My work-ethic is like a gas. The way gas expands to the volume of its surrounding container is the way I distribute my effort in working to meet a project deadline. That is, I am always working up to the last second before a project is due, regardless of how much time I have had to work on it. This practice is beyond stupid and I don’t know why can’t I work just as hard ahead of time, finish the damn thing early, and avoid all the stress that working right up to a deadline entails.
I’m sure mine is some variety of matching behavior akin to pigeons pecking for food pellets. Rather than pecking to maximize their absolute reward, they will actually adjust their pecking-frequency in proportion to the frequency at which rewards are given, even though (in the operant-conditioning scenario) they actually get fewer rewards over time than if they had pecked faster.
Starting my fourth year of grad school, my sole motivation for working is to alleviate the burden of responsibilities hanging over my head (unlike other jobs, my status and pay will remain fixed regardless of my output–I’m not whining here, I knew it would be this way when I chose grad school). These burdens manifest themselves as stress, a negative reinforcer, that I generally work to avoid. Rather than increasing my efforts early on in a project, which would minimize my accumulated stress at the time of deadline, I match my efforts in proportion to my project-associated stress-level at a given time. My stress-level tends to increase as the time until a project is due grows shorter. I’m certain this matching strategy leads to greater accumulated stress (less reward) as compared to working harder early.
Nice to know that my behavior is on par with that of pigeons.
