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So in college,
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I was a government major,
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which means I had to write
a lot of papers.
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Now, when a normal student writes a paper,
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they might spread the work out
a little like this.
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So, you know --
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(Laughter)
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you get started maybe a little slowly,
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but you get enough done in the first week
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that, with some heavier days later on,
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everything gets done, things stay civil.
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(Laughter)
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And I would want to do that like that.
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That would be the plan.
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I would have it all ready to go,
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but then, actually, the paper
would come along,
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and then I would kind of do this.
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(Laughter)
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And that would happen every single paper.
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But then came my 90-page senior thesis,
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a paper you're supposed
to spend a year on.
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And I knew for a paper like that,
my normal work flow was not an option.
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It was way too big a project.
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So I planned things out,
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and I decided I kind of had
to go something like this.
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This is how the year would go.
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So I'd start off light,
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and I'd bump it up in the middle months,
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and then at the end,
I would kick it up into high gear
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just like a little staircase.
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How hard could it be
to walk up the stairs?
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No big deal, right?
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But then, the funniest thing happened.
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Those first few months?
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They came and went,
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and I couldn't quite do stuff.
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So we had an awesome new revised plan.
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(Laughter)
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And then --
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(Laughter)
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But then those middle months
actually went by,
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and I didn't really write words,
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and so we were here.
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And then two months turned into one month,
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which turned into two weeks.
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And one day I woke up
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with three days until the deadline,
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still not having written a word,
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and so I did the only thing I could:
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I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,
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pulling not one but two all-nighters --
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humans are not supposed to pull
two all-nighters --
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sprinted across campus,
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dove in slow motion,
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and got it in just at the deadline.
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I thought that was the end of everything.
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But a week later I get a call,
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and it's the school.
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And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"
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And I say, "Yeah."
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And they say, "We need
to talk about your thesis."
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And I say, "OK."
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And they say,
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"It's the best one we've ever seen."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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That did not happen.
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(Laughter)
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It was a very, very bad thesis.
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(Laughter)
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I just wanted to enjoy that one moment
when all of you thought,
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"This guy is amazing!"
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(Laughter)
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No, no, it was very, very bad.
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Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy.
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I write the blog Wait But Why.
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And a couple of years ago,
I decided to write about procrastination.
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My behavior has always perplexed
the non-procrastinators around me,
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and I wanted to explain
to the non-procrastinators of the world
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what goes on in the heads
of procrastinators,
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and why we are the way we are.
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Now, I had a hypothesis
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that the brains of procrastinators
were actually different
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than the brains of other people.
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And to test this, I found an MRI lab
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that actually let me scan both my brain
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and the brain of a proven
non-procrastinator,
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so I could compare them.
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I actually brought them here
to show you today.
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I want you to take a look carefully
to see if you can notice a difference.
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I know that if you're not
a trained brain expert,
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it's not that obvious,
but just take a look, OK?
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So here's the brain
of a non-procrastinator.
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(Laughter)
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Now ...
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here's my brain.
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(Laughter)
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There is a difference.
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Both brains have a Rational
Decision-Maker in them,
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but the procrastinator's brain
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also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.
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Now, what does this mean
for the procrastinator?
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Well, it means everything's fine
until this happens.
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[This is a perfect time
to get some work done.] [Nope!]
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So the Rational Decision-Maker
will make the rational decision
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to do something productive,
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but the Monkey doesn't like that plan,
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so he actually takes the wheel,
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and he says, "Actually, let's read
the entire Wikipedia page
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of the Nancy Kerrigan/
Tonya Harding scandal,
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because I just remembered
that that happened.
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(Laughter)
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Then --
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(Laughter)
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Then we're going to go over to the fridge,
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to see if there's anything new
in there since 10 minutes ago.
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After that, we're going to go
on a YouTube spiral
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that starts with videos
of Richard Feynman talking about magnets
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and ends much, much later
with us watching interviews
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with Justin Bieber's mom.
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(Laughter)
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"All of that's going to take a while,
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so we're not going to really have room
on the schedule for any work today.
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Sorry!"
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(Sigh)
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Now, what is going on here?
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The Instant Gratification Monkey
does not seem like a guy
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you want behind the wheel.
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He lives entirely in the present moment.
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He has no memory of the past,
no knowledge of the future,
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and he only cares about two things:
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easy and fun.
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Now, in the animal world, that works fine.
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If you're a dog
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and you spend your whole life doing
nothing other than easy and fun things,
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you're a huge success!
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(Laughter)
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And to the Monkey,
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humans are just another animal species.
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You have to keep well-slept, well-fed
and propagating into the next generation,
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which in tribal times
might have worked OK.
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But, if you haven't noticed,
now we're not in tribal times.
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We're in an advanced civilization,
and the Monkey does not know what that is.
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Which is why we have
another guy in our brain,
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the Rational Decision-Maker,
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who gives us the ability to do things
no other animal can do.
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We can visualize the future.
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We can see the big picture.
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We can make long-term plans.
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And he wants to take
all of that into account.
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And he wants to just have us do
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whatever makes sense
to be doing right now.
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Now, sometimes it makes sense
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to be doing things that are easy and fun,
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like when you're having dinner
or going to bed
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or enjoying well-earned leisure time.
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That's why there's an overlap.
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Sometimes they agree.
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But other times, it makes much more sense
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to be doing things that are harder
and less pleasant,
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for the sake of the big picture.
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And that's when we have a conflict.
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And for the procrastinator,
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that conflict tends to end
a certain way every time,
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leaving him spending a lot of time
in this orange zone,
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an easy and fun place that's entirely
out of the Makes Sense circle.
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I call it the Dark Playground.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the Dark Playground is a place
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that all of you procrastinators
out there know very well.
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It's where leisure activities happen
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at times when leisure activities
are not supposed to be happening.
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The fun you have in the Dark Playground
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isn't actually fun,
because it's completely unearned,
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and the air is filled with guilt,
dread, anxiety, self-hatred --
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all of those good procrastinator feelings.
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And the question is, in this situation,
with the Monkey behind the wheel,
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how does the procrastinator ever get
himself over here to this blue zone,
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a less pleasant place, but where
really important things happen?
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Well, turns out the procrastinator
has a guardian angel,
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someone who's always looking
down on him and watching over him
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in his darkest moments --
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someone called the Panic Monster.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the Panic Monster
is dormant most of the time,
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but he suddenly wakes up
anytime a deadline gets too close
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or there's danger of public embarrassment,
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a career disaster or some other
scary consequence.
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And importantly, he's the only thing
the Monkey is terrified of.
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Now, he became very relevant
in my life pretty recently,
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because the people of TED
reached out to me about six months ago
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and invited me to do a TED Talk.
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(Laughter)
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Now, of course, I said yes.
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It's always been a dream of mine
to have done a TED Talk in the past.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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But in the middle of all this excitement,
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the Rational Decision-Maker seemed
to have something else on his mind.
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He was saying, "Are we clear
on what we just accepted?
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Do we get what's going to be now
happening one day in the future?
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We need to sit down
and work on this right now."
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And the Monkey said, "Totally agree,
but let's just open Google Earth
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and zoom in to the bottom of India,
like 200 feet above the ground,
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and scroll up for two and a half hours
til we get to the top of the country,
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so we can get a better feel for India."
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(Laughter)
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So that's what we did that day.
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(Laughter)
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As six months turned into four
and then two and then one,
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the people of TED decided
to release the speakers.
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And I opened up the website,
and there was my face
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staring right back at me.
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And guess who woke up?
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(Laughter)
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So the Panic Monster
starts losing his mind,
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and a few seconds later,
the whole system's in mayhem.
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(Laughter)
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And the Monkey -- remember,
he's terrified of the Panic Monster --
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boom, he's up the tree!
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And finally,
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finally, the Rational Decision-Maker
can take the wheel
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and I can start working on the talk.
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Now, the Panic Monster explains
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all kinds of pretty insane
procrastinator behavior,
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like how someone like me
could spend two weeks
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unable to start the opening
sentence of a paper,
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and then miraculously find
the unbelievable work ethic
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to stay up all night
and write eight pages.
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And this entire situation,
with the three characters --
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this is the procrastinator's system.
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It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.
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This is what I decided to write about
on the blog a couple of years ago.
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When I did, I was amazed by the response.
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Literally thousands of emails came in,
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from all different kinds of people
from all over the world,
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doing all different kinds of things.
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These are people who were nurses,
bankers, painters, engineers
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and lots and lots of PhD students.
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(Laughter)
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And they were all writing,
saying the same thing:
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"I have this problem too."
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But what struck me was the contrast
between the light tone of the post
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and the heaviness of these emails.
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These people were writing
with intense frustration
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about what procrastination
had done to their lives,
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about what this Monkey had done to them.
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And I thought about this, and I said,
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well, if the procrastinator's system
works, then what's going on?
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Why are all of these people
in such a dark place?
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Well, it turns out that there's
two kinds of procrastination.
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Everything I've talked about today,
the examples I've given,
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they all have deadlines.
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And when there's deadlines,
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the effects of procrastination
are contained to the short term
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because the Panic Monster gets involved.
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But there's a second kind
of procrastination
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that happens in situations
when there is no deadline.
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So if you wanted a career
where you're a self-starter --
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something in the arts,
something entrepreneurial --
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there's no deadlines on those things
at first, because nothing's happening,
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not until you've gone out
and done the hard work
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to get momentum, get things going.
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There's also all kinds of important things
outside of your career
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that don't involve any deadlines,
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like seeing your family or exercising
and taking care of your health,
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working on your relationship
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or getting out of a relationship
that isn't working.
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Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism
of doing these hard things
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is the Panic Monster, that's a problem,
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because in all of these
non-deadline situations,
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the Panic Monster doesn't show up.
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He has nothing to wake up for,
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so the effects of procrastination,
they're not contained;
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they just extend outward forever.
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And it's this long-term
kind of procrastination
00:12:00
that's much less visible
and much less talked about
00:12:03
than the funnier, short-term
deadline-based kind.
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It's usually suffered
quietly and privately.
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And it can be the source
00:12:11
of a huge amount of long-term
unhappiness, and regrets.
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And I thought, that's why
those people are emailing,
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and that's why they're
in such a bad place.
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It's not that they're cramming
for some project.
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It's that long-term procrastination
has made them feel like a spectator,
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at times, in their own lives.
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The frustration is not
that they couldn't achieve their dreams;
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it's that they weren't even
able to start chasing them.
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So I read these emails
and I had a little bit of an epiphany --
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that I don't think
non-procrastinators exist.
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That's right -- I think all of you
are procrastinators.
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Now, you might not all be a mess,
00:12:51
like some of us,
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(Laughter)
00:12:54
and some of you may have
a healthy relationship with deadlines,
00:12:58
but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest trick
00:13:00
is when the deadlines aren't there.
00:13:03
Now, I want to show you one last thing.
00:13:05
I call this a Life Calendar.
00:13:08
That's one box for every week
of a 90-year life.
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That's not that many boxes,
00:13:14
especially since we've already
used a bunch of those.
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So I think we need to all take a long,
hard look at that calendar.
00:13:24
We need to think about what
we're really procrastinating on,
00:13:28
because everyone is procrastinating
on something in life.
00:13:32
We need to stay aware
of the Instant Gratification Monkey.
00:13:37
That's a job for all of us.
00:13:40
And because there's not
that many boxes on there,
00:13:42
it's a job that should
probably start today.
00:13:45
Well, maybe not today, but ...
00:13:48
(Laughter)
00:13:49
You know.
00:13:51
Sometime soon.
00:13:53
Thank you.
00:13:54
(Applause)
