Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

The link of the presentation:

Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED Talk

After watching this video, I made a summarization and wrote down my reflection and thoughts. I hope this material can help you explore deeper into this topic. And, if you have any ideas, please feel free to contact me or give me some comments. :)

Summarization

The Rational Decision-Maker makes rational decisions and does productive things. He can also design and plan our future. On the other hand, the Instant Gratification Monkey does not care about all these rational things. The Monkey wants to play, work, and live without any pressures. He only cares about ease and fun.

Moreover, in many scenarios, The Rational Decision-Maker and the Instant Gratification Monkey want to do different things. Whenever you want to perform rational actions, the Monkey will try to take over everything in every possible way. He will tempt you to swipe your phone while studying; he will induce you to take a nap when you want to be focused; he will provoke your desire to enjoy one more YouTube video when you have to sleep.

In the animal world, the behavior of the Monkey is totally fine. If a dog only does things that are easy and fun, it is a huge success. And in tribal times, the Monkey may also be acceptable. But, in modern society, we are in an advanced civilization. The Monkey knows nothing about this world anymore. It would be a disaster if the Monkey took over decisions every time.

The guardian angel

Thankfully, we have a guardian angel who can protect us from the frequent interventions of the Monkey. It is the Panic Monster. The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time. However, when the danger or deadline is coming, he will wake up and drive the monkey out, then, take over all things.

So, that is how we usually finish our jobs and tasks on time — we have a plan at first, but the Monkey takes over everything soon, then, while the deadline is coming, the Panic Monster wakes up and saves us. This system is awkward but at least viable.

It might be a little bit strange to know how the system works inside procrastinators’ brains, isn’t it? The system is fragile, absurd, and dilapidated. How could those people survive in modern society?

All humans are procrastinators

This is terrible! But a more brutal truth is we all have the Monkey in our brains. It means that we are all procrastinators. Because the Monkey was embedded into humans’ brains in tribal times or even earlier.

It is the way we interact with this world. This system is fragile but works OK if we have deadlines on the things we need to do, like assignments, homework, or projects, etc.

However, this system does have some fatal flaws. In real life, there are many more things that do not have deadlines, like being a good parent, starting a business, or pursuing “the dream.”

That is when the problems come out. If we let the Monkey keep making trouble, we cannot achieve all the goals without deadlines.

Therefore, we must value our time more and be serious for each goal. Reassessing how much time we have or setting deadlines, these are what we need to do now.

My reflection and thought

I believed that I was not a procrastinator. If I wanted to do a thing, it is perfectly normal to do that immediately if possible, for me. Or I would plan how to achieve that thing. Therefore, I once thought that I did not have this issue. However, the presenter claims that all of us are procrastinators! It makes me reflect: is it true?

Then, I started consciously noticing my habits in my daily life and looked back at what I had done. What have I found? I realize I am not the exception. I have many bad habits, too. I will try to procrastinate as much as possible about everything I do not want to do.

In many things, I do have the desire and motivation. So, I will start doing them at once if it is possible. However, apart from those things that I have the huge motivation to engage in, there are many other things that I may not have a big desire to do them spontaneously.

I am a procrastinator, too. But the cognition, I would spontaneously do lots of things which I was interested in, created the hallucination that made me believe I am not a procrastinator.

Thankfully, I have detected this problem. Therefore, I can try to prevent procrastination from happening.

So what do I do to protect myself from the interventions of the Monkey? I use three techniques to help me drive the Monkey out.

Timeboxing

I have been learning how to use Timeboxing to plan my schedule for everyday life since the summer vacation this year. This tip helps me arrange the affairs I must complete on certain days. I will preorder those tasks and only allocate limited time to different tasks. Therefore, all I have to do is follow my timeboxes. I do not need to worry about what I am supposed to do next and how much time I should spend on each task. All of them are pre ordered.

Pomodoro

Pomodoro is a useful tool that helps us be concentrated within a specific time. Feeling frequently distracted is also another problem of mine; therefore, only timeboxing is not enough. Within the prearranged timeboxes, I will use the Pomodoro technique — being focused for 50 mins and taking a break for 10 mins. Is it useful? Sure! The Pomodoro technique has some scientific background and has been proved to be useful in long periods of attention.

From feeling to quantifying

Do you have some goals you have wanted to achieve for a long period of time (awhile)? Even if you wake up and practice every morning, you still cannot see progress? Then, I will suggest you move from the feeling stage to the quantifying stage. If you want to accomplish something seriously, quantifying your effort is the best way to get closer to your goal. It might not be intuitive or comfortable for you to implement this. You may suspect: is it necessary?

It is normal. Because not many people are doing this. So you can see lots of people do not achieve their goals, feel frustrated, then give up. But if you sincerely desire to accomplish some extraordinary things, you should also have this extraordinary habit! Moving from feeling to quantifying is what you have to do!

So, these skills are what I am still learning and practicing now. All of their concepts are easy to understand but harder to implement. It takes time to adapt to these methods. But for preventing procrastination from happening and being a more successful person, it is definitely worth it.

And I should also thank my tutor — Tamarah. She provided all the information above and helped me understand how to apply those tips better.

Originally published at https://www.juliansweb.com on October 10, 2020.