Tim Urban：Inside the mind of a master procrastinator| TED2016
（美 [pro,kræstə,netɚ]n.拖延者；拖拉者；因循者）
video 1
So in college, I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers.
Now,when a normal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this.
So, you know --
You get started maybe a little slowly, but you get enough done in the first week that, with some heavier days later on, everything gets done, things stay civil.
And I would want to do that like that.
That would be the plan.
I would have it allready to go, but then, actually, the paper would come along, and then I would kind of do this.
And that would happen every single paper.
video 2
But then came my 90-page senior thesis, a paper you're supposed to spend a year on.
And I knew for a paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option. It was way too big a project.
我知道对于这样一篇论文来说， 我平常的做法行不通。毕业论文是个大项目。
So I planned things out, and I decided I kind of had to go something like this.
This is how the year would go.
So I'd start off light,and I'd bump it up in the middle months, and then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear just like a little staircase. How hard could it be to walk up the stairs?
起初少干点儿， 中间几个月持续干多一点儿， 最后高速档全力以赴，就像小台阶一样。 爬台阶能有多难？
No big deal, right?
But then, the funniest thing happened. Those first few months?
They came and went,and I couldn't quite do stuff.
So we had an awesome new revised plan.（美 [rɪ'vaɪzd] adj.经过修订的；改进的）
But then those middle months actually went by, and I didn't really write words, and so we were here.
And then two months turned into one month, which turned into two weeks.
And one day I woke up with three days until the deadline, still not having written a word, and so I did the only thing I could:
I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all-nighters -- humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters
我花了72小时写出90页， 通宵整整两天赶工，人不应该连续熬两个通宵
Sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion, and got it in just at the deadline.（美 [sprɪnt]vi.全力奔跑；冲刺）
I thought that was the end of everything.
But a week later I get a call, and it's the school.
And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?" And I say,"Yeah."
And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis."And I say, "OK."
And they say, "It's the best one we've ever seen."
That did not happen.
It was a very, very bad thesis.
I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought, "This guy is amazing!"
No,no, it was very, very bad.
Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy. I write the blog Wait But Why.
And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination.
My behavior has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me, and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world
what goes on in the heads of procrastinators, and why we are the way we are.
（美 [pɚ'plɛkst]adj. 困惑的；不知所措的）
（美 [pro,kræstə,netɚ]n.拖延者；拖拉者；因循者）
我的拖延行为总是让我身边那些不拖延的人感到困惑，所以我想向不拖延的人解释一下： 拖延者脑袋里到底是怎么想的， 还有为什么我们这些拖延者会这样。
Now, I had a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people. （美 [haɪ'pɑθəsɪs]n. 假设）
And to test this, I found an MRI lab that actually let me scan both my brain and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator, so I could compare them.
I actually brought them here to show you today. I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference. I know that if you're not a trained brain expert, it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?
So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.
Now... here's my brain.
There is a difference.
Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them, but the procrastinator's brain also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.
（美 ['ræʃnəl]adj. 合理的；理性的）（美 [,ɡrætɪfɪ'keʃən]n. 满意；喜悦；使人满意之事）
Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator? Well, it means everything's fine until this happens.
[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision to do something productive, but the Monkey doesn't like that plan, so he actually takes the wheel,
and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal, because I just remembered that happened.
而且他说：“实际上， 让我们来读一下维基百科上关于南茜·克里根/汤妮·雅哈丁的丑闻案吧，因为我刚想起来这件事。
Then we're going to go over to the fridge, to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
After that, we're going to 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.
之后，让我们继续在视频网站上浏览，从理查德·费曼谈磁性的视频开始看，一直看到对贾斯汀·比伯老妈的采访看到地老天荒。
"All of that's going to take a while, so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today. Sorry!"
video 3
Now, what is going on here?
The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy 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.
Now, in the animal world, that works fine.
If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things, you're a huge success!
And to the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You have to keep well-slept,well-fed and propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times might have worked OK.
（美 ['prɑpə'get]vt. 传播；传送；繁殖；宣传）
（美 ['traɪbl]adj. 部落的，部族的；种族的）
But, if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times.We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know what that is.
Which is why we have another guy in our brain, the Rational Decision-Maker, who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.
We can visualize the future. We can see the big picture.
（美 ['vɪʒuəlaɪz]v. 使 ... 看得见； 形象化； 设想）
We can make long-term plans. And he wants to take all of that into 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 having dinner or going to bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time.
That's why there's an overlap.
（美 ['ovəlæp]与…部分重叠）
Sometimes they agree.
But other times, it makes much more sense to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant, for the sake of the big picture.
（美 [sek]n. 目的；利益；理由；）
And that's when we have a conflict.
And for the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a certain way every time, leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone,an easy and fun place that's entirely out of the Makes Sense circle.
对于拖延者来说，每次冲突都以这种方式结束，就是他在橙色区域花费了大量时间，这是那个简单又快乐，但是又没有意义的那个区域。
I call it the Dark Playground.
Now, the Dark Playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well.
It's where 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, and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred -- all of those good procrastinator feelings.
（美 [drɛd]vt. 害怕，担心；n. 恐惧，畏惧）
（['self'heitrid][医]自我憎恨）
And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this bluezone, a less pleasant place, but where really important things happen?
Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel, someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him in his darkest moments -- someone called the Panic Monster.
Now, the Panic Monster is 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.
（美 ['dɔːrmənt] adj.休眠的；睡眠的；静止的；潜伏的）
And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of.
Now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently, because the people of TED reached out to me about six months ago and invited me to do a TED Talk.
Now, 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 seemed to have something else on his mind.
He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted?
Do we get what's going to be now happening one day in the future? We need to sit down and work on this right now."
And 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 til we get to the top of the country, so we can get a better feel for India."
而猴子说：“完全同意， 但是让我们打开谷歌地球 把镜头推进到印度地下200尺， 然后花两个半小时 向上滚动到这个国家的地表， 让我们更好地感受一下印度。“
So that's what we did that day.
As six months turned into four and then two and then one, the people of TED decided to release the speakers.
And I opened up the website, and there was my face staring right back at me. And guess who woke up?
So the PanicMonster starts losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
（美 ['mehɛm]n. 骚乱；慌乱）
And the Monkey-- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster -- boom, he's up the tree!
And finally, finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk.
video4
Now, the PanicMonster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior, like how someone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence of a paper,
（美 [ɪn'seɪn]adj. 疯狂的;精神病的;非常愚蠢的）
and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up allnight and write eight pages.
（[mi'rækjuləsli]adv.奇迹般地）
And this 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.
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.
These are people who were nurses, bankers, painters, engineers and lots and lots of PhD students.
And they were all writing, saying the same thing: "I have this problem too."
But what struck me was the contrast between the light tone of the 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.
And I thought about this, and I said, well, if the procrastinator's system works, then what's going on?
Why are all of these people in such a dark place? Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination.
Everything I've talked about today, the examples I've given, they all have deadlines. And when there's deadlines, the effects of procrastination are contained to the short term because the Panic Monster gets involved.
（美 [kən'ten]vt.容纳；包含；抑制；克制）
But there's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline.
So if you wanted a career where you're a self-starter -- something in the arts, something entrepreneurial --
（ [,ɑntrəprə'njʊrɪəl]adj.企业家的；企业性质的）
there's no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing's happening, not until you've gone out and done the hard work to get momentum, get things going.
（美 [mo'mɛntəm]n. 势头；[物] 动量；动力；冲力）
起初并没有截止期， 因为在你还没有开始努力干活之前，不会有任何事情发生，没有产生推进力让事情继续进行。
There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career that don't involve any deadlines, like seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health, working on your relationship or getting out of a relationship that isn't working.
Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things is the PanicMonster, that's a problem, because in all of these non-deadline situations, the Panic Monster doesn't show up. He has nothing to wake up for,
（美 ['mɛkənɪzəm]n.机制；原理）
so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained; they just extend outward forever.
And it's this long-term kind of procrastination that's 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 regrets.
And I thought, that's why those people are emailing, and that's why they're in such a bad place.
It's not that they're cramming for some project.
（美 [kræm]vt. 填满；塞满；死记硬背；猛吃）
It's that long-term procrastination has made them feel like a spectator, at times, in their own lives.
（美 ['spɛktetɚ]n. 观众；旁观者）
The frustration is not that they couldn't achieve their dreams; it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.
他们的沮丧不是因为他们无法实现自己的梦想；而是他们甚至无法开始去追逐自己的梦。
So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany -- that I don't think non-procrastinators exist.
（[ɪ'pɪfəni]n.顿悟；(神灵）显现）
That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators.
Now, you might not all be a mess, like some of us, and some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines,
but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.
Now, I want to show you one last thing.
I call this a Life Calendar.
That's one box for everyweek of 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 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's not that many boxes on there, it's a job that should probably start today.
Well, maybe not today, but ...You know.Sometime soon.Thank you.
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