Mathematics of Motivation, Procrastination and Addiction v.2021–03

(draft)

🙋‍♂️ What is the Procrastination Formula?

🌿 Motivation = M =EV/ID = Expectancy x Value / (Impulsiveness x Delay)

🤓(for mathematicians and geeks)

🙋‍♂️ Would you enjoy applying the Procrastination Formula to a real example?

🌿

• Source Inspiration → https://focusme.com/blog/how-to-use-the-procrastination-equation/
• Measurement: Let’s take an example of each of the above elements and give it a rating from 1 to 10, 1 being lowest, ten being highest.
• Investment: Life is about the investment of time and resources and energy. Let’s talk about investing; it seems like an excellent concept to explain the Procrastination Equation.
• Video Game: Say, you’ve got five hundred dollars. And you can either choose to invest that or buy a new game console with a few video games. (in this example, you’re an avid gamer, so playing the latest video games is very rewarding).
• Reward Value: On the other hand, you’ve got your eye on a stock that has produced a return of 8 per cent in the last year. Let’s give this stock a reward value of 8, while the new video game console has a reward value of 9. The reward value of doing taxes today is 4 for the mental Zen and Superman state.
• Then, there’s expectancy. The stock market is a bit shaky, and chances are the company will do less well in the future, even though it made a decent profit in the last years. So expectancy is about a 4.
• Yay. Math.
• The video games you can buy get average review scores of 80 out of 100. The expectancy (the chance that you’ll enjoy playing them) is 8.
• The chance you will enjoy doing the taxes is 2 (without, say, very creative gamification).
• Impulsiveness: In this scenario, you’re also a somewhat impulsive person, so you’ll be likely to choose instant rewards of long term ones. Impulsivity is rated 8. It’s lower for video games since it has the short term reward, so let’s give that a four compared to other activities. (for example, you could buy lots of drugs for even more instant rewards, you can then count this as a 1)
• Delay(Stock): you’ve got lots of time to buy the stock. You can still purchase it next week, for about the same price. Let’s give delay a score of 8 here.
• Delay(Video): The video game console is on sale today, and you won’t be able to afford it next week. You have to buy it right now. Delay gets a 2 out of 10.
• If we put in the numbers, we get two different equations with two different results.
• Motivation to buy stock: (8*4)/(8*8)=32/64=0.5
• Motivation to buy video games: (9*8)/(4*2)=72/8=9
• Motivation to do taxes early: VE/ID = (4*2)/(9*9)=8/81=0.1
• The result — your motivation to buy video games is 18 times higher than it is for investing money. You will therefore be much more likely to buy the video game console than buy stock.
• Motivation (M(d)) =P(V)V/ID = Expectancy x Value / (Impulsiveness x Delay)
• Let’s say the Zen and Superman feeling has a utility value of £500 → V = V_tangible + V_intangible = £500 + £500 = £1000!
• For some dramatic effect, let’s say one gets imprisoned for two years for not doing taxes, let’s say V(freedom for two years) = £50000; now V=£51,000!
• Let’s say the probability of filling in the tax forms correctly is 99% → P(V) = 99%
• Now V*P(V)=51k*99%=£50,490
• Let’s now consider Impulsiveness; let’s say when a todo-list item on a todo-list has a 20% chance of being done when it’s on a todo-list. → 20% risk → I = 5
• Let’s now consider Delay; let the probability of us doing an admin task 30 days in advance has been 5% historically. D = 20
• Now, M = 50490*20%*5%=
• P.S. 1/Delay may be called Urgency
• P.S. 1/Impulsiveness may be called Conscientiousness Score

🙋‍♂️ How to Minimise Procrastination (regarding doing taxes)?

🌿 There are four ways:

❶ Maximise Expectancy → Maximise chance of success → read up on the latest rules, gather all relevant information early, etc.

❷ Maximise Value → 🅐 Intensely focus on the value of the tangible value of money-saving by not paying tax penalties 🅑 Intensely concentrate on the intangible value of the Zen and Superman feeling by doing taxes, say, 30 days in advance of the deadline

❸ Minimise Impulsiveness → Deliberate Practice of the Five Mindfulness Factors

❹ Minimise Delay → Use Accountability, e.g. accountability partnership, StickK.com

🙋‍♂️ What would be a mnemonic for the Procrastination Formula?

🌿 Mnemonics: MEVID/Me-Vid

The Ultimate Way: the Chris Formula v.2021–03

My friend Chris argues that, ultimately,

Proposition: Motivation = f(Conviction) = f(firmly held belief)

Let’s first define terms:

🌿 Conviction = firmly held belief

🌿 Research has indicated that emotion and cognition act in conjunction to produce beliefs, and more specifically, emotion plays a vital role in the formation and maintenance of beliefs.[47][48][49]

Let’s examine MEVID above,

As M is in the form of X/Y

It’s mathematically true that M is extreme if X is extreme while Y is in a “usual” range.

We have X = EV

🌿 extreme is defined as a value above n sigma, say, n=4; “usual” otherwise

X = EV = E*RewardValue = E*RewardValue(intellectual, emotional)

Hypothesis: corr(V(spiritual), V(emotional)), corr(V(intellectual), V(emotional)), corr(V(social), V(emotional)), corr(V(cultural), V(emotional)), corr(V(religious), V(emotional)), corr(V(philosophical), V(emotional)), corr(V(political), V(emotional))>0

Also, Suppose E is close to infinite and E is not zero and I is finite and D is finite, then M is close to infinite

QED.

Spam from here

🌿 absolute conviction leads to absolute motivation

💎 Lemma: Corr(Conviction, Value) > 0

🌿 Suppose Corr(Conviction, Value) ≤ 0 ⇔ when conviction goes up, perceived-value stays put or goes down, Contradiction QED.

🔥

🌿 I have a conviction that a greater understanding of the world leads to better decisions.

🌿 Therefore that has become one of my top goals,

🌿 And I have convinced myself from first principles that this is indeed the case

// Siam

• But let me be very clear about where my objection is and where I see the fallacies in your argument.
• You’ve presented a formula — M=EV/ID, which I don’t fundamentally disagree with.
• It is an abstraction and a useful one designed to show that motivation is positively correlated with expectation and value and negatively correlated with impulsiveness and delay.
• So far, so good.
• My problem comes from when we start treating these as pure mathematical equations.
• This is *precisely* why I object to these concepts being presented purely arithmetically — because we start to then take other mathematical principles and assume they naturally translate to our abstraction.
• For example, you say if Value is infinite, then Motivation is boundless.
• Why do you assume Value can even take infinite ranges?
• Why not the range 0–1?
• Why not the range 1–5?
• Changing these input domains has a massive impact on the conclusions you can draw from the equation.
• Similarly, why do you assume the rules on multiplication of infinity (or zero) carry through to this conceptual equation?
• There is no basis for this belief other than that you’ve written something that looks mathematical and thus *assume* that all mathematical laws thus apply.
• What does infinite value or infinite motivation look like?
• Do they conceptually make sense?
• How do we know one of the equation elements can blow out others' effect completely?
• Restricting each parameter’s domain to 1–5 would mean that no variable can dominate the equation (assuming even that usual rules of multiplication apply here).
• Can you see my issue with mathematical representations now?
• If we’re not keeping in mind the basis of our abstractions, it’s easy to get lost in the detail of the assumptions we’ve made.
• When Chris says, “It follows mathematically, that disagreeing with my statement means disagreeing with MEVID”, to me, it belies an elementary misunderstanding of the expression of MEVID itself.
• Of course, if you assume the variables can take infinite values, by definition, you’ve considered one variable (such as Value) can solely dominate motivation.
• But this assumption is entirely unjustified, and you’ve committed a fallacy of not even realising your proof begs the question.
• The above is why I keep repeating my mantra — these formulas help understand relationships but taking them too literally as maths can lead you to make bad decisions.