Cure procrastination forever with temptation bundling - Debut

Cure procrastination forever with temptation bundling - Debut Hi, Im [insert name here], and I have a procrastination problem. If youve been feeling even low levels of shame about your procrastination habits, dont fret. According to author James Clear, human beings have been procrastinating for centuries! (The Greek word for procrastination just so happens to be  Akrasia.) So, technically youre continuing on  an age-old tradition or at least thats what you can tell yer ma. What if we told you you could cure procrastination forever? Youd probably be skeptical, and rightly so. There is no such thing as a cure-all you have to find something that works for you and your personality. However, there are certain tricks that have been proven to be fairly effective in improving your work ethic.  Today were looking at one of them: temptation bundling. What is temptation bundling? If youre in a rush, heres our summary. Temptation-bundling helps you do the activities you  should  do but you avoid (like the gym) with activities you love but arent necessarily productive (binge-watching your fave Netflix show.) Heres a good example: youre only allowed to listen to the new The xx  album whilst youre writing that essay youve been putting off. Who came up with temptation bundling? Katy Milkman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvanias, came up with the concept after her personal struggles with willpower. She spoke about temptation bundling  on popular podcast  Freakonomics Radio. Heres what she said: What I realized is that if I only allowed myself to watch my favorite TV shows while exercising at the gym, then I’d stop wasting time at home on useless television, and I’d start craving trips to the gym at the end of a long day because I’d want to find out what happens next in my show. And not only that, I’d actually enjoy my workout and my show more combined. I wouldn’t feel guilty watching TV, and time would fly while I was at the gym. The temptation bundling experiment Milkman ran an experiment on campus using 226 volunteer participants on campus, all with a goal of wanting to exercise more. She created a lure for these participants.  They could listen to one of four tempting audio books (one of which was  The Hunger Games).  However, they could only do so on locked iPods they can access at the gym. The other condition? They had to listen to the books while doing a 30-minute workout. This was compared to two other volunteer groups. One had the lure of  The Hunger Games, but without limited access. This group was allowed to download the audio book on their personal iPods, which they could access at any time. The third and final group acted as the control, so were given money to buy the audio book if they so choose. The groups were monitored for 9 weeks. Milkman found that the group who used temptation bundling were 29 to 51 per cent more likely to exercise in comparison with the control group. Why is temptation bundling effective?   Dwight Eisenhower (you know, 34th prez of the United States), once said: What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important. For example, putting money into your savings account is important. However, the benefits of having savings only kick in when youre much older, so it doesnt feel immediate. Therefore, you end up putting it off to do something like buy the next  Hunger Games book instead. Temptation bundling hacks this behaviour by combining the important but seemingly non-urgent tasks with the non-important but seemingly urgent ones. Pretty clever. Tell us more: We want to hear from you! Tweet us @DebutCareers with your favourite temptation-bundles. Images via Pexels, Giphy Download the Debut app and get Talent-Spotted by amazing graduate employers! Connect with Debut on Facebook and Twitter