We are interested in the problem faced by an agent with limited comput
ational capabilities, embedded in a complex environment with other age
nts and processes not under its control. Careful management of computa
tional resources is important for complex problem-solving tasks in whi
ch the time spent in decision making affects the quality of the respon
ses generated by a system. This paper describes an approach to designi
ng systems that are capable of taking their own computational resource
s into consideration during planning and problem solving. In particula
r, we address the design of systems that manage their computational re
sources by using expectations about the performance of decision-making
procedures and preferences over the outcomes resulting from applying
those procedures. Our approach is called deliberation scheduling. Deli
beration scheduling involves the explicit allocation of computational
resources to decision-making procedures based on the expected effect o
f those allocations on the system's performance.