Our Ted Talk speaker today is a government major by the name of Tim Urban. Tim Urban will be speaking about procrastinating and explaining why we procrastinate from his point of view. In a non-procrastinator head there’s only the voice of a rational decision maker, procrastinating does not exists. The procrastinator on the other hand has two voices they tend to listen to those voices are the rational decision maker and the Instant gratification monkey. The instant gratification monkey is the voice that wants to stir away from any hard, boring, or long time consuming things. When the rational decision maker starts doing its job the monkey is always there disagreeing and changing the plan. In the ted talk Tim stated, “The Instant Gratification Monkey 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” (Urban). Easy and fun are all the things that a human needs to live by besides having a goodnights rest and being well fed according to the monkey. These things may have worked in tribal time but were in modern day where we actually have to work hard and make rational decisions to live a happy successful life. Rationally thinking helps you make some of the best decisions in your life, Tim stated “We can visualize the future, we can see the big picture, and make long term plans” (Urban). The rational decision maker just wants us to do whatever makes sense to be doing right now.

Although rational decision making seems like the best thing we should be doing, it isn’t called for in every single situation. For example having dinner, going to bed, or on leisure time; you don’t need to think too hard and that’s when rational decision making and the instant gratification monkey overlap. They overlap because they both finally agree on something that works for the both of them. When it comes to securing your future and being successful you’ll most definitely consider listening to the rational decision making voice. Tim then went on to say, “Sometimes they agree but other times it makes more sense to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant for the sake of the big picture” (Urban). This is also when conflict starts to happen, due dates and paper work are starting to catch up and the monkey doesn’t want to give up having fun for the boring work. Things get a little shaky and the panic monster comes out, Tim stated, “The panic monster is dormant most of the time but wakes anytime a deadline gets too close or there’s danger of public embarrassment a career disaster or some other scary consequence” (Urban). Being that the panic monster is the only thing that scares off the monkey, it cause the procrastinator to procrastinate the entire time until their deadline.