Make Time for Procrastination in 2023 - Nir And Far

Hey everyone. Welcome to the near and Far Podcast. This is Nir Eyal and with me today, as always, is Nick Gray. Nick, how you doing?

I'm doing great. I'm excited for our special guest today. This is going to be fun.

Absolutely. Today we have Brian Gentry joining us who is the author of a guest post. I don't usually post guest posts at near and Far, but this was such a great article and I really appreciated Brian writing it that he originally posted it on his own site called Idealink and I liked it so much that I asked if I could repost it@nearnfar.com so Brian Brian has been kind enough to join us today. Brian, how's it going?

Hi Nir. Nick, thank you so much for having me here. It's great to be here.

Likewise. Likewise. So why don't we dive into the article and of course we'll learn more about Brian and why he wrote this article as we're going through it.

Great. So if you're just joining us, I'm going to read some of the article which you can find@nearandfar.com that's spelled n I r and far.com and then they'll jump in at comments at the paragraph breaks. Make Time for procrastination in 2023 if you haven't finalized your New Year's resolutions, consider committing to binge watch a show on a regular basis. Okay, it doesn't have to be binge watching. Another guilty pleasure esque activity works too. Perhaps your preferred procrastination is jamming to 80s music videos on YouTube or browsing Amazon for new gadgets. Whatever it is, set aside time for it and do it. Anyone who knows me might wonder who hacked into my account to write this under the name of Brian Gentry. I rarely watch TV or movies, and in the past I've been more likely to admonish against non productive tasks. I may have even waxed preachy about it, for which I now repent a little. My ongoing reading on attention, Distraction and their tug of war on the meaning of our lives led me to a research paper that changed my view of binge watching. It turns out that gluing yourself to the TV for a few hours is not necessarily bad. What matters is the context when you watch them, what's on your calendar at the time, and who you're with. I want to take a break here before we go into the next one that talks about research on binge watching and self control. Who came up? Who found this research paper? Was it Brian or was it Nir.

So I found this research as I mentioned in the article and as you just read, I've been doing some reading for a while about attention and distraction and how they relate to the meaning of our lives and how we create meaning in our lives. And back in late November, early December, I was thinking, well, I want to now look at what does binge watching how what effect does that have, especially unplanned binge watching? And it turns out that just a few months before that, I think it was in August, there was a paper in the academic journal Computers and Human Behavior Reports where they had done this study about binge watching and how people feel while they are binge watching and how that is moderated by whether they have high self control or low self control. As I read it, I immediately thought of Nir. Nir, I've been reading your books and following your blog for quite some time and I thought this is kind of about timeboxing the things that I was learning in there. And so I sent it to Nir and then I ended up deciding a couple weeks later, while people are making New Year's resolutions, they should know what this research paper teaches us.

Nice. I love that. Anything that stuck out to you near about the research that you were like, oh this is great.

Yeah, let's dive into it so everybody can know what the paper found.

Research on Binge Watching and Self Control the researchers wanted to learn about the relationship between self control and the emotions we experience while binge watching. They surveyed 280 people to learn about their self control abilities and their emotions throughout their last experience with binge watching. The results showed that people with less self control experienced a quick rise in happiness with when they started watching the first episode of their binge watching session. However, as they continued watching for hours, they felt more guilt and sadness. Meanwhile, people with higher self control had a higher level of happiness after binge watching along with lower levels of tiredness, boredom, guilt and sadness. These associations are partly explained by binge watching interfering less with higher order goals for highly self controlled person participants, the authors write. Here are a few key quotes that summarize the author's conclusions. Well, unplanned bing watching sessions were associated with rised levels of guilt and boredom and the presence of conflict with other goals appeared to impair the experience of binge watching. This is in line with research suggesting that binge watching is sometimes the result of a self control failure, a guilty pleasure, and at other times a planned guilt free activity. In this study, people with high trait self control seem to have organized their binge watching so that it did not interfere markedly with their higher order goals. As I wrote last week, working toward long term goals or life projects is crucial for creating a sense of meaning in our lives. By planning our binge watching so it doesn't conflict with those goals, we can preserve meaning. And as a scheduled social activity, binge watching might contribute to meaning in our lives.

Yeah, so this is where I really loved how this research reinforces some of the ideas that I've been writing about and we've been talking about now for quite a while, around how when an activity is planned, it becomes traction. Right? If you want to watch a show on Netflix, great, do it, enjoy it. But what I think this study reinforces is that as long as it is planned, plan for. As long as it's something that we do consciously as opposed to something we're trying to escape our current reality with, it becomes something that actually serves us as opposed to hurts us. So it's not the activity itself. It's not that social media or watching a television show or whatever it is you want to do with your time is necessarily a bad or harmful or some kind of guilty pleasure. Rather, it's something that can really serve you as long as it's something you plan for.

Yeah, near. In fact, one thing that got me thinking about this topic in a New Year's resolution context is the fact that usually we think of New Year's resolutions as a time to start doing something good or stop doing something bad. But then after several weeks, very often we've stopped doing the good thing and we've started doing the bad thing. And this paper actually made me realize that maybe it's not so much about stopping a bad thing, but putting an activity in its proper place where it can actually support our life goals. For example, binge watching, supporting a goal of socialization, for example, or entertainment, putting that in its right place and right time, by which we have to also make time for the other things that we want to do. So that way when we binge watch or use social media or whatever, it's not getting in the way of the other things and, and we can participate in that guilt free.

I really like that, actually. That brings up a good potential resolution. Maybe instead of saying, I'm going to not go on social media anymore, I'm never going to watch Netflix shows, maybe the right New Year's resolution should be, I'm only going to watch them when I say I will. I will only watch them when they are on my Schedule. It actually reminds me of a company that I invested in called Sunnyside. And Sunnyside is a company that helps people cut back on drinking. And so their approach, it's really interesting. You know, the, the, it, it used to be that the, the only way to be was either you're a drinker or you're sober, right? That's all it is. It's black and white. And what Sunnyside found was that many people can live healthfully by having a drink or two a week. That's fine, that's what they want. But it's trying to bring mindfulness to that experience to say, here's how much I want to drink and then enjoy those drinks as opposed to saying it's gotta be black and white. And then, you know, some people from that path, they decide to cut out alcohol altogether. Many don't. They just decide to moderate. So it kind of reminds me in a very similar fashion when it comes to other distractions like binge watching, like social media, like whatever. Too much of anything. Maybe the first step, if you ultimately desire to consume these less or not at all, the very first step is about being mindful about when you are going to consume.

And I love that idea to make it social to say, what if we can watch? What if we can do our binge watching at the same time we. What was that called? Nir. We talked about it last episode where we would link up, for example, working out with certain friend groups. Is there a name for that?

Exactly. Temptation, bundling. And the idea is that you reward yourself with something that you want in an area that maybe you don't really want to do that other behavior. So for example, for me, the way I temptation bundle is that I never read articles on my laptop. I love consuming content. I love blog posts. But they can be a mindset sucking vortex of content. Because, you know, whether it's the New York Times or the Atlantic or any other publication, they are written with these clickbait headlines. They want you to keep reading, reading and reading. We know that their business model, their business model is to turn your eyeballs into cash. Right? Does anybody not know that? That's the business model of all media. Right. If they're ad supported, they want you to spend as much time. The New York Times is never going to say, hey, you've had enough. So what I do is when I want to read one of these articles, I never read it on my laptop. I only listen to it. I use an app called Voice Dream in conjunction with another app called Pocket that reads these articles to me and I can only listen to them while I'm in the gym or taking a walk or doing some kind of physical exercise. So I've coupled my enjoyment with something I really like, right? Reading these articles with something I don't really love, right? Exercising is just okay, but it gives me that extra motivation to Temptation Bundle so it's scheduled right? Per this principle. This article we're talking about right now. It's and it makes the activity more fun. It becomes the reward to help motivate me to do the thing I know I want to do.

Feast Watching versus Cringe Watching the study's authors cite another paper that found a difference between two very different ways to binge on tv. Cringe watching is solo, accidental and distracted, and this activity leads to more regret and lower well being. Feast watching, on the other hand, is described as planned, social and attentive, and it is associated with more positive experiences. Much like the previous study I mentioned, this shows that binging a show can lead to different feelings depending on the context. An important factor seems to be whether the experience was scheduled and social or spur of the moment and isolated time Box that Procrastination and your goals too the writing of Nir Eyal, who wrote Hooked and Indistractible, introduced me to the concept of time boxing, a process of blocking out time for specific tasks or categories of tasks throughout the week with the schedule based on our values and goals. By turning our values into time, we make sure we have time for traction, near writes. By the way, you can check out Nir's guide for starting how to do timeboxing in 2023. Visit his website at nearandfar.com the name of that article is examining your values. You then follow your timeboxed calendar with no regrets. If catching up on stranger things for three hours a week is important to you, schedule it and do it. I've engaged in some small scale timeboxing such as when I was in grad school or when I wrote a novel in one month. I recently started working on a more granular timebox calendar where I have set aside specific times for email, social media, duolingo, exercise, hobbies and family. And apparently I'm going to schedule some time for the behaviors I've used for procrastination in the past, like watching TV and reading web comics. I have to ask Brian about this writing a novel in one month and how you use timeboxing.

Yeah, so that was in 2018 and I started when I was a kid. I think I was 11 years old when I decided I want to write books, when I grew up and chose a different career path into journalism and public relations. But in 2018, I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month. That is every November. People around the world commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel in one month. And I decided that was the year I was going to do it. I actually time boxed some time. I said, here are some times each day that I'm going to write. In the morning before work, in the evening after my kids went to bed. I also scheduled some days off of work to focus intently on the novel for many hours at a time. But more importantly or equally important as making time for the writing, I also made time for the things that normally distracted me from the writing, such as social media. Using social media is a part of my job working in higher education, communications and marketing. But I decided during that month I would set it aside for non work purposes. I I think it was each Sunday I would allow myself to go onto Facebook and scroll through and read what people were up to and catch up with people that way. But during the week I was only using it during work hours for work purposes. And just setting aside that specific time for Facebook made it easier to set aside the time for the writing of the book. And I was able to focus more on the book. I was able to brainstorm on it more when I was not constantly interrupting myself to go to social media. And at the end of the month I had, I think it was about 60,000 words of a book. I wrote another 30,000 or so the next month to make it complete. And the book is not quite publishable, but maybe someday I'll finish editing and revising it and work on some other books as well.

Yeah, I love so much about that National Novel Writing Month. I haven't tried it myself. I've only focused on nonfiction, but I know many people who have finished their novels that way. Brian, when you did it, was there a component I know that the month itself has this time component of you have to finish within that month. Is there some kind of social component to checking in with others as you're writing or being accountable to others in any way?

There is a website for National Novel Writing Month. I think it's nanowrimo.org or something like that. And they do have a way that you can go in and enter how many words you wrote on each particular day. So. So it kind of tracks that for you. And I believe there's a social component to that. I guess revising what I said earlier, one thing I did, you know, for personal use on social media during that month when I was focusing on that, I would log in and drop an update on my word count. So I didn't use the NaNoWriMo site, but I used my own social media just to tell everyone, hey, I'm still working on it, and here's what, how many words I'm up to. And that provided some good feedback.

You know, there's so much I love about that. Right. You're using a tool that otherwise distracted you. Right. And now it actually helped you accomplish these goals and kept you on track. It's such a great example of how these, these technologies are tools, right. That if you use them appropriately, just like if you use a hammer appropriately, you can use a. You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use a hammer to hit someone. Right. Depends how you use that tool. So having yourself hold yourself accountable by telling others about the fact that you were doing this National Novel Writing Month and that you were updating them on your goals, that's an example of a pact, a pre commitment, which is the fourth step of becoming indistractable by telling others, this is what you're doing and you had this goal and you're making that public. There's this social obligation to do what you said you're going to do. And I'm guessing that provided quite a bit of motivation to make sure that you got it done. Yeah.

I also told a few people that I was obligated to send them the novel when I completed it. Otherwise they could. I can't remember what they were going to be allowed to do, but like, you know, some kind of commitment device there. And of course I sent it to them as scheduled and told them, please don't read it. It's. It's. It's embarrassing as it is. But just having that commitment device where I was going to send it to them gave me some extra motivation along the way.

New Year's resolutions. I hope you'll take me up on this idea and set a New Year's resolution to make time for the activities you normally reserve for procrastination. I'd love to see people's reactions when you get back to the office and say, I'm going to veg in front of the TV every Thursday night. Want to join me? This has been a reading of the guest post. I'm going to see if Nir has any thoughts or if Brian wants to add anything else. But we've had a special guest post one of the first times to have a guest post. So this is a very big deal. And Brian did such a good job. He wrote the article make time for procrastination and in 2023, Nir or Brian, you guys got any last words on this one?

I will add that in this post. When I wrote it in late December, I was working very carefully on that timebox calendar and things have not gone according to plan with what I time box. But one thing I've learned from NIR over the years is the importance of revisiting that timebox schedule and saying what didn't work, what do I need to revise? So I've been over the past few weeks, here we are, we're early February. I've spent a lot of time in January thinking about, well, where was I too optimistic, where was I too stringent with my calendar and how can I make it more adequately reflect my values? And by switching things up, I'm continuing to make time for procrastination. I've made time for wordle, I've made time for duolingo and other things and also more importantly, made time to continue writing articles and spending time with my family and all those other things that matter.

I'm so glad you said that, by the way. Brian. So I see the two biggest mistakes I see when it comes to timeboxing. The biggest mistake I see, number one, is that people don't start, right? They say, oh, it's going to take too much time. I'm going to have to sit down and like figure out my calendar. Actually, it only takes maybe what, 20, 30 minutes to figure out your week to plug in all those white spaces so that you know what you're going to do according to your values. And I tell you about all this in indistractable and how to turn your values into time. But really, maybe it only takes 20, 30 minutes. And then after you do it the first time, it takes even less time, right? From week to week to week. Maybe it takes 10, 15 minutes to just make small revisions to the week ahead. So that's the first mistake is not starting in the first place, not trying this technique. The second biggest mistake is that when it doesn't work okay, which invariably, no doubt about it, hundred percent, you will fall off track during your timebox calendar. So the second biggest mistake people make is that when they fall off track, they say, well, it doesn't work right? And what you did was not make that mistake. You said, okay, we, well, maybe I didn't estimate appropriately, right? Maybe I Didn't put in the right things in my calendar. Let me revise those things. And so the idea here is that you're not a drill sergeant, you're a scientist. A drill sergeant says, you have to do this, you have to do this. They're commanding and controlling you all day long. A scientist, what does a scientist do? A scientist makes a hypothesis, runs an experiment, sees the results, and then runs new experiments to discover more. So, so every week, what we're doing, people who time box, myself included, I fall off track still, right? I've been using this technique for years. I still have times when I fall off track. That's okay. That's part of becoming indistractable. The idea, though, is that you look at that and say, okay, I saw why I got distracted. I know why I got distracted. It's only because of one of three reasons. An internal trigger, an external trigger, or a planning problem. What can I do to prevent getting distracted by the same thing next time? And sometimes the right answer is, well, you know what, I really should have made more time for this or I allotted too much time for that. And, and making those regular revisions not in the day, right? You never want to make revisions to your Timebox calendar in the day, but for the next day or the next week, perfectly allowed. In fact, it's part of the process. You have to make these revisions. And what you discovered, Brian, is that putting in time for the previous distractions is a huge hack, right? That's a secret that I think many people don't think about. They make their perfect calendar and they say, oh, I'm never going to look at social media. And I, and I'm only going to, you know, I'm going to exercise all the time and I'm do everything I'm going to say I'm going to do. But they don't leave any time for the fun stuff. They don't leave any time to relax and watch TV or play with their kids or do the fun stuff in their day. You've got to put that time in your calendar as well. Because if you don't put in that time, what's going to happen? Your brain all day long is going to think about, oh, when can I go read the news, when can I check social media? When can I watch something on Netflix? As opposed to when you have the Timebox calendar, you know, oh, right there, eight o'. Clock, that's when I get to go on Facebook. Like you were saying, that's a really important technique to integrate into this process.

Putting in time for the fun. That feels like the theme of this article. Make time for procrastination in 2023 hey, you've been listening to the Near End Far podcast about business, behavior and the brain. We have a new review that I'd like to read real quick from southpaw38 who who said near concisely breaks down weekly action steps for making real changes to your life goals. If you have a minute, will you take a second to leave a review on whatever podcast app you listen to? It really helps us out and it encourages us to keep doing this podcast and maybe have more special guest hosts. Who would you like to have as a guest host? Send Nir an email reply to his famous newsletter or send him a tweet on who you think we should have as a guest host. Near blogs@nearnd far.com and he has a weekly newsletter filled with science backed strategies for designing healthy habits that your customers will love. Sign up for the free newsletter@nearandfar.com that's N I R and FAR F A R dot com Brian where can our listeners find you on the Internet?

They can find me on Twitter @bry gentry b r y Gentry or they can read my newsletter where I'm often focusing lately on topics of attention, distraction and the meaning of life@idealink.substack.com that's perfect.

Well, thank you both. Nir. Thank you Brian. Guys, have a great week.

You too. Thanks Nick thank you Nir.

Thank you guys.