Precrastination, defined as the act of completing tasks immediately, often at the expense of increased effort or diminished quality of outcomes, is a phenomenon observed in certain individuals. This approach is often adopted to avoid the anxiety and stress associated with last-minute work and procrastination. Precrastination may be an unhealthy behavior pattern and is accompanied by symptoms such as conscientiousness, eagerness to please, and high energy. People who precrastinate may try to find shortcuts to be more efficient and productive, but this may result in the application of non-effective energy management and cause the person to fulfill their tasks to an incomplete or insufficient degree. Precrastinators may be more likely to act impulsively instead of carefully planning ahead.
Etymology The word precrastination is a blend of pre- 'before' and -crastinus 'until next day'. It is most likely a play on the word procrastination, which has an opposite definition.
Research Rosenbaum et al. coined the term precrastination in 2014. David A. Rosenbaum is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. The study found evidence of human precrastination.
The bucket experiments The paper titled "Pre-crastination: Hastening Subgoal Completion at the Expense of Extra Physical Effort" consisted of nine different experiments that can be termed the bucket experiments. The goal of the research was "to get a better understanding of the evaluation of different kinds of costs in action planning". While confirming the belief that individuals would rather carry a load weight a shorter distance rather than an equally heavy load of weight a longer distance they found contradictory results. Most university students irrationally carried the closer bucket over a long distance, rather than the further bucket over a short distance to the endpoint. When interviewed, the participants answered that they wanted to "get the task done as quickly as possible". These surprising results from the first three experiments changed the goal of research to "describing and providing a theoretical interpretation of this astonishing phenomenon".
First three experiments The bucket experiments were conducted using Pennsylvania State University students as participants and started with a set of three experiments that involved having a participant walk down an alleyway and from there pick up one of two weighted buckets and carry it a distance further until a stop line. Contrary to the experimenters' expectations, participants would rather pick up and carry the bucket that was closer to them than pick up the bucket closer to the stop line, meaning that the participant would expend more energy to complete the task than necessary. When participants were questioned about their choice, they expressed the sentiment of wanting to get the task done as soon as possible.
Testing the new phenomenon The fourth experiment was used to confirm the finding of the previous three while reducing statistical variability by moving the starting position of the buckets 6 ft (1.8 m) further from the participants. Previous results were upheld and the statistical variability for the conclusion of the approach distance being the primary factor for picking up the bucket from the left or right was also upheld. The fifth and sixth experiments were used to remove the aspect of foot–hand coordination from the task; this was done by placing the participants in wheelchairs while they completed the task. The results from this experiment were in line with the rest of the experiments. In experiment seven, the researchers investigated "the possibility that participants actually preferred long carrying distances to short carrying distances". This was done by altering the total distance that a left or right bucket would need to be carried, rather than just altering the approach and carry distances of the buckets. The result of this experiment was that the theory that participants preferred long carrying distances was not supported and that the students still cared about the total distance of the task (approach + carrying distance), suggesting that when deciding task methodology, both approach and total distance are considered. For the eighth experiment, the experimenters tested the hypothesis that "participants may have been attracted to the nearer object, grabbing it without considering the farther object because their attention was grabbed by the object that was closer at hand". This attention hypothesis was tested by placing a screen at the end of the alleyway that told the participants to wait before starting the task, this could be for a two or four-second interval. After this an okay message would appear and the participants could complete the task at their leisure. The researchers argue that the screen "was to get participants to look down the alley so they would see the far as well as the near bucket." and that their rationale for showing the wait message "was to discourage participants from impulsively initiating their excursion into the alley". Ultimately there were no significant deviations from the results of the previous experiments, meaning that the close-object preference was replicated. Finally, the ninth experiment was to confirm that there was a noticeable difference in physical exertion between the two options for carrying distances and that the more labor-intensive option would be avoided. This was done by having light and heavy bucket options for the task while repeating the setup of experiments one through three. The results from experiment nine confirmed a general preference for the lighter bucket, thereby confirming to the researchers that exertion did matter to participants, and despite this would engage in close-object preference when performing the other experiments—even when it would result in a longer carrying distance, and thereby more exertion.
Further research
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
