Notes and Takeaways from Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator via TED
Source: TED
When I watched it: March 2020.
Why I watched it: COVID-19 wiped out many of my regular routines. As a result, I’ve been procrastinating more than usual. I found this TED talk and it helped me understand what’s happening inside my brain when I procrastinate. If you’re procrastinating right now, these notes might be helpful to you too.
Go to the video page for details and to watch or scroll down for my notes.
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My notes
About Tim Urban
Tim runs the blog Wait But Why where he writes about his “psychological shortcomings”. He’s also a co-founder of ArborBridge, an educational services firm.
The Procrastinator’s System
Tim wanted to explain what goes on in the heads of procrastinators.
So he built a framework to represent the procrastinator’s system, which consists of three characters:
the Rational Decision-Maker
the Instant Gratification Monkey
the Panic Monster
The Rational Decision-Maker
The Rational Decision-Maker makes the rational decision to do something productive. He wants to take information into account and have you do whatever makes best sense to do right now.
The Rational Decision-Maker gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do:
Visualize the future
See the big picture
Make long-term plans
The Instant Gratification Monkey
The Instant Gratification Monkey 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.
In tribal times, the Monkey worked well. It cares about sleeping, eating, and propagating.
But in advanced civilization, the Monkey fails us. It causes us to avoid the hard things required to live a life of meaning.
Agreement and Conflict
Sometimes it makes logical sense to be doing things that are easy and fun ⇒ This causes the Rational Decision Maker and the Monkey to agree ⇒ this leads to awesome play and fun times.
But other times it makes sense to do harder and less fun things ⇒ this situation causes conflict ⇒ and the Monkey often wins ⇒ when the Monkey whens, we procrastinate.
When we procrastinate, easy and fun activities happen when they are not supposed to be happening ⇒ This leads to fun that isn’t actually fun (Note: time spent procrastinating leads to guilt, dread, anxiety, and self-hatred).
The Panic Monster
The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he wakes up anytime:
a deadline gets too close, or
there’s danger of public embarrassment.
The Monkey fears the Panic Monster ⇒ when the Panic Monster shows up, the Monkey cedes control to the Rationional Decision-Maker.
Two kinds of procrastination
There are two types of procrastination:
Procrastination on hard things with deadlines
Procrastination on hard things without deadlines
For the first type of procrastination, we naturally deal with it ⇒ effects of procrastination are short term ⇒ because the Panic Monster gets involved when deadlines near.
However, the second type of procrastination is dangerous ⇒ because there are no deadlines ⇒ so the Panic Monster never gets triggered ⇒ and we are allowed to procrastinate forever.
Even worse, the second type is often less visible ⇒ it’s usually suffered quietly and privately ⇒ which leads to long-term unhappiness and regret.
We all experience the second type of procrastination
If you’re entrepreneurial, there are no deadlines at first ⇒ nothing's happening (until you've gone out and done the hard work to get things going).
Personal examples of things without deadlines include:
Seeing your family
Exercising
Eating well
Building new relationships
Your life is the ultimate deadline
Keep the finiteness of your time on this planet in mind to create deadlines for yourself when they don’t exist externally.