Cartoon Guide of Why Procrastinators Procrastinate

The Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment.

Instant Gratification Monkey doesn’t understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him. He thinks why would we continue something when we could stop, which would feel better?

Why would we practice that instrument when it’s not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane.

In the monkey world, he's got it all! He eats when he's hungry, sleeps when tired and doesn't try anything difficult, making him a successful Instant Gratification Monkey.

The problem for the procrastinator is that he happens to live in the human world, making the Instant Gratification Monkey a highly unqualified navigator.

The Rational Decision-Maker, who's trained to make rational decisions and not to deal with competition over the controls, doesn’t know how to put up an effective fight. He just feels worse about himself the more he fails.

It’s a mess. And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground.

The Dark Playground : For us this could be defined as a place where leisure activities happen when they're not supposed to be happening, and we know it. It's a place to play!

It’s a mess! The Procrastinator plays but doesn't have fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread.

Sometimes the Rational Decision-Maker puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisure things, and since the Instant Gratification Monkey sure as hell isn’t gonna let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone loses.

And the poor Rational Decision-Maker just mopes, trying to figure out how he let the human he’s supposed to be in charge of end up here again.

As it turns out, there’s one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey.

The red thing here is The Panic Monster, he's dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there’s danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence.

The Instant Gratification Monkey is terrified of the Panic Monster. It explains why the procrastinator who can’t write a blog's first line over a 2-week span suddenly takes all-nighters, fights exhaustion, and writes this Deepstash article.

Why else would an extraordinarily lazy person begin a rigorous workout routine other than a Panic Monster freakout about becoming less attractive?

The UNlucky procrastinators don’t even respond to the Panic Monster in desperate moments and end up running up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of self-annihilating shutdown.

Of course, this is no way to live, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why:

1) It’s unpleasant. Panic isn’t fun for anyone. And the too much time in the Dark Playground could be spent with a well-earned leisure with a schedule instead.

2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. He ends up underachieving and fails to reach his potential, which eats away at him over time and fills him with regret and self-loathing.

3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Most Procrastinators, even with the Panic Monster, get work done, but goals like exercise, healthy slow meals, hobbies or even a career change, are the important ones for us, but usually ignored by the Panic Monster.