Eight questions → one diagnosis
Putting off something that matters?
You know what you should be doing. It has been sitting there for weeks, and meanwhile you tidy your desk. It's not laziness. Motivation runs on four levers, and usually only one of them breaks. Eight questions to find out which one broke in your case, and which ones still hold. Then I give you the techniques that work on that lever, not ten random tips, and you leave with an if-then plan already set up.
The formula
Four levers, one motivation.
Piers Steel combed through ten years of studies on procrastination, 691 correlations in all: the largest meta-analysis ever done on the subject. Out of it came this formula. When the number drops below the pull of the alternatives, you put things off. That's all there is to it.
If part of you has already decided it won't work, the brain doesn't start.
The value you declare counts for little: what counts is the value you feel at the moment you should be working on it.
The more easy alternatives you have within reach, the more your motivation splits up.
The brain discounts the future: what is due in six months is worth almost zero today.
The levers multiply, they don't add up. If one is close to zero, pushing on the others gets you nowhere. That is why generic advice fails: it treats the wrong lever. Diagnosis first, then the technique.
And one thing the meta-analysis says loud and clear: procrastination travels with impulsiveness and with its opposite, self-control. Not with laziness. It's not a moral flaw. Calling yourself lazy actually has a cost: it lowers your expectancy, and the cycle starts over.
The test
Think of the project you keep putting off.
One only, the one that weighs on you most. Answer from the gut: the first answer that comes is worth more than the reasoned one.
One thing said plainly: this is not a clinical test or a validated psychometric tool. It's a practical compass built on Steel's equation, to figure out where to start.
The diagnosis
Here is the broken lever.
The scores, lever by lever.
The levers multiply: what counts is the lowest score, not the average. The coral rows are the ones to work on.
Now lock the decision in: your if-then plan.
Techniques stay intentions until you decide in advance when they kick in. In the 94 tests by Gollwitzer and Sheeran, what closes the gap between intention and action is the full conditional format. Generic good resolutions don't. Below you find an example already tuned to your broken lever: rewrite it with your real situation, precise to the day and the hour.
Write it where you'll see it again: in the calendar, on a sticky note, in your phone. You made the decision today, with a clear head. At the weak moment, all that's left is to execute.
Want to look at the broken lever with me? Thirty minutes and a coffee are enough: book here, no strings attached.
What now?
The diagnosis is done. The rest is here.
Who is behind this
Dr. Donato De Tullio. For more than ten years I have been running projects in large European multinationals. After 8 years in science I worked as a warehouse worker at Decathlon and rebuilt a career from zero. Today I manage 8 logistics centers across Europe. It's all on my LinkedIn.
Alongside my job as a manager, I help people who run their own project decide and move, with the 5D Method: data, direction, decision, destination, desire. If after the test you want someone to keep the pace with you, there is Decision Lab, the one-on-one decision-making program.
Taken the test?
Let's talk it through.
30 minutes, free, over a virtual coffee. You tell me which lever came out and we think through how to get it back on its feet. In English, Italian or German.
There is no form standing between you and the result: the test is yours and your email stays yours. If it helped, have a look at the English home, try the other practical exercises, take a look at the book, and we can always talk over a coffee.
The sources
- Piers Steel, The Procrastination Equation (2011), the meta-analysis The Nature of Procrastination (Psychological Bulletin, 2007) and the Temporal Motivation Theory with Cornelius König (2006): the four-lever equation comes from here. The one on this page is the popular form from the book; the 2006 academic version adds a constant to the denominator. His research is at procrastinus.com.
- Katy Milkman, Julia Minson and Kevin Volpp, Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym (Management Science, 2014): the study behind temptation bundling, you can find it here.
- Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement (2006): the meta-analysis of 94 independent tests behind the if-then plan, average effect d = 0.65.
- Gabriele Oettingen, Rethinking Positive Thinking (2014): mental contrasting, and why positive visualization alone is not enough.