When things go smoothly, people often sabotage themselves to recreate the stress that makes them perform well. Procrastination is the most obvious way this shows up. The speaker argues this pattern is rooted in how stress actually boosts performance.
Stress allows us to perform at a higher level than calm. And so obviously that's a great characteristic for business, but what's the downside? Well, the downside is that boredom is our kryptonite. So when we hit smooth sailing and everything is calm, we throw a wrench into the mix and create chaos. We inject stress into our own lives in order to be able to elicit that high performance. Okay, this is the science of self-sabotage, and the most obvious form of self-sabotage is procrastination.
