Why you procrastinate and how to still get things done Tim Urban
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.
And I would want to do that.
But then, actually, the paper would come along,
and then I would kind of do this.
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, so I
could compare them.
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, it 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/Tonya Harding scandal,
because I just remembered that that happened.”
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, and he only cares about two
things: easy and fun.
Now, sometimes it makes sense to be doing
things that are easy and fun.
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.
Turns out that the procrastinator has a guardian
angel, 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.
But there’s a second kind of procrastination
that happens in situations when there is no
deadline.
So if you wanted to have a career where you’re
a self-starter—something in the arts, something
entrepreneurial—there’s no deadlines on
those things at first, because nothing’s happening,
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 the procrastinator’s 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.
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.
And it can be the source of a huge amount
of long-term unhappiness, and regrets.
I had a little bit of an epiphany.
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.
We need to think about what we’re really procrastinating
on, because everyone is procrastinating on
something in life.
That’s a job for all of us, and it’s a job
that should probably start today.
Well, maybe not today, but you know.
Sometime soon.