Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban

so in college

I was a government major which means I had to write a lot of papers now when a normal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this..

So, you know you get started maybe a little slowly but you get enough done in the first week. That was some heavier days later on everything gets done things. Stay civil..

And I would want to do that like that. That would be the plan. I would I would have it all ready to go. But then they actually the paper would come along and then I would kind of do this and that what happened every single paper, but then it came my 90-page senior thesis paper. You're supposed to spend a year on I knew for a paper like that. I normal workflow was not an option. It was way too big a project so I plan things out and I decided.

And I had to go something like this. This is how the year we go. So I start off light and I bump it up in the middle of months and then at the end I would kick it up into high gears a little staircase. How hard could it be? Just walk up the stairs? No big deal, right?.

But then funniest thing happened those first few months they came and went and I couldn't quite do stuff. So we had an awesome new revised plan and then then those middle months actually went by and I didn't really write words. And so we were here..

And then two months turned into one month turned into two weeks and one day I woke up with three days until the deadline..

Still not having written a word and so I did the only thing I could I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours pulling not one, but two all-nighters humans are not supposed to pulled two all-nighters..

Sprinted across campus Doven slow motion and guided in just at the deadline. I thought that was the end of everything but a week later I get a call it's the school..

And they say is this Tim Urban and I say yeah and they say we need to talk about your thesis. I say, okay, and they say it's the best one we've ever seen that did not happen. It was a very very bad thesis..

I just wanted to enjoy that one moment. When all of you thought this guy is amazing. No. No, it was very very bad. Anyway today. I'm a writer blogger guy. I write the blog wait, but why and a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination. My behavior is always perplexed the non procrastinators around me and I wanted to explain to the non procrastinators of the world what goes on in the heads of procrastinators and why we are the way we are now I have a.

Sis that the brains are procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people and to test this I found an MRI lab that actually let me scan both my brain and the brain of a proven on procrastinator and I so I could compare them and I actually brought them here to show you today and I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference and I know that if you're not a trained brain expert it's not that obvious, but just take a look. Okay. So here's the brain of a non procrastinator..

Now here's my brain..

There is a difference both brains have a rational decision-maker in them. But the procrastinators brain also has an instant gratification monkey. Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator? Well means everything's fine until this happens..

So the rational decision maker will make the rational decision to do something productive with the monkey doesn't like that plan. So he had your takes the wheel and he says actually let's read the entire Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan Tonya Harding Scandal because I just remember that that happened then then we're going to go over to the fridge. We're gonna see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago. After that. We're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Fineman talking..

Magnets and ends much much later with us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom..

All that's going to take a while. So we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today. Sorry now what is going on here?.

This is the gratification monkey does not seem like a guy you want behind the wheel. He lives entirely in the present moment. He has no memory of the past. No knowledge of the future he only cares about two things easy and fun now in the animal world that works fine. If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things your huge success and to the monkey humans are just another animal species used to keep well slept..

Fed and propagating into the Next Generation which in tribal times might have worked. Okay, but if you haven't noticed now, we're not in tribal times. We're in an advanced civilization and the monkey does not know what that is, which is why we have another guy in our brain the rational decision-maker who gives us the ability to do things. No other animal can do we can visualize the future we can see the big picture we can make long-term plans and he wants to take all of that into account and he wants to just.

Have us do whatever makes sense to be doing right now. Now, sometimes it makes sense to be doing things that are easy and fun like when you're having dinner or going to bed or enjoying well or in leisure time. That's why there's an overlap. Sometimes they agree. But other times it makes much more sense to be doing things that are harder and Less Pleasant for the sake of the big picture. And that's when we have a conflict and for the procrastinator that conflict tends to end the certain way every time leaving him spending a lot of time..

I'm in this orange Zone an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the make sense Circle. I call it the dark playground..

Now the dark playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well. It's where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening the fun you have in the dark playground isn't actually fun because it's completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt dread anxiety self-hatred all those good procrastinator feelings. And the question is in this situation with the monkey behind the wheel. How does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this Blue Zone?.

A Less Pleasant place but we're really important things happen Well turns out that the procrastinator has a guardian angel someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him in his darkest moments. Someone called the Panic monster..

Now the Panic monster is dormant most of the time but he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close or there's danger of public embarrassment a career disaster or some other scary consequence and importantly he's the only thing that the monkey is terrified of now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently because the people of Ted reached out to me about six months ago and invited me to do a TED Talk..

Of course I said yes. It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past..

But in the middle of all this excitement the rational decision makers seem to have something else on his mind. He was saying we clear on what we just accepted. Do we do we get what's going to be now happening one day in the future. We need to sit down and work on this right now and the monkey said totally agree, but also let's just open Google Earth and let's zoom in to the bottom of India like 200 feet above the ground. We're going to scroll up two and a half hours till we get to the top of the country so we can get a better feel for India..

So that's what we did that day..

As six months turned into four and then two and then one the people of Ted decided to release the speakers and I opened up the website and there was my face staring right back at me and guess who woke up..

So the Panic monster starts losing his mind and a few seconds later the whole systems in Mayhem..

And the monkey remember he's terrified of the pan at Monster boom. He's up the tree and finally finally the rational decision-maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk. Now the Panic monster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinated Behavior, like how someone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence of a paper and then miraculously find the unbelievable worth work ethic to stay up all night and right..

Eight pages and this entire situation with the free characters. This is the procrastinators system. It's not pretty but in the end it works and this is what I decided to write about on the blog just a couple years ago now and when I did I was amazed by the response literally thousands of emails came in from all different kinds of people from all over the world doing all different kinds of things. These are people who are nurses and bankers and Painters and Engineers have lots and lots of PhD.

Ants and they were all writing saying the same thing. I have this problem too. But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of the post and the heaviness of these emails. These people were writing with intense frustration about what procrastination had done to their lives about what this monkey had done to them..

And I thought about this and I said what the procrastinator system works then what's going on? Why are all these people in such a dark place? Well turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination everything I've talked about today the examples I've given they all have deadlines when there's deadlines the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term because the Panic monster gets involved but there's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline. So if you want to have a career.

Going to be a self-starter something in the Arts something entrepreneurial. There's no deadlines on those things at first because nothing's happening at first not until you've gone out and done the hard work to get some momentum to get things going. There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career that don't involve any deadlines like seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health working on your relationship or getting out of a relationship. That isn't working now if procrastinators only mechanism of doing these hard things is the Panic monster that's.

It's a problem because in all of these non deadlines situations the Panic monster doesn't show up. You've nothing to wake up for so the effects of procrastination they're not contain. They just extend outward forever. And it's this long-term kind of procrastination. That's much less visible and much less talked about then the funnier short term deadline based kind. It's usually suffered quietly and privately.

And it's can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness and regrets..

And I thought you know, that's why these people are emailing and that's why they're in such a bad place. It's not that they're cramming for some project. It's that long-term procrastination is made them feel like a spectator at times in their own lives, you know, the frustration was not that they couldn't achieve their dreams is that they weren't even able to start chasing them. So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany..

That I don't think non procrastinators exist. That's right. I think all of you are procrastinators now, you might not all be a mess like some of us..

And some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines. But remember the monkeys sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there now. I want to show you one last thing. I call this a life calendar. That's one box for every week of a 90-year life. That's not that many boxes, especially since we've already used a bunch of those. So I think we need to all take a long hard. Look at that calendar..

We need to think about what we're really procrastinating on because everyone is procrastinating on something in life. We need to stay aware of the instant gratification monkey..

That's a job for all of us. And because there's not that many boxes on there. It's a job that should probably start today, but maybe not today, but you know..

sometime soon.

Thank you..