Instant Gratification Monkey 🐒

Quote of Today

📝 It’s been 2 months since we’ve been writing to all of you wonderful people every Sunday! So far, we’ve spoken about: Your way to better communication, How to sleep better, How great leaders inspire action, and so much more!

❤️ We’ve gotten such great feedback from all of you and will continue to publish the best content for your self growth. Little changes can have a big impact.

👇Business as usual…

⚡️Focus of Today

📹 With +66 million views, Tim Urban, in his famous Ted Talk addressed procrastination. Something we most likely all face. Maybe you’re even procrastinating while reading this newsletter. We’re not complaining.

🧠 Simply put, procrastination is just the process of delaying or postponing something. Tim Urban prides himself as a procrastinator - he discusses 2 types of people:

🥳 Golden Nuggets of this Ted Talk:

• The human brain has an "instant gratification monkey" that is responsible for diverting our attention away from important tasks and towards pleasurable distractions.

• Procrastinators also have a "rational decision-maker" in their brain that is responsible for making important decisions, but it often gets overridden by the instant gratification monkey.

• Overcoming procrastination requires understanding your own personal triggers and finding strategies to overcome them. This may involve breaking down tasks into smaller steps, creating external deadlines, and finding ways to increase motivation.

• The key to success is to recognize when the instant gratification monkey is taking over and to take steps to regain control of your rational decision-maker.

• Non-procrastinators don’t exist. Everyone procrastinates just on a spectrum.

🤓Towards the last few minutes of the talk, Tim mentioned a 2nd type of procrastination when there is no deadline to something.

🙀Tim describes the ‘panic monster’ that is mostly asleep until there is an important deadline coming up. When there is no formal deadline - such as a long term goal like taking care of your health - the panic monster doesn’t show up.

🙁 Where that's much less visible and much less talked about than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind. It is usually suffered quietly and privately. It can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and regrets.

👁Tim gives some perspective in the picture above. Each box is 1 week in a 90 year life span. To his point, there’s not that many boxes left to procrastinate with.

💪 Use some of the points above and avoid procrastinating on things that matter.

📖 Content Feature

For even more actionable tips on avoiding procrastination, Tim Ferriss summarized a few ways on how to “Beat Procrastination”, here we go:

1. Organize your task: Keep it small, keep it defined

   • Begin by clearly defining the overall task, and identify it’s completion date, determine the first thing you have to do in each bucket.

2. Self-encouragement: Rig it so you can win.

   • Try doing less than you’re actually capable of to make it easier to just get started

3. Use restraints to keep winning: Set some limits

   • You work for just 20 to 25 minutes to keep from taking on too much at a time, after which you get a five-minute break. After a specified number of sessions, your breaks are extended.

With love,

— Amir and Erik

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