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Podcast

How to Stop Procrastinating

SOLVED with Mark Manson

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  • Aristotle: Procrastination is Skill
    • Aristotle saw procrastination as a skill, not a moral flaw.
    • He believed anyone can improve their discipline through practice and habit formation. Transcript: Drew Burney Think there is just a lot of that self-judgment that goes into it. And I’ve always thought, yeah, if I just knew a little bit more, had the right information at the right time, then I would be a better person. So, you know, morally corrupt and bankrupt in my ways. But, yeah, it’s interesting that each one of these kind of schools of thought took one angle at it. And it’s like, yeah, you got that right, but you got this completely wrong. And I feel that within myself even too today. So, yeah, definitely. Mark Manson I think I started seeing it as a skill issue relatively late in my life. 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 the default for most people. Like there is a shame and there’s a moral judgment. And what I found super fascinating and surprising is that that moral judgment is, for the most part, didn’t exist in the ancient world. You know, Aristotle saw a crazier or doing the right action. He had a whole ethical system around virtue, right? The virtues were like the right way to live. But Aristotle was very aware that like nobody is virtuous all the time. The virtues are never achieved. They’re just something that you work towards and you get better at over time. And everybody’s going to screw it up. Everybody’s going to fail to a certain extent. And so the only thing you can do is just try to fail less. And if you look at the Stoics, there’s a very similar vein there, right? It’s like, you should try to be virtuous. The Stoics were a little bit more platonic in that they saw it as more of a lack, like a knowledge problem, but it’s still the same attitude of like, nobody’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 your failures and things like that. And it’s so fascinating, like, going back and looking at those takes because that doesn’t feel like anything I heard growing up. I heard that you are an immoral piece of shit who’s irresponsible and is failing yourself and failing your future and failing your family. And like it is, there’s so much moral judgment, especially I guess in Western culture, but I think Eastern culture as well. There’s so much moral judgment wrapped up in your ability to be disciplined. You know, like I think about people who are obese or overweight, like one of the huge judgments against them, it’s not about the unhealthiness. It’s about the apparent lack of discipline, right? Like I’ve been around people who have said really mean things about overweight people. And it’s, 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 house? Drew Burney Right. How could you let yourself go to that extent? Mark Manson Right. And we have similar judgments. Like if somebody loses their job or if somebody doesn’t make a lot of money, there’s like a moral judgment. And we joked about it earlier, right? It’s like, if I showed up an hour late for this shoot, you would judge me. Yes. Yes, I would. Yes, you would. So it’s interesting that that didn’t always exist like that. That is it started somewhere along the line. And drum roll. Do you want to guess where it started? Drew Burney I have a good idea, but why don’t you go ahead? Mark Manson I’ll give you one. It starts with a Chris and it ends with a Gianity. Yeah. Yeah. Drew Burney One of the seven deadly sins, right? Sloth. Sloth. Mark Manson Exactly. Exactly. So interestingly, there’s actually kind of a particular moment in time that I think you point to where you can actually say this is the moment that procrastination and a failure to act Became a moral problem. It became a shame-ridden failure that signifies that you are a piece of scum, essentially. So the story actually starts in the late 4th century. 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. 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. But the interesting thing about Augustine is that he was very smart and he was very philosophical. And so he became curious about a bunch of different religions and I guess you’d call them cults throughout his early adult life. He kind of dabbled in a bunch of different schools of thought. 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 (Time 0:29:53)
  • Use Self-Compassion
    • Treat yourself with kindness like a friend to overcome procrastination.
    • Self-compassion reduces shame and creates a mindset for approach, not avoidance. Transcript: Drew Burney Or self-shaming? Self-acceptance, right? Yeah. Self-compassion. Okay. What does that look like? Mark Manson Well, I hate myself, Drew. Right. How do I stop? Well. Make the self-loathing stop. Drew Burney Pretend I’m your friend, Mark. Okay. And if you heard me saying that, you would be like, whoa, dude. Yeah. God, take it easy on yourself, right? Totally. This is kind of the standard advice to a lot of people is when you want to be more self-compassionate and kinder to yourself, treat yourself like a friend. Step back, detach yourself a little bit from the whole situation and be like, okay, what’s really going on here? How can I be a little bit more understanding of my own actions? Yeah. And knowing some of these reasons, having some self-awareness around these reasons of why I’m doing this and being like, OK, I need to address these. Let’s move forward, which I think is kind of the way things were, even with Plato and his maybe a little bit muddied of thinking around procrastination. I still think there was a lot of that prior to this whole injection of shame into the culture. Yeah. Mark Manson Doing getting things done. 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. I’ve been there. Drew Burney But it’s, it’s, uh, it’s one of those things that we don’t notice it when we do it to ourselves. And that, that self-compassion does, it 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, a space for exploring what’s actually going on and then taking action. Whereas again, the shame just creates a lot of avoidance around. Yeah. Mark Manson 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 was self-esteem (Time 0:46:55)
  • Freud’s Psychoanalytic Insight
    • Freud’s pleasure vs. reality principle explains procrastination as choosing immediate pleasure over long-term goals.
    • The ego mediates between primal urges (id) and moral rules (superego) influencing procrastination behavior. Transcript: Mark Manson Let’s transition into Freud. Yeah. I actually have a cool little tidbit to like swing into this section. You want to kick it off? Okay. Yeah. It’s actually really fascinating. So Freud went to university in Vienna in the mid-19th century. And at the time, like psychology didn’t really exist. Right. It wasn’t really a thing. So Freud had a professor. His name was Franz Brentano. And Professor Brentano, his kind of obsession and the thing that he would eventually become most known for, he was really into Aristotle. Okay. And he loved the kind of subjective, what we would call today the psychological side of Aristotle. But he also loved the scientific side as well. And at the time, mostly Aristotle’s scientific stuff was studied and it was like the virtue stuff was, I guess, less prominent. But Brentano had a theory, which is he believed that you could take Aristotle’s scientific method and you could potentially apply it to human happiness. And he called it an empiricism of the psychology. And he taught this idea in his courses and Freud was one of his students. Drew Burney Oh, I did not know that. Mark Manson Interesting. There you go. Drew Burney So this would have been late 1800s. Mark Manson So this was 1860s, 1870s. Drew Burney Okay. Yeah. Interesting. I did not know that. Yeah. Freud is a fascinating guy to say the least. And yeah, whenever you bring him up, there’s going to be a lot of- A lot of dicks. A lot of dicks come out, right? A lot of dicks and mothers. Mark Manson That’s right. That’s right. Drew Burney To say he was controversial is an understatement. He got a lot of things right. He got a lot of things wrong, some fascinatingly wrong and just spectacularly wrong. But the mark he left on Western thought and on psychology is undeniable. You can’t deny that. So we would be remiss if we did not bring up Freud in all of this. Yeah. There’s a few ideas that Freud introduced into the larger kind of intellectual culture at the time that we need to be aware of that are pertinent to procrastination. Okay. So first we want to talk about the pleasure principle versus the reality principle, right? Okay. So Freud, he thought that we are basically just driven by these two principles. One he called the pleasure principle, which is we seek out pleasure and we want to avoid pain. This is from birth. This is just part of our nature. Anything that’s pleasurable, we gravitate towards it. Anything painful, we avoid it. 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 can be detrimental to us, Especially in the long run. So we start to realize this as we mature. And actually one of the marks of maturity that he saw or that he outlined was that we live more by the reality principle. Right. 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 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 model of the psyche too, the three-part. Again, the three parts. Yeah. Very platonic of him, right? You have the id ego and super ego okay anyone go through each for one of those sure for everybody okay so we have the id right and the id is like this that’s some people about the lizard brain I guess that’s probably an oversimplification but it’s basically your drives for uh a lot of it is for the pleasures that we have eating sex, sex, whatever joyful experience you might Want to indulge in, hedonism basically. You have the superego then too, which is kind of the opposite of the id, which is all these moral standards that we obtain through socialization in our childhoods, through the people Around us, our teachers, our parents, our siblings. We start to form as we as we mature, we start to form this idea of what it means to be a good person, to do right, to be morally superior to others or just to act morally out in the world. That’s the superego. 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 and propagate but we Also need to temper that in some way with our moral understanding of the world yeah and that’s the ego comes in and says okay i have a plan how we’re going to get satisfied both of these. And the whole Freud said, when these things were in balance and the ego was doing its job, then we had mental health. And whenever it’s out of balance, we’re screwed. Right. Feels very similar to the chariot. Very, very much. The chariot driver with the two horses. Like you said, Plato, he’ll come up all throughout Western thought. He’s everywhere. And he’s everywhere. Yeah. Then kind of through a freudian lens is giving into like i said giving into the id when the id (Time 1:04:30)
  • Environmental Design for Focus
    • Design your environment to make desired behaviors easier and distractions harder.
    • Use rules like phone off during work and keep unhealthy temptations out of the house. Transcript: Mark Manson Right. So why don’t you kick us off? Let’s talk about environmental design. That’s right. What’s a good way to implement environmental design to help with your procrastination? Drew Burney The core premise of this is altering your surroundings. Um, so that the desired behavior that you’re targeting is just easier or the one that you don’t want to do as much harder, um, distractions and stuff like that. We’ll, so we’ll talk about, um, how to do that. So set up your environment so that, uh, for success basically. Um, some of the ways, well, 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. That’s a good place to start with that. You can use, like you mentioned, you use website blockers. Mark Manson There’s a lot of software like that yeah um 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 Right um you know one piece of software is called freedom there was another one called uh i believe it was called self or no it was called focus yeah there was another one called Control. There’s a bunch of them. And then there’s all sorts of accessibility things like on your phones, like the iPhone and Android. Drew Burney 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. Hackback notifications on your phone too. I don’t know why people – like I look at some people’s phones and they’re just – there’s like 90 notifications on them. Like why – from like an app they downloaded four years ago that they don’t even use. That’s crazy. And turn off your notifications. Just turn them off. Put your text messages, maybe a couple other things and that’s it. Yeah. Mark Manson 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. Like I said, get rid of the junk food. One of the things that I – like a really extreme example of this that my friend Nira Eyal did. And by the way, his book on this is excellent. Drew Burney Environmental design, go to that. Mark Manson That’s a Bible for that. His book, Indistractable, it’s excellent. 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. And so he programmed the timers to shut off, I think, at 7 p.m. Or something every night. And so the internet in his house just went off every evening at 7 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 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 2 p.m. Something like that. I think it’s really useful to get explicit of like, this is a rule that I live by. Like, this is a rule that I have for myself. Because if you try to, I think the key principle here is that when you leave it up to your own decision making, you can’t trust your own decision making. Right. And not in the moment, at least. Yes. And not consistently over a long period of time. You might get it right the first day or the first week. But like eventually you’re going to start making the bad decision. And as soon as you make the bad decision once, that’s going to 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. Right. Drew Burney Or I don’t check social media until after four or whatever. Email to I only do email at two or three p.m. In the afternoon or at the end of the day. Once a day, clear the inbox. Then it’s done. Yeah. 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 power cord to my tv and like giving It to a friend right i keep it at my friend’s house so i can’t even have it like just hold on this for the next two weeks i’m just imagining you like ringing a doorbell just like handing a power Mark Manson Cable to and be like, I’m going to come back for this. Not too far off. Drew Burney Again, it goes back to, I mentioned earlier that, you know, that interview I listened to with Peter Steele, where he said the people who are most honest about these things. Yes. 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 going to accept that. I guess another thing is that there’s a self-acceptance to environmental design that you have to be really OK with. Mark Manson Right. You have to accept that you’re flawed and that you’re not going to change your own nature. I think that’s something, you know, I think a lot of chronic procrastinators, they like have this unreasonable expectation that there is going to 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 going to be able to put their phone away whenever they want. And it’s like, no, you’re not going to happen. You’re human. You’re not, you’re not going to, you’re not going to defeat a hundred thousand 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? Yeah. Drew Burney Besides the not keeping junk food in the house, like that’s, that’s a, that was a big one. Um, but also separating my, my workspace from other parts. So I just have, there’s one room now in my house that it’s just for work. And now I I’ve seen after a while, it’s been a couple of years now that I’ve had that. 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, uh, uh, 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 try to keep it clean because for me, anyway, if I see clutter on a desk, that’s a (Time 3:41:20)
  • Leverage Social Accountability
    • Collaborate with others who share goals to boost motivation and accountability.
    • Social pressure from peers can reduce procrastination significantly. Transcript: Mark Manson 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? 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 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 like 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 friend, your chance of success is gonna like five or 10 X 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 like skips French class. Like you don’t want to be the, you don’t want to be the, the dick that like paid for, you know, convinced your friends to like join a CrossFit gym with you and then never shows up. Like it just, that’s embarrassing. That loses respect to that, you know, people stop trusting you as much. And so like, that is a huge lever that you can pull within your own brain. I do have a quick story about this. So that friend that we mentioned earlier, Nir Eyal, and that book 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 going to meet up, I think it was twice a week, for writing sessions. And we set, basically, both gave ourselves the deadline of the end of the year. I think this was 2018. And we made a bet that if, I don’t remember how much money it was, but it was like, if one of us finished our books and the other one didn’t, we had to give, whoever didn’t finish the book had To give the other one, I think it was like $5,000 or $10,000. It was like a very painful amount of money. It was a very painful amount of money. And we like wrote it down and like had like a contract and everything. And we did it. And it was, I mean, we both got it done. I mean, like, let’s just put it this way. We were more effective, I think, in those four or five months than we were like the entire year prior to that. Drew Burney I’ve heard Nir tell that story to other people. He said his hand was shaking when he handed you the like because i think you each wrote a check or something or a contract whatever yeah he said my hand was shaking i handed it over because It is that powerful yeah think about that emotional uh space he had to be in for for that he’s like oh god now my ass is on the line yeah and it was it’s funny because there was kind of that looming Mark Manson Threat of like, oh my God, I have to get this done. But it actually turned, I mean, he and I are really close friends now. And a lot of it is because of that, because we started meeting up and writing together every week. And, 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 is a disaster. Like I got nothing was usable. Right. And then we kind of talk through it and be like, oh, yeah, that’s how last week was for me. But like today was pretty good. You know, and like it was just nice to like validate each other and reassure each other. Because, you know, if stuff like that happens when you’re by yourself, like let’s say you have a horrible writing session or a horrible workout or something. Again, the tendency is like the inner funhouse mirror warps it so it feels more catastrophic than it is. Whereas when you’re with somebody else, they’re like, oh, yeah, I’ve been there. I felt that way last week. But, you know, you just try again and it’ll be fine. You know, it’s like having other people around reminds you that it’s not as big of a deal as you think it is or things aren’t falling apart the way you fear they are. Yeah. Drew Burney And I want to highlight something you already mentioned with regard to that, though. But finding people who are in a similar situation and place that you are is really important in this case too. Yes. You can find somebody who’s like, you know, get an accountability coach, like somebody who’s been fitness or something like that. It was 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, um, uh, spot as you are. For example, too, like when I started CrossFit, it was me and two friends. We started in both of us, all of us, none of us had done CrossFit before. All of us kind of probably hadn’t been in the gym for a little while. And so there is that kind of 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 us. I think that’s really important to highlight. Yeah. Mark Manson And it’s funny because we talked a little bit about how like students are the biggest procrastinators. And it’s funny because this is the easiest solve for them. You know, like you are constantly surrounded by people who in the exact same situation as you struggling with the exact same procrastination as you are. And my first 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. 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. 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 4am. 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 and, like, stared at the wall. I had to go to the library. And sure enough, once I’m in the library, it’s like, well, I got all my books. I might as well, like, start studying or, you know, do that, like, start working on that assignment 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? (Time 3:52:30)
  • Minimum Viable Action
    • Break big tasks into the smallest doable actions to reduce intimidation.
    • Starting with micro-tasks builds momentum and reduces emotional overwhelm. Transcript: Mark Manson So yeah, zooming in a little bit. So zooming in. So we’re going – that’s the super big picture. Now cutting in super, super tight. I have this concept that I’ve called for many years the minimum viable action, which 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, 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, yeah, it’s still kind of like, okay, what about one minute meditation, right? Like, just go sit on the fucking floor. How about that? You don’t even have to just sit on the floor and just do like 30 seconds. It’s like, okay, yeah, that’s not intimidating. So then you go do that. And then what you find is that once you do the tiny action, once you’re on the floor for 30 seconds, then you’re like, well, I can do five minutes. And then you do the five minutes and then you’re like, I could do 10, you know, and then you do 10 and you’re like, ah, I could do 20 or maybe not, you know, maybe you just do the 10, but at least You did 10 because 10 before you were in a place where it was either zero or 20, if you sit down and do five, that’s better than zero, right? So the minimum viable action is always, it helps guarantee that something gets done. Even if it’s not as much as you would hope or imagine, it’s just that something gets done. I’ve applied this in almost every area of my business and my productivity. Like this is just, this is my absolute go-to in my personal life. Anything that I am struggling with or I’m delaying, this is the first thing that I go to because I’m like, how can I break this down into something that’s not intimidating? So with workouts, I did this just the other night. We had a long shoot day. I got home like 6 p.m. 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. 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. 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, just write one sentence. Just put together one non-shitty sentence. Like, doesn’t have to be good. Doesn’t have to sing. You don’t have to be Hemingway. Like, just put together a sentence that like makes, that is readable. Right. And then you start there and you’re like, okay, well, I kind of know what the next sentence is. And well, let me just finish this paragraph. And, you know, next thing you know, you’ve got two pages written. 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. Drew Burney Yeah. Yeah. You’ve been recommending this one for a very long time, 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’re want to build a car, but we have to break that process down. And so they’re like, this is how you should do it. What they missed was it’s because it’s an emotional problem, not a tactical, rational problem. It’s an emotional problem. You have this big, huge task in front of you, and you need to break it down into more manageable emotions that are attached to this task. Right. Mark Manson Like we keep saying, procrastination is an emotional problem. Self-control is an emotional problem. Like this is 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. (Time 4:05:40)
  • Mindfulness to Manage Emotions
    • Use mindfulness to recognize, allow, investigate, and distance from procrastination-triggering emotions.
    • Awareness helps you manage uncomfortable feelings instead of avoiding tasks. Transcript: Mark Manson It will open things up for you way, way, way more than you would ever anticipate. So absolutely a hundred percent. All right. What’s the next one? Okay. Yeah. Drew Burney 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 perceive 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. And you can – I mean, there’s different ways you could be more mindful around this, but this, I’ve found any way just on a moment to moment basis when that does pop up, this is a really good Way to just get, like really get in there and be like, okay, what’s going on here? Why am I feeling this way? Where am I feeling this in my body? Why am I feeling it there? All the things you think about when you hear about mindfulness practices, that’s how you can start to address the underlying emotions. Mark Manson And I think it’s important to emphasize, because I imagine that there’s some subset of listeners right now who just went through four hours of information and the history of procrastination And the crazier. And they get to the end and they’re like, ah, fuck, it’s about emotions. 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 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 until you get it to a point where it’s not so anxiety inducing or, you know, or if there’s like a despair Or sadness or whatever, like you can kind of play with, you know, your goals or, 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. Yeah. Drew Burney And I mean, a lot of this to this, these all tie together, right? And so if you have like an environment that’s bringing up a lot of these emotions too, fixing that will help. But again, it still just goes back to the mindfulness part of that. You have to be aware of those triggers in your environment, or maybe it’s a person or, uh, you know, work situation that happens a lot too. Um, but yeah, becoming more self-awareness. We talk a lot about self-awareness in a lot of different areas. And, um, that’s a skill too, that you develop over time and self-awareness around why you do and don’t do things. Um, I think that you have to find some method, whether that’s through more meditation or maybe you do need to go through to therapy just to get a little more self-aware around your emotions. Yeah. 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 got to, you got to work with that. Mark Manson So you’re telling me there’s no notion template to solve my anxiety issues. I’ve tried them all. Drew Burney I have tried them all. That’s, that’s a good point you make though. That’s a million dollar idea. Get this notion template to solve all of your anxiety issues. Right. Right. I think that’s a way we avoid the underlying emotions around all of this is trying, like we talked about this, trying to find the new app or the new system or whatever it is. Oh, yeah. That is avoidance. That is not addressing the underlying emotions here. 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. Mark Manson It’s the appearance of progress without actual progress. Drew Burney Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. For sure. Mark Manson Well, let’s (Time 4:11:00)
  • Make Tasks Fun
    • Gamify boring tasks and batch them with enjoyable activities to make work fun.
    • Competition and progress tracking can transform dull chores into engaging challenges. Transcript: Mark Manson 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. Drew Burney 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. I think, I think progress is fun. Progress. Okay. Mark Manson So one thing that I find very fun, I’m a very competitive person and one of like, I agree, tracking is annoying. Yeah. I don’t, the tracking itself, I don’t enjoy. Okay. Okay. What I enjoy is the competition with myself. Okay. Right. So it’s like, I know how much weight I lifted on every, on every exercise last week. Right. And so it’s fun for me to go into the gym this week and be like, let’s see if I can do one more rep, right? Like, let’s see if I can do this. Let’s see if I can add five pounds to this. Like, let’s see how that feels. I mean, and don’t get me wrong. I’m not like skipping to the gym every morning, you know, like hopping out of bed. But like, it makes it interesting enough that it’s not as hard to go and it’s not as hard to finish the workout. It takes what would be 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. You know, if you let’s say there’s a podcast you love, like two handsome men talking about procrastination for four hours. You can you can 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, I, they’re my chores podcasts. Like I don’t listen to them at any other time. It’s like when I’m doing the dishes and taking out the trash and, 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 audio books, you know, make a deal with yourself that you can, you can only listen to audio books either while you’re working out or while you’re getting ready For bed, you know, and it’s, there’s no other time. Drew Burney Okay. So I did think of actually ways I have made things fun. Um, me though, it’s more of a, it combines the social aspect to it too, though. So CrossFit being the example that you gave, but I like it instead of having a home gym, I just, I don’t like having, I need to leave the house for whatever reason. 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, even though I’m also introverted in a lot of ways, I, that social’s still some social reward in a lot of – in my yoga studio, I’ll go to too. Yeah, there’s that. Mark Manson Yeah. Yeah. Drew Burney It’s – I mean – So what’s fun for you could be fun for somebody else. Mark Manson Yeah, everybody’s fun is a little bit different. But the principles are the same. I think Ali even goes through this. He’s like gamify it, make it social, and then like batch it with something that you enjoy. Right, right. So those are the three tried and true methods. I think he has a couple more in his book. Okay. I’m probably not thinking of at the moment. Yeah. So, (Time 4:17:20)
  • Lower Standards, Celebrate Wins
    • Lower unrealistic standards and accept limitations to overcome perfectionism.
    • Celebrate small wins to build confidence and reduce overwhelm. Transcript: Drew Burney Um, so this one might get a might ruffle a few feathers from a certain type of person. Yes. You got to lower your standards and accept your limitations. 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. And actually, you know, there are certain situations where you just have to accept reality, I think, is really what it is. And like we already mentioned one thing, celebrate those 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. Mark Manson And they don’t look like it’s making a whole lot of progress, but it is actually in the grand scheme of things. Drew Burney When you step back, this is how it works. Mark Manson And you are speaking on this one, you were speaking as a recovered perfectionist. That’s right. Like this is I think this is (Time 4:26:10)
  • Manage Relationships and Validation
    • Remove toxic people or set boundaries to protect your focus.
    • Seek validation from those whose values align with yours for better motivation. Transcript: Mark Manson Get very realistic on on timelines and capacity 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, which is that if you handle your procrastination, you’re going to have to give up your excuses. Drew Burney Yeah. That we hold on to so dearly. Mark Manson You’re going to have to own your bullshit. Maybe in 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, uh, at not procrastinating are the people who are the most realistic who understand. They’re like, yeah, that’s just the story I tell myself. Right. To justify like not doing the thing I don’t want to do. And that sucks. Yeah. It’s the sort of thing that like when you let it go, it’s painful. But then once it’s gone, it’s liberating. Drew Burney Right. So. 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. Right. And like you said, at first, yes, it’s painful. Rip the bandit off. Mark Manson You adapt. Comes back to the ego flexibility. Yes. And not building an ego around the lower values, building them over the higher values. Yeah. All right. What’s the next one? Disconnecting from bad influences. Drew Burney So we mentioned this a little bit already, but there’s going to be people in 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 certain work, there’s going to be situations too, where it’s like in work situations where you might not be able to get away from somebody, you’re going to have to set up some Boundaries. That might be a little bit, have some uncomfortable conversations with these people. It’s going to be, there’s more opportunities for you to manage emotions. Let’s just say that in these situations. Yeah. Mark 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, 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 (Time 4:28:40)
  • Procrastination is Emotional Regulation
    • Procrastination is primarily an emotional regulation problem, not just lack of willpower.
    • The key is managing emotions and expectations alongside environmental design. Transcript: Mark Manson It’s a good hazard. Yeah. 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? Drew Burney Yeah. 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 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 bad are these distractions? So we’re talking about the environmental side of it. It’s bad. It’s very’s very very bad and what it did for me is it really made me get uh 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 yeah don’t buy the junk food and put in the folds all that kind of stuff i already knew that i though realized really the impact of environment really came home for me in a lot of this. But 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 an emotional problem. But I think we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all an emotional problem. It’s not – there’s an emotional component to it. It’s just baseline and emotional problem that you have to deal with. Yeah. Mark Manson 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. Right. Right. Right. Like your ego is only a problem with procrastination. If your ego is causing negative emotions to prevent you from actually doing the thing you want to do. Yeah. Drew Burney Insofar as though what I’ve changed specifically, I’ve used more of the mindfulness, like the rain method. And, um, I’ve, I’ve definitely implemented that into my daily, um, habits and routines. Now, when I start to procrastinate on something, I’m, I’m much better at it now to just stopping, catching myself. Okay. What’s going on and achieving that last step in the RAIN model, uh, in 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 going to derail my next hour or day or whatever. So that’s been a huge win for me anyway. That’s funny. Mark Manson Cause 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 (Time 4:34:30)