A Decision on Credit

Some problems grow on their own.

Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch let students set their own deadlines for coursework. Full freedom — one shared deadline at the end of the course — turned out worse than a system of intermediate commitments. Students did set themselves deadlines and improved their results, although the deadlines set by the teacher worked better still.

The experiment shows the double nature of a constraint. The future person sometimes asks the present one to put up a fence, because they know their own habits. But a badly placed fence only reduces freedom without directing movement. A commitment is useful when it breaks work into stages and makes delay expensive enough without turning a mistake into a catastrophe.

A small leak becomes a repair to the floor slab. An unpleasant conversation turns into a family tradition of years of silence at the table. An error in the data multiplies through reports until nobody knows where the number came from.

Not every problem, though, should be tackled immediately. Sometimes it makes more sense to observe, gather information or wait for a convenient moment. What matters isn’t the age of a problem but its dynamics:

• is the damage increasing;
• does it close off future options;
• does it affect other processes;
• is the fix getting more expensive;
• could it disappear without intervention;
• how reversible is waiting.

Especially suspect are solutions that remove the symptom at once but create a permanent duty.

If a door sticks, you can shoulder it open every day. That is quick, familiar, and gradually turns a defective door into part of the routine. A real repair takes more effort once, but it ends the daily payment.

That is how a decision on credit works. Today it is cheaper. Tomorrow it needs repeating. Then a separate process gets built around it, and a year later everyone believes it couldn’t be otherwise.

A temporary solution is acceptable if it really is temporary:

• the cause is understood;
• the risk is limited;
• a replacement date is set;
• someone is responsible;
• the permanent solution is being prepared;
• the temporary measure doesn’t mask a deterioration.

The label “temporary” is not itself a deadline. Some temporary constructions outlive their authors and acquire the status of historic heritage.

A reliable indicator of credit is the object in a house that a new tenant asks about on the first day. The bucket under the pipe in the basement, the brick propping the gate, the laptop nobody switches off because it won’t switch back on. Each of them was once a temporary measure for the weekend. Then it got a permanent place, then a habit, then the status of a feature of the house that people are warned about when they move in.

What is worth counting isn’t the cost of the repair but the annual payment. A door shouldered open twice a day is seven hundred shoves a year; an hour of work and the price of a hinge beat that by a wide margin. A temporary solution is usually chosen not because it is cheaper, but because its payment is invisible and isn’t made in money.