{"id":347,"date":"2008-06-24T18:50:31","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T17:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2008-06-25T14:26:47","modified_gmt":"2008-06-25T13:26:47","slug":"software-vs-procrastination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"Software vs. procrastination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOFTWARE TO DEAL WITH ULTIMATELY UNDESRIABLE INTERTEMPORAL PREFERENCE SHIFTS<\/p>\n<p>Ever find yourself frittering away the day responding to email after email? Ever think that if you&#8217;d just spent 8 hours working on that project, you&#8217;d be done and still have time to answer those emails in front of the TV later that night? Sure, we all have.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/gml.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-348 aligncenter\" title=\"gml\" src=\"http:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/gml.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why we simply don&#8217;t do the hard stuff first is a fascinating question in its own right. I mean, if we&#8217;re going to be happier at the end of the day having ignored the emails, why don&#8217;t we learn to ignore them? It&#8217;s too much to get into here, but see the psychological literature on intertemporal choice and the <a href=\"\/blog\/dont-delay\" target=\"_blank\">Don&#8217;t Delay blog<\/a> if this interests you.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that the always-innovating Google is here to help with their experimental &#8220;Take a Break&#8221; feature in Gmail. When clicked, it prevents you from checking your email for 15 minutes, telling you do something more productive instead.<\/p>\n<p>To use it, you&#8217;ll need to manually activate &#8220;Gmail Labs&#8221; inside Gmail. See the <a href=\"http:\/\/gmailblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/06\/introducing-gmail-labs.html\" target=\"_blank\">Gmail blog<\/a> or if you&#8217;re impatient, try Settings -&gt; Labs from Gmail.  Right now, it&#8217;s only enabled in the US and UK.<\/p>\n<p>Other tools to try if you can&#8217;t get down to work at work:<\/p>\n<p>* Temptation Blocker: a Windows program to prevent you from using any other program (especially good to prevent you from opening your Email client or Web browser).<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/project\/showfiles.php?group_id=147977\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/temptblocker\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>* Time Tracker: An extension to the FireFox browser that tracks how much time you waste on various sites.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/1887\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/1887<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOFTWARE TO DEAL WITH ULTIMATELY UNDESRIABLE INTERTEMPORAL PREFERENCE SHIFTS Ever find yourself frittering away the day responding to email after email? Ever think that if you&#8217;d just spent 8 hours working on that project, you&#8217;d be done and still have time to answer those emails in front of the TV later that night? Sure, we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gossip","category-programs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LKj-5B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}