Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED
发布时间 2016-04-07 00:59:35 来源
摘要
Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, but he's never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window -- and encourages us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.
For more from Tim Urban, visit Wait But Why: http://www.waitbutwhy.com/
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中英文字稿 
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 taste civil.
在大学时，我主修政府学，这意味着我必须写很多论文。一般学生写论文时，可能会像这样分散工作。所以，你知道的，可能会开始得有点慢，但在第一周就能做足够的工作，然后在后面几天加班，就能完成所有任务，事情会井然有序。
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.
我会像这样去做。那将是我的计划。我会准备好所有要做的事情，但然后会出现一份文件，我会做类似于这样的事情。每一份文件都会发生这样的情况。
But then came my 90-page senior thesis. A paper you're supposed to spend a year on. I knew for a paper like that, my normal workflow 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.
然后就来到了我90页的毕业论文。这是一篇你应该花一年时间完成的论文。我知道对于这样的论文，我平常的工作流程是行不通的。它是一个太大的项目。于是我规划了一下，决定采取如下方式进行。这是一年的计划。
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 gears. It's like a little staircase. How hard are you going to just walk up the stairs? No big deal, right?
所以我开始时会轻松一些，然后在中间几个月逐渐加大难度。最后，我会提升到高档位。就像是一座小楼梯。你只需要多费一点力气爬上楼梯，没什么大不了的，对吧？
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 those middle months actually went by and I didn't really write words. And so we were here.
然后最有趣的事情发生了。那几个月过得飞快，我却没能完成一些事情。所以我们制定了一个令人兴奋的新修订计划。然后中间的几个月竟然过去了，我并没有真正写下任何文字。所以现在我们就在这里。
And then two months turned into one month. It turned into two weeks. And one day I woke up with 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.
然后两个月变成了一个月，接着又缩短为两周。有一天，我醒来时，离截止日期只剩下三天。我仍然没有写一个字。于是我只能做我能做的事情。在72小时内，我写了90页纸，连续两个晚上都没睡觉。人类不应该连续两天不睡觉。我在校园中飞奔，以慢动作跳进，最后在最后期限之前完成了。
I thought that was the end of everything. But a week later I get a call. 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.
我以为那是一切的结束。但是一个星期后，我接到了一个电话，是学校打来的。他们问：“你是Tim Urban吗？”我回答：“是的。”他们说：“我们需要讨论你的论文。”我答道：“好吧。”他们说：“这是我们见过的最好的论文。”然而，这并没有发生。那是一篇非常非常糟糕的论文。我只是想享受在你们所有人都认为这个人很厉害的那一刻。不，不。它非常非常糟糕。
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 is always perplexed to 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.
无论如何，今天我是一位作家、博主、家伙。我写博客，等等，但为什么要写呢？几年前我决定写有关拖延症的文章。我的行为总是让我身边那些不拖延的人感到困惑。我想向全世界的不拖延者解释一下拖延者的思维过程和我们为什么会变成这个样子。
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. And so I could compare them. And I actually brought them here to show you today. And I want you to take a look carefully to see if you can notice a difference. And I know that if you're not a trained brain expert, it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK?
现在我有一个假设，认为拖延症患者的大脑与其他人的大脑实际上是不同的。为了测试这一假设，我找到了一家愿意让我扫描自己的大脑和一位被证明不是拖延症患者的人的大脑的MRI实验室。这样我就可以对比它们了。而且我确实已经将它们带到这里，今天想让你们仔细观察一下，看看是否能注意到差别。我知道如果你不是一个专业的脑科学专家，可能不那么明显，但还是请你好好看一看，好吗？
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.
所以这是一个非拖延者的大脑。而这是我的大脑。两者存在着差别。这两个大脑都拥有一个理性的决策者，但是拖延者的大脑还有一个立即满足猴。
Now what does this mean for the procrastinator? Well, it means everything's fine until this happens. 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 Tanya Harding scandal, because I just remember that that happened. Then we're going to go over to the fridge. We're going to see if there's anything new in there since ten 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.
那对于拖延者来说意味着什么呢？好吧，这意味着一切都很好，直到这种情况发生。所以一个理性的决策者会做出理性的决定去做一些有产出的事情，但是猴子不喜欢这个计划。所以它实际上接管了控制权，然后它说，实际上，让我们阅读南希·科里根和塔尼娅·哈丁丑闻的整个维基百科页面，因为我刚记起那个事情。然后我们会去冰箱看看十分钟前是否有新的东西。之后，我们会开始一个YouTube的螺旋，从理查·费曼谈论磁铁的视频开始，最后在很久很久以后，结束于我们观看贾斯汀·比伯的妈妈的采访。这一切都会花些时间，所以我们今天实际上没有时间做任何工作，抱歉。
Now, what is going on here? The Instagram notification 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.
现在，这里发生了什么事情？这个Instagram通知猴子似乎不是你想让他坐在方向盘后面的人。它完全生活在当下。它没有过去的记忆，没有未来的知识，而且它只关心两件事，简单和有趣。
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. He has to keep well slept, well fed, and propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times might have worked okay. 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.
在动物世界中，这个道理是行得通的。如果你是一只狗，整个生命都只做轻松愉快的事情，那你算是一位巨大的成功。对于猴子来说，人类只是另一种动物物种。他必须保持良好的睡眠、饮食，繁衍后代，在部落时代这也许是行得通的。但如果你没注意到，现在我们已经不是在部落时代了。我们生活在一个先进的文明社会，而猴子不知道那是什么。
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.
这就是为什么我们的大脑里还有另外一个角色，理性的决策者，它赋予了我们与其他动物不同的能力。我们能够想象未来，看到全局，制定长远计划，而理性决策者希望考虑到这一切，并希望我们做出当前最明智的选择。
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.
现在，有时候做一些简单有趣的事情是有道理的，比如吃晚餐、上床睡觉或享受劳动之余的休闲时间。这就是为什么有时候它们会重叠。有时它们意见一致。但在其他时候，为了大局着想，做一些更难和不那么愉快的事情更有意义，这时我们就会产生冲突。对于拖延症患者来说，每次这种冲突的结果往往是相同的，导致他花费很多时间处在这个橙色区域里。这是一个简单有趣的地方，完全超出了理智范围。我称之为黑暗游乐场。
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 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?
现在，黑暗游乐场是一个你们所有的拖延症患者都非常熟悉的地方。这是一个在不该进行休闲活动的时候进行休闲活动的地方。在黑暗游乐场上的乐趣实际上并不好玩，因为它完全是不应得到的，空气中充满了内疚、恐惧、焦虑、自我厌恶，以及所有那些典型的拖延者的情绪。问题是，在这种由猴子控制方向盘的情况下，拖延者如何将自己带到这个蓝色地带呢？这是一个不那么愉快的地方，但是真正重要的事情在这里发生。
Well, it turns out that 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 it 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 that the monkey is terrified of.
嗯，事实证明，拖延症患者有一个守护天使，一个在他最黑暗的时刻陪伴着他和保护他的人。这个人被称为“惊慌怪物”。现在，惊慌怪物大部分时间都处于休眠状态，但是它会突然醒来。每当截止日期临近或者面临公开尴尬，事业灾难或其他可怕的后果时，它就会醒来。最重要的是，它是猴子最害怕的东西。
Now, he became very relevant in my life pretty recently because 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 in 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 also let's just open Google Earth and let's zoom into the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground, and we're going to scroll up two and a half hours until 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.
现在，他最近成为了我生活中非常相关的人，因为泰德的人在大约六个月前联系了我，并邀请我做一个泰德演讲。当然，我说是的，一直以来，我都梦想过过去曾经做过一次泰德演讲。但是在所有的兴奋中，理性的决策者似乎有别的想法。他在说，我们对我们刚才接受的事情清楚吗？我们明白将来会发生什么吗？我们需要坐下来立刻解决这个问题。而猴子则说，完全同意，但也让我们打开谷歌地球，然后将视角缩放到印度的底部，大约海拔200英尺的地方，然后向上滚动两个半小时，直到到达印度的顶部，这样我们可以更好地了解印度。所以那天我们就这样做了。
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, who 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.
尽管原本计划六个月后才公开演讲者身份，但经过四个月、两个月，最后仅剩一个月时，Ted的人们决定提前公布演讲者。我打开网页，看见了自己的照片盯着我，猜猜谁被吓醒了。紧接着，恐慌怪兽开始疯狂地失控，几秒钟后，整个系统陷入混乱。而那只猴子，还记得他害怕恐慌怪兽，嘭地一下就爬上了树。最终，终于，理性的决策者能够掌控一切，我可以开始准备演说了。
Now, the panic monster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinated 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. And this is what I decided to write about on the blog just a couple years ago.
现在，恐慌怪物解释了各种相当疯狂的拖延行为，比如像我这样的人可能会花两个星期都无法开头一篇论文的第一句，然后奇迹般地找到难以置信的工作动力，整晚熬夜写了八页。而整个三个角色的情况，这就是拖延者的系统。虽然并不完美，但最终它起了作用。这就是我几年前决定在博客上写的内容。
Now, 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 are nurses and bankers and painters and engineers and lots and lots of PhD students. And they were all writing saying the same thing, I have this problem too.
现在，当我这样做的时候，我对回应感到惊讶。几乎有成千上万封来自世界各地、从事各种不同工作的人的电子邮件涌入。这些人有护士、银行家、画家、工程师，还有很多很多博士生。他们都在写同样的话，说我也有这个问题。
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.
但是让我感到震惊的是帖子中轻松的语气与这些邮件的沉重感形成鲜明对比。这些人对拖延给他们的生活带来的巨大困扰和这只猴子给他们带来的影响感到极度失望和沮丧。
And I thought about this and I said, if the procrastinator system works, then what's going on? Why are all these people in such a dark place?
我思考了一下，然后说道，如果拖延者制度真的有效，那么这些人为什么会陷入如此困顿的境地呢？
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.
哦，事实证明，拖延有两种类型。我今天讲的所有内容，我举的例子，它们都有截止日期。而且，当有截止日期时，拖延的影响仅限于短期，因为会有紧迫感来帮忙解决。
But there's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline. So if you wanted 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, because nothing's happening at first, not until you've gone out and done the hard work to get some momentum to 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.
然而，还有一种无截止日期的拖延现象会在某些情况下发生。如果你希望从事艺术、创业等需要自我发起的职业，最初并没有什么截止日期，因为最初没有什么进展，直到你努力工作、积累动力才能让事情开始起步。此外，还有许多与你的职业无关的重要事情，也没有任何截止日期，比如与家人团聚、锻炼和关注健康、改善关系或结束不健康的关系。
Now, if 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's nothing to wake up for, so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained, they just extend outward forever.
现在，如果拖延者完成这些困难任务的唯一机制是恐慌怪物，那就有问题了，因为在所有这些非最后期限情况下，恐慌怪物不会出现，它没有什么可唤醒的，所以拖延的影响不受限制，其延伸无穷无尽。
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.
这种长期拖延远不如那种有明确截止日期的、有趣的短期拖延引人注目，也不容易被人谈及。它通常默默地私下承受，却可能是长期不快乐和后悔的重要根源。
And I thought, you know, that's why these 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. You know, the frustration was not that they couldn't achieve their dreams, it's that they weren't even able to start chasing them.
我想，你知道的，这就是为什么这些人会发电子邮件，也是为什么他们处境艰难的原因。并不是因为他们在为某个项目而努力，而是长期的拖延让他们觉得有时候自己的生活就像是一个旁观者。你知道的，他们的挫折并不是不能实现他们的梦想，而是连开始追逐梦想的机会都没有。
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.
所以，我读了这些电子邮件，有一个小小的顿悟，我认为没有不拖延的人存在。没错，我认为你们所有人都是拖延症患者。可能并不是所有人都像我们中的一些人那样一团糟。有些人可能与截止日期保持健康的关系，但请记住，猴子最狡猾的伎俩是在没有截止日期的时候出现。
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. And 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.
现在，我想向您展示最后一件事情。我将其称为人生日历。这是一个90年人生每周的方格。虽然不算很多方格，但我们已经用掉了很多。因此，我认为我们都需要认真地审视这个日历。我们需要思考我们真正拖延的事情，因为每个人都会在生活中拖延某些事情。我们需要时刻意识到即时满足猴子（指引导我们寻找即时满足感的那一部分自己的心态）。这是我们所有人的责任。而且由于日历上的方格不多，这个责任可能应该从今天开始。
Well, maybe not today, but. You know, sometimes soon.
嗯，也许不是今天，但是，你知道的，很快就有可能发生。
Thank you. Thank you.
谢谢你。谢谢你。