In “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator,” writer Tim Urban recalls his struggles overcoming academic procrastination during his college years and the underlying problem of procrastinating in life. This is one of my favorite TED Talks because of its simplicity and relevance to my own life.
As a fellow procrastinator who is admittedly writing this blog post the night before class, I related to Urban’s thought process as he delayed work on his thesis from the beginning of the year to three days before the deadline. I have never written ninety pages in three days (yet!), but his visuals depicting the hypothetical “climb” of work required to finish his thesis under a six month, three month and three day timescale effectively illustrated the problems with procrastination. The scenarios become more and more impractical, however, the procrastinator convinces themselves that they can pull it off because they have done it before.
A significant portion of the audience is likely procrastinators, or people who have experience dealing with procrastinators, so Urban’s humor helps them feel open to considering something society considers a shameful habit. While he stands at a podium surrounded by hundreds of adoring listeners, he shows a rare sense of humility that establishes his personal credibility on giving advice to help the audience live their best lives. He jokes that his thesis was one of the best the university ever saw, and I inwardly rolled my eyes because that’s how every cheesy internet story ends. When he confessed to the audience that the thesis was terrible, I felt more willing to listen to him because he has the honesty to admit his mistakes and the intelligence to learn from them. I saw him not as an expert giving a dry explanation of the negative effects of procrastination, but as another person who deals with the same mental hurdles I do.
Once Urban promised to show the audience diagrams of the procrastinator’s brain, I braced myself to absorb complex depictions of brain activity charts and what each feature demonstrated. It took me a few replays to appreciate his bait-and-switch style of speaking. The childlike drawings of the instant gratification monkey, the rational decision maker and the panic monster proved more engaging than colored pictures of brains. Seeing my motivations boiled down to such simple players helped me make sense of why I procrastinated and how procrastination was really giving in to weaknesses rather than playing to my strengths. In the past, I tried to explain away my procrastination by telling myself that my procrastination made me smarter because it taught me how to work under pressure.
The overarching message of Urban’s TED Talk introduced a novel way of thinking of procrastination as not just a student thing, but an issue all people face as they pass through their lives. Even though I still have decades to live, the boxes on the screen showing every week of a 90-year life put into perspective how few weeks we have to waste. By putting off what we want to accomplish another week or another year, it becomes easier to never do it at all. I liked that the speech turned what seems like a topic relevant only to one demographic (procrastinators) into a message everyone can benefit from.
Procrastination is such a major part of being a student. I enjoyed all the references to the Ted talk and how you connected it to your own life. I loved in the last paragraph when you said “By putting off what we want to accomplish another week or another year, it becomes easier to never do it at all” because it makes me feel that if I want to do something then I should do it as fast as possible because I may not get the chance later in life.
I love your style of writing! This seems like an awesome TED talk. Procrastination is something everyone experiences to an extent, but the way he connects it to your whole life is very fresh and inspiring.