Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:12So in college,
2. 0:15I was a government major,
3. 0:16which means I had to write a lot of papers.
4. 0:19Now, when a normal student writes a paper,
5. 0:21they might spread the work out a little like this.
6. 0:23So, you know --
7. 0:25(Laughter)
8. 0:26you get started maybe a little slowly,
9. 0:28but you get enough done in the first week
10. 0:30that, with some heavier days later on,
11. 0:32everything gets done, things stay civil.
12. 0:34(Laughter)
13. 0:35And I would want to do that like that.
14. 0:38That would be the plan.
15. 0:39I would have it all ready to go,
16. 0:41but then, actually, the paper would come along,
17. 0:44and then I would kind of do this.
18. 0:46(Laughter)
19. 0:48And that would happen every single paper.
20. 0:51But then came my 90-page senior thesis,
21. 0:55a paper you're supposed to spend a year on.
22. 0:57And I knew for a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option.
23. 1:01It was way too big a project.
24. 1:02So I planned things out,
25. 1:04and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.
26. 1:07This is how the year would go.
27. 1:09So I'd start off light,
28. 1:11and I'd bump it up in the middle months,
29. 1:13and then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear
30. 1:16just like a little staircase.
31. 1:17How hard could it be to walk up the stairs?
32. 1:20No big deal, right?
33. 1:23But then, the funniest thing happened.
34. 1:24Those first few months?
35. 1:26They came and went,
36. 1:27and I couldn't quite do stuff.
37. 1:29So we had an awesome new revised plan.
38. 1:31(Laughter)
39. 1:32And then --
40. 1:33(Laughter)
41. 1:35But then those middle months actually went by,
42. 1:38and I didn't really write words,
43. 1:40and so we were here.
44. 1:43And then two months turned into one month,
45. 1:46which turned into two weeks.
46. 1:47And one day I woke up
47. 1:49with three days until the deadline,
48. 1:53still not having written a word,
49. 1:55and so I did the only thing I could:
50. 1:57I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,
51. 2:00pulling not one but two all-nighters --
52. 2:02humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters --
53. 2:06sprinted across campus,
54. 2:08dove in slow motion,
55. 2:09and got it in just at the deadline.
56. 2:11I thought that was the end of everything.
57. 2:14But a week later I get a call,
58. 2:15and it's the school.
59. 2:17And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"
60. 2:19And I say, "Yeah."
61. 2:20And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis."
62. 2:23And I say, "OK."
63. 2:25And they say,
64. 2:27"It's the best one we've ever seen."
65. 2:29(Laughter)
66. 2:32(Applause)
67. 2:36That did not happen.
68. 2:38(Laughter)
69. 2:40It was a very, very bad thesis.
70. 2:43(Laughter)
71. 2:45I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought,
72. 2:49"This guy is amazing!"
73. 2:51(Laughter)
74. 2:52No, no, it was very, very bad.
75. 2:55Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy.
76. 2:58I write the blog Wait But Why.
77. 3:00And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination.
78. 3:04My behavior has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me,
79. 3:07and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world
80. 3:11what goes on in the heads of procrastinators,
81. 3:13and why we are the way we are.
82. 3:14Now, I had a hypothesis
83. 3:16that the brains of procrastinators were actually different
84. 3:18than the brains of other people.
85. 3:21And to test this, I found an MRI lab
86. 3:23that actually let me scan both my brain
87. 3:26and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator,
88. 3:29so I could compare them.
89. 3:30I actually brought them here to show you today.
90. 3:32I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference.
91. 3:36I know that if you're not a trained brain expert,
92. 3:38it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?
93. 3:40So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.
94. 3:43(Laughter)
95. 3:46Now ...
96. 3:48here's my brain.
97. 3:50(Laughter)
98. 3:55There is a difference.
99. 3:57Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them,
100. 4:00but the procrastinator's brain
101. 4:01also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.
102. 4:05Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?
103. 4:07Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.
104. 4:09[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
105. 4:12So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision
106. 4:15to do something productive,
107. 4:17but the Monkey doesn't like that plan,
108. 4:19so he actually takes the wheel,
109. 4:20and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page
110. 4:23of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal,
111. 4:25because I just remembered that that happened.
112. 4:28(Laughter)
113. 4:29Then --
114. 4:30(Laughter)
115. 4:31Then we're going to go over to the fridge,
116. 4:33to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
117. 4:36After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral
118. 4:39that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets
119. 4:42and ends much, much later with us watching interviews
120. 4:45with Justin Bieber's mom.
121. 4:47(Laughter)
122. 4:49"All of that's going to take a while,
123. 4:51so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today.
124. 4:54Sorry!"
125. 4:55(Sigh)
126. 4:58Now, what is going on here?
127. 5:03The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy
128. 5:06you want behind the wheel.
129. 5:07He lives entirely in the present moment.
130. 5:09He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future,
131. 5:12and he only cares about two things:
132. 5:14easy and fun.
133. 5:16Now, in the animal world, that works fine.
134. 5:19If you're a dog
135. 5:20and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things,
136. 5:24you're a huge success!
137. 5:25(Laughter)
138. 5:27And to the Monkey,
139. 5:29humans are just another animal species.
140. 5:32You have to keep well-slept, well-fed and propagating into the next generation,
141. 5:36which in tribal times might have worked OK.
142. 5:38But, if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times.
143. 5:41We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know what that is.
144. 5:45Which is why we have another guy in our brain,
145. 5:48the Rational Decision-Maker,
146. 5:50who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.
147. 5:53We can visualize the future.
148. 5:55We can see the big picture.
149. 5:57We can make long-term plans.
150. 5:58And he wants to take all of that into account.
151. 6:02And he wants to just have us do
152. 6:03whatever makes sense to be doing right now.
153. 6:06Now, sometimes it makes sense
154. 6:08to be doing things that are easy and fun,
155. 6:10like when you're having dinner or going to bed
156. 6:12or enjoying well-earned leisure time.
157. 6:14That's why there's an overlap.
158. 6:15Sometimes they agree.
159. 6:17But other times, it makes much more sense
160. 6:20to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant,
161. 6:24for the sake of the big picture.
162. 6:25And that's when we have a conflict.
163. 6:28And for the procrastinator,
164. 6:29that conflict tends to end a certain way every time,
165. 6:31leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone,
166. 6:35an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the Makes Sense circle.
167. 6:39I call it the Dark Playground.
168. 6:42(Laughter)
169. 6:43Now, the Dark Playground is a place
170. 6:47that all of you procrastinators out there know very well.
171. 6:50It's where leisure activities happen
172. 6:52at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening.
173. 6:56The fun you have in the Dark Playground
174. 6:58isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned,
175. 7:00and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred --
176. 7:04all of those good procrastinator feelings.
177. 7:06And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel,
178. 7:10how does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this blue zone,
179. 7:13a less pleasant place, but where really important things happen?
180. 7:17Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel,
181. 7:22someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him
182. 7:25in his darkest moments --
183. 7:26someone called the Panic Monster.
184. 7:28(Laughter)
185. 7:34Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time,
186. 7:39but he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close
187. 7:43or there's danger of public embarrassment,
188. 7:45a career disaster or some other scary consequence.
189. 7:47And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of.
190. 7:52Now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently,
191. 7:56because the people of TED reached out to me about six months ago
192. 7:59and invited me to do a TED Talk.
193. 8:01(Laughter)
194. 8:07Now, of course, I said yes.
195. 8:08It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.
196. 8:12(Laughter)
197. 8:16(Applause)
198. 8:24But in the middle of all this excitement,
199. 8:26the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to have something else on his mind.
200. 8:29He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted?
201. 8:32Do we get what's going to be now happening one day in the future?
202. 8:35We need to sit down and work on this right now."
203. 8:37And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth
204. 8:40and zoom in to the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground,
205. 8:44and scroll up for two and a half hours til we get to the top of the country,
206. 8:47so we can get a better feel for India."
207. 8:49(Laughter)
208. 8:55So that's what we did that day.
209. 8:56(Laughter)
210. 9:00As six months turned into four and then two and then one,
211. 9:04the people of TED decided to release the speakers.
212. 9:07And I opened up the website, and there was my face
213. 9:10staring right back at me.
214. 9:11And guess who woke up?
215. 9:13(Laughter)
216. 9:17So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind,
217. 9:19and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
218. 9:22(Laughter)
219. 9:27And the Monkey -- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster --
220. 9:30boom, he's up the tree!
221. 9:31And finally,
222. 9:32finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel
223. 9:35and I can start working on the talk.
224. 9:37Now, the Panic Monster explains
225. 9:39all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior,
226. 9:43like how someone like me could spend two weeks
227. 9:45unable to start the opening sentence of a paper,
228. 9:49and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic
229. 9:52to stay up all night and write eight pages.
230. 9:56And this entire situation, with the three characters --
231. 9:59this is the procrastinator's system.
232. 10:02It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.
233. 10:05This is what I decided to write about on the blog a couple of years ago.
234. 10:09When I did, I was amazed by the response.
235. 10:12Literally thousands of emails came in,
236. 10:14from all different kinds of people from all over the world,
237. 10:17doing all different kinds of things.
238. 10:19These are people who were nurses, bankers, painters, engineers
239. 10:22and lots and lots of PhD students.
240. 10:24(Laughter)
241. 10:26And they were all writing, saying the same thing:
242. 10:29"I have this problem too."
243. 10:31But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of the post
244. 10:34and the heaviness of these emails.
245. 10:36These people were writing with intense frustration
246. 10:40about what procrastination had done to their lives,
247. 10:42about what this Monkey had done to them.
248. 10:46And I thought about this, and I said,
249. 10:49well, if the procrastinator's system works, then what's going on?
250. 10:53Why are all of these people in such a dark place?
251. 10:55Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination.
252. 10:59Everything I've talked about today, the examples I've given,
253. 11:02they all have deadlines.
254. 11:04And when there's deadlines,
255. 11:05the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term
256. 11:08because the Panic Monster gets involved.
257. 11:10But there's a second kind of procrastination
258. 11:12that happens in situations when there is no deadline.
259. 11:14So if you wanted a career where you're a self-starter --
260. 11:17something in the arts, something entrepreneurial --
261. 11:19there's no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing's happening,
262. 11:23not until you've gone out and done the hard work
263. 11:25to get momentum, get things going.
264. 11:27There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career
265. 11:30that don't involve any deadlines,
266. 11:32like seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health,
267. 11:35working on your relationship
268. 11:36or getting out of a relationship that isn't working.
269. 11:39Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things
270. 11:44is the Panic Monster, that's a problem,
271. 11:46because in all of these non-deadline situations,
272. 11:49the Panic Monster doesn't show up.
273. 11:51He has nothing to wake up for,
274. 11:52so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained;
275. 11:55they just extend outward forever.
276. 11:57And it's this long-term kind of procrastination
277. 12:00that's much less visible and much less talked about
278. 12:03than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind.
279. 12:06It's usually suffered quietly and privately.
280. 12:10And it can be the source
281. 12:11of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and regrets.
282. 12:16And I thought, that's why those people are emailing,
283. 12:19and that's why they're in such a bad place.
284. 12:22It's not that they're cramming for some project.
285. 12:24It's that long-term procrastination has made them feel like a spectator,
286. 12:28at times, in their own lives.
287. 12:30The frustration is not that they couldn't achieve their dreams;
288. 12:33it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.
289. 12:36So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany --
290. 12:42that I don't think non-procrastinators exist.
291. 12:45That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators.
292. 12:49Now, you might not all be a mess,
293. 12:51like some of us,
294. 12:53(Laughter)
295. 12:54and some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines,
296. 12:58but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest trick
297. 13:00is when the deadlines aren't there.
298. 13:03Now, I want to show you one last thing.
299. 13:05I call this a Life Calendar.
300. 13:08That's one box for every week of a 90-year life.
301. 13:13That's not that many boxes,
302. 13:14especially since we've already used a bunch of those.
303. 13:18So I think we need to all take a long, hard look at that calendar.
304. 13:24We need to think about what we're really procrastinating on,
305. 13:28because everyone is procrastinating on something in life.
306. 13:32We need to stay aware of the Instant Gratification Monkey.
307. 13:37That's a job for all of us.
308. 13:40And because there's not that many boxes on there,
309. 13:42it's a job that should probably start today.
310. 13:45Well, maybe not today, but ...
311. 13:48(Laughter)
312. 13:50You know.
313. 13:51Sometime soon.
314. 13:53Thank you.
315. 13:54(Applause)