision is already on, they

... just like patience

lazy or exhausted?