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Time English Language 2 Action

00:12

So in college,

00:15

I was a government major,

00:16

which means I had to write a lot of papers.

00:19

Now, when a normal student writes a paper,

00:21

they might spread the work out a little like this.

00:23

So, you know --

00:25

(Laughter)

00:26

you get started maybe a little slowly,

00:28

but you get enough done in the first week

00:30

that, with some heavier days later on,

00:32

everything gets done, things stay civil.

00:34

(Laughter)

00:35

And I would want to do that like that.

00:38

That would be the plan.

00:39

I would have it all ready to go,

00:41

but then, actually, the paper would come along,

00:44

and then I would kind of do this.

00:46

(Laughter)

00:48

And that would happen every single paper.

00:51

But then came my 90-page senior thesis,

00:55

a paper you're supposed to spend a year on.

00:57

And I knew for a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option.

01:01

It was way too big a project.

01:02

So I planned things out,

01:04

and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.

01:07

This is how the year would go.

01:09

So I'd start off light,

01:11

and I'd bump it up in the middle months,

01:13

and then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear

01:16

just like a little staircase.

01:17

How hard could it be to walk up the stairs?

01:20

No big deal, right?

01:23

But then, the funniest thing happened.

01:24

Those first few months?

01:26

They came and went,

01:27

and I couldn't quite do stuff.

01:29

So we had an awesome new revised plan.

01:31

(Laughter)

01:32

And then --

01:33

(Laughter)

01:35

But then those middle months actually went by,

01:38

and I didn't really write words,

01:40

and so we were here.

01:43

And then two months turned into one month,

01:46

which turned into two weeks.

01:47

And one day I woke up

01:49

with three days until the deadline,

01:53

still not having written a word,

01:55

and so I did the only thing I could:

01:57

I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,

02:00

pulling not one but two all-nighters --

02:02

humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters --

02:06

sprinted across campus,

02:08

dove in slow motion,

02:09

and got it in just at the deadline.

02:11

I thought that was the end of everything.

02:14

But a week later I get a call,

02:15

and it's the school.

02:17

And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"

02:19

And I say, "Yeah."

02:20

And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis."

02:23

And I say, "OK."

02:25

And they say,

02:27

"It's the best one we've ever seen."

02:29

(Laughter)

02:32

(Applause)

02:36

That did not happen.

02:38

(Laughter)

02:40

It was a very, very bad thesis.

02:43

(Laughter)

02:45

I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought,

02:49

"This guy is amazing!"

02:51

(Laughter)

02:52

No, no, it was very, very bad.

02:55

Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy.

02:58

I write the blog Wait But Why.

03:00

And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination.

03:04

My behavior has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me,

03:07

and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world

03:11

what goes on in the heads of procrastinators,

03:13

and why we are the way we are.

03:14

Now, I had a hypothesis

03:16

that the brains of procrastinators were actually different

03:18

than the brains of other people.

03:21

And to test this, I found an MRI lab

03:23

that actually let me scan both my brain

03:26

and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator,

03:29

so I could compare them.

03:30

I actually brought them here to show you today.

03:32

I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference.

03:36

I know that if you're not a trained brain expert,

03:38

it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?

03:40

So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.

03:43

(Laughter)

03:46

Now ...

03:48

here's my brain.

03:50

(Laughter)

03:55

There is a difference.

03:57

Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them,

04:00

but the procrastinator's brain

04:01

also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.

04:05

Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?

04:07

Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.

04:09

[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]

04:12

So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision

04:15

to do something productive,

04:17

but the Monkey doesn't like that plan,

04:19

so he actually takes the wheel,

04:20

and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page

04:23

of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal,

04:25

because I just remembered that that happened.

04:28

(Laughter)

04:29

Then --

04:30

(Laughter)

04:31

Then we're going to go over to the fridge,

04:33

to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.

04:36

After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral

04:39

that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets

04:42

and ends much, much later with us watching interviews

04:45

with Justin Bieber's mom.

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