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 with some heavier days later

on

everything gets done and things stay

civil

and i would want to do that like that

that would be the plan i would uh i

would have it all ready to go but then

actually the paper 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 a

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 it 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 it's like a little

staircase how hard could you just walk

up the stairs

no big deal right

but then 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

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 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

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 i say okay

and they say

it's the best one we've ever seen

[Applause]

that did not happen

it was a very

very bad thesis

i just

wanted to enjoy that one moment when all

of you thought this guy is 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

years ago i decided to write about

procrastination my behavior is 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

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 a

difference and i know that if you're not

a trained brain expert it's not that

obvious but just take a look okay

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 procrastinator's

brain also has an instant gratification

monkey now what does this mean for the

procrastinator well means everything's

fine until this happens

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 tanya harding scandal because i

just remembered that that happened

then

[Applause]

then we're going to go over to the

fridge we're going 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

all of that's gonna take a while so

we're not gonna 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 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

and

to the monkey

humans are just another animal species

he has to keep well slept well fed and

propagating into the next generation

which in tribal times might have worked

okay 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 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 where really

important things happen

well

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 of ted reached out to me

about six months ago and invited me to

do a ted talk

[Applause]

now of course i said yes it's always

been a dream of mine to have done a ted

talk in the past

[Applause]

but in the middle of all this excitement

the rational decision maker seemed to

have something else in his mind he was

saying are we clear on what we just

accepted do we 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 into

the bottom of india like 200 feet above

the ground we're going to scroll up for

two and a half hours until we get to the

top of the country so we can get a

better feel for india

so that's what we did that day

[Applause]

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

system's in mayhem

and the monkey who 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 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 work ethic to stay up all

night and write eight pages

and this entire situation with the three

characters this is the procrastinator

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

years ago now 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 were people who were nurses

and bankers and painters and engineers

and lots and lots of phd 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 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 if the

procrastinator system works then what's

going on why are all these people in

such a dark place well

turns out that there's two kinds of

procrastination

i've talked about today the examples

i've given they all have deadlines 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 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 at first because nothing's

happening at 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

monster that's a problem because in all

of these non-deadline situations

the panic monster doesn't show up he's

nothing to wake up for so the effects of

procrastination are 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 you know 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 is

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 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

you know

sometime soon

thank you

you