How to Stop Procrastinating, Solved

From Plato and Aristotle to Freud and modern research, we break down why we delay the things that matter most—and how to actually stop. This isn't a “just set a timer” productivity talk. We’re diving deep into shame, identity, perfectionism, culture, and why procrastination is ultimately a *skill issue*, not a moral failure. We cover things like: How humans have thought about putting things off for over 2000 years, the real reason you avoid the most important tasks in your life, why “I work better under pressure” is (usually) BS, why self-compassion is actually more motivating than guilt, tons of practical, research-backed strategies you can start using todayAnd much, much, much more. Get your free PDF guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/procrastination CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:05 Episode Roadmap 00:08:20 What exactly is procrastination? 00:15:50 Plato's Thoughts on Procrastination 00:24:07 The Buddhist & Confucian Views on Procrastination 00:26:19 Aristotle's Take on Procrastination 00:33:50 Christianity and Procrastination 00:46:53 Self-Compassion and Procrastination 00:58:45 The Reformation and Procrastination 01:04:25 Freud's Influence on Psychology 01:06:40 Pleasure Principle and Reality Principle 01:08:13 Id, Ego, and Superego 01:10:26 Defense Mechanisms 01:17:20 Adopting Habits as Identity 01:23:05 The Influence of Childhood and Parenting on Procrastination 01:33:42 Behaviorism 01:41:21 Environmental Design 01:46:10 Thriving Under Pressure: A Critique 01:52:10 Expectation, Pressure, and Procrastination 01:54:06 Critique of Behaviorism 01:59:20 Time Management 02:07:33 Knowledge vs Emotion in Procrastination 02:16:43 Mark and Drew's Personal Productivity Systems 02:20:37 Deep Work and Task Management 02:23:12 Productivity System for ADHD 02:29:26 Productive Procrastination 02:34:22 Importance of Task Completion 02:36:51 Existentialism and Purpose 02:44:21 Purpose and Motivation 02:53:40 Temporal Motivation Theory 02:57:39 Limitations of Temporal Motivation Theory 02:59:22 The Role of Technology in Procrastination 03:07:10 The Dynamic Nature of Temporal Motivation Theory 03:10:59 Critique of Temporal Motivation Theory 03:16:41 Emotional Regulation Theory of Procrastination 03:20:27 Understanding Emotional Regulation 03:23:04 Managing Emotions and Environment 03:28:09 Introduction to the RAIN Method 03:31:07 The Six Types of Procrastinators 03:40:21 The 80-20 of Procrastination 03:46:21 Strategic Use of Friction 03:56:11 Gamifying Tasks to Make Them More Interesting 03:58:49 The Impact of Environment on Productivity 04:01:07 The Role of Purpose in Overcoming Procrastination 04:06:06 The Concept of "Minimum Viable Action" 04:11:26 Addressing Underlying Emotions to Overcome Procrastination 04:16:06 Leveraging Human Nature and Rewards 04:20:06 The Social Aspect of Overcoming Procrastination 04:21:19 Productive Procrastination: A Double-Edged Sword 04:22:32 The Hidden Costs of Overcoming Procrastination 04:39:12 Conclusion ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/217i5ys5 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  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 Bernie. Now Drew and I have been in the personal growth and mental health space for a combined 30 years now, and we've had enough. We've had enough of the bullshit, empty promises, and fake solutions. Every episode of Solved, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, evidence-based, value-delivering podcast on earth on that specific topic. And today's topic is procrastination. Now, the catch of Solved is that whatever topic we cover, our goal is that it is the last time you will ever feel a need to listen to a podcast on that topic.

• 0:44Mark Manson?

  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.

• 1:04Mark Manson?

  Drew, I have two things to say before we get started.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08Mark Manson?

  Before we solve procrastination for the entire world.

• 1:14Mark Manson?

  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 like three months? How many months did it take us to shoot this?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Pretty close to that, yeah.

• 1:36Mark Manson?

  So be confident, listener, that your hosts are experts on procrastination.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Very familiar with the topic we're about to discuss, yes.

• 1:44Mark Manson?

  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. You're not clever.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  We've made that same joke 10 times.

• 1:58Mark Manson?

  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, "Yeah, you're very cute."

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Those people haven't even made it that far yet, though. This far yet, so yeah.

• 2:13Mark Manson?

  That's true, so.

• 2:16Mark Manson?

  All right, so today is procrastination. We are solving procrastination. Just a reminder to the listener, the whole premise of this podcast is that this is the last podcast that you should ever have to listen to on this topic. Drew and I and our research team have gone just absurdly in-depth researching, trying to understand this topic. It is, this episode is absolutely comprehensive. It is everything you need to know about procrastination, and then some. You're probably gonna wanna 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

• 2:54Mark Manson?

  to take another seminar, it's all here. So, first, some statistics. Procrastination is something that pretty much everybody struggles with. This is not surprising. 95% of adults report procrastinating at least some of the time. To me, the most surprising part of that stat is who the fuck are the 5%? Yeah, show me them. 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 report being chronic procrastinators, which essentially means that you are just literally procrastinating everything all the time. Right.

• 3:38Mark Manson?

  Anything you try to do, you end up procrastinating, which that is, that's a shocking amount, 25% of people. So, this is a huge problem. This is like, this is a massive affliction that, you know, gets to us all. So, some of the things that we're gonna go through, procrastination as a topic is really interesting because it is, it is such a common human occurrence that there is thought on it going back 2,500 years. So, we went back 2,500 years, and we're gonna cover Basically, the entire corpus of human thought and approach towards procrastination since the beginning of civilization. And it's actually kind of surprising because a lot of things that we take to be true, or a lot of our assumptions of what procrastination

• 4:23Mark Manson?

  is, are relatively modern. They're not, they're, they're pretty recent and, and, 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. 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 like, kind of doesn't make sense in a, in a certain philosophical way. Of course, we're going to cover all the latest research on

• 5:05Mark Manson?

  procrastination. We're actually going to cover the entire history of research on procrastination. And because a lot of it got it wrong. And a lot of the conventional wisdom and typical self-help advice today is based on that old research that got it wrong. And the new research is, says some things quite different than maybe what you're expecting. And of course, we are going to go through at least a dozen different tactics and strategies that the listener can implement to help lessen procrastination in their lives. I think if there's one thing that I've learned preparing for this episode, Drew, is that I don't think procrastination's ever something that we just like completely get rid of. I think that it is, it just seems

• 5:48Mark Manson?

  to be kind of a side effect or a cost of being humans who have agency and have complex brains. We'll get more into that, but I, I do think it is incumbent on all of us to do all the things that we can to lessen or mitigate the procrastination in our lives. And I do think that is very much attainable for most people relatively quickly. So, before we get into it, anything you want to add, Drew? What are you most excited for? I mean, it, this is- What are you procrastinating? Oh, God.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I mean, you hit the nail on the head. This is a very common, very pervasive problem. And we all struggle with it. And I think there's just, there's a tragedy, kind of a tragic side to it as well. Cause you know, what, what else is there to do but do the things you want to do in life, right? And then we put those things, those very things off. So I think a lot of people are going to find, there's just going to be a big nod fest going on. While you're listening to this. And yeah, I'm excited to get into it because it's something I struggle with quite a bit. I don't know if I'm a chronic procrastinator, but I, there's chronic strains of procrastination that I sometimes run into for sure.

• 6:56Mark Manson?

  Sure. I have a lot of experience with this, just being an author, a self-employed person for my entire career. So we'll, we'll get into that. And you mentioned something, which is like, kind of the tragedy of it is that what we'll, 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 so screwed up. Like that's so unfair. Why does that happen?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll dig into why that is, but yeah, it's fascinating.

• 7:33Mark Manson?

  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 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 by going to solvedpodcast.com/procrastination. That's solvedpodcast.com/procrastination. The link is also in the description if you want to get it through there.

• 8:17Mark Manson?

  All right, let's get started. Okay. So let's start off with a couple of definitions first, because it, I was actually surprised how hard it was to actually pin down a technical definition of procrastination.

• 8:31Mark Manson?

  Even the one that I chose, as we'll see, there's a little bit of wiggle room with it. So there's a researcher named Pierre Steele in 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. 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.

• 9:15Mark Manson?

  So the first factor is an unnecessary delay, right? I think this is important because prioritization is not procrastination. Like if my plan is to write a script this morning, but then my wife gets in a car accident and I 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 and fabricated. 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.

• 9:55Mark Manson?

  I think this is why so many people procrastinate things like working out or eating well because that feedback loop is so insanely long. You know, it's like 10, 20, 30 years before you actually experienced a repercussion for that decision. It's very easy to convince yourself that like 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 this is where it gets tricky. Like I actually found this whole definition very interesting because all three of these factors are ultimately subjective. Like who says a delay is unnecessary? Who's to decide what's necessary and what's not necessary, right?

• 10:40Mark Manson?

  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've convinced myself that there is no negative consequence that's gonna 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, when else am I gonna be able to watch this Netflix show? If not for right now? And then, of course, I bullshit myself of saying that, like, I'm aware, I know that this is gonna cause a negative. It's like, well, who knows, right? Like, maybe, you know, a book will write itself. Right? It happens all the time.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I definitely ran into this too, and talking with people about this, you know, 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.

• 11:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  It's very subjective.

• 11:37Mark Manson?

  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 kinda surprised me, and I guess, well, I guess it makes sense, is that there is a cultural element to this that I think is worth 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, it's not a huge deal. Turning something in late is not really judged or viewed as something negative.

• 12:20Mark Manson?

  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. 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.

• 13:02Mark Manson?

  Whereas coming from American culture where I'm like, dude, I was here at 10 a.m. It's 10:45. We still haven't even like talked about the business thing. I see it as rude that they're like wasting my time. So this concept of time and punctuality is very culturally dependent. And what I found interesting, there's a social psychologist from 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 he talked about how certain cultures have different orientations towards time.

• 13:42Mark Manson?

  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 gonna do a thing at 11:30 and you show up at 11:35. 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 11:30 and they show up at 11:40, as long as they show up in a way that's like feels justified or is like emotionally consistent with the people around them, it's not seen as being late.

• 14:26Mark Manson?

  You know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, we were gonna be here 15 minutes ago, but like, I was hanging out with 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 emotions and relationships. Like in Brazil, if I don't sit there and kind of chit chat for 20 minutes, that is seen as some sort of productive failure because I'm not doing the work to maintain the relationship with that person. Okay, yeah. Anyway, it's just very interesting.

• 15:11Mark Manson?

  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. And I think it really just comes back to, I think, probably a more effective way to just frame this entire discussion is why do we consistently fail at doing the things we wish we could do? Right. Like, we have things that we know are good for us and we want to do them, yet we don't do them.

• 15:56Mark Manson?

  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. 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.

• 16:38Mark Manson?

  They're like, if you're not doing the thing, it's because deep down you actually don't think it's worth doing. That if you thought it was worth doing, then you would just go do it. And it's kind of interesting that the earliest take ever on procrastination is like super spicy like that. I wouldn't expect that. I would expect something like, you know, uh, uh, I don't know, start small or, um, you know, like, give yourself a little reward, a piece of candy if you like, if you do something that, that you've been putting off. And it's like, Plato 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, it's just like, that, that doesn't feel true. Does that feel true to you?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely not, no. Like, definition you brought up earlier, and we'll get into that a little more too.

• 17:27Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Despite knowing part, right?

• 17:29Mark Manson?

  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.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  So Plato's full of shit.

• 17:44Mark Manson?

  No, that's, so, okay, I'm, I'm being, 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 dialogues, Socrates just kind of like clowns the, the person. And there, there, 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, uh, somebody who like, followed and learned from Socrates. So especially in,

• 18:29Mark Manson?

  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's mouth. 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.

• 19:09Mark Manson?

  So later on in The Republic, which was actually, seems to be very clearly Plato's thoughts and ideas, he kind of backtracked a little bit. And The Republic is the first place that you see this idea of what he called the tripartite soul. 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. 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?

• 19:54Mark Manson?

  It's the anger, it's the love, it's the passions, the joy, it's the sadness. And then you have the rational, which is like, the calculating and the logic and all that stuff. Plato's argument is that he used the metaphor of a chariot, which is that the rational part of yourself is like, the driver 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. But they're wild horses. And so sometimes they're gonna buck, and they're gonna run, and they're gonna try

• 20:36Mark Manson?

  to go in different directions, and it's gonna be chaotic, right? And in The Republic, Plato said that it is essentially what procrastination is, or back then they called it a crasia. 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, hey, we should go to the gym, and the horses just start going towards the fridge. That's right. For another piece of cold pizza. And you're like, wait, no.

• 21:11Mark Manson?

  And then 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 crasia or procrastination as a knowledge problem. It was, your problem isn't that you don't have willpower. The problem isn't that you don't have discipline. The problem is that you just aren't aware enough of the repercussions of your choices. He kind of puts forth this argument that like, if people were just more knowledgeable and educated on what their choices were causing in their life, they wouldn't make those choices.

• 21:55Mark Manson?

  And I personally think this is a very idealistic view. I think it's, it feels nice. I mean, there's something to it clearly, like, knowledge certainly does help, probably at the margins. But I also just think it's, it's, I don't know, it's too like roses and rainbows. It doesn't match my personal experience. And I don't think it matches most of the people that I know who really struggle with procrastination and not doing the right thing.

• 22:23Mark Manson?

  But it is, it's a nice, it feels good to believe. It feels good to believe in like, oh, if I just 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 gonna, I'm not gonna name names, but I was on social media the other day, and I see this stuff all the time. So this is a very prominent person in our space posted this. They said, "Your entire life will change when you realize that you have to sacrifice short-term freedom in order to earn long-term freedom. Instant gratification will kill your dreams." It has over a quarter of a million views and 7,000 likes, right?

• 23:08Mark Manson?

  No shit, Sherlock.

• 23:11Mark Manson?

  Like, everybody knows that.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  We all know the information.

• 23:13Mark Manson?

  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, then it wouldn't be so hard. It would be a little bit easier to get up early in the morning and, you know, put on your workout shoes and, you know, start with the hardest task of your day and, you know, all those things that we wish we could do. So, that's kind of the first school of thought. We're gonna return to it quite a bit. It, like, most of Plato's ideas, they never really go away. It's interesting, we actually, you and I, talked to pretty much the most prominent researcher on procrastination in

• 23:56Mark Manson?

  the world, Fuchsia Sera, and even talking to her, she brought this up multiple times. This never really disappears, but it starts, it starts with Plato.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:07Mark Manson?

  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 spin-off of the Platonic idea that I think is worth talking about just briefly, simply because I think when, towards the end of the episode, when we talk about interventions and tactics and strategies, there is a little bit of the Buddhist approach that I think makes sense. So Buddhism saw procrastination 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, I actually think there's probably a lot more

• 24:50Mark Manson?

  value in the Buddhist approach. Like, I just know from my own life, you know, I, like, as you know, I went through this huge weight loss journey over many years, and a big component of that was like really understanding where my food cravings were coming from. What was causing my distractions when I couldn't focus or get any work done? And sure enough, usually there's like some emotion underneath the surface that's like driving things, and becoming aware of that or mindful of that, and then learning how to, how to deal or negotiate with that emotion is super useful. So, I, I thought, like, the Buddhist twist on the ignorance, is, on the procrastination as a knowledge issue, I actually think there's...

• 25:35Mark Manson?

  It carries some water. Sticking with eastern philosophy, just want to touch really quick on Confucianism. From, I'm not, I'm by no means an expert on Confucianism, but by the little bit of research I did, it didn't seem like there was a whole lot directly written about it. But the interesting thing about Confucianism is that there is so much emphasis put on accountability and social pressure. Everything in Confucianism is kind of written in such a way of like, you have to do the right thing to honor your family, your society, your, your country, your emperor, whatever. There's a nugget in there as well that's actually really important and useful that we will come back to much later, but that social pressure and accountability is like a legit thing. This finally brings us

• 26:19Mark Manson?

  to Aristotle. So Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, wrote quite a bit about acroasia, or procrastination. He wrote quite a bit about why people don't do the things that they, they should be doing. And I have to say, dude, like, as somebody who has studied the psychology around this for a decade, going back and reading Aristotle's take, I'm like, oh, he nailed it. 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

• 27:00Mark Manson?

  why we don't do the things that we know we should do. So Aristotle essentially, here's like the super condensed version of what he says. Aristotle essentially saw procrastination as a skill issue. He said, like any other skill, we all are born terrible at it. And then as we grow older, we develop and practice and habituate ourselves to it. And anybody can learn to do it, anybody can practice it, anybody can develop the skill or discipline. And like any skill or discipline, some people are naturally extremely gifted at it, and some people are naturally not gifted at it, right? What's also interesting about this

• 27:42Mark Manson?

  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. Like, we all know we should do certain things and we just fail to do them. Look around you, yeah. Seriously, like, it's like, wake up, man.

• 27:57Mark Manson?

  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, 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 gotta 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

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  shit together. Aristotle's like, hey, man, we all struggle with this. This is a journey for all of us, and it's something that any of us can get better at. Any of us can practice it, we can develop the right habits, we can develop the right skills, and you can improve upon it. And so I think the first takeaway around all of this is that ultimately, there are, like, there's a little bit of truth in everything that each of those schools of thought said. There, you know, some of it is knowledge of the repercussions that are gonna 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

• 29:21Mark Manson?

  you, what's driving you. Some of it is finding good accountability systems and social pressure to like nudge you in the right direction. But ultimately, this is a skill issue. It's something that you can learn, it's something you can get better at, and it's something that you have to try to get better at. So, I'm curious, Drew, have you seen your procrastination as a skill issue? Because I certainly haven't most of my life. I'm curious what your experience?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  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. Not so, you know, morally corrupt.

• 30:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  And bankrupt in my ways. But, um, 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.

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And I feel that within myself even too today. So, yeah, definitely.

• 30:21Mark Manson?

  I think I started seeing it as a skill issue. Relatively late in my life. Yeah. I would say like well into adulthood. Like I have vague, I have vague memories in my twenties of like starting my first business and just being like incredibly upset at myself for playing too many video games or not being able to finish a work task in the amount of time that I allotted for myself, like just really chastising myself and beating myself up over it. And I feel like that's that's the default for most people. Like there is a shame and there's a moral judgment.

• 30:59Mark Manson?

  And what I found super fascinating and surprising is that that moral judgment is, is for the most part, didn't exist in the ancient world. You know, Aristotle saw, saw a a crasia or doing the right action. He saw, he, he had, he had a, 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, 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. And if you look at the Stoics, there's, there's a very similar vein there, right? It's like you should try to be virtuous.

• 31:42Mark Manson?

  The Stoics were a little bit more platonic in that they saw it as more of a, a lack, like a knowledge problem, but it, it's still the same attitude of like nobody's virtuous all the time. Nobody gets it right all the time. Just get up each day and try to do your best and try not to dwell on, on your failures and, and things like that. And it's, it's so fascinating, like going back and looking at those takes. Because that doesn't feel like anything I heard growing up.

• 32:14Mark Manson?

  I, I, I heard that you are, you are a, a 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, you know, like I, 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.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 32:46Mark Manson?

  Right? Like, I've been around people who have said really mean things about overweight people, and it's, it's, it's never about the weight. It's about the like, why can't they control themselves? Why can't they like, keep food out of their mouth?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Right, how could you let yourself go to that extent?

• 33:02Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:03Mark Manson?

  And, and we have similar judgments, like if somebody loses their job, or if somebody doesn't make a lot of money, um, it, it, it's, there's like a moral judgment. It's, and we just, we joked about it earlier, right? It's like, if I showed up an hour late for this shoot, you would judge me.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, I would.

• 33:22Mark Manson?

  Yes, you would.

• 33:25Mark Manson?

  So it's interesting that that didn't always exist. Like, that, that is, it started somewhere along the line. And, uh, drumroll, do you want to guess where it started?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  I have a good idea, but why don't you go ahead?

• 33:39Mark Manson?

  I'll, I'll give you one. It, it starts with a Chris and it ends with a Chianity.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. One of the seven deadly sins, right?

• 33:47Mark Manson?

  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, you can actually say, this is the moment that procrastination and a failure to act became a moral problem. It became a, a shame-ridden failure that, that signifies that you are a, a piece of scum.

• 34:16Mark Manson?

  Essentially.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:17Mark Manson?

  So the story actually starts in, in the late 4th century. Uh, Saint 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. And but it's interesting because Augustine, he was born pagan. He grew up, he was a rich kid. His parents were like aristocrats. He was kind of like that douchebag with a Ferrari in high school. Like he just not a care in the world, screwed around, partied all the time, was drinking a lot, seeing a bunch of different girls. Just life was on easy mode.

• 34:57Mark Manson?

  But the interesting thing about Augustine was that he was very smart and he was very philosophical. And so he was, he became curious about a bunch of different religions and I guess you'd call them cults. Throughout his early adult life, he kind of dabbled in a bunch of different schools of thought. Now, the interesting thing is that the Roman Empire had just converted to Christianity, maybe 50 years prior. And you have this gigantic empire and what essentially was kind of this fringe cult religion, which was Christianity, suddenly becomes the state religion and is now expected to be followed by like tens of millions of people.

• 35:39Mark Manson?

  So there was kind of this vacuum of strong theological knowledge that didn't exist at the time. There was like an early opportunity to fill that void, that theological void. Like they 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 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.

• 36:23Mark Manson?

  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 twenties, he's, he, he becomes pretty self loathing. Like, I think he, 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. 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, why do I keep drinking?

• 37:06Mark Manson?

  Why do I keep hooking up with all these women that I don't care about? And like, why can't I just get my shit together? And one day he's sitting in a garden and he's reading. And he hears a child singing outside saying, "Pick up the paper and read it. Pick up the paper and read it." Singing this like little lullaby or something. And so he happens to look down and he sees a parchment paper. 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 1313. And it says, "Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness,

• 37:50Mark Manson?

  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. 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. Yeah.

• 38:32Mark Manson?

  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 screw around anymore, he's like, very diligent and disciplined, and he's working his ass off, and he's like, achieving his potential, and he attributes all of this to God. So in his book, The Confessions, he talks about a craze. 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 gonna sell it to anybody else.

• 39:17Mark Manson?

  He stole it for the thrill of it. He stole it because it was something exciting to do, to kind of impress the other boys that he was hanging out with. And he looked at that, and with 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, you know, not being selfish. And his argument was that, anytime we sacrifice that higher level value for the lower level

• 39:56Mark Manson?

  value, that we succumb to our animalistic impulses, or urges, or desires, at the cost of kind of the higher level rational, intellectual, spiritual values, not only is that a failure, that's a sin. That is, you're not, it's not, you're not violating yourself, you're not violating your family, you're violating God. Because God's 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... Shit gets moral really quick, right?

• 40:41Mark Manson?

  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 that is shameful and you should repent. And you, the, 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

• 41:22Mark Manson?

  was interesting reading Augustine 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's, it really felt like, you know, Augustine is basically going around and taking this experience that we all have and we all already kind of feel bad about 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, 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.

• 42:06Mark Manson?

  I'm like, man, that is, that's like, it's aggressive to say the least. And, and look, we're not here to comment on religion or, or make any sort of like theological arguments, but let's just say from a, a mental health point of view, not optimal, not optimal. From a productivity point of view, also not optimal. Okay. Yeah. So we can't, we get into the shame stuff then. Yeah. I mean, do some of that right now. Cause 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, then they, 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.

• 42:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So I, I think this is like a useful. Place to make this point and kind of discuss like why this happens or what it is?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, well, they do find that exactly that that people who experience a lot of shame, especially around things like procrastination or any things that they deem to be character flaws. They actually end up putting things off more. They don't end up doing them more. And it's because that shame creates this kind of motivation for avoidance around these things. You don't want to feel that shame. And so you just avoid doing it altogether in the first place. And you get this very, very vicious cycle that goes along with it. So you there's this self judgment cycle that comes with it, right? You feel ashamed for delaying that this shame makes you uncomfortable. And to escape that shame that you feel now, you further procrastinate.

• 43:39Mark Manson?

  You delay more.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  You distract yourself. You you give into those lower values that that Augustine talked about. So that's the the studies around this have really found that it's the exact opposite. This doesn't happen all the time, but a lot of times it will be, yeah, we have these intuitions around. Oh, I need to feel this way in order to get things done. Or I think my brain works this way, and so I'm just going to keep doing this. When it's like step back, there's actually a kind of deeper issue going on here.

• 44:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Avoidance is really what what comes from that self loathing and that shame. Yeah.

• 44:13Mark Manson?

  Well, at least to me, some of the most interesting research that I saw around this was actually in workplace research. So they actually, there are a number of studies that they like looked at how shame based the feedback is in certain workplaces.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 44:27Mark Manson?

  And then they tracked employee productivity and also absenteeism, how many people stuck around. Basically, looking at like who who like who has the asshole boss and like how how do employees respond to that asshole boss? And surprise, surprise, shame based workplaces. They did one study on nurses in a hospital and they looked at supervisors who would like shame the nurses for their mistakes and for for not completing all their tasks or whatever. And sure enough, those nurses showed up less often to work. They got through fewer rounds. They spent less time with the patients and they quit more often. So.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think some researchers too will interpret that as you are violating your sense, someone's sense of autonomy too, right? If you shame them, you're saying you're a bad person. You don't have any. Control over whether or not you can do something about this.

• 45:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  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?

• 45:28Mark Manson?

  I was just gonna say, we're gonna come back to seeing procrastination as a skill issue a little bit later. And it is mind boggling to me, though, that like, that got lost.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:39Mark Manson?

  For thousands of years.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, when it was the norm before.

• 45:42Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  That was just how people thought of it. And then it completely got destroyed.

• 45:46Mark Manson?

  Right, cuz it is what you do see in this whole kind of Christian era through the medieval period and everything. It's just like, if you don't do the right thing, it's cuz you're a bad person. If you can't get your work done, you're a bad person. And you screwed up, and I don't wanna be around you, right? Again, I still feel the residue of this, you know, like, growing up in a Western culture, like, and I know people who grew up in Confucian cultures experienced this a lot, too, cuz that is also very shame.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:18Mark Manson?

  It's less about God, it's more about family. When you grow up in that, it's so hard to escape it. And it is like, I still catch myself, like, judging people.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%.

• 46:27Mark Manson?

  You know, just being like, oh, look at that guy. Like, can't even get his shit together, you know, like, what a joke.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, judging other people or judging yourself, too, again, going back to the shame thing. 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.

• 46:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Inside your head, it will create avoidance-not approach, right? And so, that's something to keep in mind all throughout this.

• 46:52Mark Manson?

  So what is the opposite of self-judgment or self-shaming?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Self-acceptance, right?

• 46:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Self-compassion.

• 46:59Mark Manson?

  Okay, what does that look like?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Well.

• 47:01Mark Manson?

  I hate myself, Drew.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:03Mark Manson?

  How do I stop?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Well.

• 47:06Mark Manson?

  Make the self-loathing stop.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Pretend I'm your friend.

• 47:10Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  And if you heard me saying that, you would be like, whoa, dude.

• 47:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  God, take it easy on yourself, right?

• 47:17Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  This is kind of the the standard advice to a lot of people is when you're when you want to be more self compassionate and kinder to yourself, treat yourself like a friend. Step back, detach yourself a little bit from the whole situation and be like, okay, what's really going on here? How can I be a little bit more understanding of my own actions?

• 47:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Doing getting things done.

• 47:58Mark Manson?

  That would be an interesting exercise. I mean, if if if you're listening to this and this is something that you really struggle with, like that could potentially be a really useful exercise of like, write down your self talk around this stuff. And then go back later and read it and just probably be horrified by by it.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  I've been there.

• 48:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. But it's it's a it's one of those things that we don't notice it when we do it to ourselves.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  And that that self compassion does that creates that space for approach, like I'm saying, instead of avoidance. So if you're if you know you're you're in a safe space, you know, in your own mind, that opens up a a space for exploring what's actually going on and then taking action. Whereas, again, the shame just creates a lot of avoidance around it.

• 48:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah. That the 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 as a metric, in my opinion, is like it's it became through a lot of the research, it became a measurement of how people felt about themselves when they did good things.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:05Mark Manson?

  Whereas like what you really want to measure is like, how do people feel about themselves when things go bad?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:10Mark Manson?

  Right? And that's that's where the self compassion comes in. It's like, okay, let's let's actually measure how you treat yourself when nothing is going right. Because that's actually 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 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. Again, thinking about this, 95% of people.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  That's what we opened with, right?

• 49:42Mark Manson?

  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.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 49:55Mark Manson?

  In surveys.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and 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.

• 50:06Mark Manson?

  They're just, or they're like androids that are secretly walking among us. It was so interesting, though, that when we were talking to, to Fuchsia Sarah, like, I actually asked her, I was like, do those 5% actually exist? And she said, absolutely. Can you imagine? What that must feel like?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  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, I don't know, maybe it's on a bell curve or something. I don't, I don't know, but.

• 50:39Mark Manson?

  To me, okay, getting off on a little bit of a tangent here, but like, to me, a certain amount of procrast, yeah, like, on optimal level procrastination is probably not zero, right? Because there, there is a certain weight that comes with like really, really important tasks in your life. And that, 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, maybe I'm being irrational here and like, kind of playing the same game with the, with the shame stuff where it's like, I'm afraid that if I don't procrastinate something, it means that 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 make me anxious.

• 51:24Mark Manson?

  Because it signifies to me that I'm doing something very worthwhile and. I don't know. Yeah, I worry that if I had zero 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, you know, 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. 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.

• 52:09Mark Manson?

  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, uh, back when I was writing all the time, which is like, I would set a goal for myself, right? Like, I'm gonna publish three articles a week of at least 2,000 words apiece, right? So 6,000 words a week, which is a really good clip of writing. 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

• 52:53Mark Manson?

  can often get completely warped in our own heads, especially when we're judging ourselves. 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 gonna 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. Cause you're just lazy if you don't do that. So it's just, it's useful to understand, I guess, that our minds are just. Crazy and wrong and in all sorts of different directions and it can it can screw us up. Especially when looking at ourselves. Yeah.

• 53:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I have to say in prepping for both this episode and the last episode, I'm like, dude, Aristotle got everything right. Yeah. Like that guy nailed everything. Plato gets a lot of credit, but Aristotle actually, yeah. Between happiness, values and virtues and and this stuff, self-discipline and acroasia and procrastination and everything like. Aristotle nailed like half of psychology before there was such a thing as psychology. So shout out to Aristotle.

• 54:05Mark Manson?

  So in like the 12th century, there was an Arab scholar living in present day Spain named Averroes. And he translated, he was the first person to translate Aristotle into Latin, back into Latin, which gave Europeans access to Aristotle again for the first time in almost a thousand years, which is mind blowing. 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.

• 54:48Mark Manson?

  So you start to see the the scientific method begin to show up and around this time, people are thinking about empirical observation, experimentation, documenting what they see, trying to measure, understand things. I mean, I, I don't think it's any coincidence that Galileo and Coperticus show up within a generation or two after Aristotle was 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.

• 55:28Mark Manson?

  And Thomas has like a very unique and interesting talent, which is he became famous very, very early in his life. He was, he was a prodigy. I think he 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.

• 55:51Mark Manson?

  We're on two opposite ends of an argument and finding a way to synthesize them. Finding like the common threads and finding a way to like make things make sense for everybody.

• 56:01Mark Manson?

  So he studies Aristotle. His mind is blown, but the rumblings going on around is that the church is like not okay with this. But in his mind, he's like, this stuff is so powerful. It's so world changing. There's gotta 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 is was essentially that. It was bringing Aristotelian philosophy into the Christian umbrella in a way that people could understand and that was acceptable to the church.

• 56:42Mark Manson?

  Brought it 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. It's a skill issue. Procrastination is a skill issue. And, and it's interesting, there's, there's this concept in psychology called self-efficacy, which is basically a belief that you can get better at something. And it's fascinating because self-efficacy strongly correlates with success in almost anything you do.

• 57:25Mark Manson?

  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, I don't think it can be overstated. The importance and the impact of bringing self-efficacy back to the public. That belief of like, we can be better. We can do things in this life that are better. Right? Like, I really do think kind of old school Catholic theology is, is like, it's fatalism. It's like God decides there's this kind of.

• 58:04Mark Manson?

  Cosmological war going on between heaven and hell. We're all caught in the middle. All we can do is just ask for forgiveness, right? Like, there's nothing. We're all sinners. We're all doomed, but if we pray enough and ask for enough forgiveness, then 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 already predetermined. Yeah. So I think just reintroducing self-efficacy back into the population. It's just like, I can't. I can't overstate how impactful that probably was. And then sure enough, like, a century or two later, you get the Reformation.

• 58:46Mark Manson?

  You know, when Luther hammered the 95 Theses to the door, he was essentially saying that 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 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, 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?

• 59:29Mark Manson?

  Like, God gives fortune to people who work hard and deserve it. And so you see these kind of philosophies emerge, like Calvinism, where there's a huge amount of moral value attached to industriousness, that if you are diligent and hardworking and do all the right things in this world, you will be rewarded in this world and in the next world by God, and you deserve it. So if you have nice things, awesome, you worked for it, you deserve it. So on the one hand, we've brought self-efficacy back into the equation. We've brought 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

• 1:00:13Mark Manson?

  And things aren't going well for you. Well, God still is displeased with you. God, God does not look on you with, with favor or fortune. You, you must be doing something wrong. There's still, there's still a moral attachment to material success, to your ability to do what you say you're gonna do or, or accomplish things in the real world. So, and in fact, because there is so much moral and theological weight placed on, I guess worldly outcomes, these early Protestants, you get this kind of insane perfectionism. And I think the group that really illustrates this is like the Puritans who came to America. They were hardworking, they were diligent. They believed that, you know, if you did the right things and if you worked really hard, you would get what you deserve and God would smile on you with good fortune.

• 1:00:58Mark Manson?

  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, and it makes sense because it's like if you, if your worldly status is now being attached to your moral superiority or inferiority, it just adds that much extra pressure to everything you do. And so I think this is actually appropriate because I think, as we'll talk about later, like a huge component of procrastination is perfectionism. Is this feeling that you're not allowed to fail? That you, if things don't work out the way you want them to,

• 1:01:43Mark Manson?

  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.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Bonafide, yes.

• 1:01:54Mark Manson?

  I'm curious how this is like come up in your own life and what the research says around this.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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. 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 be better at this, so we're into the skills set now.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:02:49Mark Manson?

  That, 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.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:57Mark Manson?

  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.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:03Mark Manson?

  But instead of actually just doing the thing, I try to do all this other stuff.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  To prepare for everything.

• 1:03:08Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Do research. This goes right up into the day. This, this happens in all sorts of productivity systems. People, you know, like, oh, you need to just have the right system in place or have the right information in place and you'll, you'll get there. And that can very much feed into the very common problem of perfectionism.

• 1:03:27Mark Manson?

  So what I'm hearing so far, it, it sounds like the story so far is that, if I was to really simplify this, is that we avoid things that are unpleasant. No duh. Often the mechanisms by which we judge ourselves or the expectations we place on ourselves around that avoidance

• 1:03:48Mark Manson?

  only makes us feel worse and therefore avoid even more.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:51Mark Manson?

  Right? And so shame is one component of that, like, that's one form of it. It's like, the, the more ashamed I feel of my inability to do the things that I set out to do,

• 1:04:02Mark Manson?

  the worse I feel about doing them, therefore, the more I avoid them. And you get in this downward spiral. Similarly, with perfectionism, the unrealistic expectations that you set on yourself are, make the task so intimidating and unpleasant that you find ways to avoid it, which then makes you feel even worse and expect even more of yourself. And then you get, end up in another kind of shit spiral.

• 1:04:32Mark Manson?

  Let's transition into Freud.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Mark Manson?

  I actually have a cool little tidbit to like swing into this.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  You want to kick it off?

• 1:04:39Mark Manson?

  Okay. Yeah. It's actually really fascinating. So Freud, Freud went to university in Vienna in the mid 19th century. And at the time, like, psychology didn't really exist.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:50Mark Manson?

  Wasn't really a thing. So Freud had a professor. His name was Franz Brentano. And Professor Brentano, his kind of obsession and the thing that he would eventually become most known for, he was really into Aristotle.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:07Mark Manson?

  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. But Brentano had had a theory, which is he believed that you could take Aristotle's scientific method and you could potentially apply it to human happiness. And he called it an empiricism of the psychology. And he taught, he taught this idea in his courses and Freud was one of his students.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 1:05:45Mark Manson?

  So.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:05:47Mark Manson?

  There you go.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  So this would have been late 1800s.

• 1:05:49Mark Manson?

  So it was 1860s, 1870s?

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I did not know that.

• 1:05:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Freud is a fascinating guy, to say the least. And yeah, whenever you bring him up, there's going to be a lot of.

• 1:06:04Mark Manson?

  A lot of dicks.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  A lot of dicks come out, right?

• 1:06:06Mark Manson?

  A lot of dicks and mothers.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. 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, you can't deny that. So we would be remiss if we did not bring up Freud in all of this.

• 1:06:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:06:45Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  So first, we want to talk about the pleasure principle versus the reality principle.

• 1:06:50Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Okay. So Freud.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  He thought that we are basically just driven by these two principles. One, he called the pleasure principle, which is we seek, we seek out pleasure and we want to avoid pain. This is from birth, this is just part of our nature. Anything that's pleasurable, we gravitate towards it. Anything painful, we avoid it. Very basic, okay? Then he said, as we mature, though, we mature into what he calls the reality principle, where we realize that just indulging in whatever pleasure comes our way is can be, 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. Yeah. Right?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  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? 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, first idea we need to think, we need to be aware of when it comes to Freud. And then he also has, if you go back to your Psych 101, he has the, the model of a psyche too, the three-part. Yeah. The three parts. Yep. Very platonic of him, right? You have the id, ego, and superego. Okay? Anyone go through each for one of those?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Sure. For everybody? Okay. So we have the id, right? And the id is like this, it's, 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, you know, whatever, joyful experience you might want to indulge in, hedonism, basically. Yeah. You have the superego then though, 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. We start to form, as we, as we mature, we start to form this idea of what it means to

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  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. 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 understanding of the world.

• 1:09:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  And that's the ego comes in and says, okay, I have a plan, how we're gonna 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.

• 1:09:46Mark Manson?

  It feels very similar to the chariot.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Very, very much.

• 1:09:50Mark Manson?

  The chariot driver with the two horses.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Like you said, Plato, he'll come up all throughout Western thought.

• 1:09:55Mark Manson?

  He's everywhere.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  And he's everywhere.

• 1:09:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 1:10:21Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:10:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because it doesn't, the ego, isn't part of the, when the ego is mediating between these two things, right, that the, the, the social obligations and the cultural values and versus the animalistic urges, doesn't the ego kind of, because like, when people talk about an ego, we usually think of some sort of like self-identity or self-image.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:58Mark Manson?

  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?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  You mean, in terms of, like, how the ego mediates that relationship, or?

• 1:11:10Mark Manson?

  Well, I, I'm imagining that the, 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 what I, how I act in these situations, and then... Once we've constructed that identity, we need to protect it.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, so the ego does, it very much forms our basis of self-identity, what you're saying, and how we navigate those, that pull between the two horses, right? The ego is sitting in between, in Freud's view, the ego sits in between those, the pulls, to be morally superior and good and pure versus, you know, a base creature of nature. Right, so yes, the ego very much navigates and say, this is how I act in these certain situations. These are, here are my morals, here is how I get what I need out of life and want to. So absolutely, yeah.

• 1:12:01Mark Manson?

  So I want to make a quick point here, a quick interjection, because I always find this super interesting, like, in conventional wisdom or typical parlance, like, if you're just hanging out with a bunch of random people and somebody's being an asshole, you're like, man, that guy's got too much of an ego.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  He's got a big ego, right.

• 1:12:16Mark Manson?

  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, you don't want to get rid of your ego.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  That's not what he wanted to ask.

• 1:12:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, your ego's actually really important.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  It's pragmatic, yeah.

• 1:12:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, actually, you just want to have a good ego.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:42Mark Manson?

  Like, you want to 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, whereas a functional ego is able to balance everything effectively and manage itself.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Right, right, and it can manage shame, for example, too, so, yeah, you can, there's good ego to have, and ego is not a bad word in the Freudian parlance, right, yeah, okay. But it does, what happens is when the ego comes under threat,

• 1:13:12Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  that can be a problem, so this is where the defense mechanisms, defense mechanisms come in, right?

• 1:13:19Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  If you, if there is any sort of threat to the ego, threat to your self-identity, or threat to your, your, your view of yourself, I'm a good person, I, this is how I act in these situations, then these defense mechanisms can kick in and protect your ego, right? And that's where some problems can come, just as they relate to procrastination, a couple of common ones are, which we've already mentioned, rationalization, right? We rationalize, well, one of them is, I work best under pressure, which I want to really talk about that one.

• 1:13:53Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Or I need the adrenaline of a looming deadline, or something like that.

• 1:13:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Right, that, that, we rationalize our way out of actually taking action towards our goals.

• 1:14:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14:15Mark Manson?

  AKA this entire podcast.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Right, yes, yes, absolutely, I need to, I need to listen to more podcasts on this.

• 1:14:22Mark Manson?

  I need to listen, I need to listen to a five hour podcast before I can do this.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  So that one's very much in our, our wheelhouse, where you, you think you just need more information, or you need to stop and understand it more in some way, right? So that's a very common.

• 1:14:39Mark Manson?

  That, that's, I mean, as you know, like, one of, one of my favorite things to say is, is that, learning more is a smart person's favorite way to procrastinate.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And that, I mean, I think a lot of people listening to this will identify, I do, for sure, so they'll relate to that. 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 gonna put it off, it's fine, you know?

• 1:15:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, what's one more day?

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  What's one more day, what's, 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.

• 1:15:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  So, the ego sitting in the middle, trying to balance all of these pulls that we have, and then all of a sudden, something comes along to threaten that, and we need to protect that. That's what the idea of the... Of defense mechanisms are. And that's, I mean, you know, for all Freud's flaws, I think defense mechanisms are definitely one of those things that he brought to the cultural conscious that we absolutely needed.

• 1:15:40Mark Manson?

  The funny thing about Freud to me is, is that he got the big stuff, right?

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he got the details horribly wrong.

• 1:15:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And the details are horribly, and not only horribly wrong, but like hilariously wrong. So and 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.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  And tracks, right?

• 1:16:04Mark Manson?

  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.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, yeah. You like revolt back into yourself. You crunch in.

• 1:16:22Mark Manson?

  You have 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 that track exactly as the emotional responses you would have to a physical threat.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:38Mark Manson?

  It is so incredible, like such an incredible realization.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we all need, we all need a sense of self-identity to navigate the world. And so it is very threatening. You have this kind of, humans have this need to explain things and make sense of the world. And one way we do that is through a self-identity. And when that gets threatened, that's very, very scary, like you said. So I do think that that's one of Freud's biggest contributions, definitely just in psychology in general, but around procrastination especially, is when we get defensive. And like you said, you'll feel that in your body. You'll feel your self-recoil whenever your ego is threatened in any way.

• 1:17:20Mark Manson?

  So, yeah. So I think this raises an interesting point of self-definition as a component of procrastination. 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.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Right to the surface.

• 1:17:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So like, 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 gonna do. This is like one of like five things I'm gonna 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, 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.

• 1:18:29Mark Manson?

  And it actually took me a number of years to like revise that self-definition and remember like, yeah, dude, you weren't always an author. Like you, you, you just kind of like decided one day that like, oh, I guess I'm an author now. And then like that added a mountain of fucking stress to my life. And like I can just as easily decide I'm not an author. It's just like one of many things I do. And suddenly, as soon as I that that self-definition switched, a lot of that stress went away. James Clear talks about this a little bit in Atomic Habits about how like the ultimately the only thing that makes a habit stick over a lo- like over the long term is when it's adopted as an identity.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Identity, yes.

• 1:19:08Mark Manson?

  And it's that adoption as an identity that is, that's the ego, right? It's like when you go from a person who

• 1:19:18Mark Manson?

  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'm a painter, then suddenly you don't need willpower, discipline, or to overcome procrastination to paint, because that's just the thing you do, right? So.

• 1:19:41Mark Manson?

  Anyway, I fucking love this topic.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  But there's, you're saying there's stakes attached to that as well, too.

• 1:19:45Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  There are 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?

• 1:19:59Mark Manson?

  I think, well, it's funny because it's, it's, I let go of.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:05Mark Manson?

  I let go, because it's like, I let go of that identity. It did cause me a lot, an immense amount of stress. And this isn't to say I don't like the books that I wrote.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:14Mark Manson?

  It's just that like, I wouldn't have necessarily written them 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 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?

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:45Mark Manson?

  It's like if you and I decided like, we're podcasters now.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:49Mark Manson?

  Like, this is who we are and what we do.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  I got caught up in that for a little while.

• 1:20:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. It's, it's, it's, it's tough. Like, it's, it draws you in. And I guess this is kind of coming back to like, the ego intermediating between, you know, the social pressures and the moral values, and then also kind of like the animalistic instincts. Like, we have a fundamental drive for social acceptance and social approval, right? And so it's like, our, our ego's, part of our ego's role is to like, take that social acceptance and be like, yeah, I'll be that. This is what rewards me socially. This is what gets me respect from the tribe. I'm going to be that person, right? And so it is a natural reaction. But when you decide that that's who you are, it, it adds a whole nother layer of,

• 1:21:37Mark Manson?

  I guess, of stakes.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:39Mark Manson?

  You know, like, I'll say this. I think adopting, coming back to the James Clear thing of like, adopting a habit as an identity. He is correct that like if the goal is to just do the thing, then adopting it as an identity essentially solves that problem.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:57Mark Manson?

  Because it's like if that's who you are, that's just what you're gonna do. And it's gonna feel like it's gonna feel weird to not do it. The trade off of that, that I think is not mentioned in that book, is that when you adopt a habit as an identity, you are now adding a whole layer of social pressure, judgment, validation to that. Right? So it's like if we if we decide now like we are podcasters like now we're that's 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.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:22:33Mark Manson?

  So it's like you you you trade.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  God, it never ends.

• 1:22:36Mark Manson?

  It never ends. You trade one problem for another, essentially.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Well, yeah, okay, yes, I I do think, again, Freud and his conceptualization of the psyche, the three parts and the defense mechanisms and all that. That's that's useful in terms of, yeah, tying your self identity to what you do, how you behave in the world. Obviously, that is that that's now in the zeitgeist and now very much a part of our culture, too. I think the other thing, though, too, is Freud was one of the first people to really emphasize childhood, 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

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  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, your psychology major major tell me about that. And I was like, 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? 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.

• 1:23:57Mark Manson?

  You are what you are.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:24:07Mark Manson?

  Even the concept of parenting.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:10Mark Manson?

  Is like less than 100 years old.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:13Mark Manson?

  Which is mind blowing.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, probably a lot of that was parenting and, well, it was probably more of a collective effort than it is now. So, yeah.

• 1:24:23Mark Manson?

  It was a collective effort. Also, like, half of your kids died before the age of seven, so.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  So it was just like, well, like, obviously, obviously, God had something to say about this.

• 1:24:32Mark Manson?

  Exactly. God decided. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  But Freud did. He introduced the idea of parenting styles and experiences we had in childhood, how they affect our development throughout our lives, all the way into adulthood, right?

• 1:24:45Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  A few of these, now, this was, this came from some of his contemporaries. It wasn't directly from Freud, but they took these psychoanalysis principles and they applied them to parenting and procrastination. There are kind of these three big ideas that I came across, anyway. One of them being when your parents kind of equate love with achievement. So this gets into the perfectionism thing.

• 1:25:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Definitely. This can kind of encourage someone to develop a more perfectionist personality.

• 1:25:18Mark Manson?

  Well, and this ties into the Confucian stuff.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. 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 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

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  parental anger. So if you grew up around very reactive parents who got angry whenever you did something wrong, you know, you spilled 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 less worthy.

• 1:26:23Mark Manson?

  Directed towards themselves.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Directed towards themselves. So, again, the procrastination is avoiding any situation in which you could fail. And so, you, you, you've already internalized that anger, and you just want to avoid it altogether. Again, it goes back, it comes back to the avoidance a lot with these. And then the last one I came across with parenting in ways, two different parenting styles. So you have permissive parents or authoritarian ones.

• 1:26:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  And on the permissive side, if you grew up in a very kind of like rules free environment, more or less, you, according to the Freudians, again, they, this produces a nervous underachiever, right? They feel overwhelmed by self imposed deadlines or work or whatever it is. They, so they just, they're like, wow, that's just, that's too many rules, too much structure. I'm just not, I'm just going to avoid it altogether.

• 1:27:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  The flip side being authoritarian, where you grew up in a very strict household with lots and lots of rules. And to the psychoanalysts, they think that there's like a rebellion against that, right? For some children.

• 1:27:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  So whether these are, you know, whether that's actually what's going on or not, that's obviously the topic of debate and we'll go over some of this. But again, the idea that the way we were raised affects the way that we develop throughout our lives.

• 1:27:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Specifically around procrastination, it does have, it could have an effect this way. Now, was it, was it, is it because we're like avoiding those emotional memories, like deep emotional memories that we want to avoid? I don't know.

• 1:27:59Mark Manson?

  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 personality, natural disposition? How much of that is like how mom and dad treated you? Like it's such a fuzzy area, like the, the boundary between those two things is very fuzzy. It is funny. I have never, I had never heard that permissive parent thing.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Mark Manson?

  And the, what, what did you say it was? The timid underachiever?

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, nervous underachiever.

• 1:28:27Mark Manson?

  Nervous underachiever. Dude, that, that fucking, I feel called out.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:28:33Mark Manson?

  My parents were super permissive.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Mark Manson?

  Like grew up, no structure, no rules, which, you know, was a real double edged sword. Like there's a lot of things that I think it forced my brother and I to develop a lot of traits, self reliance being a big one, right?

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Independence.

• 1:28:48Mark Manson?

  Independence, comfort with autonomy, comfort being alone. So there, 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 I had a really good friend in high school um who 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

• 1:29:24Mark Manson?

  because it hurts so bad, you know, it must be true.

• 1:29:28Mark Manson?

  But like I, you know, I used to be a pretty arrogant teenager. Um, you know, I was a smart kid who never did his homework. Yeah, okay, yeah. It's so it it. I think I was like just talking shit once and I said something I was like uh, I was like, you know, I if I really cared, I, you know, I could easily get an A in that class. And then I think my friend was like, well, why don't you do it? And I was like, it's not worth my time. And he was like, he said, no, I I think you don't do it because I think you're afraid of trying and then not actually getting the A. And he said, you'd rather not try at all. And I Kick in the stomach. Dude, it was like fucking getting stabbed in the chest. And I was like, whoa.

• 1:30:05Mark Manson?

  Had no comeback for it, you know? Um, but I think it there really was something to that. Like I I very much, there was something about the permissive environment that maybe as a defense mechanism, I had a very inflated perception of my my own ability and potential. And actually doing anything threatened that. 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 um 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 real the pleasure principle

• 1:30:50Mark Manson?

  segueing into the reality principle.

• 1:30:54Mark Manson?

  I imagine, I'm not aware of Freud talking about it in these terms, but I imagine like part of that process, it it part of it looks like 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 you need to get rid of your ego. What they mean is that your ego is rigid, which is that you have a self perception that is not open to new information. Right? Like if you if you fail at something or something doesn't go well, instead of reevaluating how you see yourself, you blame everybody else.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Right, and double down on your.

• 1:31:36Mark Manson?

  And double down on how you, yeah, on your your self image. And so I think that that ego flexibility is actually what we should be going for. And I think that is also a skill that we naturally develop as we get older. Like I I definitely find that I'm much better, you know, at forty, I'm much better at kind of looking at myself and being like, oh, yeah, maybe I wasn't as good at that thing as I thought I was. Whereas like, you know, when I was twenty, that felt cataclysmic to have that thought. Right? So, super interesting.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:14Mark Manson?

  Super interesting.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  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, I had a friend who had a very permissive, she was the daughter of a single mother.

• 1:32:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  And her mother just let her do whatever she wanted. And she resented her for it. She wanted this structure.

• 1:32:39Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  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 they have these neat little like explanations.

• 1:32:48Mark Manson?

  Just so, yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  So there's that. Again, though, the larger takeaway, I think, is that he did. Find these kind of big categories of influences on our behavior that nobody had really thought about before and brought them to the

• 1:33:02Mark Manson?

  To the surface.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  The surface and the cultural conscience for sure.

• 1:33:05Mark Manson?

  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 of the Solved episodes. So just go to solvedpodcast.com/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 of course, it's free. So just go to solvedpodcast.com/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.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of during Freud even too.

• 1:33:50Mark Manson?

  Oh, is it?

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  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 behavioral, as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Kind of like a slap in the face to the Freudian psychology, the psychoanalysis at the time. It really is kind of a backlash that's going on. They, Watson and the other behaviorists at the time, they see all of this like, oh, you know, let's talk about

• 1:34:24Mark Manson?

  Your dreams.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Your dreams, your childhood, your internal states that you want to like really navel gaze at, right?

• 1:34:31Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  They saw this as wishy washy. It wasn't useful. It wasn't helpful. Also, keep in mind of the time too, of what was going on, like Einstein is kind of starting to like become a name that's known and physics. And there's all these breakthroughs in the material sciences at this time, too. And the behaviorists wanted to take that kind of philosophy, which was kind of rigorous scientific method, and apply it to the psychology, very much in contrast to the Freudian psychologists. 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.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  We should only be concerned with what's observable, and what's observable is behavior. So that's why it's called behaviorism. Gotcha. Watson also went on to say in that, in that same paper is that the behaviorists recognize there's no dividing line between man and brute. So this is where, because what was going on is where all of these studies with animals were, were starting to be incorporated into the, the body of literature that was going on. And the behaviorists saw all these parallels between even, you know, a rat or a mouse and a human being and, and how they can be very similar in a lot of ways. I feel so objectified, Drew. Well, that was, that is exactly what the behaviorists were trying to do though,

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  was to make this an objective, rigorous science. They wanted, they wanted to really get at the heart of things. And they thought, if we could only just study things like a physicist studies atoms and particles, then we could get to some underlying truth around behavior and psychology and human nature even. Yeah. So that kind of puts it in the historical context of what's going on. You know, there's, Watson was very much influenced by Pavlov and the Pavlov's dogs, you know, you ring a bell, give the dog food after a little while, the dog hears the bell, it just starts salivating. Yeah. That was kind of the, the forerunner to this strict behaviorism that, that came in the early 20th century. That kind of conditioning, the Pavlovian conditioning was, was called classical conditioning by the behaviorists. They saw that as you're pairing this.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:36:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:59Mark Manson?

  Would this be like the behavioral manifestation of the neuroscientific idea of like what fires together, wires together? Or are those different things?

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, later on, that's how it would be explained.

• 1:37:10Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yes. And that was the classical conditioning side, though.

• 1:37:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  I think where you're starting to get a little bit more was the operant conditioning.

• 1:37:19Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Which is what the behaviorists really like, that was their big kind of breakthrough was, okay, you have these classical 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.

• 1:37:40Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Okay. And this was really, this really took hold, Watson kind of was dancing around it, but it wasn't until Skinner came along, BF Skinner, Burris Frederick Skinner was his name. I did not know his real name. I was a psychology major. I did not know.

• 1:37:57Mark Manson?

  Dude, I would go by BF too, if that was my name.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of a dorky name for sure. He grew up in rural Pennsylvania. Yeah. But this was the idea of operant conditioning, where you learn through a series of rewards and punishments.

• 1:38:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Now Skinner, I don't know how much we want to get into, how much do you want to get into Skinner? He's a fascinating dude.

• 1:38:20Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  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 treat. It learns very quickly that pushing the lever gets a treat.

• 1:38:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Skinner actually found that you could get rats to do all sorts of things. He used rats, he 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. Okay. Now.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  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. Okay, now get the rat to press, press the wall and then press the bar, that kind of thing. And you could get these complex behaviors out of all of that. This is what, again, was called operant conditioning.

• 1:39:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  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. Okay, 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, he taught pigeons how to play ping pong. He taught them how to quote unquote, read. It was more like a word recognition thing, but they could still, it was kind of like reading. He's like, you know, now this is, if I can teach a pigeon how to do these simple word recognitions, then taking a brain from a human, you could do the same thing, just reward and punishment. This is what this word says.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  You're rewarded through that, through a little dopamine in your brain or whatever it is. And then you learn how to read. So he's like, all these complex behaviors can be reduced down to this very, very simple idea, which is you, kind of like they're wired together, fired together.

• 1:40:18Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  You, 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 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 consequences so far down the line that you're not even, it's not even registering with you.

• 1:41:02Mark Manson?

  You've discounted it.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  You've 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. It's like the law of nature for a behaviorist.

• 1:41:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Mark Manson?

  So the solution for a behaviorist would be give yourself a worse punishment for not doing the thing?

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  I think also a lot of

• 1:41:26Mark Manson?

  Or reward yourself for doing the thing?

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Well, both, right? It's using punishments and rewards in your life strategically, right? And this has definitely influenced a lot of like the modern day productivity space.

• 1:41:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:41:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Like that's very much used in a lot of modern day productivity schemes and, and, and systems.

• 1:41:54Mark Manson?

  I mean, there is something to that.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Again.

• 1:41:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  There's something to it.

• 1:41:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, I think about it a lot in terms of friction, like adding and removing friction to certain behaviors.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:42:08Mark Manson?

  Right? In my environment, making it easier to do good be, you know, it's like if you don't want to eat junk food, like just don't bring it in the house.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:18Mark Manson?

  Right? So you don't have to make those decisions in the first place. Or if you want to do something like, if you want to pick up a new habit, like sign up for classes and get that accountability and convince a friend to go with you or whatever. So that like not doing it becomes way more painful than doing it. It's funny because it is, it sounds so simple, but this is like, for me personally, this is one of the strongest levers that I've ever pulled.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Definitely, yeah.

• 1:42:44Mark Manson?

  For my own behavior.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the environmental design is very much influenced by the behaviorist school of thought. The, 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.

• 1:43:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  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's carried over into behaviorism. They acknowledge that, but they say, that's it. We don't have to go any further than that.

• 1:43:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  And we can just, we can shape our lives and even society through a series of rewards and punishments.

• 1:43:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  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. 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

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  something done, well, you're just going to continue doing that. That's a behaviorist view. And then there's an, also, they have this negative reinforcement loop, which there's greater anxiety as a deadline approaches, right? And it can make finishing that task more relieving. Like, the more pressure you put on yourself, the greater the relief you experience once you do finally do that.

• 1:44:30Mark Manson?

  Well, it's funny because one of the, 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.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  He's a chronic procrastinator, dude.

• 1:44:40Mark Manson?

  And it's funny because I've, 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, I don't know, I've known a number of people like him where it's, they get in this pattern where, you, you kind of mentioned this earlier, that, that they, they feel like they thrive under pressure and they need that pressure cooker experience going on around them, right? Like, that's, that's what actually gets them to perform. And so they continuously throw themselves into that situation over and over again. And, you know, doing the work weeks ahead of time and not stressing or worrying about it at all, like, that's not a very interesting emotional experience.

• 1:45:25Mark Manson?

  It's kind of boring and requires, you know, a lot of forethought. Whereas waiting till the night before, having this super extremely stressful event, and then, like you said, the relief of accomplishing that stressful event, that can easily be something that you condition into yourself.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  That's 95% of college students, right? That's what it is. That was, that was a lot of my college experiences.

• 1:45:48Mark Manson?

  Totally me too.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Probably at least, yeah.

• 1:45:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It was like, I, I, I would get an assignment and I'd be like, oh, the all nighter for this is gonna be interesting.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you could pull it off. So you did.

• 1:45:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Like you, again, you were rewarded in, in these ways that you weren't, don't even realize you're being rewarded.

• 1:46:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Which is, a, a good example is the relief of that stress that you put yourself under. But it's a self, self reinforcing stress there. It's just self imposed stress.

• 1:46:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  I should say. I, this might be a good time to talk a little bit about that. Thriving under pressure. You know, I've talked a little bit about this.

• 1:46:19Mark Manson?

  I know, I know you, you have a bone to pick with this.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  I have a huge bone to pick with this because.

• 1:46:23Mark Manson?

  Cause I feel like I'm one of these people.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Right. And in talking to people around this, like I would say, oh yeah, we're doing this, this big, long podcast on procrastination.

• 1:46:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  And everyone's like, oh, I need this. But the, almost all the time, a, a good number of people immediately would say, oh, but I thrive under pressure. I need the dead, I need the, the pressure of the deadline. And I have thought a lot about that and I think that's just bullshit. I, to say, to say that you thrive under pressure.

• 1:46:50Mark Manson?

  You're calling out our entire audience.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  I get, no, no, no. Look, I, I understand that it's motivate, I understand the pressure is motivating.

• 1:46:57Mark Manson?

  But you don't need it.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  This is the more common thing of, I do my best work under pressure.

• 1:47:02Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  And that I think is total bullshit.

• 1:47:04Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  There, there are people who thrive under pressure. I get it. Like, like a situation comes up that like there, something needs to get done. And people are boom, they just snap into that get shit done mode, right?

• 1:47:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  I, that I totally believe in. That's, that's not, 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?

• 1:47:24Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  Compared to not doing anything at all? Cause that's the only work you do? Sure. It's your best work, but it's the only work you do. I, I don't, I don't agree with that at all.

• 1:47:35Mark Manson?

  I feel so attacked right now.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  I get it. I'm, 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 the 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? So are you really gonna tell me that's your, your best work that you can produce?

• 1:48:00Mark Manson?

  Let's, let's back up the truck of just a couple, a couple, a couple of feet.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:48:06Mark Manson?

  I hear what you're saying. I don't think you're wrong. I so here I'll kind of delineate what I think you're right about, which is that the people who say that they have probably not had a healthy working experience. Because what you're saying is is like, okay, if these people budgeted their time, let's say they have an assignment due in two weeks, right? Okay. If they were diligent, they budgeted their time, they're like, okay, I'm gonna spend an hour to two hours a day, every single day, and then the last day, you know, I'll have most of it done, or whatever. And they'll have time to rethink things and go back and change things and do further research and like dig in the other stuff. Yes, they will probably have a

• 1:48:48Mark Manson?

  much better result with much less stress. I guess maybe this is the funny thing, is that budgeting of time and following that schedule and following that plan, they don't see that as part of the work. They see that as something different. And so that it's it's

• 1:49:06Mark Manson?

  all they experience is maybe they try to work on it a week ahead of time, and they're like, this is boring, this sucks. Yeah. There's no emotional stimulus happening. And so they lose interest, or they don't try very hard. And then they get two days out, and they start freaking out and panicking. And then that forces them to like, really focus and put in a lot of effort. And so they get that emotional stimulation, which then gets channeled into the work itself. And then, yeah, sure, the work that they do then is much superior to like, the half-assed attempt that they had a week ago. Okay, okay. 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

• 1:49:50Mark Manson?

  in advance, and did a little bit every day, and really thought were thoughtful and considerate about like, the work they're doing, yes, they would produce a much better outcome. But they've never had that experience. They've never That's my point. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Compared to what? Yeah, no, you are correct in that regard. But I think you I think the point that you're kind of like subtly raising here is that a lot of people, I guess, maybe mistake the emotional stimulus for the work, right? Like, it is it is that anxiety fueled frenzy, where they get a ton of stuff done, and they are super focused.

• 1:50:30Mark Manson?

  That they they associate that with good work because it is enlivening, it's it's exciting, it's stimulating.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:40Mark Manson?

  And they are way more focused on on a task or a goal than they usually are in most circumstances. So in their mind, they're like, yeah, this is, I'm doing great work right now. 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.

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Mark Manson?

  But it's it's like, I guess I'm just agreeing with you, but it I'm like softening.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  There's a nuance to it.

• 1:51:10Mark Manson?

  I'm like, I'm like, I feel so attacked that I'm like.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  You're now recoiling, your ego is being attacked.

• 1:51:17Mark Manson?

  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 than I guess I'm kind of like diplomat. As somebody who was that person.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Mark Manson?

  For a lot of his life.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  And I have been too. That's I'm I'm including myself in this too. I get that. I mean, OK, if you're if you're saying I do my best work under pressure. Again, what I think you're saying is I do my best work when only the threat of the negative consequences are on the line. And not only that, but I'm I'm limiting myself to such a small time window that you're going to tell me that like all your first, if it's 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.

• 1:52:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Or to to to work out in whatever creative work you're doing. I don't think so.

• 1:52:06Mark Manson?

  Some of this might come down to, I I agree with that. Some of this might come down to the type of work as well. I mean, here's the counter argument is that is that pressure, a lot of pressure is derived from high expectation, right? So when the caliber of the work is not expected to be that high, you don't feel the pressure and so you don't try very hard. But when that when the caliber of work is expected to be extremely high, that's a lot of pressure and so you try a lot harder. I mean, I think most people have had a, I mean, maybe this gets it a little bit into a discussion of expectation and procrastination. But like, I think most of us, 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.

• 1:52:50Mark Manson?

  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,

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:52:59Mark Manson?

  I'm just gonna throw that element out there.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  I'm not saying it's not motivating. I'm not saying you shouldn't like leverage that when it does happen. I just don't think you should rely on that to produce your best work.

• 1:53:10Mark Manson?

  I agree. I a hundred percent agree.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Thank you for bringing in the nuance. I was very angry about that one. And now you've softened it. I do agree with that.

• 1:53:18Mark Manson?

  You were on your soapbox and I managed to kind of kick it out from under you.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 1:53:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  And I think that's, that's something that came out of the behaviorist, well, an interpretation of the behaviorist view, anyway, that I, I think is actually very useful for people.

• 1:54:02Mark Manson?

  So where do you think behaviorism went wrong? What did they miss? Cause everything you're describing, at least in the context of procrastination, I'm like, yeah, that works.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:11Mark Manson?

  That works. Yep, that works. So what, what, what did they fall short on?

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, all the environmental design stuff, I think they nailed definitely, I think, though, even though Skinner later in his life came to this, what he called behavioral radical behaviorism, which was that even our mental processes and cognitions could be reduced to rewards and punishments. I don't think they ever fully showed that. And I think they ignore a lot of the emotional states and cognitive internal processes. Not only do they ignore them, they explicitly ignore them. So we're not going to worry about those kinds of things because some method will come along where we can explain it in terms of rewards and punishments.

• 1:54:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  So they ignore that. We, we can also, we can override our sensibilities around rewards and punishments too. To, which I think is a cognitive, again, an internal cognitive process that happens.

• 1:55:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  That gets overridden by these principles of just simple rewards and punishments.

• 1:55:12Mark Manson?

  I wonder what Skinner would think of David Goggins.

• 1:55:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a thought experiment, God.

• 1:55:18Mark Manson?

  What would he say about David Goggins?

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, where he's just constantly self-flagellating and punishing himself, yeah.

• 1:55:25Mark Manson?

  Putting himself through the most pain that he possibly can.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  Well, you know, maybe they would say that it's a kind of a higher order of operate operant conditioning where he gets some sort of reward out of it eventually. And he's just conditioned himself to to experience that reward over time.

• 1:55:41Mark Manson?

  See, I, in the, in the context of Goggins, I see the Freudian ego explanation is more effective. And, and I mean, I mean, ego strictly in the Freudian sense, not as like, oh, my God, Goggins has an ego. But in terms, it's, 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. But to maintain that ego, he'd 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, it feels more painful to not do the action than to do it. Right? And so it's like, Goggins has built an identity

• 1:56:25Mark Manson?

  around doing incredibly difficult, painful things. And so he has reached this fucking crazy place where he probably feels weird not doing painful things, rather than doing them.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Well, he was also socially rewarded for doing those things, though, too, right? The culture he grew, he, he kind of forged all that was Navy SEALs, where that was socially rewarded.

• 1:56:50Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  So the behaviorists would say, ah, no, there's actually a big behaviorist lens we could put this through. And it doesn't have to be reduced to identities and.

• 1:57:00Mark Manson?

  So is the behavior, I mean, I like to, maybe I'm naive, but I like to try to see everything as like a puzzle and see where everything fits together. You know, I guess, are we seeing the behavior, the behaviorist perspective as kind of the interaction between the superego and the ego? Like, the, the rewards, it's like how the world is rewarding you and punishing you and how like?

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  I suppose you could see it that way. Yeah. I, I mean. I would think, I would say that the behaviorist saw human nature as finely tuned to social rewards.

• 1:57:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  And so those are big, big rewards that have a very high valence, very high salience. When you think about them, you will approach those a lot more readily.

• 1:57:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  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's all just comes down to this 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.

• 1:58:21Mark Manson?

  The environmental stuff.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  The environmental stuff, 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.

• 1:58:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  I think that's the biggest takeaway. And, you know, 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, they're not totally right.

• 1:58:51Mark Manson?

  It's incomplete.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think we're getting closer. This is part of the puzzle.

• 1:58:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  The rewards and the punishments, along with the identity stuff from Freud.

• 1:59:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Sure, that's all there. The skills stuff we got from Aristotle. We're starting to build a little bit of a picture where, okay, these things fit together. It doesn't have to be a war between all of these things, and we can take the best parts of it. And I think that's, I think that's where we're headed with it.

• 1:59:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

• 1:59:21Mark Manson?

  Well, let's move on to the next thing then, which is time management.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 1:59:27Mark Manson?

  So as we move into the mid 20th century, it's actually interesting to me that there's, there is so much credence to what the behaviorists were saying, like all this environmental design stuff, it actually does work for productivity. Yet what we got was a bunch of time management consultant bullshit. So how did this, how did that happen?

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Well, okay, put it, let's put it a little bit in historical context here. So yeah, the earliest, early 20th century, you, you have the Freudians and the behaviorists battling it out. What changes though, as we start to get into the middle of the century, so starting 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, think of like Mad Men, you know, the agencies, corporate drones, all of that starts. So people start going from the farms and the factories. We have been urbanizing for, you know, several decades since the industrial revolution started

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  in the 1800s, slowly urbanizing and we're getting a new economy out of this. Knowledge work becomes a thing.

• 2:00:35Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  So the ad agencies, the design, designing products for consumer products for the masses, all of that starts to crop up, right? So if you think about that, that's a very different work environment, right? You go from a factory or a farm, you know exactly what you need to do, it's right in front of you, it's very tangible. If you're in a factory, especially too, 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, the new knowledge economy, now you have all of this, there's all these tasks that are nebulous kind of, and they're, even the end goals a lot of times are nebulous. It's creative work, they're not really sure what you're producing. You're given a little bit more autonomy too in those spaces. And so now you have to manage

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  your own time. Okay. Up until this point too, like I said, a lot of the things you were supposed to do had kind of been outlined for you. Somebody else told you what to do for the most part, for the the average worker. Now you're you're managing your own time and you need a way to organize all this and decide what do I need to be working on right now? And so for a lot of the the 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 and rise to the collective conscious.

• 2:01:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  There's a lot of the like techniques that come out of this to 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's kind of that sets the stage, anyway, the historical stage for the time management crowd.

• 2:02:14Mark Manson?

  Okay, so you you had your bone to pick like 20 minutes ago.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02:19Mark Manson?

  This this section is going to be my bone to pick.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:21Mark Manson?

  Because I just think most of this is nonsense.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  I'll pile on with you, I think.

• 2:02:25Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  For the most part.

• 2:02:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Mark Manson?

  Well, I have a few observations here.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:30Mark Manson?

  First of all, is this is a very subtle Play-Doh back with a vengeance type situation, which is like, we have all these office workers, we have all these worker bees, they're they're at their desk, they're doing, they're typing, they're doing things, but like, the output is completely unpredictable and a lot of people are underperforming. What's the problem? Oh, they must not know the right things. Right? And I find it so interesting that repeatedly throughout history, that is our default. Like, it's like, if I just knew the right system, if I just knew how to organize my time, if I just knew how to use my calendar,

• 2:03:11Mark Manson?

  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?

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  It's simple.

• 2:03:23Mark Manson?

  It's simple.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  It's 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.

• 2:03:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  It's a simple story.

• 2:03:38Mark Manson?

  It's also, I would say it's unemotional.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03:42Mark Manson?

  Like

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  It's very rational, very, very rational.

• 2:03:44Mark Manson?

  It's very rational. And, you know, we just talked about, you know, with Freud and Skinner, like, we just spent forty five minutes talking about how defense mechanisms and resistance and rationalization and like all these excuses that you come up with and how uncomfortable it is and

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  It's exhausting.

• 2:04:02Mark Manson?

  It is exhausting. Like emotions are fucking exhausting. But it, there is something alleviating, there's something relieving about just being like, well, I just need to get the right calendar system or if I, if I get the right morning, like these days, it's the morning routine, right? Because everybody's self-employed. So it's like, I just need the right morning routine and then, and then my day is going to be great. I'm going to get so much done. I, I think here's a spicy take. I think ninety percent of the time, this is just another subtle form of procrastination.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I agree with that.

• 2:04:33Mark Manson?

  It is, it is, let me study the techniques and systems that are going to make me more, more productive. So I don't actually have to go be more productive. Because being productive is actually uncomfortable and scary and all these emotions start happening and I don't want to deal with those. So let me, let me study this calendar system and try to get it down.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And Exhibit A, look at how many productivity apps are out there. Those are all come from the, the time management kind of philosophy. They start there at least.

• 2:04:59Mark Manson?

  And correct me if I'm wrong, because you did more research on, on this section than I did, but like most of the research around this stuff is like not. There's not a whole lot of narrative.

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, they they tried to do some research, I think, kind of in the seventies is when they and they're just like, we're not finding anything here.

• 2:05:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  And just anecdotally to look at it, there's people who are highly organized, professionally, personally, whatever, they still procrastinate.

• 2:05:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  It is not just about the system. And that's speaking from somebody who's tried every system.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:05:35Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  I think, too, if you go from somebody who's never had it, 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.

• 2:05:47Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It is nowhere near the the underlying cause of what causes people to not get things done.

• 2:05:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:55Speaker 01

  Some of the tenants of time management, you know, setting clear priorities and goals. Well, sure, OK.

• 2:06:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  People often, they underestimated how long tasks would take. So getting better at managing your time.

• 2:06:05Mark Manson?

  Talking, yeah.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:06:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  At all. You know, but there are still, going to your point, too, just recently, actually, I tried a new system.

• 2:06:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  A new way of kind of capturing my to do lists and organizing my time and even time boxing and stuff like that. And it was AI enabled. So, of course, I was really excited to try it. When I tried it, it was very disappointing. Because I'm like, oh, this is just the same, the same shit I've already tried, just repackaged and they put AI in front of the the name of it.

• 2:06:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  And so I got on a forum and I asked them about a couple of things. I'm like, what about, you know, X, Y, and Z? And somebody immediately jumped in and they're like, they're like, look, this community and the the team for this app are just so dedicated and devoted. And they had this long, long response to my thing that had nothing to do with actually getting shit done. But that's where that's where this leads though, too. You're right, the people, it's 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. But I don't want to learn about an app. I just want to get shit done.

• 2:07:18Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:07:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  So that I think that is the big risk with this. These apps and other systems and people who wrote books on this, they've made a lot of money. And we still haven't found the time management solution.

• 2:07:29Mark Manson?

  Cause they're they're they're feeding that seduction that that that Play-Doh 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, people thinking knowledge is the solution when it's really like, it's an emotional problem. I'm kind of spoiling the the ending here, but like procrastination is an emotional problem. And sure, knowledge can like nudge you slightly in this direction or that. A framework, a time management framework, you know, a certain system that you build for yourself can nudge you in this direction or that. Your environment nudges you in this direction or that. Ultimately, it's an emotional problem.

• 2:08:13Mark Manson?

  I I have a couple of thoughts. One came up just while you were talking, which is like, yes, you're you are correct. Like, I think every productive person develops some sort of system for themselves.

• 2:08:25Mark Manson?

  What people mistake is that that system is not the cause of their productivity. It's the effect.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 2:08:30Mark Manson?

  Right? You like, you learn what your personality is, what your proclivities are, what your emotional pitfalls are, the the things that you get anxious about and that you worry about and that you stress about and the way you like to get things done and the sorts of things you like to do first thing in the morning versus last thing in the afternoon. And you build your own system around that to optimize for yourself. And eventually, once you spend enough time doing it, you know, you you get 10, 15 years into your work life, you 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. But then other people show up and they're like, "Oh, what system do you use?"

• 2:09:12Mark Manson?

  And they just assume that 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. 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."

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  It's very tangible, yeah.

• 2:09:46Mark Manson?

  Super tangible, and it's very measurable, and you know what your progress is. So it's like, you know, if you break for lunch and you only have 22 widgets down 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, you know, discussing committees and meetings and dealing with clients and, you know, taking somebody to the golf course and like all this stuff that is completely unmeasurable. What I know about human nature is that things that are not legible or measurable or are uncertain, they generate anxiety.

• 2:10:30Mark Manson?

  And I imagine that there are lots of people in the knowledge work world, I know I experienced this all the time in my own work, I'm sure you do too, where it's like you want to feel like you're making progress on something.

• 2:10:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:10:42Mark Manson?

  You know, you can like spend days or weeks on something, it is not necessarily clear to you that you've made any progress whatsoever. And so I've noticed it that on projects like that, I start measuring my time. You know, it's like, books are 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... 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 did, I've done 11 days in a row of at least three hours a day.

• 2:11:27Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's like, I'm, I'm doing a good job. I'm a good author.

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:11:32Mark Manson?

  Are you like?

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  Same thing with to do list too, right? Like I keep a to do list and stuff. I love checking things off. And sometimes I'll keep their completed task list there so I can see it and it's looks tangible. I'm making progress on something, but am I? I don't know. Or am I just checking boxes?

• 2:11:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:49Speaker 01

  Like, and it can get to that. Just that, that box checking can become its own little task of your own.

• 2:11:55Mark Manson?

  A conditioning, right?

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. There are, you know, a number of things, like I mentioned a few of these that already came out of this era. Or at least we're inspired by this era that we still even use today. One of the kind of famous ones amongst the kind of productivity crowd anyway. Like the Eisenhower matrix, right? Dwight Eisenhower was president after World War Two was this, this timeframe was very popular. So we had this quadrant, right? On one side you had, what was it importance? And on the other side was urgency. So it could be highly important and highly urgent, low on each.

• 2:12:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  You get these four, four quadrants. And he said, the quadrant two, which was important, but not urgent are where 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?

• 2:12:42Mark Manson?

  I was just gonna say like, that's just the 1950s Eisenhower version of that, that tweet I read at the, the top of the show, which is like, you know, you have to give up short-term freedom, the gain long-term freedom, like all of your dreams are behind sacrifices. It was like, well, no shit, Sherlock. Like this is, I know this, this is not helping me. So I don't want to dogpile on this stuff because like, it is useful information.

• 2:13:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:13:09Mark Manson?

  It's just not sufficient whatsoever. Like it is not the solution.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  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 where you start.

• 2:13:23Mark Manson?

  This is when you're optimizing what's already working.

• 2:13:26Speaker 01

  Right. Right. Yeah. Find something that works first and then they go to this kind of stuff. Like I said, I've tried all the different systems, all the big ones. And you made this point already, but it does ring true for me too. Is that I took. The one good thing from doing all that is I took the things that worked from each one of those and made it my own, my own personal way. I just don't think there's any one system out there.

• 2:13:46Mark Manson?

  No.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Cause every time, again, like this, this one app I just tried to use recently, I'm like, oh, this is it. This is the one.

• 2:13:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  I found myself already like falling into that trap and it's like, oh no, there's, there's no single system out there that's perfect for everybody.

• 2:13:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And even, even if you find a system that works for you today, like three years from now, it'll be slightly different.

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  Three weeks from now. I can, I can almost guarantee you that.

• 2:14:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Once you think you've found the solution, it's, yeah, there's something hiding around the corner that you didn't plan for.

• 2:14:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah, for sure. For sure.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Okay, but there are, okay, can we, there, 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.

• 2:14:25Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  Obviously, um, I, I think another thing that came out of, well, kind of the behaviorist view, but also the time management crowd was breaking things up into smaller chunks. Um, 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, uh, container for it, right?

• 2:14:45Mark Manson?

  Yes, correct.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  I also think too, one thing, one benefit I got out of all these different time management systems is the ability to accurately assess how much work I can get done in a day. I, 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 lot better about, okay. 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, okay, I gotta be realistic about this. So there is kind of, even though you're approaching it from the more cognitive, quote unquote, rational side of your brain.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  I think there's some benefit in, in the time boxing systems and methods that you can get out of that. They're not, again, it's not the base underlying cause, but yeah.

• 2:15:39Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:15:58Mark Manson?

  Is an issue of going from doing nothing to doing something.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:16:01Mark Manson?

  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, uh, and so, yeah, it comes back to what you said earlier. It's like, this is not the place to start. This is, this is not even the place to like go second or third. Like this is the place to go, you know, when you are, when you're, you're moving along and you're doing a lot of things really well, but you're just kind of wondering like, how can I fit more stuff in or like, how can I be more efficient with my time? Then you start taking a look at this stuff.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Do we want to risk going into some of the things we do? Do we, do we want to throw those out there? I, I, it might be a useful exercise for somebody with all of the caveats and the warnings we've already issued, but.

• 2:16:52Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:53Mark Manson?

  Why, why don't you go first? Because I'm weird.

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:57Mark Manson?

  And.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  We already know that.

• 2:16:59Mark Manson?

  No, but it actually, it might be, it might be a useful segue as well, just because, um, you know, as, as someone with ADHD, like my productivity function is like strange.

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:17:11Mark Manson?

  And so people who, other people, people who are listening who maybe have ADHD and because I know procrastination disproportionately, people with ADHD struggle with it. So, um, it might be useful to get into that.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:17:23Mark Manson?

  Okay. So why don't you go first?

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So, I mean, for me, I try to keep it as simple as I can. That, that's one gripe I have with so many of these apps, uh, 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, an audience capture a little bit. They're like, give me this feature, give me this feature, and they just keep adding things. So, so my, one of my principles is to keep it as simple as possible. Have something, have a to-do list of some kind. Um, I use Notion, that's what we use on the team. So I put all my tasks into a, a, a personal database that I have and there's a way to organize it. But that, uh, on a day, on a daily basis, when I'm trying to decide what to do, I do time box.

• 2:18:00Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  For me, this works.

• 2:18:02Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  Because, um, again, I, I. The most useful exercise out of all of this isn't like, okay, this is what I need to get done. Now I'm gonna go get it. It's thinking about, okay, realistically, what can I get done in this amount of time? And after you time box for a while, again, like I was saying, you get, you get better at this. And you get better at estimating how much time any given task is going to take you.

• 2:18:24Mark Manson?

  Just describe really quick what time boxing is, in case people don't know.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So time boxing is you, you use some sort of system. In my case, I just use pencil and paper. I actually use Cal Newport's time boxing

• 2:18:36Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  journal that he has. You could, you could use any journal to do this. I just, I like his, this way it's formatted and everything like that. Essentially, the way I do it is I will write down, you know, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, down one side of, side of the paper, and then I make a box around any given, say it's a one or two hour time box from eight 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, or whatever it is. And so I give myself those two hours, and I'm only gonna work on that during those two hours. Now, life happens, and this, it, it's not a perfect system. And so like I already mentioned, I will revise this throughout the day.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  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, you can change it as you go. Essentially, though, what the, the goal is, is to plan out your day ahead of time so that you have something to aim at and say, you know, I'm working on this. I'm, am I doing what I said I was going to do?

• 2:19:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  It's kind of like a, an internal accountability system, a little bit.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  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? 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 used this time block to. Uh, to actually get done what I said I was going to get done.

• 2:20:06Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  So I use a combination of to do this and, and time boxing. Uh, I use a calendar to obviously, we have a shared calendar with the team. I also have my own personal calendar. I look at that pretty much every day. What do I got going on? Any events? I got dinner with friends. I'll put that in there. Yeah, that kind of thing just kind of keep me. These are the things that I know I have to get done today. That, that's what I put in the calendar. 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? That's kind of my system.

• 2:20:32Mark Manson?

  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? Like.

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  So I, I try to, uh, I, I am a big fan of Cal, of Cal Newport. Um, and, uh, I do try to get, I 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. Um, I try to get that done. And for me, it's mornings for most people, it's going to be mornings. So usually I try to schedule about two hours of deep work in, in the mornings where I'm getting like, okay, this is something that's 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 thirty, eight ish. Try to give it my two hours of deep work in.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  Um, and that is usually the hardest, the hardest thing that I have to do for the day. And honestly, if I get those done, that's like a win for the day too. You know what I mean? Like if I get two solid hours of deep work, 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, I feel pretty accomplished for those. Yeah.

• 2:21:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  So I, again, that's a realistic expectation. You can get about two to three to maybe four hours of real deep, solid work in. If you're in a knowledge work industry.

• 2:21:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:50Mark Manson?

  And for those listening who haven't read the book, like deep work is generally something that requires intensive creativity or problem solving.

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:21:58Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  Right. Intense research, you know, stuff like that. Yeah.

• 2:22:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah. That sounds very.

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  I think that's it. Like I said though, what, yeah. The other principle I have is just keep it as simple as possible. Because as soon as I add any sort of. Complexity to it.

• 2:22:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  I just, I don't.

• 2:22:23Mark Manson?

  So no Pomodoro, no like break times?

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I, I will schedule in with my time boxing. I'll schedule in.

• 2:22:30Mark Manson?

  Breaks?

• 2:22:30Speaker 01

  Breaks.

• 2:22:31Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  Well, 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.

• 2:22:37Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  Do whatever I need to get done in that time. Yeah.

• 2:22:40Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  But I don't do, no, I don't get hardcore on the Pomodoro or the, um.

• 2:22:45Mark Manson?

  Pomodoro never worked for me?

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  I did, I never quite got that one. Yeah.

• 2:22:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:49Mark Manson?

  Sometimes I wonder if somebody just made that up.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  I wonder that with a lot of things. Yeah. If it works for you, great, but yeah.

• 2:22:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah, sure. Try it. Whatever.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  What's your ADHD, uh, Ritalin system look like, Mark? If you could call it that?

• 2:23:08Mark Manson?

  So, okay, I, 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 number of hours, eliminate as many distractions as possible. You know, I used to use software that would block things like social media and, you know, I've tried those two. Sports websites and stuff like that. I, I, I did that for a number of years and it was very helpful, especially when I was writing a bunch of books. Um, 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, I'll let myself do that. The biggest difference, um, so this is where the ADHD comes in. This is, and this is what's going to sound crazy to people.

• 2:23:50Mark Manson?

  And also I think is a good case study of, 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.

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  That should be the highlight of the section, actually.

• 2:24:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:24:06Speaker 01

  As we're going through the, all these details.

• 2:24:07Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  That's the highlight of the section.

• 2:24:09Mark Manson?

  So as somebody with ADHD, um, my brain kind of has a disproportionate need for novelty. Uh, 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, like 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, task switching actually works in my favor. I wouldn't call it multitasking because I don't, I never do two things at the same time. But I'll give a, a simple example, which is I had a university lecture that I used to go to. And without fail, I would fall asleep every single time.

• 2:24:52Mark Manson?

  And I would have to like, end up asking my friend for her notes and I would like scramble and freak out and have to like, go read the textbook, you know, two days before the, the exam. And it was a disaster. And then at some point, I don't remember when or how, uh, I started picking up Sudoku's and crossword puzzles from the student union and I would take them to this lecture. And I found that if I like sat there and did Sudoku's while the guy was lecturing, not only did I stay awake the entire time, but I paid attention to the entire lecture. Which, I mean, I know that makes no sense. It makes no sense. I didn't understand this for the longest time and it's, it's true to this day. So like, sometimes when I'm like, listening to somebody give a talk,

• 2:25:36Mark Manson?

  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. 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, is it's task switching, or it's like, I guess cognitive switching. Let's go back to the crossword in the, the college lecture. So I'm in the, I'm in the, the classroom. I'm listening to the professor lecture. I pay attention, let's say I make it five, six minutes. My brain starts getting bored.

• 2:26:19Mark Manson?

  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. And while I'm doing the Sudoku, I'm like, kind of passively listening and hearing him in the background. And then after a few minutes, when he says something interesting, I'm like, oh, that's shiny and new. Hey, look, novelty, go back to the lecture. Okay. And so now I'm back in the lecture for another five or six minutes. And then when the 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

• 2:27:02Mark Manson?

  I bring all of this up because I do this every day. Yeah. In my actual day to day. I've watched you do this, yes. And as you know, I'm, I am strangely somehow extremely productive. Yeah. So, anything that is not deep work, I will very intentionally do this. Like, we took a break between shooting this. We were out in the office. We're talking about this podcast. While we're talking about it, I am looking at the design for podcast covers and fonts for the website. And thinking about feedback that I'm gonna give for on all that. And I'm doing the exact same thing. So it's like, you know, while you and Jess are talking, as soon as that's, that conversation starts to get boring,

• 2:27:46Mark Manson?

  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 you, you have this kind of constant disproportionate craving for novelty, for new stimulus. And if you don't feed your brain that stimulus, you, you shut down essentially. Like, you just lose interest completely and, in my case, go to sleep. If you can find productive ways to feed yourself that stimulus, if you can, and in my case, it's kind of task pairing things.

• 2:28:25Mark Manson?

  So, uh, it's like, if I have to do something extremely boring, like, check, like, go through my inbox and clear it out, then I will just pair that with something else I need to do, right? Which is like, I don't know, have a meeting about, like a production meeting for the YouTube channel, right? And I'll just kind of casually like flick through the emails while people are talking. And I'm not being rude. Yeah, I know. I'm like, I am paying attention. When that happens, yeah. I am paying attention, but it gets, it helps me get everything done. Cause 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 through the meeting, I would get bored and I would like zone out and probably start watching YouTube videos. So, it's. Okay.

• 2:29:10Mark Manson?

  By pairing them together, and this is, so we have not talked about something yet, which you and I, I think it's like the main thing on this episode that you and I disagree on. Okay. And it's probably because of this, which is the active procrastination. There is something in the research called active procrastination.

• 2:29:31Speaker 01

  Big debate over it, actually.

• 2:29:32Mark Manson?

  Yes, which I personally call, my wife and I, we lovingly call it productive procrastination.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  Yes, that's common.

• 2:29:42Mark Manson?

  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, you're putting it off.

• 2:29:49Mark Manson?

  Well, one way to get it done is to go find an even bigger, harrier 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, you know, you just keep putting it off. But then suddenly it's, uh, 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 with like, 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.

• 2:30:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:30:26Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:30:36Mark Manson?

  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, 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.

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 2:31:02Mark Manson?

  My life is chaos and the time boxes are completely useless.

• 2:31:07Speaker 01

  If you're gonna be task switching, that's useless.

• 2:31:10Mark Manson?

  It's, and it's not just that, but it's also like, given, you know, my role in the business, like my days are crazy.

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:31:17Mark Manson?

  Like it's, there's so much unexpected stuff that happens throughout the day. So the time boxing just goes out the window. But I do do to do lists. And taskless and I I'm actually like quite religious about it because I think it's the only thing that keeps me like tethered and like streamlined because otherwise I just forget stuff. But outside of that, I don't do a whole lot else. The other thing that I do that is strange about me that's different. You know, the conventional wisdom is always like knock out the most difficult task 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.

• 2:32:02Mark Manson?

  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. I can't do that.

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like I gotta. You need some warm up or?

• 2:32:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah, my brain, it feels like my brain needs warm up. So I I usually actually do the the the least important stuff first thing in the morning. I love mornings. It's funny, my my morning routine is literally wake up, grab an energy drink and sit down at my desk and start working like within a hundred hundred seconds of waking up.

• 2:32:30Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:32:31Mark Manson?

  So it's.

• 2:32:32Speaker 01

  Wow, really?

• 2:32:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I don't do anything. I don't, I don't stretch, I don't meditate, I don't walk, I don't, I literally wake up, walk to my desk, start working.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:32:41Mark Manson?

  But I need to start with like low impact work. So it's like usually first thing in the morning is email and then I catch up on Slack messages. And then usually by then it's been like thirty, forty minutes. Um, and my brain's like functioning and I can start kind of doing creative stuff. Um, and then I'll, 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. That's kind of it.

• 2:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:17Mark Manson?

  Okay. That's it.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  Well, okay, what it sounds like is you have figured out a way to leverage your impulsivity.

• 2:33:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  Uh, which I think is 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. Um, and I I've heard you talk about that before where um, your 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, I just need a jolt of novelty and I don't have ADHD.

• 2:33:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:47Speaker 01

  Um, so I think that could be useful um for for a lot of people.

• 2:33:51Mark Manson?

  The important thing I think is going back, like.

• 2:33:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:33:54Mark Manson?

  When I talk to ADHD people who who are dysfunctional, they do the task switching thing, but then they'll just leave six things half completed.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:34:04Mark Manson?

  And they never go back and complete it. And so like, and this is where the to do list come in that I'm like religious with my to do list because it's like, I I yeah, you have to go back.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:34:16Mark Manson?

  You have to go back.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  So that's what, when you talk about the productive procrastination, I think that's the point where I get um a little sticky with it because it's so easy for me, like if my if my house is a disaster, I've been procrastinating, putting off, but I got some work tasks I need to do. Like, eh, time to clean the house now and I'll go 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.

• 2:34:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:47Mark Manson?

  If the tasks should probably be in the same domain ideally, right?

• 2:34:50Speaker 01

  I see. I'm usually like, I'm gonna know something completely different.

• 2:34:53Mark Manson?

  Exactly. It's like if if I was supposed to prepare for this podcast and instead I like decide to go mow my lawn, like that's useless.

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  Right. Okay.

• 2:35:01Mark Manson?

  Whereas if it's like, you know, I should be preparing for the podcast, but maybe instead what I'll do is I'll like start doing research for the next podcast.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:35:09Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  Even emails at that point. Yeah.

• 2:35:15Mark Manson?

  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, 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.

• 2:35:39Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:50Mark Manson?

  That makes sense?

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  That does make sense. No, I found the same thing too. We've been working on this particular episode for so long.

• 2:35:57Mark Manson?

  I'm procrastinating.

• 2:35:58Speaker 01

  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, boom, there's all this novelty to it.

• 2:36:09Mark Manson?

  It feels novel again.

• 2:36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:36:23Mark Manson?

  I need to work on a lot of things at once. Yeah.

• 2:36:25Speaker 01

  The the key takeaway here is you can try these things out, figure out what works for you, pick, choose, borrow. That's great.

• 2:36:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:36:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:45Mark Manson?

  Let's move on to another mid century school thought. This one that went completely under the radar in the productivity space and is actually one of the most effective things when it comes to dealing with procrastination and productivity. And that is purpose. This doesn't get talked about. In fact, we almost missed this.

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:04Mark Manson?

  This was a late addition to our guide and our outline.

• 2:37:08Speaker 01

  I was I was I was embarrassed. Actually, when you brought it, you're like, why aren't we talking about purpose? I'm like, oh, God. It was a huge face palm for me.

• 2:37:17Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:37:34Mark Manson?

  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, you're much less likely to delay doing it, right? Because it aligns with your values. It feels important. It feels useful. So.

• 2:37:50Mark Manson?

  This actually comes out, I'm not gonna harp on it for too long, but like, it comes out of the mid-century existentialist movement, right? Which is just wonderful and bleak and French. And that they, they basically said like, you know, they, they start with nihilism, which is like, nothing means anything. After a great start. We're all just a bunch of dirt and atoms and, and we're all gonna die. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. But from there, they make a very important leap, which is that, you know, meaning and purpose not preordained. So Jean-Paul Sartre had this great saying where he said, "Existence precedes essence", which is actually taking Plato and flipping it on his head.

• 2:38:30Mark Manson?

  Because Plato said, "Productivity is a, a form, a concept that we try to live up to. And whether we are, exist or not, productivity always, is always there. And it's, it's just a question of whether you embody it or not." Sartre's 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 it's a simple idea. It's incredibly profound. I think it's, it's most popularized from the experiences of Viktor Frankl.

• 2:39:13Mark Manson?

  In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he wrote about his experiences surviving the Holocaust. And he talks about how, you know, it's a sense of hope and purpose for the future that not only drove him to survival, but like, he noticed among the other prisoners was kind of the deciding factor of their fates as well. And so you get kind of this, this whole philosophical movement through the 60s and 70s of just really thinking and paying attention to the meaning that's being ascribed to certain behaviors or functions or, or groups or relationships. And strangely, it's funny because existentialism, I mean, it was everywhere. It was in culture, it was in art, it was in film, it was in politics.

• 2:39:57Mark Manson?

  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, it's so stupidly simple, but it is worth considering, why am I doing this? Why do I care?

• 2:40:31Speaker 01

  Well, do you think it didn't make its way into, say, corporate culture because it's almost, it's almost antithetical to a lot of corporate culture? Because it's kind of hard, I think most people would kind of see what's going on there. If you brought a consultant in to say, okay, we're here today, and from eight to noon, we're going to talk about your purpose here in this corporate setting. And people would be like, wait a second, what?

• 2:40:58Mark Manson?

  Okay, let me back out.

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  Or is that too cynical, I guess?

• 2:41:01Mark Manson?

  That is pretty cynical. 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, I would say really just in the last 20, 25 years, like really the millennials and Gen Z, like if, and I remember seeing survey data around this years ago of like, one of the big things about the millennial generation is like they, like millennials really gave a shit, 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

• 2:41:48Mark Manson?

  I mean, it is, purpose is, is productive, right? Like, it's, and if you look at all of the businesses and companies over the last 20 years, like, they really push some sort of social value or cause or mission behind whatever they're doing. You know, everything from like, like the Nike commercial, like focusing on female athletes, or Apple being the first to pioneer like recycling electronics. And there's just so many examples from the last 20 years of, of large corporations who have like adopted specific missions, certain meanings, aligning themselves with certain political causes. Right. And it's like, very much, like, it's not an accident. It's more profitable, right?

• 2:42:31Mark Manson?

  Like, it's, it's like, we want to, we want our employees to feel like they're doing something important and worthwhile. And because when you feel like you're doing something important and worthwhile, you work harder. Yeah. And you fuck around less and you're willing to, to make mistakes and, and embarrass yourself because it's for some higher cause. You know who's the master of this? Fucking Elon Musk. Oh. Like, think about it, dude. Like, if you're an engineer interested in space, what feels more important than taking humanity to Mars? Right. Right? Like, if you're an aeronautical engineer and you hear that, like, you're 25 and you hear that, you're like, whatever, dude, I'm all in. Like, tell me what to do.

• 2:43:14Mark Manson?

  I will grind all day, all night. I will work my ass off. You know, Tesla, you know? Climate change and. Bringing, bringing the renewable economy, you know, into America. It is, it really is a superpower. Right. And it is a real, I think it's an overlooked talent of Elon's, of like, finding these kind of, almost like, civil, civilisationally important causes to align his companies with. Uh, you're seeing it now with, with the AI stuff. Like, he's, he is pushing this narrative of like, we need an AI that's aligned with, with, uh, valuing human life, or else like, we could all go extinct.

• 2:43:57Mark Manson?

  It is absolutely existential. It is existentialism, you know, just in corporate form. So it is, um.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:44:06Mark Manson?

  It is a super overlooked thing.

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:08Mark Manson?

  And it, and, and I understand why it, it, it feels hand wavy and cliche. There's like, there are a lot of cliches around it. But it is a thing. And I think to bring it back home to people listening to this who are struggling just to like, you know, eat healthy or apply for that job that they want or whatever. Like really ask yourself, why do you want it? I'd say what I noticed the most often is that people who are primarily motivated to do things, not because they actually care about the thing, but because they care about the attention or the result the thing will get them. Those are the people who, 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.

• 2:44:53Mark Manson?

  Uh, so you're not going to stick through all the challenges and setbacks and failures and, you know, false starts. Whereas if you actually really believe in, in a higher, like a, like a higher meaning or purpose around something, um, then you will have that patience. You will have that resilience and you will stick with it, even if you, you don't get it right the first or second time.

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  What do you think too though about, you're, you're talking about purpose kind of in a grander sense and a, um, you have this higher grand purpose that, that aiming for whether it is somebody like Elon Musk and their, um, his grand designs that he has on humanity, I guess. Is that over complicating it so too though for some people? Cause we can't all have those jobs, right? So what I'm thinking of is I, I think a lot more jobs and work in general had just an inherent purpose tied to them and it was usually taking care of your family.

• 2:45:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:45:48Speaker 01

  Like, so a miserable job, you could be shoveling shit.

• 2:45:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:52Speaker 01

  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, 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. The job that is corporate job actually took on a new meeting because he needed the money from that corporate job.

• 2:46:21Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 2:46:21Speaker 01

  And he needed the connections and he needed, so he started to like his job more because there was a new purpose around it.

• 2:46:28Mark Manson?

  That's awesome.

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  Which is insane and it wasn't some high pie in the sky purpose that he had. It was more just like, I mean, it is treating it as a means to an end, but there was a bigger purpose behind that means to an end.

• 2:46:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:39Speaker 01

  If that makes sense.

• 2:46:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:40Speaker 01

  So I think there's just a way to, you know, not, 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.

• 2:46:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there, you, you don't need these civilizational cataclysmic existential reasons. It's interesting, I was talking to a guy recently, you know, we did a podcast, an old podcast episode last year.

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:08Mark Manson?

  On my, my health journey and I, in that episode, I talked about how it was really important for me to find a way to make exercise fun. Like that was one of my big challenges 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. He's like, it's funny, I've worked out religiously for 20 years and I've, I've always hated it, never enjoyed it. And I was like, wow, that's actually.

• 2:47:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:47:36Mark Manson?

  Sad. Yeah, well, I was like, first of all, sorry. I'm sorry, feel a little bad for you. But I was like, wow, that's actually, that's atypical.

• 2:47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:47Mark Manson?

  Generally, when you meet somebody who's like exercised religiously for forever, it's, it's because they, 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, 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 gonna, I was gonna live to an old age and I was gonna see him grow up and I was gonna see my grandkids. And I was like, there you go.

• 2:48:16Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:48:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, it doesn't need to be fun.

• 2:48:18Speaker 01

  You didn't actually hate it, probably in some way.

• 2:48:20Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 2:48:20Speaker 01

  On a deeper level, you didn't.

• 2:48:21Mark Manson?

  Right. And I, I think that's. That is the power of of finding some sort of purpose in something is that it it makes 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 it's purpose is the only thing that can take pain and make it feel worthwhile.

• 2:48:51Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:48:52Mark Manson?

  Right? And like, it can make you feel like, okay, that sucked, but I'm glad I did it.

• 2:48:59Speaker 01

  Going back to the Goggins thing, too. I think that's, I think that's actually what's going on with him is that there's just a higher purpose to his pain.

• 2:49:07Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 2:49:07Speaker 01

  What do you think too about though, if you, if you do start out kind of at a, 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, it was a vanity purely. 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 eighties was able to like, spread his legs and bend down and to get, put his head on the floor. Like, he could stretch insanely and he was skiing in his eighties and all of that. And I'm like, well, I want to be able to do that. And I want to be able to live a healthy life when I'm

• 2:49:50Speaker 01

  older now. It's very much switched to that. But it started out as a, a very vain purpose.

• 2:49:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:56Speaker 01

  I, some jobs can start out that way, too. This is a, just a means to an end. Pay my rent. And then it turns into something bigger later on, too. Are there examples of that that you could think of in your own life? Or what's going on when that happens? I don't know.

• 2:50:10Mark Manson?

  I mean, this career started out that way.

• 2:50:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:50:13Mark Manson?

  Like, I was, I read Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week, and I was like, I just want to make some money on the internet so I can go party in Argentina. Like, that's, that was like, literally, the, my entire bar.

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  God, the 2000s, man, they were awesome.

• 2:50:27Mark Manson?

  I can just clear that bar. I'm good. And so I just started, I just started a bunch of websites. Like, I didn't really think about it. I didn't care about it. And, you know, eventually, as you know, one of those websites was a dating advice website. And that started to take off and do pretty well. And And then people started asking me for advice. This was 2007, 2008. And I was like, well, shit, if people are gonna 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

• 2:51:03Mark Manson?

  and pretty soon, next thing I know, I'm like, this is, I could do this forever.

• 2:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:06Mark Manson?

  Like, this is it. I'm, I'm so in on this. And I, I just feel like that, that actually is probably the more common story. I, I think this is people's biggest mistake with this too, and, and I am 100% sure we will do an episode on purpose at some point. But it, it, people mistakenly assume that you find the purpose. And then you become super motivated to do all this stuff, where it's like, no, you do the stuff. And as you do it, you find the things that feel very meaningful and impactful. And then that's where the purpose is.

• 2:51:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:51:41Mark Manson?

  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, a, 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 in the things that you're doing and, and like, because that's the thing that's going to sustain you over the long run. Like the, the purpose, the thing that the purpose solves is going from short term to long term.

• 2:52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:13Mark Manson?

  It, it won't get you from zero to short term.

• 2:52:15Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. That makes sense to me. And, and checks out. Where I, I have found purpose in all sorts of places I never thought I would have. So 100% that, that checks out.

• 2:52:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:31Mark Manson?

  All right, let's, uh, let's get back to, to the theory and the research. So like, we're, at this point, we're pushing into the eighties and nineties. Everybody realizes the time management stuff doesn't really work. Where are we at here? What's next?

• 2:52:47Speaker 01

  Well, a group of researchers were very observant that the time management was not working. And so they set out to figure out, okay, what is it about procrastination, motivation in general, that gets people to actually do what they want to do and say what they want to do? One researcher in particular, his name was Pierre 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. Okay, or TMT for short, I might refer to it as TMT every now and then. Temporal motivation theory.

• 2:53:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:53:37Mark Manson?

  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.

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  Right, right. That will factor in really big into temporal motivation theory as we go through this. But his, the big innovation through his theory was this equation that he came up with. Okay. And I'll go through it real quick, won't bore you with the details. And you know, there's no, obviously you're not going to be able to have to plug in numbers for this or anything like that. But I know.

• 2:54:10Mark Manson?

  I brought my calculator and everything.

• 2:54:13Speaker 01

  He came up with this, 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. 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.

• 2:54:49Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:54:49Speaker 01

  We already talked about that. So he's already bringing in stuff that we know.

• 2:54:53Mark Manson?

  If you expect you're going to be successful, you're more likely to be successful.

• 2:54:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And that's one of the first factors that are 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.

• 2:55:11Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:55:12Speaker 01

  And there's a subjective component to that. But essentially, if it's something that you actually value highly, you're going to be more motivated, right? Makes total sense.

• 2:55:21Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 2:55:21Speaker 01

  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 this synergistic effect where motivation goes up, you're going to not procrastinate on it. But then we have some things that might detract from your motivation as well. Impulsiveness. Okay, so here we're kind of getting at some of the emotional side of things, right? And we've talked already about our own impulsiveness and how that's factored into our procrastination. So impulsiveness is how prone you are to seek out and succumb to distractions or immediate gratification to.

• 2:55:52Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:55:52Speaker 01

  So your ability to postpone gratification or delay gratification. 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?

• 2:56:07Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:56:07Speaker 01

  So the further a task is, or the further the

• 2:56:11Mark Manson?

  The reward is.

• 2:56:12Speaker 01

  The reward or the result of the behavior that you're going to engage in, the less motivation you have.

• 2:56:17Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:56:17Speaker 01

  And that's the temporal discounting that you talked about.

• 2:56:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:19Speaker 01

  That was one of the big innovations of temporal motivation theory, was including that in our calculus, literally, the equation to procrastination.

• 2:56:30Mark Manson?

  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 emotional factors. The expectancy, we've already talked about that, not just in terms of the self-efficacy, but also the perfectionism, right? Like if your expectation is that, you know, That it needs to be perfect to be accomplished, then that is going to be far more intimidating than if your expectation is that like, oh, I just need to do a decent job at it.

• 2:57:12Mark Manson?

  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. Like, I mean, younger listeners will probably will have trouble believing this, but like procrastination and distraction were not two things that you, 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.

• 2:57:42Speaker 01

  Maybe TV, but even that was, yeah.

• 2:57:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like it's.

• 2:57:45Speaker 01

  Dad was probably watching TV anyway, so.

• 2:57:48Mark Manson?

  My memory of childhood is, is long periods of boredom and, uh, but I still didn't do my homework. So it's, it's, this idea that procrastination is, is directly proportional to distraction is a relatively new concept and I, I know we're going to get into distraction deeply at some point here soon. Um, but it's interesting to me that it's really only coming up now.

• 2:58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, look at it in the historical context. Again, like you just said, uh, Pierre Steele was doing most of his, the bulk of his research was in the nineties and two thousands and he's continued since then. But, um, that is when information technology really started to.

• 2:58:26Mark Manson?

  Take off.

• 2:58:26Speaker 01

  Take off and get like embedded into the culture, uh, to where we see it today. And so the impulsiveness part of that, uh, you're right, it captures that distraction element.

• 2:58:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:39Speaker 01

  That it, the, 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, these terms can capture a lot. But those terms can also become imprecise then too. We, we can get into that in a little bit, but. So like just some examples of this, like your expectancy, it could be really high. Like you, like, yes, I can do this, but your impulsiveness might override that. And then your, the deadline might be a long ways away. So you can start to see all these different, really complicated kind of calculations that happens with just these four variables, um, which is really, um, pretty interesting. And again, it was a, an innovation at that time that to marry all these different things and start putting these things together

• 2:59:24Speaker 01

  in a way that's more interactive. Cause we, when we started out, we were talking about the ancient world. There's this one school of thought that thought this thing. And then there, 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, uh, what another big innovation of TMT was that it started looking at it in a kind of multidisciplinary way that we just hadn't seen up until this point.

• 2:59:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59:50Mark Manson?

  If we may take a quick detour.

• 2:59:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:59:53Mark Manson?

  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. And I definitely like, especially in the, the ancient times and throughout, you know, in my second book, I called it the classical assumption. Like if you look at all of the discussions around Akkaya 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,

• 3:00:36Mark Manson?

  the, the chariot driver to whip the horses into shape until they do the right thing. And so you, you're just expected to like brute force your way through it. I think it's really only in the last few decades that 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 of weeks, but like, by week three or four, you're done. You're just tapped out. You don't care anymore. So, you really do have to negotiate these other factors. Like, you have, you really have to look at, like, what is, how are you measuring yourself?

• 3:01:20Mark Manson?

  Like, when are the benefits coming? How do you feel about it? How do you feel about your ability to accomplish the thing? What sort of standards or expectations are you holding yourself to? Are those reasonable or not? Like, it's kind of negotiating these other factors within your mind that help you, you know, when you combine that with the environmental stuff, like, that, that's, you, you almost just, like, grease the skids for the behavior to happen naturally as a byproduct of all of these things.

• 3:01:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:01:57Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:01:57Speaker 01

  More so. This, these more recent theories start to really acknowledge that and incorporate that, incorporate that into their, their frameworks.

• 3:02:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:06Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, yeah, for the longest time, it was very much like, the reasoning, the rider, you know, on the chariot, the reasoning part of your brain developed so you can overcome all of these terrible, nasty, brutish things about you. And, well, yes, it can be used for that, but it's also, those things probably evolved in our minds as well in order to serve those two chariot, chariot-driving horses, right?

• 3:02:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:31Speaker 01

  Like, there's, there's a, an acceptance of who we are in a lot of these. It's like, okay, look, there is, you're, there's impulsivity. We're impulsive by our nature. How does that factor into getting things done and our procrastination? We, you know, there's, we have this weird kind of temporal discounting where we, we put off things that are further, that are due further in advance for, for whatever reason.

• 3:02:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:57Speaker 01

  This starts to incorporate that and, like, really acknowledge human nature on a more realistic level, in my view.

• 3:03:02Mark Manson?

  And it's a much healthier view of

• 3:03:06Mark Manson?

  How to actually get yourself to take the action that you want to take.

• 3:03:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:03:09Mark Manson?

  You know, because it is, coming back to the shame piece.

• 3:03:12Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say, shame is gone. Shame is out of the equation now.

• 3:03:14Mark Manson?

  Right. You're not judging yourself. You're not like, oh, God, why, why am I like not, why am I discounting things that happen in the future?

• 3:03:21Speaker 01

  Right. You don't do that.

• 3:03:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's, it's like you're human. This is, we all do this. And, and coming back to Aristotle, this is the skill, right? The skill, you could, you could almost look at each of these four factors and, and see the skill in each one of them, right? It's like managing your expectancy, managing like, like being mindful of the value that you're going to get out of something. And, and there are ways I, 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 a social accountability around things. You can reward yourself for things. You can create things in your environment that make it more enjoyable, right? So it's like, learning to manipulate the value aspect of the equation, learning to implement, I think the purpose stuff that we talked about really factors into the time discounting.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:04:06Mark Manson?

  Right? Like it's, it's like when you remember what is the cause or mission that is driving my motivation to do this thing, that helps you counterbalance that time discounting.

• 3:04:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:04:15Mark Manson?

  It's like, it's like I'm doing this for my kids. I'm doing this so that when I'm a grandfather, I can play with my grandchildren. That's why I'm going to the gym today. Right? It's like that counterbalances that time discounting that naturally happens in everybody's brain.

• 3:04:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:04:30Mark Manson?

  It's, we're finally starting to see everything come together.

• 3:04:34Speaker 01

  Right. Right. Yeah. And you can, you can look at each one of these, like the expectancy thing. You can work on things around self-efficacy or break the task down to a point where it is, you do feel like you have some agency and some ability to.

• 3:04:50Mark Manson?

  Where, where did that start?

• 3:04:51Speaker 01

  Uh, like the, the, the breaking down tasks.

• 3:04:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:54Speaker 01

  Actually, that, a lot of that kind of came from time management.

• 3:04:57Mark Manson?

  Oh.

• 3:04:58Speaker 01

  So there was, there was glimmers within that, where it's like, oh, um, it, it, you don't know how to, one of their, one of the big kind of, uh, 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.

• 3:05:19Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 3:05:20Speaker 01

  Where, yeah, they, they found that breaking that down into, you've talked about this so many times.

• 3:05:26Mark Manson?

  This, this is my go to advice.

• 3:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is one of the first pieces of advice you always say.

• 3:05:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:30Speaker 01

  If you have this huge jockeying task, now start with the most dead, simple, obvious thing that you can do.

• 3:05:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:36Speaker 01

  And that gets your momentum going and then on to the next one and on to the next one.

• 3:05:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:39Speaker 01

  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, most obvious in the delay thing as the time approaches, the motivation goes up, but the others can do the same thing too. You might value a task or the benefits of a task differently throughout the stages of the process of doing it as well.

• 3:06:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:00Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 3:06:01Mark Manson?

  It is, the breaking down thing, I, I feel like it works on so many levels. You know, part of it is just the intimidation factor.

• 3:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:09Mark Manson?

  You know, when you have this huge hairy goal, it, 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, 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.

• 3:06:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:06:39Mark Manson?

  And he said that, you know, the, initially the goal is to just X out a few days in a row, but he said, once he's got a few days in a row, his only goal is to don't stop the streak.

• 3:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't break the chain.

• 3:06:49Mark Manson?

  Keep it going as long as possible. And you can, again, that's like a beautiful example of like manipulating these factors within your own head and redefining what the metric is and read, like breaking down tasks 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.

• 3:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the expectancy component of the, the equation. I think for the value one, like you already mentioned too, is like having some, well, you, 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. If I have a job I don't really necessarily like,

• 3:07:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:35Speaker 01

  I'm probably gonna procrastinate it, this and that. But if I have a purpose attached to that job, that same job, Now the value could shoot up

• 3:07:42Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:07:42Speaker 01

  At that point, too. So again, it's just these little mind tricks. It's just, it's all within your head, too, which is crazy, you know? There's some external factors as well, obviously, the delay and all of that impulse in this distractions in your environment. But again, yeah, we're putting it all together at this point.

• 3:07:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it is, it is a skill. It is something you, you work on and develop. And I mean, we'll, 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, cause again, it's like purpose is subjective. Value is subjective. Expectation is subjective. These are all things that you get to decide. You get to decide like what success looks like. You get this to decide what is meaningful, what is valuable, what, what is worth pursuing? How long you pursue it? You know, do you want to pursue it for a week, a month, a year, 10 years?

• 3:08:32Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:08:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:08:40Mark Manson?

  That it, that it stops being intimidating or feeling difficult.

• 3:08:44Speaker 01

  I was, I listened to a podcast that Pierce 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. 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, you know, he gave the example that we've already given to with, you know, he doesn't buy junk food.

• 3:09:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:11Speaker 01

  And it's because he knows what happens when he has junk food in the house. And I've, I've been very, like with my friends, they all know like I'm a sugar fiend. I'm a junk food fiend and that's why I don't buy it, you know? And, but I think that you 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.

• 3:09:38Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:09:38Speaker 01

  Boom. That's like a immediate unlock for me, immediate win for me. So it is just getting into the kind of minutia and dialing these things around to fit your personality and be real honest with yourself about it.

• 3:09:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you feel like this maps with uh Neuril's indistractable stuff? Because that, you know, one of the things I quibble with Neuron sometimes, I, sometimes I feel like, you know,

• 3:10:03Mark Manson?

  it is a two-sided coin. One is just don't have temptation in your environment.

• 3:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:08Mark Manson?

  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, the avoidance in the moment. Sometimes I feel like he leans too much on the latter, but like, I'm wondering, I'm wondering if you like, if, if his framework kind of fits into the, the TMT stuff, like.

• 3:10:34Speaker 01

  So specifically around environmental design or um more about the emotional trigger stuff?

• 3:10:40Mark Manson?

  Uh, the emotional trigger stuff.

• 3:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so I think that's actually kind of one, I would say fair criticism about TMT is that it kind of is a little, it, it's not specific enough around the emotional triggers necessarily. Yes, there's impulsivity in there. Um, and there's some subjective uh constructs like value and expectancy and all of that. But the emotional side, I don't think it's quite, it, it kind of tries to boil down these very complex emotional processes that we go through into four variables. And that, that's one of the um, the criticisms of it that I think is fair.

• 3:11:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Um, it feels like it should be like six or seven variables.

• 3:11:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. And while, while the variables are pretty well clearly defined, like actually measuring them and defining them in the, in the real world is much harder.

• 3:11:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:31Speaker 01

  Um, so I think that's a fair criticism of it. 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. Because all equations will.

• 3:11:45Mark Manson?

  Of course. Well, and it's. This is, this is the problem with this field is like anytime I see an equation in psychology, I'm like, yeah, you know, it is probably directionally correct.

• 3:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:54Mark Manson?

  But it probably does not measure a single thing.

• 3:11:56Speaker 01

  It doesn't, it can't capture anything. 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, let's say.

• 3:12:07Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 3:12:08Speaker 01

  Or just like repeated procrastination in the same domain.

• 3:12:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:12Speaker 01

  Um, I'm, 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. Um, and so that's the one thing, the output for this, if you notice in the, the equation is motivation. It's motivation equals the expectancy times value, yada, yada. There's can still be times where you feel highly motivated and still procrastinate.

• 3:12:36Mark Manson?

  You just still don't do it.

• 3:12:37Speaker 01

  And it just doesn't, it, this doesn't fully capture that.

• 3:12:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's one of the criticisms for sure. I, and there just isn't really a lot of focus on the emotional affective triggers.

• 3:12:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Cause I'm just thinking about the impulsivity piece. Like everything else makes sense to me.

• 3:12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12:54Mark Manson?

  The expectancy, the value.

• 3:12:56Speaker 01

  Delay. Yeah.

• 3:12:57Mark Manson?

  The delay. I feel like the impulsivity, you could actually break out into probably three or four of its own variables.

• 3:13:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13:04Mark Manson?

  Right? Like there's how many distractions are in your environment? Like how easy is avoided? Like this is the NERIL thing, which is like he, it's, it's your level of distraction is proportional to both how many opportunities for distraction is there in your environment? And how prone are you to distraction through your own internal emotional triggers? Right? Like you want to work on both sides of that coin, right? You want to reduce your internal emotional triggers and you also want to reduce your external environmental triggers so that you're, you're kind of like hitting it from both sides. So that feels like it's missing. And then also I know we're, we're going to get to emotional regulation in a second, but it, it's a huge piece. Like if you are not good at managing

• 3:13:46Mark Manson?

  your emotions, right? Like if you are the type of person who, when you get angry, you just fucking lose your shit for an entire day and become extremely impulsive. Or when you get anxious, you just like panic and like run to, you know, whatever the, the nearest bucket of chocolate is. Like it is, the, the intensity of your emotions plays a huge factor in this and. The ability to regulate your emotions, to come down from them, to cope with them effectively is a huge part of this as well.

• 3:14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14:21Mark Manson?

  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, your willpower is just basically gone.

• 3:14:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:14:44Mark Manson?

  Entirely.

• 3:14:45Speaker 01

  And cultural norms, too. Those aren't captured in this either, you know? So, it's really hard to, that impulsivity one, I agree, is kind of like, it's a catch-all.

• 3:14:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:54Speaker 01

  Uh, category for any sort of emotional influence that would go into procrastination, or whether you are motivation.

• 3:15:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:01Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it's limited in that regard. I definitely think so, yeah. It is kind of, I really want human behavior to be boiled down to like, an equation. That would be awesome.

• 3:15:14Mark Manson?

  Wouldn't it be nice?

• 3:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure there are, like this equation, it does capture a lot of

• 3:15:20Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 3:15:20Speaker 01

  uh, 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.

• 3:15:29Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:15:30Speaker 01

  I don't want to knock it by any means.

• 3:15:32Mark Manson?

  So, where are we at now? What is, uh, what's our current best understanding of procrastination and why it happens?

• 3:15:38Speaker 01

  Well, Mark, I hate to tell you, but it comes down to emotions.

• 3:15:42Mark Manson?

  Ah!

• 3:15:43Speaker 01

  I know, we have to get squishy with this.

• 3:15:45Mark Manson?

  Why? See, you just need to be hugged more. That's why you're not, that's why you're not doing your term paper. You have not enough hugs.

• 3:15:52Speaker 01

  Well... That could be part of it, yes. In the early 2010s, late 2000s, early 2010s, uh, there was one researcher in particular, uh, Tim Pitchell, who started to notice that actually, this isn't just...

• 3:16:09Speaker 01

  A problem that boils down to these four factors, it's a much deeper emotional mood regulation problem. 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 his, one of his proteges 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 there, the core premise of the emotional regulation theory of procrastination is that it is first and foremost procrastination is a mood regulation strategy that we use

• 3:16:53Speaker 01

  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 is where procrastination starts and where we need to focus our, our resources and our ability and our higher cognitive powers and everything we've been talking about. This is actually where we really need to focus on. The, 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. It gives us this kind of urge to procrastinate almost.

• 3:17:36Speaker 01

  We also prioritize mood repair, right? So procrastination typically serves to like kind of quickly improve our current mood that we have, like, ooh, this feels bad, I just want out of this, I want to escape, basically. Research backs all of that up. There's a lot of individual traits too. We've kind of, we've kind of mentioned that you're, if you're more impulsive or not, that's like one individual trait that might influence the way you procrastinate or whether you procrastinate on anything.

• 3:18:09Speaker 01

  And there, as opposed to something like conscientiousness, which we haven't really talked about, but that's an individual trait, a personality trait that can influence all of this. 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 a kind of a personal nature to all this. So it's both universal emotional processes, but then also the individual differences. So it's kind of trying to tie all of that together into this picture of how we regulate emotions on a even moment to moment basis, not just day to day basis, but a moment to moment basis. Procrastination is a strategy for mood repair and just wanting to not feel bad, essentially.

• 3:18:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So when you say procrastination is a strategy to, for mood regulation, like explain that like I'm five.

• 3:19:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:19:02Mark Manson?

  What does that mean?

• 3:19:03Speaker 01

  Okay. So, Mark.

• 3:19:05Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:19:16Speaker 01

  It's fuzzy.

• 3:19:16Mark Manson?

  What does it actually mean?

• 3:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's just take an example of when you are going to procrastinate on something. You have a work task you want to do or you're, you need to do. Okay. You don't want to do it. That's kind of the point, right? When you approach this task, like you might get an anxious feeling.

• 3:19:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Dread.

• 3:19:35Speaker 01

  Dread.

• 3:19:36Mark Manson?

  Boredom.

• 3:19:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:19:43Mark Manson?

  Anxiety.

• 3:19:44Speaker 01

  Anxiety boils up and it.

• 3:19:45Mark Manson?

  Anger. Why the fuck do I have to do this? Yeah.

• 3:19:48Speaker 01

  Any, any negative emotion associated with the task will increase your likelihood of procrastinating in that moment. And so what we do is we look into, usually into our immediate environment or past strategies that we might've used as well to alleviate those uncomfortable feelings that we have. And that's when procrastination takes over. Okay. I, I've approached this as a task that I find unpleasant. 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.

• 3:20:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:23Speaker 01

  Uh, or, yeah, 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, they're going to be working on, right?

• 3:20:36Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:20:36Speaker 01

  Does that make sense, Marky?

• 3:20:38Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:20:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:20:40Mark Manson?

  I was gonna call you Daddy Drew.

• 3:20:42Speaker 01

  No, no, we're not gonna go there.

• 3:20:44Mark Manson?

  I was like, uh, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That gets weird. It gets really weird.

• 3:20:51Speaker 01

  Please do not call me that.

• 3:20:56Speaker 01

  Ever. Early on in this, this, when this framework was being developed, a lot of the psychologists called it giving in to feel good.

• 3:21:05Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 3:21:06Speaker 01

  Right? So you look for whatever feels, on a relative basis, whatever feels better in the moment than whatever you're uncomfortable with.

• 3:21:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:13Speaker 01

  And you go, and you go to that, and you give in to that urge.

• 3:21:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:17Speaker 01

  There's some impulsivity around that.

• 3:21:18Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 3:21:18Speaker 01

  As well, there's environmental factors that go into this. But at, at its base, at its core, it is that, that emotional regulation, that moment when you choose between, do I need to do the thing that needs to be done? Or do I need to, I just want to remove this anxious, uncomfortable, angry feeling that I have, bored feeling, painful feeling, whatever it is.

• 3:21:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I, 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.

• 3:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:21:52Mark Manson?

  One is managing the environment, managing, giving yourself fewer opportunities for that avoidance. Right? Like, clearing the junk food out of the fridge.

• 3:22:02Speaker 01

  Turning your phone off.

• 3:22:03Mark Manson?

  Turning the phone off, leaving the phone in the other room, all those things. And then the other side of the coin is, is that, that emotional management, the awareness, understanding the emotions that are coming up, and then understanding Perhaps why those emotions may be arising for unnecessary reasons, right? Like, are you being too perfectionist? Are you protecting your ego? Are you rationalizing past behavior? Are you trying to impress somebody? Do you, is the reason you're motivated, the reason you want to do this thing a shitty reason? And it's actually not very motivating at all? Like, all of those fact, all of those things that we've talked about? Do you, do you have a lot of shame around this? And you just like, don't, it makes you feel icky and horrible about yourself?

• 3:22:48Mark Manson?

  And so you just find any, any way you can to get away from it? All of these factors that we've been talking about up to this point? Almost all of them are factored into that emotional negotiation of like, why do I feel this way? Is it reasonable to feel this way? And now that I feel this way, how do I manage it well? That's one side of the coin. And then the other side of the coin is the, how do I give myself as few escape routes as possible?

• 3:23:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:23:14Mark Manson?

  Right? And that's the behaviorist stuff, the environmental design stuff.

• 3:23:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:23:19Mark Manson?

  Coming back to the skill thing, that it, that it's the two sides of the procrastination skill coin. Right? It's like, on the one side, it's the environmental design, the managing your triggers, managing your nudges. And on the other side, it's managing your own emotions.

• 3:23:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:23:34Mark Manson?

  Understanding why you, you, 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 into 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.

• 3:23:57Speaker 01

  Right, right. That, everything we've talked about does, it crosses that point of emotion regulation that you have to manage, right? Exactly.

• 3:24:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:07Speaker 01

  There's, it's, and it does, it goes back to, it's a short-term relief for a long-term detriment.

• 3:24:16Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:24:16Speaker 01

  Right? All of this is, it, what it comes down to is, I don't have to feel that discomfort right now if I just do something else.

• 3:24:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:24:24Speaker 01

  All of those things are kind of like getting At that, yeah, whether it's in your environment or just an emotional.

• 3:24:30Mark Manson?

  Well, and what's amazing too is that like all of the thinkers that we talked about through throughout this entire episode from Plato to Augustine to to Aquinas to everybody. It's not that they got it wrong.

• 3:24:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:24:42Mark Manson?

  It was just incomplete, right? It's like Augustine said, he's like it's it's the failure is is you are you are sacrificing your higher level value, the thing that is more important to you, but difficult to do for the thing for the lower level value, the thing that is easy to do, but much less and less valuable and less important, you know, Plato saw it as like a

• 3:25:03Mark Manson?

  an ignorance of the repercussions of your decisions and like not understanding like how your behavior like the what what you were doing in that that very moment. Even to like the Buddhist perspective of like not being aware of what your internal triggers are like this is this is what I found really interesting when I looked at the Buddhist side of it like. Again, it's correct, it's incomplete, but it's completely correct like. And in fact, I actually found meta analysis of fourteen thousand participants of who practice mindfulness and meditation. And they showed significant improvements in time management, task initiation and and also a sense you you talked about that sense of like how long it will take to complete something.

• 3:25:44Mark Manson?

  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

• 3:25:50Speaker 01

  It's total sense.

• 3:25:51Mark Manson?

  Emotions 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 that things that appear very close are actually very far away and vice versa, right? So it's it's understanding that you're looking at a 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.

• 3:26:26Mark Manson?

  Where Plato was correct is that the the actual ignorance is just believing the funhouse mirror is real.

• 3:26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:32Mark Manson?

  Like, that's the ignorance.

• 3:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And the the one of the big recommendations from this group of researchers, Tim Pitchell especially, and and Fuchsia Sirwa, is more mindfulness around these things. So we can talk about this now, the the RAIN method. This is what this was an article that Tim Pitchell wrote, and he's written about it in his books as well. But it's a mindfulness tool that gets you figuring out that funhouse mirror kind of brain that we all have.

• 3:27:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:06Speaker 01

  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 it's just a very basic kind of, I believe it's from Zen Buddhism even, maybe actually too, but it's recognizing in the moment.

• 3:27:21Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 3:27:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:27:32Mark Manson?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:27:32Speaker 01

  This is, okay, wait, just recognize when it's happening. That's all you have to do at first. This is, I'm approaching a task I don't like, I'm just gonna sit with that.

• 3:27:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:40Speaker 01

  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 in it is investigate those emotions, get curious, why, 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?

• 3:28:02Mark Manson?

  Are my expectations reasonable? Am I blowing things out of proportion? And am I just tired? Did I sleep last night? Like, yeah, start asking all those questions.

• 3:28:10Speaker 01

  Ask those questions, investigate, and get deep with it, too, right there. And the last one is non-identification with the emotion. This is a very Buddhist thing.

• 3:28:18Mark Manson?

  Very Buddhist.

• 3:28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, you know, I am not this anxiousness. I I feel anxious, I am not this anxiousness. 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 room.

• 3:28:37Mark Manson?

  And to Freud's point, you'll protect it.

• 3:28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:28:40Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 3:28:40Speaker 01

  You go through that.

• 3:28:41Mark Manson?

  If you decide that you are anxious and perfectionist, then you will, you will actually protect that self-definition.

• 3:28:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:28:48Mark Manson?

  Uh, which will cause you to like, actually your procrastination will become part of your identity.

• 3:28:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 3:28:53Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:29:07Speaker 01

  Right. And, and continue to procrastinate to show like, this is my identity.

• 3:29:11Mark Manson?

  To prove to themselves and others. Yeah.

• 3:29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that, um, as far as practical takeaways go, that for me, uh, after realizing that, I, I realized I did some kind of version of this or bits and pieces of it.

• 3:29:23Mark Manson?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:29:24Speaker 01

  Uh, 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, I'll just get going. Putting it all together like that though, has been super, super useful for me. Um, and especially the non-identification part, that last part is very important.

• 3:29:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:39Speaker 01

  Like you just said, don't wrap your identity up in whatever you're doing.

• 3:29:42Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 3:29:43Speaker 01

  For sure. Yeah.

• 3:29:44Mark Manson?

  Well, speaking of identities, I've got like a fun exercise for us.

• 3:29:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:29:48Mark Manson?

  Before we wrap up with like the, the, the tactics and strategies for everybody. Dr. Linda Saponin, and she's a clinical psychologist. She wrote a book in the nineties, um, called The Six Types of Procrastinators. And so she has six types that she has identified through her clinical practice.

• 3:30:03Speaker 01

  Hmm. Fun.

• 3:30:04Mark Manson?

  And I thought it could, I, I thought it would be fun to kind of like, now that we understand all the frameworks.

• 3:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:30:09Mark Manson?

  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. Um, 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.

• 3:30:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:30:27Mark Manson?

  Right? Fears imperfection, sets unrealistic standards, um, refuses to accept good enough.

• 3:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:30:35Mark Manson?

  And, um, it ends up having to use time limits to avoid endless revisions or redos. Do you feel attacked?

• 3:30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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 gonna be perfect.

• 3:30:57Mark Manson?

  Do you think that's just from accumulating so many imperfect?

• 3:31:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:31:01Mark Manson?

  Experiences?

• 3:31:02Speaker 01

  I, I don't, I don't think I've actively worked at it like that, getting over it. It's just been, I like now accept reality for what it is. Yeah.

• 3:31:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah. 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, I, my mind definitely, I like to dream big and like have these kind of giant aspirations and that's fun and that I think that is like overall, it's a net positive to have like big goals and dreams. But the, the drawback of that is the intimidation factor because it's like if you have this massive

• 3:31:47Mark Manson?

  world-changing plan that is going to take 10 years to execute and then you wake up on day one, it just feels so miniscule and insignificant. And so, yeah, it says here that, that these, the dreamers have to break, break their goals down into steps. I, I am like, as you know, I am a, an evangelist for this. Like this is my number one go-to for any, any time I'm procrastinating. I mean, I, to the point where like, if I'm procrastinating writing this outline for this podcast, I will tell myself, literally just write one word.

• 3:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:23Mark Manson?

  That's all it takes. Start with a word and then go to a sentence and then go to the paragraph, right? Like it's, it, it creates the momentum. It removes the intimidation. It like generates emotional momentum. It's, it's the way to go. Like my,

• 3:32:41Mark Manson?

  My brain tends to just wanna make everything as big and ambitious as possible. And so it's, it's like I'm, the, the work for me is constantly breaking things back down and making them smaller.

• 3:32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so that makes sense to me when it's something like do a, a podcast outline. Where I struggle with that though is, okay, I'm breaking something down, makes sense. It's doable. I have self-efficacy around it. I can do this thing. My problem often comes in when it's tying that back to the bigger picture.

• 3:33:08Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:33:09Speaker 01

  You know, it makes sense with like a podcast outline, cause 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, I have a really hard time marrying what I'm doing. Like writing a sentence about something with some grand goal that I have.

• 3:33:26Mark Manson?

  So I'm actually, I didn't expect to do this, but I'm, I'm gonna bring Eisenhower back into this.

• 3:33:31Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 3:33:32Mark Manson?

  So Eisenhower is a great quote that I love, uh, where he says, uh, uh, plans mean nothing, but planning is everything.

• 3:33:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:33:38Mark Manson?

  And I truly believe that like planning, projecting, forecasting, 99% of it's bullshit.

• 3:33:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:33:46Mark Manson?

  You know, it, it's like none of it's gonna come true. Um, it's funny, cause I just, uh, I just worked with, uh, uh, our head of operations on, 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. Yeah. None of this, none of this is gonna come true. But it's still useful. I still do it every single year because it does exactly what you just said, which is it like, it ties this individual podcast, shooting this segment 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 like our overall mission and goals. Right? So it's like, it lines all those things up.

• 3:34:30Mark Manson?

  Um, 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. Ties all those things together in your head.

• 3:34:42Speaker 01

  That makes sense to me.

• 3:34:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Uh, next one, the worrier 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'm definitely not this person. I don't think you are either.

• 3:35:01Speaker 01

  No, maybe a little bit, but nah.

• 3:35:03Mark Manson?

  I've definitely known people like this who are just like, almost like, uh, doomsayers. Like they, they just think everything's going to go wrong. They're worried about everything all the time.

• 3:35:14Mark Manson?

  And it is.

• 3:35:15Speaker 01

  It like freezes them in place, kind of, is it like a, like a fight or flight response? Or, um, more of a fight flies, freeze response, so they're freezing? Or what is it that makes them procrastinate about this?

• 3:35:25Mark Manson?

  I definitely think, uh, you know, if you think fighter, fighter flight, I think it's the flight side of it. Like, I mean, procrastination is essentially just the flight and the fight or flight.

• 3:35:36Mark Manson?

  But yeah, for people who are prone to worry and fear chronically, I could see how it's just like, you just don't want to do anything because what if it goes wrong?

• 3:35:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:35:45Mark Manson?

  You know, like they're just kind of always imagining worst case scenario.

• 3:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, which you would think is kind of like almost a perfectionist thing, but it's not.

• 3:35:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:52Speaker 01

  It's, 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, what if I'm embarrassed by it? Yeah. This is like, what if it just, everything, just the worst case scenario comes to mind.

• 3:36:02Mark Manson?

  What if, what if it goes wrong? What if it, it, what if I'm worse off than I am now? Like, yeah, the perfectionist is like, here, my bar is way up here. What if I don't hit it? Whereas like the worrier 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 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.

• 3:36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:36:41Mark Manson?

  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. Unnecessarily contrarian at times.

• 3:37:03Speaker 01

  Big cultural component of that one, though, too, you know, where if obedience or at least tradition or service to

• 3:37:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:12Speaker 01

  your family, society, whatever it is, there's, there's a big cultural component.

• 3:37:16Mark Manson?

  Totally. This feels like maybe a little bit of a privileged procrastinator.

• 3:37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:37:21Mark Manson?

  Like it's.

• 3:37:22Speaker 01

  Could be you, serving too many college kids. Yeah.

• 3:37:25Mark Manson?

  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 gonna do that.

• 3:37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:37:35Mark Manson?

  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. 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.

• 3:37:55Speaker 01

  This is me.

• 3:37:58Mark Manson?

  Definitely a little bit of me in there, too. Like, it just.

• 3:38:01Speaker 01

  You, you try to take on a lot. You do. I have a hard time saying no.

• 3:38:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:38:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I definitely see this one in myself. I, to me, this feels like the, if there's one of these that I imagine is, has grown over the last 10, 20 years, I could see it being the overdoer.

• 3:38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:38:18Mark Manson?

  Just because there, the opportunity of things to do and engage in has grown exponentially.

• 3:38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:38:24Mark Manson?

  So the need to create boundaries and say no has also grown exponentially and it, and those are hard things to do. Like, it takes, takes, there, there's quite a cognitive load to like turning something down or refusing to do something. So, so, yeah, those are the six types of procrastinators. I think it's, it's a little bit useful before we get into all like the specific tips and strategies and stuff. Like, I think it's, it's useful to kind of ask yourself where you are and what you need to, what each of us needs to focus on to improve as for ourselves.

• 3:38:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:39:04Mark Manson?

  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 section that we call the 80/20 of procrastination, which is, what is, what are the 20% of actions or behaviors that are going to give you 80% of the result? Like, what's the highest leverage implementation here? So you and I, we've got a list of a bunch of things, you know, we've, we've talked through, at this point,

• 3:39:48Mark Manson?

  dozens and dozens of different ideas. These are the most useful, the most verified, the things that have the most evidence behind them, and also the things that you and I have personally found the most leverage with when we've implemented them. So let's, let's go through them one by one. I think it could be useful, kind of returning to that external versus internal framework, like managing your external environment versus dealing with your internal environment. Let's start with the external first.

• 3:40:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:40:16Mark Manson?

  Right? So why don't you kick us off? Let's talk about environmental design.

• 3:40:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:40:20Mark Manson?

  What is, what's a good way to implement environmental design to help with your procrastination?

• 3:40:26Speaker 01

  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. Well, so we'll talk about how to do that. So set up your environment so that, for success, basically, right?

• 3:40:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:44Speaker 01

  Some of the ways, like we've mentioned right now, if you've been procrastinating on your diet, don't buy junk food. Don't keep it in the house. That's like an easy win you can have right there. If it's more work-related, get your workstation set up. Put the phone in the other room. Get all distractions out of sight and out of mind.

• 3:41:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:41:04Speaker 01

  That's a good place to start with that. You can use, like you mentioned, you use website blockers.

• 3:41:09Mark Manson?

  There's a lot of software.

• 3:41:11Speaker 01

  Like that, yeah.

• 3:41:12Mark Manson?

  So if you're the type of person who's like prone to just going down email rabbit holes or YouTube rabbit holes or sports website rabbit holes.

• 3:41:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:41:21Mark Manson?

  You know, one piece of software is called Freedom. There was another one called, I believe it was called Self, or no, it was called Focus.

• 3:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:41:29Mark Manson?

  There was another one called Control. There's a bunch of them.

• 3:41:32Speaker 01

  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. Hack back 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?

• 3:41:57Mark Manson?

  And turn.

• 3:41:58Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 3:41:59Mark Manson?

  And turn off your notifications.

• 3:42:00Speaker 01

  Just turn them off, yeah. Your text messages, maybe a couple of other things, and that's it.

• 3:42:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, if your phone is chiming or buzzing all day, like, you're basic, that's like putting crack in front of a crack addict. Like, you're doing yourself zero favors. Yeah, I think, I think one thing that's really useful to think about this, too, like, there's kind of, I would almost put this in two different categories. One is, there's actually physically altering your environment.

• 3:42:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:42:27Mark Manson?

  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 Nir Eyal did, and by the way, his book on this is excellent.

• 3:42:38Speaker 01

  Environmental design, go to that. That's a bible for that.

• 3:42:41Mark Manson?

  His book, Indistractable, it's excellent. If you're, if this is, if distraction is a huge issue for you, like, that is the best book that I can recommend. One thing that he did in his own house is that he put all of his Wi-Fi routers, he put on these plugs that you could put on timers.

• 3:42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:58Mark Manson?

  And so he like programmed the timers to shut off, I think at like 7:00 PM or something every night. And so his, like, the internet in his house just went off.

• 3:43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:08Mark Manson?

  Every evening at 7:00 PM. And it's such a pain in the ass to get up and like replug in the router and like do all this stuff. So he just. He never did it and and he sure enough, he stopped using the internet past a certain time and he would start, he was reading more books and he was spending more time with his family and he was doing all the behaviors he wanted to do. So there's, there's kind of like actual, just physically alter your environment. That's kind of the first category. And then the second environment, or the second category, I think is creating rules for yourself. You know, like when you were saying things like, you know, leave your phone in the other room or, you know, people will say stuff like, oh, only check email after 2pm, something like that. Like it's, I think it's really useful to get explicit of like, this is a

• 3:43:51Mark Manson?

  rule that I live by. Like this is a rule that I have for myself. Because if you try to, I, I think the, the key principle here is that when you leave it up to your own decision making, you can't trust your own decision making.

• 3:44:05Speaker 01

  Right. And not in the moment, at least.

• 3:44:06Mark Manson?

  Yes. And not consistently over a long period of time. You might, you might get it right the first day or the first week, but like, 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. I'm not allowed to have my phone in my office. Period.

• 3:44:25Speaker 01

  Right. Or I don't check social media until after 4 or something, whatever. Email too. I only do email at 2 or 3pm in the afternoon or at the end of the day. Once a day, clear the inbox, then it's done. Yeah. 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, okay, I need to get a lot of work done. And since I do work from home, there are those distractions. So I've taken like the, the power cord to my TV and like given it to a friend, right? Keep it at my friend's house. So I can't even have it. Like, just hold on to this for next two weeks. I'm just imagining you like ringing a doorbell and just like handing a power cable to somebody and be like, I'm gonna come back for this.

• 3:45:11Speaker 01

  Not too far off. Again, it goes back to I mentioned earlier that, you know, that interview I listened to with Pierce Steele, where he said, "The people who are most honest about these things."

• 3:45:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:45:22Speaker 01

  About, they know themselves well enough to be like, "Okay, 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 gonna accept that."

• 3:45:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:45:35Speaker 01

  I guess another thing is that there's a self-acceptance to environmental design that you have to be really okay with.

• 3:45:41Mark Manson?

  Right, you have to accept that you're flawed and that you're not gonna change your own nature. I think that's something, you know, I think a lot of chronic procrastinators, they like have this unreasonable expectation that there is gonna be a day where like they are able to turn down every temptation and they are going to be impervious to distraction and they are gonna be able to put their phone away whenever they want. And it's like, "No, you're not."

• 3:46:02Speaker 01

  Never gonna happen.

• 3:46:02Mark Manson?

  You're human. You're not. You're not gonna, you're not gonna defeat 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 you've had?

• 3:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, besides the not keeping junk food in the house, like that's, that's a, that was a big one. But also separating my, my workspace from other parts. So I just have, there's one room now in my house that it's just for work. And now I've seen after a while, it's been a couple of years now that I've had that. It's when I enter that space, that's workspace, right? And I try to keep the phone out. I try to do all that. So separating your, your workspace from your kind of like your play spaces, you know, I guess you could call them, that's been a big one for me too. And then keeping that space, so I, and I try to keep it clean because for me anyway, if I see clutter on a desk, that's a reflection of my mind. So a big one for me is just, yeah, using those cues too. So it's like, it's like I enter that room and my brain automatically goes into work.

• 3:47:06Mark Manson?

  Work time, yeah.

• 3:47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that's a big win for me.

• 3:47:09Mark Manson?

  And it's great because now when you leave, you're like.

• 3:47:11Speaker 01

  It's done.

• 3:47:12Mark Manson?

  Personal time.

• 3:47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47:13Mark Manson?

  Not worrying about it, not checking email, not.

• 3:47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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 happen?

• 3:47:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:25Speaker 01

  What about you?

• 3:47:26Mark Manson?

  For me, I mean, obviously the junk food stuff's big. The phone stuff has been big in the past. I would actually say home gym was

• 3:47:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, okay.

• 3:47:36Mark Manson?

  A absolute game changer. And it's funny too, because I remember, you know, when I moved to my place here in LA, and I started putting together a little home gym. You know, it's a really small room. It's like half the size of the 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.

• 3:47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47:56Mark Manson?

  And I was like, you know, it'll just be kind of cool to have this. I, at first I was gonna keep my gym membership and the idea was like, I just kind of work out at home is like the supplement.

• 3:48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48:06Mark Manson?

  It was such a massive game changer because it, the simplest thing is I no longer had any excuse. Right? It's like, come home at 5:30, I'm tired, long day of work or whatever, big day of shooting. And I'm like, ah, I should work out today. Like, normally I'd be like, well, I don't want to get back in my car and go to the gym and have the change and like do all this thing and shower and all this stuff. And then it's like, no, now the gym's like 20 feet away, motherfucker. Like you have no excuse. It's right there. Go do it.

• 3:48:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48:35Mark Manson?

  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, uh, it's like, ah, why did I do this to myself? But now I'm just so happy it's there. And actually I quit, I canceled my gym membership like within a month or two. Cause I'm just like, this is so easy and it's so, even dumb things like, um, you know, like I'll be like sitting on my couch, watching a TV show with my wife and she'll get up, you know, we'll pause it and she'll get up, have to go do something for 10 minutes. I'm like, I wonder how many pull-ups I can do.

• 3:49:08Speaker 01

  Bust out and be girls.

• 3:49:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I just like walk into the gym, start doing pull-ups. I'm like, ah, alright, 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, 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.

• 3:49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:49:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:49Speaker 01

  And then add it to places where you don't want to do a behavior, don't have junk food. And that there's a whole bunch of friction with not having, I gotta go all the way to the grocery store just to get a bag of chips or, or you know, a candy bar or whatever.

• 3:50:01Mark Manson?

  Strategic friction is really the key here. Yeah. And it can even go as far like, one thing I learned when I was kind of going through my health journey, don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, that's a good, that's an easy one. And then also another one, like, this one, like, my health coach pushed onto me, because I'm like, well, yeah, you know, and then I'm in the grocery store, and I've got my list, but then I'm gonna start walking through the aisles, I see all this stuff, it looks good. And he was like, you know what, don't even go. Mm hmm. Sign up for Instacart. Yeah. Put your list in when you're like, while you're eating lunch, while you're full, put your list into Instacart. Don't even give yourself the chance to, again, it's like removing those decision points. Like, the more brain-dead symbol you can make

• 3:50:44Mark Manson?

  the good behavior, the more likely it is to happen. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So, similar to environmental design, another big one is social accountability. We talked a little bit about the Confucianism, and, you know, we've, we've kind of skirted around this, you know, with all the talk of emotions and behaviorism and conditioning and all this stuff, the ego stuff. We haven't addressed it really directly, but like, it is worth understanding that probably the strongest driver of our emotions, period, is other people. Mm hmm. Right? It's the people in our lives that we like, that we trust, that we respect,

• 3:51:26Mark Manson?

  that we want to win the respect of or the trust of. They are some of the strongest levers on our own behavior. And you can utilize that. I mean, first of all, on a very abstract level, is being conscious of who you let into your life. You know, there's this old saying that you are the average of the five closest people to you. I think there's a lot of evidence that that is true, right? Definitely. 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...

• 3:52:03Mark Manson?

  That is going to nudge you into those behaviors because that is what is going to get you social validation and approval. And fundamentally, we're human. We all need social validation and approval. So surrounding yourself by people that you admire, people that have good work habits, good health habits, that have the habits that you wish you could have, just by spending more time with them, you are more likely to adapt a lot of those behaviors. But then on a very tactical level, finding somebody who has the same goal as you and is also struggling with that goal, 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

• 3:52:47Mark Manson?

  friend, your chance of success is gonna like 5 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. You don't want to be the asshole who skips French class. Like, you don't want to be the dick that convinced your friends to join a CrossFit gym with you and then never shows up. That's embarrassing. That loses respect. That people stop trusting you as much. And so that is a huge lever that you can pull within your own brain. I do have a quick story about this. So that friend that we mentioned earlier, Neil Riel, in that book

• 3:53:30Mark Manson?

  I recommended, Indistractable, so he was writing that book while I was writing my second book, Everything is Fucked. And we were both having trouble finishing our books. And so we agreed that we were 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 is 2018. And we made a bet that if, I don't remember how much money it was, but it was like, if one of us finished our books and the other one didn't, 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. It was a very painful amount of

• 3:54:11Mark Manson?

  money. And we wrote it down and had a contract and everything. And we did it. And it was...

• 3:54:19Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:54:29Speaker 01

  I, I've heard Nir tell that story to other people, and he said his hand was shaking when he handed you.

• 3:54:36Speaker 01

  Like, because I think you each wrote a check or something, or a contract, whatever it was. He said, my hand was shaking. I wanted to, I handed it over because it is that powerful. Think about that emotional space he had to be in for, for that. He's like, oh, God, now my ass is on the line.

• 3:54:48Mark Manson?

  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, 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, and it, 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, and then afterwards we'd have lunch and kind of look at each other and be like, well, how'd 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 kind of talked through it and be like, oh yeah, that's how last week was for me. But like, today was pretty good, you know?

• 3:55:28Mark Manson?

  And like, it was just nice to like, validate each other and reassure each other. Cause you know, it, 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, the inner funhouse mirror warps it. So, so it feels more catastrophic than it is. Whereas when you're with somebody else, they're like, oh yeah, I've been there. I felt that way last week, but you know, you, 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, it, it, things aren't falling apart the way you fear they are.

• 3:56:05Speaker 01

  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, 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 fitness or something like that, who's 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, too, like when I started CrossFit, it was me and two friends. We started and 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 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.

• 3:56:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:56:48Speaker 01

  I think that's really important to something to highlight.

• 3:56:50Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:57:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:57:00Mark Manson?

  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 two years, well, first year, first year of college, I was at music school. But, you know, first year out of music school, my grades were okay, like up and down.

• 3:57:21Mark Manson?

  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, zero studying would happen, like absolutely nothing would happen. There, you know, the guys down the hall will be playing poker or something. And next thing you know, I'm at a party on a Tuesday night and then I'm like drinking until 4 a.m. So like, nothing useful would happen at the dorm. So I eventually developed a rule for myself that when my classes ended, I had to go to the library and I had to spend at least two hours at the library. Didn't matter if I just sat there, like stared at the wall. I had to go to the library and sure enough, once I'm in the library, it's like, wow, I got all my books. I might as well like start studying or, you know, do that, like start working on that assignment

• 3:58:06Mark Manson?

  that's due in two weeks that, you know, I haven't really thought about. And I started doing that and sure enough, like grades immediately went through the roof. And then, you know, jump a year 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?

• 3:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58:26Mark Manson?

  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. I'm gonna look like an idiot if I'm not studying for my exam, so I might as well study for my exam. And you just, again, you you start nudging yourself into the right behaviors.

• 3:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a very similar experience in college too. Like, yeah, I wasn't very good at studying the first year or two. And then after that, I did find, like, especially in the more difficult classes, you'd find a group of people in there and be like, hey, we're gonna be at the library. It was always that. And that, like, I look back on college, I remember those

• 3:59:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:08Speaker 01

  study groups very, very vividly. Like, and so leveraging that to just the social connection that you get really brings it all home to.

• 3:59:15Mark Manson?

  It's strange how it like, yeah, it becomes fun.

• 3:59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59:18Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, seriously, like a stats class that we took that was just horrible. Our study group that went to the library all the time. Like, I remember that. We had a lot of fun, like, about stats, you know, like, yeah, you're absolutely.

• 3:59:35Mark Manson?

  Nerd.

• 3:59:35Speaker 01

  I know. Totally was.

• 3:59:39Mark Manson?

  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.

• 3:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59:48Mark Manson?

  You know, so let's let's start with the big question. I think you, let's take, let's take opposite starting points. Why don't you start with like the big hairy questions and then I'll I'll kind of like break it down into the small questions.

• 4:00:00Speaker 01

  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 reconnecting whatever task or job or whatever it is to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. And what is this doing for me in my life that is going to bring like a greater sense of purpose around things? That, starting there, so kind of finding your why, the Simon Sinek thing, you know, you could dig into that.

• 4:00:40Speaker 01

  Why, why is something important to you? Really digging into the reasons like, okay, why is this, I have this job or I have this task? Or I have this creative project I want and finding the underlying drive and value that you associate. With that, so go back and listen to the first episode on values. That'll give you a very good foundation for this as well.

• 4:00:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:00:59Speaker 01

  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 thirty year old. Why, why, why am I doing this? Why, why, why? I think that's a really good place to start anyway. Yeah.

• 4:01:12Mark Manson?

  I think too, like having a basic understanding of like what a good why is versus a bad why.

• 4:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't really talk about that, did we?

• 4:01:22Mark Manson?

  But I generally speaking, I think, I think the best way to characterize like a good why is that it's something that is bigger or more important than yourself.

• 4:01:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:01:30Mark Manson?

  You know, I think if you, if you dig down and ultimately you find that your why is just pointing back at you. It's like, oh, I'm doing this just because I want people to respect me or I'm doing this because I want to impress.

• 4:01:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:01:45Mark Manson?

  You know, this group of people that I wish were impressed by me or, you know, whatever. Here, that's going to be a weak why. And generally, the strongest whys are the sorts of things that you're like, you know what? I don't matter. Right? I will do anything for my kid or I will do anything for my church or I will do anything for the environment. You know, like it's, it's like when you find something that is greater and more important than yourself, that even if you die, you hope it continues on past you, like that is generally indicative of, of some, some, a good form of why. The other good form of why I would say is, is around creativity. Like it, it's like if there's an action that you appreciate just in and of itself, like if it's,

• 4:02:31Mark Manson?

  if it's something that you would do if nobody was watching and nobody knew you did it. Right? Like it's, it's, then that's probably a good why. It's just like the pure enjoyment and satisfaction of that thing. Right? It's like I would still.

• 4:02:47Mark Manson?

  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. You know, it's like, try to stay aligned with that.

• 4:03:02Speaker 01

  Right. 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 you later find that, oh, this isn't a very good why. The example I gave anyway was, yeah, I started working out because I wanted to look good, right? And then, 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, if I'm honest, is still important to me, right? 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 not going to be one of those 80-year-old people, like my great

• 4:03:47Speaker 01

  uncle home out, still out there skiing, and I can, you know, 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 it's just, there's no foundation for your why and your purpose.

• 4:03:59Mark Manson?

  I think that's a really good, a really good point, though, is that like those weaker whys don't go away.

• 4:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:04:05Mark Manson?

  You just need to find the bigger, stronger one. Like, yeah, you never will stop caring. You will always want, you know, the cute boy or girl to like find you attractive. You will always want respect from your peers. You will always want to impress certain people. Like, that'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 going to get any slower.

• 4:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so yeah, zooming in a little bit.

• 4:04:37Mark Manson?

  So zooming in, so we're going, that's the super big picture now, cutting in super, super tight.

• 4:04:44Mark Manson?

  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.

• 4:05:03Mark Manson?

  And then you continue to break it down to the point where it stops feeling intimidating. And then the, the, 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, what about five minutes of meditation? It's like, uh, yeah, it's still kinda like, okay, what about one minute meditation? Right? Like, just go sit on the fucking floor. You don't even have to. Just sit on the floor and just do like 30 seconds. 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,

• 4:05:48Mark Manson?

  once you're on the floor for 30 seconds, then you're like, well, I could do five minutes. And then you do the five minutes and then you're like, I could do 10, you know? And then you do 10 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 it, the minimum viable action is always, it helps guarantee that something gets done, even if it's not as much as you would hope or imagine. It's just that something gets done. I'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, I'm delaying,

• 4:06:33Mark Manson?

  this is the first thing that I go to is I'm like, how can I break this down into something that's not intimidating? So with workouts, I did this just the other night. We had a long shoot day. I got home like 6:00 PM. I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm supposed to work out today. I don't want to do this shit. And I like, looked at my workout and I was like, you know what? Just do one set of each exercise. Like, you don't have to do the full workout. Just do one set of each exercise. And I was like, all right, I can do that. And yeah, I did one set of each exercise and that's better than nothing. Right. Right? You know, when I'm writing a book, books are really fucking intimidating. And some days you sit down and you're just like, I don't know how to start this chapter. I feel like this whole section is terrible. I don't want to deal with this right now. And I just look at it and I say,

• 4:07:19Mark Manson?

  Just write one sentence, just to 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. So minimum viable action, use that momentum to carry you forward. To me, this is like the most, the biggest tactical hack that I've kind of ever found, you know, aside from the environmental stuff, like this is the biggest tactical hack that I've ever found for my own procrastination.

• 4:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You've been recommending this one for a very long time.

• 4:07:59Mark Manson?

  A long time.

• 4:08:00Speaker 01

  Many different ways. And what really clicked for me when doing this episode was that how that really helps with the emotional side of this. So what you're really addressing is kind of like this overwhelm 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, they went from, okay, we're in a factory, you know, we want to build a car, but we have to break that process down.

• 4:08:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:08:32Speaker 01

  And so they're like, this is, you know, this is how you should do it. What they missed was it's because it's an emotional problem, not a tactical rational problem.

• 4:08:38Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 4:08:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:08:46Mark Manson?

  Right. Like we keep saying procrastination is an emotional problem. Self-control is an emotional, emotional problem. Like this is not, it's not a problem of information. It's not a problem of motivation. It is a emotional problem. 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.

• 4:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And with the minimum viable actions too, don't underestimate like a small win, the, the impact of a small win.

• 4:09:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:12Speaker 01

  Uh, 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 underestimate that. It's not linear. It's exponential and how good that feels.

• 4:09:24Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. Yeah. Not, not to get off on the too much of a tangent, but like, yeah, I've noticed that. So much throughout my career that like you'll get these people who have been stagnant for a long time. And I think what happens when you feel stuck and stagnant is that you start developing this 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, 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?

• 4:10:04Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. So the next one is addressing those underlying emotions. This is kind of the crux of it. This is where we want to end up and be able to really address what's going on, dig into what's going on. Why are we putting this task off? Why are we anxious about 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. 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.

• 4:10:49Speaker 01

  And you can, I mean, there's, 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, when you hear about mindfulness practices, that's, yeah, that's how you can start to address the underlying emotions.

• 4:11:14Mark Manson?

  And I think it's important to emphasize, because I imagine that there's some subset of listeners right now who, like, just went through four hours of Information in the history of procrastination and acrazia. And they get to the end and they're like, ah, fuck, it's about emotions.

• 4:11:33Mark Manson?

  Are you, you mean, I gotta 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, you don't have to. Like this is ultimately, it's more about, it's not about fixing your emotions or like solving your emotions. It's more about becoming aware and accepting of your emotions, like not being hijacked by your emotions. Just like, as you said, like recognizing what's going on beneath the surface. So that you can work with it instead of against it, right? So if anxiety comes up, you can like, alter the action or the expectation in your head and to, 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,

• 4:12:18Mark Manson?

  you know, your goals or, or your, the, the way you approach an activity to, to try to find a way that makes it a little bit more exciting or fun for yourself. So like, it's just, until you're aware of the emotion that's, that's underlying the procrastination, you can't really adapt to it or use it in any useful way.

• 4:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, a lot of this too, this, these all tie together, right? And so if you have like an environment that's bringing up a lot of these emotions too, and fixing that will help. But again, it, 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, you know, a work situation that happens a lot too. But yeah, becoming more self-awareness, we talk a lot about self-awareness in a lot of different areas. And that's a skill too, that you develop over time. And self-awareness around why you do and don't do things. I think that you have to find some method, whether that's through more meditation,

• 4:13:19Speaker 01

  or maybe you do need to go through to therapy, just to get a little more self-aware around your emotions.

• 4:13:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:13:24Speaker 01

  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 was 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 okay. You gotta, you gotta work with that.

• 4:13:54Mark Manson?

  So you're telling me there's no Notion template to solve my anxiety issues?

• 4:13:58Speaker 01

  I've tried them all. I have tried them all. That's, that's a good point you make, though.

• 4:14:03Mark Manson?

  That's a million dollar idea. Get this Notion template to solve all of your anxiety issues.

• 4:14:08Speaker 01

  Right, right. I, I think that's a way we avoid the underlying emotions around all of this is trying, like we've, we talked about this, trying to find the new app or the new system or whatever it is.

• 4:14:19Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:14:20Speaker 01

  This, that, that is avoidance. 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.

• 4:14:36Mark Manson?

  It's the appearance of progress without actual progress.

• 4:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 4:14:40Mark Manson?

  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.

• 4:14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:14:47Speaker 01

  Party boy Mark.

• 4:14:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 4:14:51Mark Manson?

  So, a friend of the show, Ali Abdaal, has a great book about this called Feel Good Productivity. And I, for me, my favorite thing about that book, it, it's one of, it was, reading that book, it was one of those things that, that I had personally believed and felt for a long time, but I didn't really know how to say it, and I'd 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, 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, 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?

• 4:15:33Mark Manson?

  They gamified it. Like, they created systems and achievements and goals and, and challenges. And they have you track your progress over time. And then they put you in a social environment, and they put you in teams, and the teams are competing against each other. Like, these are all just like really basic how to make it fun 101 techniques. And you can do this with anything. You can gamify anything. You can track progress on anything. You can...

• 4:15:59Mark Manson?

  Again, if you've got social accountability, 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?" 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, you can get a lot further.

• 4:16:28Speaker 01

  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. But 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.

• 4:16:44Mark Manson?

  I think progress is fun.

• 4:16:46Speaker 01

  Progress, okay.

• 4:16:46Mark Manson?

  So, one thing that I find very fun, I'm a very competitive person and one of, like, I agree, tracking is annoying.

• 4:16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16:54Mark Manson?

  I don't, the tracking itself, I don't enjoy.

• 4:16:57Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 4:16:57Mark Manson?

  What I enjoy is the competition with myself.

• 4:16:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:17:00Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's like, I know how much weight I lifted on every, on every exercise last week, right?

• 4:17:08Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, okay.

• 4:17:09Mark Manson?

  It's fun for me to go into the gym this week and be like, "Let's see if I can do one more rep." Right? Like, "Let's see, let's see if I can do this. Let's see if I can add five pounds to this." Like, "Let's see how that feels." I mean, and don't get me wrong, I'm not like skipping to the gym every morning and, you know, like hopping out of bed. But like, it makes it interesting enough that it's, it's not as hard to go and it's not as hard to finish the workout. It takes what would be a pretty dull and boring workout and it makes it interesting and exciting. The other thing you can do is you can pair, like you can batch activities with each other. So, you know, if you, let's say there's a podcast you love, like,

• 4:17:53Mark Manson?

  two handsome men talking about procrastination for four hours. You can, you can, you can make a, you can make a rule with yourself that like you can only listen to the solve podcast while you're doing housework. Like this is, I've got a couple of podcasts that are just frivolous and fun. And I, they're my chores podcasts. Like I don't listen to them any other time. It's like when I'm doing the dishes and taking out the trash and, you know, cleaning the office, like that's when I put this podcast on. Cause it's kind of, it takes what is normally just a painful, boring experience and it makes it interesting for me. And you can lump activities together like that. You know, if, if, if you love audiobooks, you know, make a deal with

• 4:18:36Mark Manson?

  yourself that you can, you can only listen to audiobooks either while you're working out or while you're getting ready for bed, you know, and it's, there's no other time.

• 4:18:44Speaker 01

  Okay. 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, 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. But what I've realized is that it's actually really fun for me to go to CrossFit and see those people. 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. For me,

• 4:19:25Speaker 01

  even though I'm also introverted in a lot of ways, I, that social, there's still some social reward in a lot of it. In my yoga studio, yoga too, too, there's, yeah, there's that.

• 4:19:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean,

• 4:19:36Speaker 01

  So what's fun for you could be fun for somebody else?

• 4:19:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah, everybody's fun is a little bit different, but you know, 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. Right. You know, so like those are the three tried and true methods. I think he has a couple more in his book. I'm probably not thinking of at the moment. So. All right, last one, and I know this is, 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, it is like juggling steak knives. You can hurt yourself if you're not, if you're not very focused and adept at like what you're doing.

• 4:20:22Mark Manson?

  The productive procrastination, it can get out of hand very easily. So just to review really quick, it's when you, you procrastinate one task by doing some other task that is also intimidating or difficult to do. And it can be very effective if it's honed well and honed correctly. It can be extremely effective, but you can also waste a lot of time spinning your wheels, doing a bunch of shit that seems useful, but is not. And like you said, it's like another subtle form of avoidance. So the difference between productive procrastination and just unproductive procrastination is like a very fine line. And I would urge people to consider it, but also be very, very careful about it.

• 4:21:08Mark Manson?

  Right. All right, last section, a drum I've been banging on for a long time now is that everything in life is a trade off. There's no, there's no win, no win is 100% a win. There's always some downside somewhere with it. Yeah. So in that spirit, we like to finish every episode with what are the hidden costs? Or what is the hidden trade off of solving this area of your life? And so what 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. The first one that I put, and this is something that I've experienced quite a bit myself,

• 4:21:49Mark Manson?

  is that you have to accept that 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 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, you know, the TikTok

• 4:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:22:16Mark Manson?

  channels that you you enjoy watching like you're just gonna you're gonna have to let some of those go. That's the price. That's the price of admission of just getting this area of your life handled and that can suck. I experienced this a lot with the video games like one rule I had I discovered I had to create for myself was no multiplayer video games because I'm too competitive. And a single player video game, I can play for an hour and just put it down and like go on with my life. A multiplayer video game, I'm like, no, fuck you. I'm gonna practice. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna grind. I'm gonna get so good at this. I'm gonna beat all of you.

• 4:22:49Speaker 01

  You talk trash on your headset.

• 4:22:51Mark Manson?

  I I've literally wasted months of my life, like trying to get good at at certain video games. So I just don't let myself do that anymore and and I miss it sometimes. Like, I really do miss it. Like, I have very fond memories of certain games that I did get very good at and but that's just that that's the price of, you know, it's not worth giving up

• 4:23:15Mark Manson?

  my business and my career and my marriage. So I've I have chosen those things over it.

• 4:23:24Speaker 01

  We talked a little bit already about trading a lower value for a higher value. We talked about in the previous episode too, but that it's it can be 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 trade off. You know, you should make it. It's a struggle, but you do. Sometimes, though, you also, like in my situation, I've I've had to adjust where I don't feel like I'm necessarily trading a lower value for a higher value. I'm 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.

• 4:24:04Speaker 01

  That takes a lot of time. So workouts and I 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 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 did have less time now for that. And that's kind of a big, like, I love woodworking and it's great and it's it adds a lot of fun and enjoyment and meaning to my life. But I guess I did realize that. Taking care of my health long term is probably more important right now. And then 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 wood shop.

• 4:24:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:25:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it can be ambiguous. All right, what do you have?

• 4:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this one might get a might ruffle a few feathers from a certain type of person.

• 4:25:11Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 4:25:11Speaker 01

  You've got to lower your standards and accept your limitations. I know there's a certain type of person out there that's going to say, what? No, I'm not going to lower my standards. Like, that's not what productivity is. That's not what getting your life together means. It's raising your standards. Actually, you know, there are certain situations where you just have to accept reality. And I think is really what it is. And like we already mentioned, one thing, celebrate those like little wins that probably don't look very sexy on the outside or to anyone else. But that's a, that's a win. Like a win is a win here. And like, lower your standards from, I'm 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.

• 4:25:56Speaker 01

  But it is actually in the grand scheme of things, when you step back, this is how it works.

• 4:26:01Mark Manson?

  And you are speaking on this, this one, you were speaking as a recovered perfectionist.

• 4:26:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 4:26:05Mark Manson?

  Like, this is, I think this is the one that the perfectionists like really struggle with is like.

• 4:26:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:26:11Mark Manson?

  Like, no, it has to be excellent. It has to be perfect. And it's, that is, that is self defeating.

• 4:26:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:26:19Mark Manson?

  Before you even get started. There is a fantastic book on this, friend of the pod, Oliver Berkman's 4000 Weeks.

• 4:26:25Speaker 01

  Fantastic book. It's one of the most recommended books I recommend to people.

• 4:26:29Mark Manson?

  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. You can't do everything. Yeah. And, and. Accepting your finitude is the way he puts it. Yeah, like not only, and 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, a lot of it's a critique of just kind of the productivity industry in general, or like the mentality of like, bro, you just gotta, you just gotta hustle, man. You just gotta like, get this new system and like, you can do it all, dude. Like you, you don't have to, don't make any sacrifices. You don't need to sleep. Yeah, exactly.

• 4:27:13Mark Manson?

  And it's just like, no, actually, the game is sacrifice. Like that is the game is like, what are you willing to give up for your goals? And by the way, you, you know, if you really are trying to do something ambitious and great, you probably only have the capacity to do a handful of things like that in your entire life. Right? So. Yeah. You, you, you have to get very realistic on, on timelines and, and capacity and, and time management and everything. So huge fan of that. Here's a drawback that I think a lot of people are, won't consider, uh, which is that if you handle your procrastination, you're gonna have to give up your excuses. Ah, yeah. That we hold on to so dearly.

• 4:27:57Mark Manson?

  You're gonna have to own your bullshit. You're gonna have to own, suddenly some of these stories and narratives that you've had in maybe many cases for your entire life, it kind of explaining your own underperformance or why things didn't work out the way you thought they would, or you know, why you haven't been able to dedicate as much time to this thing as you thought you would. Yeah, you're gonna have to let that go. Yeah. It's like, again, it comes back to the, the pure steel thing about, about reality. It's like the, the best, 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.

• 4:28:38Mark Manson?

  Like it's, it's, it's the sort of thing that like, when you let it go, it's painful, but then once it's gone, it's liberating. Right. So.

• 4:28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that goes back a little bit to, we can sneak forward 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. And 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, like you said at first, yes, it's painful, rip the bandit off, you adapt.

• 4:29:12Mark Manson?

  Comes back to the ego flexibility and not building an ego around the lower values, building them over the higher values.

• 4:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:29:21Mark Manson?

  All right, what's the next one?

• 4:29:22Speaker 01

  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. 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. If there are, you know, 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.

• 4:30:05Speaker 01

  It's going to be, there's more opportunities for you to manage emotions. Let's just say that in these situations, yeah.

• 4:30:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, you know, in some cases, it will be removing the people from your life or reducing your exposure to the people in your life. 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, are you, do you respect the person you're trying to win respect from? Because in a lot of cases, you don't. 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.

• 4:30:54Mark Manson?

  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.

• 4:31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31:06Mark Manson?

  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, 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.

• 4:31:25Speaker 01

  Right. That they're more in line with your values, more in line with what you want to get done.

• 4:31:29Mark Manson?

  With who you want to be, right? So, again, it's like finding that lever to push you in the right direction. All right, last one, as we're talking about relationships with other people, and this is gonna, this is definitely a champagne problem.

• 4:31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31:44Mark Manson?

  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.

• 4:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32:02Mark Manson?

  The higher the standard you will be held to by others. And in some cases, people will not like holding you to that standard. 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, 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.

• 4:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32:44Mark Manson?

  So, it's an example of a desirable stress, I would say. In fact, I would say most of these are desirable stresses. I would say Most of these, in most cases, are things that you would like to trade off.

• 4:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32:57Mark Manson?

  So, don't, don't get the wrong idea that this, these are any reasons to not fix your procrastination. We're just trying to be realistic of like, hey, if you get your procrastination handled, here's what you can expect on the other side.

• 4:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and with the higher expectations, one, two, that you gotta be careful because then you lead into the situations where you're not saying no.

• 4:33:15Speaker 01

  And we talked about that, that certain type of procrastinator 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.

• 4:33:27Mark Manson?

  Good hazard, yeah. All right, we're at the end, finally. Before we sign off, Drew, I'm curious, in all the research and prep and recording that we've done for this episode, has anything, have you been inspired to change anything in your life? Has there been any, like, kind of tangible takeaway for you going through this process?

• 4:33:47Speaker 01

  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 a, from a friend and I said it, 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, okay, how, how bad are these distractions? So, we're talking about the environmental side of it. It's bad. 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, don't buy the food, don't, 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 and, and a lot of

• 4:34:30Speaker 01

  this. But what the, I took it one step further, too, and it was very surprising to me just to learn how important emotions are. I mean, I knew they were important. I knew procrastination on some level was, was an emotional problem, but I think we've come to the conclusion that it's all an emotional problem. It's not, it's not, there's an emotional component to it. It's just baseline, an emotional problem that you have to deal with.

• 4:34:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah, all this other stuff, environment, social connections, relationships, even ego stuff, like, it's only relevant in so much as it alters and affects your emotions.

• 4:35:05Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 4:35:06Mark Manson?

  Right? Like, your ego's only a problem with procrastination. If your ego is causing negative emotions to prevent you from actually doing the thing you want to do.

• 4:35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Insofar as though what I've changed specifically, I've used more of the mindfulness, like the RAIN method. And I've, 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, too, 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 gonna identify with it so much that it's just gonna derail my next hour, day, or whatever. So that's been a huge win for me, anyway.

• 4:35:45Mark Manson?

  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 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.

• 4:36:23Mark Manson?

  And I am, like, I'm, the stimulus junkie in me is like, is getting, is becoming a little bit of a dope fiend. 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, 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. And I don't think, I don't think it's resulted in a huge problem with procrastination.

• 4:37:03Mark Manson?

  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.

• 4:37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37:14Mark Manson?

  And, and put some time in again.

• 4:37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I recently heard that, that gap.

• 4:37:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:37:20Speaker 01

  The way that was described was the gap between

• 4:37:24Speaker 01

  whatever happens to you and your reaction in between is your interpretation and that's what you can control.

• 4:37:29Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 4:37:29Speaker 01

  And that definitely through all of this too, has been kind of a motto of mine as well. It's like, okay, you can't control what happens to you. Sometimes you can't, like your reaction is sometimes not what you control either, but the interpretation in between.

• 4:37:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:37:42Speaker 01

  And then it can obviously influence the action that you take. So that, that's been a big one for me too. Another mindfulness little trick that, yeah.

• 4:37:48Mark Manson?

  Cool. That's it.

• 4:37:51Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 4:37:51Mark Manson?

  We made it. We made it. We will be back next month with an episode on emotional regulation.

• 4:37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37:59Mark Manson?

  Since it is, we, I think we realized researching this one, we're like, yeah, if this is all about emotional regulation, we should probably just do an episode.

• 4:38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's gonna be a foundation. Yeah, for sure.