WEBVTT

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yeah

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so in college I was a government major

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which means i had to write a lot of
papers now when a normal student writes

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a paper they might spread the work out a
little like this

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so you know you get started maybe a
little slowly when you get enough done

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in the first week that with some heavier
days later on

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everything gets done things stay civil
and I would want to do that like that

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that would be the plan

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I would uh I would have it all ready to
go but then that's actually the paper

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would come along and then i would kind
of do this and that would happen every

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single paper but then came my 90 page

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senior thesis paper supposed to spend a
year on and you for a paper like that

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normal workflow was not an option it was
way too big a project so I plan things

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out and I decided I kinda had to go
something like this is how the year we

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go

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so let's start off light and I'd bump it
up in the middle months and then at the

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end I would kick it up to high gears a
little staircase

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how are going to just walk up the stairs
no big deal right

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but then funniest thing happened

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those first few months that came and
went and I couldn't quite do stuff so we

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had an awesome new revised plan

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and then but then those middle months
actually went by and I didn't really

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write words and so we're here and then
two months turned into one month turned

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into two weeks and one day I woke up
with three days until the deadline

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still not having written a word

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and so I did the only thing i could I
wrote 90 pages over 72 hours pulling not

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one but two all nighters humans are not
supposed to pull two all nighters

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sprinted across campus dovin slow motion
and got in just the deadline

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I thought that was the end of everything
but a week later I get a call

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it's the school and they say is this tim
urban and I say yeah and I say we need

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to talk about your thesis

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I say okay and they say it's the best
one we've ever seen

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that did not happen

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it was a very very bad pieces

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I just wanted to enjoy that one moment
when all of you thought this guy is

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amazing

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no no it was very very bad anyway

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today I'm a writer blogger guy i write
the blog wait but why

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and couple years ago I decided to write
about procrastination my behavior is

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always perplexed the non procrastinators
around me and I wanted to explain to the

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non procrastinators of the world

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what goes on in the heads of
procrastinators and why we are the way

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we are now I have a hypothesis that the
brains of procrastinators were actually

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different than the brains of other
people and test this

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I found an MRI lab that actually let me
scan both my brain and the brain of a

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proven non procrastinator and I so i can
compare them and I actually brought them

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here to show you today and I want you to
take a look carefully to see if you can

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notice a difference and I know that if
you're not a trained brain expert not

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that obvious but just take a look

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okay so here's the brain of a non
procrastinator

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now here's my brain

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there is a difference both brains have a
rational decision maker in them but the

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procrastinators brain also has an
instant gratification monkey

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now what does this mean for the
procrastinator well means everything's

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fine until this happens

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so the rational decision maker will make
the rational decision to do something

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productive

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the monkey doesn't like that plan so he
actually takes the wheel and he says

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actually let's read the entire wikipedia
page of the nancy kerrigan tonya harding

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scandals I just remember that happened
then

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then we're going to go over to the
fridge we receive is anything new in

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there since 10 minutes ago

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after that we're going to go on a
YouTube spiral that starts with videos

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Richard find men talking about magnets
and ends much much later with us

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watching interviews with justin bieber's
mom

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all that's gonna take a while so we're
not going to really have room on the

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schedule for any work today sorry

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now what is going on here

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this is the gratification monkey does
not seem like a guy you want behind the

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wheel he lives entirely in the present
moment he has no memory of the past

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no knowledge of the future and he only
cares about two things easy and fun

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now in the animal world that works fine
if your dog and you spend your whole

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life doing nothing other than easy and
fun things you're a huge success and to

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the monkey

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humans are just another animal species
to keep well slept well fed and

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propagating into the next generation
which in tribal times might have worked

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okay but if you haven't noticed now
we're not in tribal times

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we're in an advanced civilization and
the monkey does not know what that is

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which is why we have another guy in our
brain the rational decision maker who

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gives us the ability to do things no
other animal can do we can visualize the

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future we can see the big picture

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we can make long-term plans and he wants
to take all of that into account and he

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wants to just have us do whatever makes
sense to be doing right now

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now sometimes it makes sense to be doing
things that are easy and fun like when

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you're having dinner

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we're going to bed or enjoying a
well-earned leisure time that's why

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there's an overlap

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sometimes they agree but other time

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it makes much more sense to be doing
things that are harder and less pleasant

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for the sake of the big picture and
that's when we have a conflict and for

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the procrastinator that conflict ends to
end a certain way every time

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leaving him spending a lot of time in
this orange zone an easy and fun place

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that's entirely out of the makes sense
circle

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I call it the dark playground

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now the dark playground is a place for
all of you procrastinators out there

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know very well it's where leisure
activities happen at times when leisure

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activities are not supposed to be
happening

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the fun you have in the dark playground
isn't actually fun because it's

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completely unearned in the air is filled
with guilt

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dread anxiety self hatred all those good
for craft inator feelings and the

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question is in this situation with the
monkey behind the wheel

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how does the progress there ever get
himself over here to this blue zone a

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less pleasant place but we're really
important things happen

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well turns out that the procrastinator
has a guardian angel

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someone is always looking down on him
and watching over him in his darkest

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moments

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someone called the panic monster

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yeah

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now the panic monster is dormant most of
the time but he suddenly wakes up

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anytime a deadline gets too close or
there's danger of public embarrassment a

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career disaster or some other scary
consequence and importantly he's the

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only thing that the monkey is terrified
up now

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he became very relevant in my life
pretty recently because the people of

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Ted reached out to me about six months
ago and invited me to do a TED talk now

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of course I said yes it's always been a
dream of mine to have done a TED talk in

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the past

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but in the middle of all this excitement
the rational decision makers seem to

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have something else on his mind he was
saying we clear on what we just accepted

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do we do we get

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what's going to be now happening one day
in the future we need to sit down and

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work on this right now

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the monkey said totally agree but also
let's just open google earth and zoom

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into the bottom of india like 200 feet
above the ground we're going to scroll

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up two and a half hours to get to the
top of the country so we can get a

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better feel for India

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so that's what we did that day as six
months turned into four and then two and

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then one

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the people of Ted decided to release the
speakers and I opened up the website and

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there was my face staring right back at
me

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and guess who woke up

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so the panic monster starts losing his
mind and a few seconds later those

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systems and mayhem and the monkey
remember he's terrified of the pants

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monster boom he's up the tree and
finally finally the rational decision

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maker can take the wheel and I can start
working on the talk now

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the panic monster explains all kinds of
pretty insane procrastinated behavior

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like how someone like me could spend two
weeks

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unable to start the opening sentence of
a paper and then miraculously find the

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unbelievable worth work ethic still up
all night and right

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eight pages and this entire situation
with the three characters this is the

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procrastinators system

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it's not pretty but in the end it works
and this is what I decided to write

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about on the blog

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just a couple years ago now what i did i
was amazed by the response literally

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thousands of emails came in from all
different kinds of people from all over

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the world doing all different kinds of
things

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these are people who are nurses and
bankers and painters and engineers and

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lots and lots of PhD students

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and they were already saying the same
thing i have this problem too

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but what struck me was the contrast
between the light tone of the post and

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the heaviness of these emails

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these people were writing with intense
frustration about what procrastination

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to done to their lives about what this
monkey had done to them and I thought

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about this and I said at the press their
system works

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then what's going on why are all these
people in such a dark place well it

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turns out that there's two kinds of
procrastination everything I've talked

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about today the examples I've given they
all have deadlines when those deadlines

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the effects of procrastination are
contained to the short term because the

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panic monster gets involved but there's
a second kind of procrastination that

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happens in situations when there is no
deadline so if you want to have a career

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we want to be a self-starter something
in the arts something entrepreneurial

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there's no deadlines on those things at
first because nothing's happening at

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first not until you've gone out and done
the hard work to get some momentum to

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get things going

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there's also all kinds of important
things outside of your career that don't

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involve any deadlines like seeing your
family or exercising and taking care of

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your health

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working on your relationship or getting
out of a relationship that isn't working

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now if the craft inators only mechanism
of doing these hard things is the panic

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monster that's a problem because in all
of these non deadline situations the

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panic monster doesn't show up is nothing
to wake up for so the effects of

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procrastination they're not contain they
just extend outward forever and it's

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this long term kind of procrastination

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that's much less visible and much less
talked about then the funnier short-term

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deadline based kind

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it's usually suffer quietly and
privately and it can be the source of a

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huge amount of long-term unhappiness and
regrets and I thought you know that's

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why these people are emailing and that's
why they're in such a bad place

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it's not that they're cramming for some
project if that long-term

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procrastination is made them feel like a
spectator at times in their own lives

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you know the frustration was not that
they couldn't achieve their dreams that

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they weren't even able to start chasing
them so I

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read these e mails and i had a little
bit of an epiphany that I don't think

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nan procrastinators exist

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that's right i think all of you are
procrastinators

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now you might not all be a mess like
some of us and some of you may have a

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healthy relationship with deadlines but
remember the monkeys sneakiest trick is

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when the deadlines aren't there

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I want to show you one last thing I call
this a life calendar

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that's one box for every week of a
90-year life

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it's not that many boxes especially
since we've already used a bunch of

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those so i think we need to all take a
long hard look at calendar

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we need to think about what we're really
procrastinating on because everyone is

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procrastinating on something in life we
need to stay aware of the instant

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gratification monkey

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that's a job for all of us and because
it's not that many boxes on there it's a

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job that should probably start today but
maybe not today but you know sometimes

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soon

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thank you