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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.

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You get started maybe a little slowly but you get enough done in the first week

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that some have your days later on everything gets done things stay civil

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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 I would have it all ready to go.

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But then than that the people would come along and then I would kind of do this.

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And that would happen every single paper.
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But then came my 90 page senior thesis paper you're supposed to spend a year on.

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I knew for a paper like that my normal workflow was not an option.

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It was way too big a project.

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So I planned things out 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 it started off light.

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And I bumped it up in the middle months.

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And then at the end I would kick it up into high gears a little staircase.

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How hard could it be just walk up the stairs.

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No big deal right.

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But then funniest thing happened those first few months they came and went.

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And I I couldn't quite do stuff.

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So we had an awesome new revised plan.

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And then.

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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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turned into two weeks 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 pulling not one but two all nighters.
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Humans are not supposed to put two all nighters.

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Sprinted across campus dove in slow motion and got it in of the deadline.

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Now I thought that was the end of everything.

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But a week later I get a call.

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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 Okay.

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And they say it's the best one we've ever seen.

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That did not happen.

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It was a very very bad.
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I just.

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Wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought this guy's amazing.

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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 Krastev nation my behaviors

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are always perplexed the non procrastinators around me and I wanted

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to explain to the non procrastinators of the world.

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What goes on in the heads

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of procrastinators and why we are the where we are now.

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I had a hypothesis that the brains

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of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people

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and to testis I found an MRI lab that she'd let me scan both my brain

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and the brain of a proven non procrastinator and I so I could compare

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them and I actually brought them here to show you today.

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And I want you to take a look carefully

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to see if you can notice the difference and I know that if you're not a trained

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brain expert it's not that obvious but just take a look.

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OK so here's the brain of a non procrastinator.

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Now.

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Here's my brain.

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There is a difference.

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Both brains have a rational decision maker
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in them but the procrastinators brain 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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So the rational decision maker will make the rational decision to do something

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productive with the monkey doesn't like that plan.

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So he actually takes the wheel and he says actually let's read the entire Wikipedia

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page of the Nancy Kerrigan Tonya Harding scandal.

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I just remember that that happened.

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Then.

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Then we're going to go over to the fridge

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to see if it's anything new in there since ten

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minutes ago.
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After that.

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We're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Fineman

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talking about magnets and ends much much later.

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With us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.

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Oh that's going to take a while so we're

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not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today sorry.

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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.

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No knowledge of the future and only cares about two things easy and fun.

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Now in the animal world that works fine if you're a dog and you

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spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things.

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You were a huge success. And.

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To the monkey.

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Humans are just another animal species

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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

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in tribal times we're in an advanced civilization.

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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.

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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 like when

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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.

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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 for the sake of the big

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picture and that's when we have a conflict.

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And for the procrastinator that conflict tends to end the certain way every time
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leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone and easy and fun

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place that's entirely out of the Make Sense circle.

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I call it the dark playground.

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Now.

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The dark playground is a place that all

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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 and the air is filled with guilt

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dread anxiety self-hatred all those good procrastinator feelings.

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And the question is in this situation with the monkey behind the wheel how does

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the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this Blue Zone a less pleasant

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place but were really important things happen.

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Well. It turns out that the procrastinator has

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a guardian angel 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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Now.

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The panic monster is dormant most of the time but he suddenly wakes up.

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Anytime a deadline gets too close 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 that the monkey is terrified of.

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Now.
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He became very relevant in my life pretty recently because people have Ted reached

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out to me about six months ago and invited me to do a TED talk.

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Now of course I said yes it's always been

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a dream of mine to have done a TED talk in the past.

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But in the middle of all of this

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excitement the rational decision makers seem to have something else on his mind.

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He was saying. We're not 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 we need to sit down

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and work on this right now and the monkey said.

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Totally agree but also let's just open Google Earth and let's zoom

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in to the bottom of India like 200 feet above the ground.

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We're going to scroll up to two and a half
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hours to get to the top of the country so we can get a better feel for India.

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So that's what we did that day.

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As six months turned into four and then two and then one the people of Ted decided

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to release the speakers and I opened up the website.

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And there was my face staring right back at me.

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And guess who woke up.

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So the panic Monster starts losing his

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mind and a few seconds later the whole systems and mayhem.

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And the monkey you remember he's terrified

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of the panic mounts or boom he's up the tree.

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And finally finally the rational decision

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maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk.

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Now the panic monster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinated behavior

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like how someone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence

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of a paper and then miraculously find the unbelievable worth.

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Work ethic 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 procrastinators system. It's not pretty.

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But in the end it works.

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And this is what I decided to write about on the blog.

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Just a couple of years ago now when I did I was amazed by the response literally

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thousands of e-mails came in from all different kinds of people from all over

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the world doing all different kinds of things.
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These are people who were nurses

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and bankers and painters and engineers and lots and lots of Ph.D. students.

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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

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between the light tone of the post and the heaviness of these e-mails.

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These people were writing with intense

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frustration 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 well the procrastinator system works.

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What's going on.

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Why are all 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

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the examples I've given they all have deadlines and there's deadlines.

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The effects of procrastination are

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contained to the short term because the panic monster gets involved.

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But there's a second kind

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of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline.

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So if you want to have a career you want

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to be a self starter something in the arts something entrepreneurial.

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There's no deadlines on those things first because nothing's happening first.

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Not until you've gone out and done

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the hard work to get some momentum to get things going.

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There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career that don't involve

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any deadlines 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 procrastinators only mechanism.

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Of doing these hard things is the panic Monastir that's a problem because in all

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of these non deadlines situations the panic monster doesn't show up.

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Nothing to wake up for.

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So the effects of procrastination are not contain they just extend outward forever.

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And it's this long term kind

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of procrastination that's much less visible and much less

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talked about than the fun of your short term deadline based kind.
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It's usually suffer 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 these people are

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emailing 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 it's that long term

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procrastination has made them feel like a spectator at times in their own lives.

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You know the frustration was not that they couldn't achieve their dreams it's

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that they weren't even able to start chasing them.

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So.

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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.

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And some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines.

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But remember the monkeys sneakiest trick

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is when the deadlines aren't there now 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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It'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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And we need to think about what we're

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really procrastinating on 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

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on there it's a job that should probably start today.

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Well maybe not today but.

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You know.

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Sometime soon. Thank you.