Wait But Why – inside the minds of procrastinators

Tim Urban from Wait But Why gives a TED talk that details what’s in the mind of a procrastinator that causes them to make such poor decisions sometimes. Spoiler alert: it involves monkeys and monsters.

I’ve been reading Wait But Why for a while now ever since stumbling upon Tim’s excruciatingly-long dissertation on how cars came to run on fossil fuels and despite the best efforts of the oil industry, electric cars can and will prevail.

A brief history of fossil fuels, climate, cars, batteries and Tesla

What is Wait But Why I hear you ask? It’s a website by a guy called Tim Urban who is an extreme procrastinator, like I can be. When something intrigues him, he researches it until he’s read all there is to read about that subject. Then he digests and regurgitates that information for us to consume.

His writing is excellent being very descriptive, humourous and detailed all at the same time. And his comical cartoons and charts (similar in style to The Oatmeal) that accompany his posts make them all the more enjoyable.

So when I heard that he had done a TED talk, I eagerly awaited its release on the podcast. As it turns out we didn’t have to wait all that long at all as his talk was released just last week.

Watch this hilarious talk on who Tim is and what is inside his mind that makes him such a huge procrastinator. If that’s not enough to tempt you suffice to say that he had an MRI done and it revealed that there was a monkey in his brain.

For even more titilation, read his back-story on how he planned for his TED talk.

Author: Dave

Dave is many things. Most importantly, he's a and a father to Ellie and Jack. Almost as important, he's British (though he lives in Florida). Following on from there, he's a WordPress developer and civil engineer, has an unhealthy love of hummus, is vegan, likes cider, wants to travel to Iceland and Japan, loves solving puzzles and is a realist. View all posts by Dave

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