Ep. 4: Deliberate Procrastination

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all right folks welcome and happy February to everyone thanks for coming
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back and joining us for the deliberate way our fourth episode and uh you know
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me I’m Dan seawald I’m gonna be your host and your moderator and I am joined
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by absolutely one of the most interesting people that you’re going to
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meet not just today not just this week but maybe the whole of February Peter
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Ludwig Peter I know that’s how’s that for uh for a for an introduction I’ll
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I’ll give you a proper introduction a moment but Peter great to have you here hey Dan and thank you for having me it’s
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a great pleasure to share some ideas about procrastination with you and with
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people that are listening to us now you know Peter I plan to have you on from the the first time I thought about
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doing a podcast but you know I just never get around to it so sorry that was
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that that was a bad joke but you know no better way to start things off than than a dad joke there
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um now for my first time friends who aren’t acquainted with the deliberate way let me take a moment just to give
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you a little bit about uh you know what it’s all about and and why I do this podcast so once upon a time I was a high
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school wrestling coach yes I actually coached wrestling and in that time I
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found something really interesting the kids who were the best performers who did the best in the mat and did the best
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in school they had this very deliberate or systematic way of doing things the
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way they learned the way they performed now as I put it kind of back in the
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recesses of my mind and fast forward about 25 years I started started to find
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that same pattern was repeating in the professional World whether it was an
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artist a scientist a doctor a lawyer over and over the most successful people
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the ones who really break the rules and do things different they have this
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enigmatic deliberate or systematic way of doing things so my goal with a
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deliberate way is to find people who I’ve met or maybe you’ve been introduced to me over the years who really are
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deliberate innovators in their vocation and they do things differently by meeting them talking to them learning
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about what they’re passionate about we can extract a little bit of wisdom maybe
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we can get a little bit of of a deliberate intention and skill as we
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learn more about them so Peter you’re one of those deliberate innovators it’s awesome to have you and thanks for being
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here thank you so much I’ll I’ll tell you what for those who don’t know you
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um a few things about you that people might not know first things first you are the author of this book this is not
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a Shameless promotion but just to let you know the end of procrastination when I read this book it’s a quick read
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pretty skinny lots of really cool pictures in it too that are very informative and I love your
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illustrations but it actually helped me personally as I started thinking about
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doing things that I maybe had been putting off it got me to reflect and think differently so it made an impact
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on me but um apparently you made an impact on a lot of other people more than a hundred thousand copies have been
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sold worldwide you’ve done like a thousand plus Keynotes from what I uh from what I understand
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um but but Peter what really struck me is what you do in your spare time and uh
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in the BC you know before kovid you were super busy doing talks and out there um
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you know working on another book and promoting your existing book but during covid
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um you’ll have to correct me if I butcher this you you had uh created a hashtag called Max mass for all and it’s
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spread all across Europe to try to inveigle people wear masks to be
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consistent and compliant with the public health needs and instead of just trying to focus on your business you create a
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movement that had leading scientists actors actresses public figures all
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across the Czech Republic and Beyond and uh if their numbers are I have a right
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you had about 1.3 billion people that were following this movement which is
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unbelievable yeah it was huge yeah uh it aired on Main news on BBC CNN it was
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everywhere and all politicians were talking about the video and uh even our
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president and prime minister was talking about the video and he was calling to
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your president and discussing that they should also impose Dumas mandate and it
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was at the beginning of kovitz in that time had uh they didn’t have any better
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uh solution than the face mask so it was huge and it was truly meaningful to me to be part of the movement
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it’s amazing I I for me this is a great sort of summarization of of not
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procrastinating you see lots of things happy it’s easy to sit and wait and to
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see you took action so I love it you’re actually a man who doesn’t just talk about breaking or ending procrastination
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but you do it all right I’m gonna we’ll come back to more of that in a moment just a few ground rules for folks we’re
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going to have a few rounds of conversation we’re gonna do a little bit of exploration about the kind of core
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topic that Peter is a deliberate expert on which is procrastination but then you’ll have your say on LinkedIn live
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I’m gonna invite you put in your thoughts your comments your questions your ruminations drop them in there
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we’ll come to that when we take a break about well maybe 25-ish minutes in and
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then we’ll we’ll attack those questions then we’re gonna have another round a little bit of a speed round I’m going to
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introduce a case study and I’m going to Peter to help me solve it we’ll tell you more about that in a moment so real
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problem solving in action and then some closing thoughts and words from Peter so you’re you’re not going to want to miss
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any of this if you’re multitasking put away the PowerPoint slides shut down Excel focus on this because you’re going
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to love it um all right Peter I I gotta ask first things first the field of procrastination I didn’t
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even know what it was a field of study or research how in the world did you get involved in procrastination
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yeah of course at the beginning it was all about my procrastination because I started my own business and in that uh
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time I was like 19 20 years old and uh we started a small company that was
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about uh some software development and my team was also very young and all my
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colleagues were procrastinating a lot and then I uh was found the word
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procrastination for me it was something new and I read the definition and it was 100 me so at the beginning I was trying
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to solve my procrastination then I was trying to solve procrastination of my employees and colleagues and at the end
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after now it’s like 18 years now I’m trying to help as many people as possible because the system is uh always
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the same as you describe you have to be deliberate in terms of system you have to know what to do and we are not the
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different yeah we have the same brain in our heads we have the same parts of the brain that are
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procrastinating basically we are unable to regulate our emotions so in in this
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uh day and age we are overwhelmed by so many distractions like notification social media and we live in a very
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similar world all of us it doesn’t matter if you live in Asia or in the US or in Europe we have the same Instagram
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we have the same Facebook we are overload by so many emails and we are
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not a different so the system is uh the same for all of us well you know you bring up a really good point I was about
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to ask you do you see cultural differences or even gender differences I
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know my wife could be listening so she might get a note if I ask do women procrastinate more than men or is it the
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other way around or is there no difference culturally or by gender from your experience it seems that uh it’s
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more about age like uh the uh youngest generation like the Gen Z they are are
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much more addicted on social media than we were in in that years so basically
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with tick tock tick tock is crazy there is an article I think it was a Wall
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Street Journal and they described that uh one study that Tick Tock is as addictive as crack cocaine so it’s crazy
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so it’s getting worse with age uh young people they have some big struggles with
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procrastination and it’s also connected with the brain because uh the prefrontal cortex the part of the brain that is
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um for self-regulation that is uh the the part that is uh basically for
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willpower uh it evolves until our 26 years so uh basically if you are 16
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years old you don’t have the part of the brain that is capable of self-regulate
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so that’s also the big issue and another big issue is that
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um we live in very crazy era like we we are overwhelmed by so many uh so so many
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distractions all the time and it’s very difficult to stay focused so the
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attention span is is uh getting shorter and shorter and we are unable to focus
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uh on one thing for 30 minutes so that’s the problem so it’s getting worse with
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uh with age like uh not with age I mean like if if you are younger it’s worse
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and then uh of course even some uh older elderly people they they procrastinate
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too their procrastination is different of course they don’t have a tick tock or or Instagram but they are
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procrastinating the for example fake news they are reading those those articles they have emotions and they are
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addictive to those stories to those uh chain emails and stuff so it’s uh also
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another big issue that they are procrastinating on on those uh crazy
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sites with those conspiration theories is it yeah you know I I always kind of
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feel like there is a tendency to feel like well that generation the younger
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generation is is you know is is is more susceptible and you know we always say
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that you know our generation was different but is there do you feel there is really a generational difference it’s
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not I don’t think that’s getting so it’s it’s better it’s a matter of tools you know I think that uh if you are used to
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use uh for example Tick Tock uh your procrastination is different but it’s not about age it’s about the tools that
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uh you are surround yeah and let me take a step back for a
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moment we’re talking about procrastination well first of all how do you say procrastination in Czech
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it’s very very similar yeah I know if it was a Latin based word or not yeah it’s
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based on Latin yeah yeah uh you know procrastination what is it like how do
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you define it what’s your sort of uh common definition you share with people across cultures because maybe different
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people in different countries view procrastination or Define it differently yeah my the most favorite definition is
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uh that you know what to do yeah but you do something completely different and you do some meaning class
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activities instead of something meaningful so uh you often know what to do yeah you have your to-do list you
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know your priorities you know that you want to exercise more you know that you want to eat healthier but at the end uh
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you are stuck to the same pattern of Behavioral so you are postponing things
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you are unable to push yourself to start new things and at the end uh you are
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unhappy because um you are doing something that is meaningless to you so
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um that’s the main bad outcome of procrastination it’s always connected with uh Wars mood it’s connected with a
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high risk of anxiety and depression so at the end if you want to live a fulfill life you have to fight procrastination
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you have to understand how it works and how to overcome it is it the same thing to be lazy and to be a procrastinator or
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lazy people inherently procrastinators and procrastinators aren’t lazy or is it not is not work that way yes by
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definition uh procrastination is always connected with negative emotions but if
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you are lazy you are just happy it’s doing nothing like a dog sitting in
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the sun exactly so if you don’t uh have regrets it’s not procrastination it’s
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just poor laziness so being lazy is sometimes very important to to be happy
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doing nothing but if you’re procrastinating it’s always connected with uh regrets with a notion of failure
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and at the end uh you are just uh miserable so that’s the reason why
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procrastination is bad because uh it’s always connected with negative emotions
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laziness is fine it’s pure to to build on this point a little bit Peter
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um there’s something you referenced in your book I’m just gonna read it off here that people tend to look back on
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their lives and they don’t regret so much what they haven’t done or or what
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they have done partly they regret the things they haven’t done like we don’t say well boy I was a terrible husband
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been or I wish I didn’t beat my children but it’s not that that upsets and it’s you know I never did that vacation to
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Hawaii that I didn’t get to um I I’m trivializing it but you know it’s kind of like the movie The Bucket
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List right and I can’t think that might be resonated a lot because we look ourselves in the mirror as we get older
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and we start to wonder will I ever do it will ever get those things done I found
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it really interesting that we’re more upset by the things we haven’t done
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versus the bad things or sort of sort of sad things that we’ve done that we regret
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and that’s the problem of 21st century because we have so many options and
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there is a beautiful study about what is called decision paralysis the more choices you have uh the more difficult
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is to choose at all and at the end we do nothing and that’s the problem of
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Freedom the the ideal of Western Society is that the more freedom you have the
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more happy you are but at the end that’s not the case and now we have so many choices we can we can travel we have uh
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I don’t know 50 kinds of uh catch-ups uh at this supermarket and at the end we
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are unable to choose and that’s the same with our time management we are uh in the situation with that we have more
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tasks than we have time for uh accomplishing those tasks and so we are
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constantly overwhelmed by so many choices and in the end we are unable to choose at all so decision paralysis is
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what I call the the mother of procrastination and it’s the main source
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of procrastination because Freedom if you are working uh in Middle Ages you
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didn’t have a freedom to procrastinate so basically you didn’t procrastinate because you are uh in the situation that
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you are constantly fighting of for your survival but now that uh your primary
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needs are fulfilled it’s very difficult to motivate yourself in the long term because uh you are not fighting for
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survival on daily basis yeah it’s it’s a very interesting I just want to go like an inch deeper on this
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about choice because I I do one of the things I remember studying in graduate
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school in economics is that we fight for choice that choice is one of the things
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that thriving economy provides us but what you’re saying we’ve seen this in
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Behavioral Science studies in gr from Columbia University exactly yeah gave you the more choices you had
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in a in a supermarket the less likely you were to walk away with anything but that felt like that was that’s not an
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individual product but this is more existential that when you have too many choices in your life or too many choices
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in the moment should I watch TV should I play the Xbox should I go out with friends that it wears people down but
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tell me a little bit more go a little deeper on that for me um you know that uh I love minimalism uh
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I spend half a year or in Japan and my life and uh that’s the map of Japan over
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there so and I um what I learned there was that uh if you have less things but
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things that you uh truly love you are you have positive emotions associated
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with those things you are much happier so minimalism is not about having nothing it’s about to have just the uh
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exact perfect amount of things so and I’m trying to deploy minimalism in all aspects of my life so my living
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room is uh made of Japanese minimalism but also my company also also my uh
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um ideas also the book is made uh in minimalist style because uh it has as
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you said many drawings many simple diagrams and it works somehow it works in 21st century because we are
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overwhelmed and the solution is to live simpler lives so and I truly love one
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quote that is uh attributed to Albert Einstein and it follows like this if you can’t explain it simply you don’t
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understand it well enough so Simplicity is uh my way of living and it’s also one
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of key uh let’s say tools or ideas of fighting procrastination the less tasks
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you have the the uh the uh lower is the
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chance that you will procrastinate so if you only focus on what is important and you are unable to get rid of the noise
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around then you are much more productive is the solution so there’s a very big assumption in
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there I’ll just ask you to tease us out a little bit more for me um that assumes prioritization we know
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what’s most important I can say from my own personal life when if I’m working
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with a client or a customer and they tell me what are the most important things my natural inclination is to tell
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them 10 things because there’s so many possibilities but once you get past three or four or five they tune you out
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and yeah and you start finding that so it seems like if you come from a place
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of overabundance it can wear people down but then that means you have to prioritize how do you and I know this
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gets into the solution piece but where does prioritization fit into minimalism
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reducing choice and reducing procrastination and then after after 15 years uh in the
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field of procrastination my uh ultimate uh answer is that
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the courage to say no is the key uh tool for good style management because if you
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are unable to say no then you are overwhelmed by priorities of other people so for example my email my inbox
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is full of uh priorities but priorities of others not myself so if you have a
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courage to say no then you have also time for yes then you have time for your
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priorities so that’s the ultimate uh answer how to be more proactive say no
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to things that are unimportant or are not in your personal reasons I’m feeling
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much more I’m feeling much more rewarded that you said yes to be on the podcast now it breaks through a lot of clutter
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I’m gonna because this is Meaningful yeah this is in my personal Vision to share ideas to help people so this is
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exactly what I want to do now in in this day and age I’m glad they fit in the priority scheme
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that that’s awesome a couple things I’ll just note folks are on LinkedIn live right now make sure as you have some
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thoughts opinions Reflections put those in we’ll capture them in just a few
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minutes I’m gonna ask one more question but it’ll be your turn to have your say so I I gotta just turn to what’s
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happening right now in the world Peter a lot of things are happening you know Turkey yesterday massive earthquake that
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struck Syria and turkey the world’s in turmoil there the market it feels like
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we’re in this strange place where every day if you read The Wall Street Journal
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the times you see that there’s layoffs happening across Industries yet
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unemployment is very low I’m starting to see more and more people not acting or
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doing things and I don’t know if that’s because they’re waiting for things to
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turn around or they’re not sure but procrastination seems to be the work du jour are you seeing that what what are
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you seeing and how does that play into the current sort of economic climate we’re in right now
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yeah I think that uh sometimes I call this group procrastinations if you have
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a group of people and they are unable to uh make a decision and they are stuck in
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what we called a status quo or something then um
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well they are stuck in the same patterns of behavior so if there is a crisis and
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you you for example are unsure what to do or you are scared then you have much
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higher chance that you will procrastinate so and we experience this even with businesses that they are
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scared of course because uh the Dynamics of of the market is is crazy and I I
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completely understand that all my clients they they are like unsure about the future and it was with covet now in
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Europe it’s with the war in Ukraine and a lot of people they are scared but at
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the end they are unable to make any decision and that’s the bad part I think that we should be more decisive in terms
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of innovation in terms of uh deploying new ideas even if the market is crazy
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and is difficult because this is the best time to change something and if you
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for example uh are unable to I don’t know to deploy some new ideas about AI
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then in few years you will be left behind so I think that this time is the
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best and uh we don’t have any other choice than to innovate and to push ourselves even uh to try new things for
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example with my company before kovit we did around 100 uh Keynotes live Keynotes
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a year and with Clovis everything was canceled all our conferences were canceled and we started uh to do online
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uh conferences never we never did any conference online before covet now we do
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80 of our income is is from online world and we completely switch the whole company and we had to switch the whole
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mindset now we are deploying AI we are using uh chat GPT for generating uh
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texts or ads for our marketing team and it works so I think that this time or
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the this era is very very pushy in terms of of our courage we have to do
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something and if not we will be left behind and that’s not what we want right
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I I I do that it really resonates with me this idea that when things are
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volatile those people who are the trend centers the real innovators and entrepreneurs that’s when you strike and
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it’s right what I’m seeing is a lot of companies doubling down on reducing budgets cutting people and they’re
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actually bunkering down it’s not a great thing um it’s not all right yeah theater the
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audience wants you there are a lot of questions that have popped in um first things first okay thick asked a
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question he said I’m not a procrastinator however I struggle with too many balls in the air what’s your
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recommendation how to manage tasks better on a daily basis yeah uh the whole first chapter of the
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book is about finding a strong sense of purpose both in private life and at work
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so the stronger you have uh the sense of purpose at work then you can prioritize
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uh with this notion like what is more meaningful to you what has the higher or
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bigger impact so let’s provide the main tool of the first chapter is about writing down your personal Vision like
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what you truly want in life both personal and and your business life and
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focus on what is truly truly important so for example in my case the most important things are podcasts Keynotes
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writing a new book and those are my main priorities so I’m trying to focus like
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80 of my time on on those three main activities and then I have those two
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twenty percent of my time I do those tribal trivial activities uh meetings
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um I don’t know emails and those uh like tiny meaning quests and uh sometimes
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even meaningful activities but not the course so my solution of uh how to be
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better in prioritizing is to focus 80 on on those three four priorities and be
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able to get rid of the annoys around get rid of those meaning class activities
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and of course you need courage for doing that I’ll I’ll ask you do you actually do you numerically quantify like how do
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you keep track I know maybe just do it by gut but how detailed are you so I’m thinking about I’m Vic I’m like all
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right I’ve got my list of to-do’s the bigger things I have to do and I’ve got 12. and I should really be narrower to
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four how do I organize myself any sort of kind of tactical things you would suggest for Vic to do yeah uh every two
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weeks I do what I call meaning with myself and uh it’s it’s uh the activity that
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you uh just sit down with yourself and you went through your uh daily planner
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and you ask yourself like on the scale one to ten how happy you were in last
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two weeks and for example I put there eight eight out of ten so it’s kind of
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uh happy to two weeks and I can ask myself so what you can improve the next
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two weeks what what you can do better and for example in my case it’s okay I
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should exercise more so I put more meetings with my uh present trainer into
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my calendar and then the next next section I also ask myself so now on a
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scale one to ten how good you are how happy you are and the next week or the
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next two weeks I’m on nine or nine and a half and you can constantly improve your
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life by asking yourself on a scale one to ten how happy you are and what you
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can improve so that’s one of tools from the book too and this is like the
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continuous Improvement of your life you are constantly like coaching yourself basically
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now there was another question that that kind of dovetails nicely and we’re going to get into this a little later but
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might as wellaska now somebody asked a question about what’s the relationship between motivation and procrastination
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um how would you characterize that yeah basically we have two main uh kinds
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of motivation first is extrinsic motivations uh basically the carrot and
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the stick and uh we have almost more than 100 studies that are improving the
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extrinsic motivation uh basically doesn’t work in the long term because it’s only it doesn’t work because it’s
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very uh short-term uh and you at the end
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uh you like positive emotions because you are not doing something that you want but you do something that you must
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and that’s completely different emotion at the end so then we have intrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation is
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based on uh the vision of of yourself like what do you want to improve what
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you want uh through your um to focus on like we described the priorities and
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stuff and if you have more intrinsic motivation you are much more fulfilled there are reward centers in your brain
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are activated much more often and you experience much more positive emotions so at the end
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motivation is the main solution for procrastination but it should be
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intrinsic not extrinsic motivation so if you want to procrastinate less you should focus on intrinsic motivation and
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get rid of extrinsic because it’s forensic motivation it makes things even worse so if you reward yourself let’s
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say your goal was I’m avoiding working out yeah every time I I do a workout I
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reward myself with a piece of cake yeah it sounds like not not a good I mean
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just on the face of it not a good idea but uh yeah but besides that whatever the reward is the not a good idea is
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that not a good idea because uh there is a beautiful place
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yeah we call those people like gold junkies yeah they are addicted to bigger
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and bigger goals but at the end they are not happy on on the way they are not uh being happy during the process and there
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is a beautiful old saying that the path is the destination and it’s truly uh based on recent science so if you
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focused on on activities that are meaningful to you and you uh deploy your
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strengths on on those activities then you are much more often in this what is
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called State of Florida time stops for you you are in a present moment and this is the the exact opposition of of
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procrastinate yeah you have procrastination and you have the state of flow and it’s just the exact opposite
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because if you are in a state of flow you are much happier in a process you
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are much more fulfilled you are much more creative you have much more positive emotions and at the end you
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accomplish even more goals but as the outcome it’s not it’s it’s uh not the
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main reason why you are doing that you do that for the positive uh feedback
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from the process so the path is the destination is the best best solution of procrastination too
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it’s flow is the kind of the the goal or the anti-procrastination but it’s a
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there was an Eastern European creativity researcher I don’t remember if he was Czech or not I could never pronounce his
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name who started flow Theory she sent me hi me hi chick sent me hi yeah yeah he
32:15
was a Hungarian Hungarian that’s why I couldn’t pronounce it so difficult such a difficult language for me yeah but yet
32:21
he it’s for those you know we we can actually put that in the notes also for folks if they’re interested read his
32:28
book it’s so revealing and it’s interesting the way you’ve juxtaposed procrastination and flow together Peter
32:36
there is another question um this is very topical covid how do you
32:42
feel people have changed after covid with respect to working from home and
32:47
procrastination so many of us but you know I’m working from the home office right now
32:53
um but uh you know more and more we’re seeing people they’re resisting they want to stay home is it because they’re
32:59
in very procrastinators or the opposite how did covet affect the the work dynamic
33:04
yeah uh covet affected the work Dynamics a lot first of all uh we have a data
33:11
that uh the first covet syndrome uh had a huge impact on procrastination because
33:17
it uh truly it can truly uh ruins your sleep and if you have more sleep then
33:25
you procrastinate much more the next day and people after covet are like one third of people they have worsened their
33:32
their sleep so at the end like covet truly triggered uh procrastination just
33:39
directly because of a much worse sleep that’s the first case the second case is
33:44
working from home you know like you have much more distractions at home sometimes
33:49
you have your family there your kids and a few weeks it’s it’s okay yeah a few
33:55
months maybe also okay but two years that’s crazy yeah so people need to go
34:02
out and to to have a place for work for example in my case I can’t write at home
34:08
the best place to write for me is my favorite tea house they have my favorite
34:13
tea but they don’t have with the connection there so that’s the that’s the key that’s the key of my
34:19
productivity because they don’t have Wi-Fi there and they don’t have a signal for for cell phone so at the end you are
34:26
just without a signal and then you are able to write so for me it’s about finding the best place to work but for
34:34
many people it’s not being at home and that was the impact of covet because a
34:39
lot of my clients they switch their offices uh basically 80 of their
34:45
employees started to work remotely and uh at the beginning everyone was happy
34:50
everyone was thinking wow now we have much more freedom we don’t have to be in our offices but at the end it backfired
34:58
a lot yeah a lot of people they were basically craving to get back to the
35:03
office and have their are normal working place and to focus just on work and not
35:10
not being distracted by their families so this idea of sort of controlling your
35:16
environment and knowing how you react in a particular environment is particularly important there there is a there’s a
35:23
story of a guy met him a number of years ago he’s a writer and a speaker and he
35:28
would go on long-haul flights to Japan from New York City and back and he
35:34
literally would get off the plane he would go back and get on another plane and go home which I thought was insane
35:42
but he said that it was a great way for him to be able to disconnect and to be
35:49
able to to basically kind of work on his writing where he couldn’t get it done anywhere else so we’d take these
35:55
long-haul flights 14 hours each way to me it’s Madness utter Madness for him it
36:01
was a recipe to not procrastinate so I guess it down to your individual maybe
36:07
not just individual taste but knowing your environment and what you thrive in but I hope you’re not taking 14 on our
36:14
flights they’re right and by way it’s much cheaper it’s just the Japanese tea house so it’s cheaper
36:20
flight but I I truly understand this concept because for me uh the best place
36:26
for uh for my focus is being uh on train
36:31
yeah if you are traveling by train then you have like three hours four hours and
36:37
for me it works in Europe uh you can get Everywhere by train and it’s much longer
36:43
than uh Taking Flight of course but but it works so in Europe train is is place
36:49
that a lot of people usually improving their trades in the U.S yeah I know that that’s why I’m not using the this
36:55
example but uh I I took one train from Chicago to to I don’t know it was a
37:01
small City and it was awful it was crazy sorry for the comparison but European
37:07
trains are much better sorry for that frustration can Trump procrastination prioritization all right yeah I’m gonna
37:14
there were a few other questions I’m gonna put them on the side just for just just a little bit and as I look at the
37:20
the clock I realize I’m not procrastinating we’re just there’s a lot to talk about um but I did say that in one of our
37:28
subsequent rounds we were going to discuss uh a case study so this one hits
37:33
really at home for me I’m gonna ask you Peter to help me problem solve so you’re
37:38
in the hot seat to problem solve a little bit here um all right so for those who know me or have been in
37:45
a workshop or training with me I tend to use domestic examples from time to time
37:50
and this is no different because I have a 12 year old son amongst a couple other
37:56
kids my 12 year old son he’s been described by others not just my wife and
38:01
I a very bright boy um he’s he’s a really he’s a good natured kid but the worst procrastinator
38:09
I’ve ever met if the bus comes at 7 51 you could be sure he’s looking around
38:15
and doesn’t have anything packed and ready at 7 49. every time there’s a test
38:21
he always will say oh no I have a test tomorrow morning and I haven’t studied yet homework it’s always a last minute
38:27
thing and you know people have told me well that’s just 12 year old boys but I
38:33
don’t think that’s entirely the case I think that’s a bit of a of an excuse and
38:39
um you know I’m not trying to have a perfect child but I worry that the a small version of him will become the big
38:46
version of him in the future so when I think about the framework that you have in your book Peter when I went through
38:52
this and started to think about this there was four pillars that you talk about
38:57
um I’ll see if I I get this right motivation discipline uh outcomes and
39:03
objectivity each of those are kind of the cornerstones if you will of of approaching uh breaking the habit of
39:10
procrastination if you’re me you’re dealing with a 12 year old son who’s who’s resisting and
39:17
procrastinating all the time where do you start on those pillars where’s the first place you go to try to address
39:23
this issue with him well uh at the beginning as I said like his brain is
39:28
still evolving uh till 26 years old so still he simply liked the this part of
39:36
the brain the preferental cortex it’s not finished yet so um maybe it’s uh it will be better uh
39:43
and better during time so that’s the first uh important uh
39:48
I got 14 years exactly so be just uh happy with the
39:57
gradual uh improvements and don’t push him to be uh to do some major shifts
40:03
because a major shift doesn’t work in the long term so uh then the first chapter about motivation like uh try to
40:11
uh nurture his intrinsic motivation so ask him like what is his uh vision of uh
40:18
his future for example if uh he was he will choose a uh uh University or high
40:25
school or something in the future it should be a based on his uh values and
40:31
his strengths sometimes uh I was studying law yeah and I had a lot of my
40:38
uh my you know like folks from from my classroom they were there not because
40:44
themselves but because of their parents and at the end there they have only the
40:49
exam extrinsic motivation and now no one of them is is practicing the law so it
40:56
was useless very useless to them and they were not happy in that time they
41:01
were procrastinating a lot so try to nurture his intrinsic motivation and what works the best are questions so ask
41:08
him questions what he thinks about his future or what he thinks are his
41:14
strengths what what are his values and how he can like use them I know 12 years
41:20
uh it’s not the the best uh year because they they are starting starting to have
41:27
their own own visions of the future and they don’t want to discuss that with with their parents I was the same I was
41:33
when I was 14 years old we started a punk band so I was playing electric guitar in a punk band and it was not the
41:42
the vision of my parents in the time like 100 it was not their Vision but uh
41:48
it helped me to be um by myself yeah it helped me on my way
41:55
to start my own business and to have the courage to move to the US for example so
42:02
I still remember the punk band as as a major turning point of my life in a
42:08
positive way so don’t be scared if he is doing some crazy things they have to
42:13
sometimes fail they have to do something uh based on their uh crazy vision of being you yeah and Peter
42:22
you you’re the second sort of pillar you had was discipline which is an interesting connection to this the
42:29
particularly self-regulation and I really love the way you describe self-regulation it’s uh
42:36
the skill of giving yourself orders and then actually following them um self-regulation is definitely not a
42:43
strong suit for most people put aside a 12 year old boy but you know why is self-regulation so hard and discipline
42:51
so important with respect to Breaking procrastination Cycles yeah uh again I
42:57
have my uh own example uh I was always on time even though I was playing in a
43:04
punk band and I always wished to myself to be a systematic Pang so it’s it’s a
43:10
very uh very let’s say um opposite Concepts but it works
43:17
because I love to improve device I love being punk in terms of starting new
43:22
things to innovate to think outside of the box but I love system I think that I have a little OCD or something that’s
43:29
why I love minimalism I love Japan and I love everything in order so that’s why I
43:36
have some tools in the book that are about building habits so if you overnight focus on building habits and
43:43
that’s the source of building a self-discipline and building your willpower because our brains uh Works
43:52
our brain works like a muscle because if if you do 20 push-ups daily not just
43:57
your muscles are growing in the long term but even the prefrontal cortex the part of the brain that is uh for
44:03
willpower is growing so basically you can revive your brain by Habits by those
44:09
micro habits not about it’s not about to uh doing like huge amount of activities
44:16
it’s about doing tiny activities but uh gradually improve in the long term so
44:23
that’s the the solution of building willpower start with small steps but uh
44:29
being able to carry on and improve and uh like I always call it like if you
44:37
have a diamond you can always improve something so that’s that’s the uh way again focusing on path rather than the
44:44
destination and you had your third sort of pillar was this idea of outcomes and you had a quote where you said success
44:51
doesn’t doesn’t mean not failing it means you know how to get up quickly and
44:56
I really I really like that that really resonates with me and the idea of outcomes you you proposed a couple of
45:03
different simple practices you’ve kind of alluded to them um the evening practice of finding three
45:10
positive things every day I I really like it because it’s so simple but I
45:15
don’t do it and when I started doing it it felt a little unnatural but it felt
45:21
good and uh you know I’m curious why that you know you think that will break
45:27
a procrastination cycle or or or other things as well feels like it’s touched on multiple
45:32
um kind of elements but tell me a little bit more about that so do you want to do uh get the uh simple answer or the
45:41
deeper and more complex answer so what do you want why that’s now you’re giving
45:46
me choice but it’s only two choices I’ll I’ll take the the simpler answer right now okay because uh maybe I’ll take it
45:54
deeper if I like the simple answer yeah so if you want together it’s procrastination emotions are very important and if you uh no doubt three
46:02
positive things daily uh at the end you realize that your life is much more
46:08
um fulfilled it’s much more positive than you thought so I use this method
46:14
for more than 10 years and I have every every day noted uh so it’s it’s my the
46:21
most favorite uh tool probably from all my tools more than 10 years I have every
46:26
day uh marked or or every day you’ve stuck with it every day every day free those are the things even if I’m on
46:34
vacation still I know that only one thing but something uh to uh carry on
46:39
with the habit and I go through the system or I go through
46:46
the tool like every month I go backwards 30 days and what you realize that 80 of
46:52
those events you just forgot and sometimes even though you feel a little
46:57
depressed or you feel that uh your life is not uh moving forward as fast as you
47:04
want when you go through uh this this uh I call it uh flow flow sheet or
47:11
um of flow list sometimes if you go through this uh system or through this
47:16
method you realize that it’s much better than you thought you you realize that you have much more positive uh days and
47:24
you are basically much happier than you thought because it seems like yeah a
47:29
simple practice I don’t know a lot of people who do it or don’t talk about doing it maybe but probably I don’t know
47:36
a lot of people do it but I gotta tell you in in the the world we live in today in the environment that we’re in today
47:42
it seems like this could really benefit from being spread farther and wider 100
47:49
um yeah I’m encouraging everyone in my family to do it I’m going to try doing it consistently I’ve just started doing
47:54
it and you know what when when things feel like they’re total crap that that kind of helps lift you up a bit it
48:01
really does I I hope for example yeah if you are watching a news for example 80
48:08
90 of news are very negative right War uh recession uh politics mostly negative
48:17
things and you spend one hour watching news and uh at the end you are depressed
48:22
you are anxious you are more more uh you you lack of the the positive uh feeling
48:30
about the world but if you are with yourself and if you sit down and write three positive things you can completely
48:37
switch the mindset and you are able to focus on what is truly important important what makes or Sparks joy in
48:46
your life and you’ll realize that world is much better than than uh from news right you know you you kind of this is a
48:54
nice dovetail because the last thing you have in your book was about objectivity or last kind of tool and um you shared a
49:02
story which I I’ll never forget now I never heard it before but I’ll paraphrase it and please fill in the
49:08
blanks um a guy many decades ago from Pittsburgh who brazenly robbed a couple
49:15
of Banks and was so sure that he would never get caught and immediately he was
49:21
apprehended by the police and what did he say refresh my memory what was it
49:27
that he said that he said he put a lemon juice on his face so he he was 100
49:33
convinced that if you put a lemon juice on your face then you will be invisible for for a CCTV I used the juice I think
49:41
as he said I used the Jews how did they catch it right you know and it sounds
49:46
just like a bizarre story he’s a deranged guy what does that have to do with this but I mean what does it have
49:51
to do the objectivity piece and you’re kind of alluded to this already but but uh you share a little bit more about
49:57
that the the objectivity chapter is probably the most important one even
50:03
though it’s the the LA it’s the last chapter because uh you know I was writing the book 10 years ago and it was
50:10
before those uh even before the the word fake news before the term fake news and
50:18
uh now it’s 10 years that the book is out and what I feel is that this chapter
50:23
is much more important than it was 10 years ago because I I’m writing there about critical thinking how to recognize
50:30
what information is is valid uh What uh how you can overcome your uh biases of
50:37
your brain for example uh the the story is about what is called Running Kruger
50:43
effect and it’s the thing that you lack some skills in some domain but you think
50:49
that you are skilled so basically uh the better you are in something the higher
50:55
is the chance that you were underestimate yourself but if you are on the uh opposite side if you yeah if you
51:01
are incompetent in something you think that you are competent actually so so that’s the problem of people that are
51:08
discussing the most on social media they’re 100 sure about their Truth uh
51:13
with capital T but at the end uh you realize that they don’t have any
51:18
knowledge about the things for example about vaccination yeah they read free articles on vaccination and then they
51:26
are experts on vaccination and that’s the problem because those people are the most uh let’s say at the end aggressive
51:33
because they truly believe that their truth with capital t is the only truth
51:40
and I think that if you if we want to survive on this planet together we should be more humble we should be able
51:47
to realize that things are not black or white they are much more complex and uh
51:53
that’s the the outcome of the of the chapter yeah the objectivity is about that you have to find the truth but
52:00
probably you never find the capital uh T Truth uh forever so basically it’s about
52:06
humbleness and it’s about fighting your own that in Kruger effect because we all have uh some uh sports that we we are
52:14
unable to see because it’s natural of
52:19
part of our brain that uh our brain is unable to realize uh our weaknesses
52:26
even if if you if we are uh if we get a feedback still the brain is able to say
52:32
it’s not truth I still I’m I’m always stuck with the same notion that I’m good
52:39
in that even though you get a feedback that you are not I’m conscious we’re almost out of time which is very
52:47
disappointing because really enjoy hearing your perspective Peter and I’ve
52:52
read the book and I still get so much just hearing your perspective on it but I’m gonna share a quick story I want to
52:58
hear your your perspective on this um my father-in-law my wife father he um
53:04
he uh 21 22 years ago was on his way
53:10
from work uh he lived in the Upper East Side of of New York City and his office was downtown and he is an inveterate
53:18
procrastinator he’ll tell you himself he’s not a prompt person um but he on that day need to be in the
53:25
office I think about 9 A.M and he decided to drive which is not a great idea in New York City if you’ve been to
53:31
New York City um but he drove he stopped he got a cup of coffee got a newspaper and as he
53:37
walked into his building which happened to be one of the World Trade Towers a plane flew write directly through the
53:44
floor where he works annihilating just about all of his employees he would have
53:49
been dead without question and we always say that his habit of procrastinating it
53:57
saved his life so I don’t know if I could ever convince him not to be a procrastinator
54:02
um yeah your thoughts about trauma and procrastination are there good times to
54:08
be a procrastinator not just in these extreme examples but yeah so are there benefits procrastinating you know that
54:15
uh for for example he could have flu he could uh uh be ill and he could stay at
54:22
home and uh the outcome would be the same and he he could survive by having a
54:27
flu and at the end you don’t say that uh flu is something good and it’s same with
54:32
procrastination here you can have a coincidence that procrastinate uh should can save your life but at the end uh on
54:40
average for most of us it’s not something good yeah we are wasting our lives life is short and you don’t want
54:47
to waste your time it’s it’s the most valuable resource that we all have and if you are procrastinating you you are
54:53
doing something mean in class at the end you are anxious you are uh you are
54:58
disappointed with yourself so of course there are situations that procrastination can save their life but
55:05
overall to fight procrastination is a key skill for 21st century if you want to be happy successful if you want to
55:12
have a successful business or if you want to be just happy with yourself what’s the solution have a strong Life
55:20
vision know what to do and then have a courage and discipline to just fulfill
55:25
the vision so that’s this I don’t know if there’s anything left to be said after that you’re right the flu is not a
55:31
good thing and that that’s a that’s a really good point um last last thought Peter
55:37
um any tips tricks that you know a couple things that you might share with
55:43
the group about here are some things that you can do in the everyday yeah I think that’s the the
55:49
um the best thing is uh having courage to uh be disconnected yeah because we
55:57
all have the the fomo yeah the fear of missing out and that’s the main reason
56:02
of Addiction on social media and what I truly love I always switch my uh cell
56:08
phone off and I can be like five hours disconnected and at the end most of the
56:15
time I realize that nothing happened so I and I can go to Japan for one month and being disconnected there and I go
56:21
back and I realize that my company uh survives that so it’s been disconnected
56:27
and have a courage to have a time for yourself and find the uh to find a place
56:33
without distractions it can be on a plane it can be on a train it can be a
56:39
tea house or it can be favorite Cafe on upper east side or wherever uh but at
56:44
the end uh it’s about finding the way for yourself where you
56:49
are productive and um if you are not productive uh at your home working
56:54
remotely just have the courage to change something so that’s that’s the ultimate
56:59
uh solution is to have a courage to change things if you are not happy with
57:05
them awesome I know there are a few questions we didn’t get to and for those questions
57:10
we’re going to post those right in the LinkedIn live chat so don’t worry there’ll be some overtime where we’ll
57:16
get to answer any of your questions but for now Peter first and foremost thank
57:22
you so much for for joining and sharing being generous with your time for putting me into your prioritization
57:28
schema I truly sincerely appreciate it and um I can’t wait to have other folks
57:34
come back for our next episode which will be a surprise for the deliberate way we’re gonna go deep into the depths
57:42
of Behavioral Science and the Brain but more on that in the meanwhile Peter I
57:47
wish you well thank you and I hope that procrastination doesn’t assail you I’m
57:52
going to be practicing some of these tips and tricks I hope others will as well so thank you everyone for tuning in
57:59
and we’ll see you at the next episode take care everyone