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Economists, psychologists, and philosophers have written extensively on the causes of procrastination. While their work helps us understand why people procrastinate, it does not explain how they can resist the urge to procrastinate. This chapter argues that this is a result of a refusal to acknowledge a faculty of choice, or a will, separate from preferences or desires, which can overwhelm their pull. Based on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as contemporary work in volitionism, this chapter applies to procrastination a Kantian-economic model of decision making that emphasizes strength of character and willpower, which can serve as alternatives to the coping strategies offered elsewhere in the literature.

This essay aims to understand how it might be rational to follow through with a prior resolution in the face of anticipated temptation that comes in the form of a shift in evaluative assessment. In order to explain this possibility of rational willpower, it appeals to a kind of practical sensitivity to relevant cross-temporal organization, where that can include sensitivity to anticipated future regret. The idea is that this sensitivity is built into the practical standpoint of a planning agent at the time of the temptation. (These ideas are adjusted somewhat in essays 1, 10, and 11.)

This chapter considers and rejects the Non-Cognitivist Response. The Non-Cognitivist Response is motivated by non-cognitivism about practical reason—the view, defended by Michael Bratman and Richard Holton, that intending to φ‎ does not entail belief in success. Four versions of the Non-Cognitivist Response are considered which propose different sufficient conditions for sincerely promising or resolving to φ‎: intending to φ‎, aiming to φ‎, accepting that one will φ‎, and a combination of intending and acceptance. All four versions are found to be inadequate, because they fail to explain how agents who promise or resolve against the evidence could avoid partial inconsistency while making a commitment. The chapter concludes that the controversy between cognitivism and non-cognitivism is not significant: irrespective of whether the relation between intending and believing is one of constitution or of normative requirement, the problems of promising or resolving remain pressing.

Some philosophers distinguish between judgmental control (or rational control) and merely managerial self-control—particularly with respect to our control of our mental states. States like desire are normatively supposed to disappear whenever we sincerely endorse judgments in tension with them. (I am not supposed to continue wanting to smoke after I sincerely judge smoking to be bad for me.) When such states prove recalcitrant—when they resist judgmental control—we can apply to ourselves methods that also work when we use them on others. However, some forms of merely managerial control are also essentially first-personal in character. Investigating their first-personal character explains why some experiences can feel alien to us in the way some of our desires can—even though we don’t usually expect that our experiences will bend to our judgments.