  Working becomes harder as we grow tired or bored. I model individuals who
underestimate these changes in marginal disutility -- as implied by "projection
bias" -- when deciding whether or not to continue working. This bias causes
people's plans to change: early in the day when they are rested, they plan to
work more than late in the day when they are rested. Despite initially
overestimating how much they will work, people facing a single task with
decreasing returns to effort work optimally. However, when facing multiple
tasks, they misprioritize urgent but unimportant over important but non-urgent
tasks. And when they face a single task with all-or-nothing rewards (such as
being promoted) they start, and repeatedly work on, some overly ambitious tasks
that they later abandon. Each day they stop working once they have grown tired,
which can lead to large daily welfare losses. Finally, when they have either
increasing or decreasing productivity, people work less each day than
previously planned. This moves people closer to optimal effort for decreasing,
and further away from optimal effort for increasing productivity.
