WEBVTT

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So in college,

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I was a government major, 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 -- (Laughter) you
get started maybe a little slowly,

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but you get enough done in the first week
that, with some heavier days later on,

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everything gets done, things stay civil.

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(Laughter) And I would
want to do that like that.

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That would be the plan.
I would have it all ready to go,

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but then, actually, the paper would come
along, and then I would kind of do this.

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(Laughter) And that would
happen every single paper.

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But then came my 90-page senior thesis, 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.
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, 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. 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? They came
and went, and I couldn't quite do stuff.

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So we had an awesome new revised plan.

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(Laughter) And then -- (Laughter)

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But then those middle months actually
went by, 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, 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,
and so I did the only thing I could:

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I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,
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,
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,
and it's the school.

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And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"

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And I say, "Yeah." 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, "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. (Laughter)
It was a very, very bad thesis.

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(Laughter) I just wanted to enjoy
that one moment when all of you thought,

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"This guy is amazing!"
(Laughter) 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 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
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. 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) 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, 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,
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) Then -- (Laughter) 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 with Justin Bieber's mom.

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(Laughter) "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!" (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 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: 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!
(Laughter) 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, 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.
We can see the big picture.

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We can make long-term plans. And he
wants to take all of that into account.

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And he wants to just have us do whatever
makes sense to be doing right now.

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Now, sometimes it makes sense to be
doing things that are easy and fun,

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like when you're having dinner or going to
bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time.

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That's why there's an overlap.

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Sometimes they agree. 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, 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) 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 --
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 staring right back at me.

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And guess who woke up? (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! 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 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) 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.
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 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

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that's much less visible
and much less talked about

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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 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,
like some of us, (Laughter)

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and some of you may have a healthy
relationship with deadlines,

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but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest
trick is when the deadlines aren't there.

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Now, I want to show you one last thing.

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I call this a Life Calendar.

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That's one box for every
week of a 90-year life.

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That's not that many boxes, 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.

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We need to think about what
we're really procrastinating on,

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because everyone is procrastinating
on something in life.

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We need to stay aware of the
Instant Gratification Monkey.

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That's a job for all of us.

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And because there's not
that many boxes on there,

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it's a job that should
probably start today.

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Well, maybe not today,
but... (Laughter) You know.

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Sometime soon.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)