美国国家公共电台 NPR What Happens In The Brain Of An Extreme Procrastinator?

What Happens In The Brain Of An Extreme Procrastinator¹?

GUY RAZ, HOST:

So for all of Adam Grant's research about procrastination² and slowing down, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way.

Can you introduce yourself please, Tim?

TIM URBAN: Yeah. I'm Tim Urban.

RAZ: Tim's a blogger. His blog is called...

URBAN: "Wait But Why."

RAZ: And Tim blogs on all kinds of topics.

URBAN: The cool thing about that is I can kind of switch it up based on whatever I'm interested in.

RAZ: And like any other job, being a blogger comes with job responsibilities. In fact, Tim has a list posted on his website.

URBAN: So my responsibilities are passionately⁴ underestimating how long each post will take to do, pacing around in his underwear hating himself - that's one of my major responsibilities - thinking, if only I were doing that other topic, it would be so much easier.

RAZ: And you consider yourself to be a procrastinator, right?

URBAN: Yes, a chronic⁵, troubled procrastinator, yes. It's my core struggle.

RAZ: The core struggle of your life.

URBAN: Yes.

RAZ: So naturally, Tim started to blog about procrastination.

URBAN: You know, I've now done three posts on procrastination, and I've gotten more emails regarding those three posts than the other 80 posts I've written combined.

RAZ: Now, one thing about these posts that seem to resonate with people is this visual Tim came up with to describe what goes on in his brain when he's procrastinating⁶. He imagines these two cartoon characters fighting over control of his mental steering⁷ wheel.

URBAN: You know, you picture inside your brain there's a wheel. Like, I always picture one of those wheels on the boats, you know, the big thing with the bunch of...

RAZ: The "Steamboat Willie" wheel, right?

URBAN: Yeah, yeah, those big octopus⁸ wheels, yeah.

RAZ: Here's Tim on the TED³ stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

URBAN: 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. Now, I had a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people. Both brains have a rational decision-maker in them, but the procrastinators' brain also has an instant gratification monkey.

(LAUGHTER)

URBAN: Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator? Well, the instant gratification monkey does not seem like a guy you want behind the wheel. He lives entirely⁹ 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.

(LAUGHTER)

URBAN: Now, 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 visualize¹⁰ the future. We can see the big picture. 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. 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, and that's when we have a conflict.

(LAUGHTER)

URBAN: 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 that happened.

(LAUGHTER)

URBAN: Then...

(LAUGHTER)

URBAN: Then we're going to go over to the fridge and we're going to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.

(LAUGHTER)

RAZ: So I bet that's a - I bet that's an interesting Wikipedia page about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

URBAN: Oh, my God, it's so interesting.

RAZ: I bet it's amazing and lots of things to, like, hyperlink¹¹, click on.

URBAN: Oh, it's riveting¹².

RAZ: Yeah.

URBAN: Oh, God, so I read the whole thing. Then I went and read, you know, four other articles. Then I got into a whole Tonya Harding spiral. I read about her husband, who's an amazing character, by the way.

RAZ: Oh, man.

URBAN: Read about her husband, her husband's associate. This is the nightmare. So I'm doing this and the whole time the rational decision-maker's screaming at the top of his lungs...

RAZ: He's like, stop it.

URBAN: He's saying what the [expletive] are you doing? You have so much to do right now. This is - makes no sense and so - and so then me, I'm not actually having fun. I'm really, really upset while doing this. It's insane behavior, and it's this self-defeating kind of habitual¹³ behavior. It's a habit to let the monkey kind of take over.

RAZ: Then how do you, like, ever get anything done as a procrastinator?

URBAN: There's another character called the panic monster.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME MUSIC)

URBAN: And the panic monster, you know, is dormant¹⁴ almost all the time but emerges in a frenzy¹⁵ when there is some external deadline because the only thing that scares the monkey, the only thing that can overpower the monkey is the panic monster.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

URBAN: And this entire situation with the three characters, this is the procrastinator's system. It's not pretty, but, in the end, it works. Well, turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination. When there's 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 in situations when there is no deadline. So if you want to have a career where you want to be a self-starter, something in the arts, something entrepreneurial, there's no deadlines on those things at first.

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. Now, if the procrastinator's only mechanism¹⁶ of doing these hard things is the panic monster, that's a problem because in all of these non-deadline situations, the panic monster doesn't show up. He hasn't nothing to wake up for, so the effects of procrastination are not contained. They just extend outward forever. The monkey's sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren't there.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: So Adam Grant was saying that this can actually, like, be a good thing, right? And so I wonder whether slowing things down, like, you know, procrastinating has actually helped you out.

URBAN: In a way, yeah. In a way, it is, like, the good part of procrastination for me in my particular line of work is the impulse to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's take a just deep breath here and let's take our time. I definitely go slowly as any reader of "Wait But Why" will tell you. I do not come out with posts very quickly. Sometimes if I take 10 weeks to come out with a blog post and it's 30,000 words, that's something, but it's not really what a blogger's supposed to do. And so, for me, going slow is an important part of what I do.

RAZ: Yeah. I mean, think about your - like, your blog has been pretty successful and the sort of the conventional wisdom about the internet is, you know, fast, brief, like, clickbait stuff, and you get lots of readers and you post, you know, whenever you can.

URBAN: Oh, yeah, I absolutely - for me - I mean, it wasn't a good business plan to try to out BuzzFeed BuzzFeed. You know, they write a thousand articles a day. I'm going to write 2,000 articles a day. That's obviously - I have no chance of doing that. And I definitely believe that the ability of "Wait But Why" to gain a readership is directly tied to, you know, me spending 60 or 80 hours on every single post. And they don't come out very often, but when they do, the quality is apparent. It's apparent that someone spent a long time on that.

RAZ: I mean, that's a thing. Like, I feel like, you know, the idea of slowing down, even when it takes the form of procrastination, like, has huge benefits.

URBAN: Absolutely. I think that for someone who wants to kind of really invent something that seems new or that seems, you know, that really seems fresh, that takes emotional and mental toil¹⁷ over long periods of time. It doesn't just happen. But procrastination is different than slowing down. Procrastination often forces you to slow down, which is why it can be kind of an indirect asset.

So for me, all I cared about when I came out of college was doing creative - a creative pursuit of some kind, whether it was writing music or writing. And I didn't start doing, you know, one of those creative passions full time till I was 31. That procrastination set me back nine years there. So I think the answer isn't to be a procrastinator. That's someone who's not in control of their own life. The answer is to be in control and to know that it's smart to slow down and to do that in a controlled, intentional¹⁸ way.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: Tim Urban - his blog is called "Wait But Why." You can see his entire talk at ted.com. More ideas about slowing down in just a minute. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

1 procrastinator   

n. 拖延者, 拖拉者, 因循者

参考例句：

• General Peckem's communications about cleanliness and procrastination made Major Major feel like a filthy procrastinator. 佩克姆将军谈到清洁和拖延的那些简报，使梅杰少校感到自己象一个邋遢的、作风拖拉的家伙。
• This is also a great help if you are a procrastinator. 如果你是一个拖拉的人，这样会对你很有帮助。

2 procrastination   

n.拖延，耽搁

参考例句：

• Procrastination is the father of failure. 因循是失败的根源。
• Procrastination is the thief of time. 拖延就是浪费时间。

3 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

4 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

5 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

6 procrastinating   

拖延，耽搁( procrastinate的现在分词 )； 拖拉

参考例句：

• Begin while others are procrastinating. Save while others are wasting. 当别人拖延时你开始。当别人浪费时你节约。
• Before adjourning, councillors must stop procrastinating and revisit this controversial issue. 在休会之前，参议员必须停止拖延，重新讨论这个引起争议的问题。

7 steering   

n.操舵装置

参考例句：

• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration. 他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。
• Steering according to the wind, he also framed his words more amicably. 他真会看风使舵，口吻也马上变得温和了。

8 octopus   

n.章鱼

参考例句：

• He experienced nausea after eating octopus.吃了章鱼后他感到恶心。
• One octopus has eight tentacles.一条章鱼有八根触角。

9 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

10 visualize   

vt.使看得见，使具体化，想象，设想

参考例句：

• I remember meeting the man before but I can't visualize him.我记得以前见过那个人，但他的样子我想不起来了。
• She couldn't visualize flying through space.她无法想像在太空中飞行的景象。

11 hyperlink   

n.超链接

参考例句：

• The database is fully hyperlinked both within the database and to thousands of external links.该数据库在其内部以及和数千个外部链接之间充分实现了超链接。
• When you click on a graphic and a video clip plays,you have clicked on a hyperlink.当您按下一个图形和视频剪辑的发挥，你点击了一个超链接。

12 riveting   

adj.动听的，令人着迷的，完全吸引某人注意力的；n.铆接（法）

参考例句：

• I find snooker riveting though I don't play myself.虽然我自己不打斯诺克，但是我觉得它挺令人着迷。
• To my amazement,I found it riveting.但令我惊讶的是，我发现它的吸引人处。

13 habitual   

adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的

参考例句：

• He is a habitual criminal.他是一个惯犯。
• They are habitual visitors to our house.他们是我家的常客。

14 dormant   

adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的

参考例句：

• Many animals are in a dormant state during winter.在冬天许多动物都处于睡眠状态。
• This dormant volcano suddenly fired up.这座休眠火山突然爆发了。

15 frenzy   

n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动

参考例句：

• He was able to work the young students up into a frenzy.他能激起青年学生的狂热。
• They were singing in a frenzy of joy.他们欣喜若狂地高声歌唱。

16 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

17 toil   

vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事

参考例句：

• The wealth comes from the toil of the masses.财富来自大众的辛勤劳动。
• Every single grain is the result of toil.每一粒粮食都来之不易。

18 intentional   

adj.故意的，有意（识）的

参考例句：

• Let me assure you that it was not intentional.我向你保证那不是故意的。
• His insult was intentional.他的侮辱是有意的。