Original subtitles

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 some have your 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 than that the people would come along and then I would kind of do this.

And that would happen every single paper.

But then came my 90 page senior thesis paper you're supposed to spend a year on.

I knew for a paper like that my normal workflow was not an option.

It was way too big a project.

So I planned things out and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.

This is how the year would go.

So it started off light.

And I bumped it up in the middle 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 I couldn't quite do stuff.

So we had an awesome new revised plan.

And then.

But 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 put two all nighters.

Sprinted across campus dove in slow motion and got it in of the deadline.

Now 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.

And 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.

I just.

Wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought this guy's 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 Krastev nation my behaviors

are 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 where we are now.

I had a hypothesis that the brains

of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people

and to testis I found an MRI lab that she'd let me scan both my brain

and the brain of a proven non 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 the difference and I know that if you're not a trained

brain expert it's not that obvious but just take a look.

OK 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 it 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 actually takes the wheel and he says actually let's read the entire Wikipedia

page of the Nancy Kerrigan Tonya Harding scandal.

I just remember that that happened.

Then.

Then we're going to go over to the fridge

to see if it's anything new in there since ten

minutes ago.

After that.

We're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Fineman

talking about magnets and ends much much later.

With us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.

Oh 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

the Instant 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 and 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.

You were a huge success. And.

To the monkey.

Humans are just another animal species

to keep well slept well fed and propagating into the next generation.

Which in tribal times might have worked OK.

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 earned 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 in this orange zone and 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 were really important things happen.

Well. It 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 people have Ted reached

out to me about six months ago and invited me to do a TED talk.

Now 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 of this

excitement the rational decision makers seem to have something else on his mind.

He was saying. We're not clear on what we just accepted

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 to two and a half

hours to 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 and mayhem.

And the monkey you remember he's terrified

of the panic mounts or 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 stay up all night and write eight pages

and this entire situation with the three 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 of years ago now when I did I was amazed by the response literally

thousands of e-mails came in from all different kinds of people from all over

the world doing all different kinds of things.

These are people who were nurses

and bankers and painters and engineers and lots and lots of Ph.D. students.

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 e-mails.

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 well the procrastinator system works.

What's going on.

Why are all these people in such a dark place.

Well it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination.

Everything I've talked about today

the examples I've given they all have deadlines and 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 you want

to be a self starter something in the arts something entrepreneurial.

There's no deadlines on those things first because nothing's happening 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 Monastir that's a problem because in all

of these non deadlines situations the panic monster doesn't show up.

Nothing to wake up for.

So the effects of procrastination are 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 than the fun of your short term deadline based kind.

It's usually suffer quietly and privately.

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

And I thought 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 has 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 it's

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 to show you one last thing.

I call this a life calendar.

That's one box for every week of a 90 year life.

It'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.

And 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.

Well maybe not today but.

You know.

Sometime soon. Thank you.