Your death date can help you manage procrastination
Years, to months, to weeks to days to hours…until the deadline. You somehow managed to do it but what if you never had the deadline? Can procrastination help you then? How can death date help you manage it? Read on to find out.
This blog was originally published on Your death date can help you manage procrastination — Devanshi Singh (wordpress.com)
Are you thinking…let’s see which new movie came on Netflix?
Or let’s see what else Millie Bobby Brown said…
Or let’s check the score once again…
Or just get the fuck out of this website and will read about procrastination tomorrow?
Well, you are not alone. I wrote this article when I was forced to join a session and I’m publishing it after one week.
So, you know I’m on your team too.
I want to talk about Procrastination in which I’ve read 2–3 books, watched multiple videos, read I don’t know how many blogs, listened to podcasts, and whatnot. And yet, after all these intense R&Ds, I’m still figuring out how NOT to procrastinate. I’m guessing there are more people like me because it would be just scary if everyone was a Rational Decision Maker.
If you don’t know about procrastination, well either you are way good of a planner and executor or you are just ignorant. If you wait to complete your assignment right before the deadline, or just say 1 hr. before the next session, congratulations, like it or not you are on my team.
You’re a procrastinator.
The people who wait for the deadline to be dead and do the task right before it, are procrastinators. The people who don’t fall into the trap of deadlines and just enjoy not doing the task at all are chronic procrastinators.
But this unique TED video by Tim Urban talks about the brain of a serious procrastinator and how it helps in creativity.
But wait, hold on…that doesn’t mean you should be proud of it start practicing it right now.
When people procrastinate, they have the task in the back of their mind, but they give in to their instant gratification monkey mind. The rational decision-maker brain is pushed aside until the deadline is so close that you would rather want to be dead before the deadline. Right before the due date, the panic monster appears to scare off the monkey brain and the rational brain takes over the steering wheel and completes your task at 2 PM, just 1hr before the session.
But did you know, all the time when we procrastinate, we are cooking some crazy ideas for the task?
Yes, that’s true.
But the trick is, it usually works when you have deadlines.
So, what happens if you don’t have deadlines for tasks like working for your own site, creating your own app, writing blogs for your portfolio (that’s me), maintaining a healthy relationship, or getting out of a bad relationship?
You stay stuck in the loop.
And instead of having creative eureka moments, you have regrets, anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and shitty moments. Right?
So, Tim Urban comes up with the idea of giving you a deadline and helping you have healthy procrastination where your rational decision-maker brain and monkey brain can live happily ever after.
The life calendars!
Your Life in Weeks — Wait But Why
He designed a calendar of 90 years of human life.
Which will have 4693 weeks or 4692.86 to be precise (only if you are going to live till the age of 90😉)
And, if you are my age i.e., 30 then you have lived about 33% of your 90 years of life.
1564 weeks are already out.
That means, you now have 3129 weeks.
And most of us will be able to work with average efficiency say till we are 70 years old. (max out)
Now you have,
3129–1043= 2086 weeks or 480 months for a useful, satisfied, happy life.
2086 week to achieve your dreams, love your kids, spouse, partner, and parents, make a name for yourself, live in a dream house, drive a dream car, visit places, pursue hobbies, run a business….and the list goes on and on and on.
The numbers can be different for everyone, but the point is
there is a DEADLINE my procrastinator buddy!
There are limited numbers of weeks or months or years.
Tim says by having this deadline in our mind we can manage procrastination and leverage it to boost our creativity while getting things done. There is a way to live with a monkey mind, a rational decision-maker, and a panic monster.
It’s not all bad.
I don’t know how it will help me because I watched it recently.
Hey, I’m a guilty procrastinator. 🙅♀️
But I hope it will help you or at least now you know for how many weeks you are going to live. 😍
Just kidding!
It’s a nice practice.
You don’t have to live with another panic monster counting down your numbers on earth.
Just saying that we can implement the advice by Tim, in our day-to-day life.
RIGHT?
Well, we don’t have to start today…but you know what I mean. 😉
Procrastination is good but with a deadline.
Do you know any famous procrastinators?
Dalai Lama, Leonardo Da Vinci, Moby Dick writer Herman Melville, Harry Potter writer J K Rowling, Mozart, and many more.
Here is the video of Tim Urban Ted Talk that I know you wanna watch. It’s pretty awesome and I think it is the most-watched Ted Talk with 50 million views.
(Don’t jump to YouTube to watch more Ted Talks, you’ll end up spiraling. Forget it, who am I kidding, you might have already opened YouTube on another tab)
To get in touch with me follow me on Instagram @itsbydevanshi.
This blog was originally published on Your death date can help you manage procrastination — Devanshi Singh (wordpress.com)
