WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.031 --> 00:00:19.285
Welcome to Solved, the 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 Burney. 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.

2
00:00:19.285 --> 00:00:34.456
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...

3
00:00:34.456 --> 00:00:57.355
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.

4
00:01:04.747 --> 00:01:29.958
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 this is actually the first one we're recording. And ironically, we procrastinated this episode recently.

5
00:01:30.751 --> 00:01:55.237
Like three months. How many months did it take us to shoot this thing? Pretty close to that, yeah. So be confident, listener, that your hosts are experts on procrastination. Very familiar with the topic we're about to discuss. Yes, exactly. And then the second thing I want to say is just I want to get in before all of the comments from people who are going to say, oh, I'll listen to this later. You're not funny.

6
00:01:56.553 --> 00:02:17.933
You're not clever. Same joke. I've been doing this for 15 years. Every time I create any content around procrastination, the first comment is always, oh, I'll get to this later. And I'm like, you're very cute. Those people haven't even made it that far yet. No. This far yet. So, yeah. That's true. So. All right. So today. Today.

7
00:02:18.203 --> 00:02:41.137
This 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. This episode is absolutely comprehensive.

8
00:02:41.137 --> 00:02:58.990
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 to 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...

9
00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:16.388
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 stat is who the fuck are the 5%? Yeah, show me that. Yeah.

10
00:03:16.388 --> 00:03:30.226
They're liars. Who are 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 –

11
00:03:30.445 --> 00:03:47.135
report being chronic procrastinators, which essentially means that you are just literally procrastinating everything all the time. Anything you try to do, you end up procrastinating, which that's a shocking amount, 25% of people. So this is a huge problem. This is like...

12
00:03:47.827 --> 00:04:09.325
This is a massive affliction that 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 such a common human occurrence that there is thought on it going back 2,500 years. So we went back 2,500 years, and we're going to cover procrastination.

13
00:04:09.325 --> 00:04:36.173
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 are relatively modern. They're not – they're pretty recent and, you know, people in the ancient world or people in medieval times wouldn't necessarily agree with us and how we approach the topic of procrastination.

14
00:04:36.173 --> 00:05:02.735
So 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 is 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 that's like kind of doesn't make sense in a certain philosophical way.

15
00:05:03.173 --> 00:05:26.309
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 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 says some things quite different than maybe what you're expecting.

16
00:05:26.309 --> 00:05:52.651
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 procrastination is ever something that we just completely get rid of. I think that it just seems to be kind of a side effect or a cost of procrastination.

17
00:05:52.651 --> 00:06:20.832
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 wanna add, Drew? What are you most excited for? I mean, this is- What are you procrastinating? Oh, God.

18
00:06:22.030 --> 00:06:50.903
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 a tragedy, kind of a tragic side to it as well. Because 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 gonna 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.

19
00:06:50.903 --> 00:07:08.200
I don't know if I'm a chronic procrastinator, but 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, a self-employed person for my entire career. So we'll get into that. And you mentioned something which is like kind of the tragedy of it.

20
00:07:08.200 --> 00:07:25.902
What we'll 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 –

21
00:07:25.902 --> 00:07:45.443
So screwed up. Right. Like, that's so unfair. Why does that happen? Yeah, we'll dig into why that is. But yeah, it's fascinating. But before we dive in, there's going to be a lot of information in this podcast. And between me and you and our research team, I think we went through like, what, 13, 14 books and –

22
00:07:45.443 --> 00:08:06.335
100 research articles. So to help everyone get through this, we've 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.

23
00:08:06.335 --> 00:08:33.689
by going to solvedpodcast.com slash procrastination. That's solvedpodcast.com slash procrastination. The link is also in the description if you wanna get it through there. All right, let's get started. Okay, so let's start off with a couple definitions first because I was actually surprised how hard it was to actually pin down a technical definition of procrastination. And even the one that I chose...

24
00:08:33.689 --> 00:09:03.676
As we'll see, there's a little bit of wiggle room with it. So there's a researcher named Peter Steele up in Canada. He did a big meta-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 Steele did this in 2007, and he crafted this definition of procrastination based on all the research at the time, which is this.

25
00:09:03.676 --> 00:09:28.820
So 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 into 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 –

26
00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:40.784
Uh, then my wife gets in a car accident and I have to go to the hospital. Like that's not procrastination because something more important has now interfered. It's only when the delay is completely unnecessary, uh, and fabricated.

27
00:09:41.645 --> 00:09:58.874
The second one is that there are negative consequences. So a lot of times when you delay something, there 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 –

28
00:09:58.874 --> 00:10:26.296
procrastinate things like working out or eating well because that feedback loop is so insanely long. It's like 10, 20, 30 years before you actually experience the repercussion for that decision. It's very easy to convince yourself that there is no downside to eating the pizza tonight and sitting on the couch for another day. And then finally, the third factor is despite knowing. And

29
00:10:26.296 --> 00:10:36.927
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?

30
00:10:37.467 --> 00:10:56.570
Who's to decide what's necessary and what's not necessary, right? Who's to say what a negative consequence is? 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 usually bullshitting myself on all three of these factors. I have –

31
00:10:56.570 --> 00:11:24.481
convinced myself that there is no negative consequence that's going to happen, or the negative consequence is 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, if not for right now. And, and then of course I, I bullshit myself of saying that, like, I'm aware I, I know that this is going to cause a negative. It's like, well, who knows? Right? Like maybe, you know, a book will write itself. Yeah. Right. It happens all the time.

32
00:11:24.481 --> 00:11:53.337
I definitely ran into this too. And talking with people about this, kind of prepping with this and just talking with people around my life too, I definitely ran into this. They're like, well, is it so bad that you put this off? There was 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, well, 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,

33
00:11:53.337 --> 00:12:20.405
Well, I guess it makes sense is that there is a cultural element to this that I think is worth discussing 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 is not a huge deal. Turning something in late is not really judged or viewed as something negative.

34
00:12:20.658 --> 00:12:50.510
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 is that 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 kid's 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.

35
00:12:50.510 --> 00:13:14.557
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. Like 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 1045. We still haven't even like talked about the business thing. I see it as rude that they're like wasting my time. So –

36
00:13:14.557 --> 00:13:37.422
This concept of time and punctuality is very culturally dependent. And what I found interesting, there's a social psychologist from the Netherlands named Geert Hofstede who did a bunch of work on just like cultural factors. I think he called it – I think it's called cultural dimensions theory or something like that. And –

37
00:13:37.422 --> 00:14:02.718
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, so like Western cultures or like Anglo-Saxon cultures very much prioritize like following the clock. Like if I say we're going to do a thing at 1130 and you show up at 1135, I'm

38
00:14:03.528 --> 00:14:26.512
To me, you've now delayed things unnecessarily. It's causing negative consequences, so on and so on. It's procrastination. Some cultures, if you say 1130 and they show up at 1140, 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. Right.

39
00:14:26.512 --> 00:14:53.731
You know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, we were going to be here 15 minutes ago. But like I was hanging out with my my my brother and my cousin and we were having a great conversation. And so it just took longer. And like that's seen 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.

40
00:14:53.832 --> 00:15:09.779
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.

41
00:15:09.779 --> 00:15:39.766
Anyway, it's just very interesting. We're not going to spend a ton of time on this. But like I said, I'm bringing it up simply because we do have a big international audience. There are going to be people listening to this in 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.

42
00:15:39.766 --> 00:15:51.072
So 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.

43
00:15:56.253 --> 00:16:16.267
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 it is and why it happens does start with Plato. He has a few dialogues that get into it.

44
00:16:16.267 --> 00:16:38.963
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 instead of the good. Plato puts forth like a really interesting argument. He kind of argues that procrastination like doesn't actually exist. They're like –

45
00:16:38.963 --> 00:16:55.298
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 that. I wouldn't expect that.

46
00:16:56.294 --> 00:17:20.915
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 you've been putting off and it 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 gut intuition is just like.

47
00:17:20.915 --> 00:17:42.751
That doesn't feel true. Does that feel true to you? Absolutely not. No. Like definition you brought up earlier. We'll get into that a little more too. 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 their life that like they know are good for them and they don't do it. Exactly. So Plato's bullshit.

48
00:17:44.810 --> 00:18:13.717
No, that's – so, okay. I'm being facetious. The interesting thing about Plato is – so, almost all of his work is written in the forms of dialogues. And those dialogues revolve around – it's usually Socrates having a debate, a philosophical debate with some other prominent person. And in most of the dialogue, Socrates just kind of like clowns the person. And –

49
00:18:14.813 --> 00:18:43.771
There's a lot of ambiguity around Plato's work for a couple of 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 especially in the early dialogues, it is hard to differentiate between what Socrates thought and what – and Plato is just reporting what he thought versus like what Plato actually thinks and he's just putting his words in the Socrates' mouth.

50
00:18:44.851 --> 00:19:10.602
So there's a lot of ambiguity around that. And Socrates 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 it was a conversation between two historical figures, it's sometimes unclear if he actually believes what he's writing. So –

51
00:19:10.602 --> 00:19:36.843
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 the Republic is the first place that you see this idea of what he called the tripartite soul. And it's – he basically says that 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. Yeah.

52
00:19:36.843 --> 00:20:05.058
So the three parts of the mind is he called the rational, the spirit, and the appetitive. 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 rational, which is like the calculating and the logic and all that stuff.

53
00:20:05.885 --> 00:20:31.383
Plato's argument is that he used the metaphor of a chariot, which is that the rational part of yourself is like the driver in a chariot and he has two horses in front of him. One horse is the animalistic, appetitive 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.

54
00:20:31.788 --> 00:20:59.969
But they're wild horses. And so sometimes they're going to buck and they're going to run and they're going to try to go in different directions and it's going to be chaotic, right? And in the Republic, Plato said that it is essentially what procrastination is or back then they called it a crazier. Basically, 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 –

55
00:21:00.577 --> 00:21:30.563
hey, we should go to the gym. And the horses just start going towards the fridge for another piece of cold pizza. And you're like, wait, no. And 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 that the takeaway from Plato is that he ultimately saw a crazier or procrastination as a knowledge problem.

56
00:21:30.952 --> 00:21:42.308
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.

57
00:21:42.730 --> 00:22:05.697
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 –

58
00:22:05.697 --> 00:22:29.963
does help probably at the margins. But I also just think it's, I don't know, it's two 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 don't,

59
00:22:30.233 --> 00:22:51.766
understood what I was doing when I was going back to the fridge instead of the gym, then I wouldn't do it so much. And you actually – like you still see this a lot. It's funny. I'm going to – I'm not going to 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.

60
00:22:52.778 --> 00:23:02.414
They said, your entire life will change when you realize that you have to sacrifice short-term freedom in order to earn long-term freedom. Instant gratification will kill your dreams.

61
00:23:02.684 --> 00:23:26.933
Ed has over a quarter of a million views and 7,000 likes, right? No shit, Sherlock. Right. Like everybody knows that. We all know the information. We all know that. Like 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 –

62
00:23:26.933 --> 00:23:48.938
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 of those things that we wish we could do. So that's kind of the first school thought we're going to return to it quite a bit. It, like most of Plato's ideas, it's,

63
00:23:48.938 --> 00:23:59.047
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 Syrah.

64
00:23:59.570 --> 00:24:28.848
And even talking to her, she brought this up multiple times. This never really disappears, but it starts with Plato. The second school of thought I want to bring up – so around the same time, the Buddha was doing his thing. And Buddhism has an interesting kind of spinoff of the platonic idea that I think is worth talking about just briefly simply because I think towards the end of the episode when we talk about interventions and tactics and strategies, there is a little bit of the Buddhist –

65
00:24:28.848 --> 00:24:53.114
approach that I think makes sense. So Buddhism saw procrastination as ignorance of oneself. You know, Plato saw it as 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 twist. And I actually think there's probably a lot more value in the Buddhist approach.

66
00:24:53.114 --> 00:25:10.698
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. Yeah.

67
00:25:10.698 --> 00:25:35.048
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 deal or negotiate with that emotion is super useful. So I thought like the Buddhist twist on the ignorance, on the procrastination as a knowledge issue, I actually think there's –

68
00:25:35.504 --> 00:25:52.447
It carries some water. Sticking with Eastern philosophy, just want to touch really quick on Confucianism. 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—

69
00:25:52.582 --> 00:26:21.944
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 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...

70
00:26:22.315 --> 00:26:46.261
Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics wrote quite a bit about acrasia or procrastination. He wrote quite a bit about why people don't do the things that they should be doing. And I have to say, dude, like as somebody who has studied the psychology around this for a decade –

71
00:26:46.413 --> 00:27:13.565
Going back and reading Aristotle's take, I'm like, oh, he nailed it. Like the dude just nailed it. Over 2,000 years ago. Yeah, like 2,300 years ago. He's 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. Yeah.

72
00:27:13.733 --> 00:27:31.621
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 –

73
00:27:31.621 --> 00:27:56.393
the skill or discipline and like any skill or discipline, some people are naturally extremely 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 Plato. He's just like, dude, we all don't do the things we know we should do. We all know we should do certain things and we just fail to do them. Just look around you, yeah. Seriously, it's like, wake up, man.

74
00:27:57.254 --> 00:28:13.117
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's super unique and interesting and like way ahead of his time. With Plato, it was – there was a little bit of like, well –

75
00:28:13.673 --> 00:28:42.715
They're not doing the right thing just because 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, like, figure out what the hell is going on in your head. You know, the Confucius system, it's like you're dishonoring your family and you're screwing up society. Like, get your shit together. Aristotle's like, hey, man.

76
00:28:42.817 --> 00:29:01.075
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 improve upon it. And so I think the first takeaway around all of this is that

77
00:29:01.075 --> 00:29:30.758
Ultimately, there are like there's a little bit of truth in everything that each of those schools of thought said there. 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. Yeah.

78
00:29:30.758 --> 00:29:47.110
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 try to get better at. So I'm curious, Drew, have you seen your procrastination as a skill issue?

79
00:29:48.646 --> 00:30:05.943
Because I certainly haven't 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.

80
00:30:05.943 --> 00:30:25.028
Yeah. And bankrupt in my ways. But, yeah, 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 to today. So, yeah, definitely. I think I started seeing it as a skill issue.

81
00:30:25.653 --> 00:30:54.138
relatively late in my life. I would say like well into adulthood. Like 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,

82
00:30:55.387 --> 00:31:10.608
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 for the most part didn't exist in the ancient world. You know, Aristotle saw –

83
00:31:10.658 --> 00:31:37.372
a crazier or doing the right action. 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 going to screw it up. Everybody's going to fail to a certain extent. And so the only thing you can do is just try to fail less. Mm-hmm.

84
00:31:37.372 --> 00:31:56.322
And if you look at the Stoics, there's a very similar vein there, right? It's like you should try to be virtuous. The Stoics were a little bit more platonic in that they saw it as more of a lack – like a knowledge problem. But it's still the same attitude of like nobody is virtuous all the time. Nobody gets it right all the time.

85
00:31:56.542 --> 00:32:12.370
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 so fascinating, like, going back and looking at those takes because that doesn't feel like anything I heard growing up.

86
00:32:14.193 --> 00:32:35.270
I heard that you are an immoral piece of shit who's irresponsible and is 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. Yeah.

87
00:32:35.270 --> 00:32:59.300
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 never about the weight. It's about the like, why can't they control themselves? Why can't they like –

88
00:32:59.300 --> 00:33:19.718
keep food out of their house. Right. How could you let yourself go to that extent? Right. Yeah. 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,

89
00:33:19.853 --> 00:33:44.592
You would judge me. Yes. Yes, I would. Yes, you would. So it's interesting that that didn't always exist. Like 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 Chianity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

90
00:33:45.385 --> 00:34:07.863
One of the seven deadly sins, right? Sloth. Sloth. Exactly. Exactly. So interestingly, there's actually kind of a particular moment in time that I think you can point to where you can actually say this is the moment that procrastination and a failure to act became a moral problem.

91
00:34:08.318 --> 00:34:37.630
It became a shame-ridden failure that signifies that you are a piece of scum, essentially. Right. So the story actually starts in the late 4th century. St. Augustine of Hippo was born in what is 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. But it's interesting because Augustine –

92
00:34:38.575 --> 00:34:49.966
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.

93
00:34:50.101 --> 00:35:17.050
Screwed around, partied all the time, was drinking a lot, seeing a bunch of different girls. Just life was on easy mode. But the interesting thing about Augustine is that he was very smart and he was very philosophical. And so he became curious about a bunch of different religions and I guess you'd call them cults throughout his early adult life. He kind of dabbled in a bunch of different schools of thought.

94
00:35:17.641 --> 00:35:46.919
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.

95
00:35:46.987 --> 00:36:03.794
There was like an early opportunity to fill that void, that theological void. Like they needed like very smart people to kind of like create frameworks and philosophical ideas that the masses could understand and implement into their lives. And so Augustine –

96
00:36:04.621 --> 00:36:21.901
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 and the Catholic theology as we understand it today. Okay.

97
00:36:23.268 --> 00:36:49.238
But the way he went about that is super fascinating. So he was this playboy, he's 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 to his late 20s, he becomes pretty self-loathing. Like I think he's, at this point he's self-aware that he is a very smart, talented guy who's been handed every privilege and advantage in the world

98
00:36:49.238 --> 00:37:14.618
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 disgusted with himself. He's like, why do I keep doing this? 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 –

99
00:37:15.563 --> 00:37:44.521
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. And 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...

100
00:37:45.652 --> 00:38:04.147
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 to Christianity right there on the spot. He was like, this is it. This is a sign.

101
00:38:04.771 --> 00:38:30.590
Drops everything, immediately goes to seminary, trains to become a priest, and then within a couple of 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.

102
00:38:33.053 --> 00:38:49.102
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 doesn't drink anymore. He doesn't fornicate anymore. He doesn't –

103
00:38:49.422 --> 00:39:19.072
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 Akrasia. 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 to anybody else. He stole it for the thrill of it. Mm-hmm.

104
00:39:19.460 --> 00:39:46.730
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 a very platonic lens, he said there was a lower desire. There are the lower values of the excitement, the thrill, impressing the people around him. But then there's this higher level value of fairness and justice and –

105
00:39:47.236 --> 00:40:10.912
you know, not being selfish. And his argument was that anytime 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 –

106
00:40:12.245 --> 00:40:38.367
Not only is that a failure, that's a sin. That is, you're not violating yourself. You're not violating your family. You're violating God because God's will is 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 –

107
00:40:38.840 --> 00:40:58.718
shit gets moral really quick, right? Like it's, it's, if you're suddenly it's like your 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,

108
00:40:58.718 --> 00:41:24.959
that is shameful and you should repent. And the only path to 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 indoctrination really begin. And without getting into like too extensive of a commentary on Christianity itself, it was interesting reading Augustine's,

109
00:41:25.651 --> 00:41:44.652
In this context, because I couldn't help but but view it as like a 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.

110
00:41:44.652 --> 00:42:08.210
Augustine is basically going around and taking this experience that we all have and we all already kind of feel bad about and are a 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 hates you. And the only way he's going to stop hating you is if you come to church and confess all your sins. I'm like, man, that's like –

111
00:42:08.294 --> 00:42:22.283
It's aggressive to say the least. And look, we're not here to comment on religion or make any sort of like theological arguments. But let's just say from a mental health point of view –

112
00:42:22.807 --> 00:42:45.149
Not optimal. Right. Not optimal. From a productivity point of view, also not optimal. OK. Yeah. So we can't – we get into the shame stuff then. Yeah. I'm going to do some of that right now. Because like I said, I think it's a big misconception that most people have. Most people – what I have 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.

113
00:42:45.149 --> 00:43:06.378
then they won't do the thing. Right. Right. And it's like, actually, the research says the opposite. The exact opposite. This happens a lot. Yeah. So 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, especially around things like procrastination or any –

114
00:43:06.378 --> 00:43:22.510
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 altogether in the first place.

115
00:43:22.510 --> 00:43:38.238
And you get this very, very vicious cycle that goes along with it. So there's this self-judgment cycle that comes with it, right? You feel ashamed for delaying. This shame makes you uncomfortable. And to escape that shame that you feel now...

116
00:43:38.238 --> 00:44:02.892
you further procrastinate. You delay more. You distract yourself. You give into those lower values that Augustine talked about. So 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 one. It's like step back,

117
00:44:03.331 --> 00:44:19.278
there's actually a kind of deeper issue going on here. Yeah. Avoidance is really 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,

118
00:44:19.278 --> 00:44:41.485
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 has the asshole boss and like how do employees respond to that asshole boss? Yeah.

119
00:44:41.485 --> 00:44:59.339
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 not completing all their tasks or whatever. And sure enough, those nurses...

120
00:44:59.339 --> 00:45:22.728
showed up less often to work, they got through fewer rounds, they spent less time with the patients, and they quit more often. Yeah, I think some researchers, too, will interpret that as you are violating someone's sense of autonomy, too, right? If you shame them, you're saying you're a bad person and you don't have any control over whether or not you can do something about this.

121
00:45:22.728 --> 00:45:50.825
Whereas if you're much more gentle and much more compassionate about it, you're like, okay, this is how we fix it. It goes back to the skills thing, right? I was just going to say, we're going to come back to seeing procrastination as a skill issue a little bit later. And it is mind-boggling to me, though, that that got lost for thousands of years. Yeah, when it was the norm before. Yes. That was just how people thought of it. Yes. And then it completely got destroyed. Right. Because it is what you do see in this whole kind of Christian era.

122
00:45:51.365 --> 00:46:20.947
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 also very shame. Yes. It's, it's less about God. It's more about family. Um,

123
00:46:20.947 --> 00:46:37.079
When you grow up in that, it's so hard to escape it. And it is like I still catch myself like judging people. Oh, 100 percent. Yeah. Just being like, oh, look at that guy. I can't even get his shit together. You know, like what a joke. Yeah. Judging other people or judging yourself, too. Again, going back to the same thing. And

124
00:46:37.079 --> 00:47:04.298
And this isn't just applicable to procrastination, but anything where you kind of have this kind of self-loathing or self-criticism that's very loud inside your head, it will create avoidance, 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? Self-acceptance, right? Yeah. Self-compassion. Okay. What does that look like? Well, I hate myself, Drew. Right. How do I stop? Yeah.

125
00:47:05.767 --> 00:47:29.932
Make the self-loathing stuff. Pretend I'm your friend, Mark. Okay. And if you heard me saying that, you would be like, whoa, dude. Yeah. God, take it easy on yourself, right? Totally. This is kind of the standard advice to a lot of people is 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, okay.

126
00:47:30.016 --> 00:47:58.433
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 of 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 muddied of thinking around procrastination. I still think there was a lot of that prior to this whole injection of shame into the culture around getting things done, you know?

127
00:47:58.433 --> 00:48:21.434
That would be an interesting exercise. I mean, 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. I've been there. But it's –

128
00:48:21.434 --> 00:48:45.464
It's one of those things that we don't notice it when we do it to ourselves. And that self-compassion does – it creates that space for approach, like I'm saying, instead of avoidance. So if you know you're in a safe space 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 around that.

129
00:48:45.464 --> 00:48:57.715
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 with self-esteem as a metric, in my opinion, is like it's –

130
00:48:58.255 --> 00:49:19.484
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. Right? And that's where the self-compassion comes in. It's like, okay, let's actually measure how you treat yourself when nothing is going right because –

131
00:49:19.754 --> 00:49:38.097
That's actually probably a better, more accurate metric of your mental health and 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 finding shared humanity. It's funny because it's just –

132
00:49:38.097 --> 00:50:05.266
Again, thinking about this, 95% of people. That's what we opened with, right? Yeah. 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. No. Yeah. I, I can't. In surveys. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. And I, I think it's about 5% of the population is considered psychopaths too. So maybe that's where the 5% are. I don't know.

133
00:50:05.266 --> 00:50:35.033
they're just or they're like androids that are secretly walking among us it was so interesting though that uh when we were talking to um to fuchsia uh sarah like i actually asked asked her i was like do those five percent actually exist and she said absolutely can you imagine what that must feel like i wonder what like there's some downsides to that though 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

134
00:50:35.624 --> 00:50:57.443
I don't know. Maybe it's on a bell curve or something. I don't know. But to me, okay, getting off on a little bit of a tangent here. But like to me, a certain amount of – yeah, like an optimal level of procrastination is probably not zero, right? Because there is a certain weight that comes with like really, really important tasks in your life.

135
00:50:57.443 --> 00:51:22.013
And that weight is intimidating. And sure, as a human, you find ways to delay it or put it off or avoid it in this way or that. I kind of like that. I don't know. Maybe I'm being irrational here and kind of playing the same game with the shame stuff where it's like I'm afraid that if I don't procrastinate something, it means it doesn't have weight or importance. 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 –

136
00:51:23.009 --> 00:51:28.763
make me anxious because it signifies to me that I'm doing something very worthwhile. And,

137
00:51:29.219 --> 00:51:57.434
I don't know. Yeah, I worry that if I had zero procrastination that I would just kind of see everything. Like you said, a psychopath. I would just see everything in my life as just another task to be done. And you just get on with it and you don't – what's the point in stressing over it? I would be curious. Any listeners out there who – well, 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 from them. Like what their experience is or why –

138
00:51:58.227 --> 00:52:23.641
Like what is your thought process? 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 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

139
00:52:24.974 --> 00:52:36.601
I would set a goal for myself, right? Like I'm going to publish three articles a week of at least 2,000 words a piece, right? So 6,000 words a week, which is a really good clip of writing.

140
00:52:36.922 --> 00:52:58.218
And then if I didn't hit that expectation, I would judge myself. But then I'd 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 like reasonable can often get completely warped in our own heads, especially when we're judging ourselves. Yeah.

141
00:52:58.218 --> 00:53:23.665
And so it's – again, it 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 going to be a big deal. We can also bullshit ourselves in the other direction by saying like, oh, you're absolutely a 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 –

142
00:53:23.935 --> 00:53:41.857
It's useful to understand, I guess, that our minds are just crazy and wrong in all sorts of different directions. And it can screw us up. Especially when looking at ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, in prepping for both this episode and the last episode, I'm like, dude, Aristotle got everything right. Yeah.

143
00:53:41.857 --> 00:54:07.203
Like that guy nailed everything. Plano gets a lot of credit, but Aristotle actually, yeah. Between happiness, values, and virtues, and this stuff, self-discipline, and accrasia, and procrastination, and everything, like Aristotle nailed like half of psychology before there was such a thing as psychology. So shout out to Aristotle. So in like the 12th century,

144
00:54:07.743 --> 00:54:25.327
There was an Arab scholar living in present-day Spain named Averroes, and he translated – he was the first person to translate Aristotle into – back into Latin, which gave Europeans access to Aristotle again for the first time in almost 1,000 years, which is mind-blowing. Yeah.

145
00:54:25.327 --> 00:54:51.280
And sure enough, quietly, Aristotle started to go viral within European universities and 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. Like basically all of what is modern science started with Aristotle as well. So you start to see the scientific method –

146
00:54:51.567 --> 00:54:59.633
begin to show up and around this time, people are thinking about empirical observation, experimentation,

147
00:55:00.798 --> 00:55:29.013
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 into 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 by the name of Thomas Aquinas. And

148
00:55:29.013 --> 00:55:55.253
Thomas has like a very unique and interesting talent, which is he became famous very, very early in his life. He was a prodigy. I think he ended 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.

149
00:55:55.253 --> 00:56:14.255
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 OK with this. But in his mind, he's like this stuff is so –

150
00:56:15.115 --> 00:56:37.306
It's so world-changing. There's got to be a way to make this synthesize with Christian thought and theology. And so that became his life's work. And eventually he published Summa Theologica, which was his magnum opus, which was essentially that. It was bringing Aristotelian philosophy into the Christian world.

151
00:56:37.306 --> 00:57:03.648
umbrella in a way that people could understand and that was acceptable to the church, essentially brought Europe out of its medieval period intellectually into kind of what would eventually become the Renaissance and the scientific revolution and everything. So I can't overstate 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.

152
00:57:03.648 --> 00:57:16.338
It's a skill issue. Procrastination is a skill issue. And it's interesting. There's this concept in psychology called self-efficacy, which is basically a belief –

153
00:57:16.490 --> 00:57:42.342
that you can get better at something. And it's fascinating because self-efficacy strongly correlates with success in 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 and the impact of bringing self-efficacy back

154
00:57:42.342 --> 00:58:09.359
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.

155
00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:36.578
All we can do is just ask for forgiveness, right? Like there's nothing – we're all sinners. We're all doomed. But like if we pray enough and ask for enough forgiveness, then like things are going to turn out all right in the next life, not in this life because this life is going to be shit. It is shit. It's got to be pretty determined. Yeah. So I think just reintroducing self-efficacy back into the population is just like I can't –

156
00:58:38.114 --> 00:59:07.662
I can't overstate how impactful that probably was. And then sure enough, like a century or two later, you get the reformation. You know, when Luther hammered the 95 theses to the door, he was essentially saying that 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,

157
00:59:07.662 --> 00:59:30.342
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. Because the idea 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...

158
00:59:31.405 --> 00:59:57.359
God gives fortune to people who work hard and deserve it. And so you see 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 –

159
00:59:57.359 --> 01:00:24.157
If you have nice things, awesome. You worked for it. You deserve it. So on the one hand, we've brought self-efficacy back into the equation. We've brought, you know, procrastination as 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 does not look on you with favor or fortune. You must be doing something wrong.

160
01:00:24.157 --> 01:00:53.131
There's still a 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. 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 believed that, you know,

161
01:00:53.131 --> 01:01:15.457
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 judged the shit out of each other. Like there was an insane amount of perfectionism self-induced onto those communities, right? And it makes sense because it's like if your worldly status –

162
01:01:15.457 --> 01:01:38.643
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 we'll talk about later, like a huge component of procrastination is perfectionism, is this feeling that you're not allowed to fail, that –

163
01:01:38.947 --> 01:02:00.361
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. Bonified, yes. I'm curious how this has like come up in your own life and what the research says around this. Yeah.

164
01:02:00.361 --> 01:02:21.725
Yeah, definitely perfectionism. It feeds into procrastination, what they find in 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 of sorts.

165
01:02:21.725 --> 01:02:41.283
It creates a lot of anxiety around certain tasks. So you end up avoiding them that way. You're so afraid of failing that you just don't even want to approach the task 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. I need to.

166
01:02:41.283 --> 01:03:10.949
Be better at this. So we're into the skills set now. Yeah. I need to be better at this. I need to have the skills in order to do this. And for that, I need to step back and develop these skills. That's an 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 instead 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 everything. Exactly. Do research. Nothing.

167
01:03:11.270 --> 01:03:38.708
This goes right up into today. 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 get there. And that can 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. Mm-hmm.

168
01:03:39.974 --> 01:04:09.472
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 worse I feel about doing them. Therefore, the more I avoid them and you get in this downward spiral. Similarly with perfectionism, perfectionism,

169
01:04:09.927 --> 01:04:27.157
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.

170
01:04:32.118 --> 01:04:56.080
Let's transition into Freud. Yeah. I actually have a cool little tidbit to like swing into this section. You want to kick it off? Okay. Yeah. It's actually really fascinating. So Freud went to university in Vienna in the mid-19th century. And at the time, like psychology didn't really exist. Right. It wasn't really a thing. So Freud had a professor. His name was Franz Brentano. Yeah.

171
01:04:56.384 --> 01:05:24.802
And Professor Brentano, his kind of obsession and the thing that he would eventually become most known for, he was really into Aristotle. Okay. And he loved the kind of subjective, what we would call today the psychological side of Aristotle. But he also loved the scientific side as well. And at the time, mostly Aristotle's scientific stuff was studied. And it was like the virtue stuff was, I guess, less prominent. Yeah.

172
01:05:24.802 --> 01:05:39.550
But Brentano 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 an empiricism of the psychology.

173
01:05:40.664 --> 01:06:09.892
And he taught this idea in his courses, and Freud was one of his students. Oh, I did not know that. So interesting. There you go. So this would have been late 1800s. So this was 1860s, 1870s. Okay, yeah. Interesting, I did not know that. Yeah. Freud is a fascinating guy to say the least. And yeah, whenever you bring him up, there's gonna be a lot of- A lot of dicks. A lot of dicks come out, right? A lot of dicks and mothers. That's right, that's right.

174
01:06:09.892 --> 01:06:35.947
To say he was controversial is an understatement. He got a lot of things right. He got a lot of things wrong, some fascinatingly wrong and just spectacularly wrong. But the mark he left on Western thought and on psychology is undeniable. You can't deny that. So we would be remiss if we did not bring up Freud in all of this. Yeah.

175
01:06:35.947 --> 01:06:53.851
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 that are pertinent to procrastination. Okay. So first we want to talk about the pleasure principle versus the reality principle. Okay. Okay. Okay. So Freud –

176
01:06:54.340 --> 01:07:13.291
He thought that we are basically just driven by these two principles. One he called the pleasure principle, which is 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.

177
01:07:13.291 --> 01:07:36.781
Very basic, okay? Then he said, as we mature, though, we mature into what he calls a reality principle, where we realize that just indulging in whatever pleasure comes our way can be detrimental to us, especially 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, right?

178
01:07:36.781 --> 01:07:52.019
So again, it goes back to this, you know, our evolution, like I mentioned previously, was such that we will prioritize pleasure in the immediate term over long term benefits that if we delay gratification. Right.

179
01:07:52.019 --> 01:08:08.843
So that's the first one. Procrastination 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 idea we need to think we need to be aware of when it comes to Freud.

180
01:08:08.843 --> 01:08:26.157
And then he also has, if you go back to your psych 101, he has the model of the psyche too, the three part. Yeah. The three parts. Yeah. Very platonic of him, right? You have the id ego and super ego. Okay. Anyone go through each one of those? Sure. For everybody? Okay. So we have the id, right? And the id is like this. It's like this.

181
01:08:26.157 --> 01:08:55.739
Some people have 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, whatever joyful experience you might want to indulge in, hedonism basically. You have the superego then too, which is kind of the opposite of the id, which is all these moral standards that we obtain through socialization in our childhoods, through the people around us, our teachers, our parents, our siblings.

182
01:08:55.739 --> 01:09:11.011
We start to form as we as we mature, we start to form this idea of what it means to be a good person, to do right, to be morally superior to others or just to act morally out in the world. That's the superego.

183
01:09:11.011 --> 01:09:32.763
And then Freud 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 propagate. But we also need to temper that in some way with our moral –

184
01:09:32.763 --> 01:09:49.216
Understanding of the world. Yeah. And that's the ego comes in and says, OK, I have a plan how we're going to get satisfied both of these. And the whole Freud said when these things were in balance and the ego was doing its job, then we had mental health. And whenever it's out of balance, we're screwed. Right. Feels very similar to the chariot.

185
01:09:49.469 --> 01:10:12.267
Very, very much so. The chariot 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 through a Freudian lens, is giving into, like I said, giving into the id. When the id can overpower the superego or the ego, I guess, and the superego is kind of left out to dry. Yeah.

186
01:10:12.267 --> 01:10:33.597
That is, you know, Freud never specifically addressed procrastination, but a lot of his people after him did. A lot of his students did the psychoanalysts who were the Freudian psychologists. They addressed procrastination through this lens. Another thing he brought up to and brought to our awareness, I think, more was the defense mechanisms.

187
01:10:33.597 --> 01:10:48.177
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say, because it doesn't, the ego isn't part of the, when the ego is mediating between these two things, right? The social obligations and the cultural values versus the animalistic urges.

188
01:10:48.329 --> 01:11:05.913
Doesn't 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 is it kind of this mental construction that happens? Like how does that all map out?

189
01:11:05.913 --> 01:11:24.745
You mean in terms of like how the ego mediates that relationship or? Well, I'm imagining that the mediation between those two things, it happens through the construction of this self-image, right? It's like this is the type of person I am. This is how I act in these situations. And then –

190
01:11:25.133 --> 01:11:50.598
Once we've constructed that identity, we need to protect it. Right. Yeah. So the ego does. It very much forms our basis of self-identity, which you're saying, and how we navigate that pull between the two horses, right? Yeah. The ego is sitting in between, in Freud's view, the ego sits in between the pulls to be morally superior and good and pure versus, you know, a base creature of nature. Yeah. Right.

191
01:11:50.598 --> 01:12:08.013
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 is how I get what I need out of life and want to. So, absolutely. So, I want to make a quick point here or quick interjection because I always find this super interesting. Like –

192
01:12:08.013 --> 01:12:32.212
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. You're like, man, that guy's got too much of an ego. He's got a big ego, right? Yeah, he's got to get rid of his ego, man. Or if you go to like a meditation group or, you know, go to some woo-woo, you know, incense burning temple here in Malibu. Like they'll tell you like, oh, we're here to dissolve our ego, get rid of our ego. It's interesting if you actually go back to Freud.

193
01:12:32.903 --> 01:12:53.407
you don't wanna get rid of your ego. That's not what he wanted to ask. Yeah, it's like your ego's actually really important. It's pragmatic, yeah. Yeah, it's like, actually, you just wanna have a good ego. Right. Like you wanna have a functional ego, 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.

194
01:12:53.407 --> 01:13:08.577
Whereas a functional ego is able to balance everything effectively and manage itself. Right. Right. And it can manage shame, for example, too. So, yes, you can. There's good ego to have. Ego is not a bad word in the Freudian parlance. Right. Yeah. OK.

195
01:13:08.577 --> 01:13:26.566
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 come in. Okay. Right? So if you – if there is any sort of threat to the ego, threat to your self-identity –

196
01:13:26.566 --> 01:13:45.922
or threat to your view of yourself. I'm a good person. 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,

197
01:13:45.922 --> 01:14:04.737
Right. We rationalize. Well, one of them is I work best under pressure, which I want to really talk about that one. Okay. Or I need the adrenaline of a looming deadline or something like that. Yeah. Right. That we rationalize our way out of actually taking action towards our goals. Right.

198
01:14:04.737 --> 01:14:32.277
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, I need to listen to more podcasts. I need to listen to a five hour podcast before I can do this. So that one's very much in our, our wheelhouse where you, you think you just need

199
01:14:32.530 --> 01:14:54.755
More information or you need to stop and understand it more in some way. Right. So that's a very common. 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. A hundred percent. And I mean, I think a lot of people listening to this. Well, I don't really. I do. Yeah. For sure. So they'll relate to that.

200
01:14:54.755 --> 01:15:24.421
Another really common one, too, is just denial, which we've already mentioned this one too. It's like, ah, it's not that important. I'm just going to put it off. It's fine. What's one more day? What's one more day? What's one workout? What's, you know, that sort of thing. So those are some common ones. What those are designed to do in the Freudian school of thought is to protect this ego, the self-identity that we've constructed over time. Yeah. So the ego sitting in the middle, trying to balance all these pulls that we have. And then all of a sudden something comes along to threaten that. We need to protect that.

201
01:15:24.421 --> 01:15:44.013
That's what the idea of the – of defense mechanisms are. And that's – I mean for all Freud's flaws, I think defense mechanisms are definitely one of those things that he brought to the cultural conscience that we absolutely needed. The funny thing about Freud to me is that –

202
01:15:44.013 --> 01:16:03.183
He got the big stuff right. Yeah. He got the details horribly wrong. Yeah. And the details are horrible. And not only horribly wrong, but like hilariously wrong. Right. So 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.

203
01:16:03.183 --> 01:16:18.185
And tracks, right? And it is like it is such an incredible insight into human nature. 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.

204
01:16:18.185 --> 01:16:33.760
Yeah. You like revolt back into yourself. You will have crunching. You will have physical physiological responses to an ego threat the same way you would have responses to a physical threat. You will have emotional responses to an ego threat.

205
01:16:33.929 --> 01:16:50.669
That 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 a sense of self-identity to navigate the world. Yeah. And so it is very threatening.

206
01:16:50.669 --> 01:17:19.492
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. You'll feel your self recoil whenever your ego is.

207
01:17:19.492 --> 01:17:46.542
is threatened in any way. So, yeah. So I think this raises an interesting point of self-definition as a component of procrastination. 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 to the surface. Yeah. Yeah.

208
01:17:46.913 --> 01:18:13.593
Before I wrote Subtle Art, I didn't really see myself as an author. So I just wrote a book. It was just kind of like, oh, this is just another thing I'm going to do. This is like one of like five things I'm going to do over the next few years. But then all of a sudden it takes off and I become socially known as an author, 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 –

209
01:18:13.593 --> 01:18:35.193
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 –

210
01:18:35.193 --> 01:18:53.873
Yeah, dude, you weren't always an author. You just kind of decided one day that, oh, I guess I'm an author now. And then that added a mountain of fucking stress to my life. And I can just as easily decide I'm not an author. It's just one of many things I do. And suddenly, as soon as that self-definition switched –

211
01:18:54.886 --> 01:19:18.477
a lot of that stress went away. James Clear talks about this a little bit in Atomic Habits, about how like the ultimately, the only thing that makes a habit stick over the long term is when it's adopted as an identity. Identity, yes. And it's that adoption as an identity, that's the ego, right? It's like when you go from a person who, who's a person who's a person

212
01:19:18.730 --> 01:19:39.858
is happens to be running three times a week to a runner or you go from a person who is taking a painting class to a painter Right. It's like once you define yourself as I am 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

213
01:19:41.107 --> 01:19:59.939
Anyway, I fucking love this topic. But you're saying there's stakes attached to that as well, too. Yes. There's 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 to I'm an author. You haven't written a book in a few years, Mark. Have you been procrastinating on this because it threatens your identity now? Or...

214
01:19:59.939 --> 01:20:18.603
I think – well, it's funny because it's – I let go of – Oh, okay. I let go of – because it's like I let go of that identity. It did cause me an immense amount of stress. And this isn't to say I don't like the books that I wrote. It's just that like I wouldn't have necessarily written them –

215
01:20:18.603 --> 01:20:35.528
when I did or 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...

216
01:20:36.203 --> 01:20:57.230
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, right? It's like if you and I decided, like, we're podcasters now, right? Like, this is who we are and what we do. I got caught up in that for a little while. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. It's tough. Like, it's...

217
01:20:57.230 --> 01:21:20.315
It draws you in. And I guess this is kind of coming back to like the ego intermediating between, you know, the social pressures and the moral values and then also kind of like animalistic instincts. Like we have a fundamental drive for social acceptance and social approval. Right. And so it's like our our egos part of our egos role is to like take that social acceptance and be like, yeah, I'll be that.

218
01:21:20.315 --> 01:21:47.247
This is what rewards me socially. This is what gets me respect from the tribe. I'm going to be that person, right? And so it is a natural reaction. But when you decide that that's who you are, it adds a whole other layer of, I guess, of stakes. I'll say this. I think adopting – coming back to the James Clear thing of adopting a habit as an identity –

219
01:21:47.990 --> 01:22:17.251
He is correct that like if the goal is to just do the thing, then adopting it as an identity essentially solves that problem. Because it's like if that's who you are, that's just what you're going to do. And it's going to feel like it's going to feel weird to not do it. The tradeoff 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, validation.

220
01:22:17.251 --> 01:22:44.909
to that, right? So it's like, if we decide now, like, we are podcasters, like, now we're, that's the yardstick we're gonna start measuring ourselves with, right? If you decide, I am a runner, well, yeah, now it's not gonna be hard to get up and run in the morning. Now you're gonna be judging yourself by how your run went every morning. So it's like, you trade one. God, it never ends. It never ends. You trade one problem for another, essentially. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay, yes. I do think

221
01:22:44.909 --> 01:23:10.323
Again, Freud and his conceptualization of the psyche, the three parts and the defense mechanisms and all that, that's useful in terms of tying your self-identity to what you do, how you behave in the world. Obviously, 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 –

222
01:23:10.323 --> 01:23:32.733
was one of the first people to really emphasize childhood. 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 I was taking pretty lower level psychology classes and was talking with somebody in my dorm who wasn't a psychology major. And they're like, oh, you're a psychology major. Major, tell me about that. And I was like,

223
01:23:32.733 --> 01:23:45.338
oh, we're going over Freud right now, you know? I tell him all this. And I get to the part about childhood. I'm like, oh yeah, and Freud, you know, he's the one who kind of came up with this idea of that childhood, you know, affecting us as we get older. And she goes, well, doesn't everybody know that?

224
01:23:45.878 --> 01:24:15.173
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 just- 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 a hundred years old. Yeah. Yeah. Which is mind blowing.

225
01:24:15.882 --> 01:24:34.765
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 the age of seven. So it was just like, well, like obviously God had something to say about this. Exactly. God decided. Yeah, yeah.

226
01:24:34.765 --> 01:24:57.310
But Freud did. He introduced the idea of parenting styles and experiences we had in childhood and how they affect our development throughout our lives all the way into adulthood, right? Right. A few of these – now, this came from some of his contemporaries. It wasn't directly from Freud, but they took these psychoanalysis principles and they applied them to –

227
01:24:57.310 --> 01:25:21.290
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. So this gets into the perfectionism thing. Definitely. This can kind of encourage someone to develop a more perfectionist personality. Well, and this ties into the Confucian concept.

228
01:25:21.290 --> 01:25:46.079
100%. But parents who set these unrealistically high expectations on their children, you'll often get children who are perfectionists and big time procrastinators at some point, at least in their lives, if they don't manage it well anyway. The child feels fear around taking any sort of action around the failure. And procrastination then as an adult, it'll manifest in a way that

229
01:25:46.079 --> 01:26:04.490
As to just avoid that emotional pain through the Freudian lens, what you're doing when you're procrastinating, if you had 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.

230
01:26:04.490 --> 01:26:32.435
So if you grew up around very reactive parents who got angry whenever you did something wrong, you spill 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 in which you could fail.

231
01:26:32.435 --> 01:26:58.422
And so you've already internalized that anger and you just want to avoid it altogether. Again, it comes back to the avoidance a lot with these. And then the last one I came across with parenting anyway is two different parenting styles. So you have permissive parents or authoritarian ones. And on the permissive side, if you grew up in a very kind of like rules-free environment more or less,

232
01:26:58.540 --> 01:27:23.482
You, according to the Freudians, again, this produces a nervous underachiever, right? They feel overwhelmed by self-imposed deadlines or work or whatever it is. 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 going to avoid it altogether. The flip side being authoritarian, where you grew up in a very strict household with lots and lots of rules.

233
01:27:23.482 --> 01:27:53.401
And to the psychoanalysts, they think that there's like a rebellion against that, right, for some children. Yeah. So whether these are – 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 develop throughout our lives. Yeah. Specifically around procrastination, it does have – it could have an effect this way.

234
01:27:53.401 --> 01:28:09.989
Was it was is it because we're like avoiding those emotional memories, like deep emotional memories that we want to avoid? I don't know. It's funny because the parent 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.

235
01:28:10.428 --> 01:28:30.070
personality, natural disposition, how much of that is like how mom and dad treated you. Like it's such a fuzzy area. Like the boundary between those two things is very fuzzy. It is funny. I had never heard that permissive parent thing. Yeah. And the – what did you say it was? The timid underachiever? Yeah, nervous underachiever. Nervous underachiever. Yeah.

236
01:28:30.070 --> 01:28:45.967
Dude, that fucking – I feel called out. Oh, really? My parents were super permissive. Yeah. Like grew up no structure, no rules, which 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 –

237
01:28:45.967 --> 01:29:15.076
Self-reliance, yeah, a big one, right? Independence, 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. 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

238
01:29:16.595 --> 01:29:40.203
called me out on my bullshit once. And it was like very uncomfortable. It was one of those moments where like somebody says something to you and it 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. So it, I think I was like just talking shit once and I said something and I was like,

239
01:29:40.591 --> 01:30:03.693
And I was like, you know, if I really cared, 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 think you don't do it because I think you're afraid of trying and not actually getting the A. And he said, you'd rather not try at all. And I – Kicking the stomach. Dude, it was like fucking getting stabbed in the chest. And I was like –

240
01:30:03.693 --> 01:30:25.090
whoa yeah I had no comeback for it you know but I think there really was something to that like I very much there was something about the permissive environment that maybe as a defense mechanism I had a very inflated perception of my own ability and potential and I

241
01:30:25.445 --> 01:30:53.255
actually doing anything threaten that. Ah, yeah. So if I actually did try in a class and didn't get the A, I'd have to reevaluate my ego. I'd have to reevaluate 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 pleasure principle segueing into the reality principle.

242
01:30:54.183 --> 01:31:02.975
I imagine – I'm not aware of Freud talking about it in these terms, but I imagine like part of that process, part of it looks like –

243
01:31:03.616 --> 01:31:27.258
almost 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 have 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 –

244
01:31:27.258 --> 01:31:55.321
If you fail at something or something doesn't go well, instead of reevaluating how you see yourself, you blame everybody else. Right, and double down on your self-image. And so I think 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 I definitely find that

245
01:31:56.283 --> 01:32:03.016
I'm much better at 40. I'm much better at looking at myself and being like, oh,

246
01:32:03.725 --> 01:32:27.738
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, too, 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,

247
01:32:27.738 --> 01:32:55.565
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. Interesting. Yeah. And she became a very high achiever, actually. So it 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 explanations for it. Just so stories. So there's that. Again, though, the larger takeaway, I think, is that he did –

248
01:32:55.565 --> 01:33:16.186
Find these kind of big categories of influences on our behavior that nobody had really thought about before and brought them to 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.

249
01:33:16.186 --> 01:33:34.006
So just go to solvedpodcast.com slash procrastination to get a full episode guide with accompanying notes, takeaways, references, and citations. We break everything down, help summarize all the most important information, and offer next steps if you want to start implementing what you're hearing. And...

250
01:33:34.006 --> 01:33:49.177
Of course, it's free. So just go to solvedpodcast.com slash procrastination. The link is also in the description. All right. Anyway. So yeah, speaking of other frameworks, behaviorism. This is the big psychological breakthrough that comes right after Freud.

251
01:33:49.177 --> 01:34:16.480
Yeah, kind of during Freud even too. Oh, is it? A bit of a backlash, I would say. So 1930, John B. Watson, kind of regarded as the father of behaviorism, although there were some people before him, 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 behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Kind of like a slap in the face to the Freudian psychology psychoanalyst at the time.

252
01:34:16.480 --> 01:34:40.595
It really is kind of a backlash that's going on. Watson and the other behaviorists at the time, they see all of this like, oh, you know, let's talk about your 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 –

253
01:34:40.595 --> 01:34:57.892
Like kind of starting to become a name that's known and physics and there's all these breakthroughs in the material sciences at this time too. And the behaviorists wanted to take that kind of philosophy, which was kind of rigorous scientific method, and apply it to the psychology. Right.

254
01:34:57.892 --> 01:35:24.419
Um, very much in contrast to the, uh, the Freudian psychologist, which is just sit and talk for hours, sit on couch, talk, let's get under all 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 and what's observable as behavior. So that's why it's called behaviorism. Gotcha. Um, Watson, you know.

255
01:35:24.419 --> 01:35:54.018
Also went on to say in that same paper is that the behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. So this is where – because what was going on was all of these studies with animals were starting to be incorporated into the body of literature that was going on. And the behaviorist saw all these parallels between even 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, Drew. Well, that was –

256
01:35:54.862 --> 01:36:14.217
That is exactly what the behaviors were trying to do, though, was to make this an objective, rigorous science. 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 and psychology and human nature.

257
01:36:14.217 --> 01:36:35.463
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 dog hears the bell and just starts salivating. That was kind of the forerunner to this strict behaviorism that came in the early 20th century. Yeah.

258
01:36:35.463 --> 01:36:59.155
That kind of conditioning, the Pavlovian conditioning was called classical conditioning by the behaviorists. 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 kind of innate response, which was the salivating response.

259
01:36:59.155 --> 01:37:25.902
Yeah. Okay. Would this be like the behavioral manifestation of the neuroscientific idea of like what fires together, wires together? Or are those different things? Well, I mean, later on, that's how it would be explained. Okay. Yes. And that was the classical conditioning side, though. Yeah. I think what you're starting to get out a little bit more was the operant conditioning. Okay. Which is what the behaviorists really – like that was their big kind of breakthrough was, okay, you have these classical –

260
01:37:25.902 --> 01:37:41.393
Conditioning experiments where you can make a dog salivate at the ringing of a bell. So what? But actually when you introduce learning, which is relevant to the procrastination story, when you introduce learning into the equation, then it becomes what they call operant conditioning. Okay. Okay. Okay.

261
01:37:41.393 --> 01:38:01.070
And this was really – this really took hold. Watson kind of was dancing around it. But it wasn't until Skinner came along, B.F. Skinner. Burris Frederick Skinner was his name. I did not know his real name. I was a psychology major. I did not know B.F. Skinner. Dude, I would go by B.F. too if that was my name. Right.

262
01:38:02.015 --> 01:38:18.316
Yeah, it's kind of a dorky name for sure. He grew up in rural Pennsylvania. But this was the idea of operant conditioning where you learn through a series of rewards and punishments. Yeah. Okay. Now, Skinner, I don't know how much we want to get into –

263
01:38:18.316 --> 01:38:44.219
How much do you want to get into Skinner? He's a fascinating dude. Okay. 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 Skinner box, what we know as 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 was...

264
01:38:44.219 --> 01:39:00.925
Actually found that you could get rats to do all sorts of things. He used rats, used pigeons. Those were his two main animals. But he found that you could get them to do all sorts of different complex, very complex behaviors with just simple rewards and punishments. OK. Now –

265
01:39:01.617 --> 01:39:22.205
So he invented the Skinner box. He taught them to – he introduced the idea of shaping behavior as well. So just little increments of, you know, get the rat to press the bar. OK, now get the rat to 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.

266
01:39:22.205 --> 01:39:46.032
Skinner 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. OK, we'll get into that here in 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. Yeah.

267
01:39:46.319 --> 01:40:14.281
He taught pigeons how to play ping pong. He taught them how to quote unquote read. It was more like a word recognition thing. Yeah. 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, then 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

268
01:40:14.382 --> 01:40:29.722
Which is you kind of like the wire together, fire together. You repeat what you're rewarded for and you don't repeat what you're punished for. So to a behaviorist, procrastination really does just come down to

269
01:40:29.722 --> 01:40:58.645
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, you're rewarded for the delay. 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 aren't grave enough for you. We've kind of already touched on this too, right? Like it's the, the, the,

270
01:40:58.645 --> 01:41:17.292
consequences so far down the line that you're not even it's not even registering with you you've discounted it you 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 that's like the law of nature for a behaviorist yeah yeah

271
01:41:17.292 --> 01:41:34.420
So the solution for a behaviorist would be give yourself a worse punishment for not doing the thing. I think also a lot of – Or reward yourself for doing the thing. Well, both. Okay. Using punishments and rewards in your life strategically.

272
01:41:34.420 --> 01:42:01.977
Right. And this has definitely influenced a lot of the 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 systems. I mean, there is something to that. A hundred percent. Again. Yeah. There's something to it. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's.

273
01:42:02.450 --> 01:42:22.025
I think about it a lot in terms of friction, like adding and removing friction to certain behaviors. Yes. Right? In 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. Right? So you don't have to make those decisions in the first place or –

274
01:42:22.784 --> 01:42:46.510
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 sounds so simple, but this is like for me personally, this is one of the strongest levers that I've ever pulled. Definitely, yeah. For my own behavior. Yeah.

275
01:42:46.510 --> 01:43:14.236
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 behaviorist school of thought, for sure. And also there is even though, you know, they were a reaction to Freudian psychology, there is still kind of that pleasure principle that carried over into behaviorism. They acknowledge that.

276
01:43:14.236 --> 01:43:44.223
But they say, that's it. We don't have to go any further than that. And we can just, we can shape our lives and even society through a series of rewards and punishments. 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 environment are just easier to reach for. So we will reach for them. There's ineffective punishments.

277
01:43:44.223 --> 01:44:11.830
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 going to continue doing that. That's a behaviorist view.

278
01:44:11.830 --> 01:44:30.595
And then there's 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.

279
01:44:30.595 --> 01:44:49.613
Well, it's funny because one of the people I talked to in preparation for this podcast was Tim Urban, who has the most watched TED Talk of all time about procrastination. He's a chronic procrastinator, too. And it's funny because I've been friends with Tim for over 10 years and I know him very well. And he is – he's a chronic procrastinator. But he's also like –

280
01:44:50.795 --> 01:45:00.987
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 they –

281
01:45:01.882 --> 01:45:20.815
feel like they thrive under pressure and they need that pressure cooker experience going on around them, right? Like that's what actually gets them to perform. And so they continuously throw themselves into that situation over and over again. And doing the work weeks ahead of time and not

282
01:45:20.815 --> 01:45:44.913
stressing or worrying about it at all, like that's not a very interesting emotional experience. It'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, um, that can easily be something that you condition into yourself. 95% of college students right there.

283
01:45:44.913 --> 01:46:10.580
That's what it is. That was, that was a lot of my college experiences. Totally. Me too. Probably at least. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, I, I, I would get an assignment and I'd be like, oh, the all nighter for this is going to be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you could pull it off. So you did. Yeah. Like you, again, you were awarded, uh, in, in these ways that you weren't, don't even realize you're being rewarded. Yeah. Right. Which is a good example is the relief of that stress that you put yourself under, right?

284
01:46:10.580 --> 01:46:30.172
But it's a self-reinforcing stress or it's just self-imposed stress, I should say. This might be a good time to talk a little bit about that. Thriving under pressure. You know, I've got to talk a little bit about this. I know you have a bone to pick with this. I have a huge 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 big, long job.

285
01:46:30.172 --> 01:46:44.684
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 debt. I need the pressure of the deadline. And I have thought a lot about that. And,

286
01:46:44.937 --> 01:47:13.287
I think that's just bullshit. To say that you thrive under pressure. You're calling out our entire audience right now. No, no, no. Look, I understand that it's motivating. I understand the pressure is motivating. Sure. But you don't need it. This is the more common thing about her. I do my best work under pressure. And that, I think, is total bullshit. Okay. There are people who thrive under pressure. I get it. Like a situation comes up that something needs to get done and people are, boom, they just snap into that get shit done mode, right? Yeah.

287
01:47:13.287 --> 01:47:37.807
That I totally believe in. That's something separate. That's not what I'm talking about. When people say I do my best work under pressure, I'm always – my immediate question is compared to what? 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 work you do. I don't agree with that at all. I feel so attacked right now.

288
01:47:37.807 --> 01:48:06.612
I get it. I look, I get it. Sometimes you just have to, sometimes they're like, there's just so much going on in 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 in a day. 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. Are you really going to tell me that's your best work that you can produce? Let's back up the truck. Just a couple, a couple, a couple feet. Okay. Uh,

289
01:48:06.612 --> 01:48:26.255
I hear what you're saying. I don't think you're wrong. 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, OK, if these people budgeted their time.

290
01:48:26.457 --> 01:48:51.247
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 going to 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.

291
01:48:51.382 --> 01:49:05.067
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 –

292
01:49:06.164 --> 01:49:28.102
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.

293
01:49:28.102 --> 01:49:57.785
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-assed attempt that they had a week prior. So I agree 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 and 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 were doing, yes, they would produce a much better outcome.

294
01:49:57.785 --> 01:50:26.017
But they've never had that experience. They've never – That's my point. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Compared to what? Yeah. No, you are correct in that regard. But 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. Right? Like it is that anxiety-fueled frenzy.

295
01:50:26.017 --> 01:50:50.468
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 exciting, it's stimulating, and they are way more focused on a task or a goal than they usually are in most circumstances. So in their mind, they're like, yeah, I'm doing great work right now.

296
01:50:51.515 --> 01:51:14.785
So 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 like – I guess I'm just agreeing with you, but I'm like softening the – There's a nuance to it. I do get that. I'm like – I feel so attacked that I'm like –

297
01:51:14.785 --> 01:51:40.857
I'm you're now recoiling your ego is being exactly my ego 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 and 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 too that's I'm 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

298
01:51:41.009 --> 01:52:07.807
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 all your first – if creative work especially, all your first ideas are going to be your best ideas because that's all the time you have to put down or to work out in whatever creative work you're doing. I don't think so. Some of this might –

299
01:52:07.807 --> 01:52:32.444
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 pressures 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...

300
01:52:32.984 --> 01:52:58.718
I mean, maybe this gets a little bit into a discussion of expectation and procrastination. But, like, I think most of us have had an experience at some point in our lives where, like, somebody has come to you and be like, hey, Drew, I need you to do this thing. And 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 –

301
01:52:58.853 --> 01:53:15.475
Okay. I'm just going to throw that element out there. I'm not saying it's not motivating. I'm not saying you shouldn't leverage that when it does happen. I just don't think you should rely on that to produce your best work. That's what I'm saying. I 100% agree. Thank you for bringing in the nuance. I was very angry about that.

302
01:53:16.133 --> 01:53:38.206
And now you've softened it. I do 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 fearing is the 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, they're effective in the short term. They're not effective in the long term.

303
01:53:38.206 --> 01:53:57.697
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 rewards on the line, we can choose whether or not we like that reward. Yeah. I think that's that's something that came out of the behaviorist.

304
01:53:57.697 --> 01:54:21.338
Well, an interpretation of the behaviorist view anyway that 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 what did they fall short on? Yeah. I mean, all the environmental design stuff I think they nailed definitely. I think –

305
01:54:21.760 --> 01:54:42.044
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.

306
01:54:42.196 --> 01:55:12.065
Not only do they ignore them, they explicitly ignore them. 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, which I think is a cognitive – again, an internal cognitive process that happens that gets overridden by these principles of just simple rewards and punishments.

307
01:55:12.065 --> 01:55:41.512
I wonder what Skinner would think of David Goggins. Oh, that's a thought experiment. God. What would he say about David Goggins? Yeah, where he's just constantly self-flagellating and punishing himself. Putting himself through the most pain that he possibly can. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe they would say that it's kind of a higher order of operant conditioning where he gets some sort of reward out of it eventually. And he's just conditioned himself to experience that reward over time.

308
01:55:41.731 --> 01:56:09.625
See, in the context of Goggins, I see the Freudian ego explanation is more effective. And I mean ego strictly in the Freudian sense, not as like, oh, my God, Goggins has an ego. But in terms of it's like Goggins has built an identity around doing incredibly hard and painful things. And so to maintain and preserve that ego that he's built for himself, which has served him extremely well in his life and he's like rewarded him in many ways.

309
01:56:09.625 --> 01:56:27.310
But to maintain that ego, he like needs to get out and 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 more painful to not do the action than to do it. Right? And so it's like Goggins has built an identity around –

310
01:56:27.310 --> 01:56:56.082
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 too, right? The culture he grew, he kind of forged all that was Navy SEALs where that was socially rewarded. Totally. So the behaviorists would say, ah, no, there's actually a big behaviorist

311
01:56:56.082 --> 01:57:22.829
Lens we could put this through. It doesn't have to be reduced to identities. 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. I guess are we seeing the behavior – 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 –

312
01:57:23.234 --> 01:57:46.927
I suppose you could see it that way. Yeah. I mean, I would think – I would say that the behaviorists saw human nature as finely tuned to social rewards. Yeah. And so those are big, big rewards that have a very high valence, a very high salience when you think about them. You will approach those a lot more readily. Yeah. Yeah.

313
01:57:46.927 --> 01:58:10.568
So, I mean, anything – just with operant conditioning, anything can be turned into a reward almost, right? The operant part is that you're learning about these rewards or punishments. So almost anything can – like with the Goggins example, punishment can be its own form of reward at some level. And so I think even the behaviorist would go so far as to say that, yeah, it all just comes down to this –

314
01:58:11.328 --> 01:58:39.104
Seeking pleasure, avoiding pain. You know, I think really, though, the big takeaway from the behaviorist was these practical tools that we've kind of already talked about. Yeah, the environmental stuff. The environmental stuff. So useful. Setting up, teaching yourself about the rewards and punishments that you're being aware of the environment 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 yeah.

315
01:58:39.104 --> 01:58:55.507
Even today, all of the productivity systems and gurus who preach the kind of environmental and only environmental side, they draw from a lot of this. But they're not wrong. They're just not totally right. It's incomplete. Yeah. So I think we're getting closer.

316
01:58:55.507 --> 01:59:23.603
Um, 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 skills 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, we're headed with it. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well, let's move on to the next thing then.

317
01:59:24.616 --> 01:59:41.913
which is time management. Ah, yes. So as we move into the mid-20th century, it's actually interesting to me that there is so much credence to what the behaviorists were saying. Like all this environmental design stuff, it actually does work for productivity. Yet what we got...

318
01:59:42.858 --> 01:59:59.665
was a bunch of time management consultant bullshit. So how did that happen? Well, okay, let's put it a little bit in historical context here. So yeah, the early 20th century, you have the Freudians and the behaviorists battling it out.

319
01:59:59.665 --> 02:00:16.912
What changes, though, as we start to get into the middle of the century, so starting in the 40s, 50s, 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, thinking like Mad Men, you know, the...

320
02:00:16.912 --> 02:00:46.662
Corporate drones. Corporate drones. All of that starts. So people start going from the farms and the factories. We have been urbanizing for 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 the ad agencies, the design, designing products for consumer products for the masses, all of that starts to crop up. Right.

321
02:00:46.662 --> 02:01:15.333
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. If you're in a factory, especially to somebody else is 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 even the end goals a lot of times are nebulous. It's creative work. They're not really sure what you're producing. Yeah.

322
02:01:15.333 --> 02:01:30.250
You're given a little bit more autonomy, too, in those spaces. And so now you have to manage your own time. OK, 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 average worker.

323
02:01:30.352 --> 02:01:57.537
Now 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 industry, I don't know if there were 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 kind of the time management philosophy really starts to take hold and rise to the collective conscious. Yeah.

324
02:01:57.537 --> 02:02:27.254
There's a lot of the techniques that come out of this too, at least started here, even the ones we use today, Pomodoro techniques and time boxing and all that. And we can get into those here in a little bit. But that sets the stage anyway, the historical stage for the time management crowd. Okay. So you had your bone to pick like 20 minutes ago. Okay. This section is going to be my bone to pick. Yeah. Because I just think most of this is nonsense. I'll pile on with you, I think, for the most part. Yeah. Okay.

325
02:02:27.254 --> 02:02:53.275
Yeah. Well, I have a few observations here. First of all, is this is a very subtle Plato back with a vengeance type situation, which is like we have all these office workers. We have all these worker bees. They're 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. Yeah.

326
02:02:53.680 --> 02:03:22.520
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?

327
02:03:22.520 --> 02:03:52.473
It's simple. It's simple. 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. It's very rational. Very, very rational. It's very rational. And, you know, we just talked about, you know, with Freud and Skinner, like we just spent 45 minutes talking about how –

328
02:03:52.642 --> 02:04:10.951
defense mechanisms and resistance and rationalization and like all these excuses that you come up with and how uncomfortable it is. And it's exhausting. It is exhausting. Like emotions are fucking exhausting. But there is something alleviating. There's something relieving about –

329
02:04:10.951 --> 02:04:40.938
just being like, well, I just need to get the right calendar system, or if I get the right morning, like these days it's the morning routine, right? Because everybody's self-employed, so it's like, I just need the right morning routine, and then my day is gonna be great, I'm gonna get so much done. I think, here's a spicy take, I think 90% of the time, this is just another subtle form of procrastination. 100%, I agree with that, yeah. 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.

330
02:04:40.938 --> 02:05:07.280
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 study this calendar system and try to get it down. Absolutely. And exhibit A, look at how many productivity apps are out there. Those all come from the time management kind of philosophy. They start there at least. And correct me if I'm wrong because you did more research on this section than I did, but like most of the research around this stuff is like not –

331
02:05:07.432 --> 02:05:23.783
There's not a whole lot of narrative. Oh, yeah. No. They tried to do some research, I think, kind of in the 70s. And 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.

332
02:05:23.783 --> 02:05:38.937
So it is not just about the system. And that's speaking from somebody who's tried every system. Maybe not everyone, but I've tried a lot of different systems. I have my little system. I do have a time management system. Don't get me wrong. I think, too, if you go from somebody who's never had to –

333
02:05:38.937 --> 02:06:00.503
It's just been told what to do at all times. And then you just tell them, OK, 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 underlying cause of what causes people to not get things done. Yeah. Some of the tenets of time management, you know, setting clear priorities and goals. Well, sure. OK. Yeah. Yeah.

334
02:06:00.503 --> 02:06:20.753
people often, they underestimated how long tasks would take. So getting better at managing your time. Sure. Yeah. Struggle, you struggle to structure your day. And so you end up working on less important tasks over more important tasks. So prioritizing. Sure. All of these things, obviously you need to have those skills, but it's not getting at the root cause at all.

335
02:06:20.990 --> 02:06:40.649
you know, but there are still going to your point to just recently, actually, I tried a new system, 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, it was AI enabled. So of course I was really excited to try it. When I tried it, it was very disappointing. Yeah.

336
02:06:41.662 --> 02:07:06.687
Because I'm like, oh, this is just the same shit I've already tried, just repackaged and they put AI in front of the name of it. And so I got on a forum and I asked them about a couple of things. I'm like, what about X, Y, and Z? And somebody immediately jumped in and they're like, look, this community and 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 actually getting shit done.

337
02:07:07.227 --> 02:07:25.013
But that's where this leads though too. You're right. It's another form of procrastination. Like I learned so much from this app. That was one of the lines I said. I've learned so much. I don't want to learn about an app. I just want to get shit done. Right. Right. So I think that is the big risk with this. These apps and other systems and –

338
02:07:25.013 --> 02:07:43.812
People have wrote books on this. They've made a lot of money and we still haven't found the time management solution. Because they're feeding that seduction, that Plato seduction of like, if I just knew the right thing. I mean, this kind of dovetails into just the self-help industry in general. I'm sure this is going to come up on a lot more episodes of like –

339
02:07:43.812 --> 02:08:00.974
People thinking knowledge is the solution when it's really like it's an emotional problem. I'm kind of spoiling the ending here. But like procrastination is an emotional problem. And sure, knowledge can like nudge you slightly in this direction or that.

340
02:08:00.974 --> 02:08:24.852
A time management framework, 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 have a couple thoughts. One came up just while you were talking, which is like, yes, you are correct. I think every productive person develops some sort of system for themselves. Yeah.

341
02:08:25.105 --> 02:08:51.987
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 your 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. Yeah.

342
02:08:51.987 --> 02:09:08.812
And eventually, once you spend enough time doing it, you know, you get 10, 15 years into your work life, you've figured out pretty well what works for yourself and what doesn't. And that does make you very effective on a day-to-day basis.

343
02:09:08.812 --> 02:09:23.813
But then other people show up and they're like, oh, 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 multimillion dollar businesses around that. So that's the first thought.

344
02:09:23.813 --> 02:09:46.882
The second thought, I thought what you said, you know, while 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 of these widgets per day. It's very tangible, yeah.

345
02:09:46.882 --> 02:10:08.752
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 done instead of 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 it's creative. A lot of it's intangible. A lot of it is like involves negotiation. It involves like –

346
02:10:08.752 --> 02:10:36.241
you know, discussing committees and meetings and dealing with clients and, you know, taking somebody to a golf course and like all this stuff that is completely unmeasurable. What I know about human nature is that things that are not legible or measurable or are uncertain, they generate anxiety. And I imagine that there are lots of people in the knowledge work world. I know I experience this all the time.

347
02:10:36.832 --> 02:10:52.137
in my own work, I'm sure you do too, where it's like you wanna feel like you're making progress on something. Yes. 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,

348
02:10:52.998 --> 02:11:16.640
That on projects like that, I start measuring my time. You know, it's like books are a perfect example because books like literally take two years to write. 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'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.

349
02:11:16.825 --> 02:11:34.510
That doesn't feel good. So what do you start doing? You start measuring the hours you put in. You know, you start measuring like, okay, 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? Yeah.

350
02:11:34.510 --> 02:11:57.562
It's the same thing with to-do lists too, right? Like I keep a to-do list and stuff like that. I love checking things off. And sometimes I'll keep their completed task list there so I can see it and it 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 box checking can become its own little task. A conditioning, right? Yeah.

351
02:11:57.562 --> 02:12:26.519
There are a number of things. I mentioned a few of these that already came out of this era, or at least were 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. Dwight Eisenhower was president after World War II. This time frame was very popular. So he 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 side.

352
02:12:26.519 --> 02:12:42.128
You get these four quadrants. And he said the quadrant two, which was important but not urgent, were the tasks that typically got procrastinated on. So his advice was to do those first. Not bad advice, don't get me wrong. But it still hasn't solved the problem of why is it not urgent? Why is it not important? Right?

353
02:12:42.128 --> 02:13:03.965
I was just going to say like that's just the 1950s Eisenhower version of that tweet I read at the top of the show, which is like, you know, you have to give up short-term freedom. The game long-term freedom. Like all of your dreams are behind sacrifices. It's like, well, no shit, Sherlock. Like this is – I know this. This is not helping me. So I don't want to dogpile on this stuff because like –

354
02:13:04.741 --> 02:13:23.573
It is useful information. Absolutely. It's just not sufficient whatsoever. Right. Like it is not the solution. Right. You shouldn't start there. I think a lot of people where 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. I don't think this is when you start.

355
02:13:23.573 --> 02:13:50.793
This is when you're optimizing what's already working. Right. Yeah. Find 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 work from each one of those and made it my own personal way. I just don't think there's any one system out there. No. Because every time – again, like this one app I just tried to use recently, I'm like,

356
02:13:50.793 --> 02:14:02.740
oh, this is it, this is the one. I found myself already 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 if you find a system that works for you today, like...

357
02:14:02.993 --> 02:14:25.454
Three years from now would be slightly different. Three weeks from now. Three weeks from now. I can almost guarantee you that. Once you think you've 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, can we, there are some good things, like we said, there are some good things that did come out of this. So providing structure and clarity around what you need to do, that is a useful step.

358
02:14:25.454 --> 02:14:50.075
Yes. Obviously. I think another thing that came out of what kind of a 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. Yes. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I also think, too, one thing, one benefit I got out of

359
02:14:50.311 --> 02:15:15.269
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, um, for instance, you know, I time box or, 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

360
02:15:15.269 --> 02:15:39.518
It used to be like I'd have 10 things on my to-do list and I'd 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, OK, I got to 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. Again, it's not the base underlying cause, but yeah.

361
02:15:39.518 --> 02:15:58.081
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 –

362
02:15:58.283 --> 02:16:27.545
Is an issue of going from doing nothing to doing something. Yes. Even if that 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 so, yeah, it comes back to what you said earlier. It's like this is not the place to start. This is not even the place to like go second or third. Like this is the place to go, you know, when you are –

363
02:16:28.473 --> 02:16:43.610
When 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? Sure.

364
02:16:44.251 --> 02:16:59.573
Do we want to throw those out there? It might be a useful exercise for somebody with all of the caveats and the warnings we've already issued. But sure. Yeah. Why don't you go first? Because I'm weird. Yeah. And we already know that.

365
02:16:59.573 --> 02:17:18.119
No, but it actually – it might be a useful segue as well just because, you know, as someone with ADHD, my productivity function is like strange. Right, right. And so people who – other people – people who are listening who maybe have ADHD and – because I know procrastination –

366
02:17:18.119 --> 02:17:39.432
disproportionately people with ADHD struggle with it. So it might be useful to get into that. Okay. 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 they kind of get a, like a audience capture a little bit. They're like, yeah.

367
02:17:39.432 --> 02:17:55.970
Give me this feature. Give me this feature. And then just keep adding things. So one of my principles is to keep it as simple as possible. 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.

368
02:17:55.970 --> 02:18:24.083
But then on a daily basis, when I'm trying to decide what to do, I do time box. Okay. For me, this works. Yep. Because, again, 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 to 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 I was saying, you get better at this. Right. And you get better at estimating how much time any given task is going to take you.

369
02:18:24.083 --> 02:18:43.777
Just describe really quick what timeboxing is in case people don't know. Yeah, sure. So timeboxing is you use some sort of system. In my case, I just use pencil and paper. I actually use Cal Newport's timeboxing journal that he has. You could use any journal to do this. I like his, this way it's formatted and everything like that.

370
02:18:44.519 --> 02:19:04.634
Essentially, the way I do it is I will write down 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock down one side of the paper. And then I make a box around any given – say it's a one- or two-hour time box from 8 to 10 o'clock, 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.

371
02:19:04.634 --> 02:19:30.385
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 task took longer or something came up that was urgent that I needed to address. Why I like Cal's notebook too is because there's different columns for that. You can change it as you go.

372
02:19:30.385 --> 02:19:55.107
Essentially, though, what 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 an internal accountability system a little bit. And again, it also just keeps you very realistic. Like, you know, you have an eight to 10 hour workday every day. What can you honestly get done in that?

373
02:19:55.411 --> 02:20:16.184
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 and say, I use this time block to actually get done what 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, too, obviously. We have a shared calendar with the team. I also have my own personal calendar. I look at that.

374
02:20:16.184 --> 02:20:31.743
Pretty much every day, what do I got going on? Any 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's what I put in the calendar. The to-do list is more just like these need to be done at some point. The time box is what am I doing right now?

375
02:20:31.743 --> 02:20:52.752
That's kind of my system. Do you have any sort of like rules or principles? Do you like do the hardest thing first in the morning? Do you like do easy things in the morning? So I try to – I am a big fan of Cal, of Cal Newport. And I do try to get deep work in every day, what he calls deep work. If you don't know, go read his book, Deep Work. It's fantastic. Yeah.

376
02:20:52.752 --> 02:21:22.452
Um, I try to get that done. And for me, it's mornings for most people, it's going to be mornings. Um, 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 going to require a lot of my attention and focus. So I'm going to sit down and, uh, for two hours, usually from like eight to 10, um, or something like that. I usually get up around six 30 or seven do, you know, I'll read, I'll kind of get warmed up for the day. And then I start working around eight ish, seven 38 ish. Okay. I try to give it my two hours of deep work in. Um,

377
02:21:22.452 --> 02:21:50.296
And that is usually 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, I mean, there's all sorts of other tasks 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. Yeah. So 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. Yeah.

378
02:21:50.296 --> 02:22:11.980
And for those listening who haven't read the book, like deep work is 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. Intense research, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

379
02:22:11.980 --> 02:22:40.938
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. Because as soon as I add any sort of complexity to it, I just, I don't. So no Pomodoro, no like break times. No. I mean, I will schedule in with my time boxing. I'll schedule in breaks or sometimes what I'll 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. It's just called flex. Okay. Do whatever I need to get done in that time. Yeah. Okay.

380
02:22:40.938 --> 02:22:55.433
But I don't do – no, I don't get hardcore on the Pomodoro or the – Pomodoro never worked for me. I never quite got that one. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if somebody just made that up. I wonder that with a lot of things. Yeah, yeah.

381
02:22:56.868 --> 02:23:21.843
If it works for you, great. But yeah, sure. Try it. Whatever. What's your ADHD Ritalin system look like, Mark, if you could call it that? So, OK, 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.

382
02:23:22.231 --> 02:23:49.585
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 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 the 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. And this is what's going to sound...

383
02:23:49.585 --> 02:24:09.177
Crazy to people. And also, 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. Yeah, absolutely. As we're going through all these details. Absolutely. That's the highlight of the section.

384
02:24:09.177 --> 02:24:36.278
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 susceptibility to novelty. Like it gets bored extremely easily and it gets excited by something shiny very quickly and very strongly. What I noticed, and 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,

385
02:24:36.700 --> 02:24:45.982
task switching actually works in my favor. I wouldn't call it multitasking because I never do two things at the same time. But I'll give a simple example, which is...

386
02:24:46.252 --> 02:25:10.737
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 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.

387
02:25:11.193 --> 02:25:27.477
from the student union, and I would take him to this lecture. And I found that if I sat there and did Sudokus while the guy was lecturing, not only did I stay awake the entire time, but I paid attention to the entire lecture. Which I know that makes no sense. That makes no sense.

388
02:25:28.017 --> 02:25:46.715
I didn't understand this for the 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 to 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.

389
02:25:47.069 --> 02:26:14.170
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 the classroom. I'm listening to the professor. Yeah.

390
02:26:14.170 --> 02:26:37.542
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 start to get bored, it's like I'm really fucking bored and When I have the Sudoku there, I'm like cool switch to the Sudoku and I start doing the Sudoku Sudoku and while I'm doing the Sudoku, I'm like kind of passively listening and hearing him in the background and

391
02:26:37.913 --> 02:27:02.247
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 lecture 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...

392
02:27:02.939 --> 02:27:24.792
I bring all of this up because I do this every day. Yeah. In my actual day-to-day work. I've watched you do this, yes. And as you know, 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. Yeah.

393
02:27:24.792 --> 02:27:41.853
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 gonna give on all that. And I'm doing the exact same thing. So it's like,

394
02:27:41.853 --> 02:28:00.483
You know, while you and Jess are talking, as soon as 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 stop 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,

395
02:28:01.613 --> 02:28:15.991
You have this kind of constant disproportionate craving for novelty, for new stimulus. And if you don't feed your brain that stimulus, you shut down essentially. Like you just lose interest completely and –

396
02:28:16.193 --> 02:28:45.860
in my case, go to sleep. If you can find productive ways to feed yourself that stimulus, if you can, 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.

397
02:28:46.214 --> 02:29:15.728
And I'm not being rude. I'm like, I am paying attention. I barely noticed it when that happens. I am paying attention, but 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 by pairing them together. And this is, so we have not talked about something yet.

398
02:29:15.847 --> 02:29:42.087
Which you and I, I think it's like the main thing on this episode that you and I disagree on. And it's probably because of this, which is the act of 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. Yes, that's common. Yeah. Yeah.

399
02:29:42.087 --> 02:30:05.358
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 that you've been putting off. Right? So it's like a simple example is you've been meaning to clean the garage for months, and –

400
02:30:05.611 --> 02:30:35.193
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. So it's Saturday. You're supposed to go to the 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 garage. Okay. And so you spend the entire Saturday cleaning the garage. Now, on the one hand, you just put off a really important task. On the other hand, you finally cleaned the damn garage.

401
02:30:36.492 --> 02:31:02.902
And as somebody with ADHD, I feel like my entire life is this. It's 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 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 time box because as you can imagine. Yeah, that's.

402
02:31:02.902 --> 02:31:25.835
My life is chaos and the time boxes are completely useless. If you're going to be task switching, that's useless. And it's not just that, but it's also like given my role in the business, my days are crazy. There's so much unexpected stuff that happens throughout the day. So yeah, time boxing just goes out the window. But I do do to-do lists.

403
02:31:26.358 --> 02:31:42.828
And taskless. And I'm actually quite religious about it because I think it's the only thing that keeps me tethered and 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...

404
02:31:43.300 --> 02:32:07.583
is strange about me. That's different. You know, the conventional wisdom is always like knock out the most difficult tasks of the day. First, that goes all the way back to Ben Franklin. There was a bestselling book in the eighties called eat that frog by Brian 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're like, like you said, you feel, it feels like a win for the rest of the day.

405
02:32:07.583 --> 02:32:23.007
I can't do that. Yeah. Like I got to. You need some warm up? Yeah, my brain. It feels like my brain needs warm up. So I usually actually do the least important stuff first thing in the morning. I love mornings. It's funny. My morning routine is literally wake up.

406
02:32:23.007 --> 02:32:50.918
grab an energy drink and sit down at my desk and start working within 100 seconds of waking up. Oh, wow. So it's- Wow, really? Yeah, I don't do anything. 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 low impact work. So it's like, usually first thing in the morning is email, and then I catch up on Slack messages.

407
02:32:51.172 --> 02:33:16.130
And then usually by then it's been like 30, 40 minutes. And my brain's like functioning and I can start kind of doing creative stuff. And then I'll – and 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, put the phone on the other side of the room. And like now we're locked in. We're writing a script or we're writing an email or whatever. Yeah.

408
02:33:16.130 --> 02:33:43.822
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 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 in recent weeks as well. And yes, every now and then, like if I am getting bored with something, I'm like, okay, I need...

409
02:33:43.822 --> 02:34:06.704
I just need a jolt of novelty and I don't have ADHD. Yeah. So I think that could be useful for a lot of people. The important thing I think is going back. Yes. When I talk to ADHD people 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. Right. And so like –

410
02:34:07.278 --> 02:34:30.042
And this is where the to-do lists come in that I'm like religious with my to-do list because it's like I – yeah, you have to go back. You have to go back. So that's what – when you talk about the productive procrastination, I think that's the point where I get a little sticky with it because it's so easy for me like if –

411
02:34:30.042 --> 02:34:46.208
My if my house is a disaster, I've been procrastinating putting off, but I got some work task I need to do like time to clean the house now and I'll do that. And then two hours go by and I got a hell of a clean house, but I I'm nowhere closer working on what I want to work on. I think this is one you just have to be very, very careful with.

412
02:34:46.208 --> 02:35:04.484
Yes. If the task should probably be in the same domain, ideally. Oh, okay, I see. I'm usually like, I'm gonna know something completely different. Yeah, 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's useless. Right, okay. Whereas if it's like, you know, I should be preparing for the podcast,

413
02:35:05.395 --> 02:35:23.232
But maybe instead what I'll do is I'll like start doing research for the next podcast. Okay. Like that's what I try to do because then it's like, okay, at least that's like adjacent to what I should be working on. Even emails at that point. Yeah. Right. Okay. And 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 –

414
02:35:23.232 --> 02:35:38.116
you know, prepping for this podcast, I get bored halfway through, so I start 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...

415
02:35:39.010 --> 02:36:07.698
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. We've been working on this particular episode for so long. I've been procrastinating this one. I would get so bored. I'm just like, oh my God, I cannot, with procrastination anymore, I've read these studies or whatever so many times or whatever. And if I just put it away for a week or whatever and came back to it, I'm like,

416
02:36:07.698 --> 02:36:25.788
Boom, there's all this novelty to it again. It feels novel again. Yeah, yeah. The big takeaway here though, is not to get caught up in what we do because you and I have very different systems. We have, except for the to-do list, 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 favor. I need to work on a lot of things at once, yeah.

417
02:36:25.788 --> 02:36:52.012
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 procrastination problem. This is only after you're self-aware enough, right, of why you procrastinate in the first place that these things actually will work. Yeah. Yeah. Let's move on to another mid-century school of thought. This one that went completely under the radar.

418
02:36:52.585 --> 02:37:14.641
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. In fact, we almost missed this. Yeah. This was a late addition to our guide and our outline. I was, I was, I was embarrassed actually. You're like, why aren't we talking about purpose? I'm like, Oh God.

419
02:37:15.468 --> 02:37:42.316
Huge face palm for me. Yeah. This is the fascinating thing is like so much has been written on time management. There is 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 your work is meaningful.

420
02:37:42.923 --> 02:37:57.773
you're much less likely to delay doing it, right? Because it aligns with your values. It feels important. It feels useful. So this actually comes out – I'm not going to harp on it for too long, but like it comes out of the mid-century existentialist movement, right? Which is –

421
02:37:58.060 --> 02:38:20.251
just wonderful and bleak and French. And they basically said like, you know, they start with nihilism, which is like nothing means anything. Off to a great start. We're all just a bunch of dirt and atoms and we're all going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. But from there, they make a very important leap, which is that –

422
02:38:20.403 --> 02:38:41.294
meaning and purpose, not preordained. So Jean-Paul Sartre 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 form, a concept that we try to live up to. And whether we exist or not, productivity is always there.

423
02:38:41.294 --> 02:39:04.632
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 to decide if it's even worth pursuing at all. You get to decide if it's meaningful. Existence precedes essence. That basically meaning is constructed after the fact. That essentially like we are all writing our own stories and we are all deciding what is useful and meaningful and what is not. And –

424
02:39:05.307 --> 02:39:22.165
It's a simple idea. It's incredibly profound. I think it's most popularized from the experiences of Viktor Frankl. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he wrote about his experiences surviving the Holocaust. And he talks about how it's a sense of hope and purpose for the future that –

425
02:39:22.165 --> 02:39:37.015
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 whole philosophical movement through the 60s and 70s of just really –

426
02:39:37.420 --> 02:39:56.033
thinking and paying attention to the meaning that's being ascribed to certain behaviors or functions or groups or relationships. And strangely, it's funny because existentialism, I mean, it was everywhere. It was in culture. It was in art. It was in film. It was in politics.

427
02:39:57.080 --> 02:40:21.987
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 procrastinate less. And so it's just like...

428
02:40:22.645 --> 02:40:37.563
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 –

429
02:40:38.575 --> 02:41:01.728
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, OK, 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? OK, let me back out. Or is that too cynical, I guess? Yeah.

430
02:41:01.728 --> 02:41:20.813
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, yeah. I would say really just in the last 20, 25 years. Like, really the millennials and Gen Z. And I remember seeing survey data around this years ago of, like,

431
02:41:20.813 --> 02:41:48.337
One of the big things about the millennial generation is like they – like millennials really gave a shit. 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 weren't – they weren't satisfied just, you know, getting a 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 –

432
02:41:48.488 --> 02:42:07.220
I mean, it is purpose 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,

433
02:42:07.220 --> 02:42:31.638
like the Nike commercial folk, like focusing on female athletes or, um, Apple being the first to pioneer, like recycling electronics. And like, there's just so many examples from the last 20 years of, of large corporations who have like adopted specific missions, certain meanings, aligning themselves with certain political causes. And it's like very much like, it's not an accident. It's more profitable. Yeah.

434
02:42:31.638 --> 02:43:00.832
Right? It's like 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 worthwhile, you work harder. Yeah. And you fuck around less. And you're willing to make mistakes 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,

435
02:43:00.832 --> 02:43:17.099
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.

436
02:43:17.099 --> 02:43:42.935
I will work my ass off. You know, Tesla, you know, climate change and bringing the renewable economy, you know, into America. It is, it really is a superpower. And it is a real, I think it's an overlooked talent of Elon's of like finding these kind of almost like civilizationally important causes to align his companies with.

437
02:43:43.154 --> 02:44:11.099
You're seeing it now with the AI stuff. Like he is pushing this narrative of like we need an AI that's aligned with valuing human life or else like we could all go extinct. It is absolutely existential. It is existentialism, you know, just in corporate form. So it is – OK. It is a super overlooked thing. Yeah. And I understand why –

438
02:44:11.302 --> 02:44:35.669
It feels hand wavy and 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 differently.

439
02:44:35.669 --> 02:44:59.227
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. Right.

440
02:44:59.817 --> 02:45:26.328
Whereas if you actually really believe in 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 too though about – you're talking about purpose kind of in a grander sense and this higher grand purpose that aiming for whether it is somebody like Elon Musk and they're –

441
02:45:26.817 --> 02:45:42.258
his grand designs that he has on humanity, I guess. Is that overcomplicating it? So too, though, for some people, because we can't all have those jobs, right? So what I'm thinking of is, I think a lot more...

442
02:45:42.511 --> 02:46:00.550
jobs and work in general had just an inherent purpose tied to them. And it was usually taking care of your family. 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. Or you can say, this job allows me to put food on the table for my family or whatever.

443
02:46:00.550 --> 02:46:16.126
you know whatever it is another example i had a friend um 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

444
02:46:16.126 --> 02:46:34.115
The job that is corporate job actually took on a new meeting because he needed the money from that corporate job. Interesting. And he needed the connections and he needed – so he started to like his job more because there was a new purpose around it. 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 –

445
02:46:34.115 --> 02:46:53.555
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 I think there's just a way to – we don't all have to be engineers for SpaceX or NASA or whatever to find that purpose and to motivate us and to not procrastinate on these things.

446
02:46:53.555 --> 02:47:13.096
Yeah, you don't need these civilizational, cataclysmic, existential reasons. It's interesting. I was talking to a guy recently. We did an old podcast episode last year on my health journey. And in that episode, I talked about how –

447
02:47:13.096 --> 02:47:29.650
it was really important for me to find a way to make exercise fun. Like that was one of my big challenges is that I just, I hated doing it. And so I, I really had to find like gamification or groups or, you know, competitions or whatever, just like keep it interesting for myself. Yeah.

448
02:47:29.650 --> 02:47:46.255
He's like, it's funny. I've worked out religiously for 20 years and I've always hated it. Never enjoyed it. And I was like, wow, that's actually – Wow. Sad. Yeah. Well, I was like – I was like, first of all, sorry. I'm sorry. I feel a little bad for you. But I was like, wow, that's actually – that's –

449
02:47:46.255 --> 02:48:15.145
Atypical. Yes. Generally, when you meet somebody who's like exercised religiously for forever, it's because they enjoy it in some way or they found a thing that they enjoyed. And so I asked him, I was like, well, what drives you? Like, why do you keep doing it? And he said, oh, well, you know, everybody in 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 going to live to an old age and I was going to see them grow up and I was going to see my grandkids. And I was like –

450
02:48:15.652 --> 02:48:30.805
There you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah. It's like it doesn't need to be fun. You didn't actually hate it probably on some level, right? Exactly. On a deeper level, you didn't. Right. And I think that is the power of finding some sort of purpose in something is that it makes –

451
02:48:31.598 --> 02:48:50.650
Like the suffering in anything is going to be inevitable. You know, we've talked a lot in this episode about the pleasure principle and avoiding pain. To me, it's like purpose is the one – if there is a hack, it's the one hack there is because purpose is the only thing that can take pain and make it –

452
02:48:50.650 --> 02:49:14.528
feel worthwhile. Right. Yeah. Right. And it like, it can make you feel like, okay, that sucked, but I'm glad I did it. Going back to the Goggins thing too. I think that's, that's, I think that's actually what's going on with him is 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

453
02:49:15.507 --> 02:49:38.761
a not very good reason or not very good purpose for something. I'll 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's I was a vanity. Sure. It's it's switched to a bigger purpose, though. I was just telling you a little while ago about a great uncle that I had who in his 80s was able to like

454
02:49:38.761 --> 02:50:08.107
spread his legs and bend down and put his head on the floor. Like he could stretch insanely and he's skiing and his eighties and all of that. And I'm like, well, I want to be able to do that. I want, I, and I want to be able to live a healthy life when I'm older now. 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 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, uh,

455
02:50:08.630 --> 02:50:35.326
What's going on when that happens? I don't know. I mean, this career started out that way. Oh, yeah. Like, I read Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek, and I was like, I just want to make some money on the Internet so I can go party in Argentina. Like, that was a dream by then. That was, like, literally my entire bar. God, the 2000s, man. You were awesome. I can just clear that bar. I'm good. And so I just started a bunch of websites. Like, I didn't really think about it. I didn't care about it. And...

456
02:50:35.326 --> 02:51:01.938
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 then people started asking me for advice. This was 2007, 2008. And I was like, well, shit, if people are going to ask me for advice, I should probably like know what I'm talking about. So I started researching all this stuff. I started, you know, buying a bunch of books and downloading psychology papers and reading journals. And yeah.

457
02:51:03.288 --> 02:51:25.057
And pretty soon, next thing I know, I'm like, this is – I could do this forever. Yeah. Like, this is it. I'm so in on this. And I just feel like that actually is probably the more common story. Yeah, as you guys said. I think this is people's biggest mistake with this too. And I am 100% sure we will do an episode on purpose at some point. Oh, yes. Yeah. But it –

458
02:51:26.002 --> 02:51:39.468
People mistakenly assume that you find the purpose and then you become super motivated to do all the 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.

459
02:51:40.345 --> 02:52:09.809
And then that's where the purpose is. 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 zero to one, then purpose is probably less of a factor unless 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 the purpose –

460
02:52:09.809 --> 02:52:39.121
The thing that the purpose solves is going from short term to long term. Yeah. It won't get you from zero to short term. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense to me. And checks out where I have found purpose in all sorts of places I never thought I would have. So 100% that checks out. Yeah. Yeah. All right. 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.

461
02:52:39.526 --> 02:53:02.223
Everybody realizes the time management stuff doesn't really work. Where are we at here? What's next? Well, a group of researchers were very observant that the time management was not working. And so they set out to figure out, OK, 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?

462
02:53:02.223 --> 02:53:21.730
One researcher in particular, his name is Peter Steele, who you've already brought up, and he gave us the definition, our modern definition of procrastination. He also formulated what's called the temporal motivation theory, or TMT for short. I might refer to it as TMT every now and then. Temporal motivation theory.

463
02:53:22.895 --> 02:53:49.338
Essentially what he did, 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 listeners, 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 care. Right. Right.

464
02:53:49.338 --> 02:54:10.448
That will factor in really big into temporal motivation theory as we go through this. But the big innovation through his theory was this equation that he came up with. OK. And I'll go through it real quick. I won't bore you with the details. OK. 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 I know. OK.

465
02:54:10.938 --> 02:54:38.427
I brought my calculator and everything. He came up with this equation, which is motivation equals expectancy times value divided by one plus impulsiveness 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 or not. If you're motivated enough to not procrastinate, right? Yeah.

466
02:54:38.427 --> 02:54:58.255
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. It goes back to the self-efficacy thing. Right. We already talked about that. So he's already bringing in stuff that we know. If you expect you're going to be successful, you're more likely to be successful. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

467
02:54:58.255 --> 02:55:14.388
And 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.

468
02:55:14.388 --> 02:55:31.955
Um, but essentially if it's something that you actually value highly, you're going to be more motivated, right? Makes total sense. 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.

469
02:55:31.955 --> 02:55:57.554
But then we have some things that might detract from your motivation as well. Impulsiveness. 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, too. So your ability to postpone gratification or delay gratification.

470
02:55:57.554 --> 02:56:26.242
And then that last one is delay. How far away is the outcome of whatever is associated with the task that you're about to perform, right? Right. So the further a task is or the further the reward or the result of the behavior that you're going to engage in, the less motivation you have. Right. And that's the temporal discounting that you talked about. That was one of the big innovations of temporal motivation theory was including that in –

471
02:56:26.242 --> 02:56:48.010
our calculus, literally the equation to procrastination. Now, I'm going to guess just from my experience with other psychologists who have tried to create equations is that this equation is just not going to work in 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 problems.

472
02:56:48.601 --> 02:57:12.108
emotional factors or the expectancy we've already talked about that not just in terms of the self-efficacy but also the perfectionism right like if your 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 yeah i just need to do you know a decent job at it um

473
02:57:12.310 --> 02:57:41.993
I like the temporal discounting. And then I like the, it's amazing that we've gotten this far and not talked about distraction yet, especially given this day and age. I mean, younger listeners will probably will have trouble believing this, but like procrastination and distraction were not two things that 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 our homework.

474
02:57:41.993 --> 02:58:06.901
Maybe TV, but even that was, yeah. Yeah. Like it's – Dad was probably watching TV anyway, so you can choose what you used to watch. Like my memory of childhood is long periods of boredom, but I still didn't do my homework. So it's – this idea that procrastination is directly proportional to distraction is a relatively new concept. And I know we're going to get into distraction later.

475
02:58:06.901 --> 02:58:13.077
deeply at some point here soon. But it's interesting to me that it's really only coming up now.

476
02:58:13.246 --> 02:58:39.689
Well, look at it in the historical context again, like you just said, Pierce Steele was doing most of his – the bulk of his research was in the 90s and 2000s, and he's continued since then. But that is when information technology really started to take off and get embedded into the culture to where we see it today. And so the impulsiveness part of that, you're right, it captures that distraction element that –

477
02:58:39.689 --> 02:58:56.108
So it's a simple equation, but it is pretty flexible still at the same time because that impulsiveness – one of the benefits and the strength of the equation is that it can – these terms can capture a lot. But those terms can also become imprecised into – we can get into that in a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

478
02:58:56.108 --> 02:59:24.172
So just some examples of this, your expectancy, it could be really high. Like, yes, I can do this, but your impulsiveness might override that, and the deadline might be a long ways away. So you can start to see all these different really complicated calculations that happens with just these four variables, which is really pretty interesting. And again, it was an innovation at that time that to marry all these different things and start putting these things together together,

479
02:59:24.172 --> 02:59:50.513
in a way that's more interactive. Because when we started out, we were talking about the ancient world. There's this one school of thought that thought this thing. And then the psychologists come along and they're 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 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. Yeah.

480
02:59:50.513 --> 03:00:13.852
If we may take a quick detour, I think the assumption up until this point is that to be productive or to defeat procrastination, it is about summoning willpower. It's about just mustering up enough energy or motivation to just brute force your way through it.

481
03:00:14.746 --> 03:00:36.245
And I definitely like – especially in the ancient times and throughout – in my second book, I called it the classical assumption. Like if you look at all of the discussions around Akrasia 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 –

482
03:00:36.245 --> 03:00:46.370
the chariot driver to whip the horses into shape until they do the right thing. And so you're just expected to like brute force your way through it.

483
03:00:46.977 --> 03:01:12.205
I think it's really only in the last few decades that our 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 tapped out. You don't care anymore.

484
03:01:12.205 --> 03:01:39.610
So you really do have to negotiate these other factors. Like 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 –

485
03:01:40.842 --> 03:02:06.796
Like that, that's, you almost just like grease the skids for the behavior to happen naturally as a byproduct of all of these things. Yeah. And I think maybe what you're kind of getting at too is that you're not denying that part of you, that part of your nature too. You're working with it. Yes. More so. And this, these more recent theories start to really acknowledge that and incorporate that, incorporate that into their, their frameworks. Yeah.

486
03:02:06.796 --> 03:02:23.857
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 –

487
03:02:23.857 --> 03:02:42.638
Those things probably evolved in our minds as well in order to serve those two chariot driving horses, right? Like there's an acceptance of who we are in a lot of these. It's like, okay, look, there's impulsivity. We're impulsive by our nature.

488
03:02:42.638 --> 03:02:56.847
How does that factor into getting things done in 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 further in advance for whatever reason. Yeah.

489
03:02:57.252 --> 03:03:21.923
This starts to incorporate that and really acknowledge human nature on a more realistic level, in my view. And it's a much healthier view of how to actually get yourself to take the action that you want to take. Right. Because it is – coming back to the shame piece. I was just going to 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? Right.

490
03:03:21.923 --> 03:03:39.608
Right. You know, yeah, it's like you're human. This is we all do this. 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 see the skill in each one of them. Right. It's like managing your expectancy, managing like like.

491
03:03:39.608 --> 03:03:54.880
being mindful of the value that you're gonna get out of something and there are ways I'd love to talk to you, 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

492
03:03:54.880 --> 03:04:12.953
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 like when you remember what is the cause or mission that is driving my motivation to do this thing.

493
03:04:12.953 --> 03:04:34.553
That helps you counterbalance that time discounting. Right. 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. Right. So we're finally starting to see everything come together. Right.

494
03:04:34.604 --> 03:05:04.152
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, the breaking down tasks. Yeah. Actually that, a lot of that kind of came from time management. Oh, so there was, there was glimmers within that where it's like, oh, you don't know how to,

495
03:05:04.152 --> 03:05:25.735
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 the component parts. And it's just a lot more explicit in something like TMT where, yeah, they found that breaking that down into you've talked about this so many times.

496
03:05:25.735 --> 03:05:53.630
This is my go-to advice for this. Yeah, this is one of the first pieces of advice you always say. If you have this huge daunting task, start with the most dead simple, obvious thing that you can do. And that gets your momentum going. And then on to the next one and on to the next one. 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...

497
03:05:53.630 --> 03:06:11.112
a task or the benefits of a task differently throughout the stages of the process of doing it as well. 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.

498
03:06:11.112 --> 03:06:30.991
it is scary and it feels impossible and it feels you don't get that sense of progress and movement, you know, in 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, yeah.

499
03:06:30.991 --> 03:06:55.932
There's like an 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, 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. Keep it going as long as possible. And you can get that's like a beautiful example of like.

500
03:06:56.573 --> 03:07:15.811
manipulating these factors within your own head and redefining what the metric is and read like breaking down tasks into constituent tasks or like lumping tasks together into some larger task in a way that feels more doable, feels more exciting, feels more fun and feels less intimidating for yourself.

501
03:07:15.811 --> 03:07:32.753
Yeah, so that's the expectancy component of the equation. I think for the value one, like you already mentioned too, is like having some... Well, you said it with respect to delay, but I think value can also be manipulated through your purpose as well. Like if you do have a purpose, again, it goes back to...

502
03:07:32.753 --> 03:08:00.040
If I have a job I don't really necessarily like, I'm probably going to procrastinate it, this and that. But if I have a purpose attached to that job, that same job, now the value could shoot up at that point too. So again, it's just these little mind tricks. It's all within your head too, which is crazy. There's some external factors as well, obviously, the delay and all of the impulsiveness, distractions in your environment. But again, yeah, we're putting it all together at this point. And it is...

503
03:08:00.040 --> 03:08:15.042
It is a skill. It is something you work on and develop. And, I mean, we'll talk at the end of the 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.

504
03:08:15.042 --> 03:08:32.086
expectation is subjective. These are all things that you get to decide. You get to decide like what success looks like. You get to decide what is meaningful, what is valuable, what, what is worth pursuing, um, how long you pursue it. You know, do you want to pursue it for a week, a month, a year, 10 years? Um,

505
03:08:32.761 --> 03:08:57.905
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 listened to a podcast that Pierre Steele was on in 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. Mm-hmm.

506
03:08:57.905 --> 03:09:27.166
And he said the people he's noticed that do the best with procrastination are very, very honest with themselves. And I think it applies to each one of these variables. But he gave the example that we've already given, too. He doesn't buy junk food. 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 I'm a sugar fiend. I'm a junk food fiend. And that's why I don't buy it. But I think that you –

507
03:09:27.166 --> 03:09:53.795
Um, that's part of like reducing distractions part maybe, or it is, uh, even increasing expectancy. Like I know I can not eat junk food if it's not around me. Yes. Boom. That's like a immediate unlock from here, immediate win for me. So it is just getting into the kind of minutia and dialing these things around, uh, to fit your personality and be real honest with yourself about it. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you feel like this maps with, uh, yeah.

508
03:09:53.997 --> 03:10:02.063
Nier-I-L's indistractable stuff. Because one of the things I quibble with Nier on sometimes, sometimes I feel like,

509
03:10:03.127 --> 03:10:27.545
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 antsy or anxious and not choosing the avoidance in the moment. Sometimes I feel like he leans too much on the ladder, but like –

510
03:10:27.545 --> 03:10:45.247
I'm wondering if his framework kind of fits into the TMT stuff. 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 –

511
03:10:45.567 --> 03:11:13.242
I would say fair criticism about TMT is that it kind of is a little, it's not specific enough around the emotional triggers necessarily. 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 into four variables. Yeah.

512
03:11:13.242 --> 03:11:34.066
And that's one of the criticisms of it that I think is fair. Yeah. It feels like it should be like six or seven variables. Yeah. At least. While the variables are pretty well clearly defined, like actually measuring them and defining them in the real world is much harder. Yeah. So I think that's a fair criticism of it.

513
03:11:34.066 --> 03:11:46.756
Um, and we'll, we'll get to more of the emotional side of things, but yeah, it oversimplifies some of the, the, the complexity of human behavior, I think to some extent, which all equations will, of course, you know, well, and it's.

514
03:11:47.110 --> 03:12:07.698
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 does not measure a single thing. It 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. Interesting.

515
03:12:07.698 --> 03:12:25.450
or just like a repeated procrastination in the same domain. Yeah. And I'm sure you've experienced this before too. Sometimes you're like highly motivated and you still procrastinate. Like I, like a surge of motivation. I'm going to get this done and you still find a way to procrastinate. And so that's,

516
03:12:25.450 --> 03:12:49.210
The one thing, the output for this, if you notice in the equation, is motivation. It's motivation equals the expectancy times value, yada, yada. There can still be times where you feel highly motivated and still procrastinating. You just still don't do it. And it just doesn't – this doesn't fully capture that. Yeah. So that's one of the criticisms for sure. And there just isn't really a lot of focus on the emotional and affective triggers. Yeah.

517
03:12:49.261 --> 03:13:11.553
Yeah, because I'm just thinking about the impulsivity piece. Like everything else makes sense to me, right? The expectancy, the value. Delay, yeah. The delay. I feel like the impulsivity you could actually break out into probably three or four of its own variables. Yes. Right? Like there's how many distractions are in your environment. Like how easy is avoided? Like this is the near IL thing, which is like it's –

518
03:13:11.553 --> 03:13:27.567
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.

519
03:13:27.567 --> 03:13:50.433
You want to reduce your internal emotional triggers and you also want to reduce your external environmental triggers so that you're kind of like hitting it from both sides. So that feels like it's missing. And then also I know we're going to 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 are the type of person who –

520
03:13:50.433 --> 03:14:11.999
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 nearest bucket of chocolate is. Like it is – the intensity of your emotions plays a huge factor in this.

521
03:14:12.505 --> 03:14:40.940
the ability to regulate your emotions, to come down from them, 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, it's well-documented and everybody's experienced it that it's like if you are physically not in good shape, um...

522
03:14:41.615 --> 03:15:05.729
Your willpower is just basically gone. Right. Right. Entirely. Cultural norms, too. Those aren't captured in this either, you know. So it's really hard to that impulsivity one. I agree. It's kind of like it's a catch all. Yeah. Category for any sort of emotional influence that would go into procrastination or whether you are motivation. Yeah. So, yeah, it's limited in that regard. I definitely think so. Yeah. Yeah.

523
03:15:05.729 --> 03:15:32.358
It is kind of I really want human behavior to be boiled down to like an equation. That would be awesome. Wouldn't it be nice? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure there are there like this equation. It does capture a lot of sure procrastination or motivation in certain situations, but it's not it's still not complete. And, 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. Right. So I don't want to knock it by any means.

524
03:15:32.358 --> 03:15:53.485
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. I know. We have to get squishy with this one. Why? See, you just need to be hugged more. That's why you're not doing your term paper. You've got enough hugs. Well –

525
03:15:55.021 --> 03:16:16.722
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. Yeah.

526
03:16:16.722 --> 03:16:43.503
And in 2013, he wrote a book about it. And it's a very accessible and great book if you want to check it out. And then one of his protégés was Fuchsia Sirwa, who we interviewed for the show, too. And she has kind of carried the torch since then. Tim's retired. He's retired now. Fuchsia is now living in England. And she's carried on. She's kind of the world's foremost researcher on procrastination. And the core...

527
03:16:43.672 --> 03:17:05.609
premise of the emotional 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 said that is the point, that right there

528
03:17:05.609 --> 03:17:33.014
is where procrastination starts and where we need to focus 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. We're more likely to delay tasks that we just find unpleasant. Makes sense, right? There's task aversion as well. Anything we perceive as unpleasant or overly challenging.

529
03:17:33.014 --> 03:17:51.661
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. We're like, ooh, this feels bad. I just want out of this. I want to escape basically.

530
03:17:51.661 --> 03:18:18.087
Um, research backs all of that up. There's a lot of individual traits too. Um, we've kind of, we've kind of mentioned that you're, uh, if you're more impulsive or not, that's like one individual trait that might, um, uh, influence the way you procrastinate or whether you procrastinate on anything. Um, and, uh, there, as opposed to something like conscientiousness, which we haven't really talked about, um, but that's an individual trait, a personality trait that can influence all of this.

531
03:18:18.728 --> 03:18:31.317
There's very personal experiences too. We've talked a little about 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

532
03:18:31.435 --> 03:18:55.482
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. Yeah.

533
03:18:55.482 --> 03:19:06.232
So when you say procrastination is a strategy for mood regulation, like explain that like I'm five. Okay. What does that mean? Okay. So, Mark.

534
03:19:07.531 --> 03:19:30.008
Marky. Marky. Marky poo. In case people like don't really. Emotional regulation is one of those things that like everybody's heard the term, but like. It's fuzzy. What does it actually mean? 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 need to do. Yeah. Okay. You don't want to do it. That's kind of the point. Right. Right.

535
03:19:30.008 --> 03:19:48.048
When you approach this task, you might get an anxious feeling. Yeah. Dread. Dread. Boredom. Yeah. Or the perfectionism can even come in at that point too. Like, oh my God, am I not going to do a good job at this? And if I fail, anxiety boils up. Anger. Why the fuck do I have to do this? Yeah. Yeah.

536
03:19:48.048 --> 03:20:15.976
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 away. Okay, I've approached this as a task that I find unpleasant.

537
03:20:16.583 --> 03:20:39.618
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, you know, this is why you can also, like, people will 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 working on, right? Right. Does that make sense, Marky? Yes. Okay.

538
03:20:40.833 --> 03:20:53.185
I was going to call you Daddy Drew. I don't know where I'm going to go. I was like, oh, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. That gets weird. It gets really weird. Please do not call me that.

539
03:20:53.675 --> 03:21:16.979
But yeah, ever. Early on in this, when this framework was being developed, a lot of the psychologists called it 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 to that and you give in to that urge. Yeah. Yeah.

540
03:21:16.979 --> 03:21:38.461
There's some impulsivity around that as well. There's environmental factors that go into this. But at its base, at its core, it is 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 –

541
03:21:38.714 --> 03:22:03.318
Angry feeling that I am. Bored feeling, painful feeling, whatever it is. 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 seeing 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 out of the fridge. Turning your phone off.

542
03:22:03.318 --> 03:22:20.868
Turning the phone off, leaving the phone in the other room, all those things. And then the other side of the coin is that emotional management, the awareness, understanding the emotions that are coming up. And then understanding perhaps why those emotions may be arising for –

543
03:22:20.868 --> 03:22:50.855
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 shitty reason? And it's actually not very motivating at all. Like all of those facts, all of those things that we've talked about, do you, 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, any way you

544
03:22:50.855 --> 03:23:10.379
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,

545
03:23:10.818 --> 03:23:29.515
how do I give myself as few escape routes as possible? Exactly. Right. And that's the behaviorist stuff, 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, uh, the,

546
03:23:29.515 --> 03:23:58.422
managing your triggers, managing your nudges. And on the other side, it's managing your own emotions. Right. Understanding why you associate certain things with a task and how to kind of manipulate the levers or dials in your head to make the task feel easier. Whether 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.

547
03:23:58.422 --> 03:24:20.427
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 it's a short term relief for long term detriment. Right. Right. All of this is what it comes down to is.

548
03:24:20.427 --> 03:24:47.562
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. Like 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 –

549
03:24:47.562 --> 03:25:03.138
It's – the failure is 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 valuable and less important. Plato saw it as like a –

550
03:25:03.138 --> 03:25:21.211
an ignorance of the repercussions of your decisions, like not understanding like how your behavior, like what you were doing in that very moment. Even to like the Buddhist perspective of like not being aware of what your internal triggers are. Like this is what I found really interesting when I looked at the Buddhist side of it. Like,

551
03:25:21.211 --> 03:25:35.318
Again, it's correct. It's incomplete, but it's completely correct. And in fact, I actually found a meta-analysis of 14,000 participants who practice mindfulness and meditation. And they showed –

552
03:25:35.487 --> 03:25:52.970
significant improvements in time management, task initiation, 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 emotions –

553
03:25:52.970 --> 03:26:10.503
tend to be funhouse 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, other things that appear very close or actually very far away and vice versa, right? So it's,

554
03:26:10.503 --> 03:26:26.095
It's understanding that you're looking at a funhouse 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 –

555
03:26:26.095 --> 03:26:50.530
Where Plato was correct is that the actual ignorance is just believing the funhouse mirror is real. Like that's the ignorance. Yeah, definitely. And one of the big recommendations from this group of researchers, Tim Pitchell especially and Fuchsia, Siroir, is more mindfulness around these things. So we can talk about this now, the RAIN method.

556
03:26:50.530 --> 03:27:15.134
Uh, this is what, uh, this was an article that Tim Pitchell wrote and he's written about it in his books as well. Um, but it's a mindfulness tool, um, that gets you, um, figuring out that fun house mirror kind of brain that we all have and, and being able to deal with it. And he calls it the RAIN method because it's an acronym. It's recognize, allow, investigate, and non-identification. Okay. So.

557
03:27:15.134 --> 03:27:36.329
It's just a very basic kind of I believe it's from Zen Buddhism, maybe actually, too. But it's recognizing in the moment when you do feel that resistance, those those uncomfortable feelings that that pop up. I think most people like when those that pops up, your initial reaction is to look for a distraction. This is OK. Wait, just recognize when it's happening. That's all you have to do at first.

558
03:27:36.329 --> 03:27:55.043
This is I'm approaching a task I don't like. I'm just going to 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.

559
03:27:55.415 --> 03:28:14.112
Get curious. Why do I feel this way? That's something you just said too. 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? Am I just tired? Did I sleep last night? Yeah. Start asking all those questions. Ask those questions, investigate, and get deep with it too right there.

560
03:28:14.112 --> 03:28:36.016
And the last one is non-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 this anxious. Yes. Don't, you don't want to fuse your identity. Like you just said, if you fuse yourself with that funhouse mirror image that you have in your mind, then everything becomes like a funhouse mirror.

561
03:28:36.016 --> 03:28:53.330
Mirror room. Right. And to Freud's point, you'll protect it. Yeah. Right. If you decide that you are anxious and perfectionist, then you will actually protect that self-definition. Yes. Which will cause you to like actually your procrastination will become part of your identity.

562
03:28:53.330 --> 03:29:14.575
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. Yeah. Yeah.

563
03:29:14.575 --> 03:29:44.444
So that, as far as practical takeaways go, that for me, after realizing that, I realized I 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 and be like, okay, I don't like this. Why don't I like this? All right, let's just get going. Putting it all together like that, though, has been super, super useful for me. And especially the non-identification part, that last part is very important, I think, too. Like you just said, don't wrap your identity up in whatever you're doing. Totally. For sure.

564
03:29:44.444 --> 03:30:08.812
Well, speaking of identities, I've got like a fun exercise for us before we wrap up with like the tactics and strategies for everybody. Dr. Linda Sapoden, and she's a clinical psychologist, she wrote a book in the 90s called The Six Types of Procrastinators. And so she has six types that she has identified through her clinical practice. Fun. And I thought it would be fun to kind of like now that we understand all the frameworks.

565
03:30:08.812 --> 03:30:35.778
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 in at least one of them. So the first one, which I know I know you've dealt with is the perfectionist. Right. Fears imperfection, sets unrealistic standards, refuses to accept good enough. Yeah.

566
03:30:35.778 --> 03:30:44.603
And it ends up having to use time limits to avoid endless revisions or redos. Do you feel attacked? Yeah.

567
03:30:45.616 --> 03:31:09.427
I feel like I'm getting better at it. I mean, this is kind of my, this is my beast to slay 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, all right, that's not going to be perfect. Do you think that's just from accumulating so many imperfect experiences? I don't, I don't think I've actively worked it. Like I'm getting over it. It's just been, I like now accept reality for what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

568
03:31:09.427 --> 03:31:34.317
All right. The second one is the dreamer loves big ideas, but struggles with 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

569
03:31:34.317 --> 03:31:50.517
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 drawback of that is the intimidation factor because it's like if you have this massive world-changing plan –

570
03:31:50.517 --> 03:32:18.108
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 the dreamers have to break their goals down into steps. I am like, as you know, I am an evangelist for this. Like this is my number one go-to for any time I'm procrastinating. I mean, to the point where like, if I'm procrastinating writing things,

571
03:32:18.496 --> 03:32:41.176
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, it creates the momentum. It removes the intimidation. It, like, generates emotional momentum. It's the way to go. Like, my...

572
03:32:41.412 --> 03:33:04.700
My brain tends to just want to make everything as big and ambitious as possible. And so it's like the work for me is constantly breaking things back down and making them smaller. Yeah. So that makes sense to me when it's something like do a podcast outline. Where I struggle with that, though, is, OK, I'm breaking something down. Makes sense. It's doable. I have self-efficacy around it. I can do this thing.

573
03:33:04.700 --> 03:33:26.958
My problem often comes in when it's tying that back to the bigger picture. Oh, yeah. You know, it makes sense with like a podcast outline because that's a tangible thing. But it's 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 with some grand goal that I have. Yeah.

574
03:33:26.958 --> 03:33:53.215
So I'm actually, I didn't expect to do this, but I'm going to bring Eisenhower back into this. Oh, okay. So Eisenhower is a great quote that I love where he says, plans mean nothing, but planning is everything. Okay. And I truly believe that like planning, projecting, forecasting, 99% of it's bullshit. You know, it's like none of it's going to come true. It's funny because I just worked with –

575
03:33:53.215 --> 03:34:12.250
our head of operations on like a projection for 2025 and 26. And I mean, I've been doing this long enough that I'm like, this is bullshit. None of this is going to 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 together.

576
03:34:12.250 --> 03:34:40.516
this individual podcast, shooting this segment of 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 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 expect it to. But the act of creating that plan or projection

577
03:34:40.516 --> 03:35:01.475
Ties all those things together 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 steps and challenge catastrophic thinking with more realistic outcomes. I am definitely not this person. I don't think you are either. Yeah.

578
03:35:01.475 --> 03:35:13.844
No, maybe a little bit, but nah. I've definitely known people like this who are just like almost like doomsayers. Like they just think everything's going to go wrong. They worry about everything all the time.

579
03:35:14.435 --> 03:35:39.055
And it is like freezes them in place kind of is it like a like a fight or flight response or more of a fight flies freeze response? So they're freezing or 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.

580
03:35:39.427 --> 03:35:57.213
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, like they're just kind of always imagining worst case scenario. Yeah, which you would think it was kind of like almost a perfectionist thing, but it's not. Yeah. It's more because the perfectionist is like, well, what if I don't do it perfectly? But what if I, you know, what if I...

581
03:35:57.213 --> 03:36:22.508
What if I'm embarrassed by it? This is like, what if it just everything, just the worst case scenario. What 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 bar is way up here. What if I don't hit it? Whereas like the warrior is 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.

582
03:36:22.947 --> 03:36:41.780
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 defier. I definitely relate to this one.

583
03:36:41.948 --> 03:37:01.051
Resists 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 –

584
03:37:01.051 --> 03:37:17.420
unnecessarily contrarian at times. Aaron Powell Big cultural component that one, though, too, you know, where if obedience or at least tradition or service to your family, society, whatever it is, there's a big cultural component as well.

585
03:37:17.420 --> 03:37:44.656
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 has always been like, if somebody tells me to do something, my first reaction is like, no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. And then finally, the overdoer takes on too much, tries to accomplish too many tasks at the same time, unable to manage their energy effectively. Yeah.

586
03:37:45.297 --> 03:37:57.515
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. Yeah.

587
03:37:58.865 --> 03:38:24.616
Definitely a little bit of me in there too. Like it just. 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. To me, this feels like the, if there's one of these that I imagine has grown over the last 10, 20 years, I could see it being the overdoer. Just because the opportunity of things to do and engage in has grown exponentially.

588
03:38:24.616 --> 03:38:52.190
So the need to create boundaries and say no has also grown exponentially. And those are hard things to do. Like it takes – 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 a little bit useful before we get into all like the specific tips and strategies and stuff. Like I think it's useful to kind of ask yourself where you are and –

589
03:38:53.152 --> 03:38:59.159
what each of us needs to focus on to improve this for ourselves. Absolutely.

590
03:39:04.897 --> 03:39:30.580
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 where 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 –

591
03:39:30.580 --> 03:39:36.723
a section that we call the 80-20 of procrastination, which is what are the 20% of –

592
03:39:37.027 --> 03:40:06.271
actions or behaviors that are gonna give you 80% of the result. Like what's the highest leverage implementation here? So you and I, we've got a list of a bunch of things. You know, 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 go through them one by one. I think it could be useful kind of returning that

593
03:40:06.271 --> 03:40:26.200
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's a good way to implement environmental design to help with your procrastination?

594
03:40:26.200 --> 03:40:43.970
The core premise of this is altering your surroundings so that the desired behavior that you're targeting is just easier or the one that you don't want to do is much harder. Distractions and stuff like that. So we'll talk about how to do that. So set up your environment for success, basically.

595
03:40:43.970 --> 03:40:58.010
Some of the ways, like we've mentioned right now, if you're being 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.

596
03:40:58.837 --> 03:41:26.360
Put the phone in the other room. Get all distractions out of sight and out of mind. That's a good place to start with that. You can use, like you mentioned, you use website blockers, stuff like that. There's a lot of software. There's a lot of things like that, yeah. So if you're the type of person who's prone to just going down email rabbit holes or YouTube rabbit holes or sports website rabbit holes, one piece of software is called Freedom. There was another one called, I believe it was called

597
03:41:26.360 --> 03:41:47.723
Self or no, it's called focus. Yeah. There was another one called control. There's a bunch of use. And then there's all sorts of accessibility things like on your phones, like, you know, the iPhone and 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 things.

598
03:41:47.723 --> 03:42:06.995
Hackback notifications on your phone, too. I don't know why people like I look at some people's phones and they're just there's like 90 notifications on them. Like why from like an app they downloaded four years ago that they don't even use. That's crazy. And turn off your notifications. Just turn off. Yeah. Put your text messages, maybe a couple other things and that's it. Yeah. It's it's.

599
03:42:06.995 --> 03:42:24.832
If your phone is chiming or buzzing all day, that's like putting crack in front of a crack addict. You're doing yourself zero favors. Yeah, 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 –

600
03:42:24.832 --> 03:42:48.187
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 Nira Eyal did. And by the way, his book on this is excellent. Environmental design, go to that. That's a Bible for that. His book, Indistractable, it's excellent. If distraction is a huge issue for you, that is –

601
03:42:48.187 --> 03:43:17.060
the best book that I can recommend. One thing that he did in his own house is that he put all of his wifi routers, he put on these plugs that you could put on timers. And so he like programmed the timers to shut off, I think at like 7 p.m. or something every night. And so his like, the internet in 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 re-plug in the router and like do all this stuff. So he just,

602
03:43:17.060 --> 03:43:44.026
He never did it. And sure enough, he stopped using the internet past a certain time. And 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 kind of like actual just physically alter your environment. That's kind of the first category. And then 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, whatever.

603
03:43:44.026 --> 03:44:03.517
People will say stuff like, oh, only check email after 2 p.m. Something like that. I think it's really useful to get explicit of like, this is a rule that I live by. Like, this is a rule that I have for myself. Because if you try to – I think the key principle here is that when you leave it up to your own decision making –

604
03:44:03.517 --> 03:44:21.927
you can't trust your own decision-making. Right, and not in the moment, at least. Yes, and not consistently over a long period of time. You might get it right the first day or the first week, but eventually you're gonna start making the bad decision, and as soon as you make the bad decision once, that's gonna justify every future bad decision. So it's just like you have to create a rule

605
03:44:21.927 --> 03:44:37.115
I'm not allowed to have my phone in my office, period. MARK MANDELAVYSKI- Right. Or I don't check social media until after 4 or whatever. Email, too. I only do email at 2 or 3 PM in the afternoon or at the end of the day, once a day, clear the inbox. Then it's done. Yeah.

606
03:44:37.115 --> 03:45:03.389
Yeah. And then the physical side, the physical environment 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 even have it in the house. It's like, you know, not having junk food in the house. Same type of deal. I've also in times where it's like, OK, 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 given it to a friend. Right. Keep it at my friend's house. I can't even have it. Just hold on to this for the next two weeks.

607
03:45:03.389 --> 03:45:09.869
seriously I'm just imagining you like ringing a doorbell just like a power cable and somebody like I'm gonna come back for this yeah

608
03:45:11.303 --> 03:45:41.037
Not too far off. Again, it goes back to I mentioned earlier that, you know, that interview I listened to with Pierce Dill, he said the people who are most honest about these things. Yes. About they know themselves well enough to be like, OK, I know I don't have the requisite willpower to fend off the TV or the fridge or whatever in these certain moments. And so I'm just going to accept that. Yeah. I guess another thing is that there's a self-acceptance to environmental design that you have to be really OK with.

609
03:45:41.037 --> 03:46:06.451
Right. You have to accept that you're flawed and that you're not going to change your own nature. I think that's something – I think a lot of chronic procrastinators, they have this unreasonable expectation that there is going to be a day where 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. And it's like, no, you're not. Never going to happen. You're human. You're not. You're not going to defeat –

610
03:46:06.451 --> 03:46:22.853
100,000 years of biology. You're just not. So you might as well work with it and create rules and structures and an environment for yourself that like nudges you towards success. I'm curious, like what is your personal biggest environmental design win that's going to happen?

611
03:46:22.853 --> 03:46:44.842
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. Um, 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 of years now that I've had that. When I enter that space, that's workspace. Right. And I try to keep the phone out. I try to do all that.

612
03:46:44.842 --> 03:47:11.521
separating 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 using those cues, too. So it's like it's like I enter that room and my brain automatically goes into work time. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big win for me. And it's great because now when you leave, you're like.

613
03:47:11.521 --> 03:47:33.256
It's done. Personal time. Yep. Yep. Not worrying about it. Not checking email. Not. That took a while. I've been working remotely for a long time and I've had a boundary issue a little bit of like where does work happen and where does leisure happens? Yeah. What about you? For me, I mean, obviously the junk food stuff's big. The phone stuff has been big in the past. Yeah.

614
03:47:33.577 --> 03:47:56.071
I would actually say a home gym was a absolute game changer. And it's funny, too, because I remember, you know, when I moved to my place here in L.A. and I started putting together a little home gym, you know, it's a really small room. It's like half the size of a 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.

615
03:47:56.071 --> 03:48:21.738
And I was like, you know, it'll just be kind of cool to have this. At first, I was going to 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 the simplest thing is I no longer had any excuse. Right? It's like come home at 530. I'm tired. Long day of work or whatever. Big day of shooting. And I'm like, oh, I should work out today.

616
03:48:22.261 --> 03:48:44.924
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 this thing and shower and all this stuff. And it's like, no, now the gym is like 20 feet away, motherfucker. Like you have no excuse. It's right there. Go do it. 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, yeah.

617
03:48:45.042 --> 03:48:58.795
why did I do this to myself? But now I'm just so happy it's there. And actually I quit, I canceled my gym membership like within a month or two, because I'm 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

618
03:48:59.217 --> 03:49:22.842
watching a tv show with my wife and she'll get up you know we'll pause it and she'll get up i have to go do something for 10 minutes i'm like wonder how many pull-ups i can do just like walking to the gym start doing pull-ups i'm like ah all right yeah it's not bad you know like it's just it has been such like just having it right there the convenience the ease and the elimination of like all the friction of like having to like

619
03:49:22.842 --> 03:49:38.536
Get dressed, get in the car, go get a gym bag, all that stuff. So home gym, huge up, even if it's like small and simple and like not not even doesn't have all the equipment that like a normal gym would have. Huge game changer. Yeah. Yeah.

620
03:49:38.536 --> 03:50:05.738
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 got to go all the way to the grocery store just to get a bag of chips or a candy bar or whatever. Strategic friction is really the key here. Yeah. Yeah. And it can even go as far like –

621
03:50:05.924 --> 03:50:29.954
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. Yeah. Like, that's an easy one. And then also another one, like, this one 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 going to 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.

622
03:50:29.954 --> 03:50:55.638
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 yourself the chance. Again, it's like removing those decision points. Like 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 one is social accountability.

623
03:50:55.638 --> 03:51:11.602
We talked a little bit about the Confucianism and, you know, we've kind of skirted around this, you know, with all the talk of emotions and behaviorism and conditioning and all this stuff, the ego stuff.

624
03:51:11.922 --> 03:51:35.733
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. Yeah.

625
03:51:35.733 --> 03:52:02.885
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 –

626
03:52:02.885 --> 03:52:22.291
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.

627
03:52:22.443 --> 03:52:49.358
Just by spending 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 goal as you and is also struggling with that goal is – and then, like, working on it together, it's 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 –

628
03:52:49.358 --> 03:53:04.782
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 accountability. Yes. You don't want to be the asshole who like –

629
03:53:04.782 --> 03:53:27.732
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 convinced 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 like that is a huge lever that you can pull within your own brain i do have a quick story about this

630
03:53:27.732 --> 03:53:40.625
Um, so that friend that we mentioned earlier, uh, near IEL and that book I recommended in distractible. So he, he was writing that book while I was writing my second book, everything is fucked. And we were both having trouble finishing our books.

631
03:53:41.097 --> 03:54:09.565
And so we agreed that we were gonna 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 was 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 and 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 $5,000 or $10,000. It was like a very painful amount of money.

632
03:54:09.565 --> 03:54:34.422
It was a very painful amount of money. And we like wrote it down and like had like a contract and everything. And, and, and we did it and it was, I mean, we both, we both got it done. I mean, like, let's just put it this way. We, we, we were more effective, I think in those four or five months than we were like the entire year prior to that. So I've heard near tell that story to other people. And he said his hand was shaking when he handed you.

633
03:54:35.772 --> 03:55:04.308
because I think you each wrote a check or something or a contract or whatever it was. My hand was shaking. I handed it over because it is that powerful. Think about that emotional space he had to be in for that. He's like, oh God, 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 are really close friends now and a lot of it is because of that because we started meeting up and writing together every week. And

634
03:55:04.308 --> 03:55:30.464
And it just became – there was a lot of kind of soft accountability that happened in the interim, right? Like there were – you know, it's like I'd go over there on a Monday and we'd spend a few hours writing. And then afterwards we'd have lunch and kind of look at each other and be like, well, how did your session go? And be like, oh, man, I didn't – it was a disaster. Like I got – nothing was usable, right? And then we'd kind of talk through it and be like, oh, yeah, that's how last week was for me. But like today was pretty good, you know? And like it was just nice to like –

635
03:55:31.358 --> 03:55:52.655
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 funhouse mirror warps 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. Right.

636
03:55:52.655 --> 03:56:18.085
you know, you just try again and it'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 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 is really important in this case too. Yes. You can find somebody who's like, you know, get an accountability coach, like somebody who's,

637
03:56:18.085 --> 03:56:41.170
fitness or something like that is really good and they're way advanced in 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, to like when I started CrossFit, it was me and two friends. We started in both of us, all of us, none of us had 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.

638
03:56:41.170 --> 03:57:09.166
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 it. So I think that's really important too, something to highlight. 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 you are constantly surrounded by people who in the exact same situation as you struggling with the exact same procrastination as you are. And my first

639
03:57:09.166 --> 03:57:32.133
Two years, well, first year of college, I was at music school, but 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. And 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 that like if I went back to my dorm, no.

640
03:57:32.133 --> 03:57:49.042
zero studying would happen. Like absolutely nothing would happen. You know, the guys down the hall will be playing poker or something. And the next thing you know, I'm at a party on a Tuesday night and then I'm like drinking until 4am. So like nothing useful would happen at the dorm. So I eventually developed a rule for myself that when my classes ended, I,

641
03:57:49.295 --> 03:58:16.362
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 and 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 start studying or start working on that assignment that's due in two weeks that I haven't really thought about. And I started doing that and sure enough, grades immediately went through the roof.

642
03:58:16.362 --> 03:58:43.582
And then, you know, jump a year or two ahead 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 knew were like, can I come with you? Yeah. I'm like, yeah, sure. I'll be there at 1 p.m. on Thursday. Like, I'll be there until at least 3. And, like, sure enough, a bunch of my friends started coming and meeting me at the library. And, again, it's that accountability, right? It's like, well, my friend's there. She's studying for her history exam, like, okay.

643
03:58:43.582 --> 03:59:11.206
I'm going to 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, I have 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 going to meet at the library was always that. And that was like I look back on college. I remember those study groups very, very vividly like and so.

644
03:59:11.206 --> 03:59:35.928
leveraging that to just the social connection that you get really brings it all home to it's strange how it like yeah it becomes fun yeah i don't know like when you 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 um that we took that was just horrible horrible our study group that went to the library like i remember that we had a lot of fun like about stats you know like yeah yeah absolutely nerd nerd

645
03:59:38.257 --> 03:59:59.047
It totally was. Cool. All right. So that's the external stuff. Those are 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 start with the big question. I think you – let's take opposite starting points. Why don't you start with, like, the big, hairy questions, and then I'll kind of, like –

646
03:59:59.198 --> 04:00:21.845
break it down into the small questions. Okay. 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 tied to what your daily actions. Right. So.

647
04:00:21.845 --> 04:00:47.343
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 up like a greater sense of purpose around things that I'm 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, OK, why is this? I have this job or I have this task or.

648
04:00:47.343 --> 04:01:14.444
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 there, starting with why, why am I doing any of this? And like really getting into and digging into playing the why 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. I think too, like...

649
04:01:14.680 --> 04:01:35.690
Having a basic understanding of what a good why is versus a bad why. Yeah, we didn't really talk about that, did we? But generally speaking, I think the best way to characterize a good why is that it's something that is bigger or more important than yourself. Yes. I think if you dig down and ultimately you find that your why is...

650
04:01:35.960 --> 04:01:58.640
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 year that's going to be a weak wife. And generally the strongest wise are the sorts of things that you're like, you know what? I don't matter. Right. Right.

651
04:01:58.910 --> 04:02:18.502
I will do anything for my kid or I will do anything for my church or I will do anything for the environment. You know, like 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.

652
04:02:18.502 --> 04:02:46.008
of some, a good form of why. The other good form of why I would say is, is around creativity. 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, 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,

653
04:02:47.273 --> 04:03:10.342
play music if nobody ever heard me play. It's just because it's like the pure joy and satisfaction of playing is fundamentally enriching in my life. That's a good why as well. It's like try to stay aligned with that. Yeah. We talked a little bit about – in this section too, we talked a little bit about this where if you do start out with a why that –

654
04:03:10.342 --> 04:03:32.414
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? But it eventually did change into something else. Sometimes that can happen. So sometimes we need to abandon something if we don't have a good why for it. But sometimes the why can change too, right? So like in that case, I changed from my vanity, which is –

655
04:03:32.414 --> 04:04:00.325
If I'm honest, it's still important to me, right? Sure. Like on some level. But really what it grew into was, oh, this is a lifelong skill that I'm developing that's going to help me until the day I die, basically. Like hopefully I'm going to be one of those 80-year-old people like my great uncle who I'm still out there skiing and I can do the splits and all of that kind of stuff. So your why can change. But sometimes you also just need to let something go because there's no foundation for your why and your purpose. I think that's a really good point.

656
04:04:00.325 --> 04:04:13.049
A really good point, though, is that like those those weaker wise don't go away. Yeah. Yeah. You just need to find the bigger, stronger one. Like, yeah, you you never will stop caring. You will always want, you know.

657
04:04:13.488 --> 04:04:43.475
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 and 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 just on a very ugly treadmill and it's not gonna get any slower. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so yeah, zooming in a little bit. So zooming in, so we're going, that's the super big picture now cutting in super, super tight.

658
04:04:43.475 --> 04:05:02.476
I have this concept that 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 call it 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.

659
04:05:03.657 --> 04:05:27.856
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. And it's like, okay, well, let's break that down. Like...

660
04:05:27.991 --> 04:05:55.463
what about five minutes of meditation? It's like, yeah, it's still kind of like, okay, what about one minute of meditation, right? Like, just go sit on the fucking floor. How about that? You don't even have to. Just sit on the floor and just do like 30 seconds. And it's 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 can do five minutes. And then you do the five minutes and then you're like,

661
04:05:55.463 --> 04:06:19.223
I could do 10, you know, and then you do 10 and 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 it was either zero or 20. If you sit down and do five, that's better than zero. Right. So 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. Yeah.

662
04:06:19.223 --> 04:06:45.110
It's just that something gets done. I've 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 am struggling with or I'm delaying, this is the first thing that I go to. I'm like, how can I break this down into something that's not intimidating? So with workouts, I did this just the other night. We had a long shoot day. I got home like 6 p.m.,

663
04:06:45.110 --> 04:07:00.128
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.

664
04:07:00.128 --> 04:07:18.910
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...

665
04:07:19.923 --> 04:07:41.894
Just write one sentence. Just put together one non-shitty sentence. Like, doesn't have to be good. Doesn't have to sing. 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, I kind of know what the next sentence is. And, well, let me just finish this paragraph. And, you know, next thing you know, you've got two pages written. Right.

666
04:07:42.653 --> 04:08:07.274
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. A long time. Many different ways. And what really clicked for me when doing this episode was that –

667
04:08:07.274 --> 04:08:26.495
how that really helps with the emotional side of the scope. So what you're really addressing is kind of like this overwhelm that 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 surprising. But if you think about it.

668
04:08:26.495 --> 04:08:50.626
They went from, okay, we're in a factory. We want to build a car, but we have to break that process down. And so they're like, this is how you should do it. What they missed was it's because it's an emotional problem, not a tactical, rational problem. It's an emotional problem. You have this big, huge task in front of you, and you need to break it down into more manageable emotions that are attached to this task. Right. Like we keep saying, procrastination is an emotional problem.

669
04:08:50.626 --> 04:09:06.117
Self-control is an emotional problem. Like this is not a problem of information. It's not a problem of motivation. It is an emotional problem. It'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 do that.

670
04:09:06.117 --> 04:09:30.181
Yeah. And with the minimum viable actions to don't underestimate like a small win, the impact of a small win. Yeah. That can have an outsized 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 underestimate that. It's not linear. It's exponential and how good that feels. Absolutely. Yeah. Not not to get off on the too much of a tangent, but like, yeah, I've noticed that.

671
04:09:30.181 --> 04:09:52.760
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 drastic thing to turn my life around. And it's like actually, no, dude, you just need to go get like, yeah, go get a couple of small wins under your belt. Like.

672
04:09:52.760 --> 04:10:10.698
That will actually – that will move mountains for you. Like it 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. Yeah. So the next one is addressing those underlying emotions. This is kind of –

673
04:10:10.698 --> 04:10:31.319
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 it? Why are we angry about it? Why are we bored? What's so painful about this task? And addressing those emotions that we attach to these dreadful tasks that we have to do or perceived dreadful tasks.

674
04:10:31.319 --> 04:10:49.561
So we talked about the RAIN method. This is one way. It's really just more about mindfulness, though. Being aware. So your RAIN method, remember to recognize, allow, investigate, and non-attachment 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.

675
04:10:49.561 --> 04:11:17.995
And you can, I mean, there's different ways you could be more mindful around this, but this, I've found a new 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's, yeah, that's how you can start to address the underlying emotions. And I think it's important to emphasize, because I, I,

676
04:11:17.995 --> 04:11:31.968
I imagine that there's some subset of listeners right now who just went through four hours of information and the history of procrastination and the crazier. And they get to the end and they're like, ah, fuck, it's about emotions.

677
04:11:32.677 --> 04:11:50.783
You mean I got to go to therapy to like get my work done? And it's like, no, no, you don't have to. Like, sure, it would help. But like 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.

678
04:11:50.952 --> 04:12:05.633
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.

679
04:12:06.258 --> 04:12:29.292
Alter the action or the expectation in your head 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 the way you approach an activity to try to find a way that makes it a little bit more exciting or fun for yourself. So, like, it's just –

680
04:12:29.292 --> 04:12:56.073
Until you're aware of the emotion that's underlying 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, these all tie together, right? And so if you have, like, an environment that's bringing up a lot of these emotions, too, fixing that will help. But, again, it 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 something.

681
04:12:56.073 --> 04:13:15.361
Uh, you know, work situation that happens a lot too. Um, but yeah, becoming more self-awareness. We talk a lot about self-awareness in a lot of different areas. And, um, that's a skill too, that you develop over time and self-awareness around why you do and don't do things. Um, yeah.

682
04:13:15.361 --> 04:13:43.323
I think that you have to find some method, whether that's through more meditation or maybe you do need to go through to therapy just to get a little more self-aware around your emotions. But at the end of the day, yes, I'm sorry. It's about emotions and you do have to address it. 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

683
04:13:43.323 --> 04:13:59.455
It's like, look, accept that. That's just how it's going to be. And it's probably never going to change. I'm never going to have this like real big excitement to, I don't know, clean my house or whatever it is. But that's OK. You got it. You got to work with that. So you're telling me there's no notion template to solve my anxiety issues? I've tried them all.

684
04:14:00.029 --> 04:14:22.102
I have tried them all. That's a good point you make, though. That's a million-dollar idea. Get this notion template to solve all of your anxiety issues. Right, right. I think that's a way we avoid the underlying motions around all of this is trying, like we talked about this, trying to find the new app or the new system or whatever it is. Oh, yeah. That is avoidance.

685
04:14:22.102 --> 04:14:50.080
That is not addressing the underlying emotions here. You're recognize 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 fix. 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. A hundred percent. For sure. Well, let's talk about how I deal with my unpleasant emotions, which is I just find a way to make it fun. Yeah. Party boy, Mark. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

686
04:14:50.603 --> 04:15:15.123
So a friend of the show, Ali Abdaal, has a great book about this called Feel Good Productivity. And for me, my favorite thing about that book, it was reading that book. It was one of those things that I had personally believed and felt for a long time, but I didn't really know how to say it. And I had never really seen it said well anywhere else. And I feel like he was kind of the first person to say it, which is like –

687
04:15:15.123 --> 04:15:34.462
You can find a way to make boring things fun. There are actual ways that you can apply certain principles that just make something that's drudgery feel more interesting. I think you mentioned CrossFit earlier. I think CrossFit is like a prime example of this, right? Like most people don't enjoy working out. So what did CrossFit do? They gamified it.

688
04:15:34.462 --> 04:15:58.998
Like they created systems and achievements and goals 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 gamify anything. You can track progress on anything. You can –

689
04:15:58.998 --> 04:16:27.213
Again, if you've got social accountability, you know, 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 leverage it, you know,

690
04:16:27.213 --> 04:16:33.693
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.

691
04:16:34.452 --> 04:16:57.622
What are some examples, specific examples you've used around, I mean, 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 not think just tracking is fun. I think progress is fun. Progress. Okay. So one thing that I find very fun, I'm a very competitive person. And one of the, like, I agree, tracking is annoying. Yeah. I don't, the tracking itself, I don't enjoy. Okay. Okay.

692
04:16:57.622 --> 04:17:04.996
What I enjoy is the competition with myself. OK. Right? So it's like I know how much weight I lifted

693
04:17:05.452 --> 04:17:34.645
on every exercise last week, right? And so 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 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, you know, like hopping out of bed. But like, it makes it interesting enough that it's not as hard to go and it's not as hard to finish the workout. It takes what would be,

694
04:17:34.645 --> 04:17:59.502
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, you know, if you, let's say there's a podcast you love, like two handsome men talking about procrastination for four hours, you can, you can...

695
04:18:00.025 --> 04:18:28.308
You can make a rule with yourself that you can only listen to the Solve podcast while you're doing housework. I've got a couple of podcasts that are just frivolous and fun. And they're my chores podcasts. I don't listen to them at any other time. It's like when I'm doing the dishes and taking out the trash and cleaning the office, that's when I put this podcast on. Because it takes what is normally just a painful, boring experience.

696
04:18:28.308 --> 04:18:45.098
And it makes it interesting for me. And you can lump activities together like that. You know, if you love audio books, you know, make a deal with yourself that you can only listen to audio books 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.

697
04:18:45.098 --> 04:19:00.927
So I did think of actually ways I have made things fun. For me, though, it's more of a, it combines the social aspect to it, too, though. So CrossFit being the example that you gave. But I like it, instead of having a home gym, I just, I don't like having, I need to leave the house for whatever it is.

698
04:19:00.927 --> 04:19:23.776
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 there's a social aspect to that. I used to do jujitsu too. Like you go in, there's a very social aspect to that obviously too. So yeah, for, for some people, for you, you have fun with competition with yourself.

699
04:19:23.776 --> 04:19:48.937
For me, even though I'm also introverted in a lot of ways, that social, there's still some social reward in a lot of it. In my yoga studio, I go to too. There's, yeah, there's that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean- So what's fun for you could be fun for somebody else. Yeah, everybody's fun is a little bit different. Right. But the principles are the same. I think Ali even goes through this. He's like, gamify it, make it social, and then like batch it with something that you enjoy. Right.

700
04:19:48.937 --> 04:20:17.506
So those are the three tried and true methods. I think he has a couple more in his book that I'm probably not thinking of at the moment. So, all right, last one, and I know this is the spicy one, but just really quick, productive procrastination, 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 like juggling steak knives. You can hurt yourself.

701
04:20:17.506 --> 04:20:42.346
If you're not very focused and adept 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 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.

702
04:20:42.346 --> 04:21:10.544
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 procrastination 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. Yeah.

703
04:21:10.544 --> 04:21:16.079
A drum I've been banging on for a long time now is that everything in life is a trade-off. There's no...

704
04:21:16.315 --> 04:21:44.513
There's no win. No win is 100% a win. There's always some downside somewhere. No free lunch, yeah. So in that spirit, we like to finish every episode with what are the hidden costs or what is the hidden tradeoff of solving this area of your life? And so 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 handle on it, yeah.

705
04:21:44.902 --> 04:22:00.359
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're, you're probably going to lose hobbies, interests, or diversions. Like there are going to be certain things in your life that you do genuinely like and appreciate. Uh,

706
04:22:00.359 --> 04:22:27.275
that you're just going to 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, um, you know, the, the tick tock channels that you, you enjoy watching. Like you're just going to, you're going to 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,

707
04:22:27.275 --> 04:22:51.845
That can suck. I experienced this a lot with video games. Like one rule I discovered I had to create for myself was no multiplayer video games because I'm too competitive. 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, dude. I'm going to practice. I'm going to like – I'm going to grind. I'm going to get so good at this. I'm going to beat all of you. You're going to talk trash on your headset. You're going to –

708
04:22:51.845 --> 04:23:15.098
I've 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 I miss it sometimes. Like, I really do miss it. Like, I have very fond memories of certain games that I did get very good at. And – but that's just – that's the price of – you know, it's not worth giving up –

709
04:23:15.098 --> 04:23:40.276
my business and my career and my marriage. So I've chosen those things over it. We talked a little bit already about trading a lower value for a higher value. And we talked about it in the previous episode too. But that's pretty a 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 that clear tradeoff. You know you should make it.

710
04:23:40.276 --> 04:24:04.390
It's a struggle, but you do. Sometimes, though, you also like in my situation, I've had to adjust 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.

711
04:24:04.390 --> 04:24:33.365
That takes a lot of time. So workouts and you 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 some of my like woodworking has kind of I haven't been able to do as much just because I have less time now for that. And that's kind of a big like I love woodworking and it's great. And it adds a lot of fun and enjoyment and meaning to my life. But I guess I did realize that

712
04:24:33.365 --> 04:25:02.542
taking care of my health long-term is probably more important right now and then will be more important in the future. And I can woodwork longer. Hopefully, you know, it's a physical activity. I'm going to need that when I'm old, you know, when I'm an old man in the woodshop. And so, yeah, sometimes it's really clear that, oh, I need to give up this kind of lower value, this lower fun that I have in my life for something that's more important. And sometimes it's not quite as clear cut though, too. Yeah. So,

713
04:25:02.542 --> 04:25:15.637
It can be ambiguous. All right. What do you have? Yeah. So this one might get a might ruffle a few feathers from a certain type of person. Yes. You got to lower your standards and accept your limitations.

714
04:25:15.755 --> 04:25:42.653
I know there's a certain type of person out there that's going to say, what? No, I'm not going to lower my standards. That's not what productivity is. That's not what getting your life together means. It's raising your standards. Actually, there are certain situations where you just have to accept reality, I think is really what it is. And like we already mentioned one thing, celebrate those little wins that probably don't look very sexy on the outside or to anyone else. But –

715
04:25:43.092 --> 04:26:10.767
That's a, that's a win. Like a win is a win here. And like lower your standards from I'm going to get 10 million things done today, you know, to I'm going to 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're, you are speaking on this, this one, you were speaking as a recovered perfectionist. That's right. Like this is, I think this is the one that the perfectionists like really struggle with is like.

716
04:26:11.341 --> 04:26:39.640
Yes. Like, no, it has 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 friend of the pod, Oliver Berkman's 4000 Weeks. Fantastic book. That's one of the most recommended books I recommend to people. Yeah, it's just it is the subtitle is called productivity for mortals, which I love. It's it's all about this. It's all about like.

717
04:26:39.910 --> 04:26:56.600
You can't do everything. Yeah. Accepting your finitude is the kind of way he puts it. Yeah. Like, not only can you not do everything, but, like, A, coming to that realization, and then B, like, properly prioritizing the things you can do is a very difficult thing. Yeah. And this kind of, like...

718
04:26:56.768 --> 04:27:25.490
a lot of it's a critique of just kind of the productivity industry in general, like the mentality of like, bro, you just got to, you just got to hustle, man. You just got to 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,

719
04:27:26.030 --> 04:27:47.292
You probably only have the capacity to do a handful of things like that in your entire life, right? So, yeah, you have to get very realistic on timelines and capacity and time management and everything. So I'm a huge fan of that. Here's a drawback that I think a lot of people –

720
04:27:47.630 --> 04:28:00.455
or won't consider, which is that if you handle your procrastination, you're going to have to give up your excuses. Ah, yeah. Oh, that we hold on to so dearly. You're going to have to own your bullshit. You're going to have to own...

721
04:28:01.940 --> 04:28:24.957
Suddenly, some of these stories and narratives that you've had, maybe in many cases for your entire life, 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 going to have to let that go. Yeah. It's like, again, it comes back to the pure steel thing about reality. It's like the best...

722
04:28:24.957 --> 04:28:46.540
The best people at not procrastinating are the people who are the most realistic and who understand. They're like, yeah, that's just a story I tell myself. Right. To justify, like, not doing the thing I don't want to do. And that sucks. Yeah. 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. Right.

723
04:28:46.540 --> 04:29:15.869
Yeah, that goes back a little bit to we can sneak for it back in here. If we want to 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 of those. That can be a painful thing, too, because those defense 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 ego flexibility. Yes.

724
04:29:16.426 --> 04:29:41.941
And not building an ego around the lower values and building them 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 and 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.

725
04:29:41.941 --> 04:29:55.120
And that's also painful. Those relationships have served some sort of purpose in your life. It might not be a healthy purpose, but it's served 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.

726
04:29:55.441 --> 04:30:13.227
If there are certain work, there's going to be situations too where it's like in work situations where you might not be able to get away from somebody. You're going to have to set up some boundaries. That might be a little bit. Have some uncomfortable conversations with these people. It's going to be – there's more opportunities for you to manage emotions. Let's just say that in these situations. Yeah. Yeah. It's –

727
04:30:13.227 --> 04:30:34.996
In some cases, it will be removing the people from your life or reducing your exposure to the people in your life. And 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, do you respect the person you're trying to win respect from? Because…

728
04:30:35.097 --> 04:30:54.554
And a lot of cases you don't. You don't, yeah. 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 approved 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 –

729
04:30:54.554 --> 04:31:15.192
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 do think there is a little bit of a misconception in just self-help in general, which is that like, there's like a cliched advice of like, you know,

730
04:31:15.192 --> 04:31:36.893
Stop seeking validation from others. I think that's impossible. It's not, you don't stop seeking validations from others. You seek validations 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. Right. So again, it's like finding that lever to push you in the right direction.

731
04:31:36.893 --> 04:32:03.353
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. Yeah.

732
04:32:03.353 --> 04:32:21.562
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 effective. 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 –

733
04:32:21.562 --> 04:32:51.548
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 also, 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 you to be those things. And ultimately, that's a good thing. So it's an example of a desirable stress, I would say. In fact,

734
04:32:51.548 --> 04:33:17.553
most of these in most cases are things that you would like to trade off. So don't get the wrong idea that 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. And with the higher expectations, one, two, that you got to be careful because then you lead into the situations where you're not saying no. And we talked about that, the certain type of...

735
04:33:17.553 --> 04:33:40.098
uh, procrastinator, uh, who, who takes on too much at that point too. And then you just end up procrastinating more. 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, uh, I'm curious in all the research and prep and recording that we've done for this episode. Um, you know,

736
04:33:40.098 --> 04:34:09.612
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 out. I was like, OK, how how bad are these distractions? So we're talking about the environmental side of it. It's bad.

737
04:34:09.612 --> 04:34:36.494
It's very, very bad. And what it did for me is it really made me get, again, get honest. I knew that being honest with myself was actually a key to this. You know, don't buy the food. Don't buy the junk food and put it in the fridge, all that kind of stuff. I already knew that. I, though, realized really the impact of environment really came home for me in a lot of this. But what the – I took it one step further, too, and –

738
04:34:36.697 --> 04:34:59.157
It was very surprising to me just to learn how important emotions are. I mean, I knew they were important. I knew procrastination on some level was an emotional problem. But I think we've come to the conclusion that it's all an emotional problem. 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 –

739
04:34:59.157 --> 04:35:15.458
connections, relationships, even ego stuff, like it's only relevant in so much as it alters and affects your emotions. Right. Right. Right. Like your ego is 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.

740
04:35:15.458 --> 04:35:45.192
In so far as though what I've changed specifically, I've used more of the mindfulness, like the RAIN method. And I've definitely implemented that into my daily habits and routines. Now, when I start to procrastinate on something, I'm much better at it now to just stopping, catching myself. Okay, what's going on? And achieving that last step in the RAIN model, which is non-identification. I'm like, oh, this is what I'm feeling right now. I'm not going to identify with it so much that it's just going to derail my next hour or day or whatever. So that's been a huge win for me anyway.

741
04:35:45.192 --> 04:36:06.573
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 quite a bit throughout my adult life and done it very intensely for periods and done it not at all for periods. I'm currently in a not at all period. But it's funny. Prepping for this episode, it's –

742
04:36:07.315 --> 04:36:32.662
Making me think that I should kind of get back on the meditation train. You know, I've done it on and off 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 like I'm the stimulus junkie in me is like is getting is is becoming a little bit of a dope fiend. Yeah.

743
04:36:32.847 --> 04:36:59.054
And it was just interesting going through all this research and really seeing the importance of that self-awareness, the importance of boredom, the importance of being able to sit in stillness and recognize emotions and, and, you know, that gap. So in Buddhism, they, 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've definitely felt my gap shrinking over the past couple of years.

744
04:36:59.206 --> 04:37:16.334
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 to maybe get back on the mat and put some time in again.

745
04:37:16.334 --> 04:37:42.153
Yeah. I recently heard 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, OK, you can't control what happens to you. Sometimes you can't like your reaction is sometimes not what you control either, but the interpretation in between.

746
04:37:42.153 --> 04:38:10.553
and then it can obviously influence the action that you take. So that's been a big one for me too. Another mindfulness 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, I think we realized researching this one and we're like, yeah, if this is all about emotional regulation, we should probably just do an episode on emotional regulation. Yeah, that's going to be a foundation gap for sure. Yeah.