As an architect and sometime builder, as an excellent procrastinator, I heartily concur with this comment.
The range of biases, psychological and ‘structural’ factors at work is wide. Here are a few:
‘tactical optimism’ : David Bohm’s term for the way in which humans overcome the (so far) inescapable assessment that; ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’. Specifically, within the building industry, rife with non-optimal ingrained conditions, you wouldn’t come to work if you weren’t an optimist. Builders who cease to have an optimistic outlook go and find other things to do.
maintaining flexibility has benefits: non-trivial projects have hidden detail. It often happens that spending longer working around the project—at the expense of straight-ahead progress—can lead to higher quality at the end, as delayed completion has allowed a more elegant/efficient response to inherent, but unforeseen problems.
self-application of pressure: as someone tending to procrastinate, I know that I sometimes use ambitious deadlines in order to attempt to manage myself—especially if I can advertise that deadline—as in the study
deadline/sanction fatigue: if the loss incurred for missing deadlines is small, or alternatively if it is purely psychological, then the ‘weight’ of time pressure is diminished with each failure.
I’m going to stop now, before I lose the will to live.
As an architect and sometime builder, as an excellent procrastinator, I heartily concur with this comment.
The range of biases, psychological and ‘structural’ factors at work is wide. Here are a few:
‘tactical optimism’ : David Bohm’s term for the way in which humans overcome the (so far) inescapable assessment that; ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’. Specifically, within the building industry, rife with non-optimal ingrained conditions, you wouldn’t come to work if you weren’t an optimist. Builders who cease to have an optimistic outlook go and find other things to do.
maintaining flexibility has benefits: non-trivial projects have hidden detail. It often happens that spending longer working around the project—at the expense of straight-ahead progress—can lead to higher quality at the end, as delayed completion has allowed a more elegant/efficient response to inherent, but unforeseen problems.
self-application of pressure: as someone tending to procrastinate, I know that I sometimes use ambitious deadlines in order to attempt to manage myself—especially if I can advertise that deadline—as in the study
deadline/sanction fatigue: if the loss incurred for missing deadlines is small, or alternatively if it is purely psychological, then the ‘weight’ of time pressure is diminished with each failure.
I’m going to stop now, before I lose the will to live.