Wait But Why Summary

Tim Urban, the writer-blogger of Wait But Why, considers himself a true master of the art of procrastination, so he decided to write about it. The bad habit has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around him, so his purpose was to explain to the non-procrastinators what goes on in the heads of procrastinators, and why we are the way we are.

Urban begun his TED Talk “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator” with his experience as a government major that demanded many papers. He showed a chart about how most students schedule their work to write a paper, starting a little slowly but getting enough done in the first week, heavier days later, on and on until finally everything gets done. Then he displayed another chart to contrast how he

In short, “There is a difference. Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them, but the procrastinator's brain also has an Instant Gratification Monkey.” The Rational Decision-Maker makes rational decisions to do something productive, but the Monkey doesn't like that plan, so he takes the wheel. Next, the Dark Playground, is a place where procrastinators do leisure activities when they're not supposed to. It isn't fun at all because it is unearned, and one feels guilt, dread, anxiety, and

I wasn’t aware that I am unconsciously procrastinating on other things rather than homework. I am a deadline procrastinator even though I’ve improved so much this semester, and I’ve come to conclude that our lack of discipline is not worth our dreams, our future. It is not easy to overcome procrastination, but I too have a hypothesis: a major cause of my procrastination is that I have a creative mind, I am more inclined to art, to transform new ideas into objects, into sketches, and to be more active. Sadly, our education system is focused on protocols, processes, robot-like tasks and training. It is creating workers in fear of the higher class losing power. Creativity is part of the human being's integral identity and by killing it we lose a little of our humanity. I am not complaining about education; in fact, I love learning new things every day. I am so passionate about education that Leonardo da Vinci is my role model, a man who was interested in many areas of study but, in the end, he was more admired as an artist, a proof that procrastination makes us more