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procrastination

Tim Urban: Inside The Mind of a Master Procrastinator - TED

Notes and Takeaways form Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator via TED - https://www.ricklindquist.com/notes/inside-the-mind-of-a-master-procrastinator-via-ted

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.

See Also: When Are You Ready? - Overcoming The Toolbox Fallacy

Referenced in

Notes on Mastery

Where procrastination or lack of focus comes from...