Name: 聽演講 | 學英文 | 為什麼你總在拖延？他用漫畫畫出了拖延症的真實樣子 帶你走進拖延者大腦 | 中英對照 英語学習 | 英文演讲 | Learn English with ted talks
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T15:57:48.000Z
Duration: 13 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So in college I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers.

Modal verbs - B1

Now when a normal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this.

Adverbs of manner

So you know, you get started maybe a little slowly, but

you get enough done in the first week that with some heavier days later on, everything gets done and things stay civil.

But then actually the paper would come along and then I would kind of do this.

And that would happen every single paper.

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

I knew for a paper like that my normal workflow was not an option.

So I planned things out and I decided it kind of had to go something.

So I'd start off light and I'd bump it up in the middle months.

And then at the end I would kick it up into high gear.

How hard could it be to just walk up the stairs?

Those first few months, they came and went and I couldn't quite do stuff.

But then those middle months actually went by and I didn't really write words.

And then two months turned into one month, which turned into two weeks.

And one day I woke up with three days until the deadline, still not having written a word.

I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all nighters.

Humans are not supposed to pull two all nighters, sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion and got it in just at the deadline.

I thought that was the end of everything.

And they say, we need to talk about your thesis.

And they say it's the best one we've ever seen.

I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought this guy is amazing.

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

My behavior has always perplexed the non procrastinators around me.

And I wanted to explain to the non procrastinators of the world what goes on in the heads of procrastinators and why we are the way we are.

Now, I had a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of of other people.

And to test this, I found an MRI lab that actually let me scan both my brain and the brain of a proven non procrastinator so I could compare them.

And I actually brought them here to show you today.

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

And I know that if you're not a trained brain expert, it's not that obvious, but

Okay, so here's the brain of a non procrastinator.

Both brains have a rational decision maker in them.

But the procrastinator's brain also has an instant gratification monkey.

Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?

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

So the rational decision maker will make the rational decision that to do something productive.

So he actually takes the wheel and he says, actually

let's read the entire Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan Tanya Harding scandal, because I just remembered that that happened.

Then we're gonna go over to the fridge, we're gonna see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.

After that, we're gonna go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets and ends much, much later with us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.

So we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today.

The instant gratification monkey does not seem like a guy you want behind the wheel.

He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future, and

he only cares about two eggs, easy and fun.

Now, in the animal world, that works fine.

If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things, you're a huge success.

And to the monkey, humans are just another animal species he has to keep well slept, well fed, and

propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times, might have worked.

Okay, but if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times.

And the monkey does not know what that is.

Which is why we have another guy in our brain, the rational decision maker, who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.

And he wants to take all of that into account, and

he wants to just have us do whatever makes sense to be doing right now.

Now, sometimes it makes sense to be doing things that are easy and fun, like when you're having dinner or going to bed or enjoying well earned leisure time.

other times, it makes much more sense to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant for the sake of the big picture.

And for the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a certain way every time, leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone, an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the make sense circle.

Now, the dark playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well.

It's where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

聽演講 | 學英文 | 為什麼你總在拖延？他用漫畫畫出了拖延症的真實樣子帶你走進拖延者大腦 | 中英對照英語学習 | 英文演讲 | Learn English with ted talks

entire

procrastinate

situation

panic

聽演講 | 學英文 | 為什麼你總在拖延？他用漫畫畫出了拖延症的真實樣子 帶你走進拖延者大腦 | 中英對照 英語学習 | 英文演讲 | Learn English with ted talks

entire

procrastinate

situation

panic

聽演講 | 學英文 | 為什麼你總在拖延？他用漫畫畫出了拖延症的真實樣子帶你走進拖延者大腦 | 中英對照英語学習 | 英文演讲 | Learn English with ted talks