Tim Urban | Inside the mind of a master procrastinator (Short Version)

So in college, 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: You get started a little bit slowly but you get enough done in the first week

that with some heavier days later on, everything gets done and things stay civil.

I would have it all ready to go but then actually the paper would come along and I would kind

of do this.

And that would happen every single paper.

But then came my 90 page senior thesis.

Those first few months, they came and went and I couldn't quite do stuff.

And one day I woke up with 3 days until the deadline, not having written a word, I wrote

90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all nighters.

Now I had a hypothesis- that the brain's of procrastinators were actually different from

the brains of other people.

So, here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.

Now, here's my brain: Both brains have a rational decision maker in them, but the procrastinator's

brain also has an instant gratification monkey.

So the rational decision maker will make the rational decision to do something productive,

but the monkey doesn't like that plan.

And he says "Actually let's read the entire wikipedia page of the Nancy Carrigan Tany

Harding Scandal cause I just remembered that happened."

The instant gratification monkey does not seem like a guy you would want behind the

wheel, he lives entirely in the present moment, he only cares about two things: easy and fun.

How does the procrastinator ever get himself over to this blue zone?

A less pleasant place but where really important things happen.

The procrastinator has a guardian angel, someone called the "Panic Monster".

The Panic Monster suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close or there's danger

of public embarassment or some other scary consequence.

This entire situation with the three characters, this is the procrastinator's system.

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

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 because the

panic monster gets involved.

But there's a second kind of procrastination: when there is no deadline.

So, if you wanna have a career where you wanna be a self starter: something in the arts,

something entrepreneurial, or exercising and taking care of your health.

There's no deadlines on those things at first.

All of these non-deadline situations, the panic monster doesn't show up.

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.