Inside A Procrastinator's Mind
Do you tend to postpone your work? Ever wondered how other people accomplish things when you delay things quite often.
Here is a very funny yet thought provoking speech from Tim Urban on understanding a procrastinator's brain.
Everyone's brain has a 'Rational Decision-Maker' who runs the wheels. A 'Rational Decision-Maker' can visualize the future, see the big picture, make long terms plans and makes whatever it is that makes sense to do it right now.
But a procrastinator's brain has an 'Instant Gratification Monkey'. The money lives in the presence, has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future and only cares about 2 things. Easy and Fun.
Every time the rational decision maker decides to do something productive the monkey doesn't like it.
Remember the monkey cares just about 2 things only which are Easy and Fun stuff while the Rational Decision-Maker does things that really makes sense..
Sometimes it makes sense to do easy and fun stuff like enjoying your time in leisure time or having dinner or spending time with your family. And that's why there is an overlap and these 2 characters in our brain agree.
But other times it makes more sense to do the hard and tough things for the sake of the big picture and that's when we have a conflict. For a procrastinator, it ends up something like this spending more time on the easy and fun zone.
How can a procrastinator end up doing things that are important?
Turns out that a procrastinator has a guardian angel to guard him in his/her dark moments.
The Panic Monster.
He is mostly in the dormant area and only comes in when the deadline is close or there is a public embarrassment, career disaster or some other scary consequence.
But more importantly, he is the only thing that the 'Monkey' is terrified of.
The Panic Monster wakes up at the critical minute.
And a few seconds later the whole system is in mayhem.
The Monkey runs and hides up the tree allowing the Rational Decision-Maker to take the wheels.
This is the first kind of procrastination where there is a deadline involved and only then the Panic Monster comes to save.
There is another kind of procrastination where there is no deadline and hence the Panic Monster doesn't show up. There are many things that do not involve a deadline, like pursuing your passion, seeing your family, exercising and taking care of yourself health, working on your relationship etc.,
Remember the monkey's sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.
And if you think there is no deadline here is a something called a life calendar.
That's one box for every week of a 90-year life.
There are not that many boxes especially when we have already used some.
Take a long hard look at that calendar.
Stay aware of the 'Instant Gratification Monkey'.
And since there are not many boxes out that start your task/work today!
Check out the complete speech on TED Youtube Channel
Tim Urban's blog: http://waitbutwhy.com/
(All pictures are screenshots of the video)
Here is a very funny yet thought provoking speech from Tim Urban on understanding a procrastinator's brain.
Everyone's brain has a 'Rational Decision-Maker' who runs the wheels. A 'Rational Decision-Maker' can visualize the future, see the big picture, make long terms plans and makes whatever it is that makes sense to do it right now.
But a procrastinator's brain has an 'Instant Gratification Monkey'. The money lives in the presence, has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future and only cares about 2 things. Easy and Fun.
Every time the rational decision maker decides to do something productive the monkey doesn't like it.
Sometimes it makes sense to do easy and fun stuff like enjoying your time in leisure time or having dinner or spending time with your family. And that's why there is an overlap and these 2 characters in our brain agree.
But other times it makes more sense to do the hard and tough things for the sake of the big picture and that's when we have a conflict. For a procrastinator, it ends up something like this spending more time on the easy and fun zone.
How can a procrastinator end up doing things that are important?
Turns out that a procrastinator has a guardian angel to guard him in his/her dark moments.
The Panic Monster.
He is mostly in the dormant area and only comes in when the deadline is close or there is a public embarrassment, career disaster or some other scary consequence.
But more importantly, he is the only thing that the 'Monkey' is terrified of.
The Panic Monster wakes up at the critical minute.
And a few seconds later the whole system is in mayhem.
The Monkey runs and hides up the tree allowing the Rational Decision-Maker to take the wheels.
This is the first kind of procrastination where there is a deadline involved and only then the Panic Monster comes to save.
There is another kind of procrastination where there is no deadline and hence the Panic Monster doesn't show up. There are many things that do not involve a deadline, like pursuing your passion, seeing your family, exercising and taking care of yourself health, working on your relationship etc.,
Remember the monkey's sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.
And if you think there is no deadline here is a something called a life calendar.
That's one box for every week of a 90-year life.
There are not that many boxes especially when we have already used some.
Take a long hard look at that calendar.
Stay aware of the 'Instant Gratification Monkey'.
And since there are not many boxes out that start your task/work today!
Check out the complete speech on TED Youtube Channel
Tim Urban's blog: http://waitbutwhy.com/
(All pictures are screenshots of the video)
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