The speech that I viewed was Tim Urban’s “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator.” This is my favorite TED Talk by far and I have watched it multiple times, most of the time while procrastinating my homework.

The main theme of the speech is how procrastination is a massive issue that plagues everyone, no matter who you are. Their goal in terms of a paradigm shift is to have everyone realize that they procrastinate on something significant in their lives. It varies from person to person, but no matter who you are, there is something that you can be working on that you put off. It can either be something with a deadline that needs to get done soon, or it could be a goal of yours that you just have not started yet.

One important idea was that Tim Urban started this speech talking about deadline procrastination and how it affects people and all the parts that go into this type of procrastination, but it does get resolved. This would be for things like homework, studying for tests, writing papers, etc. Another important idea that he outlines is that long-term procrastination is much more dangerous. This type of procrastination is delaying things that have no deadline. This could be things like starting a business, becoming healthier, reconnecting with people, etc. These things are extremely important to our lives and very fulfilling, but people tend to put them off because they are big tasks and they would rather do something easier. Finally, he showed a life calendar. This is a calendar with one box for every week of your life from when you were born until you are 90. It is a lot fewer than you think, and we have already used up a lot of them. This calendar helps ask the question, why are we putting off these very important things even though we do not have a lot of time left?

One thing that was very strong about Tim’s presentation style is that he made this topic very comical by using himself as an example and using poorly drawn cartoons to emulate his point. This helps capture the audience’s attention while he is addressing a very important topic that plagues us all. This TED Talk was more of a speech than a presentation. This is because, while he used slides, they were not critical to his talk and just helped illustrate his points rather than being the basis of his topic.

Link to this amazing and funny TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator?language=en