Self-Control in the Face of Multiple Projects.

This article investigates how present-biased individuals—those who disproportionately prefer immediate gratification and tend to procrastinate—manage multiple multistage projects, each requiring costly effort at starting and finishing stages but yielding rewards only upon completion. It distinguishes between naïve agents, who are unaware of their present bias and may start but not finish projects or multitask inefficiently, and sophisticated agents, who anticipate their self-control problems and always finish started projects but may still multitask or sequence projects suboptimally. The study shows that present bias can cause three behavioral anomalies: procrastination, multitasking (starting new projects before finishing old ones), and suboptimal sequencing (not prioritizing projects by net present value, NPV). When agents can endogenously choose how to allocate costs across project stages, naïve individuals tend to defer costs to finishing stages, exacerbating multitasking or procrastination, while sophisticates may avoid such deferral to reduce multitasking. Remedies include increasing workload by adding projects, which can, under certain conditions, reduce these anomalies, and raising individuals' awareness of their self-control problems, which generally improves long-run utility when project portfolios are fixed. However, when agents select projects endogenously at a cost, sophistication may lead to overly conservative project selection, causing sophisticates to complete fewer or less profitable projects than naïfs. The findings provide a behavioral explanation for common inefficiencies in project scheduling and suggest nuanced managerial interventions.