Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

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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 --

(Laughter)

you get started maybe a little slowly,

but you get enough done in the first week

that, with some heavier days later on,

everything gets done, things stay civil.

(Laughter)

And I would want to do that like that.

That would be the plan.

I would have it all ready to go,

but then, actually, the paper

would come along,

and then I would kind of do this.

(Laughter)

And that would happen every single paper.

But then came my 90-page senior thesis,

a paper you're supposed

to spend a year on.

And I knew for a paper like that,

my normal work flow 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 I'd start off light,

and I'd bump it up in the middle months,

and then at the end,

I would kick it up into high gear

just like a little staircase.

How hard could it be

to walk up the stairs?

No big deal, right?

But then, the 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.

(Laughter)

And then --

(Laughter)

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,

which 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 pull

two all-nighters --

sprinted across campus,

dove in slow motion,

and got it in just at the deadline.

I thought that was the end of everything.

But a week later I get a call,

and 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, "OK."

And they say,

"It's the best one we've ever seen."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

That did not happen.

(Laughter)

It was a very, very bad thesis.

(Laughter)

I just wanted to enjoy that one moment

when all of you thought,

"This guy is amazing!"

(Laughter)

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 has 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 had a hypothesis

that the brains of 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

non-procrastinator,

so I could compare them.

I actually brought them here

to show you today.

I want you to take a look carefully

to see if you can notice a difference.

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.

(Laughter)

Now ...

here's my brain.

(Laughter)

There is a difference.

Both brains have a Rational

Decision-Maker in them,

but the procrastinator's brain

also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.

Now, what does this mean

for the procrastinator?

Well, it means everything's fine

until this happens.

[This is a perfect time

to get some work done.] [Nope!]

So the Rational Decision-Maker

will make the rational decision

to do something productive,

but 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,

because I just remembered

that that happened.

(Laughter)

Then --

(Laughter)

Then we're going to go over to the fridge,

to 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 Feynman talking about magnets

and ends much, much later

with us watching interviews

with Justin Bieber's mom.

(Laughter)

"All of that's going to take a while,

so we're not going to really have room

on the schedule for any work today.

Sorry!"

(Sigh)

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 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,

you're a huge success!

(Laughter)

And to the Monkey,

humans are just another animal species.

You have 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

a certain way every time,

leaving him spending a lot of time

in this orange zone,

an easy and fun place that's entirely

out of the Makes Sense circle.

I call it the Dark Playground.

(Laughter)

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 of 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 where

really important things happen?

Well, turns out 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.

(Laughter)

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

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.

(Laughter)

Now, of course, I said yes.

It's always been a dream of mine

to have done a TED Talk in the past.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

But in the middle of all this excitement,

the Rational Decision-Maker seemed

to have something else on his mind.

He was saying, "Are we 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 let's just open Google Earth

and zoom in to the bottom of India,

like 200 feet above the ground,

and scroll up for two and a half hours

til we get to the top of the country,

so we can get a better feel for India."

(Laughter)

So that's what we did that day.

(Laughter)

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?

(Laughter)

So the Panic Monster

starts losing his mind,

and a few seconds later,

the whole system's in mayhem.

(Laughter)

And the Monkey -- remember,

he's terrified of the Panic 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

procrastinator 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 work ethic

to stay up all night

and write eight pages.

And this entire situation,

with the three characters --

this is the procrastinator's system.

It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.

This is what I decided to write about

on the blog a couple of years ago.

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 were nurses,

bankers, painters, engineers

and lots and lots of PhD students.

(Laughter)

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,

well, if the procrastinator's system

works, then what's going on?

Why are all of 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 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 wanted a career

where you're a self-starter --

something in the arts,

something entrepreneurial --

there's no deadlines on those things

at first, because nothing's happening,

not until you've gone out

and done the hard work

to get momentum, 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 the procrastinator's only mechanism

of doing these hard things

is the Panic Monster, that's a problem,

because in all of these

non-deadline situations,

the Panic Monster doesn't show up.

He has nothing to wake up for,

so the effects of procrastination,

they're not contained;

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 funnier, short-term

deadline-based kind.

It's usually suffered

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

those 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.

The frustration is 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,

(Laughter)

and some of you may have

a healthy relationship with deadlines,

but remember: the Monkey's 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.

Well, maybe not today, but ...

(Laughter)

You know.

Sometime soon.

Thank you.

(Applause)