This in-depth look into the mind and world of a procrastinator shows how we’re all procrastinators, and why some people’s issues with procrastination are much more serious than others.
Tim Urban starts the TED Talk with a personal anecdote about procrastinating on his thesis and other papers when he was in college. He adds a comedic twist to the end of the story, telling everybody that, years prior to the talk, he wrote a blog post explaining how procrastinators think. He wrote that people who don’t procrastinate are often perplexed by the thinking pattern of individuals who often procrastinate.
Urban states that whilst procrastinators and their non-procrastinating counterparts both have a rational decision-maker leading their brains, procrastinators have an “instant gratification monkey” who steals the wheel. The monkey will steer your brain away from its goals, and turn it to the isle of instant gratification, until the “panic monster”, who is usually dormant, scares away the monkey. The rational decision-maker once again steers your brain to its goals and all is well, except for one thing…
What if the panic monster doesn’t wake up? What if there isn’t a deadline to scare him awake? What if the monkey still steers your brain to instant gratification no matter how hard the rational decision-maker tries to take back control? What if you are stuck in that dark playground where no work is done and all the fun is unearned?
That’s where the problems begin. While the procrastinator system works, it only works when there’s a deadline. For example, when there’s a due date to scare the panic monster awake, all is well, but when there isn’t a deadline, the instant gratification monkey reigns supreme until the procrastinator decides to make a move. If they don’t, the monkey rules till the end of time, and that is truly one of the scariest things a person can realise.
As a person who procrastinates often, I can safely say that this is one of the best explanations of how we, as procrastinators, think. When we get told what to do, we tell ourselves to do it, and we end up having the monkey take control until the panic monster scares that darn monkey away, and we can finally get to work. (Try that excuse with a teacher, however, and it won’t end well.)
