TED演讲：你有拖延症吗？

　　TED演讲英文文稿:

　　00:11

　　So in college, I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers. Now, when anormal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this. So, you know --

　　00:25

　　you get started maybe a little slowly, but you get enough done in the first week that, with someheavier days later on, everything gets done, things stay civil.

　　00:33

　　(Laughter)

　　00:34

　　And I would want to do that like that. That would be the plan. I would have it all ready to go, butthen, actually, the paper would come along, and then I would kind of do this.

　　00:45

　　(Laughter)

　　00:47

　　And that would happen every single paper.

　　00:50

　　But then came my 90-page senior thesis, a paper you're supposed to spend a year on. And I knewfor a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option. It was way too big a project. So Iplanned things out, and I decided I kind of had to go something like this. This is how the yearwould go. So I'd start off light, and I'd bump it up in the middle months, and then at the end, Iwould kick it up into high gear just like a little staircase. How hard could it be to walk up thestairs? No big deal, right?

　　01:22

　　But then, the funniest thing happened. Those first few months? They came and went, and Icouldn't quite do stuff. So we had an awesome new revised plan.

　　01:30

　　(Laughter)

　　01:31

　　And then --

　　01:32

　　(Laughter)

　　01:34

　　But then those middle months actually went by, and I didn't really write words, and so we werehere. And then two months turned into one month, which turned into two weeks. And one day Iwoke up with three days until the deadline, still not having written a word, and so I did the onlything I could: I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all-nighters -- humans arenot supposed to pull two all-nighters -- sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion, and got it injust at the deadline.

　　02:10

　　I thought that was the end of everything. But a week later I get a call, and it's the school. Andthey say, "Is this Tim Urban?" And I say, "Yeah." And they say, "We need to talk about yourthesis." And I say, "OK." And they say, "It's the best one we've ever seen."

　　02:28

　　(Laughter)

　　02:31

　　(Applause)

　　02:35

　　That did not happen.

　　02:37

　　(Laughter)

　　02:39

　　It was a very, very bad thesis.

　　02:42

　　(Laughter)

　　02:44

　　I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought, "This guy is amazing!"

　　02:50

　　(Laughter)

　　02:51

　　No, no, it was very, very bad. Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy. I write the blog Wait ButWhy. And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination. My behavior has alwaysperplexed the non-procrastinators around me, and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinatorsof the world what goes on in the heads of procrastinators, and why we are the way we are. Now, Ihad a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of otherpeople. And to test this, I found an MRI lab that actually let me scan both my brain and the brainof a proven non-procrastinator, so I could compare them. I actually brought them here to showyou today. I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference. I know that ifyou're not a trained brain expert, it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK? So here's thebrain of a non-procrastinator.

　　03:42

　　(Laughter)

　　03:45

　　Now ... here's my brain.

　　03:49

　　(Laughter)

　　03:54

　　There is a difference. Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them, but the procrastinator'sbrain also has an Instant Gratification Monkey. Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator?Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.

　　04:08

　　[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]

　　04:11

　　So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision to do something productive, butthe Monkey doesn't like that plan, so he actually takes the wheel, and he says, "Actually, let's readthe entire Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal, because I justremembered that that happened.

　　04:27

　　(Laughter)

　　04:28

　　Then --

　　04:29

　　(Laughter)

　　04:30

　　Then we're going to go over to the fridge, to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutesago. After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Feynmantalking about magnets and ends much, much later with us watching interviews with Justin Bieber'smom.

　　04:46

　　(Laughter)

　　04:48

　　"All of that's going to take a while, so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for anywork today. Sorry!"

　　04:54

　　(Sigh)

　　04:57

　　Now, what is going on here? The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy you wantbehind the wheel. He lives entirely in the present moment. He has no memory of the past, noknowledge of the future, and he only cares about two things: easy and fun.

　　05:15

　　Now, in the animal world, that works fine. If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doingnothing other than easy and fun things, you're a huge success!

　　05:24

　　(Laughter)

　　05:26

　　And to the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You have to keep well-slept, well-fedand propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times might have worked OK. But, if youhaven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times. We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkeydoes not know what that is. Which is why we have another guy in our brain, the RationalDecision-Maker, who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do. We can visualize thefuture. We can see the big picture. We can make long-term plans. And he wants to take all of thatinto account. And he wants to just have us do whatever makes sense to be doing right now. Now,sometimes it makes sense to be doing things that are easy and fun, like when you're havingdinner or going to bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time. That's why there's an overlap.Sometimes they agree. But other times, it makes much more sense to be doing things that areharder and less pleasant, for the sake of the big picture. And that's when we have a conflict. Andfor the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a certain way every time, leaving him spending alot of time in this orange zone, an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the Makes Sense circle.I call it the Dark Playground.

　　06:41

　　(Laughter)

　　06:42

　　Now, the Dark Playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well. It'swhere leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening.The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned, andthe air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred -- all of those good procrastinator feelings.And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does theprocrastinator ever get himself over here to this blue zone, a less pleasant place, but where reallyimportant things happen?

　　07:16

　　Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel, someone who's always looking down onhim and watching over him in his darkest moments -- someone called the Panic Monster.

　　07:27

　　(Laughter)

　　07:33

　　Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up anytime adeadline gets too close or there's danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster or some otherscary consequence. And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of. Now, hebecame very relevant in my life pretty recently, because the people of TED reached out to meabout six months ago and invited me to do a TED Talk.

　　08:00

　　(Laughter)

　　08:06

　　Now, of course, I said yes. It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.

　　08:11

　　(Laughter)

　　08:15

　　(Applause) But in the middle of all this excitement, the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to havesomething else on his mind. He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted? Do we getwhat's going to be now happening one day in the future? We need to sit down and work on thisright now." And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth and zoom in tothe bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground, and scroll up for two and a half hours til weget to the top of the country, so we can get a better feel for India."

　　08:48

　　(Laughter)

　　08:54

　　So that's what we did that day.

　　08:55

　　(Laughter)

　　08:59

　　As six months turned into four and then two and then one, the people of TED decided to releasethe speakers. And I opened up the website, and there was my face staring right back at me. Andguess who woke up?

　　09:12

　　(Laughter)

　　09:16

　　So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system's inmayhem.

　　09:21

　　(Laughter)

　　09:26

　　And the Monkey -- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster -- boom, he's up the tree! Andfinally, finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk.

　　09:36

　　Now, the Panic Monster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior, like howsomeone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence of a paper, andthen miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up all night and write eight pages. Andthis entire situation, with the three characters -- this is the procrastinator's system. It's not pretty,but in the end, it works. This is what I decided to write about on the blog a couple of years ago.

　　10:08

　　When I did, I was amazed by the response. Literally thousands of emails came in, from all differentkinds of people from all over the world, doing all different kinds of things. These are people whowere nurses, bankers, painters, engineers and lots and lots of PhD students.

　　10:23

　　(Laughter)

　　10:25

　　And they were all writing, saying the same thing: "I have this problem too." But what struck mewas the contrast between the light tone of the post and the heaviness of these emails. Thesepeople were writing with intense frustration about what procrastination had done to their lives,about what this Monkey had done to them. And I thought about this, and I said, well, if theprocrastinator's system works, then what's going on? Why are all of these people in such a darkplace?

　　10:54

　　Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination. Everything I've talked about today, theexamples I've given, they all have deadlines. And when there's deadlines, the effects ofprocrastination are contained to the short term because the Panic Monster gets involved. Butthere's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline. So ifyou wanted a career where you're a self-starter -- something in the arts, somethingentrepreneurial -- there's no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing's happening, notuntil you've gone out and done the hard work to get momentum, get things going. There's alsoall kinds of important things outside of your career that don't involve any deadlines, like seeingyour family or exercising and taking care of your health, working on your relationship or gettingout of a relationship that isn't working.

　　11:38

　　Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things is the Panic Monster, that'sa problem, because in all of these non-deadline situations, the Panic Monster doesn't show up. Hehas nothing to wake up for, so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained; they justextend outward forever. And it's this long-term kind of procrastination that's much less visible andmuch less talked about than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind. It's usually sufferedquietly and privately. And it can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, andregrets. And I thought, that's why those people are emailing, and that's why they're in such a badplace. It's not that they're cramming for some project. It's that long-term procrastination hasmade them feel like a spectator, at times, in their own lives. The frustration is not that theycouldn't achieve their dreams; it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.

　　12:35

　　So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany -- that I don't think non-procrastinatorsexist. That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators. Now, you might not all be a mess, likesome of us,

　　12:52

　　(Laughter)

　　12:53

　　and some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines, but remember: the Monkey'ssneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.

　　13:02

　　Now, I want to show you one last thing. I call this a Life Calendar. That's one box for every weekof a 90-year life. That's not that many boxes, especially since we've already used a bunch of those.So I think we need to all take a long, hard look at that calendar. We need to think about whatwe're really procrastinating on, because everyone is procrastinating on something in life. We needto stay aware of the Instant Gratification Monkey. That's a job for all of us. And because there'snot that many boxes on there, it's a job that should probably start today.

　　13:44

　　Well, maybe not today, but ...

　　13:47

　　(Laughter)

　　13:48

　　You know. Sometime soon.