Welcome to solved, this self-help podcast for smart
people. My name is Mark, Manson
three-time number one New York Times bestselling author.
And this is my co-host and longtime lead researcher Drew.
Bernie now, Drew and I have been in the personal growth and
mental health space for a combined 30 years now.
And we've had enough, we've had enough of the bullshit empty
promises and fake Solutions every episode of solved.
Our goal is to create the most comprehensive evidence-based
value delivering podcast on Earth on that specific topic.
And today's topic is procrastination.
Now the catch of solved is that whatever topic we cover our goal
is that it is the last time you will ever feel a need to listen
to a podcast on that topic. And this is the last time we can
make an episode covering this topic.
Therefore, our promise to you is that if you make the commitment
to get through the entire episode and implement the
advice, your procrastination will be solved.
Drew. I have two things to say before
we get started. Okay?
Before we solve procrastination for the entire world.
You're welcome everybody. First thing is so listeners,
don't know this. But this is the second episode
that's going out of this podcast but it this is actually the
first one we're recording and ironically we procrastinated
this episode like three months. How many months did it take us
to shoot the streets? So be confident listener that
you're you're hosts are experts up there with the topic here
about to discuss. Yes, exactly.
And then the second thing I want to say is is just I want to get
in before all of the comments from people who are gonna say,
oh, I'll listen to this later. You're not funny.
You're not same joke. I've been doing this for 15
years every time I create any content around procrastination.
The first comment is always, I'll get to this later.
And I'm like, yeah, you're very cute.
Those people haven't even made it that far yet, know this far
yet. So, yeah, that's true.
So, all right, so today Is procrastination.
We are solving procrastination. Just a reminder to The Listener,
the whole premise of this podcast is that this is the last
podcast that you should ever have to listen to on this topic.
Drew, and I, and our research team have gone.
Just absurdly in-depth researching trying to understand
this topic. It is this episode is absolutely
comprehensive. It is everything you need to
know about procrastination and then some you are probably going
to want to vomit when you hear the word procrastination, by the
end of this. But the goal is that you don't
have to ever listen anything about procrastination ever
again. You don't have to read another
book. You don't have to take another
seminar, it's all here. So first, some statistics
procrastination is something that pretty much everybody
struggles with. This is not surprising 95% of
adults report procrastinating at least some of the time to me the
most surprising part of that is. Who the fuck are the five
percent? Yeah, show me.
These superhuman robots that never procrastinate.
Yeah, I think 5% of people are liars 42% of adults report,
procrastinating regularly and then 25% of adults.
Report being chronic procrastinators, which is
essentially means that you are just literally procrastinating
everything all the time, right? Anything you try to do.
You end up procrastinating, which that is, that's a shocking
amount. 25% of people. So this is a huge problem.
This is like This is a massive Affliction that you know, gets
to us all. So some of the things that we're
going to go through Procrastination as a topic is
really interesting because it is it is such a common human
occurrence that there is thought on it going back, 2500 years.
So we went back 2500 Years and we're going to cover basically
the entire Corpus of human thought and approach towards
procrastination, since the beginning of civilization.
And it's actually kind of surprising because a lot of
things that we take to be true or a lot of our assumptions of
what procrastination is. Our relatively modern, they're
not, they're pretty recent and and, you know, people in the
agent world or people times wouldn't necessarily agree with
us and how we approach the topic of progress, the nation.
Ultimately, we're going to get to the bottom of what is
procrastination? What like fundamentally like,
what is happening in your brain? What is happening?
Psychologically, when you're procrastinating something, when
you're not doing the thing, you know, you should be doing.
And why does it happen? Why does it even possible,
Right? Like if I know something is good
for me. Like, Why is It possible that I
can choose not to do that. That like kind of doesn't make
sense in a certain philosophical way.
Of course, we're going to cover all the latest research on
procrastination. We're actually going to cover
the entire history of research on procrastination and because a
lot of it got it wrong and a lot of the conventional wisdom and
typical self-help advice today. Is based on that old research
that got it wrong and the new research is says some things
quite different than maybe what you're expecting.
And, of course, we are going to go through, at least a dozen
different tactics and strategies that the listener can Implement
to help lessen procrastination in their lives.
I think if there's one thing that I've learned preparing for
this episode, Drew is that I don't think procrastinations
ever something that we just like, completely get rid of, I
think it is. It just seems to be kind of a
side effect or a cost of being humans who have agency and have
complex brains. We'll get more into that but I
do think it is incumbent on all of us to do all the things that
we can to lessen or mitigate the procrastination in our lives.
And I do think that is very much attainable for most people
relatively quickly. So, before we get into it,
anything you want to add Drew. Um, what are you most excited
for? I mean this you procrastinating?
Oh God. I mean, you hit the nail on the
head. This is a very common, very
pervasive problem. And we all struggle with it.
And I think there's just there's a tragedy kind of a tragic side
to it as well, because you know what, what else is there to do,
but do the things you want to do in life, right?
And then we put those things, those very things off.
So I think a lot of people are going to find.
There's just going to be a big nod fest going on while you're
listening to this. And yeah, I'm excited to get
into it because it's something I struggle with quite a bit.
I don't know if I'm a chronic procrastinator but I've there's
chronic strains of procrastination that I
sometimes. Run into for sure sure.
I have a lot of experience with this, just being an author of
person for my entire career so we'll we'll get into that.
And you mentioned something which is like kind of the
tragedy of it. Is that what will actually
discover later on the episode is that the proportion of
procrastination is actually Directly correlated to how
important we see a task being in our lives.
So it's like the more important. The task is, the more likely we
are to procrastinate it, which is So screwed up, right?
Yeah, like what? Like, that's so unfair.
Why does that happen? Yeah, I'm digging into why that
is. But yeah, it's fascinating.
But before we dive in, there's gonna be a lot of information in
this podcast in between me and you and our research team.
I think we went through like what 13 14 books and 100
research articles. So the help everyone get through
this, we put together a companion, PDF guide, it's 65
Pages. Includes a full summary of the
show, all of our citations and references has book
recommendations, and it includes some practical takeaways and
lessons as well. So if you're listening to this
you can get the PDF guide for free by going to solved.
Podcast.com slash procrastination that's solved.
Podcast.com slash procrastination.
The link is all in the description if you want to get
through there. All right let's get started.
Okay so let's start off with a couple definitions for us
because it I was actually surprised how hard it was to
actually pin down a technical definition of procrastination.
And even the one that I chose as we'll see, there's a little bit
of wiggle room with it. So there's a researcher named
Pierce Steel in up in Canada. He did a big meaty analysis in
2007 which is basically what A meta-analysis is for Listeners
is that it's when a researcher takes all of the relevant
studies or data and then kind of like, finds a way to combine
them into like a super study. So this guy steals did this in
2007. And he crafted this definition
of procrastination, based on all the research at the time, which
is this Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily, delaying
something, despite knowing that there could be negative
consequences for doing so. And when I look at this, I kind
of like break it down in the three factors.
So the first factor is an unnecessary delay, right?
I think this is important because prioritization is not
procrastination. Like, if my plan is to write a
script this morning but then my wife gets in a car accident and
I go to the hospital. Like, that's not procrastination
because something more important has now interfered.
It's only when the delays completely unnecessary in
fabricated, the second one is that there are negative
consequences. So, a lot of times we need to
delay, something that are actually are not negative
consequences. There are plenty of things that
you can delay. And There's actually nothing
that immediately. There's no immediate feedback,
that makes you feel bad for that.
I think this is why so many people.
Procrastinate things like working out or eating well
because the that feedback loop is so insanely long.
You know, it's like 10, 20, 30 years before you actually
experience the repercussion for that decision, it's very easy to
convince yourself that like there is no downside to eating
the pizza tonight and sit on the couch for another day.
And then finally, the third factor is despite knowing and
this is where it gets tricky. Like I actually found this whole
definition very interesting because all three of these
factors are ultimately subjective, like who says a
delay is unnecessary who's to decide what's necessary and
what's not necessary, right? Who's to say, what a negative
consequences like you say potato, I say potato and who
says that you're aware or that you know my personal experience
is that most of my procrastination is.
I'm I'm usually bullshiting myself on all three of these
factors. I've convinced myself that there
is no any Of consequence that's going to happen or the negative
consequences, very minor. It's not a big deal.
I've convinced myself that the delay is actually extremely
necessary like like when else. Am I going to be able to watch
this Netflix show if not for right now?
And and then of course, I I bulshit myself of saying that
like I'm aware. I I know that this is gonna cost
a day it's like well who knows, right?
Like maybe you know a book will write itself.
Yeah. Right.
It happens all the time. I definitely ran into this too
and talking with people about this and can I prepping with
this? And just talk with people around
my life too, I definitely ran into this.
They're like well is it so bad that you put this off, is there?
Yes a lot of that that goes into it.
So yeah, it's very subjective. It's yeah.
And it is there's a whole question around this of
awareness and knowledge which is actually very much.
What we'll get into that, we're getting a little bit ahead of
myself. So the other thing that kind of
surprised me and I guess well I guess it makes sense is that
there is a cultural element to this that I think is worth I
seen at least just for a few minutes especially because I
know the audience for this podcast is extremely
International. So it turns out the
procrastination is to a certain extent, culturally defined or
culturally relative. There are some cultures where
showing up late, it's not a huge deal, turning something in late
is not really judged or viewed as something negative.
It actually reminded me. So I lived in Brazil for a few
years. My wife is Brazilian, and it's
one of the things that drove me crazy, as an American down
there, said, if you, if you ever do a business meeting with a
Brazilian first of all, they show up like 20 minutes late.
Then they spend the first 20 minutes like talking about their
weekend and telling you about like their kids soccer game and
you know, asking you what kind of beer you like and then it's
like not until like minute 45 that you actually get to the
thing that you're supposed to be talking about.
And what's interesting down there is that if you ever like
try to cut that time down, They see it as impolite and rude that
they see you as doing something wrong.
Whereas, coming from American culture, where I'm like, dude, I
was here at 10 a.m. it's 10:45. We still haven't even like
talked about the business thing, I see it as rude, that they're
like, wasting my time. So this concept of time and
punctuality is very culturally dependent.
And what I found interesting, there's a social psychologist
from from the Netherlands named gear.
Hofstead who did a bunch of work on just, like, cultural factors.
He I think he called it. I think it's called cultural
Dimensions Theory, or something like that.
And He talked about how. certain cultures have different
orientations towards time and they have different
understandings of like What is something that's done on time or
not. So some cultures, very much
prioritize like Western cultures or like English and cultures
very much prioritize, like following the clock.
Like, if I say we're going to do a thing at 11:30 and you show up
at 11:35 to me, you've now delayed things on necessarily
it's causing negative consequences so on and so on,
it's procrastination. Some cultures, if you say 11:30
and they show up at 11:40, as long as they show up in a way
that's like, feels Justified or is like emotionally consistent
with the people around them, it's not seen as being late, you
know, it's like oh well yeah, we're gonna be here 15 minutes
ago but like I was hanging out with my, my brother and my
cousin and we were having a great conversation and so it
just took longer and like that scene as a completely Justified
response. And so, it's interesting that I
guess coming back to the subjectivity of procrastination,
some cultures, see it, very strictly in terms of task
getting completed on time and some cultures, see it more in
terms of like emotions and relationships like in Brazil.
If I don't sit there and kind of chit chat for 20 minutes, that
is seen as some sort of productive failure because I'm
not doing the work to maintain the relationship with that
person. Okay.
Yeah. Anyway, it's just very
interesting. We're not going to spend a ton
of time on this, but I like I said, I'm bringing it up simply
because we do have a big International audience.
They're going to be people listening to this and Latin
America and the Middle East, and the Mediterranean, and some of
these places that are not so rigid with the clock itself,
they're more kind of emotional social, and emotionally based,
and it's just worth considering, and I think it really just comes
back to I think probably a more effective way to just frame this
entire discussion is Why do we consistently fail at?
Doing the things, we wish we could do right?
Like we have things that we know are good for us.
And we want to do them yet. We don't do them.
Let's go back. I think the best way, I decided
the best way to do this is to just go start at the beginning.
So the first recorded discussion of procrastination and what what
it is, and why it happens does start with Plato.
He is a few dialogues that get into it.
The first one is called protagoras, there's a quote from
Socrates in there, he says, surely no one goes willingly
towards the bad or what he believes to be bad.
Neither is it in human nature. So it seems to want to go toward
what One Believes to be bad in the good.
Plato puts for us, like a really interesting argument.
He kind of argues a procrastination like doesn't
actually exist. They'll like, if you're not
doing the thing, it's because deep down you actually don't
think it's worth doing that. If you thought it was worth
doing, then you would just go do it.
And it's kind of interesting that the earliest take ever on
procrastination is like super spicy like Like that, I wouldn't
expect that. I would expect something like,
you know, I don't know. Start small or, you know, like,
Give yourself a little reward, a piece of candy.
If you, like, if you do something that that you've been
putting off, and it's played, it was like, no, no.
It's it's impossible to do something that you don't think,
is the best thing to do, which I think just into like our gut
intuition. Everybody's got into it and it's
just like, that doesn't feel true.
Does that feel true to you? Absolutely not like definition.
You brought up early and we'll get into that a little more too.
But right, despite knowing part, right?
I just, I feel like anybody, you talk to they've probably got at
least a handful of things in our life that like, they know or
good for them and they don't do it.
So Plato's full shit. No, that's so.
Okay, I'm being I'm being facetious.
The interesting thing about Plato is.
So all almost all of his work is written in the forms of
dialogues and those dialogues revolve around.
It's usually soccer tees, having a debate, a philosophical debate
with some other prominent person and in most of the dialogue,
Socrates just kind of like clowns the the person and
there's a lot of ambiguity around Plato's work for a couple
reasons. One is it's sometimes unclear,
because Socrates was a real person and Plato was somebody
who like followed and learned from Socrates.
So, in the early dialogues, it is hard to differentiate between
what Socrates thought. And what in Plato is just
reporting what he thought versus like, what Plato actually
thinks. And he's just putting his words
in the Socrates as mouth. So, there's a lot of ambiguity
around that and talk to tease. Had a reputation for being a bit
of a troll. The second piece of ambiguity is
that sometimes Plato would just create a dialogue to just kind
of raise points and play with those ideas.
And because they, it was a conversation between two
historical figures. It's sometimes unclear if he
actually believes what, he's right.
So later on in the Republic, which was actually seems to be
very clearly. Plato's thoughts and ideas, he
kind of backtracked, a little bit and and the Republicans the
first place that you see this idea of what he called the
tripartite soul. And its he basically says that
the the mind is divided up into three different parts and it's
actually pretty incredible because this idea still persists
today. Like, you still see it all over
psychology and philosophy today. So the three parts of the mind
is he called the rational, the spirit and appetite of One way
to think about that is that there's like the animalistic
self, the part of you that has hunger and impulses and
Cravings. There's the emotional part of
yourself, that's the spirit right?
It's the anger. It's the love.
It's the passion, it's the joy, it's the sadness, and then you
have the rationale, which is like the calculating and the
logic and all that stuff. Plato's argument, is that He
used the metaphor of a chariot which is that the rational Part
of Yourself is like the driver and a chariot, and he has two
horses in front of him. One horse is the animalistic.
Appetite of Part of Yourself. The other one is the spirit
emotional part of yourself, and it is your job to guide those
horses in the right direction. but, They're wild horses and so
sometimes they're going to Buck and they're gonna run and
they're gonna go try to go in different directions and it's
gonna be chaotic, right? And in the Republic, Plato said
that it is Essentially what procrastination is or back, then
they called it a crazy. This experience of not doing the
thing that you know you should do is when Essentially your
horses, don't go where you want them to go.
It's like, Hey, we should go to the gym and the horses just
start going towards the fridge for another piece of gold Pizza
in your, like, wait, no. The next thing you know, you're
there and so I feel like that is a little bit more relatable and
a little bit more understandable.
But I think the takeaway from Plato is that He ultimately saw
a crazier. or procrastination, as a knowledge problem, it was
Your problem isn't that you don't have willpower.
The problem isn't that you don't have discipline.
The problem is that you just aren't aware enough of the
repercussions of your choices. He kind of puts forth this
argument that like if people were just more knowledgeable and
educated on what their choices were causing in their life, they
wouldn't make those choices. And I personally think this is a
very idealistic view. I think it's, it feels nice.
I mean, there's something to it clearly like knowledge.
Certainly does help probably at the margins, but I also just
think it's, it's, I don't know. It's too, Like Roses and
Rainbows. It doesn't match my personal
experience and I don't think it matches.
Most of the people that I know who really struggle with
procrastination and not doing the right thing, But it is.
It's a nice. it feels good to believe, it feels good to
believe like, oh, if I just understood what I was doing when
I was going back to the fridge and set of the gym, then I
wouldn't do it right? And you actually like you still
see this a lot, it's funny. I'm gonna I'm not gonna name
names but I was on social media the other day.
And I see this stuff all the time.
So this is a very prominent person in our space posted this.
They said your entire life will change.
When you realize that you have to sacrifice short-term freedom
in order to earn long-term instant gratification will kill
your dreams. It has over a quarter of a
million views and 7,000 likes, right?
No shit Sherlock, right? Like everybody knows that the
information, we all know that. Like it, it's not you're not
moving the needle by telling us that.
But I think there is a part of ourselves a very idealistic part
of ourselves that just feels like if we were reminded of
that, then it wouldn't be so hard.
It would be a little bit easier to get up early in the morning
and, you know, put on your workout shoes and, you know,
start with the hardest task of your day.
And, you know, all those things that we wish we could do.
So that's kind of the first school thought.
We're gonna return to it quite a bit, it like most of Plato's
ideas. They never really go away.
It's interesting. We actually you and I talked to
Pretty much the most prominent researcher on procrastination in
the world, fuchsia, Sora. And even talking to her, she
brought this up multiple times, this never really disappears,
but it starts, it starts with Play-Doh.
Yeah, the second School thought. I want to bring up so around the
same time the Buddha was doing his thing and Buddhism has an
interesting kind of spin-off of the the platonic idea that I
think is worth talking about just briefly, simply because I
think when towards the end of the episode, when we talk about
interventions and tactics and strategies, there is a little
bit of the Buddhist Approach that I think makes sense.
So Buddhism saw procrastination is ignorance of oneself you know
Plato saw it is like an ignorance of the consequences of
your action. The Buddha saw it as an
ignorance of your own cravings and desires, not understanding
what your own motivations were which I think is a really
interesting twists. And I, I actually think there's
probably a lot more value in the Buddhist approach, like, I just
know from my own life. You know, I like, as you know, I
went through this huge weight loss Journey over many years and
a big component of that was like really understanding where my
food cravings were coming from, what was causing my distractions
when I couldn't focus or get any work done.
And sure enough usually there's like some emotion underneath the
surface. That's like driving things and
becoming aware of that or mindful of that, and then
learning how to how to deal or negotiate with that emotion is
super useful. So I I thought like the Buddhist
Twist on the ignorance as on the procrastination, as a knowledge
issue, I actually think there's It carries some water sticking
with Eastern philosophy. Just want to touch really quick
on Confucianism from. I'm not.
I'm by no means an expert on Confucianism but by the little
bit of research I did it didn't seem like there was a whole lot
directly written about it. But the interesting thing about
Confucianism, Is that there's so much emphasis put on
accountability and social pressure.
Everything in Confucianism is kind of written in such a way of
like, you have to do the right thing to honor your family, your
Society, your your country, your Emperor, whatever.
There's a nugget in there as well.
That's actually really important and useful that we will come
back to much later, but that social pressure and
accountability is like a legit thing.
This finally brings us to Aristotle, so, Aristotle in the
nickel Mackie, in that ethics, wrote quite a bit about equation
or procrastination. He wrote quite a bit about why
people don't do the things that they, they should be doing.
And I have to say, dude like as somebody who Has studied the
psychology around this for a decade.
Going back and reading Aristotle's.
Take I'm like, Oh, he nailed it. Mmm like the dude.
Just nailed it over like 2300 years ago.
You just like In one chapter just like here's why we don't do
the things that we know we should do.
So Aristotle essentially. Here's like the super condensed
version of what he says, Aristotle essentially saw
procrastination as a skill issue.
He said, like any other skill. We all are born terrible at it.
And then as we grow older, we develop and practice and
habituate ourselves to it. And anybody can learn to do it.
Anybody can practice it. Anybody can develop the skill or
discipline and like any skill or discipline, some people are
naturally gifted at it and some people are naturally not gifted
at it, right? What's also interesting about
this view is that he kind of puts his middle finger up to
Play-Doh? He's just like dude, we all
don't do the things. We know we should do.
Like we all know we should do certain things and we just fail
to do that around you. Yeah seriously like it's like
wake up, man. But what I like about Aristotle
as well, is that it's there was no moral judgment or shame
attached to it. This is actually what super
unique and interesting and like way ahead of his time, with
Plato, it was there was a little bit of like, well, They're not
doing the right thing just because they're they're
ignorant, they're uneducated, they're not as privileged as you
and I are right, they're not as enlightened as us, you know, in
the Buddhist view. There's if you're not doing the
right thing, like you got to get right with yourself dude, like,
you know, sit on a mat and meditate for.
A few years and and like, figure out what the hell is going on in
your head and, you know, the Confucius system.
It's like, you're just honoring your family and you're screwing
up Society, like get your shit together.
Aristotle's. Like hey, man, We all struggle
with this. This is a journey for all of us
and it's something that any of us can get better.
At any of us can practice it, we can develop the right habits, we
can develop the right skills and you can, and you can improve
upon it. And so I think, The first
takeaway around. All of this, is that ultimately
there are like there's a little bit of Truth in everything that
each of those schools of thought said they're you know, some of
it is knowledge of the repercussions that are going to
happen if you I don't know stay up to 4 a.m. on a Tuesday night.
Some of it is understanding your own internal.
Awareness and emotions and you know what's motivating?
You, what's driving you? Some of it is finding good
accountability systems and social pressure to like nudge,
you in the right direction. But ultimately This is a skill
issue, it's something that you can learn.
It's something you can get better at and It's something
that you have to to try to get better at.
So I'm curious Drew Have you seen your procrastination as a
skill issue? Because I certainly have it most
of my life. I'm curious what your
experience. Yeah, I think there is just a
lot of that self-judgment that goes into it and I've always
thought. Yeah, if I just knew a little
bit more, had the right information at the right time,
then I would be a better person so, you know, morally corrupt.
Yeah, and and bankrupt in my ways but um, yeah, it's it's
interesting that each one of these kind of schools of thought
took one angle at it and it's like yeah you got that right?
But you got this completely wrong.
Yeah. And I feel that Within Myself
even too today, so yeah, yeah. I think I started seeing it as a
skill issue. Relatively late.
Yeah in my life. Yeah I would say like well into
adulthood like I vague I have vague memories in my 20s of like
starting my first business and just being like incredibly upset
at myself, for playing too many video games or not being able to
finish a work task in the amount of time that I allotted for
myself, like just really chastising myself and beating
myself up over it. And I feel like that's That's
the default for most people like there is a shame and there's a
moral judgment. And what I found super
fascinating and surprising is that that moral judgment is is
for the most part, didn't exist in the ancient world you know,
Aristotle saw saw A crazier or doing the right action.
He saw, he had, he had a whole ethical system around virtue,
right? The virtues were like the right
way to live, but Aristotle was very aware that, like, nobody is
virtuous all the time. The virtues are never achieved.
They're just something that you work towards and you get better
at over time and everybody's gonna screw it up.
Everybody's gonna fail to a certain extent.
And so, the only thing you can do is just try to fail less.
And if you look at the stoics, there's there's a very similar
vein there, right? It's like you should try to be
virtuous. The Stokes were a little bit
more platonic and that they saw it as more of a like, a
knowledge problem. But it's still the same attitude
of, like, Nobody's virtuous all the time.
Nobody gets it right all the time.
Just get up each day and try to do your best and try not to
dwell on your failures and things like that.
And it's it's so fascinating like going back and looking at
those takes Because that doesn't feel like anything I heard
growing, right? I, I heard that you were, you
are a immoral piece of shit who's irresponsible and his
failing yourself and failing, your future and failing, your
family and like it is. There's so much moral judgment
especially, I guess in Western culture, but I think Eastern
culture as well. There's so much moral judgment
wrapped up in your ability to be disciplined, you know, like I
think about people who are obese or overweight like one of the
huge judgments against them. It's not about the unhealthiness
it's about the apparent, lack of discipline, right?
Like I've been around people who have Said really mean things
about overweight people and it's it's it's never about the
weight. It's about the like why can't
they control themselves? Why can't they like, Keep food
out of the right? How could you let yourself go to
that extent, right? Yeah, and and we have similar
judgments like if somebody loses their job or if somebody doesn't
make a lot of money, It's there's like a moral judgment
it's and we just we joked about it earlier, right?
It's like if I showed up an hour late for this shoot, You would
judge me? Yes, yes, I would.
Yes, you so, it's interesting that that didn't always exist
like that, that is it started somewhere along the line and
drum roll, do you want to guess where it started?
I have a good idea. Why don't you go ahead?
I'll give you one. It starts with a Chris and it
ends with a January. Yeah.
One of the seven. Deadly sins.
Exactly, exactly. so interestingly there's actually
kind of a particular moment in time that I think you can point
to where you can, you can actually say this is the moment
that Procrastination in a failure, to act became a moral
problem. It became a shame ridden
failure, that that signals that you are a piece of scum,
essentially, right? So, the story actually starts in
in the late, fourth Century, Saint Augustine of Hippo was
born in, what his present day Tunisia and he would go on and
become basically the most important theologian.
Of pretty much anybody who didn't live during Christ's
time. And, but it's interesting
because Augustine. He was born Pagan, he grew up.
He was a rich kid. His parents were like
Aristocrats. He was kind of like that
douchebag with a Ferrari in high school.
Like he just not a care in the world.
Screwed around partied. All the time was drinking a lot
seeing a bit bunch of different girls.
Just life was on easy mode. But the interesting thing about
August was that he was very smart and he was very
philosophical. And so he was, he became curious
about a bunch of different religions and I guess you call
him Colts throughout his early adult life, he kind of dabbled
in a bunch of different schools of thought, Now, the interesting
thing is that the Roman Empire had just converted to
Christianity, maybe 50 years prior and you have this gigantic
Empire. And what essentially was kind of
this Fringe cult religion, which was Christianity, suddenly
becomes the state religion and is now expected to be followed
by like tens of millions of people.
So there was kind of this vacuum of Strong theological knowledge
that didn't exist. At the time, there was like an
early opportunity to fill that void that theological void.
Like they, they needed like very smart people to kind of like
create Frameworks and philosophical ideas that the
masses could understand and Implement to their lives and so
Augustine. would end up filling that void to a great extent and
he would be the one who would take Christian thought and
combine it with Plato and Kind of turn it into.
Early. Christian theology in the
Catholic theology as we understand it today.
But the way he went about that is super fascinating.
So he was this Playboy, he screwing around all the time and
he's like drifting, you know, from this religious sect to this
religious sect and by the time he gets his late 20s, he's he
becomes pretty self-loathing. Like I think he he's at this
point, he's self-aware that he's a very smart, talented guy who's
been handed every privilege and advantage in the world.
And he's done nothing with it. He's like absolutely wasted
everything. So this goes on for a number of
years and he's just, he's really looking for something to commit
himself to and all the while he's like, Kind of discussed it
with himself. He's like why do I keep doing
that? Why do I keep drinking?
Why do I keep hooking up with all these women that I don't
care about and like why can't I just get my shit together and
One day, he's sitting in a garden and he's reading.
And he hears a child singing outside saying, pick up the
paper and read it, pick up the paper and read it singing, this
like little lullaby or something.
And so he happens to look down and he sees a parchment paper
He's like, huh? So he picks it up and he starts
reading it and it's Paul's letter to the Romans. verse 13,
13 and it says, Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not
in orgies and drunkenness, not in the sexual immorality and
debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.
And Augustine claims that he converted the Christianity right
there on the spot. He was like This is it.
This is a sign. Drops.
Everything immediately goes to Seminary. trains to become a
priest and then within a couple years goes on to become The most
prolific and successful Christian preacher.
In the Roman Empire, he gave I think 2,500 sermons or something
like that of which like half are still around today.
He was just like a prodigy of preaching, I guess.
Yeah. But what's super interesting is
that he has this personal history of like he was kind of
this. He's like this Playboy wasting
his life and then he finds God and God Saves him, right?
Like he isn't drinking anymore. He doesn't fornicate anymore.
He doesn't Screw around anymore, he's like very diligent and
disciplined, and he's working his ass off, and he's like,
achieving his potential and he attributes all of this to God.
So, in his book, The confessions, he talks about a
crazier, he talks about. He gives an example of when he
was a boy of stealing fruit from a local market, and he talks
about how He stole the fruit. He didn't need the fruit.
He wasn't hungry, he didn't need the money.
He wasn't going to sell it. Anybody else?
He stole it for the thrill of it?
He stole it because it was something exciting to do to kind
of impress. The other boys that he was
hanging out with and, He looked at that. and with the very
platonic lens, he said, There was a lower desire, they're the
lower values of the excitement, the thrill impressing, the the
people around him, but then there's this higher level value
of fairness and Justice and, you know, not being selfish.
And his argument was that any time we sacrifice that higher
level value for the lower level value that we succumb to our
animalistic, impulses, or urges, or desires at the cost of Kind
of the higher level rational intellectual spiritual values.
Not only is that a failure, that's a sin that is You're not,
it's not, you're not violating yourself, you're not violating
your family, you're violating God, because God's Wills that
you do these other things. And you are.
Failing God's will. To indulge your animalistic.
Behaviors, and impulses and cravings.
And as soon as God enters the picture, Shit gets moral really
quick, right? Like, it's, it's if you're
Suddenly, It's like you're procrastination or your failure
to do the right thing for yourself.
It's not about failing yourself. Like now, you are actually
sinning and becoming a corrupt individual and that is shameful
and you should repent. And you the only path the
Salvation is to surrender yourself even further to God,
and to Jesus, and to give even more of your life over to the
church. And so, this is where you see
the shame and doctrination really begin. and, Without
getting into like two, extensive of a commentary on Christianity
itself. It was interesting, reading
Augustine, In this context because I couldn't help but but
view it as like it's like a multi-level marketing scheme or
something, where like it's basically like you create the
problem for for people and then you sell them the solution,
right? So it's it really felt like, you
know, Augustine is basically going around and taking this
experience that we all have and we all already kind of feel bad
about in our little bit sensitive about and he's like,
hey that thing that you feel bad about that means you're a piece
of shit and God, God hates you. And the only way he's going to
stop hating you is if you come to church and confess all your
sense? I don't like, man, that is
that's like That's aggressive. Let's say the least and and look
we're not here to comment on religion or or make any sort of
like theological arguments but Let's just say from a mental
health point of view, not operate not optimal from a
productivity point of view, also not optimal.
Okay, yeah. So we can't, we get into the
shame stuff then, yeah. I mean some of that right now
because like I said, I think it's a big misconception that
most people have most people. What I found is that a lot of
people are afraid to relinquish that self-judgment, right?
Because they're afraid. If they go easy on themselves
quote, unquote, then they they won't do the thing, right?
Right. And it's like, actually the
research says the opposite, the exact opposite.
So what happens a lot? Yeah.
So I I think this is like a useful place to make this point
and kind of discuss like, why this happens or what it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, they do find that exactly that people who experience a lot
of Shame around things like procrastination or any things
that they deem to be character flaws.
They actually end up putting things off more, they don't end
up. Doing them more and it's because
that shame creates this kind of motivation, for avoidance around
these things, you don't want. To feel that shame.
And so, you just avoid doing it all together in the first place.
And you get this very, very vicious cycle that goes along
with it. So you there's this
self-judgment cycle that comes with it, right?
You feel ashamed for delaying that this shame makes you
uncomfortable and to escape that shame that you feel.
Now you further procrastinate, you delay, more you, distract
yourself, you you give into those lower values that
Augustine talked about. So that's the studies around.
This have really found that it's the exact opposite.
This doesn't happen all the time but a lot of times it will be.
Yeah, we have these intuitions around.
Oh, I need to feel this way in order to get things done or I
think my brain works this way. And so I'm just going to keep
doing this when it's like, step back.
There's actually a kind of deeper issue going on.
Yeah, avoidance is really what what comes from that
self-loathing and that shame? Yeah, well, at least to me some
of the most interesting research that I saw around.
This was actually workplace research so they actually there
are a number of studies that they like looked at how
shame-based the feedback is in certain workplaces and then they
tracked employee productivity and also absenteeism how many
people stuck around basically looking at like who like who has
the asshole boss and like how how do employees respond to that
asshole boss and Surprise surprise shame-based workplaces.
They did one study on nurses in a hospital and they looked at
supervisors, who would like shame the nurses for their
mistakes and for for not completing, all their tasks or
whatever. And sure enough those nurses
Showed up less often the work. They got through fewer rounds.
They spent less time with the patients and they quit more
often. So yeah, I think some
researchers too interpret that as you are violating.
Your sense. Someone's sense of autonomy too.
Right? If you shame them you're saying
you're a bad person. You don't have any control over
whether or not you can do something about this.
Yeah. Whereas if you're much more,
gentle and much more compassionate about it, okay,
this is how we fix it, goes back to the skills thing.
Right. I was just gonna say we're gonna
come back to seeing procrastination as a skill
issue, a little bit later and it is Mind-boggling to me though.
That like that. Got lost.
Yeah. For thousands of years.
Yeah. When it was the norm before.
Yeah, that was just how people thought yes.
And then it completely got destroyed, right?
Because it's it is what you do, see in this whole kind of
Christian era. Through the medieval period and
everything is just like if you don't do the right thing, it's
because you're a bad person. If you if you can't get your
work done you're a bad person and you screwed up and I don't I
don't want to be around you, right again.
I still feel the residue of this, you know, like growing up
in a western culture like and I, I know People who grew up in
Confucian cultures experience this a lot too because that is
all very shame. Yes, it's less about God, it's
more about family when you grow up in that.
It's so hard to escape it and and it is like I still catch
myself like judging people 100%. Yeah.
Just be like oh look at that guy like can't even get his shit
together. You know.
Like what a joke. Yeah you judging other people or
judging yourself, too again going back to the same thing and
and this isn't just applicable to procrastination but anything
where you kind of have this kind of self-loathing yourself crisis
criticism. That's very loud.
Yeah. Inside your head, it will create
a voice and it's not approach, right?
And so that's something to keep in mind all throughout this.
So, what is the opposite of self-judgment or self?
Shaming, I self-acceptance, right?
Yeah, self-compassion. Okay, what is that look like?
Well, I hate myself. True right, how do I stop?
Make make the self-loathing stop pretend I'm your friend, okay.
If you heard me saying that you would be like, whoa, dude, yeah,
cat take it easy on yourself, right?
And totally. This is kind of the standard
advice to. A lot of people is when you're
when you want to be more self-compassionate and kinder to
yourself treat yourself like a friend step back, detach
yourself a little bit from the whole situation and be like,
okay, what's really going on here?
How can I be a little bit more understanding of my own actions?
Yeah, and knowing some of these reasons having some
self-awareness around these reasons why I'm doing this and
being like, okay, I need to address these.
Let's move forward, which I think is kind of the way things
were even with Plato and his maybe a little bit muddy of
thinking around procrastination. I still think there was a lot of
that prior to this whole injection of Shame into the
culture. Yeah, doing getting things done,
that would be an interesting exercise.
I mean if if you're listening to this and this is something that
you really struggle with like that could potentially be a
really Useful exercise of like, write down your self-talk around
this stuff and then go back later and read it and just
probably be horrified by it. It's been there but it's it's a
It's one of those things that we don't notice it when we do it to
ourselves and that self-compassion does that
creates that space for approach? Like saying instead of
avoidance? So if you're if you know you're
you're in a safe space you know, in your own mind that opens up a
space for exploring what's actually going on and then
taking action, whereas again, the shame just creates a lot of
avoidance. Yeah, the thing I like about
self-compassion too, is that it's not and this is a point I
made in subtle art. Is that, you know, it's the flaw
was self-esteem as a as a metric in my opinion is like it's It
became through a lot of the research, it became a
measurement of how people felt about themselves when they did
good things, right? Whereas like, what you really
want to measure is like, how do people feel about themselves
when things go bad, right? And that's so that's where the
self-compassion comes in. It's like, okay, let's let's
actually measure how you treat yourself when nothing is going,
right? Because that's actually a
probably a better or more accurate metric of your mental
health, in your well-being, and your life satisfaction and all
that stuff. So the other thing that's
interesting with the self-compassion research is that
a big component of it? A big step in.
It is a finding shared Humanity. It's funny because it's just
Again thinking about this 95% of people so we opened with right
like literally a survey asking people do you struggle with
procrastination 95% of people said they do?
Like I don't I'm not aware of any other problem that that
scores that high know. Yeah, I in surveys.
Yeah. Yeah.
So yeah. And I think it's about 5% of the
population is considered to, so maybe that's where the 5% are.
I don't know. They're just or they're like
Androids that are secretly walking Among Us.
It was so interesting though, that when we were talking to to
fuchsia Syrah like I actually asked asked her.
I was like, lose 5%, actually exists and she said, absolutely.
Can you imagine What the most feel like I wonder what like
there's some downsides that too, right?
Like sometimes you need to prioritize and sometimes you
need to delay. Like what if you're jumping into
things a little too much. So maybe it's I don't know,
maybe it's on a bell curve or something?
I don't, I don't know. But It to me.
Okay, getting off on a little bit of a tangent here but like
to me a certain amount of progress.
Yeah. Like an optimal level
procrastination is probably not zero, right?
Because there is a certain weight That comes with like
really, really important tasks in your life and that, that
weight is intimidating and ensure as a human, you find ways
to delay it, or put it off or avoid it and this way, or that
kind of like that, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'm being
irrational here and like, kind of playing the same game with
the, with the shame stuff where it's like, I'm afraid that.
If I don't progress innate something, it means it doesn't
have weight or important. But like, I don't know.
I kind of like that there are certain things in my life that
intimidate me a little bit that make me anxious because it
signifies to me that I'm doing something very worthwhile and I
don't know. Yeah, I worry that.
If I had zero progress in nation that I would just kind of see
everything and like you said, a cycle path, I would just see
everything in my life. It's just another task to be
done and you just get on with it and you don't, you know, what's
the point and stressing over it? I, I would be curious any
listeners out there who I don't know why they'd be listening to
this. But like, if, for some reason,
you are one of these freaks who does not procrastinate, I'd be
very curious to hear ya from them, like, what their
experience is or why? Like what, what is your thought
process, when, when there's a really important task in front
of you? What is the emotional experience
of that task? I'd be very curious.
I actually just thought of something related to the
self-compassion as well. Something else like it's funny
when we're judging ourselves, I think we we get very skewed
perceptions of what's actually normal.
Like I remember, I used to feel this back when I was writing all
the time, which is like, I would set a goal for myself, right?
Like I'm gonna publish three articles a week of at least 2000
words a piece, right? So 6000 words a week.
Which is a really good clip of right app.
And then if I didn't hit that expectation, I would judge
myself. But then I go talk to other
writers and they're like, man, I'm lucky if I get like 300
words in an entire day, right? So, it's like our understanding
of like what is normal and expected and and like reasonable
can often get completely warped in our own heads.
It's when we're judging ourselves and so it's again kind
of comes back to that subjectivity thing.
Like the same way we can kind of bullshit ourselves in One
Direction and tell ourselves that oh yeah I can you know I'll
do it tomorrow it's not gonna be a big deal.
We can also bulshit ourselves in the other direction by saying,
like oh you're you're absolutely horrible person, you know, you
only worked out for 90 minutes, you should be working out for
two hours because you're just lazy if you don't do that.
So it's just It's useful to understand.
I guess that our minds are just crazy and wrong and in all sorts
of different directions and I can, it can screw us up
especially when looking at ourselves.
Yeah, I have to say in prepping for both this episode and the
last episode, I'm like, dude, aerosol got everything, right?
Yeah, like, that guy nailed. Everything is a lot of credit.
But yeah, it'll actually yeah, between happiness values and
virtues and, and this stuff self-discipline and a crazy and
procrastination and everything, like Aristotle nailed like half
of psychology before there was such a thing as psychology.
So Shout out their saddle. So like the 12th century.
There was a are an Arab scholar, living in present-day, Spain
named avarice and he translated, he was the first person to
translate Aristotle into lat back into Latin, which gave
Europeans access to Aristotle. Again for the first time in
almost 1000 years, which is mind blowing and sure enough quietly
Aristotle started to go viral within European universities in
among European scholars. It was just, it was mind-blowing
stuff to them. Keep in mind too that it wasn't
just the psychology and the happiness and The Virtue stuff
Aristotle. Like, literally invented the
scientific method, he like, basically all of what is modern
science. Started with Aristotle as well.
So you start to see the the scientific method Begin the show
up in around this time. People are thinking about
empirical observation, experimentation, Documenting.
What they see trying to measure understand things.
I mean I don't think it's any coincidence that Galileo and
Copernicus show up within a generation or two after
Aristotle is translated back in the Latin of course predictably
the church has this horrible reaction, they try to ban it.
They say it's heresy but there's a young student at the
University of Paris at the time, the name of Thomas Aquinas and
Thomas has like a very unique and interesting Talent which is
he became famous very, very early in his life.
He was, he was a prodigy, I think he would end up going to
University when he was like 15 or something and he studied
theology became very successful very quickly.
And he became famous for being very good at taking people who
Were on two opposite ends of an argument and finding a way to
synthesize them, finding like the common threads and finding a
way to like make things make sense for everybody. so, he
studies Aristotle. His mind is blown. but the
Rumblings going on around, is that the church is, like, not
okay with this, but in his mind, he's like this stuff is so
Powerful. It's so world changing.
There's got to be a way to make this synthesized with Christian
thought in theology. And so that became his life's
work and eventually he published Summa theologica, which was his
magnum opus, which is was essentially that it was bringing
Aristotle and philosophy into the Christian.
Umbrella in a way that people can understand and that was
acceptable to the church brought essentially brought Europe out
of its its medieval period, intellectually into kind of what
would eventually become the Renaissance and the Scientific
Revolution and everything. So I can't over a state how
important it is to bring back the idea that this is a skill
issue. This is not a character issue,
this is not a theological issue, it's a skill issue.
Procrastination is the skill issue and and it's interesting.
There's there's this concept in psychology. a cold
self-efficacy, which is basically a belief, That you can
get better at something. and it's fascinating, because
self-efficacy, Strongly correlates with success and
almost anything you do. Essentially, the more you
believe, you can get better at something, the more likely you
are to get better at that thing. And I don't know, I just like
everything I know about psychology.
I don't think it can be overstated the importance in the
impact of bringing self-efficacy back.
To the public that belief of like, we can be better.
We can do things in this life that are better, right?
Like I really do think kind of old school.
Catholic theology is, is like. It's fatalism it's like God
decides. There's this kind of
Cosmological war going on between Heaven and Hell.
We're all caught in the middle. All we can do is just ask for
forgiveness, right? Like, there's nothing we're all
Sinners. We're all.
We're all doomed. But like if we pray enough and
ask for enough forgiveness and like, things are going to turn
out. All right, in the next life, not
in this life, this life is gonna be shit.
It is shit, it's Gotta determined.
Yeah, so I think just reintroducing self-efficacy back
into the population. It's just like, I can't I can't
overstate how impactful that probably was, and then sure
enough, like, Century or two later, you get the Reformation,
you know, when Luther hammered the 95 Theses to the to the
door. He was essentially saying
they're like, we have control over the outcome, we can decide,
we can improve our relationship with God, we can improve our lot
in this life. We don't have to depend on the
clergy. We don't have to depend on on
the church. There shouldn't be an
intermediary between us, right? And sure, enough as
protestantism arises, this is what they become known for,
right. It's the old Protestant work
ethic like because the idea is, is that if our Salvation is up
to us in this life, and we have control over it, Then whoever
works. The hardest is the most likely
to be saved, right? Like God.
God gives Fortune to people who work hard and deserve it.
And so, you see, you see these, these kind of philosophies
emerge like Calvinism. Where it's there's a huge amount
of moral value attached to industriousness that if you are
diligent and hardworking, and you know, do all the right
things in this world, you will be rewarded in this world, and
in the next World by God and you deserve it.
So, if you have nice things, awesome, you worked for it.
You deserve it. So, on the one hand, we've
brought self-efficacy back in the equation.
We've brought, you know, procrastination is a skill
problem, back into the equation, that's good.
But on the other hand, we still have the shame right?
Because now it's like if you work your ass off and things
aren't going well for you. Well God still is displeased
with you. God, God does not look on you
with with favor or Fortune. You, you must be doing something
wrong. There's still there's still
moral attachment to material success, to your ability to do
what you say you're going to do. Or accomplish things in the real
world. So and in fact because there is
so much moral and Theological weight placed on, I guess
worldly outcomes, these early Protestants.
You get this kind of insane perfectionism.
And I think the group that really illustrates this is like
the Puritans who came to America.
They were hardworking, they were diligent, they believe that, you
know, if you did the right things and if you worked really
hard you would get what you deserve and God would smile on
you with Good Fortune but holy crap.
They like judge the shit out of each other.
Like there was an insane amount of perfectionism self-induced
right onto those communities, right?
And it and it makes sense because it's like, if you if
you're worldly, status is now being attached to your moral
superiority or inferiority, it just adds that much extra
pressure to everything you do. And so I think this is actually
appropriate because I think as well, talk about later, like, a
huge component of procrastination is
perfectionism, is this feeling that you're not allowed to fail
that? You if things don't work out the
way you want them to then, that is some sort of moral reflection
on you as a terrible person. And so I'm curious, like, I know
you are a Recovering perfectionist side.
Yes, I'm curious how this is like, come up in your own life
and what the research says around this.
Yeah, yeah, definitely perfectionism.
It feeds into procrastination. What?
They find the research and I can vouch for that very much.
So in my life again the research shows that perfectionism.
It's just it's another form of Shame.
Basically, that causes you to avoid the things you need to do,
it's an avoidance mechanism. Yeah, of sorts, it creates a lot
of anxiety around certain tasks, so you end up avoiding them that
way you are. So afraid of failing that you
just don't even want to approach the tasks to begin with or you
come up with all sorts of mental, gymnastics ways to, to
avoid those. So I need to wait, I need to
have more information before I do this and you need to be
better at this. So we're into the skills set
now. Yeah, I need to be better at
this and I need to have the skills in order to do this.
And for that, I need to step back and develop these skills.
That that's a evil Loop that I've gotten caught up in before
I'm like oh I need to be better at this before I go do the thing
right? And so then I spend all my time
trying to be better and set of doing like actually like doing
the thing is what will make you better at it, right?
But instead of actually just doing the thing, I try to do all
this other stuff to prepare for. Exactly do research, this goes
right up into today. This this happens in all sorts
of productivity systems people. You know like oh you need to
just have the right system in place or have the right
information in place and you'll you'll get there and very much
feed into the very common problem of perfectionism.
So what I'm hearing so far, it sounds like the story so far is
that If I was to really simplify this is that we avoid things
that are unpleasant. No duh often the mechanisms by
which we judge ourselves or the expectations.
We place on ourselves around that avoidance.
Only makes us feel worse and therefore avoid even more yes.
Right. And so shame is one component of
that, like, that's one form of it.
It's like the more ashamed. I feel of my inability to do the
things that I set out to do the worst.
I feel about doing them. Therefore the more I avoid them
and you get in this downward spiral similarly with
perfectionism The unrealistic expectations that you set on
yourself, are make the task so intimidating and unpleasant that
you find ways to avoid it. Which then makes you feel even
worse and expect even more of yourself and then you end up in
another kind of shit spiral. Let's transition in the Freud.
Yeah, I actually have a cool little tidbit to, like, swing
into this and check it off. Okay, yeah, it's actually really
fascinating. So, Freud Freud went to
University in Vienna in mid-19th Century.
And at the time, like, psychology didn't really exist,
right? Wasn't really a thing.
So Freud had a professor. His name was Franz Brinton Tano.
and Professor, brentano, his kind of obsession and the thing
that he would have eventually become most known for He was
really in the Aristotle. Okay?
And he loved the Kind of subjective.
What we would call today, the psychological side of aerosol
but he also loved the scientific side as well.
And at the time, most mostly Aristotle scientific stuff was
studied and it was like The Virtue stuff was I guess, less
prominent. But brentano had had a theory
which is he believed that you could take Aristotle's
scientific method and you could potentially apply it to human
happiness and he called it and an empiricism of the psychology.
He taught the, he taught this idea in his courses and Freud
was one of his students. I did not know that.
So interesting. There you go.
So this would have been late 1800s, so it was 1860 1870.
Yeah, yeah, interesting. I did not know that.
Yeah, yeah. Freud is a fascinating, the
least. And yeah whenever you bring him
up there's going to be a lot of a lot of dicks.
A lot of dicks. Come out, right?
A lot of dicks and mothers. That's right.
To say he was controversial as
an understatement. He got a lot of things, right?
He got a lot of things wrong. Some Fascinatingly wrong.
Yeah, and just spectacularly wrong.
But the mark he left on Western thought and on psychology is
undeniable. You can't, you can't deny that.
So we would be remiss if we did not bring up for it.
Yes. Yeah there's a few ideas that
Freud introduced into the larger kind of intellectual culture at
the time that we need to be aware of for to better pertinent
to procrastination. Okay, so first we want to talk
about the pleasure principal versus the reality principle,
right, okay. So Freud He thought that we are
basically just driven by these two principles one.
He called the Pleasure Principle which is we seek we seek out
pleasure and we want to avoid pain.
This is from birth, this is just part of our nature.
Anything that's pleasurable. We gravitate towards it,
anything painful. We avoid it very basic, okay?
They said as we mature though, we mature into what he calls
reality principle, where we realized that just indulging in
whatever pleasure comes, our way is can be, can be detrimental to
us as special in the long run. So we start to realize this as
we mature and actually one of the marks of maturity that he
saw or that he outlined was that we live more by the reality
principle. Yeah, right.
So again, it goes back to this, you know, our Evolution, like I
mentioned previously was such that we will prioritise pleasure
in the immediate term over long-term benefits that if we
delay gratification, right? So that's the first one.
Destination. Then can kind of be seen as
giving into the Pleasure Principle over the reality
principle and this can happen chronically or it can happen
just in the moment like that. Okay, so that's the first first
idea. We need to think we need to be
aware of when it comes to Freud. And then he also has, if you go
back to your cycle 101 is the the model of the psyche, too.
The three part, the three parts. Yeah.
Very platonic of him, right? You have the id ego and superego
okay I'm gonna go through each one of those sure for everybody.
Okay. So we have the ID right?
And it is like this. That's some people about the
lizard brain. I guess that's probably an
oversimplification but it's basically your drives for a lot
of it is for the pleasures that we have eating sex you know
whatever but joyful experience you might want to indulge in
Hedonism basically yeah you have the super ego then no too.
Which is kind of the opposite of the ID which is all these moral
standards that we obtained through socialization in our
childhoods through the people around, us are teachers.
Or parents or siblings. We start to form.
As we as we mature, we start to form this idea of what it's
means to be a good person to do. Right to be morally, Superior to
others or just act Morey out in the world.
That's the superego. And then for I had this other
idea of the ego which is kind of the mediator between the two
like you need to satisfy some of your base, urges right?
You need to eat and drink and have sex and all of those things
in order for the species to Survive and Thrive and, and
propagate. But we also need to temper that
in some way, with our moral understanding of the world.
Yeah. And that's the ego comes in and
says, okay, I have a plan. How we're going to get
satisfied, both of these. And the whole Freud said, when
these things were imbalanced in, the ego is doing its job.
Then we had mental health, and whenever it's out of balance for
screwed, right. Feels very similar to The
Chariot. Very, very much Cherry driver
with the two horses. Like you said Plato, he'll come
up all throughout Western thought he's everywhere and he's
everywhere. Yeah, procrastination.
Then kind of threw a Freudian lands is giving into.
Like I said, giving into the ID when it can overpower the
superego and the ego I guess and the superego is kind of left out
to dry. That is, you know, Freud never
specifically address procrastination, but a lot of
his people after him did a lot of his students did the
psychoanalysts who were the, the Freudian psychologist.
They address procrastination through this lens.
Another thing he brought up to and brought to our awareness.
I think more was the defense mechanisms.
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
I was gonna say because it doesn't the ego isn't part of
the ego, when the ego is mediating between his two
things, right? That the social obligations and
the cultural values and versus the animalistic, urges doesn't
the ego kind of, because like, when people talk about an ego,
we usually think of some sort of like, Self-identity or
self-image. Yes, right.
So isn't is the mechanism for mediating those two things like
it? Is it kind of this mental
construction that happens? Like, how does that all map out
you mean in terms of like, how the ego mediates that really
relationship or well? I, I'm imagining that the, the
mediation between those two things that happens through the
construction of this self-image, right?
It's like this is the type of person I am.
This is what I how I act in these situations and then Once
we've constructed that identity, we need to protect it, right?
Right. So the ego does it very much
forms our basis of self-identity?
And how we navigate those that poll.
Yeah. Between the two horses, right?
The ego is sitting in between and Freud's view.
The ego sits in between those the polls to to be morally,
Superior, and good, and pure versus, you know, a base
creature of nature, right? So, yes, the ego very much
navigates and say, this is how I act in these certain situations.
These are here are my morals here, how I get what I need out
of life and want to yeah. So, absolutely.
So I want to make a quick Point here, quick interjection,
because I always find this super interesting like in conventional
wisdom or typical parlance. Like, if you're just hanging out
with a bunch of random people, and somebody's being an asshole.
Yeah, like man, I guys got too much money go, right.
He's gonna get rid of his ego man or if you go to like a
meditation group, okay? You know, go to some, woo, you
know, incense burning Temple here in Malibu like They'll tell
like oh we're here to dissolve our ego.
Get rid of our ego it's interesting.
If you actually go back to Freud You don't want to get rid of
your not. What you like your ego is
actually really important. It's pragmatic.
Yeah, it's like actually, you just want to have a good ego,
right? Like you want to have a
functional eat, right? Instead of A Dysfunctional ego
because a dysfunctional ego is probably giving in way too much
to either the social pressures or the animalistic urges,
whereas a functional ego is able to balance everything
effectively and manage itself, right?
Right. And it can manage shame, for
example, two. So yes, you can.
There's good ego to have it. Ego is not a bad word in the 40.
Yeah. Parlance, right.
Yeah. Okay, but it does what happens
is when the ego comes under threat?
Yes that can be a problem. So this is where the defense
mechanisms defense mechanisms come in.
Okay? Right so if you if there is any
sort of threat to the ego threat to yourself identity and these
are threat to your your your view of yourself.
I'm a good person. I this is how I act in these.
Situations. Then these defense mechanisms
can kick in and protect your ego, right?
And that's where some problems can come just as they relate to
procrastination. A couple of common ones are
which we've already mentioned rationalization, right,
rationalize. Well, one of them is I work best
Under Pressure, which I want to really talk about that one.
Okay. Um, or I need the adrenaline of
a looming deadline or something like that, right?
That that we rationalize our way out of actually taking action
towards our goals. Yeah.
Okay. Another one is
intellectualization one. I'm very fond of which is we've
already mentioned this one too. You research.
I need to research this more. I need to just I need more
information AKA this entire podcast.
Yes yes. Absolutely.
I need to listen to more podcasts.
A five-hour podcast before I can do this.
So yeah, that one's very much in our wheelhouse where you, you
think you just need More information, or you need to stop
and understand it more in some way, right?
So that's a very common that that's I mean, as you know, like
one of one of my favorite things to say is is that learning more
is a smart person's. Favorite way to procrastinate
100%. And I mean, I think a lot of
people listening to this will, I don't really, I do.
Yeah, for sure. So yeah, they'll relate to that.
Another really common one too, is just denial which we've
already mentioned this one seriously.
It's like it's not bad important.
Yeah, I'm just gonna put it off. It's fine.
You know what's one more day? What's not more day?
What's what's one? Workout?
What's? You know, that's sort of thing.
So those are some common ones. What those are designed to do.
And the Freudian school of thought is to protect this ego.
The self-identity that we've constructed over time.
Yeah. So the ecosystem in the middle
trying to balance all these polls that we have and then all
of a sudden something comes along to threaten that we need
to protect that. That's what the idea of the of
defense mechanisms are. And that's, I mean, you know,
for all Freud's flaws. I think defense mechanism are
definitely one of those things that he brought to the cultural
conscience that. Yeah, we absolutely needed the
Anything about Freud to me is, is that it's he got the big
stuff, right? Yeah.
He got the details horribly. Yeah.
And the details are horrible. Yeah.
And and not only horribly wrong but like hilariously, right?
So it it's because they're hilariously wrong.
That's what everybody focuses on and remembers.
But like the ego is just, it is such like everything you just
described is so profound and tracks, right?
And it is like it is such an incredible insight into the
human nature. And, and not only like, you
know, talking about these defense mechanisms and
protecting ego. Like, not only do we protect the
ego. We protect our ego as if it is
our physical body. Yes.
Oh yeah. You like Revolt back in
yourself. You you will have function.
You have physiological responses to Ego threat.
The same way you would have responses to a physical threat.
You will have emotional responses to an ego threat that
are track exactly as the emotional responses, you would
have to a physical threat, right?
It is So incredible like such an incredible realization.
Yeah. Because we all need, we all need
a sense, a self-identity to navigate the world.
And so it is very threatening. You have this kind of humans
have this need to explain things and make sense of the world and
one way we do that is through a self-identity and when that gets
threatened, that's very, very scary.
Like you said, so I do think that that's one of Freud's
biggest contributions. Definitely just in Psychology in
general, but around procrastination, especially is
when we get defensive. And like you said, you'll feel
that in your body. Yeah, you'll feel your yourself
recoil. Whenever you're ego is, is
threatened in any way. So, yeah.
So I think this raises an interesting point of
self-definition as a component of procrastinating.
Yes. And I've noticed this, I mean,
I've noticed this in my own life quite a bit where it's like, as
soon as I decide that I am something.
Suddenly the emotional valence around that thing.
Becomes way more intense. Right?
The surface. Yeah, so like before I wrote
subtle art, I didn't really see myself as an author and So, I
just wrote a book. It was just kind of like, oh,
this is just another thing I'm gonna do is like one of like
five things I'm gonna do over the next few years.
But then all sudden it takes off and I become socially known as
an offer which then affects my self-perception of myself of
like, oh, I guess I'm an author now.
And as soon as I am, quote unquote, an author.
Now, writing is a completely different experience for me.
Because now this is the thing that I'm supposed to be good at
this is the thing that I'm most known for.
This is the thing that I'm most respected for I've been most
rewarded for and so that is a much more intimidating
experience and it actually took me a number of years to like
revise. That self-definition and
remember like yeah, do you work always an author like you?
You just kind of like decided one day that like, oh I guess
I'm an author now and then like that added a mountain of fucking
stressed in my life and like I can just as easily decide on
author. It's just like one of many
things I do and suddenly as soon as I that, that self-definition
switched. A lot of that stress went away.
James Clear talks about this a little bit and atomic habits
about how like the ultimately, the only thing that makes a
habit, stick over a lot like over the long term is when it's
adopted as an identity identity. Yeah, and it's that adoption as
an identity. That is that the ego, right?
It's like when you go from a person who Uh, is happens to be
running three times a week to a runner.
Or you go from a person who is taking a painting class, too a
painter, right? It's like once you define
yourself as I'm a painter. Then suddenly you don't need
willpower discipline or to overcome procrastination to
paint because that's just the thing you do, right?
So, um, anyway, I fucking love this stuff, but there's a you're
saying they're Stakes attached to that as well too.
Yes, their Stakes when you attach your identity to that.
And so, would you say from your transition to being?
Well, I'm just somebody who's going to write a book too.
I'm an author, you haven't written a book in a few years.
Mark, you've been procrastinating on this because
it's threatens, your identity now, or I think, well it's funny
because it's it's I let go of okay, I like go because it's
like I let go of that. I did it did cause me a lot.
An immense amount of stress. And this isn't the say, I don't
like the books that I wrote, It's just that like I wouldn't
have necessarily written them. When I did, or are the way I
did, if I had had a different self-identity at the time and by
freeing myself of that identity. Part of freeing myself is
realizing that, like, I don't have to write a book, like I'm
not just an author. So, I can write a book if I want
and I'm sure I will write a book again soon, but I don't have to
it's not the thing I do, okay? It's like if you and I decided
to like we're podcasters now. Yeah, right, right.
Like, this is who we are and what we do.
I got caught up in that for a little while.
I'm sure I'm sure it's it's it's it's it's it's tough like it's
it draws you in and I guess this is kind of coming back to the
like the the ego intermediate between, you know, the social
pressures and the moral values and then all, so kind of like
the animalistic instincts like We have a fundamental drive for
social acceptance and social approval, right?
And so its like our, our egos part of our egos role is to,
like take that social acceptance and be like, yeah, I'll be that.
This is what rewards me socially.
This is what gets me respect from the tribe.
I'm gonna be that person, right? And so, it is a natural
reaction, but When you decide that, that's who you are. it, it
adds a whole another layer of I guess of stakes, you know, like
I'll say this. I think adopting the coming back
to the James Clear thing of like adopting a habit, as an
identity. he is correct that, like, if the goal is to just do
the thing, Then adopting it as an identity.
Essentially solves that problem. Yes, because it's like if that's
who you are that's just what you're going to do and it's
gonna feel like it's gonna feel weird to not do it.
The trade-off of that that I think is not mentioned in that
book. Is that when you adopt a habit
as an identity You are now adding a whole layer of social
pressure. Judgment.
Validation To that, right? So it's like if we if we decide
now like we are a podcasters. Like now that's that's the
yardstick. We're going to start measuring
ourselves with, right? If you decide, I am a runner.
Well, yeah. Now it's not going to be hard to
get up and run in the morning. Now, you're going to be judging
Yourself by how you run went every morning.
So it's like you You trade. It never ends.
It never ends you trade one problem for another essentially.
Okay, well okay. Yes.
I do think Again Freud and his conceptualization of this Ikea,
the three parts and the defense mechanisms and all that.
That's that's useful in terms of yeah.
Tying yourself identity to what you do.
How you behave in the world. Obviously, that is that that's
now in the Zeitgeist and now very much a part of our culture,
too. I think the other thing though
too is Freud, was one of the first people to really emphasize
childhood. Yeah.
How our childhoods affect the way we develop into adulthood.
It's funny when I was in college and I was taking psychology, I
think I was either a freshman or sophomore at the time so it's
taking pretty low level psychology classes and was
talking with somebody in my dorm who wasn't a Psychology major
and they're like, oh, you're Psychology.
Major, major. Tell me about that.
And I was like, oh, we're going over for Freud right now, you
know, that's all about this. And I get to the part about
childhood and I'm like, oh yeah. And Freud, you know, he's the
one who kind of came up with this idea of Love childhood, you
know, affecting us as we get older and she goes it doesn't
everybody know. Know that and I didn't have a
good answer at the time. I was like, well, yeah, it's
really obvious, isn't it? And I didn't have a good answer
at the time but no actually, before, Freud, nobody thought
that like it was just, you were just a bad person period.
Like you are, what you are, you are, what you are.
There was nothing that from your childhood or the way you were
raised. That was necessarily like
indicative of why you are the way you are at this point.
Even the concept of parenting. Yes, is like less than 100 years
old. Yeah.
Which is mind blowing.
Yeah. Well I think yeah, probably a
lot of that was parenting and well, it was probably more of a
collective effort than it is now.
So, yeah, it was a collective effort.
Also like half of your kids died before age of seven.
So there's just like, well, like obviously obviously God had
something yeah. But but Freud, did he introduced
the the idea of parenting style and experiences we had in
childhood how they affect our development throughout our lives
all the way. Into adulthood right?
A few of these. Now, this was this came from
some of his contemporaries. It wasn't directly from Freud,
but they took these like analysts psychoanalysis
principles and they applied them to Parenting and
procrastination. There are kind of these three
big ideas that I came across. Anyway, one of them being when
your parents kind of equate love with achievement.
Mmm. So this gets into the
perfectionism thing. Yeah, definitely.
This can kind of encourage someone to develop a more
perfectionist personality. Well, in this, this ties into
the confusion stop that but parents who set these
unrealistically high expectations on their children.
You'll often get children who are perfectionist and Big Time,
procrastinators at some point. At least, if they don't manage
it. Well anyway, the child feels
fear around taking any sort of action around the failure and
procrastination and as an adult It'll manifest in a way as to
just avoid that emotional pain. Flew the Freudian lens, what
you're doing when you're procrastinating.
If you have these types of parents is that you're avoiding
those memories of being chastised for not doing the
right thing, or for not for not doing a good enough job, right?
Another one is kind of internalizing.
Parental anger. So if you grew up around very
reactive parents, who got angry, whenever you did something
wrong, you know, you spell the milk or whatever it was and they
immediately got on you about that.
That a child. According to the Freudian school
of thought would internalize those that anger from those
parents and they would feel directed towards themselves.
So again, the procrastination is avoiding any situation which you
could fail. And so you you've already
internalized that anger and you just want to avoid it all
together, you're gonna go back to comes back to the avoidance a
lot with these And then the last one I came across with
parenting. Anyways, two different parenting
style. So you have permissive parents
or authoritarian ones? Yeah.
And on the permissive side, if you grew up in a very kind of
like Rule's free environment, more or less, You according to
the freudians again, they this produces that nervous
underachiever, right? They feel Overwhelmed by
self-imposed deadlines or work or whatever it is.
They so they just, they're like, wow, that's just, that's too
many rules. Too much structure.
I'm just not, I'm just gonna avoid it all together.
Yeah, the flip side being authoritarian, where you, you
grew up in a very strict household with lots and lots of
rules and to the cycle analyst, they think that there's like a
rebellion against that. Right?
For some children. Yeah.
So Whether these are, you know, whether that's actually what's
going on or not. That's obviously the topic of
debate and we'll go over some of this.
But again, the idea that the way, we were raised affects the
way that we developed throughout our lives and specifically
around procrastination. It does have, it could have an
effect this way. Now was it, was it?
Because we were like, avoiding those emotional memories like,
deep, emotional memories that we want to avoid.
I don't know. It's funny because the parents
thing I mean there's definitely something to it.
It's so hard to know where that line begins and ends, you know
how much of that is just Personality natural disposition.
How much of that is? Like, how Mom?
And Dad treated you? Like it's such a fuzzy area.
Like the the boundary between those two things is very fuzzy.
It is funny. I have never I had never heard
that permissive parent thing. Yeah.
In the what did you say? It was the timid underachiever
nervous under nervous, underachiever do that?
That fucking I feel called out. Oh really my parents were super
permissive. Yeah, like grew up no structure.
No rules which, you know, was a real double-edged sword?
Like there's a lot of things that I think it forced my
brother and I to develop a lot of traits.
Self-reliance, right and dependents comfort with
autonomy, Comfort being alone. So there are a lot of things
that I developed at an early age that I'm like, actually very
grateful for, but it is funny. I both my brother and I were
spectacular. Underachievers.
I, you know, pretty much up until maybe my second year of
college. I was very much an underachiever
and It's funny. I had a really good friend in
high school, who Called me out on my bulshit once.
And it was like, very uncomfortable.
It was one of those moments where like somebody says
something to you and like Because it hurts so bad, you
know, it must be true. But like, I, you know, I used to
be a pretty arrogant teenager. You know, I was a smart kid who
never did his homework. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
It's so it. I think it was like just talking
shit once and I said something I was like I was like, you know, I
if I really cared, I, you know, I could easily get an A in that
class and then I think my friend was like, well, why don't you do
it? And I was like, it's not worth
my time and he was like, he said, no.
I, I think you don't do it because I think you're afraid of
trying and not actually getting that, and he said, you'd rather
not try it. All, and I kicking the stomach.
Dude, it was like, fucking getting stabbed in the chest and
I was like, whoa, no comeback for it, you know, but I think it
really was something to that. Like I very much there was
something about the permissive environment that maybe as a
defense mechanism, at a very inflated perception of my own
ability and potential. and, Actually doing anything
threatening that. Ah, yeah.
So if I actually did try in a class and didn't get the, ah, I
had to reevaluate my ego and after Rio evaluate how I see
myself and that was just too scary and too so it's just
easier to smoke pot and not do your homework?
Yes, which is interesting. Like, you know, you mentioned
the the Pleasure Principle Segwaying, into the reality
principle. I imagine I'm not aware of Freud
talking about it in these terms but I imagine like part of that
process, it part of it looks like Almost the ego flexibility
like developing an ego flexibility.
Like when I think about my younger self, and I think about
young people in general or immature people in general, they
are very rigid egos. They have very like, I think,
what people mean when they say you have a big ego or you need
to get rid of your ego, what they mean, is that your ego is
rigid, which is that you have a self perception that is not open
to new information, right? Like if you If you fail at
something or something doesn't go well instead of re-evaluating
how you see yourself you blame everybody else, right?
And double down and double down on how you yeah on your your
self-image and so I think That that ego flexibility is
actually. what we should be going for and I think that is
also a skill that we naturally develop as we get older like
III, find that I'm much better, you know, at 40 a much better at
kind of looking at myself and being like, Oh, Yeah, maybe I
wasn't as good at that thing as I thought I was whereas like you
know when I was 20 that felt cataclysmic to have that
thought, right? So super interesting.
Yeah yeah, super interesting. One thing to about the whole
parenting thing and Freud's view I think sometimes they get a
little bit pigeonholed when they think about this.
Because when you were telling your story about permissive
parenting and how it affected you, I had a friend who had a
very permissive, she was the daughter of a single mother.
Yeah. And her mother, just let her do
whatever she wanted and she resented her for it.
She wanted this structure. Yeah.
And she became a very high achiever actually.
So I was the other way. So I just don't think.
Like, a lot of times with Freud. I think they have these neat
little like just stories. Yeah.
So there's that. Again, though.
The larger takeaway I think, is that he did?
Find these kind of big categories of influences on our
behavior that nobody had really thought about before and brought
them to to the surface, the surface and the cultural
conscience for sure. Yeah, so just a quick reminder
before we move on, if you're starting to get a little bit of
information overload, we do have a PDF guide for all of this and
all the solved episodes, you just go to solved, podcast.com
slash procrastination to get a full episode guide with a
company notes, takeaways references and citations.
We break everything down. Helps summarize all the most
important information and offer. Next steps if you want to start
implementing what you're hearing and of course it's free.
So just go to solved. Podcast.com slash
procrastination, the link is also in the description.
All right. Anyway so yeah speaking of other
Frameworks behaviorism. This is the big cycle break
through the comes right after Freud.
Yeah, kind of during for even too.
Oh, a bit of a backlash, I would say so 1930.
John B, Watson kind of regarded. It as the father of behaviorism.
Although there were some people performed but he comes out with
a paper called psychology as the behaviorist views it, okay?
And right from the get-go, like, the opening line is psychology
as the behavioral. As the behaviorist views, it is
a purely objective experimental branch of Natural Science.
Kind of like a slap in the face to the Freudian college.
At the time, it really is kind of a backlash that's going on
the they Watson and the other behaviors at the time, they see
all of this like oh you know, dreams your childhood your
internal states that you want to like really navel gaze at,
right? They saw this as wishy-washy, it
wasn't useful, it wasn't helpful.
Also keep in mind at the time, too of what was going on.
Like, Einstein is, like, kind of.
Yes, starting to, like, become a name, that's known and physics.
And there's all these breakthroughs in the Material
Sciences at this time, too. And the behavior is wanted to
take that kind of philosophy, which was kind of rigorous
scientific method and apply it to the psychology very much in
contrast to the the Freudian psychologist, which is just sit
and talk for hours. Sit on couch, talk.
Let's get on these unconscious motives that you have.
The behaviorists were very much the opposite actually, like
almost exactly the opposite. They said, no, we should not be
studying mental. Internal, mental States at all.
We should only be concerned with what's observable.
What's observable is behavior? So, that's why it's called
behaviorism. Watson?
Also went on to say in that in that same paper is that the
behaviorist? Recognizes no, dividing line,
between, man, and brute. So this is where it's, because
what was going on, is what all these studies with animals were
starting to be incorporated into the body of literature that was
going on and the behavior assault.
All these parallels between even, you know, a rat or a mouse
and a human being and how They can be very similar in a lot of
ways, I feel so objectified. Well, that was that is exactly
what the Beavers try to do that was to make this an objective
justify rigorous science, they wanted, they wanted to really
get at the heart of things and they thought if we could only
just study things like a physicist studies atoms and
particles then we could get to some underlying truth around
behavior in Psychology and human nature even.
Yeah, so that kind of puts it in the historical context of what's
going on. You know, there's Watson was
very much influenced by Pavlov and the Pavlov's dogs, you know,
you ring a bell. Give the dog food after a little
while the Dockers the belt just starts salivating.
Yeah, that was kind of the the Forerunner two, this strict
behaviorism that that came in the early 20th century.
That kind of conditioning. The pavlovian conditioning was
called classical conditioning, by the behaviorist, they saw
that as you're pairing, this neutral stimulus, which in this
case was the Bell to a natural stimulus which was the food and
then you get this on this kind of innate response, which was
the salivating, yeah. Okay.
With this, be like the behavioral manifestation of the
neuroscientific idea of like, what fires together wires
together? I know those different things.
Well, I mean later on. That's how it would be
explained. Okay, yes, and that was the,
that was the classical conditioning side though.
Yeah, I think what you're starting to get a little bit
more, was the operant conditioning?
Okay. Which is what the behavior is
really like. That was their big kind of
breakthrough was. Okay.
You have these classical conditioning experiments where
you can make a dog celebrate at the ringing of the Bell.
So yeah. But actually, when you
introduced learning, which is relevant to the Procrastination
story. When you introduced learning
into the equation, then it becomes what they call Operating
Conditioning. Okay.
And this was really, this really
took hold Watson kind of was dancing around it, but it wasn't
until Skinner came along. BF Skinner Burris Frederic
Skinner. What's his name?
I did not know his real name of it.
I'm I was a Psychology major. I did not know.
I would go by BF, too. That was my name.
Yeah, it's kind of a dorky name for sure.
He grew up in rural, Pennsylvania.
Yeah, but this was the idea of operant conditioning where you
learned through a series of rewards and punishments.
Yeah. Okay.
Now, Skinner, I don't know how much we want to get into.
How much do you want to get into this again?
He's a fascinating dude. Okay.
From a young age, he was very
inventive. He was always trying to come up
with like new little inventions and Contraptions.
And he had a very Mechanical Mind, which would later produce
the, the Skinner box. What we know is the Skinner box,
right? You put the rat in the Box.
It pushes the lever. It gets a tree, it learns very
quickly. That pushing the lever.
It's a tree. Yeah, Skinner Actually found
that you could get rested to do all sorts of things.
He just rats used pigeons. Those were his two main animals,
but he, he found that you could get them to do all sorts of
different complex. Very complex behaviors, which
just simple rewards and punishments.
Okay? Now, he so he invented the
Skinner box, he It taught them to he, he introduced the idea of
shaping Behavior as well. So just little increments of,
you know, get the rat to press the bar.
Okay? Now get the right to press,
press the wall and then press the bar that kind of thing.
And you could get these complex behaviors out of all of that.
This is what again was called operant conditioning.
Yeah, skin or even got to a point where he coined the term
radical behaviorism, which he thought even, like, internal
States. Could be the result of rewards
and punishments. Okay, we're gonna hear a little
bit, but one of the reasons he thought that was because you
could do some pretty complex behaviors with these simple
animals and get just through a series of rewards and
punishments, right? So for instance, he taught He
taught pigeons how to play ping pong.
He taught them how to quote, and quote read.
It was more like a word recognition thing, but they
could still, it was kind of like reading.
He's like, you know, now this is if I can teach a pigeon.
How to do these simple word, recognitions and taking a brain
from a human, you could do the same thing, just reward and
Punishment. This is what this word says
you're rewarded through that through a little dopamine in
your brain or whatever it is and then you learn how to read.
So he's like all these complex behaviors can be reduced down to
this very, very simple idea. Which is you like the wire
together. Fire together.
Sure. You repeat?
What? You were awarded for and you
don't repeat what you're punished for. so to a
behaviorist procrastination, really does just come down to
what you are rewarded or punished for And in the case of
procrastination, they would say something along the lines of,
you know, you are one year rewarded for the delay.
You you're anxious about whatever task this is and then.
So in order to remove that anxiety, you just don't engage
in it whatsoever. So there's your reward or the
punishments are grave enough for you.
We've kind of already touched on this too, right.
Like it's the the consequences so far down the line that you're
not even it's not even registered.
Yeah, you've discounted yeah discounted it completely so it's
really just a series of they just see it as a series of
rewards and punishments and that's what all animals not just
humans. But all of us are subjected to
do. That's like the law of nature
for a behaviorist. Yeah, yeah.
So the solution for a behaviorist would be.
Give yourself a worse punishment for not doing the thing, I think
so. A lot of reward yourself for
doing the thing. Well both, okay, it's using
punishments and rewards in your life.
Strategically, right? And this as definitely
influenced a lot of like the modern-day productivity space.
Yeah, there's even a law called Skinner's Law.
So like make make the thing so unpleasant, not to do it that
you just do it. Yes.
Like, that's very much used in a lot of modern day, productivity
schemes, and and systems. I mean, there is something to
that 100% again. Yeah, there's something to it.
Yeah, yeah. It's it's I think about it a lot
in terms of friction like adding and removing friction to certain
behaviors. Yes.
Right and my environment making it easier to do good.
You know it's like if you don't want to eat junk food like just
don't bring it in the house. Right.
So you don't have to make those
decisions in the first place, or If you want to do something,
like, if you want to pick up a new habit, like, sign up for
classes and get that accountability and convince a
friend to go with you or whatever.
So, that like not doing it becomes way more painful than
doing it. It's funny because it is, it
sounds so simple. But this is like, for me,
personally, this is one of the strongest levers that I've ever
pulled. Definitely for my own behavior.
Yeah, the environmental design is very much influenced by the
behaviorist school of thought. The modern day environmentalist,
design. Even go back to James, Clear,
setting up your environment and in such a way that rewards and
punishes certain behaviors that you want.
That's very much comes from the behavioral school.
Yeah, for sure. And also there is even though,
you know, they were a reaction to for audience psychology,
there is still kind of that pleasure training principle
totally carried over into behaviorism.
They acknowledge that but they say that's it.
We don't have to go any further than yeah.
And we can just we can shape our lives and even Society through a
series of Rewards. And punishments.
Yeah, and yeah. So procrastination to them is
really again it's in terms of rewards and punishment but
there's you know, there's kind of like there's a reinforcement
of delay. Like I already said you
immediate indulgences that are in your room and are just easier
to reach for. So we will reach for them.
There's an effective punishments.
It's either distant or it's not a strong enough punishment for
us to not procrastinate On Any Given task.
Previous conditioning though, too.
They also bring that in. So there is a little bit of, you
know, if you were If previous experiences of procrastination
went unpunished, then you're just more likely to do it,
right? So, if you're in a job and you
don't really face a lot of consequences for not getting
something done. Well, you're just gonna continue
doing that. That's a behaviorist View and
then there's an also, they have this negative reinforcement
Loop, which there's greater anxiety as a deadline
approaches, right? And it can make finishing that
task more relieving. Like, the more pressure you put
on yourself the greater the relief you experience.
Once you do finally do that. Well, it's funny because one of
the one of the people I talked to in preparation for the
podcast was Tim Urban. Who is the most watched?
Ted Talk of all time about procrastinating procrastinating.
And it's funny, because I've been friends with Tim for over
10 years and and I know him very well and he is, he's a chronic
procrastinator, but he's also like I don't know.
I've known a number of people like him where it's they get in
this pattern where you kind of mentioned this earlier that,
that they They? Feel like they Thrive under
pressure and they need that pressure cooker.
Experience going on around them, right?
Like that's that's what actually gets them to perform and so they
continuously throw themselves into that situation over and
over again. And you know doing the work
weeks ahead of time and not stressing or worrying about it
at all. Like that's not a very
interesting emotional experience.
That's kind of boring and requires, you know, a lot of
forethought whereas waiting to the night before having this
super extremely stressful event and then like you said the
relief of accomplishing that stressful event that can easily
be something that you condition in 95% of college students.
That's what it is. That was, that was a lot of my
college experience is thought, probably.
Just, yeah, it's like I I would get.
Assignment. I'd be like, oh, the all-nighter
for this is gonna be interesting.
Yeah, yeah. And you could pull it off.
So, you did. Yeah.
Like you again, you were awarded in in these ways that you won't
don't even realize you're being rewarded.
Yeah. Which is a good example.
Is the relief of that stress that you put yourself under, but
it's a self. Self-reinforcing stress.
There was just self-imposed stress.
Yeah, I should say, this might be a good time to talk a little
bit about that thriving Under Pressure.
Yeah, a little bit about. I know, I know you, you have a
bone to pick with. I have a bone to pick with this
because I feel like, I'm one of these people, right?
And in talking to people around this, like, I would say, oh
yeah, we're doing this, this big long podcast on procrastination.
Yeah. And it was, oh, I need this.
But almost all the time. A good number of people
immediately would say. Oh, but I thrive Under Pressure.
I need the dead. I need that the pressure of the
deadline. and I thought a lot about that, and I think that's
just bulshit I just say to say that you drive under pressure
you're calling out our entire audience.
I understand that it's motivated.
I understand I'm sure it's motivating.
You don't need it. This is the more common thing
about I do my best work under pressure and that I think is
total bulshit. Okay.
There are people who drive under pressure, I get it.
Like, like a situation comes up that like that something needs
to get done and people, boom. They just snap into that.
Get shit done mode. Yeah, I that I totally believe
in. That's, that's not that's
something that I'm talking about.
When people say, I do my best work under pressure I'm always
my immediate question is compared to what right compared
to not doing anything at all because that's the only work you
do. Sure it's your best work but
it's the only word. I I don't I don't agree with
that at all. I feel so attacked right now.
I get it. And look, I get it.
You just have to sometimes. Like there's just so much going
on and most people's lives that they use that pressure to get
things done. I get that.
Like, there's just, there's only so many hours.
Yeah, that's fine. Don't tell me.
That's your best work. When you're fearing the negative
consequences of not getting something done.
That's your best work. Yeah.
Are you really gonna tell me? That's your best work that you
can produce. Well let's back up the truck
just a couple a couple a couple feet.
Okay I hear what you're saying. Yeah I I don't think you're
wrong. I so here I'll kind of delineate
what I think you're right about which is that the people who say
that they have probably not had a healthy working experience
because what you're saying is like okay these people budgeted
their time, Let's say they have an assignment due in two weeks,
right? Okay.
If they were diligent, they budgeted their time, they're
like, okay, I'm gonna spend an hour to two hours a day every
single day and then the last day, you know, I'll have most of
it done or whatever and they'll have time to rethink things and
go back and change things and do further research and like dig in
the other stuff. Yes, they will probably have a
much better result with much less stress.
I guess, maybe this is the funny thing is that budgeting of time
and following that schedule and following that plan, they don't
see that as part of the work, they see that as something
different and so that it's, it's All they experience is.
Maybe they try to work on it a week ahead of time and they're
like, this is boring. This sucks.
Yeah, there's no emotional stimulus, happening.
And so they lose interest, or they don't try very hard and
then they get two days out and they start freaking out and
panicking. And then that forces them to
like really focus and put in a lot of effort.
And so they get that emotional stimulation, which then gets
channeled into the work itself. And then yeah, sure the work
that they do then is much Superior to like the half-ass
the temp that they had. Okay.
So I grew up with that. Yes.
I can see how that is probably their experience.
And I can also see your point that, like, if they were very
diligent budgeted out their time, like, say, two weeks in
advance and did a little bit every day.
And really thought were thoughtful and considerate about
like, the work, they're doing. Yes, they would produce a much
better outcome, but they've never had that experience.
They've never that's my point. Yeah, but what yeah, no, yeah,
you are correct in that regard. But I I think you, I think the
point that you're kind of like subtly raising here is that a
lot of people I guess maybe mistake the emotional stimulus.
For. The work, hmm.
Right? Like It is it is that anxiety?
Fuelled Frenzy Where they get a ton of stuff done, and they are
super focused. That they associate that with
good work because it is enlivening.
It's, it's exciting, it's stimulating, right?
And they are way more focused on on a task or a goal.
Then they usually are and most circumstances, so in their mind
they're like, yeah, this is I'm doing great work right now. so,
it I guess what I'm saying is it's more of a skill issue, like
If they knew how to budget things out, well in advance and
do a little bit every day and like thoughtfully look at their
work every day. They would agree with you.
Yeah. But it's it's like I guess I'm
just agreeing with you but I'm like softening.
There's a new ones too. I like so I'm like I feel so
attacked that. I'm like you're now recording
your ego is being exactly. My ego is being threatened.
So no I think it's just I think you are.
I think you are directionally correct.
I do think it's a little bit more nuanced than I guess.
I'm kind of like Diplomat as somebody who Was that person?
Yeah, for A lot of his life and I have been to that.
I'm including myself. Yes too.
I get that. I mean okay, if you're if you're
saying I do my best work under pressure Again, what I think
you're saying is I do my best work when only the threat of the
negative consequences are on the line.
And not only that but I'm limiting myself to such a small
time window that you're going to tell me that, like all your
first if creative work is specialty, all your first ideas
are going to be your best ideas because that's all the time.
You have to put down. Yeah.
Or to work out and whatever creative work you're doing.
I don't think so. Some of those might come down
to, I agree with that. Some of this might come down to
the type of work as well. I mean here's the counter
argument. Is that is that pressure?
A lot of pressure is derived from high expectation, right?
So when the caliber of the work is not expected to be that high,
you don't feel the pressure. And so you don't try very hard,
but when the caliber of work is expected to be extremely high,
that's a lot of pressure. And so you try a lot harder.
I mean, I think most people have had a I mean maybe this gets it
a little bit into a discussion of expectation and
procrastination, but like I think most of most of us have
had an experience at some point in our lives were like, somebody
has come to you and be like, hey Drew, I need you to do this
thing in the first time. You hear it, you're like that's
impossible. And they're like, oh, and by the
way, I need it in like four days and then you do it and you're
like, holy shit, I could actually do that, right?
So it like, Okay, I'm just gonna throw that element out there.
I'm not saying it's not motivating, I'm not saying you
shouldn't like Leverage that when it does happen.
I, I just don't think you should rely on that.
I agree. Best work 100% saying it. 100%
agree. Thank you for bringing in the
Nuance. I was very angry you now you
softened it. You agree with that.
You were on your soapbox and I managed to kind of kick it out
from under you, from the behaviorist point of view
though. Too again, going back to those,
what you're hearing is a negative consequences.
Well, they've, I mean, a lot of Studies have shown that, you
know, punishments aren't really as effective.
At least not their effective. In the short term, they're not
effective in the long. Yeah, right.
Rewards are more effective. I think in the long term part of
that I do think goes back to something I mentioned earlier
was about agency. We think we when we're just
being punished for something, we don't feel like we have the
agency to actually make decisions but when there's a
rewards on the line we can choose whether or not we like
that world. Yeah I think that's that's
something that came out of the behaviorist well and interpret.
Creation of the behavior anyway that I I think is actually very
useful for people. So where do you think,
behaviorism, went wrong? What did they miss?
Because everything you're describing at least in the
context of procrastination. I'm like, yeah, that works.
Oh yeah, that works. Yeah, that works.
So again what what did they fall short on?
Yeah, I mean all the environmental design stuff.
I think they nailed definitely I think Though, even though
Skinner later in his life, came to this, what he called
behavioral radical behaviorism, which was that even our mental
processes and cognitions could be reduced to rewards and
punishments. I don't think they ever fully
showed that and I think they ignore a lot of the emotional
states and cognitive internal processes.
Not only do they ignore them? They explicitly ignore.
Yeah, so we're not going to worry about those kind of things
because some method will come along, where we can explain it
in terms of rewards and punishments.
Yeah, so they ignore that. We can also, we can override our
sensibilities around rewards and punishments too, to which I
think is a cognitive again and internal cognitive process that
happens. Yeah, that gets overridden by
these principles of just simple rewards and punishments.
I wonder what Skinner would think of David Goggins.
That's a thought experiment. God, what would you say about
David goggin? Yeah.
Where he's just constantly self flagellated.
Just like punishing himself. Yeah.
Putting himself through the most pain that he possibly can.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maybe they would
say that it's a kind of a higher order of operate, operant
conditioning, where you get some sort of reward out of it
eventually. And he's just conditioned
himself to to experience that reward over time c.
I in the, in the context of Goggins, I see the Freudian ego
explanation is more effective and and I mean, I mean, ego
strictly in the 40 and since not as like, oh God has an ego, but
it's like, Goggins has built an identity around doing incredibly
hard and painful things. And so, two maintain and
preserve that ego that he's built for himself which is
served him extremely well in his life.
And he's like rewarded him in many ways.
But to maintain that ego, he'd like needs to get out in front
of fucking punish himself. It's kind of what we were.
Saying that it's like when the Habit becomes the identity, you
have to do the action, it feels. It feels more painful to not do
the action to do it, right? And so it's like Goggins is
built an identity around. Doing incredibly difficult
painful things. And so he has reached this
fucking crazy place where he probably feels weird, not doing
painful things rather than doing them.
Well, he was also socially rewarded for doing those things
so too. Right?
The culture he grew, he kind of forged all that was Navy.
Seals. Yeah, that was socially
rewarded, totally. So the behaviorist would say, ah
know there's actually a big behaviorist lens.
We could put this here so it doesn't have to be reduced
identities. And so, is the behavior.
I mean, I like to maybe I'm naive, but I like to try to see
everything as like a puzzle and see where everything fits
together. You know, you I guess.
Are we seeing the behavior or the behaviorist perspective is
Kind of the interaction between the superego and the ego like
the rewards. It's like how the world is
rewarding, you and punishing you and how like I suppose you could
see it that way. Yeah, I mean I, I would think I
would say that the behavior is saw human nature as finely tuned
to social rewards. Yeah.
And so those are big, big rewards that have a very high
valence, very high salience when you think about them.
Those, you will approach those a lot more readily.
Yeah. so, I mean, Anything just and with operant conditioning,
anything can be turned into a reward almost, right?
You the operant part is that you're learning about these
Rewards or punishments so almost anything can like, with the
Goggins exactly punishment can be its own form of reward.
It's at some level. And so I think the even the
behaviors would go so far as to say that, yeah, it's all just
comes down to this. Seeking pleasure of waiting
pain. You know, I think really, though
the big takeaway from the behaviorist was these practical
tools that we've kind of stuff, the environmental stuff.
So you setting up, teaching yourself about the rewards and
punishments that you're being aware of the and how it rewards
and punishes you in different ways.
The refrigerator example, with the junk food is a good example
of that. Yeah, I think that's the biggest
takeaway. And, you know, even today all of
like the productivity systems and and gurus, who preached, the
kind of environmental and only environmental side, they draw
from a lot of this but they're not wrong.
They're just not, they're just right, it's incomplete.
Yeah. So I think we're getting closer.
This is part of the puzzle. Yeah, the rewards and the
punishments along with the identity stuff from Freud.
Yeah, sure that's all there. The skill stuff we got from from
Aristotle. We're starting to build a little
bit of a picture where, okay, these things fit together, it
doesn't have to be a war between all of these things.
And we can take the best parts of it and I think that's, I
think that's where we're headed with it.
Yeah, cool. Awesome.
Well, let's move on to the next thing then.
Which is time management. Ah, yes.
So as we move into the mid-20th century, it's actually
interesting to me that there's there is so much Credence to
what the behavior is. We're saying like all this
environmental design stuff, it actually does work for
productivity. Yet, what we got?
It was a bunch of Time Management Consultant bulshit.
So how did how did that happen? Well, okay, put it, let's put it
a little bit in historical context.
Okay, so yeah, the earliest early 20th century, you you have
the freudians in the behaviorist battling it out.
What changes though as we start to get into the middle of the
century. So starting the 40s, 50 60s is,
there's a big shift in the economy, right?
The post-war economy shifts, much more towards kind of the
knowledge work. The beginning of the knowledge
work, especially getting into the 60s, think, like Mad Men,
you know, the age of corporate drones, all of that starts.
So people start going from the farms and the factories we have
been urbanizing for, you know, several decades, since the
Industrial Revolution started in the 1800s slowly urbanizing.
And we're getting a new economy out of this knowledge.
Work becomes a thing. Yeah, so yeah, the Ad Agency is
the design designing products for Consumer products for The
masses, all of that. Start to crop up, right?
So, If you think about that, that's a very different work
environment, right? You go from a factory or a farm
you know exactly what you need to do.
What's right in front of you. It's very tangible.
You're in a factory to somebody else's telling you exactly what
to do, you don't have to think about it.
Whereas, if you're getting into more creative work in the new
knowledge economy, now you have all of this There's all these
tasks that are nebulous kind of and they're even the end goals.
A lot of times are nebulous. It's creative work.
They're not really sure what you're producing.
You're giving a little bit more autonomy, too, in those spaces.
And so now, you have to manage your own time, okay?
Up until this point, too. Like I said, a lot of the things
you were supposed to do, had kind of been outlined for you.
Somebody else told you what to do for the most part, for the,
the average worker. Now, you're, you're managing
your own time and you need a way to organize all this and decide.
What do I need to be working on right now?
And so, for a lot of the the industry I don't know if they're
really gurus around this time, but this is kind of their
predecessors. They thought oh well these
people just need to be taught how to organize their time, how
to manage their time. So this is where the kind of the
time management philosophy really starts to take hold and
and rise to the collective conscious.
Yeah. There's a lot of the like
techniques that come out of this to at least started here.
Even the ones we used today, Pomodoro techniques, time boxing
and all that we can get into those here in a little bit but
that's kind of that sets. The stage with the historical
stage for the time management crowd.
Okay. So you, you had your bone to
pick like 20 minutes ago. Okay.
This this section is going to be my bone.
Yeah, because I just think most of this is nonsense.
I'll pile on with you. I think.
Okay. For the next part.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I have a few observations. Yeah.
First of all. Is this is a very subtle.
Play-Doh back with a vengeance type situation which is like we
have all these office workers. We have all these worker bees.
They're they're it at their desk, they're doing they're
typing, they're doing things, but like the output is
completely unpredictable and a lot of people are
underperforming. What's the problem?
Oh, they must not know the right things, right?
And I find it so interesting that repeatedly throughout
history, that is our default. Like, it's like, if I just knew
the right system, if I just knew how to organize my time, if I
just knew how to use my calendar, if I just knew how to
time box my week, you know, like it, then everything is going to
be fine and I don't know. It's like what is so seductive
about that? It's simple, it's simple.
It's a you can point to one thing and say, oh I just need to
know how to organize better. I just need to know how to
manage my time more effectively and box this little bit of time
over here for this little thing and this little thing over here.
Yeah, it's a simple story. It's also I would say it's
unemotional. Yes.
Like very rational very, very rational.
And you know, we just talked about, you know, with Freud and
Skinner like we just spent 45 minutes talking about how
Defense mechanisms and resistance and rationalization
and like, all these excuses that you come up with and how does
uncomfortable it is and it's exhausting.
It is exhausting like a motion is a fucking exhausted, but it
there is something alleviating. There's something relieving
about just being like, well, I just need to get the right
calendar system or if I, if I get the right morning, like
these days, it's the morning routine, right?
Because everybody self employed so it's like, I just need the
right morning routine and then and then my days gonna be great,
I'm gonna get so much done. I I think here's the spicy take.
I think 90% of the time. This is just another subtle form
of procrastination. 100% agree with that.
It is. It is let me study the
techniques and systems that are gonna make me more productive.
So I don't actually have to go be more productive because being
productive is actually uncomfortable and scary and all
these emotions start happening. And I don't want to deal with
those. So let me let me study this
calendar system and try to get it down.
Absolutely. And exhibit, a look at how many
productivity apps are out there. Those are all come from the time
management kind of philosophy. They start there at least in me
if I'm wrong because you did more research on on this section
than I did but like Most of the research around this stuff is
like not. There's not a whole lot of
there. Oh yeah.
No, they they tried to do some research.
I think kind of in the 70s is when they're just like we're not
finding anything here. Yeah and just anecdotally to
look at it, there's people who are highly organized
professionally personally whatever.
They still procrastinate so it isn't it is not just about the
system and that's speaking from somebody who's tried every
system. Everyone, but I'm trying to a
lot of different systems. I have my little system, I do
have a time management system. Don't get me wrong, right?
I think too, if you go from somebody who's never had, it's
just been told what to do at all times.
And then you just tell them, okay?
Now, go do whatever you need to do without any structure.
Yeah, they probably need some time management skills, right?
Absolutely. It is nowhere near the, the
underlying cause of what's causes people to not get things
done. Yeah, some of the tenants of
time management, you know, setting clear priorities and
goals. Well, sure.
Okay. Yeah.
People often, they underestimated how long tasks
would take. So getting better at managing
your time. Sure.
Yeah. Going you struggle to structure
your day and so, you end up working on less important tasks
over more important. So prioritizing sure all of
these things, obviously, you need to have those skills but
it's not getting at the root cause right at all, you know
there, but there are still going to your point too.
Just recently. Actually I tried a new system.
Yeah. A new way of kind of capturing
my to-do lists and organizing my time and even time boxing and
stuff like that. And it was AI enabled.
So of course I was really excited to try it when I tried.
It was very disappointing because I'm like, oh, this is
just the same the same shit. I've already tried, just
packaged and they put AI in front of the, the name of it.
Yeah. And so I got on a forum and
asked him about a couple of things.
I'm like, what about you know, XYZ And somebody immediately
jumped in and they're like, they're like, look this
community and the, the team for this app are just so dedicated
and devoted. And they had, this long, long
response to my thing that had nothing to do with x-ray getting
shit. But that's where that's where
this leads though, too. You're right that people.
It's it's another form of procrastination.
Like, I learned so much from this app, that was one of the
lines that I've learned so much. I don't want to learn about an
app. I just want to get shit done.
Right? Right.
So that I think that is the big risk with this, these apps, and
other systems, and people wrote books on this.
They've made a lot of money, and we still haven't found the time
management solution because they're they're feeding that
seduction that that that Plato seduction of.
Like if I just knew the right thing, I mean, this kind of
dovetails into just the self-help in the street in
general. I'm sure this is going to come
up on a lot more episodes of like People thinking knowledge
is the solution when it's really like it's an emotional problem.
I'm kind of spoiling the the ending here but like
procrastination is an emotional problem and Sure.
Knowledge can like nudge you slightly in this direction or
that a framework a time management framework, you know,
a certain system that you build for yourself can nudge you in
this direction or that your environment nudges you in this
direction or that ultimately, it's an emotional problem.
I, I have a couple thoughts, one came up, just while you were
talking which is like, yes, you're correct.
Like I think every productive person develops, some sort of
system for themselves. What people mistake is that,
that system is not the cause of their productivity.
It's the effect. Yes.
Right. You like you learn what your
personality is, what your proclivities are, what you're
emotional. Pitfalls are the things that you
get anxious about and that you worry about and that you stress
about and the way you like to get things done and the sorts of
things you like to do first thing in the morning versus last
thing in the afternoon. And you build your own system
around that to optimize for yourself and eventually, once
you spend enough time doing it you know you get 10-15 years
into your work life, you figure it out pretty well.
What works for yourself and what doesn't and That does make you
very effective on a day-to-day basis but then other people show
up and they're like oh what, what system do you use?
And they just assume that like if they just adopt your system,
that it's going to work perfectly for them yet, you
know, a lot of people have built multi-million dollar businesses
around that so that's that's the first thought the second thought
I thought what you said, you know you, well, you were
describing knowledge, work. You raised a really good point
that I hadn't really thought about before, which is, you
know, in the kind of the industrial economy or agrarian
economy, the measurement of the output is like predetermined,
right? Like if you're a factory worker,
you go in your boss is like, hey, I need 50.
Widgets per day, it's very tangible.
Yeah, super tangible. And it's very measurable and you
know what your progress is. So it's like, you know, if you
break for lunch and you only have 22 widgets down and set a
25, you know you're behind schedule and so, you know, to
like catch up in the afternoon. When you go into knowledge work,
as you pointed out, a lot of its creative, a lot of its
intangible, a lot of it is like in Negotiation, it involves
like. You know, discussing committees
and meetings and dealing with clients and, you know, taking
somebody to the golf course and like all this stuff that is
completely unmeasurable. What I know about human nature
is that The things that are not legible or measurable or
uncertain, they generate anxiety.
And I imagine that there are lots of people in the knowledge
Work World. I know, I experienced this all
the time. In my own work.
I'm sure you do too. Where it's like you want to feel
like you're making progress on something?
Yes. You know you can like spend days
or weeks on something. It is not necessarily clear to
you that you've made any progress whatsoever.
And so I've noticed it That on projects like that.
I start measuring my time, you know, it's like books are
perfect example because books, like, literally take two years,
the right? So there are whole stretches in
the middle of a book where you actually don't know if you're
making any progress or not like you, you're like this entire
chapter could end up deleted, right?
You know, like, everything I've worked on this month.
Might be for nothing, so that doesn't feel good.
So what do you start doing? You start measuring the hours
you put in eat, you know, you start measuring like.
Okay, I did, I've done 11 days in a row of at least three hours
a day, right? So it's like I'm doing a good
job. I'm a good author.
Right. Are you like same thing with
to-do lists two, right? Yeah.
I keep it to do list until I love checking things off and
sometimes I'll keep their completed that task list there
so I can see it. And it's looks tangible.
I'm making progress on something.
But am I? I don't know.
Or am I just checking boxes? Yeah.
And it can get to that. Just that that box.
Checking can become its own little task of your a
conditioning, right? Yeah.
There are, you know, a number of things like I mentioned a few of
these that already came out of this era or at least, we're
inspired by this era that we still even use today.
One of the kind of famous ones amongst the kind of productivity
crowd. Anyway like the Eisenhower
Matrix? Yeah, Dwight Eisenhower was
president after World War Two is this, this time?
Frame is very popular. So we had this quadrant right on
one side, you had what was an importance and on the other side
was urgency so it could be highly important and highly
urgent low on each. Yeah, you get these four four
quadrants and he said the quadrant two which was important
but not urgent. Are the tasks that typically got
procrastinated on so his advice was to do those first had
advice, don't get me wrong but it's still off the problem.
Know why is it not urgent? Why is it not important, right?
I was just gonna say like that's just the 1950s, Eisenhower
version of that, that tweet. I read at the top of the show
which is like, you know, you have to give up short-term the
game, long term. Freedom, like all of your dreams
are behind sacrifices. It was like, well, no shit
Sherlock. Like, this is, I know this.
This is not helping me, so I don't want to dog pile on this
stuff because like, It is useful information.
Absolutely, it's just not sufficient whatsoever, right?
It is not the solution, right? You shouldn't start there.
I think a lot of people wear, when they're like, okay, I need
to get a system together. I need to get something together
where I can get stuff done. They'll start here and I don't
think this is no start. This is when you're optimizing
what's already working, right? Right.
Yeah. And something that works first.
And then that go to this kind of stuff.
Like I said, I've tried all the different systems, all the big
ones and you made this point already but it does ring.
True for me too is that I took the one good thing from doing
all that is. I took the things that worked
from each one of those and made it my own in my own personal
way. I just don't think there's any
one system out there know, because every time again like
this, this one, I just tried to use recently, I'm like, oh, this
is it, this is the one. Yeah, I found myself already
like falling into that trap and it's like, oh no, there's no
single system out there. That's perfect for everybody.
Yeah. And even, even if you find a
system that works for you today, like Three years from now.
Slightly different three weeks from now I can almost guarantee
you that. Yeah, once you think you found
the solution it's yeah. There's something hiding around
the corner that you didn't plan for.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay.
But there are okay. I mean, there are some good
things. Like we said, there are some
things that did come out of this.
So providing structure and Clarity around what you need to
do. That is a useful step.
Yes. Obviously I think another thing
that came out of look kind of the behaviorist view but also
the time management crowd was breaking.
Things up into smaller chunks and we'll talk about maybe a
little bit later, why that's useful.
It's not it's not because it just manages your time better.
It's because it gives you a better emotional container for
it, right. Yes, correct, yeah.
Yeah, I also think too. One thing, one benefit I got out
of all these different time. Management systems is the
ability to accurately assess, how much work I can get done in
a day. I think that did actually come
from trying and failing over and over and over.
Because for instance, you know, I timed box or yeah.
And I am by no means perfect at it.
And I change it constantly throughout the day even too.
So I'm not a rigid time boxer but I've gotten a lot better
about, okay. It used to be like I'd have 10
things on my to-do list and I try to time box them all, and
it's like I'm on Thing Two by three o'clock in the afternoon
and I'm like, okay, I gotta be realistic about this.
So there is kind of even though you're approaching it from the
more cognitive quote, unquote, rational side of your brain.
I think there's some benefit in the time boxing systems and
methods that you can get out of that.
They're not again it's not the base underlying cause but yeah
yeah I mean again I think a lot of this stuff is useful at the
margins, right? Like what you just described
like gaining an accurate assessment of Which part what
parts of your job? Take, what amounts of time?
Like, that's something that is just, it's good to learn that
over time. Like ultimately procrastination.
Is an issue of going from doing nothing to doing something.
Yes, even if that's something is completely imperfect, whereas I
feel like time management is just is taking somebody who's
already doing something and just helping them do it.
Slightly better or more efficiently or in a slightly
shorter amount of time. And And so yeah, I it comes back
to what you said earlier. It's like this is not the place
to start. This is, this is not even the
place to like go. Second or third like this is the
place to go. you know, when you are When you're you're moving
along and you're doing a lot of things really well, but you're
just kind of wondering like, how can I fit more stuff in or like,
how can I be more efficient with my time?
Then you start taking a look at this stuff?
Yeah, for sure. Do we want to risk going into
some of the things we do? Do we want to throw those out
there? I might be a useful exercise for
somebody with all of the caveats in the mornings.
We've already issued. But sure.
Yeah. What, why don't you go first?
Because I'm weird. Yeah.
And already know but it actually it might be it might be a useful
segue as well. It just because you know as
someone with ADHD that my productivity function is like
strange, right? Right.
So people other people people who are listening who maybe have
ADHD and because I know progress the nation Disproportionately
people with adhs struggle with it so it might be useful to get
into that. Okay.
So why don't you go first?
Yeah sure. So I mean for me I try to keep
it as simple as I can. That's one gripe I have with.
So many of these apps is that they get complicated way too
quickly. They usually start out fairly
simple and then I think what happens is it kind of get a like
a audience capture a little bit. Like yeah, give me this feature,
give me this feature and then just keep adding things so.
So my one of my principles is to keep it as simple as possible.
Have something have a to do list of some kind, I use notion.
That's what we use on the team. So I put all my tasks into a
personal database that I have and there's a way to organize it
that on a date on a daily basis. When I'm trying to decide what
to do. I do time box.
Okay, for me, this works. Yeah, because again, I the most
useful exercise out of all of this isn't like, okay, this is
what I need to get done. Now, I'm going to go get it.
It's thinking about, okay, realistically, what can I get
done in this amount of time? And after you time box for a
while, again, like a I was saying you get you get better at
this and you get better at estimating.
How much time any given task is going to take you just described
really quick, what time boxing is, right case?
People don't know. Yeah, sure.
So time boxing is, you you use some sort of system.
In my case, I just use pencil and paper actually use Kyle
Newports time boxing. Okay.
Journal that he has. You could you could use any
general to do this. I just, I like his at this
weight format and everything like that.
Essentially, the way I do it is I will write down, you know,
8:00 9:00 10:00 down, one side of the side of the paper and
then I make a box around any given its a one or two hour time
box from 8 to 10:00, let's say every morning and I put down
whatever task I need to get done and I'm saying I'm allotting two
hours to this task or whatever it is.
And so I give myself those two hours and I'm only going to work
on that during those two hours now.
Life happens and this it's not a perfect system.
And so, like I already mentioned, I will revise this
throughout the day. I'm like, okay, this test took
longer or something came up, that was urgent that I needed to
do address. Why?
I like house Notebook 2 is because there's different
columns for that you can, you can change it as you go.
Essentially though what the the goal is is to plan out your day
ahead of time so that you have something to aim at and say you
know, I'm working on this. I'm am I doing what I said I was
going to do. Yeah it's kind of like a
internal account. System a little bit. and again,
it also just keeps you very realistic like, you know, you
have An eight to ten hour work day every day.
What can you honestly get done in that and then it also for me
anyway, too, it does give me that.
Okay, I actually did get something done.
This is what I can look back at it.
And say, I use this time block, to, to actually get done.
When I said I was going to get done.
Okay, so I use a combination of to-do, lists and time boxing.
I use a calendar to obviously we have a shared calendar with the
team. I also have my own personal
calendar I look at that pretty much every day.
What do I got going on in events?
I got dinner with friends. I'll put that in there, that
kind of thing. Just kind of keep me.
These are the things that I know I have to get done today.
That that's what I put in the calendar, but to do, this is
more just like these need to be done at some point.
A time box is what am I doing right now?
Just kind of my system. Do you have any sort of like
rules or principles you like do the hardest thing first in the
morning? Like do easy things in the
morning? Like so I try to, I am a big fan
of Cal of Rapport and I do try to get, I get deep work in every
day. He calls deep work, if you don't
know, go read his book d. Work, it's fantastic.
I try to get that done. And for me, it's mornings for
most people. It's going to be mornings.
So usually I try to schedule about two hours of deep work in
in the mornings where I'm getting like, okay, this is
something that's gonna require a lot of my attention and focus.
So I'm going to sit down and for two hours usually from like 8 to
10 or something like that. I usually get up around 6:30 or
7, do you know? I'll read all kind of get warmed
up for the day and then I start working around. 8 ish.
Okay, 7:38 ish, okay, try to give my two hours a deep work
and and that is usually the hardest.
The hardest thing that I have to do for the day and honestly if I
get those done, that's like a win for the day too.
You know what I mean? Like, if I get two solid hours
of deep work and I mean, there's all sorts of other tests that
are important that I need to do that.
I will get done but if I get those two hours in I feel pretty
accomplished. Yes.
Yeah. So I again that's a realistic
expectation. You can get about two to three
to maybe four hours of real deep solid work in if you're in a
knowledge, work industry. Yeah, yeah.
And for those listening, Who haven't read the book like deep
work. It's generally something that
requires intensive, creativity or problem-solving, right?
So something that takes, like a lot of mental energy and effort,
like, you know, writing an article or programming, or, you
know, whatever, design, something like that.
Like generally, we kind of max out at three to four hours a
day, right? Intense research, you know,
stuff like that. Yeah, that sounds very, I think
that's it. Like I said though, what?
Yeah, the other principle I have is just keep it as simple as
possible. Yeah.
That's as soon as I add any sort of complexity to it and I just I
don't so no like break times know.
I mean, I I will schedule in with my time boxing.
I'll schedule in breaks. What's, sometimes, what I call
Flex? I'm just like, I just, I know I
just need a bunch of stuff I need to get done and I'll put
like, a 30 minute box just called Flex.
Okay. Do whatever you need to get done
in that time. Yeah, but I don't do no.
I don't get a hardcore on the Pomodoro or the Puma Jordan,
never worked for me. I never quite got that one.
Yeah. And so I wonder if somebody just
made that up. I wonder that with a lot of
things. Yeah, if it works for you great.
But yeah, try it, whatever. What's your ADHD?
Ritalin system look like Mark if you could call it that.
So, okay. I would divide it up into two
kind of classes of work, so, For deep work, I would say it's not
very different, which is I try to block off x a number of
hours. Eliminate as many distractions
as possible. You know, I used to use software
that would block things like social media and, you know,
Sports websites and stuff like that.
I, I did that for a number of years and it was very helpful,
especially when I was writing a bunch of books.
These days, I don't do it as much.
I kind of, I'll let myself if I kind of feel need to get
distracted for a little bit mentally, I'll let myself do
that. The biggest difference.
So this is where the ADHD comes in this is and this is what's
going to sound crazy to people and all.
So I think is a good case study of like how productivity is just
very personal and what works for you may be something that like
does not work for any productivity Guru out there.
That should be the highlight of the section actually going
through these details. Absolutely, so action as
somebody with ADHD my brain kind of has a disproportionate need
for novelty actually. I wouldn't say need, I would say
a disproportionate to set the ability to novelty like it gets
bored extremely easily and it gets excited by something shiny
very quickly and very like very strongly what I noticed.
I noticed this as far back as when I was in university, is
that To a certain extent. And if it's not deep work, task
switching actually works in my favor, I wouldn't call it
multitasking because I don't, I never do two things at the same
time, but I'll give it a simple example, which is I had a
university lecture that I used to go to and without fail, I
would fall asleep every single time and I would have to like
end up asking my friend for her notes and I would like scramble
and freak out and have to like go read the textbook, you know,
two days before the the exam and It was a disaster and then at
some point, I don't remember when or how I started picking up
sudokus and crossword puzzles. From the Student Union, and I'd
take him to the lecture. And I found that if I like sat
there and did sudokus, while the guy was lecturing, I not only
did I stay awake the entire time, but I paid attention to
the entire lecture, which I mean, I know, that makes no
sense. That makes no sense.
I didn't understand this for a longest time and it's true to
this day. So like sometimes, when I'm like
listening to somebody, give a talk or even if I like pull up a
podcast or something like I can't just sit and listen to a
podcast. I have like open up like a game
on my phone and if I have the game going on my phone, then I
can pay attention to the podcast.
I know. Yeah.
You are weird man but it's you know what it is.
So this is what I figured out. Yeah it took me a long time to
figure this out but it's so it's not multitasking.
I thought it was that for a long time.
What it is is it's task switching or it's like, I guess
cognitive switching. Let's go back to the crossword
in the college lecture. So, I'm in I'm in the classroom,
I'm listening to the professor. Lecture, I pay attention, let's
say I make it five six minutes, my brain starts getting bored
and as an eight person with ADHD.
When I started to get bored it's like I'm really fucking bored
and when I have the Sudoku there, I'm like cool switch to
doku and I started doing this to do Sudoku.
And while I'm doing this Sudoku I'm like kind of passively
listening and hearing him in the background.
And then after a few minutes, when he says something
interesting, I'm like, oh, that's shiny and new.
Hey, look, novelty, go back to the lecture.
Okay? And so now I'm back in the
lecture for another five or six minutes.
And then when the lectures starts to get boring again, I
can like use the Sudoku to keep the novelty.
Engine going in my brain so that I never just shut down and go to
sleep. And I bring all of this up
because I do this every day. Yeah, in my actual data watch to
do this. Yes.
And as you know I'm I am strangely somehow extremely
productive. Yeah.
So anything that is not deep work.
I will very intentionally do this.
Like we took a break between shooting.
This, we were out in the office. We're talking about this podcast
while we're talking about it. I am looking at the design for
podcast covers and fonts for the website and thinking about
feedback that I'm going to give for on all that and I'm doing
the exact same thing. So it's like, you know, while
you ingest or talking as soon as that's that conversation starts
to get boring. I look at the designs and start
thinking about the designs and then as soon as I hear, one of
you say something interesting. I like stopped looking at the
designs and I go back to the conversation and it keeps the
novelty engine going in my brain.
So, anybody listening to this with ADHD, the thing to know is
that you, you have this kind of constant disproportionate
craving for novelty for new stimulus.
And if you don't feed your brain that stimulus, you you shut down
essentially, like you just lose interest completely and In my
case, go to sleep. If you can find Productive ways
to feed yourself that stimulus if you can.
And in my case it's kind of task pairing things.
So it's like if I have to do something extremely boring, like
check, like go through my inbox and clear it out.
Then I will just pair that with something else I need to do,
right? Which is like I don't know.
Have a meeting about like a production meeting for the
YouTube channel, right? And I'll just kind of casually
like flick through the emails while people are talking.
And I'm not being rude. Yeah, I'm like, okay, I am
paying attention but it gets it helps me get everything done
because it's like if I just tried to do the email and
nothing but the email it would never get done.
I would get bored. And I'd start watching YouTube
after 10 emails. And if I just did the meeting
and I tried to pay attention to the meeting, I would get bored
and I would like zone out and probably start watching YouTube
videos, so, it's okay, my pairing them together and this
is so we have not talked about something yet.
Which you and I I think it's like the main thing on this
episode that you and I disagree on.
Okay. And it's probably because of
this it which is the active procrastination.
There is something in the research, Called active
procrastination. Big debate over it.
Actually yes. Which I personally call my wife
and I we lovingly call it productive procrastination.
That's common. Yeah.
Which is essentially this. It's like, let's say you have a
big hairy task, that's really intimidating and scary and so
you're putting it off. Well, one way to get it, done is
to go find an even bigger. Hairier task.
That's even more scary than that, one and then procrastinate
by doing the less scary task. Okay, putting off, right?
So it's like, simple example is, you've been meaning the clean,
the garage for months, and You know, you just keep putting it
off, but then suddenly, it's, you know, you need to go buy a
new car and that's terrifying and you're really anxious about
it. So you put it off like, so it's
Saturday. You're supposed to go to a lot.
You're supposed to go look at the cars and instead of doing
that you decide, you know what? It's time to clean the girl.
Okay, so you spend the entire Saturday cleaning the garage.
Now, on the one hand, you just put off a really important
tasks. On the other hand, you finally
cleaned the damn girl, it is somebody with ADHD.
I feel like my entire life is this is just like Finding like
here's the task. I'm supposed to do.
Here's my level of intimidation with it.
What is something I can find that is is more or less
intimidating than this. To either do instead or to force
me to do this, right? And it's just like this constant
negotiation with my own brain. Like you, I do have a to-do
list. I don't timebox because as you
can imagine. Yeah, that's my life is chaos
and the time boxes are completely if you're gonna be
tasks with switching, there's yeah that's useless.
It's and it's not just that but it's also like giving you know
my role in the business like my days are Crazy.
Yes. Like it's there's so much
unexpected stuff that happens throughout the day so the time
boxing just goes out the window but I do do to-do lists.
And tasks lists. And I I'm actually like quite
religious about it because I think it's the only thing that
keeps me like tethered and like streamlined because otherwise I
just forget stuff. But outside of that, I don't do
a whole lot else. The other thing that I do that
Is strange about me? That's different.
You know, the conventional wisdom is always like knockout
the most difficult task of the day.
First goes all the way back to Ben Franklin.
There was the best selling book in the 80s called eat that frog
that frog Tracy which was basically it's one of those like
books that should have been a blog post.
Like the entire book is just like do the most important
thing, eat the Frog first thing in the morning, and then you
like, like you said, you, if you feels like a win for the rest of
the day, I can't do that. Yeah, like, I gotta get some
warm up, or yeah, my brain. It feels like my brain needs
warm up. So I I usually actually do the
the least important stuff. First thing in the morning, I
love mornings. It's funny.
My my morning routine is literally wake up grabbing
energy, drink and sit down on my desk and start working like
within 100 seconds of waking up. Wow.
So it's really I don't do anything.
I don't I don't stretch, I don't meditate, I don't walk.
I don't I literally wake up walk to my desk start working okay.
But I need to start with like low impact work.
So it's like usually first thing in the morning is email.
And then I catch up on slack messages.
And then usually by then it's been like 30 40 minutes and my
brains like functioning I can start kind of doing creative
stuff. And then I'll in, if anything is
kind of intensive and creative and I need to like dedicate more
in a couple hours to it, then I'll like do the Deep work
thing, where I'm like, okay, close all the windows close, all
the tabs but the phone on the other side of the room and like
now we're locked in, we're writing the script or we're
writing an email or whatever. That's kind of it.
Yeah. Okay, that's it well, okay, what
it sounds like is you have figured out a way to leverage
your impulsivity, yes, which I think is.
It's probably useful for people even if they don't have ADHD.
If they're just an impulsive person and I consider myself to
be impulsive at times too. And I've heard you talk about
that before where your tasks switching cognitive, switching,
whatever. And I've experimented with it
and recent weeks as well and yeah, every now and then like if
I am getting bored with something I'm like okay I need I
just need a jolt of novelty and I don't have any ADHD.
Yeah so I think that could be useful for for a lot of people.
The important thing I think is going back like yes, when I talk
to ADHD people who Who are dysfunctional, they do the task
switching thing, but then they'll just leave six things,
half completed. Yes.
And they never go back and complete it and so, like, And
this is where the to-do list come in that I'm like religious
with my to-do list, because it's like, I, yeah, you have to go
back. Okay, you have to go back.
So that's what when you talk about the productive
procrastination. And that's the point where I get
a little sticky with it because it's so easy for me.
Like, if my, if my house is a disaster, I've been
procrastinating putting off, but I got some work tasks.
I need to do like that. Time to clean the house.
Now, do that. And then two hours go by, and I
got a hell of a clean house. But I, I'm nowhere close to
working on what I want to work on.
I think this is one. You just have to be very, very
careful with. Yes.
If the task should probably be in the same domain.
Ideally, right. Can you use like I'm just
exactly. It's like if I was supposed to
prepare for this podcast and instead I like decide to go mow
my lawn like that useless, right.
Okay. Where is it?
If it's like, you know, I should be preparing for the podcast.
But maybe instead what I'll do is I'll like start doing
research for the next podcast. Like that's what I try to do
because then it's like, okay, at least that's like a Jason.
What? I should be working on even
emails at that point. Yeah, right.
Okay. In the idea too, that the whole
the importance of coming back to the thing and finishing it, it's
like let's say I start You know, prepping for this podcast, I get
bored halfway through. So I started doing another
thing. what I do is I wait for the moment that the initial task
starts to feel novel again, it's like, oh yeah, I was prepping
for the podcast this morning and now it's six hours later, and
Yeah, I should go finish that. That sounds kind of interesting.
Actually, I was in like I was at a really interesting place with
that so it's like tricking your brain into finding old things to
feel new again. Yeah, that makes sense.
That does make sense. No, I found the same thing too,
because we've been working on this particularly so, for so
long, I got crusty, I'm just like, oh my God, I cannot with
procrastination anymore. I've read these studies or
whatever, it's a time or whatever and if I just put it
away for a week or whatever and came back to my boom there's all
this novelty to it. It feels novel.
Yeah. Yeah, the big takeaway here
though, is not a good caught up on what we do because you and I
have very different systems we have except for the to do this,
I think we have pretty different systems and I try not to work on
too many things at once where you leverage that in your
favorite, I need to work on a lot of things at once.
Yeah, the key takeaway here is you can try these things out.
Figure out what works for you pick choose borrow.
That's great. Yeah, but this is not going to
solve your professional problem. This is only after yourself
aware enough right? Of why you procrastinating in
the first place that these things actually will work.
Yeah. Yeah, let's move on to another
mid-century School fought. This one that went completely
under the radar. In the productivity space and is
actually one of the most effective things when it comes
to dealing with procrastination and productivity.
And that is purpose, this doesn't get talked about it.
In fact, we almost missed this. Yeah, this was a late addition
to our our guide and our outline.
I was I was I was embarrassed actually.
Yeah Friday. You're like why aren't we
talking about purpose? I'm like oh God it was a huge
face palm for me. Yeah.
This is the fascinating thing is like So much has been written on
time management. There's not a single person in
the corporate world that is like, you know, walking around
cubicles like reminding people of their purpose.
Yet, when you look at the research, this is like one of
the most important things. Yes.
Is that people feel a sense of meaning and purpose in the work
that they're doing, right? Like if if you feel like you're
work is Meaningful. You're much less likely to delay
doing it, right? Because it aligns with your
values. It feels important if it feels
useful, so This actually comes out.
I'm like a harp on it for too long but like, It comes out of
the mid-century existentialist movement, right?
Which is just wonderful and and Bleak and French, and that they,
they basically said, like, you know, they start with nihilism
which is like nothing means anything.
After a great start, we're all just a bunch of dirt and Adams
and we're all gonna die and there's nothing you can do to
stop it. But from there, they make a very
important leap which is that You know, meaning and purpose not
preordained so Jean-Paul. Start had this great saying
where he said, existence precedes essence, which is
actually taking Plato and flipping it on his head because
Plato said productivity is a a form a concept that we try to
live up to and whether we are exist or not, productivity
always is always there and it's just a question of whether you
embody it or not starts like no dude.
Fuck that. Like you get to decide what
productivity is you get the decided if it's even worth
pursuing at all, you get the decide if it's meaningful.
Existence, precedes essence that basically meaning is
constructed, after the fact that essentially, like, we're all
riding our own stories and we are all deciding what is useful
and meaningful and what is not and It's a simple idea.
It's incredibly profound. I think it's, it's most
popularized from the experience of Viktor Frankl and his book
man searched for me. Meaning, he wrote about his
experiences surviving the Holocaust.
And he talks about how, you know, it's a sense of hope and
purpose for the future, that Not only drove him to survival but
like he noticed among the other prisoners was kind of the
deciding factor of their Fates as well.
And so you get kind of this this whole philosophical movement
through the 60s and 70s of just really Thinking and paying
attention to the meaning, that's being described to certain
behaviors or functions or or groups or relationships and
strangely it's funny because existentialism, I mean, it was
everywhere, it was in culture, it was an art, it was in film,
it was in politics. It never made its way into the
business World, which is funny. Because when you look at the
research on Productivity and procrastination as an extension
people who feel a sense of meaning and purpose in their
work. They're more productive.
They're more resilient to setbacks, they're more willing
to take risks, they're more willing to hear feedback and
they they procrastinate less and so it's just like It's so
stupidly simple. But it is worth considering.
Why am I doing this, right? Why do I care?
Well, do you think it didn't make its way into say corporate
culture? Because it's almost it's almost
antithetical to a lot of corporate culture because it's
kind of hard, I think, most people Would kind of see what's
going on there. If you brought a consultant in
to say, okay, we're here today. And from 8 to noon, we're going
to talk about your purpose here in this corporate setting and
people would be like, wait a second.
What? Oh, okay, let me back.
Where's that too? Cynical, I guess.
Yeah, that is pretty cynical. Yeah, I would also say that it
did make its way into the corporate world.
It just took about 50 years, I would say with our generation,
ah, okay with it. I would say really just in the
last 20, 25 years, like really the Millennials and gen Z, like
if you and I remember seeing survey data around this years
ago of, like, One of the big things about the millennial
generation is like they like Millennials really gave a shit
right purpose, what they did for a living, like they needed to
feel like their job was contributing value to the world
in some way and they were not, they were not satisfied.
Just you know getting the paycheck and that's a relatively
new thing throughout history. Like it's a I would say it's
actually a very privileged thing in history but it's also I mean
it is purpose is is productive, right?
Like it's and if you look at all of the businesses and companies
over the last 20 years, like they really push some sort of
social value or cause or Mission behind whatever they're doing,
you know, everything from like, like then Nike commercial folk,
like focusing on female athletes, or apple being the
first to Pioneer, like recycling, electronics, and
there's just so many examples from the last 20 years of large
corporations who have like adopted specific missions.
Certain means aligning themselves with certain
political causes, right? And it's like very much like
it's on an accident. It's more profitable, right?
Like it's it's like we want to, we want our employees to feel
like they're doing something important and worthwhile, and
because when you feel like you're doing something important
and whereas Wild, You work harder?
Yeah and you fuck around less and you're willing to make
mistakes and and embarrass yourself because it's for some
higher cause you know who's the master of this.
Fucking Elon Musk. Oh, like, think about it, dude.
Like if you're an engineer interested in space, what feels
more important than taking Humanity to Mars.
Right, right. Like if you're an aeronautical
engineer and you hear that like you're 25 and you hear that.
You're like, whatever dude. I'm all in.
Like, tell me what to do, I will grind all day.
All night. I will work my ass off, you
know, Tesla, you know, climate change and bringing bringing the
renewable economy, you know, into America.
It is, it really is a superpower, right?
And it is a real, I think it's an overlooked Talent of elon's
of, like, finding these kind of almost like, Civilizational.
Important causes to align his companies with You're seeing it
now with with the AI stuff. Like he's he's pushing this
Narrative of like we need an AI That's aligned with with valuing
human life or else like we could all go extinct.
It is absolutely existential. It is existentialism, you know,
just incorporate form. So it is okay.
It is a super overlooked thing. Yeah.
And and I understand why. It feels hand wavy and cliche.
There's like there are a lot of cliches around it, but it is a
thing. And I think to bring it back
home to people listening to this who are struggling just to like,
you know, eat healthy or Apply for that job that they want or
whatever. Like really ask yourself, why do
you want it? I'd say what I noticed the most
often is that people who are primarily motivated to do
things, Not because they actually care about the thing
but because they care about the attention or the result, the
thing will get them. Those are the people who lose
motivation very quickly, right? Like if you're doing something
for the approval of others, that is not a sticky motivation, like
that is a very short term motivation.
So you're not going to stick through all the challenges and
setbacks and failures and you know, false starts.
Where is if you actually really believe in in a high like a
higher meaning or purpose around something.
Then you will have that patience.
You will have that resilience and you will stick with it even
if you don't get it right the first or second time.
What do you think? who though about you you're
talking about purpose kind of in a grander sense and a this
higher Grand purpose that aiming for whether it is somebody like
Elon Musk and their his Grand designs that he Is that over
complicating it? So to though, for somebody
because we can't all have those jobs, right?
So what I'm thinking of is I think a lot more.
Jobs and work in general. How did just an inherent purpose
tied to them and it is usually taken care of your family.
Yes. Like so a miserable job you
could be shoveling shit. Yeah.
And you could say ah, this is a meaningless job.
I'm Shoveling shit where you can say this job allows me to put
food on the table for my family or you know, whatever it is.
Another example, I had a friend who wanted to start his own
business, he was he had a, you know, pretty decent corporate
job that he had and didn't really like it though and there
was no purpose behind it but he wanted to start this business
and as soon as he decided, I'm going to start this business,
The job that is corporate job actually took on a new meeting
because he needed the money from that corporate job and they
needed the connections and he needed.
So he started to like his job more because there was a new
purpose around that's awesome which is insane.
And it wasn't some high pie in the sky purpose that he had, it
was more just like, I mean, it is treating it as a means to an
end, but there was a bigger purpose behind that means to an
end if that makes sense. So yeah, I think there's just a
way to, you know, not. We don't all have to be
Engineers for whenever to find that purpose and to motivate us
and to not procrastinate on these things.
Yeah, they're you don't need these civilizational cataclysmic
existential reasons. It's interesting.
I was talking to a guy recently, you know, we did a Podcast, an
old podcast episode last year on my my health journey.
And I in that episode, I talked about how it was really
important for me to find a way to make exercise fun like that
was one of my big challenges that I just, I hated doing it.
And so I, I really had to find like, game application or
groups, or, you know, Competitions or whatever, just
like keep it interesting for myself.
It's like it's funny. I've worked out religiously for
20 years and I've always hated it.
Never enjoyed it. I was like, wow, that's actually
sad. Yeah, well first of all, sorry,
I'm sorry. I feel a little bad for you.
But I was like, wow. That's actually that, that's
atypical. Yeah, generally when you meet
somebody who's like, exercise religiously for forever, it's,
it's because they enjoy it in some way or they found a thing
that they enjoyed. And so, I asked them, I was
like, well, what drives you like?
Why do you keep doing it? And he said, oh well, you know,
everybody everybody, my family dies, super early.
And as soon as my kids were born, I was absolutely
determined that. I was not going to die early.
I was gonna, I was gonna live to an old age and I was going to
see him grow up, and I was going to see my grandkids.
I was like There you go. There you go.
Yeah. So you don't need to actually
did probably exactly deeper level he did.
Right? And I think that's That is the
power of finding some sort of purpose and something.
Is that it it makes like the suffering in anything is going
to be in, you know, we've talked a lot in this episode about the
Pleasure Principle and avoiding pain.
To me, it's like the purpose is the one.
If there is a hack it's the one hack there is because its
purpose is the only thing that can take pain.
And make it. Feel worthwhile, right?
Yeah, right. And like, it can make you feel
like, okay, that sucked, but I'm glad I did it.
Go back to the Goggins thing, too.
I think. Yes, that's I think that's
actually what's going on. Yeah, with him.
Is it there's just a higher purpose to his pain?
Totally. What do you think too about
though? If you if you do start out kind
of at a Not very good reason or not very good, purpose for
something. I give you an example.
Like I've always been fairly healthy but you know, like you
over the last few years I've focused more on my health and I
started out was I just I just want to look good that I was as
vanity purely. It's, it's switched to a bigger
purpose though. I like I was just telling you a
little while ago about a great uncle, that I had who in his
80s, was able to like, spread his legs and bend down, and get
put his head on the floor. Like he could stretch insanely
and he was skiing and his 80s and all of that I'm like, well,
I want to be able to do that. I and I want to be able to live
a healthy life. When I'm older not, it's very
much switched to that but it started out as a, a very vain
purpose. Yeah, I some jobs can start out
that way, too. This is a, just, a means to an
end. Yeah.
Pay my rent and then it turns into something bigger later on,
too. I are there examples of that,
that you can think of in your own life, or What's going on
when that happens? I don't know.
I mean this career started out that way.
Yeah I I was I read Tim Ferriss as for our work week and I was
like I just want to make some money on the internet so I can
go party in Argentina. Like that's that's like
literally the my entire bar, like 2000, man, they're awesome.
You just so I just started I just started a bunch of website
like I didn't really think about it, I didn't care about it.
And you know eventually as you know one of those websites was a
dating advice website and that started to take off and do
pretty well and And then people start asking me for advice.
This was 2007 to 2008. And I was like, well shit, if
people can ask me for advice, I should probably like know what
I'm talking about. So I started researching all
this stuff. I sure, you know, buying a bunch
of books and downloading psychology papers and reading
journals. And And pretty soon.
Next thing I know I'm like this is I could do this forever.
Yeah. Like this is it.
I'm I'm so in on this, and I I just feel like that that
actually is probably the more common story.
Yes, I think this is people's biggest mistake with this too,
and I am 100% sure we will do an episode of purpose.
That's right. But it People mistakenly assume
that you find the purpose. And then you become super
motivated to do all this stuff where it's like, no you do the
stuff and as you do it you find the things that feel very
meaningful and impactful. And then that's what the purpose
is, right? And you know so again I guess
this might be a little bit like the time management thing where
it's like if you're trying to go from 0 to 1 then purpose is
probably less of a factor and less.
There's I don't know there's like some major external Force
like a kid's born or something like that.
Generally speaking though it's like you need to have actually
be doing something and then you look for the purpose and the
things that you're doing and like because that's the thing
that's going to sustain you over the long run like that the
purpose The thing that the purpose solves is going from
short term to long term. Yeah, it won't get you from 0 to
short term. Okay?
Yeah, that makes sense to me and and checks out where I have
found purpose and all sorts of places, I never thought I would
have so 100% that that checks out.
Yeah, yeah, so just really quick, before we get into the
takeaways, I just want to remind listeners that we do have the
free downloadable guide that goes along with this episode
most podcasts put their show notes on the website are show
notes are so freaking long and thorough, we actually had to
turn them into a PDF, the show notes for this episode is over
65 pages long. So if you want to see those show
notes including full summary of the episode, all the takeaways,
all the research, book recommendations, all the above,
go to solve podcast.com slash procrastination to get it all.
So, if you want some help implementing the advice from
this episode into your life, you should check out the momentum
Community. We are launching a 30-day.
Nation challenge based on this episode where we take all of the
best ideas and Concepts that we're discussing here and turn
them into daily actions that you can Implement into your life.
So if you're wondering how to apply everything that you've
been learning, then the momentum Community is the best way to do
that. You can go to find momentum.com
slash procrastination. Link is in the description
below. All right, let's let's get back
to the theory and the research. So like we're at this point
we're pushing into the 80s and 90s.
Everybody realizes the time management stuff doesn't really
work. Where are we?
At here? Right?
What? What's next?
Well, a group of researchers were very observant that time
management was not working and so they said out to figure out,
okay, what is it about procrastination motivation in
general, that gets people to actually do what they want to do
and say what they want to do. One researcher in particular,
his name is Peter Steele who you've already brought up, and
he gave us the definition, our modern deaf Venetian of
procrastination. He also formulated What's called
the temporal motivation Theory, okay.
TNT, for short, I might refer to it as team to every now and that
is temporal motivation Theory. The essentially what he tried to
marry a few different areas around things like motivation,
there was this idea about temporal discounting and
hyperbolic discounting that he kind of developed to throughout
this that he borrowed from which we've talked about and just for
for listeners. Its temporal discounting is we
tend to devalue things far in the future, right?
So if there's a consequence 20 years from now we tend to not
really right that will factor in really big into.
Temporal motivation Theory as we go through this but his the big
innovation through his theory. Was this equation that he came
up with okay and I'll go through, quick won't bore you
with the details. And, you know, there's no
obviously you're not going to be able to have to plug in numbers
for this or anything like that, but oh, I know I brought my
calculator and everything. He came up with this this
equation, which is motivation, equals expectancy times, value
divided by one, plus and pulsive.
Times delay. Okay, that's all right.
So if you're not mathematically inclined, no big deal.
The important thing to take away is there's kind of four big
factors that go into this equation on whether or not you
are going to procrastinate around if you're motivated
enough to not procrastinate, right?
Yeah. So expectancy, we have this
first variable which is the perceived likelihood that you
think you can actually achieve, what you're trying to achieve
goes back to the self-efficacy, right?
We already talked about that. So the he's already bringing in
stuff that we know if you expect your gonna be successful, you're
more likely to be successful. Absolutely, absolutely.
And that's, that's one of the first factors that up in the
numerator of the equation, right?
Then you have the value. It's your perceived how
rewarding the perceived outcome is to you.
And there's a subjective component to that.
But essentially, if it's something that you actually
value highly, you're going to be more motivated, right?
It's total sense. Yeah.
Okay, multiply that By your expectancy if you think you can
achieve it and it's highly valuable to you.
Then you're going to have the synergistic effect, where
motivation goes up. You're going to not
procrastinate on it. But then we have some things
that might detract from your motivation as well
impulsiveness. Okay?
So here we're kind of getting at some of the emotional side of
things, right? And we've talked already about
our own impulsiveness and how that's factored into our
procrastination. So, impulsiveness is how prone
you are to seek out and succumb to distractions or immediate
gratification to, right? So your ability to postpone
gratification or gratification and then that last one is delay.
How far away is the outcome of whatever is associated with the
tasks that you're about to perform, right?
Right. So the further a task is or the
further, the reward, the reward, or the result of the behavior
that you're going to engage in the last motivation you, right?
And that's the temporal discounting that you talked
about. Yeah, that was one of the big
Innovations of temporal motivation.
Theory was including that, in our, our calculus, literally the
equation to procrastination know I'm going to guess.
Just From my experience with. Other psychologists who have
tried the creative equations is that this equation is just not
going to work and every situation.
So that's fine. What I like about what I really
like about TMT is that it finally breaks down and
acknowledges a lot of these Emotional factors the expectancy
we've already talked about that, not just in terms of the
self-efficacy but also the perfectionism, right?
Like if you're expectation is that, you know, That it needs to
be perfect, right to be accomplished.
Then that is going to be far more intimidating than if you
your expectation. Is that like, oh, I just need to
do. Yeah, a decent job at it.
I like the temporal discounting and then I like the, it's
amazing that we've gotten this far, not talked about
distraction yet. That's actually giving this day
and age. Like, I mean, young girl,
listeners will probably will have trouble believing this but
like Procrastination and distraction we're not too things
that you really people really related to each other until like
maybe 15 20 years ago. Like when we were kids it was
never like the issue with doing our homework was never because
like we couldn't get off our phones.
It was just we just didn't want to do it maybe TV but even that
was yeah yeah like it's Dad was probably watching TV anyway so
you my memory of childhood is is long periods of boredom and but
I still didn't do my homework so it's it's this idea that
procrastination is is directly. Proportional to distraction is a
relatively new concept and I I know we're going to get in the
distraction. Deeply at some point here soon,
but it's interesting to me that it's really only coming up now.
Yeah, well look at it in the historical context again.
Like you just said, pure steel was doing a most of his, the
book of his research was and then 90s and 2000s, and he's
continued since then. But that is, when Information,
Technology really started to take off take off and get like
embedded into the culture to where we see it today.
And so the impulsiveness part of that, as you're right, it
captures that distraction element.
Yeah. That the it's a simple equation
but it is pretty flexible. So, it's the same time because
that impulsiveness One of the benefits, and the strength of
the equation is that it can these, these terms can capture a
lot, but those terms can also become imprecise, then too, we
can get into that in a little bit.
But yeah, so like just some examples of this, like, you're
expectancy, it could be really high like you.
Like, yes I can do this, but your impulsiveness, my override
that and you're the deadline might be a long ways away.
So you can start to see all these different really
complicated. Kind of calculations that
happens with just these four variables, which is really
pretty interesting. And again, it was a an
innovation at that time, that to marry all these different things
and start putting these things together in a way that's more
interactive. Because we, when we started out,
we were talking about the ancient world.
Yes. One school of thought that this
thing and then the psychologists come along like no it's this
thing. This is finally we're starting
to get a more integrated Approach at this point and I
think that's what another big innovation of TMT was that it
started looking at it in a kind of multidisciplinary way that we
just hadn't seen up until this point.
Yeah, yeah. if we may take a quick detour, okay, I think the
Assumption up until this point, is that to be productive or to
defeat procrastination. It is about summoning willpower
about just mustering up enough energy or motivation to just
brute force your way through it. And I definitely like especially
in the ancient times and and throughout you know, in my
second book I called it the classical assumption.
Like if you look at all of the discussions around a crazy and
like why people don't do the things that they should do and
why people fail at things like it is very much seen as like it
is the job of the higher level of your mind.
The, The Chariot driver to whip the horses into shape until they
do the right thing. And so you, you're just expected
to like, brute force your way through it.
I think it's really only in the last few decades that are
understanding of psychology has gotten developed enough, that
we've realized that it's like, a, that doesn't really work in
the long term, like, you can brute force yourself into.
I mean, everybody's had this experience.
You can brute force your way into the gym once maybe, twice,
maybe even a couple weeks, but, like, by week, three or four,
you're done, you're just taped out, you don't care anymore.
So you really do have to negotiate these other factors.
Like you have, you really have to look at like what is, how are
you measuring yourself? Like, when are the benefits
coming? How do you feel about it?
How do you feel about your ability to accomplish the thing?
What sort of Standards or expectations?
Are you holding yourself to are those reasonable?
Or not? Like it's kind of negotiating
these other factors within your mind that help you. you know,
when you combine that with the environmental stuff, Like that.
That's what you almost just like, Grease the skids.
For the behavior to happen naturally, as a byproduct of
these things. Yeah.
And I think maybe you're kind of getting at too is that you're
not denying that part of you, that part of your nature to your
working with it. Yes, more.
So this these more recent theories start to really
acknowledge that and incorporate that incorporate that into their
their Frameworks. Yeah.
And I think, you know, yeah, for the longest time it was very
much like the reasoning, the writer, you know, on The
Chariot, the reasoning part of your brain developed so you can
overcome all of these terrible nasty brutish things about you
and well, yes, it can be used for that but it's also those
things. Probably evolved in our minds as
well, in order to serve those two Cherry driving horses,
right? There's there's a an acceptance
of who we are in a lot of these. It's like, okay, look there is
your, there's some pulsee, we're impulsive by our nature.
How does that factor in to getting things done and our
procrastination? We you know there's we have this
weird kind of temporal discounting where we we put off
things that are further that are due for their, in advance, for
whatever reason. Yeah.
It this starts to incorporate that and like really acknowledge
human nature on a more realistic level.
Yeah, my view. It's a much healthier view of.
How to actually get yourself to take the action that you want to
take, right? You know, because it is coming
back to the shame piece. I was just gonna say, shame is
gone. Shame is out of the equation,
right? You're not judging yourself.
You're not like, oh God, why am I not?
Why am I discounting things that happen in the future?
You know, like, you know, it's it's like you're human.
This is we all do this and and coming back to Aristotle.
This is the skill, right? The skill.
You could, you could almost look at each of these four factors
and and see the skill in each one of them.
Right? Is like managing your expectancy
managing, like like being mindful of the value that you're
going to get out of something. And there are ways I love to
talk to like there are ways of manipulating that value as well.
Like you can gamify things, you can create social accountability
around things, you can reward yourself for things.
You can create things in your environment that make it more
enjoyable, right? So it's like learning to
manipulate the value aspect of the equation, learning to
implement. I think the purpose stuff that
we talked about really factors into the time, discounting
right? Like it's it's like when you
remember, what is the cause or Mission?
That is driving my motivation to do this thing.
That helps you counterbalance that time discounting like, it's
like I'm doing this for my kids. I'm doing this so that when I'm
a grandfather, I can play with my grandchildren, that's why I'm
going to the gym today, right? It's like that counterbalances
that time discounting that naturally happens in everybody's
brain. So It's we're finally starting
to see everything come together. Right, right, yeah.
And you can you can look at each one of these, like, the
expectancy thing you can work on things around self-efficacy or
break the task down. To a point where it is you do
feel like you have some agency and some ability to where did
that start like the the breaking down tasks.
Yeah. Actually that a lot of, that
kind of came from time management.
So there was there was glimmers within that whereas like oh you
don't know how to one of their one of the big kind of I don't
know, not a revelation or even an innovation, but they were
like, oh yeah, people need to be able to see a big task and break
it down into this component parts and it's just a lot more
explicit in something like TMT. Okay.
Where, yeah, they, they found that breaking that down into.
You've talked about this so many times.
This this is my case. Yeah, this is one of the first
piece is advice. You are saying, yeah.
If you have this huge daunting task, no.
Start with the most dead. Simple obvious thing that you
can do. Yeah.
And that gets your momentum going and then onto the next one
on the next one. Yeah, that's the other thing
about the equation, it's very Dynamic.
If you really apply it, you will see that these factors can
change over time a lot. It's most obvious in the delay
thing as the time, approaches the motivation goes up, but the
others can do the same thing too.
You might value a task or the benefits of a task differently
throughout the stages of the process of doing it as well.
Yeah. So, yeah, it is the breaking
down thing. I feel like it works on so many
levels. You know, part of it is Just the
intimidation Factor. Yeah, you know, when you have
this huge hairy goal it is scary and it feels impossible.
And if it feels you don't get that sense of progress and
movement. You know, and just a single day
or a single week of action, but if you can break it down into
that single day of action, then you get to feel the sense of
accomplishment. It feels less intimidating.
And then like you said, you do, get that sense of momentum,
right? Like, there's like, a old thing
from that Jerry Seinfeld said that, you know, when he writes,
he X's out a day on his calendar.
Yeah. And he said that, you know, the
initially the goal is to just X out a few days in a row.
But he said, once he's got a few days in a row, his only goal is
to don't stop the street. Don't break the chain.
He's going as long as possible, and you can get that.
Like a beautiful example of like, Manipulating these factors
within your own head and redefining what the metric is
and read like breaking down tasks in the constituent tasks
or like lumping tasks together into some larger tasks in a way
that feels more doable. Feels more, exciting feels more
fun and feels less intimidating for yourself.
Yeah. So that's expectancy component
of the equation. I think for the value one, like
you already mentioned to as like having some what you said it
with respect to delay but I think value can also be
manipulated through your purposes as well.
Like if you do have a purpose again it goes back to If I have
a job, I don't really necessarily like, yeah, I'm
probably gonna procrastinate it, it's an appetite.
If I have a purpose attached to that job, that same job.
Now, the value could shoot up right at that point too.
So again, it's just these little mind, it's just it's all within
your head too. Which is crazy.
You know, there's some external factors as well.
Obviously the delay and all of that impulse in this
distractions, in your environment.
But again, yeah, we're putting it all together at this.
Yeah. And it is It is a skill.
It is something you you work on and develop.
And I mean, we'll talk at the end of episode about how to work
on and develop it. But it is It's not something you
know because again it's like purpose is subjective.
Value is subjective. Expectation is subjective.
These are all things that you get to decide you get to decide
like what success looks like, you get this to decide what is
Meaningful. What is valuable, what, what is
worth pursuing? How long you pursue it?
You know do you want to pursue it for a week?
A month, a year, 10 years. These are all decided within
your head and the skill is learning to draw the lines in
such a way that makes it easy to move forward, right?
That it stops being intimidating or feeling difficult.
I was I listened to a podcast that peer still was on and
preparation for this too and he made a good point.
And you actually alluded to this earlier was that TMT?
A lot of it is about being very realistic too and he said the
people he's noticed that do the best with procrastination are
very, very honest with himself. And I think it applies to each
one of these variables. But he, you know, he gave the
example that we've already given two of You know, he doesn't buy
junk food. Yeah.
And it's because he knows what happens when he has junk food in
the house and I've been very like with my friends.
They all know like I'm a sugar fiend, I'm a junk food fiend and
that's what I don't buy it, you know?
And but I think that you that's part of like reducing
distractions part maybe or it is even increasing expectancy like
I know I cannot eat junk food if it's not around me.
Yes, boom. That's like a media unlock for
me Immediate win for me. So it is just getting into the
kind of minutiae and dialing these things around to fit your
personality and be real honest with yourself about it.
Yeah. How do you, how do you feel like
this maps with the Near ILS. in distractible stuff because, you
know, one of the things like quibble with near on sometimes,
I feel like, you know, It is a two-sided coin.
One is just don't have Temptation in your environment.
Yeah. Like be aware of your triggers
and get rid of them but then some of it too is like being
aware of your own, internal triggers like being aware of
when you get bored or and see or anxious.
And not choosing the, the avoidance in the moment.
Sometimes I feel like he leans too much on the ladder, but
like, I'm wondering, I'm wondering if you, like, if his
framework kind of fits into the, the TMT stuff.
Like, So specifically around environmental design or more
about the emotional trigger stuff.
The emotional trigger stuff. Yeah.
Well, so I think that's actually kind of one.
I would say, fair criticism about TMT is that?
It kind of is a little, it's not specific enough, around the
emotional triggers, not really yes there's impulsivity in there
and there's some subjective constructs like value and
expectancy and all that. But the emotional side I don't
think it's quite it kind of tries to boil down these very
complex, emotional processes that we go through.
Yeah, four variables. And that that's one of the, the
criticisms of it, that I think is fair.
Yeah, if it feels like it should be like six or seven variables.
What? Yeah, while the variables are
pretty well. Clearly defined like actually
measuring them and defining them in the, in the real world is
much harder. Yeah, so I think that's a fair
criticism of it. And we'll get to more of the
emotional side of things, but yeah, it oversimplifies some of
the, the complexity of human behavior.
I think to some extent all equations will, of course, well,
and it's This is this is the problem with this field is like
anytime I see an equation in Psychology I'm like yeah you
know it is probably directionally correct.
Yeah. But it probably doesn't not
measure a single thing, I can't capture.
Yeah. And really what they found in
the experimental studies is TMT does a very good job of
predicting procrastination in the short run but it's not super
great about like chronic procrastination or just like
repeatedly. Procrastination is the same
domain. Yeah.
You and I'm sure you've experienced this before too.
Sometimes you're like, highly motivated.
He still procrastinate, like, I like, surge of motivation, I'm
going to get this done and you still find a way to
procrastinate. And so, that's the one thing,
the output for this. If you notice in the equation is
motivation, it's motivation equals the expectancy times
value. Yeah, there's can still be times
where you feel highly motivated and still, you still don't do it
and it just it, this doesn't fully capture that.
Yeah, so that's one of the criticisms for sure.
I and they're just isn't really a lot of focus on the emotional
affective triggers. Yeah.
Because I'm just thinking about the impulsivity piece, like
everything else makes sense to me, right?
Spelling to see the value delay, the delay.
I feel like the impulsivity you could actually break out into
probably three or four of its own variables, right?
Like there's how many distractions are in your
environment like how easy is avoided like this is the near
Ile thing which is like he, it's It's your level of distraction
is proportional to both, how many opportunities for
distraction, is there in your environment and how prone are
you to distraction through your own?
Internal emotional triggers right?
Like you want to work on both sides of that coin, right?
You want to reduce your internal emotional triggers and you also
want to reduce your external environmental triggers so that
you're you're kind of like hitting it from both sides so
that feels like it's missing and then all.
So I know we're gonna get to emotional regulation in a second
but it's a huge piece like if you are not good at managing
your emotions, right? Like if you were the type of
person who When you get angry, you just fucking lose your shit
for an entire day and become extremely impulsive.
Or when you get anxious you just like panic and like run to, you
know, whatever the the nearest bucket of chocolate is like it
is the the intensity of your emotions plays, a huge factor in
this and The ability to regulate your emotions to come down from
them to, to cope with them. Effectively is a huge part of
this as well. Yeah.
And this doesn't even get into the physical side.
Like it's like, if you haven't slept.
Right? Like if you haven't, if, you
know, if you've got an injury or if you're sick, I mean, like
there. It's well documented and
everybody's experienced it that, it's like, if you are
physically, not in good shape, Your willpower is just basically
gone, right? Right.
Entirely a cultural norms, too. Those are captured in this
either, you know? So it's really hard to that
impulsivity when I agree is kind of like it's a catch-all ya
category for any sort of emotional influence that would
go into procrastination or whether you or motivation.
Yeah so yeah it's limited in that regard.
I definitely think so. Yeah it is kind of I really want
human behavior to be boiled down to like an equation.
That would be awesome. What would it be?
Nice. Yeah and I'm sure there are
there like this equation, it does capture a lot of
procrastination or motivation in certain situations but it's not
it's still not complete. And I you know whether we ever
get to a fully complete view of it or not, I don't know.
But this is definitely a step in the right direction.
So I don't want to knock it by any means.
So where are we at now? What is what's, our current best
understanding of procrastination and why it happens?
Well, Mark, I hate to tell you, but it comes down to emotions.
I know, we have to get Squishy. Why see you just need to be
hugged more? That's why you're not.
That's why you're not doing your term paper.
You have enough hugs. Well, that could be part of it.
Yes. In the early, 2010s late 2000s,
early 2010s, there was one researcher in particular, Tim
pitchell, who started to notice that.
Actually, this isn't just A problem that boils down to these
four factors. It's a much deeper emotional
mood regulation problem. And in 2313, he wrote a book
about it and it's very accessible and great book if you
want to check it out. And then his one of his proteges
was fuchsia while we interviewed for the show too.
And she is kind of carried the torch since then Tim's.
He's retired. Now a few as now, living in
England and she's scared on. She's kind of the world's
foremost researcher on procrastination and their, the
core Premise of the emotion regulation theory of
procrastination is that it is first and foremost
procrastination is a mood regulation strategy that we use
and an emotional regulation strategy that we use to avoid
these nasty negative feelings that we associate with any
given. Task that a lot of what we've
already talked about, but they say that is the point that right
there is where procrastination starts and where we need to
focus our, our resources and our ability and our higher cognitive
powers and everything. We've been talking about this is
actually where we really need to focus on the research findings
point to the negative affect triggers that we have around or
more likely to delay tasks that we just find them Pleasant
sense, right? There's task aversion as well.
Anything we perceive is unpleasant or overly
challenging. It gives us this kind of urge to
procrastinate. Almost we also prioritize mood
repair, right. So Procrastination typically
serves to like, kind of quickly improve our current mood, that
we have like, oh, this feels bad.
I just want out of this, I want Escape, basically research
backs, all of that up. There's a lot of individual
traits too. We've kind of we kind of
mentioned that you're, if you're more impulsive or not, that's
like one individual trait, that might influence the way you
procrastinate or whether you procrastinate on anything, And
there as opposed to something like conscientiousness, which we
haven't really talked about. But that's an individual trade,
a personality trait, that can influence all of this.
There's very personal experiences too.
We've talked a little bit about you know, your childhood
upbringing or anything like that.
They incorporate that into this framework as well.
There's also just kind of a personal nature to all this so
it's Both Universal emotional processes but then also the
individual differences. So it's kind of trying to tie
all of that together into this picture of How we regulate
emotions on a even moment to moment basis.
Not just day-to-day basis, but a moment to moment basis,
procrastination is a strategy for mood repair and just wanting
to not feel bad. Yeah essentially yeah.
So when you say procrastination is a strategy to for mood
regulation like explain that like I'm five.
Okay. What is that mean?
Okay, so Marky Marky Marky in case people like don't realize,
it's emotional regulations. One of those things I like
everybody's heard the term, but like it's fuzzy.
What is it actually? Yeah, let's just take an example
of when you are going to procrastinate on something.
You have a work task, you want to do or you're you need to do?
Yeah. Okay.
You don't want to do it. That's kind of the point, right?
When you approach this task all like, might get an anxious
feeling? Yeah, it's red.
Dread boredom. Yeah.
Or the perfectionism can even come in at that point too like,
oh my God. Am I not gonna do a good job at
this? And if I fail anxiety, anxiety,
boils up and anger, why the fuck do I have to do this?
Yeah, any, any negative emotion associated with the task will
increase your likelihood of procrastinating in that moment.
And so what we do is we look into usually into our immediate
environment or past strategies that we might have used as well
to Alleviate those uncomfortable feelings that we have and that's
when procrastination takes. Okay, I I've approached this a
task that I find them Pleasant. Don't like that unpleasant
feeling get me out of here let me do something else.
Let me distract myself with you know these days it's your phone
or whatever it is. Yeah or yeah this is why you can
also like people procrastinate by cleaning their houses or
something like this. Something some boring task
because they find that even less awful than whatever they're
going to be right on. Right right.
Does that make sense Marky? Yes.
Okay let's get to call you Daddy.
Please do not. Early on.
In this, this when this framework was being developed, a
lot of the psychologist called giving in to feel good, right?
So you look for whatever, feels on a relative basis, whatever
feels better in the moment than whatever you're uncomfortable
with. Yeah.
And you go and you go to that and you give in to that urge.
Yeah, there's some impulsivity around that, totally as well.
There's environmental factors that go into this but its base
at its core. It is that that emotional
regulation. That moment when you choose
between, do I need to do the thing that needs to be done?
Or do I need to? I just want to remove this
anxious uncomfortable. Angry feeling that bored
feeling, painful, feeling. Whatever it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
I still it's funny because I didn't think about this when we
were researching the episode but like now that we're talking
about it, I'm kind of like seen it in my mind.
Again, it's kind of two sides of a coin.
One is managing the environment managing Giving yourself fewer
opportunities for that avoidance, right?
Like clearing the junk food, all right, turning your phone off.
Turning your phone off, leaving the phone in the other room, all
those things. And then the other side of the
coin is, is that that emotional management, the awareness,
understanding the emotions that are coming up, and then
understanding Perhaps why those emotions may be arising for?
Unnecessary reasons, right? Like are you being too
perfectionist? Are you protecting your ego?
Are you rationalizing, past Behavior?
Are you trying to impress? Somebody?
Do you, is the reason you're motivated.
The reason you want to do this thing.
A shity reason, and it's actually not very motivating at
all. Like, all of those fact, all of
those things that we've talked about, do you have a lot of
Shame around this and you just like, don't it makes you feel
icky and horrible about yourself and so, you just find any way
you can to get away from it. All of these factors that we've
been talking about up to this point, Almost all of them are
factored into that emotional negotiation of like, why do I
feel this way? Is it reasonable to feel this
way? And now that I feel this way,
how do I manage it? Well, That's one side of the
coin. And then the other side of the
coin is the How do I give myself as few Escape Routes as
possible? Exactly right.
And that's the behaviorist, right?
The environmental design stuff, right.
Coming back to the skill thing. That it's the two sides of the
procrastination skill coin, right?
It's like on the one side, it's the environmental design, the
managing your triggers managing, your nudges, and on the other
side it's managing your own emotion, right?
Understanding? Why you use, you associate
certain things with that task and how to kind of manipulate
the levers or dials in your head, to make the task feel
easier, right? That's through breaking it down
in the smaller chunks, whether that's gamifying it, whether
that's finding accountability with somebody, rewarding
yourself with something, there's all sorts of levers.
You can pull to, like, manage those internal emotions, right,
right. Everything we've talked about,
does it crosses that point of emotion regulation that you have
to manage? Right.
Exactly. Yeah, there's it's and it does,
it goes back to Short-term relief for a long-term
detriment, right? Right.
All of this. Is it what it comes down to is I
don't have to feel that discomfort right now.
If I just do something else. Yes, all of those things are
kind of like getting at that. Yeah, good.
Whether it's in your environment or just an emotional.
Well, and what's amazing too is that like all of the thinkers
that we talked about throughout this entire episode, from Plato
to Augustine to Aquinas to everybody?
It's not that they got it wrong, right?
It was just incomplete, right? It's like Augustine said.
He's like it's it's the failure is, is you, are you are
sacrificing your higher level value.
The thing that is more important to you, but difficult to do for
the thing for the lower level value.
The thing that is easy to do but much less and less valuable, and
less important, you know, Plato saw it is like a a, an ignorance
of the repercussions of your decisions.
Like not understanding, like how your behavior like the what what
you are doing in that. That very moment, even till like
the Buddhist perspective of like not being aware of what your
internal triggers are like, this is, this is what I found.
Really interesting when I looked at the Buddha side of it like
again, it's correct. It's incomplete but it's
completely correct. Like, and in fact, I actually
found a meta-analysis of 14,000 participants of who practice
mindfulness and meditation and they showed Significant
improvements in time management, task initiation and, and also a
sense, you talked about that sense of like how long it will
take to complete something, their sense of how long it would
take to complete a task actually got more accurate after the
mindfulness as well. And so again, it's like a total
sense emotions tend to be fun house mirrors in our brains,
right? So like when you're angry,
Things that are small appear, very large and things that are
large appear. Very small, you know, it's like
when you're anxious, there are other things that things that
appear very close are actually very far away and vice versa,
right? So it's it's understanding that
you're looking at a fun house mirror.
You know, meditation is a practice of like, developing the
ability to recognize the Funhouse mirrors and adapt to
them, and still navigate through them.
And whereas, when you're just, you know, I think, We're Plato
was correct. Is that the actual ignorance is
just believing the Funhouse mirrors, real.
Yeah. Like that's the ignorance.
Yeah. Definitely.
And the one of the big recommendations from this group
of researchers, temperature, a and fuchsia, your wall is more
mindfulness around these things so we can talk about this.
Now, the the rain method, this is what this was an article that
Tim Mitchell wrote his books as well but it's a mindfulness tool
that gets you For figuring out that fun house mirror and kind
of brain that we all have and and being able to deal with it
and he calls it, the rain method because there's an acronym.
It's recognized allow investigate and not
identification. Okay.
So it's just a very basic kind of I believe it's from Zen
Buddhism, even maybe actually too but recognizing in the
moment. Yep.
When you do feel that resistance, those, those
uncomfortable feelings, that pop up.
I think most people like, when those that pops up, your initial
reaction is to look for a distraction.
This says, okay, wait, just recognize when it's happening.
That's all you have to do up first.
This is, I'm approaching a task. I don't like, I'm just gonna sit
with that, right? And that's actually the second
step is allowing those emotions to just exist and not push them
away. Not reach for distraction.
Just allow them to be there and don't flee from it.
The I is investigate those emotions.
Get curious. Why do I feel this way?
You? That's something you just said
to like, why am I feeling ashamed about this?
Why am I feeling anxious about it?
Angry about it are my expectations, reasonable.
Am I blowing things out of proportion?
They might just tired that I sleep last night.
Oh yeah. Start asking all those
questions. Asked those questions
investigate and get deep with it right there.
And the last one is not identification with the emotion.
This is a very Buddhist thing, very Buddhist.
Yeah, which is, you know, I am not this anxiousness.
I feel anxious. I am not saying, yes, don't, you
don't want to fuse your identity, like you just said, if
you fuse yourself with that fun house, mirror image, that you
have in your mind, then everything becomes like a fun
house mirror room, right? And to Freud's Point you'll
protect it. Yeah, yeah, right.
If you just decide that you are anxious and perfectionist then
you will you will actually protect that.
Self-definition. Yes, which will cause you to
like actually you're procrastination will become part
of your identity, right? And it's it's, we talked about
that. Earlier about people who
identify as like, oh, I just work better under pressure.
What they probably don't realize they're doing is that they are,
they are incorporating their procrastination as a part of
their identity. And so now they will start
unconsciously protecting it right?
And continue to procrastinate to show like this is my identity to
prove to themselves and others. Yeah.
So that as far as practical
takeaways go that for me after realizing that I realize that
did some kind of version of this or bits and pieces of it, when I
really did need to get something done, I would kind of like, you
know, buckle down be like, okay, I don't like this, why don't I
like this? All right, I just get going,
putting it all together like that though.
Has been super, super useful for me and the Nana identification
part that last part is very important.
Yeah, I think too. Like I can just don't wrap your
identity up and whatever you're doing totally for sure.
Yeah, well speaking of identity's, I've got like a fun
exercise for us. Oh, before we wrap up.
Okay. The the tactics and strategies
for everybody Dr. Linda sapped in and she's Clinical
psychologist, she wrote a book in the 90s called the six types
of procrastinators. And so she has six types that
she is identified through her clinical practice and fun.
And I thought it would be fun to kind of like now that we
understand all the Frameworks, right?
Like I think it'd be fun to go through these six types and kind
of identify what the factors are like that lead to their
procrastination. And I imagine that listeners
will see themselves and at least one of them.
So The first one, which I know. I know you've done with this.
The Perfection, right, right? Fears imperfection sets
unrealistic standards, refuses to accept good enough and ends
up. Having to use time limits to
avoid endless revisions or reduce Do you feel attacked?
Yeah, I feel like I'm getting better at it.
I mean, this is kind of my this is my Beast display this year.
I think, was the perfectionism. I I actually feel like, as I'm
getting older, I'm letting more things go.
I'm like, yeah, that's not gonna be perfect.
Do you think that's just from accumulating?
So many imperfect? Yes, experiences.
I don't think I've actively worked like getting over.
It's like now except reality for it.
Yes. Yeah.
All right. The second one is the dreamer
loves big ideas but struggles with the details breaks goals
into steps and needs to use structured plans to maintain
consistent habits. Tends to wait for inspiration,
rather than just take action. I relate to this one a little
bit, like, I my mind. Definitely, I like to dream big
and like, have these kind of giant aspirations and that's
fun, and that I think that is like overall.
It's a net positive to have like big goals and dreams, but the,
the drawback of that is the intimidation Factor because it's
like if you have this massive world-changing plan, That is
going to take 10 years to execute and then you wake up on
day one, it just feels so minuscule and insignificant and
so yeah it says here that these the dreamers have to break break
their goals down in the steps I am like as you know I am an
evangelist like this is my number one go-to.
For any any time I'm procrastinating?
I mean, to the point where, like, if I'm procrastinating
writing This outline for this podcast I will tell myself
literally just write one word. Yeah that's all it takes start
with a word and then go to a sentence and then go to the
paragraph, right? Like Its it creates the
momentum. It removes the intimidation.
It like generates emotional momentum its it's the way to go,
like my My brain tends to just want to make everything as big
and ambitious as possible. And so it's it's like I'm the
work for me is constantly breaking things back down and
making them smaller. Yeah.
Well, so that makes sense to me when it's something like do it.
A podcast outline where I struggle with that, though is,
okay, I'm breaking something down, makes sense, it's doable,
you have self-efficacy around it.
I can do this thing. My problem often comes in when
it's time that back to the bigger picture.
Oh yeah. You know, wait it makes sense
but like a podcast outline because that's a tangible thing.
But like if it's more abstract further in the future, Maybe And
I'm doing this one little task. I have a really hard time,
marrying what I'm doing? Like writing a sentence about
something. Yeah some Grand goal that I have
so I'm actually I didn't expect to do this.
I'm gonna bring Eisenhower back into this.
Oh okay, so Eisenhower is a great quote that I love where he
says a plans mean nothing, but planning is everything, okay?
And I truly believe that like planning projecting forecasting
99% of its bulshit. Okay, you know, it's like none
of its gonna come true. It's funny because I just, I
just worked with our head of operations on like a projection
for 2025 and 26 and I mean I've been doing this long enough.
That is gonna come true but it's still useful.
I still do it every single year because it does exactly what you
just said which is it? Like it ties, this individual
podcast shooting this segment, this podcast.
Is now tied to this episode, which is tied to the projection
for the podcast this year, which is tied to the overall business
strategy, which is tied to like our overall mission and goals,
right? So it's like it lines all those
things up. That's what I find is that like,
it's like the numbers don't matter like it's nothing ever
plays out the way you expected to.
But the act of creating that plan or projection Ties, all
those things together. Okay, in your head that makes
sense to me. Yeah, next one, the warrior
avoids risk due to fear of failure.
Struggles to reframe fear as growth needs to take small
manageable, stack steps and challenge catastrophic thinking
with more realistic outcomes. I am definitely not this person.
I don't think you are either know, maybe a little bit, but
yeah, I've definitely known people like this who are just
like, almost like Doomsayers. Like they just think
everything's gonna go wrong. Don't worry about everything all
the time. And it is like freezes them in
place. Kind of like a, like a fight or
flight response or more of a fight flies.
Freeze response. So they're freezing or way, what
is it? That makes them procrastinate
about this. I definitely think you know, if
you think fighter fight or flight, I think it's the flight
side of it. Like I mean procrastination is
essentially just the flight in the fight or flight but yeah,
for people who are prone to worry and fear.
Chronically. I could see how it's just like
you just don't want to do anything because what if it goes
wrong, right. You know what?
Like they're just kind of always imagining worst case scenario.
Yeah. Which you would think it's kind
of like almost a perfectionist thing but it's not.
Yeah, it's it's more because the perfectionist is like, well,
what if I don't do it perfectly, what if I you know, what if What
if I'm embarrassed by, this is like, what if it, just
everything, just the worst case scenario combined what it would,
if it goes wrong. What if it, what if I'm worse
off than I am that? Like, yeah, the perfectionist is
like here my bars way up here, what if I don't hit it, whereas
like the Warriors just like what if things get worse?
Because I tried this thing. The crisis maker.
So we talked about this thrives on last minute, adrenaline
enjoys, the emotional Rush Of doing things last minute needs
to create earlier. Artificial deadlines needs to
work in scheduled sessions and needs to reward themselves for
finishing ahead of time. I think we've covered this
person quite a bit here but it is interesting to see them show
up in the list here. The next one is the defyer I
definitely relate to this one. Yeah resist imposed tasks
dislikes, Authority struggles to reframe actions.
As personal choices, needs to identify with the direct
benefits, use autonomy to stay in control, rather than react
passively. I, as a person who just
chronically hates being told what to do to the point.
Like is just like Unnecessarily. Contrary in a times, big
cultural component that one though, too.
You know, where if obedience are at least tradition or service
to, yeah, your family. Society, whatever it is.
There's there's a big cultural control as well.
This feels like maybe a little bit of a privileged
procrastinator. Yeah, like it's could be
surveying too many college kids. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Like, it's just, I mean, my
personality is always been like, if somebody tells me to do
something, my first reaction is like no I'm not gonna do.
Yeah. And then finally the overdoor
takes on too much tries to accomplish too many tasks at the
same time unable to manage their energy effectively The they must
learn to say no delegate their tasks focus on high impact tasks
prioritization, which we talked about and then set boundaries to
reduce overwhelm and burnout. This is me definitely a little
bit of me in there too. Like it just you, you try to
take on a lot. You do I have a hard time saying
no, yeah, yeah. I definitely see this one in
myself. I to me, this feels like the if
there's one of these that I imagine is has grown over the
last 10. 20 years, I could see it being the overdoor.
Yeah, just because they're the opportunity of things to do and
engage in Grown exponentially. So the need to create boundaries
and say, no is also growing exponentially and it, and those
are hard things to do. Like it takes, it takes like,
there's quite a cognitive load to, like, turning something down
or refusing to do something. So, yeah, those are the six
types of procrastinators. I think it's it's a little bit
useful before we get into all like, the specific tips and
strategies and stuff, like I think it's it's useful to kind
of ask yourself where you are, and What you need to focus?
What each of us needs the focus on?
To improve as ourselves. Absolutely.
All right, Drew. So now that we've Beat people
over the head with a trash can full of information.
It's time to bring this home, it's time to now we get to the
end of the show, we get to the part, we're like, okay what are
the takeaways here? Like what do we actually use and
Implement into our lives? How do we actually fight
procrastination within ourselves and so you and I we like to do
this section. We like to start this segment of
the podcast with A section we call the 80/20 of
procrastination. Which is what is?
What are the 20% of? Actions or behaviors that are
going to give you 80% of the result.
Like what what's the highest? Leverage implementation here.
So you and I we've got a list of a bunch of things, you know, we
we've talked through at this point dozens and dozens of
different ideas. These are the most useful, the
most verified, the things that have the most evidence behind
them. And also, the things that you,
and I have personally found the most leverage with when we've
implemented them. So, let's let's go through them
one by one. I think it could be useful, kind
of returning that external versus internal framework like
managing your external environment versus dealing with
your internal environment. Let's start with the external
first, sure, right. So why don't you kick us off?
Let's talk about environmental design.
That's right. What is it?
What's a good way to implement environmental design to help
with your procrastination? The core premise of this is,
altering your surroundings so that the desire behavior that
you're targeting is just easier or the one that you don't want
to do as much harder distractions, like that will.
So, we'll talk about how to do that.
So, set up your environment, so that for Success basically.
Yeah, some of the ways like we've mentioned right now, if
you've been procrastinating on your diet, don't buy junk food.
Don't keep it in the house. That's like an easy win.
You can have right there if it's more work-related, get your
workstation set up. Put the phone in the other room,
get all distractions out of out of sight and out of mind.
That's, that's a good place to start with that.
You can use like you you mentioned, you use website
blockers? There's a lot of software like
that. Yeah.
So if you're the type of person who's like prone to just going
down, email rabbit holes, or YouTube rabbit, holes or Sports
Website rabbit holes. Right?
You know, one piece software is called Freedom.
There was another one called, I believe it was called self or
no, it's called Focus. Yeah, there was another one
called control, there's a bunch of them use and then there's all
sorts of accessibility things like, on your phone's like, you
know, I found an Android. They have like these are working
hours. So you turn off all the
notifications. Honestly, just keep your phone
in the other room. If you're really serious about
that, but if you need to have it on you, I would say definitely
use those that hack back notifications on your phone too.
I don't know why people like I look at people's phones and
they're just there's like 90s on them.
Like why from like an app, they downloaded four years ago that
they don't even use and That's crazy.
In turn off your notifications, just text messages, maybe a
couple of other things, and that's it.
Yeah. It's, it's if your phone is
chiming or buzzing all day, that that's like putting crack in
front of the crack addicts. Like you you're doing yourself?
Zero favors? Yeah I I think I think one thing
that's really useful to think about this too.
Like there's kind of I would almost put this in two different
categories. One is There's actually
physically altering your environment like I said, get rid
of the junk food, one of the things that I like a really
extreme example of this, that my friend near Ile did, and by the
way, his book on this is excellent like environmental
design. Go to that.
Yeah. Bible for that his book
indestructible. It's excellent.
If you're if this is if distraction is a huge issue for
you, like that is the best book that I can recommend.
One thing that he did in his own house is that he put all of his
Wi-Fi, routers he put on these plugs that you could put on
timers. Yeah.
And so he like programmed, the timers to shut off, I think it
like 7 p.m. or something every night.
And so he's like the internet and his house just went off
every evening at 7 p.m. and it's such a pain in the ass to get up
and like replug in the router and like, do all this stuff.
So he just He never did it and and he sure enough he stopped
using the internet passed a certain time, and he would
start, he was reading more books and he was spending more time
with his family and he was doing all the behaviors.
He wanted to do. So there's there's kind of like
actual just physically alter your environment that's kind of
the first category and then the second environment are.
The second category I think is creating rules for yourself.
You know, like when you were saying things like, you know,
leave your phone in the other room or, you know, people will
say stuff like, oh, only check email after 2 p.m. they're like
that, like, it's I think it's really useful to get explicit of
like this is a rule that I live by.
This is a rule that I have for myself because if you try to I
think the the key principle here is that when you leave it up to
your own decision making You can't trust your own decision,
right? And in the moment at least.
Yeah. And not consistently over a long
time you might you might get it right the first day or the first
week but like eventually you're going to start making the bad
decision. And as soon as you make the bad
decision, once that's going to justify every future bad
decision. So it's just like you have to
create a rule. I'm not allowed to have my phone
in my office period, right? Or I don't check social media
until after 4:00 or whatever email to only do email at two or
three PM in the afternoon, or at the end of the day.
Once a day, clear the box, then it's done.
Yeah, yeah. And then the physical side, the
physical, and side too. I've done things like well, for
a long time, I really, I didn't even have a TV which just didn't
have it in the house. It's like, you know, not having
junk food in the house, same type of deal.
I know in times where it's like, okay, I need to get a lot of
work done. And since I do work from home,
there are those distractions. So I've taken like the power
cord to my TV and like giving it to a friend, right friends?
Seriously, I'm just imagining you like regular doorbell, just
like, I'm gonna come back for this.
Too far off. Back to mentioned earlier that
you know that interview I listened to with Pierce daily
said the people who are most honest about these things.
Yes about they know themselves well enough to be like okay I
know I don't have the wreck was it willpower to fend off the TV
or the fridge or whatever and these certain moments and so I'm
just gonna accept that. Yeah, there's another thing is,
there's a self-acceptance to environmental design that you
have to be really, okay, with right.
You have to accept that you're flawed and that you're not gonna
change your own nature. I think that's something, you
know, I think a lot of chronic procrastinators they like have
this unreasonable expectation that there is going to be a day
where like they are able to turn down every Temptation and they
are going to be impervious to distraction and they are going
to be able to put their phone away whenever they want.
It's like, no, you're not gonna happen.
You're human, you're not you're not gonna you're not going to
defeat 100,000 years of biology. You're just not.
So you might as well work with it and create rules and
structures and environment for yourself.
That like nudges you towards success.
I'm curious. Like, what is your personal
biggest environmental design win that you've had?
Yeah, besides the not keeping junk food in the house.
Like that's, that's a, that was a big one, but also separating
my my workspace from other parts.
So I just have there's one room now, in my house, that it's just
for work. And now I, I've seen after a
while. It's been a couple years now
that I've had that, it's when I enter that space, that's
workspace, right? And I try to keep the phone out,
I try to do all that. So separating your, your
workspace from your kind of like, your play spaces, you
know, I guess you could call them.
That's been a big one for me, too.
And then keeping that space. So I try to keep it clean
because for me, anyway, if I see clutter on a desk that's a
reflection of my mind. So a big one for me is just
yeah, using those cues too. So it's like it's like I enter
that room in my brain automatically goes into work
time. Yeah.
I think that's a big win for me
and it's great because now when you leave you're like it's done
personal time. Yeah.
Not worrying about it. Not checking email.
Not that, that's a while. I've been working remotely for a
long time, and I've had about reissue a little bit about where
does work happen. And where is yeah.
Leave your absence. Yeah, about you, for me, I mean,
obviously, the junk food stuffs big, the phone stuff is been big
in the past. I would actually say home gym.
Was. Oh yeah.
Okay. Ah, absolute Game Changer.
And it's funny too because I remember You know, when I moved
to my place here in LA. And I started putting together a
little home gym. You know, it's a really small
room. It's like half the size of this
studio. Probably.
And so, there's not a whole lot in there.
There's just some free weights, a bench and like a small squat
rack. Yeah.
And I was like, you know, it'll just be kind of cool to have
this. I, at first I did.
I was gonna keep my gym membership and the idea was
like, I just kind of work out at home as like the supplement.
Yeah. It was such a massive Game
Changer because it the simplest thing is I no longer had any
excuse, right? It's like come home at 5:30, I'm
tired long day of work or whatever Big, Dave shooting and
I'm like, ah, I should work out today.
Like normally I'd be like, well I don't want to get back in my
car and go to the gym and change and like do all those things and
shower and all this stuff and it's like no.
Now the gym is like 20 feet away.
Motherfuker like you have no excuse.
It's right there, go do it. Yeah, it doesn't matter what
time it is. It doesn't matter how tired you
are. It's right there.
You can get something in. And at first, it was a little
bit of, like, It's like, ah. Why did I do this to myself?
But now I'm just so happy, it's there.
And actually I quit. I cancel my gym membership like,
within a month or two. So just like this is so easy.
And it's so even dumb things like You know, like, I'll be
like sitting on my couch. Watching the TV show with my
wife and she'll get up. You know, we'll pause it and
show it up. Have to go do something for 10
minutes. I'm like, wonder how many
pull-ups I can just like walk into the gym or doing pull-ups?
I'm like yeah, it's not bad. Like it's just, it is been set.
Like just having it right there, the convenience, the ease and
the elimination of, like all the friction of like, having like,
Get dressed, get in the car. Go get a gym bag all that stuff.
So home gym up even if it's like small and simple.
And like, not not even doesn't have all the equipment that I
like a normal gym would have. Huge game changer.
Yeah, so I think the big kind of takeaway from this then is using
friction strategically, remove it for the things that you want
to do, like, have a home gym. It's frictionless, you get right
into there. Yeah, and then add it to places
where you don't want to do a behavior.
Don't have junk food. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of
friction with not having. I gotta go all the way to the
grocery store, just to get back a chips or, you know, a candy
bar or whatever strategic friction is really the key here.
Yeah. And it can even go as far like
One thing I learned when I was kind of going through my health
Journey, don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry.
Oh yeah. Like that's a good.
That's an easy one. And then also another one, like
this one, like my health coach pushed on to me because I'm
like, well yeah, you know, and then I'm in the grocery store
and I've got my list, but then I'm gonna start walking through
the aisles. I see all this stuff, it looks
good and he was like, you know what, don't even go sign up for
instacart. Yeah.
Put your list in when you're like while you're eating lunch
while you're full, put your list into instacart, don't even give
your self the chance. To again, it's like removing
those decision points like the the more brain dead simple.
You can make the good behavior. The more likely it is to happen.
Yeah, absolutely cool. So similar to environmental
design, another big ones, social accountability.
We talked a little bit about the Confucianism and, you know,
we've we've kind of skirted around this, you know, with all
the talk of of emot And conditioning, and all this
stuff, the egos stuff. We haven't addressed it really
directly but like, it is worth understanding that probably the
strongest driver of our emotions.
Period is other people, right? It's the people in our lives
that we like that, we trust that we respect that we want to win
the respect of, or the trust of they are some of the strongest
levers on our own behavior. And You can utilize that.
I mean first of all on a very abstract level is being
conscious of who you let into your life.
You know there's this old saying that you are the average of the
five closest people to you. I think there's a lot of
evidence that that is true, right?
It's like if the five closest people to you in your life have
absolute shit habits and they get nothing done.
And they're always complaining and laying around on the couch
and brain rotting like That is going to nudge you into those
behaviors because that is what is going to get you, social
validation, and approval and fundamentally.
We're human, we all need social validation and approval.
So surrounding yourself, by people that you admire people
that have good work habits. Good health habits, that have
the habits that you wish you could have.
Just by spinning more time with them, you are more likely to
adapt a lot of those behaviors. But then on a very like tactical
level finding somebody who has the same goals you and is also
struggling with that goal is and then like working on it together
it is just your chance of success Rises exponentially like
the difference between say I don't know trying to learn a new
language by yourself and trying to learn a new language with a
friend. Your chance of success is going
to like five or 10x if you do it with a friend.
And I think that's true of pretty much anything.
And a big part of that is just more fun and interesting, which
we'll get to in a second. But I think the biggest thing is
just the accountability. Yes.
You don't want to be the asshole who like, Skips French class
like you don't want to be the, you don't want to be the the
dick that like paid for, you know, convince your friends to
like join a CrossFit gym with you and then never shows up like
it just that's embarrassing. That loses respect that, you
know, people stop trusting you as much.
And so that is a huge lever that you can pull within your own
brain. I do have a quick story about
this, so that friend that we mentioned earlier near Yale and
that book I recommended in distractible so he he was riding
that book. While I was writing, my second
book, everything is fucked and we were both having trouble
finishing our books. And so we agreed that we were
going to meet up. I think it was twice a week for
writing sessions and we set. Basically, we both gave
ourselves, the deadline of the end of the year.
I think this is 2018 and we made a bet that if I don't remember
how much money it was, but it was like, if one of us finished
our books in the other one, didn't we had to give, whoever
didn't finish the book had to give the other one.
I think it was like 5000 or 10000 dollars.
It was like a very painful. Yeah.
It was a very painful amount of money and we like wrote it down
and like had like a contract and everything and and we did it and
it was He, I mean, we both, we both got it, done.
I mean, like, let's just put it this way.
We, we were more effective. I think in those four or five
months, then we were like the entire year prior to that.
So I I've heard near tell that story too that people and he
said his hand was shaking when he like because I think you each
wrote a check or something or a contract or whatever.
Yeah. Is in my hand was shaking.
Yeah. I ended it over because it is
that powerful. Yeah.
Think about that emotional space.
He had to be in for that, he's like, oh God, the man.
Now my ass is on the line. Yeah, and it was, it's funny
because there was kind of that looming threat of like, oh my
God, I have to get this done, but it actually turned.
I mean, he and I really close friends.
Yeah, and a lot of it is because of that, because we started
meeting up riding together every week and And it just became
there was a lot of kind of soft accountability that happened in
the interim right? Like there, you know, it's like
I go over there on a Monday and we'd spend a few hours riding
and and then afterwards, we'd have lunch and kind of look at
each other and be like, well, how'd your session go like oh
man, I didn't is a disaster. Like I got nothing was usable,
right? And then we kind of talked
through it and be like, oh yeah, that's how last week was for me
but like today was pretty good. Yeah.
And like it was just nice to like, Validate each other and
reassure each other. Because, you know, if stuff like
that happens, when you're by yourself, like let's say, you
have a horrible writing session or a horrible workout or
something. Again the tendency is like the
inner fun house mirror Wars it so it feels more catastrophic
than it is. Whereas when you're with
somebody else, they're like, oh yeah, I've been there.
I felt that way last week. But, you know, you just try
again and he'll be fine. You know, it's like having other
people around. Reminds you that it's not as big
of a deal. As you think it is or it things
aren't falling apart. Yeah, the way you fear, they
are. Yeah, and I want to highlight
something you already mentioned with regard to that though, but
finding people who are in a similar situation and place that
you are as real important. In this case, too.
Yes, you can find somebody who's like, you know, get an
accountability coach, like somebody who's Fitness or
something like that is really good and they're waiting.
You there's some accountability there, but I think it's a lot
more enjoyable and relatable when you find people who are at
a similar spot. As you are, for example too.
Like when I started CrossFit, it was me.
And two friends. We started in both of us all
about. None of us.
Have done CrossFit before. All of us, kind of probably
hadn't been in the gym for a little while.
And so there is that kind of Commiseration that you can all
do around it and you're like, oh this person's in the same spot
struggling with the same thing that I am.
And you kind of feel that sense of community around.
Yes, I think that's really important too, so that I like.
Yeah. And it's funny because we talked
a little bit about how like, students are the biggest
procrastinators. And it's funny because this is
the easiest solve for them, you know, like, oh yeah, you were
constantly surrounded by people who in the exact same situation
as you struggling with the exact same procrastination as you are.
And my first two years. Well, first year, first year of
college I was at music school but you know first year out of
Music School My grades were okay, like up and down.
But then my last three years I was like a straight A student in
the primary reason it was two of these things that we've talked
about already. The first thing that I did is
that I realized to like if I went back to my dorm, studying
would have happened like absolutely nothing would happen.
You know, the guys down the hall will be playing poker or
something and next thing, you know, I'm at a party on a
Tuesday night and I'm like drinking till 4 a.m. so like
nothing useful would happen at the door.
So I eventually developed a rule for myself that when my classes
ended. I had to go to the library and I
had to spend at least two hours at the library, didn't matter.
If I just sat there like, stared at the wall, I had to go to the
library and sure enough. Once I'm in the library it's
like, well, I got all my books. I might as well like start
studying or, you know, do that like, start working on that
assignment that's due in two weeks that, you know, I haven't
really thought about and I started doing that and sure
enough, like grades immediately went through the roof.
And then, you know, jump a year to a head later and I like
started telling some of my friends like, oh yeah, I have
this rule. I just go to the library and a
bunch of people I need were like, can I come with you?
Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll be there at 1 p.m. on
Thursday, like I'll be there till at least three and like
sure enough. Bunch of my friends started
coming to meet me at the library and and again, it's that
accountability, right? It's like, well the my friends
there, she's studying for her History exam like I'm gonna look
like an idiot if I'm not studying for my exam.
So I might as well study for my exam and you just again, you
start, nudging yourself into the right behaviors.
Yeah, a very similar experience in college, too.
Yeah, I wasn't very good at studying the first year or two,
and then after that, I did find like, especially the more
difficult classes. You'd find a group of people in
there and be like, hey, we're gonna be at the library, what
was that? And that like I look back on
College. I remember those.
Yeah. Study groups very, very vividly
like and so leveraging that too just the social connection that
you get really brings it all home to it's strange, how like,
yeah, it becomes fun. Yeah, I don't know, like when
you're young you kind of think, like, you need to be like drunk
or doing something crazy to have fun.
Yeah. No, seriously like a stats class
that we took that was just for it horrible.
Our study group that went to the library Hotel, like I remember
that. We had a lot of fun like about
stats, you know, like, yeah, absolutely nerd.
I know totally was cool. All right, so that's the
external stuff. There's the external factors
that we can manipulate to help our own procrastination.
Let's start talking about the internal stuff.
Yeah, you know. So, let's let's start with the
big question. I think you let's take this,
take opposite, starting points, why don't you start with like
the big hairy questions and then I'll kind of like break it down
into the small questions. Okay.
Well first, we talked about
purpose and finding a why for your actions, right?
And I think that's just foundational and fundamental as
we already discussed to getting things done and not there.
I mean procrastination kind of becomes an afterthought when you
really have a strong purpose time to what your daily actions,
right? So you reconnecting whatever
task or job or whatever it is to a deeper sense of meaning and
purpose and what is this? Doing for me in my life that is
going to bring like a greater sense of purpose around things
that starting there. So, kind of finding your, why
the Simon sinek thing, you know, you could dig into that.
Why? Why is something important to
you really digging into the reasons?
Like, okay, why is this? I have this job or I have this
task, or I have this creative project I want and finding the
underlying drive and value that you associate with that.
So, go back and listen to the first episode on values.
That'll give you a very good foundation for this as well.
Yeah, but starting their starting with why, why am I
doing any of this? And like, really getting into
and digging into playing the white game with yourself like a
30 year old? Why why why am I doing this?
Why why why? I think that's a really good
place to start. Anyway.
Yeah, I think two like, Having a basic understanding of like,
what a good. Why is versus a bad one?
Yeah, we didn't talk about that, did we?
Yeah, but I generally speaking, I think, I think the best way to
characterize like a good wife is that it's something that is
bigger or more important than yourselves.
Yes, you know, I think if you, if you dig down and ultimately
you find that your why Is just pointing back at you.
It's like, oh, I'm doing this. Just because I want people to
respect me, or I'm doing this because I want to impress,
right? You know, this group of people
that I wish were impressed by me or, you know, whatever.
Here, that's going to be a week. Why?
And generally the strongest wise are the sorts of things that
you're like, you know what, I don't matter, right?
I will do anything for my kid or I will do anything for my church
or I will do anything for the environment, right?
Like it's it's like when you find something that is greater
and more important in yourself that even if you die you hope it
continues on past you like that is generally indicative of some
some a good form of why the other good form of why I would
say is is around creativity. Like it's like if there's an
action that you appreciate just in and of itself, like if it's,
if it's something that you would do, if nobody was watching and
nobody knew you did it right? Like it's, it's Then that's
probably a good. Why?
It's just like the pure enjoyment and satisfaction of
that thing, right? It's like I would still Play
music. If nobody ever heard me play.
It's just because it's like, the pure joy.
And satisfaction of playing is, is fundamentally enriching in my
life. That's a good wise.
Well, you know, it's like, Try to stay aligned with that,
right? Yeah.
We talked a little bit about in this section two, we talked a
little bit about this where if you do start out with the why
that you later find that? Oh, this isn't very good.
Why? The example I gave anyway was
yeah I started working out because I wanted to look good.
Right? And yeah, but eventually did
change into something else. Sometimes that can happen.
So sometimes we need to abandon something.
If we don't have a good wife for it, but sometimes the why can
change too, right? So like in that case, I changed
from my vanity and which is if I'm honest, it's still important
to me right on some level, but really, the what it grew into
was, oh, this is a lifelong skill that I'm developing that's
going to help me and tell the day.
I die rightly. Like hopefully I'm gonna be one
of those 80 year, old people like my great uncle home out,
still out there skiing and I can, you know, do this blitz,
back kind of stuff so you're why can change.
But sometimes you also just need to let something go because it's
just there's no foundation for your your wife and your purpose.
I think that's a really good. A really good point though, is
that like those, those weaker wise, don't go away.
Yeah. You just need to find the bigger
stronger one like, yeah, you you never will stop caring, you will
always want, you know. The cute boy or girl to like
find you attractive, you will always want respect from your
peers. You will always want to impress
certain people like that. That's a very natural human
thing. It's just like, that's not
sufficient. You need to find something
bigger than that because if that's your only why then you're
you're just on a very ugly treadmill and it's it's not
going to get any slower. Yeah yeah absolutely.
Okay so he has zooming in a little bit so we're going that
that's the super big picture now cutting in super super tight.
I have this concept that I, I've called for many years, the
minimum viable action, which is, this is, this is the breaking
down or chunking down, you know, actions into a smaller component
pieces. I called the minimum viable
action because it's basically what you do is you, take,
whatever you're procrastinating, you break it down into sub,
actions. And then you continue to break
it down to the point where it stops feeling intimidating and
then the point where it stops feeling intimidating, then you
say, okay, cool, I'll go do that.
So, really simple examples like let's say, I want to develop a
meditation practice And I wake up one morning and I'm like, oh
man. 20 minutes of meditation. Like that's a huge pain in the
ass. It's like, okay, well let's
break that down. Like What about five minutes
meditation? It's like yeah it's still kind
of like okay. What about one minute
meditation, right? Like, just go sit on the fucking
floor, don't even have to just sit on the floor and just do
like 30 seconds. Like okay, yeah, that's not
intimidating. So then you go do that.
And then what you find is that once you do the tiny action,
once you're on the floor for 30 seconds, then you're like, well
I could do five minutes and then you do the five minutes and then
you're like, I could do 10, you know?
And then you do 10, you're like I could do 20 or maybe not, you
know, maybe you just do the 10 but at least you did 10 because
10 before you were in a place where he was either 0 or 20, If
you sit down and do five, that's better than 0, right?
So at the minimum viable action is always, it helps guarantee
that something gets done even if it's not as much as you would
hope. Or imagine It's just that
something gets done. I have applied this in almost
every area of my business and my productivity.
Like this is just this is my absolute go to in my personal
life anything that I'm struggling with or I'm delaying
this is the first thing that I go to is I'm like how can I
break this down into something that's not intimidating.
So with workouts, I do this. Just the other night we had a
long shoot day. I got home, like 6 p.m.
I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm tired.
I'm supposed to work out today. I don't want to do this shit and
I like looked at my workout and I was like, you know what?
Just do one set of each exercise.
Like you don't have to do the full workout.
Just do one set of each exercise and I was like, all right, I can
do that. And yeah, I did one set of each
exercise and that's better than nothing.
Right, right. You know, when I'm writing a
book, books are really fucking intimidating and some days you
sit down and you're just like, I don't know how to start this
chapter. I feel like this whole section
is terrible. I don't want to deal with this
right now, and I just look at it and I say, Just write one
sentence just to just put together one, non shity
sentence. Like doesn't have to be good.
Don't have the same. You don't have to be Hemingway.
Like just put together a sentence that like makes that is
readable right? And then you start there and
you're like okay well that kind of know what the next sentence
is and Well, let me just finish this pair of, you know, next
thing. You know, you've got two pages,
right? And so, Minimum viable action
use that momentum to carry you forward to me.
This is like the most, the biggest tactical hack that I've
kind of ever found, you know, aside from the environmental
stuff like this is the biggest tactical hack that I've ever
found for my own procrastination.
Yeah. Yeah, you've been recommending
this one for a very long time, in a long time, many different
ways and what really clicked for me when doing this episode?
Was that how that really helps with the emotional side of this.
So what you're really addressing is kind of like this overwhelm.
Yeah. Happens when you have this big
task in front of you and we mentioned in the previously, you
know, it was actually this kind of came out of the time
management crowd, which a little bit surprised, but if you think
about it, they went from okay, where in a factory you know,
where we want to build a car, but we have to break that
process down. Yeah.
And so they're like, this is, you know, this is how you should
do it. What they missed was, it's
because it's an emotional problem, not a tactical rational
problem that's an emotional problem.
You have this big huge task in front of you and you need to
break it. Into more manageable emotions
that are attached to this test, right?
Like we keep saying procrastination is an emotional
problem. Self-control is an emotion,
emotional problem. Like this is not, it's not a
problem of information, it's not a problem of motivation.
It is a emotional problem, that's managing your own
expectations, managing your own self-perception.
And so, yeah. This is just the most effective
trick that I've ever come across to that.
Yeah, and with the minimum viable actions too.
Don't underestimate like a small win the impact of a small win.
Yeah. That can have an outsize
emotional impact on you especially if you go from man,
I'm just not feeling like I'm getting anything done to even
just getting one or two things done, it's a huge.
Don't. Don't understand that.
It's exponential. And how good that feels.
Absolutely. Yeah, not to get off on the too
much of a tangent but like I. Yeah, I have noticed that So
much throughout my career. That like, you'll get these
people who have been stagnant for a long time, and I think
what happens when you feel stuck and stagnant is that you start
developing the story in your head that like, I've got to do
this drastically in the turn my life around and it's like,
actually, no, dude, you just need to go get like, yeah, go
get a couple small wins under your belt, like That will
actually that will move mountains for you.
Just, it will open things up for you way.
Way, way more than you would ever anticipate.
So absolutely 100%. All right.
What's the next one? Okay.
Yes. So the next one is addressing
those underlying emotions. This is what kind of the Crux of
it. This is where we want to end up
and be able to really address what's going on, dig into what's
going on. Why are we putting this task
off? Why are we anxious about why are
we angry about it? Why do we board?
What's so painful about this task?
And addressing those emotions that we attached to these
Dreadful tasks that we have to do or perceived read full task.
So we talked about the rain method.
This is one way, it's really just more about mindfulness
being aware so you're rain method.
Remember to recognize allowed and investigate and
nonattachment to those emotions? So it's just a way to be more
mindful at every single stage of what's going on during
procrastination. Yeah.
And you can I mean there's there's different ways you
could. Be more mindful about this but
this I found any way just on a moment to moment basis.
When that does pop up, this is a really good way to just get
like, really get in there and be like, okay, what's going on
here? Why am I feeling this way?
Where am I feeling this in my body?
Why am I feeling it there? All the things you think about.
When you hear about mindfulness practices that?
Yeah, that's how you can start to address the underlying
emotions. And I think it's important to
emphasize because I imagine that there's some subset of listeners
right now like just went through four hours of Information in the
history of procrastination and the craziest and they get to the
end and they're like ah fuck it's about a motion.
Are you, you mean, I gotta go to therapy to like, get work done
and it's like, not know. You don't have to, like sure it
would help, but you don't have to like this is, ultimately,
it's more about, it's not about fixing your emotions or like
solving your emotions. It's more about Becoming aware
and accepting of your emotions like not being hijacked by your
emotions. Just like as you said like
recognizing what's going on beneath the surface so that you
can work with it instead of against it, right?
So if anxiety comes up, you can like Alter the action or the
expectation in your head and see until you get it to a point
where it's not. So anxiety inducing, or you
know, or if there's like a despair or sadness or whatever
like you can kind of play with, you know, your goals or or your,
the way you approach an activity to to try to find a way, that
makes it a little bit more exciting or fun for yourself.
So it's just Until you're aware of the emotion.
That's that's underlined the procrastination you can't
really. Adapt to it, or use it in any
useful way. Yeah.
And I mean, a lot of this too, this these all tied together,
right? And so if you have like an
environment, that's bringing up a lot of these emotions too, and
fixing that will help. But again, it's still just goes
back to the mindfulness. Part of that you have to be
aware of those triggers in your environment or maybe it's a
person or you know work situation that happens a lot
too. But yeah, becoming more
self-awareness. We talk a lot about
self-awareness and a lot of different areas and That's a
skill to that. You develop over time and
self-awareness around why you do and don't do things.
I think that you have to find some method whether that's
through met more meditation or maybe you do need to go through
to therapy just to get a little more self-aware around your
emotions. Yeah.
But at the end of the day, yes, I'm sorry it's about emotions
and you do have to address. You have to figure out a way to
address them. And again, it goes back to being
honest with yourself, like me, I just know that there's certain
things that I do procrastinate that I like, and I have these
emotions that I don't like around them, but I was like,
look, except that. That's just how it's going to
be, and it's probably never gonna change.
I'm never gonna have this like, real big excitement to, I don't
know, clean my house or whatever it is, but that's okay.
We gotta work with that. So you're telling me there's no
notion template to solve my anxiety attacks.
I'm trying to, I have tried them all.
That's, that's a good point. You make those.
That's a million dollar idea, get this notion template, the
salve All of your anxiety is right?
I I think that's a way of the underlying motions around all of
this is trying like we've, we talked about this, they're
trying to find the new app or the new system or whatever it
is. Oh yeah, this, that is
avoidance. That is not addressing the
underlying emotions here. You're recognized that what
you're doing in that situation is you're saying I want a way
around this uncomfortable. Feeling, please just give me the
fixed. Just give me the one thing.
The one hack the one trick. It's not there.
It's the appearance of progress without actual progress.
Yeah, yeah. 100% for sure. Well, let's talk about how I
deal with my own Pleasant emotions, which is I just find a
way to make it fun. Yeah.
Party boy Mark. Yeah.
So A friend of the show, Ali abdaal has a great book about
this called fuel feel good productivity.
And I for me, My favorite thing about that book, it's one of it
was reading that book. It was one of those things that
that I had personally believed and felt for a long time but I
didn't really know how to say it.
And I never really seen it said, well anywhere else, and I feel
like he was kind of the first person to say, which is like you
can find a way to make boring things fun.
There are actual ways that you can apply certain principles
that just makes something. That's, that's drudgery feel
more, interesting. I think you mentioned CrossFit
earlier. I think CrossFit is like, a
primary example of this, right? Like most people don't enjoy
working out. So what did CrossFit do?
They gamified it? Like they created systems and
achievements and goals and and challenges and they have you
track your progress over time, and then they put you in a
social environment and they put you in teams and the teams are
competing against each other. Like, these are all just like
really basic how to make it fun, 101 techniques and you can do
this with anything. You can game a fee, anything you
can track progress on anything you can Again, if you've got
social accountability you know you you can set up a little game
with your friend of like okay let's see who can study more
hours this week or who can learn more French words this month,
you know, create little friendly competitions, between yourself
and somebody and track your progress over time, create
little rewards and incentives for yourself.
It's you know, human nature is pretty simple and if you
understand how to how to leverage it, you know you can
get a lot further. Yeah.
What are some of the examples? I don't use this one as much.
Maybe I hate fun or something, I don't know.
What are some examples of specific examples?
You've used around? You've been on a big Health
journey, I know. Just tracking in general, you
think is fun, which is, you know, some people might think
just tracking as fun. I think, I think progress is
fine progress. Okay, so one thing that I find
very fun, I am a very competitive person and one of
like I agree. Tracking is annoying.
Yeah I don't the tracking itself, I don't enjoy.
Okay, what I enjoy is the comp With myself.
Okay. Right, so it's like I know how
much weight I lifted. On every on every exercise last
week, right? So, okay, it's fun for me to go
into the gym this week and be like, let's see if I can do one
more rep, right? Like, let's see, let's see if I
can do this. Let's see if I can add five
pounds to this. Like, let's see how that feels.
I mean, and don't get me wrong. I'm not like skipping to the gym
every morning out of it. Yeah.
But like, it makes it interesting enough that it's it.
It's not as hard to go and it's not as hard to finish the work
out. It takes, what would be A pretty
dull and boring workout and it makes it interesting and
exciting. The other thing you can do is
you can pair like, you can batch activities with each other.
So um, you know, if you let's say there's a podcast you love
like two handsome, men talk about procrastination for four
hours. You can you can you can make a
you can make a rule with yourself that like you can only
listen to the solve podcast while you're doing housework.
Like this is, I've got a couple podcasts that are just frivolous
and father and I, they're my chores podcast.
I don't listen to them in any other time.
It's like, when I'm doing the dishes and taking out the trash
and, you know, cleaning the office.
Like, that's when I put this podcast on because it's kind of
it takes, what is normally just a painful boring experience and
it makes it interesting for me and you can lump activities
together like that you know. If if you love audiobooks you
know make a deal with yourself that you can you can only listen
to audiobooks either while you're working out or while
you're getting ready for bed you know and it's there's no other
time. Okay, so I did think of actually
ways I have made things fun for me though, it's more of a
combines the social aspect to it, you know?
So CrossFit being the example that you gave but I like it
instead of having Home gym. I just, I don't like heaven.
I need to leave the house for whatever it is.
But what I've realized is that it's actually really fun for me
to go to CrossFit and see those people.
Yeah, the workouts themselves are brutal and they're, you
know, intense, but you go and you start you kind of get your
little CrossFit friends, you know?
And yeah, there's a social aspect to that.
I used to do Jujitsu too. Like you go and there's a very
social aspect to that obviously too.
So yeah, for some people for you you have fun with competition
with yourself for me even though I'm also introverted in a lot of
ways. I that social there's still some
social reward in a lot. Yeah you might yoga studio.
Go to two. There's yeah there's that.
Yeah, yeah it's I mean. So what's fun for you could be
fun for somebody else? Yeah.
Everybody's fun is a little bit different but you know, the
principles are the same thing. I'll even goes through this,
he's like gamify it, make it social, and then like it with
something that you enjoy, right? You know, so like those are the
three tried and true methods. I think he has a couple more in
his book. Okay.
I'm probably not thinking about that.
So, All right, last one. And I know this is this is the
the spicy one but just really quick, productive
procrastination. Okay, with an asterisk.
Yes, this is personality dependent.
If you are an ADHD person like me, you might get a lot of
Leverage out of this. Be careful.
Like it is it is like juggling steak knives.
You can hurt yourself. If you're not, if you're not
very focused and depth at like what you're doing, the
productive procrastination, it can get out of hand very easily.
So just to review really quick. It's when you, you procrastinate
one task by doing some other task, that is also intimidating
or difficult to do. And it can be very effective if
it's honed well, and honed correctly.
It can be extremely effective. But you can also waste a lot of
time spinning your wheels doing a bunch of shit that seems
useful but is not. And like you said it's like
Another subtle form of avoidance.
So the difference between productive procrastination and
just unproductive progress, and nation is like a, very fine line
and I would urge people to consider it.
But also be very, very careful about it, right?
All right, last section draw, I've been banging on for a long
time. Now, is that everything in life
is a trade off? There's no There's no when no
win is 100% a win. There's always some downside
somewhere with it. Yeah.
So in that Spirit, we like to finish every episode with what
are the hidden costs or what is the hidden trade-off of solving
this area of your life? And so what what are the hidden
costs of getting a handle on your procrastination?
Like, what are the unnoticed sacrifices or things that you're
going to have to give up? If you actually get over this
issue in your life, get a analy. I am the first one that I put
and this is something that I've experienced quite a bit myself.
Is that you have to accept that you, you're probably going to
lose Hobbies interests or diversions.
Like they're gonna be certain things in your life that you do
genuinely like and appreciate that you're just gonna have to
let go of and that could be anything from like, you know,
the gaming Discord server that you hang out in to the sports
websites that you frequent to, you know, the the tiktok Yeah,
channels that you you enjoy watching, like you're just
gonna, you're gonna have to let some of those go.
That's the price. That's the price of admission of
just getting this area of your life handled, and that can suck.
I experienced this a lot with the video games, like, one rule
I had, I discovered I had to create for myself.
Was no multiplayer video games because I'm too competitive and
a single player video game. I can play for an hour and just
put it down and like, go on with my life, a multiplayer video
game. I'm like, no, fuck you.
I'm gonna practice, I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna grind.
I'm gonna get so good at this. I'm gonna beat all of you.
Get talk trash on your head. I literally wasted months of my
life like trying to get good at certain video games so I just
don't let myself do that anymore and and I miss it sometimes
like, I really do miss it. Like I very fond memories of
certain games that I did get very good at and but that's just
that that's the price of, you know, it's not worth giving up
my business and my My career and my marriage.
So I have chosen those things. So yeah over it that we talked a
little bit already about trading, a lower boundary for a
higher value. Yes.
Talk about in the previous episode too but that it's, it
can be. That's pretty clear example
where it's like, okay, yeah, I probably shouldn't be playing
these multiplayer video games or video games in general.
I should be doing this other thing.
There's a clear trade-off, you know you should make it, it's a
struggle. But you do sometimes though you
also like in my situation, I've had to a just where I don't feel
like I'm necessarily trading a lower value for a higher value.
I'm sacrificing something that is genuinely genuinely
meaningful for me, but I guess at the end of the day, it is a
higher one. So my example is when I did
finally start to address my health stuff and stop
procrastinating on working out and eating, right?
And all of that, that takes a lot of time.
So you work outs and usually work out in the middle of the
day because it's just, that's how my brain works.
And so, it takes up kind of a big chunk of time in the middle
of the day and I've had to sacrifice, Of my like
woodworking has kind of I haven't been able to do as much
just because I did have less time now for that and that's
kind of a big like, I love we're working and it's great and it's
it adds a lot of fun and enjoyment and meaning to my
life. But I guess I did realize that
taking care of my health long term is probably more important
right now and then we'll be more important in the future and I
can would work longer. Hopefully, you know it's a
physical activity. I'm going to need that when I'm
old, you know, when I'm sure man in the wood shop and so yes,
sometimes it's really clear that.
Oh, I need to give up this kind of lower value with this lower
fund that I have in my life for something that's more important
and sometimes it's not quite as clear-cut.
Those two? Yeah, it can be in ambiguous.
All right. What do you have?
Yeah. So this one might get a might
ruffle a few feathers from certain type of person.
Yes, you got a lower, your standards and accept your
limitations. I know there's a certain type of
person out there that's going to say what?
No we like I'm not gonna lower my standards like that's not
what productivity is. That's not what getting your
life together. Means, it's raising your
standards and actually you know, there are certain situations
where you just have to accept reality and I think is really
what it is and like we already mentioned, one thing, celebrate
those like little wins that probably don't look very sexy on
the outside or to anyone else, but That's a, that's a win.
Like a win is a win here and like lower your standards from.
I'm gonna get 10 million things done today, you know?
So I'm gonna get one or two things done today and they don't
look like it's making a whole lot of progress, but it is
actually in the grand scheme of things.
When you step back, this is how it works.
And you are speaking on this this one you were speaking as a
recovered perfectionist, right? Like this is, I think this is
the one that the perfectionists like really struggle with is
like Yes. Like no, I have to be excellent.
It has to be perfect. And it's, that is That is
self-defeating. Yes, before you even get
started, there is a fantastic book on this front of the Pod,
all of her berkman's 4,000 weeks has to book.
It's one of the most recommended books.
I recommended people. Yeah, it's just it, it's the
subtitles called productivity for Mortals, which I love.
It's it. It's all about this.
It's all about, like, You can't do everything.
Yeah. You and and accepting your
finitude is yeah. Like, not only and not only can
you not do everything but like a coming to that realization and
be like properly prioritizing, the things you can do is a very
difficult thing and this kind of like A lot of it's a critique of
just kind of the the productivity industry in
general. Like the mentality of like bro
you just gotta you just gotta hustle man.
You just gotta like get this new system and like you can do it
all, dude. Like you, you don't have to
don't make any sacrifices, you don't need to sleep.
Yeah, exactly. And it's just like, no actually,
the game is sacrifice. Like that is the game is like,
what are you willing to give up for your goals?
And by the way, you, you know, if you really are trying to do
something ambitious and great, you probably only have the
capacity to do a handful of things.
Like that in your entire life. Right?
So yeah you you have to get very realistic on on timelines and
capacity and time management and everything.
So huge fan of that. Here's a drawback that I think a
lot of people are won't consider, which is that if you
handle your procrastination, you have to give up your excuses.
Yeah, so that we hold on to so dearly.
You gonna have to own your bulshit.
Yeah, the OWN Suddenly, some of these stories and narratives
that you've had and maybe in many cases for your entire life.
It kind of explaining your own underperformance or why things
didn't work out the way you thought they would.
Or you know why you haven't been able to dedicate as much time to
this thing as you thought you would.
Yeah. You're gonna have to let that
go. Yeah.
It's like again, it comes back to the pure steel thing about
about reality. It's like the best.
The best people at not procrastinating, are the people
who are the most realistic who understand.
They're like, yeah, it's just a story.
Tell myself, right? The justify, like, not doing the
thing. I don't want to do and that
sucks. Like it's, it's, it's, it's the
sort of thing that, like, when you let it go, it's painful, but
then, once it's gone, it's liberated.
Right? So yeah, that goes back.
A little bit too. We can sneak for it.
Back in here, the defense mechanisms, right?
You have to let go of those and recognize that.
That's what you're doing is you're just protecting your
little ego and letting go with those.
That can be a painful thing too. Because those Fence mechanisms,
they're defensive, they protect you in some way, but they're
protecting you in a way that's holding you back.
So, recognizing that right? Like you said, at first?
Yes, it's painful. Rip the Bandit off.
You adapt comes back to the the ego flexibility.
Yes. And not building an ego around
the lower values building them over over the higher values.
Yeah. All right.
What's the next one? Disconnecting from bad
influences. So we mentioned this a little
bit already but there's going to be people in situations in your
life that are not conducive to you getting things done.
And you taking care of what you really want to get done in your
life and you're going to have to remove yourself from some of
those situations or some of those relationships that you
have. And that's all so painful.
Those relationships have serve some sort of purpose in your
life. I might not be a healthy
purpose, but if serves some purpose in your life and you're
going to have to leave those in some way shape or form and that
will be painful if there are, you know, certain work that
there's going to be situations where it's like in work
situations where you might not be able to get away from
somebody, you're going to set. Some boundaries, that might be a
little bit. Have some uncomfortable
conversations with these people. It's going to be, there's a,
there's a more opportunities for you to manage emotions.
Let's just situations. Yeah.
It's it's you know, in some
cases it will be removing the people from your life or
reducing your exposure to the people in your life.
In other cases, it will be managing that relationship in
your life and even more important than simply like who's
in your life and who's not, it's really paying attention to.
Who are you seeking validation from?
Ask yourself, are you do you respect the person?
You're trying to win respect for him because a lot of cases you
know so like why the fuck are you trying to earn their
respect? It makes no sense but it is very
human, right? Like we kind of default to just
wanting to be a by the people around us, right?
So if the people around us are actually people that we don't
really respect or value their judgment highly, we should have
a difficult conversation with ourselves of like why am I
trying to win the approval of this person?
Like I Should find somebody a little bit more admirable to try
to get validation from. And I I do think there is a
little bit of a misconception in just self-help in general, which
is that like there's like a cliche advice of like, you know,
stop seeking validation from others, I think that's
impossible. It's it's not, you don't stop
seeking validation from others. You you seek validations for
from better people and for better reasons, right?
That they're more in line with your values more in line with
what you want to get done with who you want to be.
Alright, so again it's like finding that lever to push you
in the right direction. All right.
Last one as we're talking about relationships with other people
and this is going to. This is definitely a champagne
problem. Yeah, you will have this
problem. You will not mind having this
problem but it is a problem nonetheless which is the more
effective you become as a person, the more productive you
are, the more successful you are the more you get things done,
accomplish your goals, the more the people around you will
expect of you. Yeah, the higher the standard
you will be held to by others and in some cases people will
not like holding you to that stand.
They won't like that, you're that productive or that.
And so they might there might be a little bit of backlash among
some people, but for the most part people will respect and
admire it. But they'll also, you know,
you'll set the bar high for yourself and that can be
stressful and intimidating at times.
It can feel unfair at times, but it's all.
So again, I think it's a positive social pressure, right?
Like if the people around, you see you as somebody who performs
well and is diligent, and is reliable that puts social
pressure on YouTube below things and ultimately, that's a good
thing. Yeah, so it's it's an example of
a desirable stress. I would say in fact that I would
say most of these are desirable stresses, I would say, Most of
these in most cases are things that you would like to trade
off. So don't don't get the wrong
idea that this these are any reasons to not fix your
procrastination. We're just trying to be
realistic of like, hey, if you get your procrastination
handled, here's what you can expect on the other side.
Yeah. With the higher expectations one
too. That you've got to be careful
because then you lead into the situations where you're not
saying no. And we talked about that certain
type of procrastinator who takes on too much at that point too.
And then you just end up procrastinating anymore.
So yeah, that's it's a, it's a hazard but it's a good Hazard.
Yeah, good Hazard. Yeah.
All right, we're at the end. Finally, before we sign off
Drew, I'm curious and all the research and prep and recording
that we've done for this episode.
Has anything. Have you been inspired to change
anything in your life? Has there been any like, kind of
tangible? Takeaway for you going through
this process? Yeah, I'm so when we started
researching this a long time ago, right, I did my own little
experiment and I borrowed a Nintendo switch from from a
friend and I said it's like not too far away from my office.
So it's really easy for me to go in and I was like, okay how how
bad are these distractions? So we'll talk about the
environmental side of it. It's bad.
It's very, very bad. And what it did for me, is a
really made me get again, get honest.
I knew that being honest with myself, was actually a key to
this, you know. Don't don't buy the food, don't?
Yeah. Don't buy the junk food and put
in the world, all that kind of stuff.
I already knew that I though realized really the impact of
environment really came home for me and a lot of this.
But what the I took it one step further too and it was very
surprising to me just to learn how important emotions are.
I'm knew they were important. Yeah, procrastination on some
level was it wasn't an emotional problem, but I think we've come
to the conclusion that it's all an emotional problem.
It's not it's not. There's an emotional component
to it, it's just Baseline and emotional problem that you have
to deal with. Yeah, all this other stuff,
environment, social connections relationships, even ego stuff.
It's only relevant in so much as it Alters in affects your
emotions, right, right. Like your ego's, only a problem
with procrastination. If your ego is causing negative
emotions to prevent you from actually doing the thing you
want to do. Yeah.
And so far as though would have changed specifically, I've used
more of the mindfulness like the rain method and I've definitely
implemented that in my daily habits and routines.
Now when I start to procrastinate on something I'm
much better at it now too, just stopping catching myself.
Okay. What's going on and achieving
that last step in the rain model in which is non identification?
I'm like, oh this is what I'm feeling right now.
I'm not gonna identify with it so much.
That's going to derail my next hour day or whatever.
Yeah so that's been a huge win for me.
Anyway. That's funny because it's yeah
prepping for this episode is I mean I've been thinking about it
for a while like as you know I've been I've gone in and out
of meditation. Yeah.
Quite a bit throughout my adult life and done it.
Very intensely for a periods and not at all for periods.
I'm currently in a knot at all period but it's funny prepping
for this episode. It's making me think that I
should kind of get back on the meditation train, you know, I
I've done it on and off Main mainly to kind of help manage
the ADHD. I've definitely noticed over the
last year year and a half, I am becoming a lot more distractible
and I am all like I'm the stimulus junkie in me is like
He's getting is becoming a little bit of a dope fiend. and
it was just interesting, going through all this research and
really seen the importance of That self-awareness, the
importance of boredom, The Importance of Being able to sit
and Stillness and recognize emotions and, you know that Gap.
So in Buddhism, the, they talk about the gap between the
emotion and the action, you know, and it's like, the more
you meditate, The Wider that Gap gets and I have felt my Gap
shrinking over the past couple years.
And I don't think, I don't think it's resulted in a huge problem
with procrastination. I've been very productive
recently, but just in terms of like mental health and general
well-being and happiness, it's kind of inspired me a little bit
too. Maybe get back on the mat.
Yeah. And put some time in again.
Yeah, I recently heard that, that Gap.
Yeah, the way that was described was the gap between whatever
happens to you and your reaction in between is your
interpretation. And that's what you can control.
Yeah. And that definitely, through all
of this too has been kind of a motto of mine as well.
It's like, okay, you can't control what happens to you.
Sometimes, you can't like your reaction is sometimes not where
you control either, but the interpretation in between and
then it can obviously influence the action that you take.
So that that's been a big one for me too cool.
They're mindfulness. A little trick that.
Yeah. Cool.
That's it. I think so.
We made it. We made it.
We will be back next month with an episode on, emotional
regulation. Yeah.
Since it is we I think we realized researching this one or
like, Yeah, if this is all about emotional regulation, we should
probably just do an episode. Yeah, that's gonna be a
foundation after share. Yeah.
So, all right. And finally, if you have
listened to all of this and you want to start taking some action
on this stuff, we have an amazing online community that is
designed to do exactly that. So, we break every episode down
into 30-day challenges, with daily exercises and
implementations. We also connect you with
like-minded people who are doing the same thing as well.
The community is called momentum and it's it's incredible.
Honestly, it's just, it's full, the smart, hardworking.
People who just want to get this area of their life solved once
and for all. So in momentum, the whole point
is to build a habit of action. It's to get those small wins.
Get the momentum towards doing something, too many people, sit
around. Listen to a bunch of podcasts
and don't ever do anything. We're trying to fix that too.
Many people also think that the solution to their problems is a
huge transformational moment. No.
It's actually just getting up and doing a little bit more each
and every day. It's gaining that momentum.
So if you've enjoyed this podcast and you want to know how
to implement these lessons, into your life, check out the
momentum Community, we have a 30-day course that breaks
everything that you just heard down into bite-sized actionable
chunks. So you can actually make some
progress on it and get more shit done.
To learn more, go to find momentum, calm slash
procrastination. That's find f.
I n d momentum calm slash procrastination.
The link is also in the description below.
I will see you all there.