Turtle, task ninja, or time waster? Who cares? Traditional task-completion strategies are overrated
Citation
Vangsness, Lisa; Young, Michael E. 2020. Turtle, task ninja, or time waster? Who cares? Traditional task-completion strategies are overrated. Psychological Science, vol. 31:no. 3:pp 306-315
Abstract
Standard approaches for identifying task-completion strategies, such as precrastination and procrastination, reduce behavior to single markers that oversimplify the process of task completion. To illustrate this point, we consider three task-completion strategies and introduce a new method to identify their use. This approach was tested using an archival data set (N = 8,655) of the available electronic records of research participation at Kansas State University. The approach outperformed standard diagnostic approaches and yielded an interesting finding: Several strategies were associated with negative outcomes. Specifically, both procrastinators and precrastinators struggled to finish tasks on time. Together, these findings underscore the importance of using holistic approaches to determine the relationship among task characteristics, individual differences, and task completion.
Description
© The Author(s) 2020. All data for this study have been made publicly available on the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/t3ek6/. The analytical approach, code, and out-of-sample validations are detailed in the R markdown document at https://osf.io/t3ek6/. The design and analysis plans for the study were not preregistered.