Come to think of it, breaking something into subgoals is likely to increase value (higher reward frequency, lower dread per goal), increase expectancy (smaller tasks are easier to envision oneself accomplishing), and decrease impulsiveness (since one is less likely to get distracted from smaller goals).
The disadvantage is having more total goals to keep track of, which can itself be a source of problems. There is probably a point at which there is a trade-off between having too many goals to keep track of and having goals which are too easily procrastinated. This could be a reason why writing things down helps some people, as it reduces the working-memory barrier to generating more numerous sub-goals.
Come to think of it, breaking something into subgoals is likely to increase value (higher reward frequency, lower dread per goal), increase expectancy (smaller tasks are easier to envision oneself accomplishing), and decrease impulsiveness (since one is less likely to get distracted from smaller goals).
The disadvantage is having more total goals to keep track of, which can itself be a source of problems. There is probably a point at which there is a trade-off between having too many goals to keep track of and having goals which are too easily procrastinated. This could be a reason why writing things down helps some people, as it reduces the working-memory barrier to generating more numerous sub-goals.