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 November 6, 2013 By Tim Urban

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This is Part 2. You won’t get Part 2 if you haven’t read Part 1 yet. Here’s Part 1.

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pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-|

noun
the action of ruining your own life for no apparent reason

Let me start by saying that I’ve had just about enough of the irony of battling through crippling
procrastination while trying to write posts on procrastination and how to beat it. I’ve spent the last two
weeks being this guy, who shoots himself in the foot while talking about gun safety, and I look forward
to getting back to irony-free procrastination following this post.

A couple notes before we begin:

I’m not a professional at any of this, just a lifelong procrastinator who thinks about this topic all
the time. I’m still in a total battle with my own habits, but I have made some progress in the last
few years, and I’m drawing my thoughts from what’s worked for me.

This post was posted late, not only because it took me 2,000 years to do, but also because I
decided that Monday night was an urgent time to open Google Earth, hover a few hundred feet Popular Posts
above the southern tip of India, and scroll all the way up India to the top of the country, to “get a
better feel for India.” I have problems. The AI Revolution

 1,042 Like 10K

Alright, so last week we dove into the everyday inner struggle of the procrastinator to examine the
underlying psychology going on. But this week, when we’re actually trying to do something about it, we
Why Procrastinators
need to dig even deeper. Let’s begin by trying to unwrap the procrastinator’s psychology and see Procrastinate
what’s really at the core of things:
 516 Like 4.2K

We know about the Instant Gratification Monkey (the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate)
and his dominion over the Rational Decision Maker, but what’s really happening there? The Fermi Paradox

 1,324 Like 4K
The procrastinator is in the bad habit, bordering on addiction, of letting the monkey win. He continues
to have the intention to control the monkey, but he puts forth a hapless effort, using the same proven-
not-to-work methods he’s used for years, and deep down, he knows the monkey will win. He vows to The Elon Musk Series
change, but the patterns just stay the same. So why would an otherwise capable person put forth such
 482 Like 701
a lame and futile effort again and again?

The answer is that he has incredibly low confidence when it comes to this part of his life, allowing How to Pick a Life Partner
himself to become enslaved by a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s call this self-fulfilling
 242 Like 2.2K
prophecy his Storyline. The procrastinator’s Storyline goes something like this:

For the Have-To-Dos in my life, I’ll end up waiting until the last minute, panicking, and then either doing Why Gen Y Yuppies Are
less than my best work or shutting down and not doing anything at all. For the Want-To-Dos in my life, Unhappy

let’s be honest—I’ll either start one and quit or more likely, I just won’t ever get around to it.  1,170 Like 1.9K

The procrastinator’s problems run deep, and it takes something more than “being more self-
7 Ways to be Insufferable
disciplined” or “changing his bad habits” for him to change his ways—the root of the problem is on Facebook
embedded in his Storyline, and his Storyline is what must change.
 900 Like 4.5K
 ___________ Putting Time In
Perspective
Before we talk about how Storylines change, let’s examine, concretely, what the procrastinator even
Follow these
 522specialLike
men 1.2K
wants to change into. What do the right habits even look like, and where exactly will the procrastinator
run into trouble? 412,637 130,240
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How to Name a Baby

There are two components of being able to achieve things in a healthy and effective manner—planning  311 Like 402
and doing. Let’s start with the easy one:

Planning Why You Should Stop

Caring What Other
People Think
Procrastinators love planning, quite simply because planning does not involve doing, and doing is the
 314 Like 2.7K
procrastinator’s Kryptonite.
Religion for the
But when procrastinators plan, they like to do it in a vague way that doesn’t consider details or reality Nonreligious
too closely, and their planning leaves them perfectly set up to not actually accomplish anything. A
procrastinator’s planning session leaves him with a doer’s nightmare:  789 Like 838

A big list of icky, daunting tasks and undertakings. 10 Types of 30-Year-Old

Single Guys

 666 Like 443

From Muhammad to ISIS:

Iraq's Full Story

 317 Like 136

A big list of vague and daunting things makes the Instant Gratification Monkey laugh. When you make a
list like that, the monkey says, “Oh perfect, this is easy.” Even if your gullible conscious mind believes it
intends to accomplish the items on that list in an efficient manner, the monkey knows that in your
subconscious, you have no intention of doing so.

Effective planning, on the other hand, sets you up for success. Its purpose is to do the exact opposite of
everything in that sentence:

Effective planning takes a big list and selects a winner:

A big list is perhaps an early phase of planning, but planning must end with rigorous prioritizing and
one item that emerges as the winner—the item you’re going to make your first priority. And the item
that wins should be the one that means the most to you—the item that’s most important for your
happiness. If urgent items are involved, those will have to come first and should be knocked out as
quickly as possible in order to make way for the important items (procrastinators love to use
unimportant but urgent items as an excuse to forever put off the important ones).

Effective planning makes an icky item un-icky:

We all know what an icky item is. An icky item is vague and murky, and you’re not really sure where
you’d start, how you’d go about doing it, or where you’d get answers to your questions about it.

So let’s say your dream is to make your own app, and you know that if you build a successful app you
could quit your job and become a full-time developer. You also think that programming ability is the
literacy of the 21st century, and you don’t have money to spend outsourcing development anyway, so
you decide to anoint “Learn how to code” the winning item on your list—the number one priority.
Exciting, right?

Well, no, because “Learn how to code” is an intensely icky item—and every time you decide it’s time to
get started, you will coincidentally also decide your inbox needs to be cleaned out and your kitchen
floor needs to be mopped, ASAP. It’ll never end up happening.
To un-icky the item, you need to read, research, and ask questions to find out exactly how one learns
how to code, the specific means necessary for each step along the way, and how long each one should
take. Un-ickying a list item turns it from this: Follow these special men

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Into this:

Effective planning turns a daunting item into a series of small, clear, manageable tasks:

Icky combines with Daunting into an Instant Gratification Monkey steroid potion. And just because you
un-icky an item, it doesn’t mean it’s still not horribly big and daunting. The key to de-dauntifying an
item is to absorb this fact:

A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks
like from far away.

No one “builds a house.” They lay one brick again and

again and again and the end result is a house.
Procrastinators are great visionaries—they love to
fantasize about the beautiful mansion they will one day
have built—but what they need to be are gritty
construction workers, who methodically lay one brick after
the other, day after day, without giving up, until a house is
built.

Nearly every big undertaking can be boiled down to a core

unit of progress—its brick. A 45-minute gym visit is the
brick of getting in great shape. A 30-minute practice
session is the brick of becoming a great guitarist.

The average day in a wannabe author’s week and a real author’s week looks almost the same. The real
author writes a couple pages, laying a brick, and the wannabe author writes nothing. 98% of their day is
otherwise identical. But a year later, the real author has a completed first draft of a book and the
wannabe author has…nothing.

It’s all about the bricks.

And the good news is, laying one brick isn’t daunting. But bricks do require scheduling. So the final step
in planning is to make a Brick Timeline, which slots bricks into the calendar. The slots are non-
negotiable and non-cancellable—after all, it’s your first priority and the thing that matters most to you,
isn’t it? The most important date is the first one. You can’t start learning to code “in November.” But
you can start learning to code on November 21st from 6:00 – 7:00pm.
Now you’re effectively planned—just follow the schedule and you’ll be a programmer. Only thing left is
to do…
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It’s not that procrastinators don’t like the concept of doing. They look at the bricks on their calendar
and they think, “Great, this will be fun.” And that’s because when they picture the moment in the future
when they sit down and knock out a work session, they picture things without the presence of the
Instant Gratification Monkey. Procrastinators’ visions of future scenarios never seem to include the
monkey.

But when the actual moment arrives to begin that scheduled brick-laying, the procrastinator does what
the procrastinator does best—he lets the monkey take over and ruin everything.

And since we just stressed above that all achievement boils down to the ability to lay that one brick
during that slot when it’s on your schedule, we seem to have isolated the core struggle here. Let’s
examine this specific challenge of laying a single brick:

So this diagram represents the challenge at hand anytime you take on a task, whether it’s making a
PowerPoint for work, going on a jog, working on a script, or anything else you do in your life. The
Critical Entrance is where you go to officially start work on the task, the Dark Woods are the process of
actually doing the work, and once you finish, you’re rewarded by ending up in The Happy Playground—
a place where you feel satisfaction and where leisure time is pleasant and rewarding because you got
something hard done. You occasionally even end up super-engaged with what you’re working on and
enter a state of Flow, where you’re so blissfully immersed in the task that you lose track of time.

Those paths look something like this:

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Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well unfortunately for procrastinators, they tend to miss out on both The Happy Playground and Flow.

For example, here’s a procrastinator that never even gets started on the task he’s supposed to do,
because he never makes it through the Critical Entrance. Instead, he spends hours wallowing in The
Dark Playground, hating himself:

Here’s a procrastinator who gets started on the task, but she can’t stay focused, and she keeps taking
long breaks to play on the internet and make food. She doesn’t end up finishing the task:
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Here’s a procrastinator who couldn’t bring himself to get started, even though a work deadline was
approaching, and he spent hours in The Dark Playground, knowing the looming deadline was drawing
near and he was only making his life harder by not starting. Eventually, the deadline got so close, the
Panic Monster suddenly came roaring into the room, freaking him out and causing him to fly through
the task to hit the deadline.

After he finishes, he feels decent because he accomplished something, but he’s also not that pleased
because he knows he did an underwhelming job on the project because he had to rush so much, and
he feels like he wasted most of his day procrastinating for no reason. This lands him in Mixed Feelings
Park.

So if you’re a procrastinator, let’s look at what you need to do to get on the right path, one that will
leave you much happier.

The first thing you must do is make it through the Critical Entrance. This means stopping whatever
you’re doing when it’s time to begin the task, putting away all distractions, and getting started. It
sounds simple, but this is the hardest part. This is where the Instant Gratification Monkey puts up his
fiercest resistance:
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The monkey absolutely hates stopping something fun to start something hard, and this is where you
need to be the strongest. If you can get started and force the monkey into the Dark Woods, you’ve
broken a bit of his will.

Of course, he’s not going to give up anytime soon.

The Dark Woods is where you are when you’re working. It’s not a fun place to be, and the Instant
Gratification Monkey wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded
by the Dark Playground, one of the monkey’s favorite places, and since he can see how close it is, he’ll
try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods.

There will also be times when you bump into a tree—maybe the jog is taking you on an uphill street,
maybe you need to use an Excel formula you don’t know, maybe that song you’re writing just isn’t
coming together the way you thought it would—and this is when the monkey will make his boldest
attempt at an escape.

It makes no sense to leave the Dark Woods in favor of the Dark Playground—they’re both dark. They
both suck to be in, but the big difference is the Dark Woods leads to happiness and the Dark
Playground leads only to more misery. But the Instant Gratification Monkey isn’t logical and to him, the
Dark Playground seems like much more fun.

The good news is, if you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Making
progress on a task produces positive feelings of accomplishment and raises your self-esteem. The
monkey gains his strength off of low self-esteem, and when you feel a jolt of self-satisfaction, the
monkey finds a High Self-Esteem Banana in his path. It doesn’t quell his resistance entirely, but it goes
a long way to distracting him for a while, and you’ll find that the urge to procrastinate has diminished.
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Then, if you continue along, something magical happens. Once you get 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through a
task, especially if it’s going well, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight.
This is a key tipping point—

The Tipping Point is important because it’s not just you who can smell the Happy Playground up ahead
—the monkey can smell it too. The monkey doesn’t care if his instant gratification comes alongside you
or at your expense, he just loves things that are easy and fun. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the
monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground. When
this happens, you lose all impulse to procrastinate and now both you and the monkey are speeding
toward the finish.
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Before you know it, you’re done, and you’re in the Happy Playground. Now, for the first time in a while,
you and the monkey are a team. You both want to have fun, and it feels great because it’s earned.
When you and the monkey are on a team, you’re almost always happy.

The other thing that might happen when you pass the Tipping Point, depending on the type of task and
how well it’s going, is that you might start feeling fantastic about what you’re working on, so fantastic
that continuing to work sounds like much more fun than stopping to do leisure activities. You’ve
become obsessed with the task and you lose interest in basically everything else, including food and
time—this is called Flow. Flow is not only a blissful feeling, it’s usually when you do great things.

The monkey is just as addicted to the bliss as you are, and you two are again a team.
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Fighting through to the Tipping Point is hard, but what makes procrastination so hard to beat is that
the Instant Gratification Monkey has a terribly short-term memory—even if you wildly succeed on
Monday, when you begin a task on Tuesday, the monkey has forgotten everything and will again resist
entering the Dark Woods or working through them.

And that’s why persistence is such a critical component of success. Laying each brick yields an inner
struggle—and in the end, your ability to win this very specific struggle and lay brick after brick, day after
day, is what lies at the core of a procrastinator’s struggle to gain control over his world.

So that’s what needs to happen—but if procrastination could be solved by reading a blog entry, it
wouldn’t be such a large problem in so many people’s lives. There’s only one way to truly beat
procrastination:

You need to prove to yourself that you can do it.

You need to show yourself you can do it, not tell yourself. Things will change when you show yourself
that they can. Until then, you won’t believe it, and nothing will change. Think of yourself like a
basketball player on a cold streak. For basketball players, it’s all about confidence, and an ice cold
shooter can tell himself 1000 times, “I’m a great shooter, I’m going to hit this next one,” but it’s not
until he physically hits a shot that his confidence goes up and his touch comes back.

So how do you start hitting shots?

1) Try to internalize the fact that everything you do is a choice.

Start by thinking about the terms we’ve used in these posts, and if they resonated with you, write them
down. Part of the reason I assigned terms to so many of these feelings or phenomena—the Instant
Gratification Monkey, the Rational Decision-Maker, the Panic Monster, the Dark Playground, Ickiness,
Bricks, the Critical Entrance, the Dark Woods, the Tipping Point, the Happy Playground, Flow, your
Storyline—is that terms help you clarify the reality of the choices you’re making. It helps expose bad
choices and highlights when it’s most critical to make good ones.

2) Create methods to help you defeat the monkey.

Some possible methods:

Solicit external support by telling one or more friends or family members about a goal you’re
trying to accomplish and asking them to hold you to it. If that’s hard for whatever reason, email it
to me—I’m a stranger (contact@waitbutwhy.com)—and just typing out a goal and sending it to a
real person can help make it more real. (Some experts argue that telling people in your life about
a goal can be counterproductive, so this depends on your particular situation.)
Create a Panic Monster if there’s not already one in place—if you’re trying to finish an album,
schedule a performance for a few months from now, book a space, and send out an invitation to a
group of people.
If you really want to start a business, quitting your job makes the Panic Monster your new
roommate.
If you’re trying to write a consistent blog, put “new post every Tuesday” at the top of the page…
Leave post-it notes for yourself, reminding you to make good choices.
Set an alarm to remind yourself to start a task, or to remind you of the stakes.
 Minimize distractions by all means necessary. If TV’s a huge problem, sell your TV. If the internet’s
a huge problem, get a second computer for work that has Wifi disabled, and turn your phone on
Airplane Mode during work sessions. Follow these special men
Lock yourself into something—put down a non-refundable deposit for lessons or a membership.
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And if the methods you set up aren’t working, change them. Set a reminder for a month from now that
says, “Have things improved? If not, change my methods.”

3) Aim for slow, steady progress—Storylines are rewritten one page at a time.

In the same way a great achievement happens unglorious brick by unglorious brick, a deeply-engrained
habit like procrastination doesn’t change all at once, it changes one modest improvement at a time.
Remember, this is all about showing yourself you can do it, so the key isn’t to be perfect, but to simply
improve. The author who writes one page a day has written a book after a year. The procrastinator who
gets slightly better every week is a totally changed person a year later.

So don’t think about going from A to Z—just start with A to B. Change the Storyline from “I
procrastinate on every hard task I do” to “Once a week, I do a hard task without procrastinating.” If you
can do that, you’ve started a trend. I’m still a wretched procrastinator, but I’m definitely better than I
was last year, so I feel hopeful about the future.

Why do I think about this topic so much, and why did I just write a 3,500-word blog post on it?

Because defeating procrastination is the same thing as gaining control over your own life. So much of
what makes people happy or unhappy—their level of fulfillment and satisfaction, their self-esteem, the
regrets they carry with them, the amount of free time they have to dedicate to their relationships—is
severely affected by procrastination. So it’s worthy of being taken dead seriously, and the time to start
improving is now.

____________
The follow-up to these two posts: The Procrastination Matrix

And two more related posts:

Why you shouldn’t care what other people think. A different struggle going on in another part of
your brain. Meet the mammoth.

A religion for the nonreligious. An even deeper look at the deal with the monkey and the other
animals in your brain.

If you’re interested in supporting Wait But Why, here’s our Patreon.

While they’re ruining your life, you might as well cuddle with them:

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Maciej • 2 days ago

This is exactly what I needed in my life. My fight will start NOW!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Agrippa • 5 days ago

How am i gonna beat procrastination? Well this blog inspired me to do the following challenge: I'm gonna
read both entry every monday for a year or when i feel that i have controlled my Instant Gratification
Monkey. Thanks wbw <3.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Chelle • 21 days ago

"I decided that Monday night was an urgent time to open Google Earth, hover a few hundred feet above the
southern tip of India, and scroll all the way up India to the top of the country, to “get a better feel for India.”"
Buddy do you think you might potentially have ADHD?
7△ ▽ 6 • Reply • Share ›

Avin Mamo • a month ago

Absolutely loved this. I showed your TEDtalk to my students (14-16 y/o) and then asked them to make a
comic strip with the Rational Decision Maker, Instant Gratification Monkey and Panic Monster. They really
enjoyed it and a lot of them told me they now finally understand their behaviour. Thank you so much Tim
Urban.
2△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Physics 4_u • a month ago

I will not procrastinate
1△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Rob • 2 months ago

I was going comment on this article, but I think theres time for that later.
3△ ▽ 1 • Reply • Share ›

Levi • 3 months ago • edited

Seriously, this hit me like a ton of bricks thrown at my head. Not sure if anyone else ironically laughed whilst
welling up at how relatable this was and finally having a "prognosis" for the internal battle that's been
happening for years. I don't know if I'm cured but I 100% know I can see myself a lot clearly and know what
I'm dealing with. Thank you so much for writing this. You might just have changed a stranger's life forever
10 △ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Pieguy 123 • 3 months ago

This makes a lot of sense. Humans aren't meant to do long-term tasks. You hunt food, you eat, you sleep,
maybe build a house, etc. By splitting a task into multiple, easy-to-identify sub tasks, it tricks the mind into
thinking the task it easy to do or is otherwise quick.
2△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

WhyEssDee • 3 months ago

Woah, A great post, as always!

It took me 3 weeks to complete these two articles!

FYI, its not because of my inability to read.
3△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
Marcin • 3 months ago
A really good book on fighing procrastination I read recently is How to fight procrastination by Terry
Lämqvist. I can honestly recommend it to anyone who struggle with getting things done and starting any
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activity in general.
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Paula Bustamante • 3 months ago

Graaaaaaaaaaacias! ! ! ! ! ! ! Es cómo si fuera la historia de mi vida! Intentaré vencerlo!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Amanda McKittrick • 4 months ago

Best post I have EVER read on procrastination. Of course I should not be reading but heading for the dark
woods (: thanks for the inspiration to start "doing" x
4△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

M.A. • 4 months ago

I just found this post and reread it again. Meanwhile I still haven't finished unpacking from the move 3 years
ago. I have problems... at least I see I have lots of company. I have found my people!
2△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Moshood Liasu • 4 months ago

This is my second reading and it feels so great, motivating and sweeps me off my feet everytime.
Thank you and I must say I consider you one of the brightest story tellers. The clarity in your thinking is
enviable.
5△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

TheHun • 5 months ago

I like your way of telling stories, funny but imformative.
3△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Ecclesiastes • 6 months ago

What led me to this post?
I were reading my JavaScript programming course and then I wanted to have a good alternative to Google
Keep to take my notes (I wanted a tool that could allow me have not with code formatting enabled), so I tried
Pocket, installed the extension and saved a note as a test and opened it to see if it worked.
Now, when I opened my pocket, I saw I had old notes including this article link. I don't remember when I
added it again.
As my English is not so perfect, I had to spend 1 hour to read the 2 articles... I have problems
6△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Luna • 6 months ago

The way this post helped me was by freaking me out with the mention of the Dark Playground. Like, under
no circumstance would I go there. Ever. (I don't mean to criticize this post. I want to say that it actually
helped. A lot.)
1△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Deep Blue wholesome • 7 months ago

God all mighty bless your insanely creative brain to explain procrastination is probably best way it ever has
been explained before!!! I am shocked how come such a brilliant person is not world known personality yet!
Your work it super amazing! I have just read your all three post and I would have cried because my monkey
has destroyed my career and love life! My panic monster has also given up on me. He just looks at me
sarcastically, judges me to still be with this monkey and leaves. I go back in the tree instead of the monkey
isolating myself and the monkey tells me I know you are hating me right now but we both know tomorrow
you are again going to fall for me. I will make make you believe that future Sam will be a superhero and you
can just be in dark playground for being distracted from your life and once you will be distracted enough the
future you will appears and solve all he problems in a jiffy. I know you don't want to believe it but I will make
sure you will do this ha ha ha.. I have been trying to gear up change myself from a years but I couldn't which
I just understood why! This post will make my life! I will come back with a the progress result soon! Thank
you once again! And yes once I will be financially stable I will donate you and definitely buy that panic
monster and monkey to remind myself of all these things. I might first just beat him hard! lol.. Anyway thanx
for everything!
8△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Axtra • 7 months ago

I'll read this tomorrow
19 △ ▽ 1 • Reply • Share ›

Squirrel • 7 months ago

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am a teenager with big goals and plans, but the things I want to get
done never happen. With graduation and college coming up in less than a year, I knew I had to make some
SERIOUS changes. I have ADHD, and even with my medication (which IS really helpful), I still find it hard to
force myself to do the hard things and get. Stuff. Done.

Fortunately for me, my online English professor (I'm taking an extra class to graduate early) highly
recommended we all watch your Ted Talk on procrastination. I've ready thousands of books, online articles,
 y p y , ,
and youtube videos on ADHD, procrastination, and paying attention, all by people with an alphabet after
their names- none of them helped! After watching your Ted Talk, I searched up your site and found these two
articles. And, guess what? They make so much sense!! People who don't struggle with procrastination have Follow these special men
all sorts of tips and solutions, but they just don't get it!
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There is no easy way to beat procrastination, even though lots of people will say there is. "Just do this!"
"Make a nice study space!" "Avoid eating a, b, and c!" This article gets the point across PERFECTLY! I love
the illustrations, and I can't wait to show this to a friend of mine! Thanks a million!!

P.S.- The other day, I decided to look at my search history and see what was taking me so long on my
schoolwork. Pages and pages and pages of google searches. My personal favorite was that, at some point
or another, I had searched up "Crocs memes"...... on. Google. MAPS.
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Kateal Washington • 7 months ago

I stubbled across your blog after seeing your Ted Talk. Holy crap what a discovery. Out of all of the “fix your
habits” books I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot because I’m a self help junkie) ...I’ve never seen procrastination
explained this way. The books haven’t helped at all. But this 2 part post finally explained my state of mind
exactly as it feels in my brain, and presented a realistic solution I think I can actually do for once. I don’t
know how hard it was for you to write this..but thank you for caring about people like us. I’m going to give
this a try. Be back in a couple months to update.
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Uma > Kateal Washington • 4 months ago

How did it go??
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Muhammad Waheed Ullah • 7 months ago

Thank you so much Tim it means a lot i'm a chronic procrastinator i read many books noting happend but
this blog changed my whole mindset thanks again
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蒋蓓蓓 • 8 months ago

thanks a lot. It is hard for me to read a such long blog with 3500 words. But I decide to learn English and
CANNOT procrastinate to read this.
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DonutLord • 9 months ago • edited

THERES A LITTLE REDDIT ICON WHERE THE RATIONAL DECISION MAKER IS DRAGGING THE
MONKEY IN THE DARK WOODS I-
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Ecclesiastes > DonutLord • 6 months ago

I didn't notice it at all 😂
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DonutLord • 9 months ago

I procrastinated big time by reading this article...
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Axtra > DonutLord • 7 months ago

Well you're one step ahead of me
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Sophia • 9 months ago

ok i just procrastinated by reading this but it was worth it.

i think
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ANDRO DIMENSION • a year ago

Just gonna do it...
I am coming for you instant gratification monkey !!!!!
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Jerson Seling • a year ago

Today morning I procrastinated drawing this to stick in my wall behind my workstation. The home office in
this quarantine is consuming me.
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Cebion > Jerson Seling • 8 months ago

Hey Jerson!
Great drawing! I'd love to hang that behind my monitor.
Would you mind scanning it for me so I can print it out?

Thanks in Advance
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Larry Fredlund • a year ago

At 51, this two part blog helped me see where and how and for how long I have procrastinated. The humor,
simple illustrations drew me in, and the deep insights woke me up.

Naming the I.G. monkey and calling out the panic monster by name and creating the leading story is crafty!

Thank you for sharing exactly the way you did.

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Grace Pacie • a year ago

Fabulous insight into a subject that isn't often unraveled! Hopefully you gave yourself a great therapy
session by writing this blog seven years ago, but I wonder did it change you in the long term? I have the
feeling we were born like this. However, this also has a positive side. People who get most of their work
done just before a deadline are often amazingly creative - and you're a great example of this. I can't help
wondering whether the adrenaline triggers something which unlocks our creative juices. Prof. Charles Limb
at the John Hopkins School of Medicine has carried out MRI scans on improvising musicians and rap artists,
and discovered that the brain turns off areas linked to self-monitoring and inhibition while they are being
creative. Maybe something similar happens when the Panic Monster appears?
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Flatlander • a year ago

I decided that Monday night was an urgent time to open Google Earth,
hover a few hundred feet above the southern tip of India, and scroll all
the way up India to the top of the country, to “get a better feel for
India.”

OMG what an amazing suggestion!

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Rick Wang > Flatlander • 5 months ago

You've surely got the point of this article😂
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Eduardo Soares • a year ago

Great value here! Big text!!
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Félix Oporto López • a year ago

Amazing! I think you could be a great Engineer writing like this and being able to explain your thoughts so
clearly. Thanks for the post.
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NAVEEN M.D. • a year ago

Amazing blog.Thank you much.
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MX • a year ago
Actual tears in my eyes in finally finding the words to describe my state of mind, put a name and clarify the
many things I feel daily including the constant guilt I am in and to know that I am not alone in this. Thank
you.
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Alex • a year ago

Thank you for this post, i really didn't know how to beat this little monkey.
Your post changed my mind about my life, habits, what is important and what is not.
From know on will try hardly to change my self to a better person and better friend. Follow these special men
Thank you!
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Guest • a year ago

Decided to read this post after stumbling across your Ted talk. Unbelievable how accurately this metaphor
applies to my life. Reading this made me smile, slapped me in the face, and inspired me. Your writing has
single-handedly returned my joy for reading. Thank you. I feel like I need to do something in return.
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daniel • a year ago

5 years later, still useful. Thank you
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2, 8 and 24 will live forever • a year ago

Thank you. Ill be back in a day to give progress
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Kop • a year ago

Let me procrastinate reading though your article fully, to say that it is shocking how good, and accurate your
monkey model is to how i imagined it. I never finished the model so sophisticated, but it was quite similar.
For me it wasnt a monkey, rather a little evil demon. But the monkey seems to fit so well. He isnt evil, he just
has a different view point.
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karthikeyan gunasekaran • a year ago • edited

id=monkey
ego=self (aka Rational Decison Maker)
superego=panic monster
(just my perspective)
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haiiroteien • 2 years ago

As someone who suffers from mental health issues, including depression and untreated ADHD, fighting
procrastination is basically impossible and fuels my depression to the point of making me feel like my life will
never change and I'll never amount to anything. I've led my entire life never being able to do anything unless
the "Panic Monster" got to me last minute.
The terms you used in this post (the monkey, the dark playground, etc) are really helpful at visualizing the
entire process of avoiding or completing tasks. I also liked the metaphor that a house needs to be built brick
by brick, since I'm someone who completely gives up when things don't work out right away.
I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life right now where I need to be content with doing things step by step,
and actually getting STARTED somewhere... I'm going to try and apply your tips + thoughts onto my own
situation and my goals (that I have already figured out but... put off, of course) and I hope it will help me a
little.
Thank you for putting the issue of procrastination in words and giving advice... and also just for making me +
other readers feel understood...
I'm glad to hear you're also starting to beat your own procrastination habits, by the way!
I hope we can keep at it together.
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mary ann cloherty > haiiroteien • a year ago

you are not alone
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Tom Clark > haiiroteien • a year ago

How are you getting on now with procrastination?
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Kop > haiiroteien • a year ago

Yeah, i kinda comforted my rational innerself for years with either long term visions ("youre still in
your early 20s, eventually you will get it done, relax") or trying to accept the fate as beeing
ok("millions of people are lazy and watch tv all weekend, and they still enjoy life without ever
accomplishig too much").

Now ive come to the same point as you said, thinking my life will never change and i will be below my
potential so hard, that i either kill myself or feel like shit my whole life. I thought it would be possible to
accept the fate with some dignity, and leave an ok life, but it seems it is not possible. In fact
coworkers and friends initially always compliment me on my knowledge (gained by years of
procrastinstin on wikipedia) and intelligence. Some even envy me or envision me as a millionaire. It
makes me feel so bad, If only the knew my abyss.
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