Procrastinating by posting about delayed gratification

[sabotabby]

rantipole6 posted this article about the "Marshmallow Test." Here is a video demonstrating it. I've been thinking about it all morning.

The test is simple: A small child is put in a room with a marshmallow. She is told that if she can sit there for 15 minutes and not eat the marshmallow, she will get two marshmallows. The experimenter then leaves the room and the child is alone with the marshmallow.

Sadism aside, this test is apparently a predictor of future academic and social success. The children who can delay gratification tend to get higher marks in school, are fitter, and have fewer behavioural problems than those who give into temptation. This is not surprising; think of the academic performance of a child who watches TV instead of doing homework, versus a child who studies first and then watches TV if he has time.

Because of a somewhat-misguided policy, I am only allowed to take off 10% for late assignments (and I seldom do that), which means that my kids often hand in their work late since they have no external motivation to complete assignments on time. But I don't need to take off late marks, because the students who hand in their assignments late (and thus have theoretically more time to complete the assignment than the ones who did it on time) almost always hand in work that is less complete and of lower quality than the students who are able to stick to timelines.

rantipole6 asks whether her readers are able to resist temptation. I responded that as a child, I'd have no problem passing the marshmallow test. I had much more self-discipline then than I do now. As you can see by the fact that this entry will be posted before I've finished writing my exams, as an adult, I'm terrible at delaying gratification, and accordingly, I'm far more stressed out than I need to be.

Another factor mentioned in that study is that children who have difficulty passing the marshmallow test can be taught techniques that will help them. The children who pass distract themselves by playing mental games. If a child is told to, for example, pretend that the marshmallow is a picture of a marshmallow with a frame around it, she is more likely to be able to hold out 15 minutes. Whether these tricks teach children skills that help them delay gratification outside of the test remains to be seen.

Now, when I think about it, I've always been a procrastinator. The difference is a matter of how I procrastinated. As a kid, I did the equivalent of imagining a frame around the marshmallow. Instead of writing my essay, I would write stories. I was seldom tempted by the TV. This didn't decrease my stress level (back in those days one did get in trouble for handing in late work), but it wouldn't decrease the quality of my writing either. Accordingly, while I wasn't necessarily the greatest at delaying gratification, it didn't seem to affect my academic performance. (Though, of course, it didn't help, and it resulted in me forming bad habits like blogging instead of doing my work.)

When I look at how my kids procrastinate, it's quite interesting. Some of the worst cases will not stop playing simple Flash games or refreshing Facebook (for simplicity's sake, I'll focus on the former waste of time, as I think the latter is a more complicated phenomenon). It doesn't matter how much I nag, wheedle, or threaten. They cannot seem to close the window, even if I threaten to send them to the office or tell them that they will get a lower mark on the assignment. It looks very much to me like a physical addiction. I can remotely control their computers, so out of desperation I sometimes log them out or blank their screens. They have been known to scream as if in pain when I do this.

The thing is, I am pretty sure they aren't getting any pleasure out of playing the games. I know, because I play those games too. (My weaknesses are Tetris and Space Invaders because I'm a 30-year-old hipster. Room Escape Games were also a problem for me for awhile.) It's repetitive, frustrating behaviour that's compulsive rather than pleasurable. They don't like the taste of the marshmallow; they just can't look at food without wanting to put it in their mouths.

So really, the issue for me is not procrastination per se. The results (quality of work and also mood, which is probably a bigger issue for me) differ depending on how I'm avoiding doing what I should be doing, which is one of the reasons "lifestyle experts" advise you to train yourself to do housework as a means of procrastination rather than, say, watching TV. If I'm procrastinating by writing, I'm not necessarily more productive than if I'm procrastinating by playing video games, but a) I have something to show for it at least and b) I don't get overwhelmed with guilt and stress to quite the same degree. Hey, at least I'm doing something.

How I can use this to help my kids is beyond me, particularly when they see even fun activities as "work," and thus less appealing than games/Facebook. But I can probably use it myself to be less of a fuck-up.

Thoughts?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, but that counts under important things, like saving lives. I think raising children would count under that - nurturing lives! Erm, it does lead to burn-out and severe stress from what I've seen, but it isn't so pointless of course. I've not been lucky enough to have got there yet, but I'm already on burn-out and stress!