Summary of ted talk:inside the mind of a master procastinator by Tim Urban

Inside the mind of a master procastinator is a most viewed tedtalk.it can be considered as a gem of a Ted talk.the speaker of the talk is Tim urban. He is the writer of the blog Wait but why.

The talk begins with introduction to himself. Tim was a government major from college which was the reason he had to write a lot of papers.he describes how a normal student would organise his work,with a proper division of papers per day causing it to be less stressful.

But he would end up being this

tim explains how he was always interested to that kind of person,but eventually he would end up doing nightout for the work
After sometime he has to write 90 pages senior thesis which people would literally take a year to complete,he understands that with his regular habits (procastination)it would be impossible to complete the work,so he divides the work in a neat manner

He believed that with the below plan it would be very easy for him to complete the work so he makes the following plan

but the initial months pass by,then he piles up the work with another plan as follows

piling it for the next month.But he continued procastination the work then 2 weeks was left for submission.2 weeks turned into 3 days.

He had completed his 90 pages of thesis in 72 hours, pulling two nightout.the they turned out to be terrible thesis

In 2014 he started writing about procastination in his blog.tim was always shocked with the behaviour of non procastinator. he wanted to show non procastinator what goes in the mind of procastinator.
He took the following mri scan

Both procastinator and non procastinator have a rational decision maker but procastinator brain has a gift of instant gratification monkey.
So the rational mind will make the rational decision,but the monkey mind does not like the plan,so he makes us do the stuff which adds no value like stalking our ex,scroll Zomato app or seeing cringe vedios

Our money mind has no sense of past or future.with no memory of the past no knowledge of future,he cares about only two things easy and fun.g

In animal world it sounds like a perfect idea,if you are a dog who only had fun and spends the whole life doing same it is considered huge sucess.similarlirly the monkey in our mind wants to well fed, propagating into next generation,even this idea sounds amazingly fun,but this would be exciting in tribal time,but we are living in one of the advanced civilization where we have got real work to do.

So to make difference from animal brain we have a rational decision maker who has a vision,sees the bigg picture,long term plan,he want us to do the things which makes sense with respect to future.

Sometimes both monkey mind and rational mind agrees for easy time like,but sometimes it is necessary to do less pleasant things for the sake of future vision,then both the brains have conflict.

For a pracastinatipor the conflict will leave him in orange zone an easy and fun place that is entirely out of making sense zone.here leisure activities happen at times where liesure should not happen.tim urban calls it the dark play ground.here the air is filled with guilt,dread,anxiety and many of those not good feeling.

Here is blue zone where less pleasant things happen

Procastinator also has a gaurdian angel who looks after him in his darkest moments.His name is panic monster 👹.he is dormant most of times.but he wakes when he senses a danger near him like public embarrassment,a career disaster or important consequences.

Money is only terrified of panic monster .tim urban recently met the panic monster,ted talk had reached him for the talk he was so excited about the the talk and also expressed it was like a dream for him to give a Ted talk.his rational mind started making all the decisions for the ted talk but the monkey mind make him scroll through Google maps.

From 6 months of time he was only left with one month,one day he wakes up to see the announcement of tedtalk with himself as speaker.the panic monster is up,the whole system is shaken off.as we know that monkey mind is scared of the panic monster he is up the tree and the rational decision maker will take up the wheel

Procastinator mind explains all the behaviour of the procastinator like from 2 weeks writting 2 words to staying up all night writing 8 pages.

He wrote about the procastinator system to the world through his blog,thousands of emails flooded to him from different parts of the world.All the letters came from different parts of the world.all the letters came from the sense of frustration and how procastination has effected them.Tim was very shocked,he thought that panic monster exist then why he not helping.

So he realises that there are two types of procastination one with the deadline and the other with no deadline.in the project where there are no deadlines,the panic monster does not wake up.in long term goal like starting up new business, taking care of the family, working on relationship all of them have no deadlines panic monster does not wakeup.this kind of procastination is less talked about,but this causes long term happiness and regrets and it also causes the feeling of being of spectator in ur own life at times.

The frustration was not that they could not chase the dream and they werent even able to start chasing them.some of u may have healthy relationship with deadlines and some of us don’t have.

But the monkey always shows its power where there are no deadlines.so for the solution of procastination he gives the solution of procastination he gives the something called “LIFE CALENDER”.

Tim at the end of the tedtalk shows the above life calendar,where each box is of one week,most of had used nearly one forth of the calendar and we r left with three fourth of it,by seeing the life calendar it helps us having a deadline and work towards our life goals..