PNTV - Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosophers Nodes tv. Today, another great book, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle. Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, long title. Timothy Pischel is the author. He's one of the world's leading researchers and and scientist on procrastination. He's been doing this work for over 20 years and he has a popular blog that I'll link to on Psychology today website. Procrastination CA and this is a tiny little book, 123 pages, deliberately quick reading so you don't have an excuse to procrastinate on it. And it's packed with big ideas. So we're going to look at some of my favorites from my philosopher's notes. First one is Just get started. Just get started versus just do it. So a lot of times we procrastinate because we think we need to finish something. We get a little overwhelmed and we think, oh man, I can't finish this. And then we put it off. And Timothy talks again and again and again throughout the book that we have an inclination to have an immediate gratifying experience. We want to feel good right now. So when we imagine that we've got to finish something that overwhelms us, that stresses us out, that we have pain in the anticipation. We talked about that fact in our note on A Mind for Numbers, right? They can actually look at your brain and see that when you anticipate doing something that you don't like, you have pain registered in your brain. Just like physical pain. Crazy, right? But when you actually do it, it goes away. So we don't want to overwhelm ourselves with the prospect of having to do it all while we want to just get started. Just get the ball rolling. Tall Ben Shahar calls this a five minute takeoff. Just get started and you'll find that the momentum builds. It's not as bad as you thought. Your brain literally looks different in anticipation versus actually doing it. It's a powerful thing. And again he comes back to it again and again and again. Just get started. And it's not like it's going to happen once in a day. You may need to just get started. Just many times in a particular project, just in the morning, and that's normal. Quit telling yourself that something's wrong with you because you face these challenges. We talk about it in the context of Brene Brown's work, Common humanity. You're not alone, right? It's not because you're you, as Steve Chandler once taught me, you're not experiencing the stress because you're you. You're experiencing it because you're human. Right. We all procrastinate, literally. That's what Timothy says. The research shows that everyone procrastinates in different ways. So it's not a big deal. You just need to discipline yourself and train yourself and practice at just getting started again and again and again. The same way, when we're meditating and our attention wanders, what do we do? We don't get upset. We're neutral about it. We bring our mind back to our anchor. Oh, my mind wandered again. Bring it back. That's just part of the process. Well, same with anything in our lives. And when we're trying to create something, our mind will flutter away. We. We need to bring it back. And then we need to develop better strategies so we don't get distracted as often as we may. Currently, that's the first big idea. Second big idea. If, then thinking. This is huge. He calls it. What does he call it? Intentions. I'm going to look this one up because it's a good phrase. Implementation intentions. Implementation intentions. You need to have a strategy in place to, to help you deal with the inevitable challenges. So what we want to do is identify what you do when you start procrastinating and then say, if I do this, if I say something to myself like, I'll get going on this tomorrow. Which, by the way, the Latin root of the word procrastinate means to put off until tomorrow. That's what the word means from its Latin origins, to put off until tomorrow. So. So if you say to yourself, I'll just get to this tomorrow, if that happens, then you make what Timothy calls a pre decision. You've decided in advance. If I say this to myself, then. Then what? Then what are you going to do? Then you're just going to get started. If I find myself distracted and going to email, even though I said I was going to focus on a project, I'm going to notice that. And then I'm going to shut email off and I'm just going to get started. We're going to talk about dealing with that a little bit later. Distractions. But if this happens, then I'm going to do this pre decision. In our notes and episodes on Willpower by Roy Baumeister and Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, we call this pre commitment. So one of the best ways to preserve your willpower, which is finite, which we talk about all the time right is to make decisions in advance. So Odysseus, when he was trying to avoid the sirens who were seducing him, what did he do? He had his crew lash him to the mast and he said, do not try to release me, no matter what I do, no matter how much I beg. He pre committed himself to not being distracted by the sirens. What did his crew do? Well, they had a different form of procrastinate or pre commitment. They plugged their ears so they couldn't even hear the sirens. That's a better strategy, right? To actually remove the challenge in the first place is much better than trying to resist it. Pre decision, pre commitment. It's big. If then this is a really, really, really big idea. Which leads us to the third big idea. Only one minute. Timothy has a great section in the book on this mythology that this will only take a minute. So he shares a comment on one of his blog posts by a reader and he was talking about the fact that oftentimes we say we're going to go online, we're going to be on the Internet and we say, oh, I'm just going to go check this out for a minute, or I'm going to go look at my email for a minute, or I'm just going to post a status update on Facebook. It's just a minute, no big deal. But when we do that, it's a slippery slope into wasting a ton of time. And he talks about, you know, you start your work whether it's at 7am or 7pm and you want to get going on it and hours go by before you realize that that one minute became half your day. So in the note I talk about the fact that in our getting getting stuff done 101 class, I'll put a link to that below. We had a two minute rule. So one of the primary kind of time management hacks is if something takes you less than two minutes, you just do it. You don't put it on a list and you don't put it in your mind so you can forget it and then be reminded again and again and again and realize, I haven't done that little thing yet. If something takes less than two minutes, do it. That's a very powerful time management approach. Right? It's the number one rule and tip that Roy Baumeister gives in his book Willpower. Now that's great when you've decided that you're going to do little things, but if you're working on a big project and you've said, look, I'm going To finish this, I'm going to just get started, right? In pursuit of just doing it. And you've committed to doing whatever it is, whether it's your homework or a business plan or piece of art or whatever. And then you feel that little distraction come up of, oh, I'm just going to spend just a minute. I'm just going to go research this little thing. Just a minute. The rule is, if you hear yourself say that, then you get back to work, you just get started again. I've showed this before, but when I'm working on a note, I don't need to be online, I turn off my wi fi. Literally, it's off. I have my airplane, or what do you call it, WI fi off on my computer as well. And there are a lot of times where I'm writing and I'm like, oh, I want to go get a link for this, or I want to go do this, I want to go do that. But I don't go do that because I know that this one minute can turn into an hour. And I'm committed to getting one, whatever it is I decided I wanted to get done in the case of the note, the note done. So notice how often that happens and do something with it. Quick little aside here, meditation is a huge way to build our awareness when we're slipping, right? So you need to first be aware of, wow, I'm procrastinating again. I'm doing this. And meditation is a huge way to build the attention muscles. You can actually see that and then implement this strategy. Whole other conversation. Fourth big idea, multitasking. Timothy tells us it's a myth. There are very, very, very small percentage of people who can actually multitask effectively. Most of us are just wasting time and distracting ourselves and diffusing our energy and not being as productive as we can be. There's a stat that I mentioned in the note that's just crazy. Texting while driving. Classic multi text game. Texting is six times more likely to lead to an accident than driving while intoxicated. Texting while driving, six times more likely than driving while intoxicated, which obviously in itself is a horrible thing to do. So think about that. Multitasking is not helping. If you're texting while driving, quit doing that. Let that be a disciplined practice of you're focused, you're enjoying your drive, you're taking deep breaths, maybe you're listening to some inspiring stuff, but you're not taking texting while you're driving. And then realize that applies to every creative aspect of your life. And when you're multitasking, you're just. Timothy puts it directly, you're basically wasting your life. You're not using your best energy, you're not doing your best work. And we need to disconnect in order to connect to the highest version of ourselves. So remove the distractions. This kind of comes into the pre commitment idea we were talking about before. Turn off your email, unplug the WI fi if you don't need to be online, have only the program you need to be working on open while you're working on it. And at least force yourself to go through a couple extra steps to violate your commitment to doing something. And remember, if you feel tempted, then you just get back to work. Fifth, big idea. Stumbles are us. So we need to remember the fact that none of us are perfect. You are going to continue to procrastinate because you're human, not because you're flawed, but because you're human. And when we're able to forgive ourselves while holding high standards, we want to go for it. We want to try to and strive to optimize our lives a little bit more each day, right? Try to get a little bit better each day. This morning I interviewed Mark Devine, the Navy seal. He said the attitude of the SEAL is they need to earn their trident every day. Their little symbol for being a seal. They need to earn that every day. He wants to get 1% better in the skills that matter to his profession every single day. High standards. But you need to match those high standards with high levels of self forgiveness. When you fall short, you need to have self compassion. Realize that that's just part of the deal. George Leonard in Mastery says that you need to understand how it works, how the mastery process works. Sometimes you're taking two steps forward and you slide back a step. Sometimes you're stumbling backwards two or three steps and you're crawling back a step. That's just how it works. Just show up again and again and again and know that high levels of self forgiveness, self compassion are correlated with less procrastination. So if you want to procrastinate more, which none of us do, then beat yourself up more, right? If you want to reduce your procrastination, reduce how harsh you are with yourself and, and forgive yourself when you fall short. Inevitably stumbles are us. And obviously that applies to every aspect of our lives, not just procrastination. Multitasking is a myth. Quit distracting yourself. Quit texting while driving. Only one minute is a silly myth as well. These things take hours of our time. Sometimes quit doing that. And then if, then if I start procrastinating in this way, then I'm going to just get started. Great mantra. Just get started. Whatever you've been putting off, you don't need to do it perfectly. You don't need to complete it. Just get started again and again and again. Every time you feel yourself wanting to procrastinate. Let's not put off to tomorrow. Let's do what we can today. Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosophers notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. 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