Inside the mind🧠 of a Master Procrastinator⏳

I listen to a lot of speeches of great orators and authors’ talk shows. I love watching shows like TED Talk and Engage Talk where very diverse speakers come and narrate their stories. Can really get you to see the world in people’s different POVs and experiences.

So this week, I came across a TED Talk by blogger Tim Urban.

PS: So that I don’t ruin this for people who love watching videos instead of reading, you can watch it here on YouTube.

For lovers of my writing, please stay on :-)

Tim narrates procrastination in the most exciting way. I bet you know of the common last minute pressure of ‘studying’ the night right before your exams yet you postponed serious study all the months/weeks before.

He explains how the minds of procrastinators and non-procrastinators are somewhat different. Both have a ‘Rational-Decision Maker’ inside them. But the procrastinator’s mind has an ‘Instant Gratification Monkey’ too. That means when it’s time to make decisions, a non-procrastinator makes the rational decision and goes on with it without the ‘Instant Gratification Monkey’ coming in.

For the procrastinator, the ‘Rational Decision-Maker’ will make the rational decision to do something productive, but the ‘Monkey’ doesn't like that plan, so he actually takes the wheel, and he says,

"Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page of the Goldenberg scandal, because I just remembered that that happened.
Then --
Then we're going to go over to the fridge, to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Mr. Beast digging boreholes in Kenya and ends much, much later with us watching Oga Obinna interviews with Kenyan famous people who call themselves celebrities.”

The ‘Rational-Decision Maker’ replies:

"All of that's going to take a while, so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today. Sorry!"

Day ends without doing the necessary work. You procrastinated, again.

The ‘Instant Gratification Monkey’ does not seem like a guy you want behind the wheel. He 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. This brings conflict between the ‘Rational Decision-Maker’ and the ‘Gratification Monkey’.

He also talks about the dormant ‘Panic Monster’ that comes to life on the deadline hour of whatever we’re supposed to do. These three actively make up most of the procrastinator’s system.

Tim then talks about the two kinds of procrastination: those with deadlines and those without deadlines.

When there are deadlines, the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term because the ‘Panic Monster’ gets involved.

But there's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline, like spending time with your family/friends, or taking care of your health, working on your relationship etc. The ‘Panic Monster’ doesn’t show in these non-deadline situations and so it brings a problem to the procrastinator because the effects of procrastination are not contained and bring problems in the long-term/in life. This is often the reason for a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and regrets.

An important thing to note, that the monkey’s (instant gratification) worst trick is that of non-deadline procrastination. That’s when to be most careful. Instant gratification now, at the expense of long-term goals, long-term dreams/desires that have not been started.

But most importantly, instant gratification at the expense of LIFE itself!

😃You might have missed my most popular writings😍(so far..)

1. Just showing up..😐 - When you have those days when you just can’t be bothered or just don’t feel like doing what you need to do, try to still show up. Habits are built on consistency.

2. Itutu🧘🏽‍♂️ - A West African philosophy of calm. If a bus is late, a person of ‘itutu’ won’t shout or get in a dispute with the ticket vendor, they’ll let out a minor sigh and pull a weary smile.
   If it starts pouring just when they’ve laid chairs out for an event, they will - in their normal tranquil and unaffected way - simply take them all back in again.

PS: If you have a few seconds to spare, please hit the <reply> button and let me know what you thought of this email. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and what could be improved. It also reminds me that there’s another person reading it on the other end of my screen😅. Thanks.

Have a wonderful week ahead!

✍🏽Reagan.