The Procrastination Matrix

拖延矩阵

The Instant Gratification Monkey is the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate—he’s a primal part of you who lives to maximize the ease of the present moment. Read more about him.

瞬足（瞬间满足）猴子是让你形成拖延，它是你大脑的一个部分—他让你能够在暂时的时刻最轻松的生活的一种原始机制。

The Panic Monster is the part of your brain that wakes up and has a freak out when a deadline draws too close. He’s the only thing the monkey is terrified of and the only reason a procrastinator ever manages to get anything done.

当截止日期临近的时候，你大脑中恐慌的怪物就会被唤醒并感到崩溃。这是唯一可以让猴子感到恐慌并且是唯一的理由让一个拖延者设法去完成一件事情。

Rational Decision-Maker—inner-self.

合理决策制造者—内在自我

High school is full of regular deadlines and short-term project, and even long term projects had sub-deadlines that force pacing upon you.

高校都充满了有规律的截止日期和短期计划，而且即使长期计划也都有在其之上的截止日期去按步就班的完成。

There was definitely an Instant Gratification Monkey in my head, but he was cute more than anything. With deadlines looming constantly, my Panic Monster was never fully asleep, and the monkey knew that while he could have some time at the wheel each day, he wasn’t the one in charge.

在我们的大脑中会确信出现一只瞬足的猴子，但是他显得比其他事物更加可爱。伴随着截止日期的隐隐到来，我们恐慌的怪物从来不敢去安稳睡觉，这时猴子知道他可以在每一天拥有控制权的时候，他也并不是唯一拥有掌控权的。

My Brain in High School:

PanicMonster/Rational Decision-Maker/Instant Gratification Monkey

Rational Decision: “If I get my homework done now, I can enjoy some good TV later tonight.”

Monkey: “or……we can dick around for the next four hours and make everything stressful!”

Four hours later

Panic Monster:”AAHH”

Rational Decision:” That’s enough monkey, It’s really time to work now.”

在高校中的大脑：

恐慌的怪物/合理决策创造人/瞬足猴子

合理决策者：“如果我现在就完成了我的作业，我今晚后续的时间就可以看一些自己喜欢的电视节目”

猴子：“或者……我们可以游手好闲四个小时然后让所有的事情变得紧张！”

四小时后

恐慌怪物：“啊啊啊”

合理决策者：“够了猴子，该干活了。”

College is not like high school. The assignments are big, with a lot of time between deadlines, and since you’re not a child anymore, classes don’t treat you like one—no one forces you to pace anything. As a Government major, most of my classes involved a couple papers, a midterm, and a final exam over a four-month stretch, which means most of the time, there were no hard deadlines anywhere on the horizon.

大学不像是高校。这些任务更繁重，在截止日期间你有大量的时间，因为你也不再是个孩子了，课程也不会再那样对待你—再也没有人再推着你慢慢进行一些事情。就像一个官方主修科目，在四个月的时间里大部分的课程包含了两张纸，一场其中考试和一场期末考试，也就意味着大部分的时间，在我们的视野中没有特别困难的截止日期存在。

Without deadlines to occupy him, my Panic Monster, who can’t think too far ahead, began to spend a lot of time in hibernation. My Rational Decision-Maker, who never realized how much he had relied on the Panic Monster, began to have difficulties carrying out his plans.

离开截止日期去提醒他们，我的恐慌怪物就无法想的更远，然后就开始花费大量时间去冬眠。我的合理决策创造者，她也就认识不到他可以依靠恐慌怪物多少，开始非常困难的执行他的计划。

Rational Decision: “The only way to get the most out of college classes is to do the assigned reading.”

Monkey:” Never ever ever!”

合理决策者：“完成大部分大学课程的唯一方法是去做有计划的阅读。”

猴子：“决不，决对不！”

The more the Panic Monster slept, the more confidence the monkey gained. The Rational Decision-Maker, the only member of the brain who sees the world clear, was concerned—he knew that college assignments were a lot bigger than high school assignments, and that pacing was no longer something to scoff at, but a critical thing to do. He’d put his foot down about social commitments when a deadline began to draw closer, but that wouldn’t solve the problem.

恐慌怪物睡的越深，这只猴子就会获得越多的自信。合理决策制造者作为大脑群体中唯一一个对世界有清晰判断的成员，显得格外被关心—他知道大学任务比高校任务要繁重的多，按步就班的模式不再是一种值得嘲笑的事情，而是一件需要判断的事情。当事情的截止日期开始临近，他需要去履行他的社会承诺，但是这并不能解决问题。

A:”Hey! We’regoing to a movie. Wanna come?”

B:”Would loveto, but I’ll skip it because I have to work.”

(RationalDecision: “With only two days until this paper is due, that was a gooddecision.)

Monkey: “Adorable”

2.5hours later

A:”What agreat movie and life experience!”

C:”How’d the workgo?”

A:“嗨，我们要去看电影，一起来吗？”

B：“我很想去，但是我去不了，因为我还要去工作。”

（合理决策者：仅需要两天就可以交付这个作业，真是一个正确的决策。）

猴子：“崇拜”

2.5小时后

A:“多棒的电影和人生体验呀！”

C：“工作进行的怎么样？”

The RDM( rational decisionmaker) would slip further into despair, and only the times when things reachedtheir most dire would anything change.

合理决策制造者将会把未来走到绝望，只有这个时候，当所有的事情都快形成悲剧的时候，事情才有所转机。

This is due in5 hours and I haven’t started yet how did I let this happen again???

Panic Monster:”AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH”

……

交付时间只有五个小时了，我还没有开始，我怎么会再次让这种事发生？？

恐慌怪物：“啊……”

It didn’t matter how obvious adecision seemed to the RDM, it was becoming clear that he was totally unable tocontrol the monkey without the Panic Monster’s help.

这和一个合理决策创造者做了一个多么正确的决定没有关系，事情很容易发展成他完全无法在离开恐慌怪物的情况下控制这只猴子。

Wait…wait…there’sbeen an extension.

RationalDecision:”There’s been an extension praise every fuck shit……This is too good tobe true. Just minutes age I was swearing at myself for letting things get tosuch a dire situation, filled with regret. And now, as if from God himself. I’mgiven a new lease on life. I can now have all the extra time I was fantasizingabout. I can relax, really dig into this paper, and crush it. This is just thebest--”

Monkey:”Playtime up the dick!”

等一等……可以延期了。

合理决策者：“这个延期真他么的值得称赞……真的实现了实在太棒了。几分钟前我还在诅咒我自己讲事情拖到这么一个悲惨的情况，感到非常后悔。现在，就好像来自于上帝的恩赐，我的生命中上了一课。我现在拥有了我幻想的所有额外的时间了。我可以放心了，真正钻研作业，碾压这些课题。真的是太棒了—”

猴子：“学鸡毛，嗨起来”

Last year, I came across alittle diagram that I think holds the key to these questions. It’s called theEisenhower Matrix:

去年，我无意中发现一些表格，我想这个表格可能是解决这些问题的关键。这个表格称之为艾森豪威尔矩阵。

The EisenhowerMatrix:

URGENT      NOT URGENT

IMPORTANT   QUADRANT 1   QUADRANT 2

IMPORTANT AND URGENT   IMPORTANT AND NOT URGENT

NOT    QUADRANT3      QUADRANT4

IMPORTANT  URGENT AND  NOT  URGENT AND

NOT IMPORTANT  NOT  IMPORTANT

艾森豪威尔矩阵:

紧急的不紧急的

重要的第一象限第二象限

重要而紧急的重要而不紧急的

不重要的第三象限第四象限

紧急而不重要的不重要也不紧急的

The Eisenhower Matrix places anything you could spend your time doing on two spectrums: one going from the most urgent possible task to the least urgent, the other going from critically important to totally inconsequential—and using these as axes, divides your world into four quadrants.

艾森豪威尔举证将你所需要消耗时间做的事情放置到了两个范围：一个是从最紧急的可能的任务到最不紧急，另一个是判断出重要的任务到完全不重要的任务—并且使用这个表格进行削减，将你的世界划分成四个象限。

The matrix was popularized in Stephen Covey’s famous book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and is named after President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was well-known for being tremendously productive, which Covey credits to his “first thing first”attitude on how to spend your time. And to Eisenhower, the “first things” were always the important ones. He believed you should spend nearly all of your time in Quadrants 1 and 2, and he accomplished this with a simple D-word for each quadrant:

这个矩阵在史蒂芬.科维的著名畅销书中被普及，《高效人士的七个习惯》这也是在德怀特.艾森豪威尔总统之后命名的。艾森豪威尔由于其可怕的高效执行力而被大家认知，科维将其归功于他用“要事第一”的态度去支配时间。对艾森豪威尔来说“要事第一”经常是其重要的一些事。他相信你可以花费将近你所有的时间在第一象限和第二象限，并且他使用简单的D单词完成每个象限的内容。

The EisenhowerMatrix:

URGENTNOT URGENT

IMPORTANTQ1Q2

DO NOWDECIDE WHEN TO DO IT

NOTQ3Q4

IMPORTANTDELEGATE IT AWAYDELETEIT

艾森豪威尔矩阵:

紧急的不紧急的

重要的第一象限第二象限

立即去做决定什么时候去做

不重要的第三象限第四象限

委派他人去做清除不做

And that’s fantastic for Dwight fucking Eisenhower. But you know what Dwight clearly didn’t have in his bald head? An all-powerful Instant Gratification Monkey. If he had, he’d know that a procrastinator’s matrix looks like this:

这个不切实际的东西出自于德怀特意淫艾森豪威尔。但是你们知道德怀特清楚他那个秃头中没有的东西？一直全能的瞬间满足猴子。只要他愿意，他可以让拖延者的矩阵变成这样：

The EisenhowerMatrix:

URGENTNOT URGENT

IMPORTANTQ1Q2

DO WHENDELEGATE TO

IT GOESFROMFUTURE YOU

URGENT TO

APPALLINGLYDIRE

NOTQ3Q4

IMPORTANTDO WHEN Q1DO NOW

IS URGENT(and maybe also just do forever)

艾森豪威尔矩阵:

紧急的不紧急的

重要的第一象限第二象限

当事情发展到委派给将来的你去做

骇人听闻的

悲惨境地时再做

不重要的第三象限第四象限

当第一象限变紧急时再去做立刻去做

（甚至也许是一直做下去）

One way to look at this is that

each human life has a certain number of “time points,” and it’s up to you how

you “spend” them. Consider the difference between someone who spends 30 hours a

week in Q2 and someone else who only manages two hours of Q2 time a week. Since

Q2 is, for many, where real advancement happens, over the course of their

lives, the 30 hour person will accomplish 15 times as much in her life as the

two hour person. And in reality, the multiplier is probably even larger than

15, since progress builds upon progress and the rate can accelerate.The distinction between an ordinary person and an extraordinary person might simply come down to the differences in how they allot their time points.

看待这个问题的其中一个方法就是每一个人的一生都有确定的“时间点”的数量，这就取决于你怎样使用他们。一些人每周会花费30个小时在第二象限而两一些人仅仅会在第二象限每周投入2小时，我们可以思考一下两者的不同。就第二象限而言，对于大多数人来说，真正进步的出现，是在他们生活中的锻炼中出现，完成30小时的人比完成2小时的人在生活中实现15倍的超越。在现实中，这个倍数可能要远大于15倍，进步的叠加使得成长率可能成指数级增长。归根结底，普通人和非凡的人之间的区别也许就在于他们是如何分配自己的时间点的。

Clearing away delusion

消除迷惑

If we want to improve our time point spending, the first step is learning to see the world through a crystal clear Eisenhower Matrix—which means shaking off all delusion.

如果我们想要改善自己的对时间点的使用，首先就是要学习使用完全清楚的艾森豪威尔矩阵对世界进行认知—也就是说要摆脱所有的迷惑。

We need to develop well-thought-out definitions of urgent and important, which will be different for everyone and requires a deep dig into the highly personal question,” What matters most to me?”

我们需要深思熟虑后发展出自己的紧急而重要的概念，这些概念对每个人来说都是不同的并且需要深入的向自己的内心提问，“那些事对我来说是值得称最的？“

Brett Mckay defines” important tasks” as things that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals. This is broad and straightforward and a good core sentence to come back to when assessing importance down the road.

布雷特.麦凯将“重要的任务”定义为需要为长期的使命，价值和目标做出贡献的事情。这就需要广阔又直率，还有一个好的核心判断，当将来的某个时刻到来时做出评估。

You may also want to gather some hard data on how you’re currently spending your time points, by logging your hours for the next week and seeing just how many of them fall into each of the four quadrants (you’ll probably be unpleasantly surprised by the results).

你也许也愿意收集一些详细的数据看你是怎么消耗你当前的时间点的，这个可以通过记录你未来一周的时间并且看看他们中有多少分布在四个象限之中（你有可能会对结果表示惊奇和不爽。）

Becoming the boss of your brain

成为你大脑的主宰

Once you feel clear on your Eisenhower Matrix and where its various boundaries lie, you’ll need to do the hard part and gain control over how you spend your time points within it. Which for a procrastinator, is life’s greatest challenge.

一旦你在你自己的艾森豪威尔矩阵中感觉清晰并且探索到矩阵边界的位置，你就需要去做困难的部分并且在其之中对你如何使用你的时间点增加控制。这对于一个拖延者来说，是生命中最大的挑战。

The rewards of gaining control are obvious. It’s incredible how much a person can get done—while also maintaining a balanced lifestyle—if they’re in control of their time points pending. And those not in control will lose most of their time points to Q3 and Q4 and feel like they don’t have time for either their work or their lifestyle, all while accomplishing very little. Time point allotment is everything.

增加时间控制的好处是显而易见的。如果一个人能够控制他们对时间点的使用。他们能够完成的事情是难以置信的—与此同时也能够维持一种生活方式上的平衡。同时那些无法控制的人们将会在第三象限和第四象限上消耗他们的大部分时间点并且会感觉他们没有足够的时间用在他们的工作和生活方式上，这两者他们都只能实现一点点。时间点的分配就是一切。

A procrastinator’s reality is that his inner self—his Rational Decision-Maker—is the grand master of his life in theory, but in practice, only a spectator. The procrastinator’s RDM goes,helplessly, where the waves take him, shuffled from activity to activity by the primal forces of the monkey and the Panic Monster. Until a procrastinator’s RDM can walk, on his own, from Q4 to Q2, whenever he wants to, he’s not fixed.

一个拖延者的现实是在他自己的内心深处—他的合理决策制造者—是他生命方向的导师，但是在实践中，只是一个旁观者。拖延者的合理决策制造者是无助的，他的方向随着一个又一个的事件被猴子和恐慌怪物最原始的力量所左右。直到拖延者的合理决策制造者能够以自己的方式从第四象限走到第二象限，无论何时他想要出发，他都不会再困惑。

At its deepest level, it comes down to a battle of confidence. The RDM and monkey each have their own idea of how to spend your time points, and whichever of them is more confident—whoever has a stronger belief that they’re the alpha dog in the relationship—ends up prevailing. The difference between a procrastinator and a non-procrastinator is simply that the procrastinator’s monkey and RDM both believe that the monkey is the alpha dog, and the non-procrastinator’s pair both believe that the RDM is the boss.

在最深得层级上，实质上是一场关于自信心的战斗。合理决策制造者和猴子都有各自关于使用时间点的主意，无论他们谁更有信心—无论谁更强大，都相信在两者关系中有一个是绝对的跟班—最终成占到上峰。拖延者和非拖延者的区别简单来说就在于拖延者的猴子和合理决策制造者都认为猴子是那个跟班，而非拖延者的两者认为合理决策制造者是老板。

But as firmly entrenched as these confidence levels may feel, the monkey and the RDM share a single pool of confidence with a fixed sum—when one’s confidence goes up, the other’s goes down—and the balance can begin to be tipped by the smallest changes, taking your storyline with it.

但是也许能够感觉到信心的程度已经足够的牢固坚定，猴子和合理决策制造者还是处于一个单一的信心撞球混合的环境中—当其中一方信心增加，另一方就减少—这个平衡将会随着微小的变化而倾斜，就看你使用哪种故事情节去推动。

Figuring out the starting point of this chicken and egg paradox is each procrastinator’s personal quest. But auniversal starting point is to try to remain aware as much as possible. Aware of what’s important, aware of what’s urgent, and most importantly—aware of the monkey. The monkey is not your friend, and he never will be. But he’s also part of your head and impossible to get rid of, so get in the habit of noticing him.

计算出先有鸡还是先有蛋这个悖论就是每一位拖延者个人需要探索的。但是一个普通的起点就是尽可能的保持意识。意识到什么是重要的，意识到什么是紧急的，以及最重要的—意识到猴子。猴子不是你的朋友，而且永远也不会是你的朋友。但是他却是你头脑中的一部分，并且不可能摆脱他，因此你需要有警惕他的习惯。

But he thrives off of unconsciousness. Simply by noticing him and saying to yourself, “Yup, there’s the monkey, right on cue,” you can start to tip the balance out of its default state. Then maybe one day, you’ll find yourself nonchalantly shoving the monkey off of the wheel with the simplest.” No monkey, not now.” And your life will be forever change.

但是他会在无意识中发展。简单的注意他并对自己说，“是的，这有一只猴子，果然不出所料，”你可以不再处于默认状态而去开始倾斜你的天平。也许有一天，你会发现你可以使用最简单的方法轻易的让这只猴子原理控制源“没有猴子，也没有当下。”那么你的生命将会永远改变。