Low Expectancy is Not a Confidence Problem

Lukeprog's How to Beat Procrastination includes in its framework a term for expectancy or how likely/accomplishable a successful outcome feels internally. One of the levers to combat procrastination is thus to increase the perceived odds of getting a reward. I think this misattributes low expectancy to poorly calibrated self-confidence, when really it boils down to your own actual capabilities and the problem structure.In many cases, the root cause for low expectancy is that you personally do not have experience, knowledge, or resources. Expectancy should be low rationally. While the original post does prescribe learning/process goals, this is framed as a means to the end of increasing self-confidence. In practice, this framing can lead you to focus on goals that increase confidence without tackling underlying understanding/competence. Competence can lead to confidence, but false confidence (which is fairly easy to manufacture via the methods in the original post) can lead to disaster. An unfortunate side effect: If you're optimizing for self-confidence, when reality hits back, you will start to distrust self-confidence as a signal, leaving you in an even worse place than where you started. (I actually think this is the main cause of chronically miscalibrated low self-confidence.)Another common case that brings low expectancy: a task has long feedback loops and credit assignment is difficult. Even if you have the fundamental skills, there's no way of knowing if your actions are moving the needle. Setting intermediate process goals here can help sustain effort in one direction, but it cannot change the nature of the problem: it takes time to know if the intermediate process goals you choose are actually moving you towards your terminal goals effectively, especially in a new/unstructured domain. Society's answer here is to create concrete, well-trodden paths with visible rewards (structure the domain) or to work closely and learn from someone who has similar experienc