In Your Best Interests
I recently met Chris Waterguy for a philosophical consultation on a question that lies at the heart of his coaching service:
Why is it that we act against our own best interests through procrastination, and how can we overcome this?
What follows is an extended, more detailed version of the analysis I offered in that session. Chris has said that he’s happy for me to write this up - thanks for that, Chris, and thanks for a great conversation!
This is a good example to walk people through how the analytical philosophy process on something that isn’t obviously a ‘philosophical topic’. So I'm not just going to tell you my conclusions but also a bit about how the process went.
My first, painfully 'analytic philosopher' step was to ask 'what do we mean by "in our best interests"?'
Then I identified a few different possible categories of 'best interests' to work with. A course of action, or an outcome, could be 'in our best interests':
because it meets some universal human need,
because it meets some goal or commitment which we have as individuals,
because we are directly interested in the action/outcome itself: it's a passion project,
because we want to become directly interested in the action/outcome itself,
because it is rational: in the sense there is good evidence that it’s the course of action most likely to lead to a particular outcome.
I also drew a distinction between 'direct' interests and 'instrumental' interests. We have a 'direct' interest in the things we find intrinsically valuable. We have an 'instrumental' interest in things that help us to achieve our 'direct' interests.
(Things of instrumental interest to us may or may not also be of intrinsic interest. Compare keeping fit through a sport you love, with keeping fit through a routine workout that you regard in much the same way as brushing your teeth.)
Then, once I had these categories, and the direct/instrumental distinction, I could identify potential failure points. I did this by looking through the categories I’d identified, searching for conceptual confusions that could lead to us acting against our own best interests, or else appearing to do so (to ourselves or to others).
Here's what I spotted:
A: Confusing (1), 'universal human interests', with (2), 'personal commitments'.
This confusion has two subtypes:
A1: Categorizing something as a 'universal human interest' when it's actually an opt-in 'personal commitment'.
Illustrative example: 'having children'.
A person who does not in fact want to have children can nonetheless become convinced that it is still in their interests to have children, when they are surrounded by the message that doing so is a universal human interest rather than a personal commitment.
For further examples, just complete the sentence "But everyone wants... " (to get married, to go to parties, to travel abroad, to get promoted, etc etc.)
All these examples categorize as a 'universal human interest' something which is conventional, but not actually universal; which many people have genuine personal commitments to, but which is not in fact obligatory.
If a person's felt sense of their own interests conflicts with what they have learned to regard as 'universal human interests', then the result might be procrastination: they delay starting a family because they 'aren't ready'.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs offers a reasonably plausible account of actual 'universal human interests', but these needs are sufficiently general that there are numerous possible ways to meet them. So whilst a 'universal human interest' in, say, 'love and belonging' could be met by having children, it could also be met by different kinds of relationships.
Replacing ‘having children’ with ‘love and belonging’ as the ‘universal human interest’ might enable them to consider other possible approaches to meeting that interest, and thus move past procrastination.
A2: Categorizing something as an opt-in 'personal commitment' when it's actually a 'universal human interest'.
Illustrative example: 'making enough money'.
Important clarification: I'm not claiming that this is a direct universal human interest. Not everyone finds building wealth to be intrinsically satisfying. However, for the majority of people, the direct universal human interests of food, water, warmth, security, and safety can only be reliably met by making money. Therefore, whilst this is an instrumental interest, there is a distinct lack of alternative instruments.
The example here is someone who has become convinced that seeking financial rewards is intrinsically immoral, unintellectual, unworthy, or at least contingent on being a certain type of person very different from themselves.
A person with this mindset may struggle with aspects of their work that are unapologetically about making more money, because these aspects clash with their sense of self. They concentrate instead on those areas that are intrinsically interesting or otherwise bolster their sense of self, and procrastinate on the financially focused aspects.
Recategorising ‘making money’ as a ‘universal human interest’ could help them to escape this mindset.
B) Confusing ‘having a genuine interest in something’ with ‘having a desire to have a genuine interest in something’.
Illustrative example: 'learning an instrument'.
It is very possible to confuse 'what I am interested in' with 'what I wish I was interested in'. You may want to be the type of person who, e.g., spends their evenings playing an instrument, without actually wanting to spend your evenings playing an instrument.
It’s true that even if you love playing an instrument you may struggle to practice enough, due to time conflicts or low energy levels, but if picking up the instrument is rarely or never intrinsically enjoyable, then you don’t have a passion project. Rather, you are attempting to use ‘playing an instrument’ as a, er, instrumental means to meet some other intrinsic interest; perhaps falsely believing that it is the only means available to you. Therefore you both procrastinate on practicing, and also procrastinate on the decision to stop practicing.
Once you recognize that this is happening, then you might be in a better position to identify what the intrinsic interest is. Perhaps it’s something like ‘artistic expression’, or ‘doing something with my hands’, or even just ‘reducing screen time’; in which case, it might be better met with some different activity.
Note that the issue here lies in the confusion. Wanting to enjoy something that you currently don’t enjoy is not intrinsically problematic, provided that you know what’s happening, and set limits on the amount of effort you’re prepared to spend on trying to ‘get into’ the thing . For example, I would like to enjoy board games, because my friends do. I’m fully aware that currently, my only ‘direct interest’ is in getting to socialize with people on board game nights without becoming bored or frustrated. I’m prepared to put a bit of effort into finding board games that I might actually enjoy; I am not prepared to grit my teeth through Agricola ever again, and if I try a few of the suggestions I got on Twitter and nothing sticks, then I will retire the goal (for now, at least).
C) Overestimating the scope of the ‘rational’.
Illustrative example: navigating a career path.
‘Rational’ is a slippery word, but here I am using it to mean roughly what Hume means by ‘reason’. In this sense, we are ‘rational’ when we use empirical evidence and statistical analysis to work out the likely outcome of a course of action (is this plan likely to work?’), or find the course of action most likely to achieve a particular outcome (‘How am I most likely to achieve this goal?’)
The key point is: the goal itself is neither rational nor irrational.
Suppose you are aware that you need to acquire certain skills in order to be promoted in your company, especially management skills. You have done the research, you know what the skills are that you would need to acquire, and you know the best methods available to you to acquire those skills as quickly as possible.
You’ve done the ‘rational’ bit.
Yet you aren’t in fact working on acquiring those skills. You’re procrastinating. You’re also berating yourself for procrastinating, because you think that you are ‘being irrational’ and the ‘rational’ thing to do is to just get on with it.
Remember at this point: There is no such thing as a ‘rational thing to do’. Rationality just tells you what is likely to happen as a result of what you do. Rationality can’t tell you whether or not you want the result.
This is where the A1 confusion comes back to haunt us:
A1: Categorizing something as a 'universal human interest' when it's actually an opt-in 'personal commitment'.
If you think of ‘seeking promotion’ as something that ‘everybody wants’, then you will not be open to the possibility that seeking promotion might not be what you want. You come under the category of ‘everybody’, after all.
So if you find yourself acting as though you don’t want to seek promotion, you won’t reach for the explanation that... you don’t want to seek promotion.
You’ll reach for ‘I’m too lazy’, or ‘I just need to be more organized’, or, or, or...
If instead, you categorize ‘seeking promotion’ as an opt-in ‘personal commitment’ (albeit a very common one), then you can conclude that you don’t want to do it. And then you can consider why you don’t want to do it:
Do you dislike the idea of managing people? If so, are there ways to advance your career that don’t involve this element?
Are there elements of your current role that you love, and would lose in the promotion? If so, is there any way to retain these whilst advancing your career? If not, are you content to stay at your current paygrade to retain those elements?
Are you bored or discontented at your company, and therefore reluctant to invest more effort in it? If so, is this a good moment to move on?
***
So, yes: all of this emerged from a pretty straightforward philosophical analysis of a concept: “best interests”.
To be clear: what I have here is a list of ways in which procrastination can be explained by various conceptual confusions. I don’t mean to suggest that procrastination can always be explained in this way. But I do think the list might be a helpful way of ruling out certain possibilities and clarifying your own thinking about procrastination.
