Why We Procrastinate and What Actually Happens Inside Our Brains

Back in college, I majored in government. That meant writing papers. Lots of papers. You know how normal students handle assignments? They spread the work out sensibly. Maybe they start a bit slow, but they make steady progress through the first week. Then they buckle down during those heavier days near the end, and everything gets done without too much drama.

I always wanted to work that way. Really, I did. The plan was always there, ready to go. But then the actual paper would show up, and somehow I'd end up doing the complete opposite.

This happened every single time.

Then came my senior thesis. Ninety pages. The kind of paper you're supposed to spend an entire year working on. I knew my usual approach wouldn't cut it. This was way too big. So I planned it out carefully, deciding to start light, bump up the effort during the middle months, and then kick into high gear at the end. Just like walking up a little staircase. How hard could that be?

Here's what actually happened: Those first few months came and went, and I couldn't quite get myself to do anything. We had to revise the plan. Then the middle months actually went by, and I still hadn't written any real words. Two months turned into one month, which became two weeks.

One day I woke up with three days until the deadline, having written exactly zero words.

So I did the only thing I could. I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all-nighters. Humans really aren't supposed to pull two all-nighters. I sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion, and got it in just at the deadline.

A week later, the school called. "Is this Tim Urban?" they asked. "Yeah," I said. "We need to talk about your thesis." My heart stopped. "OK," I managed. "It's the best one we've ever seen."

That did not happen.

It was actually a very, very bad thesis. I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when you all thought I was amazing.

What Goes On in a Procrastinator's Brain

Today I'm a writer and blogger. I run a site called Wait But Why. A couple years ago, I decided to write about procrastination. My behavior has always confused the non-procrastinators around me, and I wanted to explain what goes on in the heads of people like me. Why are we the way we are?

I had a theory that procrastinator brains might actually be different from other people's brains. To test this, I found an MRI lab that let me scan both my brain and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator so I could compare them.

Here's what I found: Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker. But the procrastinator's brain also has something else. An Instant Gratification Monkey.

What does this mean for the procrastinator? Well, everything's fine until the Rational Decision-Maker decides it's time to get some work done. The Monkey doesn't like that plan at all. He takes the wheel and says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page about the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal, because I just remembered that happened."

Then we'll check the fridge to see if anything new appeared since 10 minutes ago. After that, we'll go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking about magnets and ends much, much later with us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.

All of that takes a while, so there's no room on the schedule for any work today. Sorry.

Understanding the Instant Gratification Monkey

The Instant Gratification Monkey doesn't seem like someone you want behind the wheel. He lives entirely in the present moment. He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future, and he only cares about two things: easy and fun.

In the animal world, this works fine. If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doing easy and fun things, you're a huge success. To the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You need to stay well-slept, well-fed, and keep the species going. In tribal times, this might have worked okay.

But we're not in tribal times anymore. We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey doesn't understand what that means.

That's why we have the Rational Decision-Maker. He gives us abilities no other animal has. We can visualize the future. We can see the big picture. We can make long-term plans. And he wants us to do whatever makes sense right now.

Sometimes doing what makes sense means doing easy and fun things, like having dinner or going to bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time. That's why there's overlap between what the Monkey wants and what makes sense.

But other times, it makes much more sense to do harder, less pleasant things for the sake of the big picture. That's when we have a conflict.

For the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end the same way every time. He spends a lot of time in what I call the Dark Playground.

Life in the Dark Playground

The Dark Playground is a place all procrastinators know very well. It's where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities aren't supposed to be happening. The fun you have there isn't actually fun because it's completely unearned. The air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred. All those good procrastinator feelings.

The question is: with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does the procrastinator ever get over to that less pleasant place where really important things happen?

Turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel. Someone who's always looking down on him, watching over him in his darkest moments. Someone called the Panic Monster.

The Panic Monster stays dormant most of the time. But he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets too close or there's danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence. Importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of.

The Panic Monster became very relevant in my life recently when the people at TED reached out about six months ago and invited me to give a talk. Of course I said yes. It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.

But in the middle of all this excitement, the Rational Decision-Maker had something else on his mind. "Are we clear on what we just accepted? Do we understand what's going to be happening one day in the future? We need to sit down and work on this right now."

The Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth and zoom in to the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground, and scroll up for two and a half hours until we get to the top of the country, so we can get a better feel for India."

So that's what we did that day.

As six months turned into four, then two, then one, TED decided to release the speakers. I opened up the website and there was my face staring right back at me.

Guess who woke up?

The Panic Monster started losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system was in mayhem. The Monkey, remember, is terrified of the Panic Monster. He's up the tree. Finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk.

The Panic Monster explains all kinds of insane procrastinator behavior. Like how someone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence of a paper, and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up all night and write eight pages.

This entire situation with the three characters is the procrastinator's system. It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.

When the System Breaks Down

This is what I decided to write about on my blog a couple years ago. When I did, I was amazed by the response. Literally thousands of emails came in from all different kinds of people from all over the world doing all different kinds of things. Nurses, bankers, painters, engineers, and lots of PhD students.

They were all saying the same thing: "I have this problem too."

But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of my post and the heaviness of these emails. These people were writing with intense frustration about what procrastination had done to their lives. About what this Monkey had done to them.

I thought about this and wondered: if the procrastinator's system works, then what's going on? Why are all these people in such a dark place?

Turns out there are two kinds of procrastination.

Everything I've talked about so far, all the examples I've given, they all have deadlines. When there are deadlines, the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term because the Panic Monster gets involved.

But there's a second kind of procrastination that happens when there is no deadline.

If you want a career where you're a self-starter, something in the arts or something entrepreneurial, there are no deadlines at first. Nothing's happening until you've gone out and done the hard work to get momentum and get things going.

There are also all kinds of important things outside your career that don't involve any deadlines. Seeing your family. Exercising and taking care of your health. Working on your relationship or getting out of one that isn't working.

If the procrastinator's only mechanism for doing hard things is the Panic Monster, that's a problem. Because in all these non-deadline situations, the Panic Monster doesn't show up. He has nothing to wake up for. So the effects of procrastination aren't contained. They just extend outward forever.

This long-term kind of procrastination is much less visible and much less talked about than the funnier, short-term, deadline-based kind. It's usually suffered quietly and privately. And it can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness and regret.

That's why those people were emailing. That's why they were in such a bad place. It's not that they were cramming for some project. Long-term procrastination had made them feel like spectators in their own lives.

The frustration wasn't that they couldn't achieve their dreams. It's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.

We're All Procrastinators

I read these emails and had a bit of an epiphany. I don't think non-procrastinators exist. That's right. I think all of you are procrastinators.

You might not all be a mess like some of us. Some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines. But remember: the Monkey's sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.

I want to show you one last thing. I call it a Life Calendar. That's one box for every week of a 90-year life. That's not that many boxes, especially since we've already used a bunch of them.

I think we need to all take a long, hard look at that calendar. We need to think about what we're really procrastinating on, because everyone is procrastinating on something in life.

We need to stay aware of the Instant Gratification Monkey. That's a job for all of us.

And because there aren't that many boxes on there, it's a job that should probably start today.