Tim Urban, co-founder of Wait but Why blog, explains why procrastinators procrastinate.
Tim takes us on an amusing yet engaging talk on procrastination and the many inevitable “YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window”.
Procrastination As Second Nature
Like Beauty and the Beast, delaying, avoiding, and procrastinating on issues that matter to us is a tale as old as time and really the perfect analogy. The beauty of procrastination can be summed up by Tim’s depiction of the Dark Playground. A place he says that “all of you procrastinators out there know very well’. It’s a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. However, it’s completely unearned, and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred Tim explains or in the case of this analogy “The Beast” of procrastination.
Many, may we say all of us, have at some point experienced that deadline-induced panic. Some of us thrive on this and often produce our best work but these people often prove to be the exception, rather than the rule.
Watch this insightful Ted talk and get to know the different characters or role players in your mind. The instant gratification monkey, the panic monster and the mistreated and often booed rational thinker.
