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The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination.
Edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark White. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010. 320pp., $65.00.
ISBN: 978-0-195-37668-5
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Behavioral economics has several research agendas. One concerns why humans consistently procrastinate. The Thief of Time is a collection of essays, many of which were prepared for a 2008 workshop in New York organized by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark White. The chapters suggest that the problem of delaying effort is widespread and economically significant. An action is not procrastination unless delay is irrational. An agent who procrastinates "pays a steep price in the form of reduced well-being and shoddy work" [p. 3]. Yet humans engage in self-deception about motives and rationales for delay, or permit self-evasiveness and vagueness of goals to persist. Preference reversals and the possibility of intransitive preferences also provide interesting avenues for investigation. In the face of widespread procrastination, should society develop virtue ethics as a tool to promote greater self-discipline? Alternatively, should governments adopt paternalistic measures that mandate actions such as forced savings plans?
Part I of the book contains five essays on the nature and causes of procrastination. Part II provides five essays on the link between delayed effort and the vice of being imprudent. Part III concludes with five chapters on overcoming procrastination, or at least mitigating its effects. The 17 authors (including co-authors) represent six disciplines, but philosophers predominate (10 out of 17). Two contributors are economists with philosophical interests.
George Ainslie, a psychiatrist and key researcher in this field, opens the book with an overview of procrastination, hyperbolic discounting, and willpower. He notes that rewards come "from expectations we construct of the future, our rehearsal of the past, and occasions for emotion that we have in the present" [p. 21, emphasis added]. The problem of procrastination arises because to shape current choices, potential future rewards must all feed present emotions. Hence, "even the greatest of long-term projects must...