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So in college,
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I was a government major,
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which means I had to write a lot of papers.
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Now, when a normal student writes a paper,
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they might spread the work out a little like this.
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So, you know --
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(Laughter)
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you get started maybe a little slowly,
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but you get enough done in the first week
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that, with some heavier days later on,
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everything gets done, things stay civil.
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(Laughter)
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And I would want to do that like that.
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That would be the plan.
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I would have it all ready to go,
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but then, actually, the paper would come along,
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and then I would kind of do this.
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(Laughter)
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And that would happen every single paper.
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But then came my 90-page senior thesis,
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a paper you're supposed to spend a year on.
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And I knew for a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option.
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It was way too big a project.
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So I planned things out,
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and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.
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This is how the year would go.
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So I'd start off light,
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and I'd bump it up in the middle months,
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and then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear.
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Just like a little staircase.
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How hard could it be to walk up the stairs?
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No big deal, right?
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But then, the funniest thing happened.
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Those first few months?
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They came and went,
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and I couldn't quite do stuff.
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So we had an awesome new revised plan.
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(Laughter)
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And then --
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(Laughter)
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But then those middle months actually went by,
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and I didn't really write words,
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and so we were here.
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And then two months turned into one month,
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which turned into two weeks.
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And one day I woke up
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with three days until the deadline,
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still not having written a word,
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and so I did the only thing I could:
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I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours,
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pulling not one but two all-nighters --
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humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters --
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sprinted across campus,
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dove in slow motion,
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and got it in just at the deadline.
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I thought that was the end of everything.
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But a week later I get a call,
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and it's the school.
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And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?"
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And I say, "Yeah."
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And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis."
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And I say, "OK."
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And they say,
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"It's the best one we've ever seen."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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That did not happen.
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(Laughter)
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It was a very, very bad thesis.
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(Laughter)
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I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought,
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"This guy is amazing!"
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(Laughter)
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No, no, it was very, very bad.
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Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy.
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I write the blog Wait But Why.
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And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination.
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My behavior has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me,
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and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world
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what goes on in the heads of procrastinators,
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and why we are the way we are.
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Now, I had a hypothesis
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that the brains of procrastinators were actually different
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than the brains of other people.
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And to test this, I found an MRI lab
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that actually let me scan both my brain
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and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator,
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so I could compare them.
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I actually brought them here to show you today.
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I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference.
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I know that if you're not a trained brain expert,
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it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?
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So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.
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(Laughter)
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Now ...
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here's my brain.
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(Laughter)
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There is a difference.
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Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them,
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but the procrastinator's brain
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also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.
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Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?
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Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.
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[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
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So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision
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to do something productive,
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but the Monkey doesn't like that plan,
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so he actually takes the wheel,
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and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page
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of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal,
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because I just remembered that that happened.
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(Laughter)
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Then --
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(Laughter)
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Then we're going to go over to the fridge,
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to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
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After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral
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that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets
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and ends much, much later with us watching interviews
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with Justin Bieber's mom.
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(Laughter)
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"All of that's going to take a while,
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so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today.
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Sorry!"
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(Sigh)
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Now, what is going on here?
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The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy
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you want behind the wheel.
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He lives entirely in the present moment.
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He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future,
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and he only cares about two things:
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easy and fun.
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Now, in the animal world, that works fine.
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If you're a dog
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and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things,
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you're a huge success!
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(Laughter)
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And to the Monkey,
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humans are just another animal species.
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You have to keep well-slept, well-fed and propagating into the next generation,
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which in tribal times might have worked OK.
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But, if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times.
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We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know what that is.
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Which is why we have another guy in our brain,
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the Rational Decision-Maker,
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who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.
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We can visualize the future.
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We can see the big picture.
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We can make long-term plans.
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And he wants to take all of that into account.
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And he wants to just have us do
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whatever makes sense to be doing right now.
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Now, sometimes it makes sense
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to be doing things that are easy and fun,
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like when you're having dinner or going to bed
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or enjoying well-earned leisure time.
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That's why there's an overlap.
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Sometimes they agree.
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But other times, it makes much more sense
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to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant,
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for the sake of the big picture.
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And that's when we have a conflict.
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And for the procrastinator,
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that conflict tends to end a certain way every time,
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leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone,
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an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the Makes Sense circle.
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I call it the Dark Playground.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the Dark Playground is a place
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that all of you procrastinators out there know very well.
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It's where leisure activities happen
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at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening.
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The fun you have in the Dark Playground
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isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned,
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and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred --
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all of those good procrastinator feelings.
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And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel,
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how does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this blue zone,
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a less pleasant place, but where really important things happen?
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Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel,
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someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him
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in his darkest moments --
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someone called the Panic Monster.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time,
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but he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close
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or there's danger of public embarrassment,
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a career disaster or some other scary consequence.
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And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of.
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Now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently,
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because the people of TED reached out to me about six months ago
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and invited me to do a TED Talk.
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(Laughter)
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Now, of course, I said yes.
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It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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But in the middle of all this excitement,
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the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to have something else on his mind.
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He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted?
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Do we get what's going to be now happening one day in the future?
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We need to sit down and work on this right now."
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And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth
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and zoom in to the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground,
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and we're gonna scroll up for two and a half hours til we get to the top of the country,
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so we can get a better feel for India."
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(Laughter)
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So that's what we did that day.
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(Laughter)
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As six months turned into four and then two and then one,
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the people of TED decided to release the speakers.
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And I opened up the website, and there was my face
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staring right back at me.
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And guess who woke up?
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(Laughter)
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So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind,
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and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
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(Laughter)
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And the Monkey -- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster --
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boom, he's up the tree!
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And finally,
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finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel
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and I can start working on the talk.
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Now, the Panic Monster explains
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all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior,
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like how someone like me could spend two weeks
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unable to start the opening sentence of a paper,
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and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic
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to stay up all night and write eight pages.
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And this entire situation, with the three characters --
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this is the procrastinator's system.
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It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.
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This is what I decided to write about on the blog just a couple of years ago.
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When I did, I was amazed by the response.
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Literally thousands of emails came in,
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from all different kinds of people from all over the world,
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doing all different kinds of things.
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These are people who were nurses, bankers, painters, engineers
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and lots and lots of PhD students.
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(Laughter)
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And they were all writing, saying the same thing:
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"I have this problem too."
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But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of the post
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and the heaviness of these emails.
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These people were writing with intense frustration
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about what procrastination had done to their lives,
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about what this Monkey had done to them.
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And I thought about this, and I said,
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well, if the procrastinator's system works, then what's going on?
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Why are all of these people in such a dark place?