# Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

[00:12] So in college,
[00:15] I was a government major,
[00:16] which means I had to write a lot of papers.
[00:19] Now, when a normal student writes a paper,
[00:21] they might spread the work out a little like this.
[00:23] So, you know --
[00:25] (Laughter)
[00:26] you get started maybe a little slowly,
[00:28] but you get enough done in the first week
[00:30] that, with some heavier days later on,
[00:32] everything gets done, things stay civil.
[00:34] (Laughter)
[00:35] And I would want to do that like that.
[00:38] That would be the plan.
[00:39] I would have it all ready to go,
[00:41] but then, actually, the paper would come along,
[00:44] and then I would kind of do this.
[00:46] (Laughter)
[00:48] And that would happen every single paper.
[00:51] But then came my 90-page senior thesis,
[00:55] a paper you're supposed to spend a year on.
[00:57] And I knew for a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option.
[01:01] It was way too big a project.
[01:02] So I planned things out,
[01:04] and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.
[01:07] This is how the year would go.
[01:09] So I'd start off light,
[01:11] and I'd bump it up in the middle months,
[01:13] and then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear
[01:16] just like a little staircase.
[01:17] How hard could it be to walk up the stairs?
[01:20] No big deal, right?
[01:23] But then, the funniest thing happened.
[01:24] Those first few months?
[01:26] They came and went,
[01:27] and I couldn't quite do stuff.
[01:29] So we had an awesome new revised plan.
[01:31] (Laughter)
[01:32] And then --
[01:33] (Laughter)
[01:35] But then those middle months actually went by,
[01:38] and I didn't really write words,
[01:40] and so we were here.
[01:43] And then two months turned into one month,
[01:46] which turned into two weeks.
[01:47] And one day I woke up
[01:49] with three days until the deadline,
[01:53] still not having written a word,
[01:55] and so I did the only thing I could:
[01:57] I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,
[02:00] pulling not one but two all-nighters --
[02:02] humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters --
[02:06] sprinted across campus,
[02:08] dove in slow motion,
[02:09] and got it in just at the deadline.
[02:11] I thought that was the end of everything.
[02:14] But a week later I get a call,
[02:15] and it's the school.
[02:17] And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"
[02:19] And I say, "Yeah."
[02:20] And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis."
[02:23] And I say, "OK."
[02:27] "It's the best one we've ever seen."
[02:29] (Laughter)
[02:32] (Applause)
[02:36] That did not happen.
[02:38] (Laughter)
[02:40] It was a very, very bad thesis.
[02:43] (Laughter)
[02:45] I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought,
[02:49] "This guy is amazing!"
[02:51] (Laughter)
[02:52] No, no, it was very, very bad.
[02:55] Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy.
[02:58] I write the blog Wait But Why.
[03:00] And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination.
[03:04] My behavior has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me,
[03:07] and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world
[03:11] what goes on in the heads of procrastinators,
[03:13] and why we are the way we are.
[03:14] Now, I had a hypothesis
[03:16] that the brains of procrastinators were actually different
[03:18] than the brains of other people.
[03:21] And to test this, I found an MRI lab
[03:23] that actually let me scan both my brain
[03:26] and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator,
[03:29] so I could compare them.
[03:30] I actually brought them here to show you today.
[03:32] I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference.
[03:36] I know that if you're not a trained brain expert,
[03:38] it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?
[03:40] So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.
[03:43] (Laughter)
[03:46] Now ...
[03:48] here's my brain.
[03:50] (Laughter)
[03:55] There is a difference.
[03:57] Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them,
[04:00] but the procrastinator's brain
[04:01] also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.
[04:05] Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?
[04:07] Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.
[04:09] [This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
[04:12] So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision
[04:15] to do something productive,
[04:17] but the Monkey doesn't like that plan,
[04:19] so he actually takes the wheel,
[04:20] and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page
[04:23] of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal,
[04:25] because I just remembered that that happened.
[04:28] (Laughter)
[04:29] Then --
[04:30] (Laughter)
[04:31] Then we're going to go over to the fridge,
[04:33] to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
[04:36] After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral
[04:39] that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets
[04:42] and ends much, much later with us watching interviews
[04:45] with Justin Bieber's mom.
[04:47] (Laughter)
[04:49] "All of that's going to take a while,
[04:51] so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today.
[04:54] Sorry!"
[04:55] (Sigh)
[04:58] Now, what is going on here?
[05:03] The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy
[05:06] you want behind the wheel.
[05:07] He lives entirely in the present moment.
[05:09] He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future,
[05:12] and he only cares about two things:
[05:14] easy and fun.
[05:16] Now, in the animal world, that works fine.
[05:19] If you're a dog
[05:20] and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things,
[05:24] you're a huge success!
[05:25] (Laughter)
[05:27] And to the Monkey,
[05:29] humans are just another animal species.
[05:32] You have to keep well-slept, well-fed and propagating into the next generation,
[05:36] which in tribal times might have worked OK.
[05:38] But, if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times.
[05:41] We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know what that is.
[05:45] Which is why we have another guy in our brain,
[05:48] the Rational Decision-Maker,
[05:50] who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.
[05:53] We can visualize the future.
[05:55] We can see the big picture.
[05:57] We can make long-term plans.
[05:58] And he wants to take all of that into account.
[06:02] And he wants to just have us do
[06:03] whatever makes sense to be doing right now.
[06:06] Now, sometimes it makes sense
[06:08] to be doing things that are easy and fun,
[06:10] like when you're having dinner or going to bed
[06:12] or enjoying well-earned leisure time.
[06:14] That's why there's an overlap.
[06:15] Sometimes they agree.
[06:17] But other times, it makes much more sense
[06:20] to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant,
[06:24] for the sake of the big picture.
[06:25] And that's when we have a conflict.
[06:28] And for the procrastinator,
[06:29] that conflict tends to end a certain way every time,
[06:31] leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone,
[06:35] an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the Makes Sense circle.
[06:39] I call it the Dark Playground.
[06:42] (Laughter)
[06:43] Now, the Dark Playground is a place
[06:47] that all of you procrastinators out there know very well.
[06:50] It's where leisure activities happen
[06:52] at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening.
[06:56] The fun you have in the Dark Playground
[06:58] isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned,
[07:00] and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred --
[07:04] all of those good procrastinator feelings.
[07:06] And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel,
[07:10] how does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this blue zone,
[07:13] a less pleasant place, but where really important things happen?
[07:17] Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel,
[07:22] someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him
[07:25] in his darkest moments --
[07:26] someone called the Panic Monster.
[07:28] (Laughter)
[07:34] Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time,
[07:39] but he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close
[07:43] or there's danger of public embarrassment,
[07:45] a career disaster or some other scary consequence.
[07:47] And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of.
[07:51] Now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently,
[07:56] because the people of TED reached out to me about six months ago
[07:59] and invited me to do a TED Talk.
[08:01] (Laughter)
[08:07] Now, of course, I said yes.
[08:08] It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.
[08:12] (Laughter)
[08:16] (Applause)
[08:24] But in the middle of all this excitement,
[08:26] the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to have something else on his mind.
[08:29] He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted?
[08:32] Do we get what's going to be now happening one day in the future?
[08:35] We need to sit down and work on this right now."
[08:37] And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth
[08:40] and zoom in to the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground,
[08:44] and scroll up for two and a half hours til we get to the top of the country,
[08:47] so we can get a better feel for India."
[08:49] (Laughter)
[08:55] So that's what we did that day.
[08:56] (Laughter)
[09:00] As six months turned into four and then two and then one,
[09:04] the people of TED decided to release the speakers.
[09:07] And I opened up the website, and there was my face
[09:10] staring right back at me.
[09:11] And guess who woke up?
[09:13] (Laughter)
[09:17] So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind,
[09:19] and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
[09:22] (Laughter)
[09:27] And the Monkey -- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster --
[09:30] boom, he's up the tree!
[09:31] And finally,
[09:32] the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel
[09:35] and I can start working on the talk.
[09:37] Now, the Panic Monster explains
[09:39] all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior,
[09:43] like how someone like me could spend two weeks
[09:45] unable to start the opening sentence of a paper,
[09:49] and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic
[09:52] to stay up all night and write eight pages.
[09:56] And this entire situation, with the three characters --
[09:59] this is the procrastinator's system.
[10:02] It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.
[10:05] This is what I decided to write about on the blog a couple of years ago.
[10:09] When I did, I was amazed by the response.
[10:12] Literally thousands of emails came in,
[10:14] from all different kinds of people from all over the world,
[10:17] doing all different kinds of things.
[10:19] These are people who were nurses, bankers, painters, engineers
[10:22] and lots and lots of PhD students.
[10:24] (Laughter)
[10:26] And they were all writing, saying the same thing:
[10:29] "I have this problem too."
[10:31] But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of the post
[10:34] and the heaviness of these emails.
[10:36] These people were writing with intense frustration
[10:40] about what procrastination had done to their lives,
[10:42] about what this Monkey had done to them.
[10:46] And I thought about this, and I said,
[10:49] well, if the procrastinator's system works, then what's going on?
[10:53] Why are all of these people in such a dark place?
[10:55] Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination.
[10:59] Everything I've talked about today, the examples I've given,
[11:02] they all have deadlines.
[11:04] And when there's deadlines,
[11:05] the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term
[11:08] because the Panic Monster gets involved.
[11:10] But there's a second kind of procrastination
[11:12] that happens in situations when there is no deadline.
[11:14] So if you wanted a career where you're a self-starter --
[11:17] something in the arts, something entrepreneurial --
[11:19] there's no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing's happening,
[11:23] not until you've gone out and done the hard work
[11:25] to get momentum, get things going.
[11:27] There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career
[11:30] that don't involve any deadlines,
[11:32] like seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health,
[11:35] working on your relationship
[11:36] or getting out of a relationship that isn't working.
[11:39] Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things
[11:44] is the Panic Monster, that's a problem,
[11:46] because in all of these non-deadline situations,
[11:49] the Panic Monster doesn't show up.
[11:51] He has nothing to wake up for,
[11:52] so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained;
[11:55] they just extend outward forever.
[11:57] And it's this long-term kind of procrastination
[12:00] that's much less visible and much less talked about
[12:03] than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind.
[12:06] It's usually suffered quietly and privately.
[12:10] And it can be the source
[12:11] of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and regrets.
[12:16] And I thought, that's why those people are emailing,
[12:19] and that's why they're in such a bad place.
[12:21] It's not that they're cramming for some project.
[12:24] It's that long-term procrastination has made them feel like a spectator,
[12:28] at times, in their own lives.
[12:30] The frustration is not that they couldn't achieve their dreams;
[12:33] it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.
[12:36] So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany --
[12:42] that I don't think non-procrastinators exist.
[12:45] That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators.
[12:49] Now, you might not all be a mess,
[12:51] like some of us,
[12:53] (Laughter)
[12:54] and some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines,
[12:58] but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest trick
[13:00] is when the deadlines aren't there.
[13:03] Now, I want to show you one last thing.
[13:05] I call this a Life Calendar.
[13:08] That's one box for every week of a 90-year life.
[13:13] That's not that many boxes,
[13:14] especially since we've already used a bunch of those.
[13:18] So I think we need to all take a long, hard look at that calendar.
[13:24] We need to think about what we're really procrastinating on,
[13:28] because everyone is procrastinating on something in life.
[13:32] We need to stay aware of the Instant Gratification Monkey.
[13:37] That's a job for all of us.
[13:40] And because there's not that many boxes on there,
[13:42] it's a job that should probably start today.
[13:45] Well, maybe not today, but ...
[13:48] (Laughter)
[13:49] You know.
[13:51] Sometime soon.
[13:53] Thank you.
[13:54] (Applause)