Trust the Procrastinator | Valerie Brown | TEDxShanghaiWomen

once upon a time a long time ago in a faraway land called South Orange New Jersey there lived this sweet and kind and adorable little girl her name was Valerie yeah I'm talking about me at the age of 14 I was elected to give my 8th grade graduation speech but no matter how much I tried to focus on writing that speech I couldn't I kept getting distracted and I would do everything else instead as an adult I came to realize that the act of postponing or delaying something is called procrastination well procrastination got the best of me as a result on my graduation day I had no speech I walked up to that stage and my hands were sweating my heart beat faster than a normal pace fear encompassed me I was shaking like a leaf how are words gonna exit my mouth when I could barely breathe then something wonderful happened I relaxed and I found my voice I began to share with my captive audience all of the wonderful and exciting adventures of my middle school years now I may have left out some of the more colorful highlights like the fact that I was the one that started the food fight in the cafeteria and that on the last day of school I kissed and what was his name well you know what it's probably better off that I don't remember just in case he ever watches this but my audience they weren't just listening to me they were nodding they were smiling they were enjoying the product of my wait for it I'm pausing for a fact they enjoyed the product of my procrastination when I finished they applauded it loudly for me I even got a standing ovation okay well maybe it was just my parents but I remember that story as if it was yesterday because I changed on that day and history would repeat itself time and time again procrastination would become a part of me but it was a part of me that I desperately tried to keep a secret why because society frowns upon procrastination I thought that I should feel embarrassed and ashamed I never wanted to be thought of as one of those type of people I mean we're taught early on that procrastination is bad there are articles written studies conducted research compiled by mental doctors physical doctors experts from here there and everywhere saying fight it kill it conquer it run over it get back in your car and run over it again they treat procrastination as if it's a fatal disease but it's not I mean I'm not sitting on my sofa eating Oreo cookies and flipping through TV channels I am running my office in East China I am raising my five children and I am trying to leave a positive impact on the world that I live in and I'm doing all of this as a procrastinator more importantly I'm amazing at it so I stand before you today and I'd like to explain to you why you should learn to trust the procrastinators in your life maybe not all of them but at least the ones who deserve your trust and that may be the person that you see standing in the mirror but wait since I'm sharing secrets let me share another one I irritate non procrastinators one reason I believe that I do this is because we live in a microwaveable society everybody wants everything right now I am NOT a right now type of person I am more of a put it off too later procrastination princess but you can trust that the princess and me will get the job done it may not be on your time or your time or your time but it will be right on time I get my inspiration right before the deadline my juices flow and I become a creative genius and I'm not the only one many creative people throughout history were great procrastinators one that may surprise you was Leonardo da Vinci yes Leonardo da Vinci was a great procrastinator yet we love him for his creativity and his brilliance now knowing that Leonardo da Vinci was a great procrastinator it may not be the push that you need to start trusting the procrastination princesses and or princes in your life I get that I understand but we are not necessarily the villains in the story let me tell you why I think the basic problem for non procrastinators and dealing with procrastinators is one word frustration we frustrate and we irritate others in fact I have a very good friend his name is Zechariah Henderson and I irritate and frustrate him all the time one reason is because Zack is what professor and author Adam grant refers to as a pre craft inator and he wrote about this in his article the six secrets to true originality a procrastinator is someone who has a strong impulse to get things done as soon as possible so for Zack or zum-zum Zack as I call him the art of procrastination makes him sick on his stomach I admire Zack and his very structured and orderly approach to life but it took that some time to learn to trust my an orderly and and well unstructured and disorderly approach to living but to his surprise into his dismay he did learn to trust this procrastinator I'm gonna share with you how that happened and at the outcome of this story I want you to think about how you feel toward this procrastinator about a year or so ago I was scheduled to cook on the Shanghai TV show called you are the chef well being the great procrastinator that I am I didn't prepare so the night before the taping Zack who is my deputy at the time began to panic and get frustrated because I wasn't prepared so his procrastination came in direct conflict with my across the nation and I began to doubt my own abilities I was lying awake in that bed that night I was unsure unprepared anxious worried what was I going to do in front of the cameras the next day I woke up after little to no sleep I was irritable annoyed with myself for not preparing and a little bit fearful about what was going to unfold on that fair day at that studio can you guess what happened the cameras turned on and so did I it was a fantastic experience so how did I go from a panic to a cool confident and confident chef well I may not have prepared the way the my good friend the procrastinator had expected me to but I knew the steps to take ingredients and make them into delectable dishes I understood what was at stake and I knew the deadlines in Don Norman's article why procrastination is good he writes that the deadlines are extremely important to procrastinators we may wait into the very last minute to pull the rabbit out of the hat but we honor that deadline just in time so for Zach he couldn't see my preparation so what he couldn't see was unknown and what was unknown was uncomfortable what he didn't know and what he didn't understand is say he was like a passenger in my procrastination mobile and I was the driver and as the driver I knew the destination I just didn't have a map to share with him so that he would understand where we were going but my instinct was a perfect GPS so do you think that he changed his approach to me after that would you have he did he did and even to this day when I get worried and I do sometimes he says Valerie don't worry because we both know that there's something going on up there and at the end of the day everything will be alright yay right Wow so do you think that Zack and I are the only ones screaming in the chair go procrastinator go he's not actually screaming it but you get my point but we're not we're not there are other Crusaders out there that understand that procrastination can be more than unrealized dreams and empty promises okay so we all get the bad right we all get the bad we've heard it already like like diet Mondays don't act like you don't know what diet Monday is diet Monday is the day that comes after a fat burger Friday super spaghetti Saturday so sad Sunday cuz my jeans just don't fit but not to worry because tomorrow's Monday will start our diet and then that day comes and our good friends say you know tomorrow is Taco Tuesday so we throw up our hands and pull on a pair of jogging pants and say we'll start our diet next Monday which never comes images like those give procrastination of bad reputation you know it's not that cut and dry there is a myth that when a procrastinator puts off a task that they actually put it out of their mind but we don't well at least not all of us we think about it we Mull it over we weigh our options and a lot of times we come out with a better solution than our first idea this is what happened on my eighth grade graduation speech and my preparation for you are the chef this is my process this is what works for me Frank Partnoy wrote a book called wait the art in science of delay he took he looks at procrastination differently he looks at active and passive procrastination so active procrastination is when you have a task to do but instead of doing that task you do another task like cleaning your house paying your bills or writing your New York Times best-selling novel sounds familiar someone once said there is no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else so Adam grant said that Leonardo da Vinci was procrastinating when he was supposed to be painting the Mona Lisa it was actually flexing his active procrastination muscles so all of his diversions led to his curiosity which led to innovations in optics and light and the reason he is known as the Renaissance man I call this purposeful procrastination it's so worth it don't you agree okay but then there's past the procrastination past the procrastination on the other hand is we have a task to do but instead of doing it you sit on that sofa eating those Oreo cookies and flipping through the TV channels in my own life I call this distracted nation because I'm totally distracted by activities that add no value to my life at all and this is the area that I have to work on so what I've done is that I've adopted the approach that writer Raymond Chandler uses it's called the do-nothing approach so to do nothing approach you decide on a period of time maybe an hour and you decide that you'll either do that task that you really don't want to do or you do absolutely nothing no TV no computers no talking no social media no nothing so that bad task actually looks not so bad it works trust me so where does that leave us where are we now let's go back to our fairy tale scenario so we pick up the story where distract nation has gotten the best of our passive procrastinator and he finds himself totally distracted and lost in the disenchanted forest never to be heard from again the procrastination princess well she's on her way to the castle to do her chores in her tasks but she stopped to slay a dragon and to kiss her frog whose name she can't remember but the procrastinator the procrastinator is the hero of our story because the procrastinator was brave enough to take on the challenge and learn to trust the procrastinator as a result we all lived happily ever after [Music] [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 8,670

Rating: 4.6825395 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, China, Life, Achievement, Behavior, Brain, Career, Choice, Motivation, Women

Id: v6jr1g7G4gE

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2016