这个英文演讲，一定能治好你的拖延症晚期！（附视频&演讲稿）
你有拖延症吗？ 拖延症者的内心是怎么想的？他们的大脑是怎样运作的? 本次TED演讲者Tim先生将用诙谐的语言，贴切的比喻和贴近你我生活的故事来为我们剖析这些问题的答案。这是一个令所有人都会感同身受又倍受启发的TED演讲，不容错过。
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=v0193zizzjb&width=500&height=375&auto=0
今天，我们要分享的是TED的一堂演讲
《你有拖延症吗？》
我相信，我们都有。
只是程度不一样啊
这是今天演讲的主人公
Tim Urban
一位在拖延症方面很有建树的专家
一个对拖延症非常了解的人
我们一起看看他会怎么分析拖延症
面对拖延他该怎么面对？
以下文字为TIM演讲内容
在大学
我读的是政府专业
也就是说，我需要写很多论文
一般同学写论文时
他可能会这样安排
（此处有笑声）
你可能开头会慢一些
但是第一周有这些已经足够
后期再一点点的增加
最后任务完成
论文圆满结束
有条不紊
但是，我也想这么做
所以一开始也是这么 计划的
我做了完美的安排
但是我一直没有去履行我的计划
于是乎，论文最后是这样完成的
而且我的论文每一篇都是这样完成的。
我想你也是
我的每一篇论文都是这个情况
知道我长达90页的毕业论文任务
这篇论文理应花一年的时间来做
我也知道这样对待论文
我先前的工作方式是行不通的
这个项目太大
所以我制定计划
决定按照这样的方式工作
开头我会轻松一点
中期任务逐渐增加
到最后，我再全力冲刺一下
整体是这种稳步的安排
一层一层的走楼梯
多轻松啊
所以没什么大不了的，是吧？（笑声）
但后来，好笑的事情发生了
头几个月
我一直什么都没干
所以，我明智地调整了计划（笑声）
中间的几个月也过去了
我还是一个字没动
结果就变成了这样
然后时间从2个月变成了1个月
就像上面的图片一样
我前面的时间什么都没干
因为我知道我还有时间
时间从一个月变成了两周
又变成了3天
我别无选择
只能在接下来的72小时里面
连续通宵两个晚上赶论文
（一般人不应该连续通宵两个晚上）
90页论文赶出来了
我飞奔回学校
像电影里面的特写镜头一样
论文在恰好截稿的日期的最后一刻交上
我以为事情完了
但一周前，我接到一个电话
是学校打来的
他们说，是TIM吗？
我们要说一说你的毕业论文
论文非常非常的差劲（笑声）
结局我预料到了
这也是必然得到的结果
如今，我现在成为了一个博客写手
我决定写写拖延症这件事
我的行为方式总让身边非拖延症者感到不能理解
我想对身边非拖延症的人解释一下
我们拖延症患者的脑子是什么样的
为什么我们会拖延
拖延症患者的大脑实际上
和其他人的大脑不太一样
为了验证这一点
我们找到了核磁共振的专家
给我和另一个确定是非拖延症的人
进行了脑补扫描
我好将两者作比较
今天我带到现场
给大家展示一下
我希望大家仔细观察
看能不能注意到差异
这张是非拖延症的大脑
这张是我的大脑
（注意左边的猴子，那就是我的大脑）
看出来变化了吧
我的脑子里还有一只及时行乐的猴子
那么，这对拖延症患者来说意味着什么
平时可能没什么
可是，一到正经事的时候
这只猴子就开始出来
告诉你
现在，我们不做这件事也可以
于是，他抢过方向盘
告诉你，哈哈，我们先去打会游戏吧
于是，你打开了电脑
开始玩游戏，玩了一会
你又发现，今天的贴吧没有看
于是，你又去逛了一会贴吧
然后，你又会去翻翻冰箱
看看十分钟过去了，冰箱有没有什么变化
以上这些事情都要花时间
所以，今天你没有别的时间去做其他事情了
洗洗睡吧
（唉。。。）
这只猴子，他关注的不是未来
也不是过去
他只喜欢 简单和快乐
一辈子只追求一些简单和快乐的事情
那就是巨大的成功了？
我想每个人想要的不只是这些吧
你想要好的生活
你想要好的身材
你想要高学历
你想要尊重、钱、成功
但是你拖延着所有能让你进步和成功的事情
你却来这里跟我抱怨不公平
这也是很多人长期抑郁的症结
你想去做，却没有做
你责备自己，为什么行动力这么差
第二天还是该干嘛干嘛。。
那么，问题来了
为什么
你会有拖延症？
是因为你认为那些事情很困难
让你心里不舒服
让你身体不舒服
总之，你就是怕吃苦
简单和快乐的事情我们每天都会做
所以我们享受
比如，吃饭和睡觉
这两件事情不用别人督促
你一定可以做的很好
一个道理
你不愿意做的事情
他一定是你认为困难的事情
但恰恰是这些事情，能够改变你的状态
拯救你的现在
我们总在微信、微博里面看到
有人减肥成功了
有人却还在每天说着减肥
却从来不运动
有人坚持学习
考到了翻译等级考试
你却还在六级单词的第一个单词处徘徊
所以
孩子
醒醒吧
你什么都好
就是有拖延症而已
拖延症也并不可怕
请你与她战斗吧
明天，哦，不，现在
就去做最重要的事情
让自己看到不一样的你
去最近的操场吧
去感受运动的过瘾
去看想看的书吧
画出最喜欢的句子
滚蛋吧，
拖延症！！
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 all ready 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.
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. 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? 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.
And then --
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 upwith 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 -- sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion, and got it in just at the deadline.
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. Now, I had a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people.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. 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 that happened.
Then --
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.
"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!"
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. And the question is, in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does the procrastinator ever get himself over here to this blue zone, 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. 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."
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 Panic Monster starts losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
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.
Now, the Panic Monster 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, and then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up all night and write eight pages. 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. 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 --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. 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 Panic Monster, 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, 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. It's that long-term procrastination has made them feel like a spectator, at times, in their own lives. The frustration is not that they couldn't achieve their dreams;it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.
So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany -- that I don't think non-procrastinators exist. 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 every week 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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