BY ISAAC SORKIN and HENRY SWIFT

In print | November 30, 2006

This column could have been written months ago. Given that we knew what we would write about and that we had no intention of being timely, composing all our columns in the languor of summer’s end would have been possible. But of course we didn’t.

We could call this laziness, but it’s really procrastination: that constant sense that a task can be put off and put off until it’s really almost due, and then maybe it can still be put off because deadlines don’t really matter now, do they? While procrastination can be debilitating, there are good reasons for doing it.

The alternative to procrastination is to apportion work evenly over time. That paper that’s due in a week? Work on it for two hours a day for the next seven days, and then you have put in the 14 hours necessary to write a good paper and have avoided pulling an all-nighter to spend those same 14 hours of writing in a much more painful manner. A student who doesn’t procrastinate would, as Professor of Economics Mark Kuperberg (if he didn’t try not to teach Ricardian equivalence) might say, “smooth” his work over time, such that his workload each day was about equal. He would do so in order to prevent massive (and stress-inducing) build-ups in work and to prevent boring lulls. Moreover, there may be diminishing returns to large amounts of work done at the same time (the conclusion is never as good as the first few paragraphs).

Though work-smoothing may sound appealing, we all know that it never happens to the ideal degree. Part of this is certainly due to decision-making myopia. But is it possible that there is also a rational component to our procrastination habits? There are at least three reasons why this might be the case. The first is that there are fixed costs to doing homework. Suppose that in order to do homework you have to run to Kohlberg for a mocha latté, set up your McCabe carrel and check your favorite five media outlets as a preemptive distraction. In that case, it makes sense to have longer homework sessions in order to reduce the total number of sessions (and number of fixed costs to pay). Thus, putting things off in order to concentrate the work for a paper in one epic block means that you don’t have to waste time setting up to write again and again.

The second reason is that there may be decreasing marginal costs to doing homework. Suppose that the second hour of doing homework is much easier than the first, and the third easier yet and so on. You get in the homework zone. Then it makes sense to make your homework sessions as long as possible in order to take advantage of these returns to scale in doing homework. Again, to put off writing the paper to do a longer session allows this.

The third reason is that there might be “thick-market externalities” in doing homework. The idea is that if everyone else is doing the same thing that you are, it gets easier and more enjoyable. If all of your friends are procrastinating at the same time, then the opportunity cost of doing work is that you miss an excruciatingly funny episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or a scintillating round of Speed Scrabble. Similarly, when everyone is doing work, the opportunity cost of work is very low. After all, “Curb” is far less excruciatingly funny when watched alone. So it makes sense to do work when your friends do work, and avoid work when your friends avoid work.

Thus, while work-smoothing may seem appealing, there are good reasons not to. So, next time you find yourself with lumpy work habits, comfort yourself with the thought that you aren’t lazy, but you are instead responding to sophisticated economic theory.

(With thanks to Tyler Cowen for the analogy, via Josh Hausman.)

Isaac and Henry are seniors. You can reach them at isorkin1@swarthmore.edu and hswift1@swarthmore.edu.

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