What Goes On In The Mind Of A Procrastinator? | Reevin

He talked about when he noticed his patterns of procrastination while his college times and how he made plans (like staircase plan - starting off light and bumping up in middle and final months) to work upon and deal with accumulations and why they didn't work out (it was also because of procrastination.)

You can have a better image of everything I talk about in the article by watching the talk. I have attached the link by the end of the article already.

He explains the phenomenon by addressing 3 figures, a rational decision-maker, an instant gratification monkey, a panic monster, and a wheel implying the task's operation or functioning to be done.

A rational decision-maker controls the wheel in the mind of a non-procrastinator; he is the one who works the wheel sensibly and makes clear head, the responsible and rational decision of how the job can be done smoothly before the deadline. A procrastinator's mind is the one having 2 wheelmen, a rational decision-maker, and an instant gratification monkey and the monkey doesn't like the idea of rationality. He takes over the control, runs over the wheel, messing up the time with ineffective stuff (e.g., surfing about worthless weird things over the internet.)

Tim says an instant gratification monkey is the one who neither has any record of the past nor any concern of the future. The only 2 things he craves are- FUN and EASE, which might work well in the animal or tribal world, but we humans are meant to improve and propagate to generations. Monkeys don't know what civilization is, nor they care! The rational decision-maker levels us high; it helps us visualize the future and make long-term plans, it wants us to do everything making sense.

Sometimes we can make sense of easy and fun things (e.g.- enjoying your earned leisure time) while many times they can't overlap, and there's where conflict rises, pushing the non-procrastinators to the fun orange zone which Tim called THE DARK PLAYGROUND, filled with fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and additional negative emotions. As deadlines strike, the monkey needs to get to the hard blue zone (where the rational decision-maker is the supervisor) from his orange zone, which wakes up the panic monster. The monster being monster terrifies the monkey, and WOOSH! he escaped, leaving the rational decision-maker with wheel, worries, and a sequel of sleepless nights. 

So that's how it works! But why all the fuss if it works?

Here Tim talks about 2 types of procrastination - 

a. Short term procrastination (Involving deadlines and a panic monster)

b. Long term procrastination with No deadlines (e.g.- working on your relationship, health, career, goal)

In the type-B, there is no panic monster to put the rational man to the charge, hence pushing forward the task forever and leaving us with the regret of not achieving the dreams but the regret of not even able to chase them!

In the end, Tim says he considers all of us to be a procrastinator but some of us holding healthy relationships with deadlines. He also talked about a life calendar and said, we all procrastinate on something, so recognize what we are procrastinating on, asking us to be aware of the monkey because we don't enough boxes to shift to.

 LINK TO THE TED TALK - https://youtu.be/arj7oStGLkU