Question

Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow.
Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you’re simply saying “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” you’re not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. Most agree that this peculiar irrationality stems from our relationship to time—in particular, from a tendency that economists call “hyperbolic discounting.” A two-stage experiment provides a classic illustration: In the first stage, people are offered the choice between a hundred dollars today or a hundred and ten dollars tomorrow; in the second stage, they choose between a hundred dollars a month from now or a hundred and ten dollars a month and a day from now. In substance, the two choices are identical: wait an extra day, get an extra ten bucks. Yet, in the first stage many people choose to take the smaller sum immediately, whereas in the second they prefer to wait one more day and get the extra ten bucks. In other words, hyperbolic discounters are able to make the rational choice when they’re thinking about the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. The lesson of this experiment is not that people are shortsighted or shallow but that their preferences aren’t consistent over time. We want to watch the Bergman masterpiece, to give ourselves enough time to write the report properly, to set aside money for retirement. But our desires shift as the long run becomes the short run.
Which of the following statements can be BEST inferred from the passage about procrastination?

• A. People tend to delay unpleasant tasks since they consider time to be linear.
• B. People delay tasks that they should be doing immediately.
• C. It exacts a great cost on people’s psyches.
• D. People knowingly delay tasks in order to make the most efficient use of time.
• E. People delay tasks because they do not factor in time.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Passage Summary- The passage is about procrastination which can be defined as willingly deferring something even though the delay will make one worse off. The reason for procrastination is short term goals tend to overwhelm long term ones.

Option A is incorrect. Since people value short term goals over long term ones it implies that time is nonlinear.

Option B can be correctly inferred to be the meaning of procrastination.

Option C gives the effects of procrastination. It is not an inference.

Option D is not procrastination according to the passage. ‘Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either.’

Option E is incorrect. Time is very much factored in by people.

Hence, the correct Answer is option B.