Speaker 1: What is it with the human mind? You just can't win.
Speaker 1: It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing.
Speaker 2: But before that's fascinating discussion.
Speaker 1: You know him, you love him. He's a ginger.
Speaker 2: He's the guy who brought us so one of the
Speaker 2: greatest pieces of political satire I have ever seen in
Speaker 2: my life, including Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Twain and
Speaker 2: hl Making or anybody else. Ryan Long, who did the
Speaker 2: fantastic woke and racist agree on Everything bit of several
Speaker 2: years ago. Here he is talking about how all the
Speaker 2: women of New York are liberal and how to get
Speaker 2: them to do anything.
Speaker 3: Probably right now in New York you can get women
Speaker 3: to do almost anything by just telling them Republicans don't
Speaker 3: want them to do it.
Speaker 1: You're like you here, JD. Fans me to build it.
Speaker 3: Women can't take out the garbage. Oh no, that cruise
Speaker 3: is saying women aren't allowed to be ready on time.
Speaker 3: Now you call that movie theater.
Speaker 1: Tell them what's in the previews this time? The rest
Speaker 1: of that? That's pretty funny. Did you hear that JD.
Speaker 1: Vance just said women aren't allowed to be ready on time?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I will not put up with that.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't show that fascist since it's the podcast, I
Speaker 4: could tell you the third one. He said something like, oh,
Speaker 4: and Marco Rubio said, we women can't schedule threesomes for
Speaker 4: their husband or something.
Speaker 2: Oh, brother, funny.
Speaker 1: So I have never understood the concept, or I don't
Speaker 1: think I used to. Maybe I do now of being
Speaker 1: a perfectionist or perfectionism and the way it holds some
Speaker 1: people back. Never, I've never fully understood it. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I heard about it and had explained, but
Speaker 1: I still just never like, could it internalize it and
Speaker 1: understand it or whatever. But I think I got one
Speaker 1: kid that is that, and I've had it explain now,
Speaker 1: I mean and everything like that. Do you do you?
Speaker 1: Does anybody here have any of that in their life
Speaker 1: or think they suffer from perfectionism? I feel like I
Speaker 1: clearly clearly don't, but maybe I do. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Uh no.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: My version of that.
Speaker 2: Is the the tendency to look at a large project
Speaker 2: and not be able to internalize the single longest journey
Speaker 2: takes it starts with a single step. I tend to
Speaker 2: look at mountains and forget that all you have to
Speaker 2: do is walk up five feet of it. Then five
Speaker 2: more feet, then more five more feet. That's how you
Speaker 2: get up a mountain. And I've worked on that my
Speaker 2: whole life. But no perfectionism per se.
Speaker 5: No, Yeah, Katie, I'm trying to think. I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't think I have an element.
Speaker 4: I mean I do have like the I hyper focus
Speaker 4: on something until I get it right, But I don't
Speaker 4: think it's like a.
Speaker 1: Do you ever not do something though, because you think
Speaker 1: you can't get it exactly right? Because that's what perfectionism is.
Speaker 5: Now now I'll try.
Speaker 1: Rather than ben There's all kinds of examples being really
Speaker 1: good at this. You might be really good at it,
Speaker 1: but it's not as good as you'd like to be. See,
Speaker 1: you just don't do it at all. That's what holds
Speaker 1: back a lot of perfectionists.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting, Yeah, I'm familiar with that impulse, specifically in music.
Speaker 2: The the bitter joke that anybody who's ever worked on
Speaker 2: recorded music knows is it's never done. You just stop
Speaker 2: working on it because you get to the point where
Speaker 2: you're making yourself crazy and making the song same.
Speaker 1: So you just writing a book or anything making the picture,
Speaker 1: You just at some point have to decide okay, I'm
Speaker 1: stopping now, right.
Speaker 2: But the fact that you know, most people can say,
Speaker 2: all right, this is crazy, we got to stop. That's
Speaker 2: I guess that's what a perfectionist can't do or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't even start, they don't even starty, you would
Speaker 1: tear it up. I think this is not perfect yet,
Speaker 1: you'd tear it up and you just screw it and
Speaker 1: maybe not do it again ever or for a very
Speaker 1: long time. I wonder how many of the successful people
Speaker 1: in the world are just because they don't have perfectionism.
Speaker 1: They can just do my best. I wish it were better,
Speaker 1: but that's good enough for me, whatever it is starting
Speaker 1: a business or painting or learning to be a mechanic
Speaker 1: or whatever the hell it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, yeah, they probably have a grasp of
Speaker 2: what are diminishing returns and what does that mean? Maybe
Speaker 2: they don't even know the term, but they realize, look,
Speaker 2: if I work this long, it it it's going to
Speaker 2: be pretty good. And making it two percent better it
Speaker 2: takes so much time. Now, let's leave that alone, move
Speaker 2: on to the other thing, and just it's good enough.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: The human mind, you know, there are different levels of
Speaker 1: that obviously. Yeah, the human mind is so complicated. Yes, Michael.
Speaker 1: Did you guys ever struggle with, especially earlier in your careers,
Speaker 1: wanting to do the perfect show, Like if you said
Speaker 1: something or something went wrong during the show, well, that
Speaker 1: would be perfectionism. Yeah. No, I just couldn't get past it.
Speaker 1: You know, I really don't think I've got perfectionism, thank god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's like I was thinking about. Somebody
Speaker 2: used the incorrectly use the term simplistic the other day.
Speaker 2: Simple and simplistic are different things. Simplistic means uh, oversimplifying
Speaker 2: something to the point of absurdity or inaccuracy. Simple is good.
Speaker 2: Simplistic is distortion. Wanting to have high quality is healthy.
Speaker 2: Being a perfectionist is unhealthy. So yeah, wanting wanting the show,
Speaker 2: for instance, to be as good as it can possibly be,
Speaker 2: and cringing at every moment that didn't come out the
Speaker 2: way I'd hoped it would, that's wanting quality. That's not paralyzing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I absolutely used to do that though, Michael too, When
Speaker 4: I had rough moments on the air, it.
Speaker 1: Would eat me up, really interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and until actually a guy that I worked with,
Speaker 4: he said, Katie, what can you do about it.
Speaker 5: It's already gone over there, it's gone, let it go.
Speaker 5: And it was like, oh, you know you're right.
Speaker 2: Well, and you were an athlete, right hm moral yeah,
Speaker 2: oh yeah serious.
Speaker 5: Right played? Yeah, I played multiple sports, but big time basketball.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm kind of surprised then, because you know, I
Speaker 2: learned early in life that hey, sometimes if you're pitching,
Speaker 2: sometimes you give up a hit. You don't want to,
Speaker 2: but it happens. Your perfection is possible, So just bounce
Speaker 2: back and come out and play hard.
Speaker 5: Add a lot of conversations with dad about letting go.
Speaker 5: What happened on the court.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, fair enough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't think this is perfectionism. It's just procrastination,
Speaker 1: and I don't think they're the same thing. Well, like
Speaker 1: I have, I always struggle with a stack of paperwork
Speaker 1: that I never get to my whole life. On my deathbed,
Speaker 1: I'm going to think, why did you spend like half
Speaker 1: of your adult life stressed out over that stack of paperwork?
Speaker 1: But that's what I do. But part of it is
Speaker 1: like what you're talking about. It just seems like too
Speaker 1: big a project, Like I can't do the whole thing,
Speaker 1: so I don't do any So I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's perfectionism or just procrastination, or if they overlap a lot.
Speaker 1: But I did have a therapist saying this is one
Speaker 1: of the best pieces of ice ever got. I was
Speaker 1: able to implement it for a while. He said, just
Speaker 1: do one thing every day, and I said, but I'll
Speaker 1: never get through it doing one thing every day, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that I was doing zero things every day
Speaker 1: at the time, and the doing one thing every day,
Speaker 1: whether it's cleaning the house or the paperwork or whatever,
Speaker 1: really made some serious progress. But I always looked at
Speaker 1: the task of got to tear into that and get
Speaker 1: that done, as opposed I'm gonna do one and stop.
Speaker 1: It's pointless. But again, if your fallback is zero, it's
Speaker 1: not worth I was squandering the precious moments of my
Speaker 1: life yesterday on Twitter and came across an ad for
Speaker 1: I think it's called the Fabulous or Fabulous or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: It's it was developed by some scientists and at Harvard
Speaker 2: or Yale or one of your high falutine universities, but
Speaker 2: it's and it sounded. I actually did a little uh
Speaker 2: ai searching on what it is and how it works.
Speaker 2: It has to do with habit building, and it starts
Speaker 2: like effortless easy and you just do one thing, like
Speaker 2: one new thing. The one example that gave, which was odd,
Speaker 2: is drink a cup of water when you wake up
Speaker 2: every morning and get used to and then attach something
Speaker 2: semi useful to that, and it just incrementally helps you
Speaker 2: build the the you know, longest journey begins with a
Speaker 2: single step feeling of confronting paperwork for instance. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's so similar to the idea go to the gym,
Speaker 2: promise yourself you'll stay there for five minutes, and if
Speaker 2: you're not digging it, leave after five minutes, and honor that.
Speaker 2: If you're not digging it, leave, Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I've got it in a couple of things I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Just go up and start write five words or you know,
Speaker 2: listen to one bass guitar track or whatever, and that's it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to take on the monster. Just start,
Speaker 2: see how it's going, and then don't. And it's worked
Speaker 2: for me. Actually, you know what I got some of
Speaker 2: this advice Jack was from Claude speaking of AI. I
Speaker 2: was talking about, Hey, sometimes I feel what's the point
Speaker 2: and I get to scours and blah blah blah, And
Speaker 2: they said, all right.
Speaker 1: Here's what you kill yourself, right, you suck. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you didn't suck, you wouldn't feel like that suck.
Speaker 2: Oh, nobody was super good advice about waste to overcome that.
Speaker 1: I've always wished. I suppose in reality, no addiction is
Speaker 1: good because by definition means you have no control over it.
Speaker 1: Why can't I be addicted to working out, or be
Speaker 1: a workaholic, or be a clean freak or one of
Speaker 1: those people that I just can't go to bed unless
Speaker 1: every in my checkbook is completely balanced and everything is
Speaker 1: in order. Why can't I be one of those people?
Speaker 1: Just get a little bit? No, no, what, nothing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get what you get.
Speaker 1: You don't get a choice. Well, I guess that's it.
Speaker 2: Can we a second take that, Michael? I didn't but
Speaker 2: I didn't think you'd really put your heart into it.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's it. Okay, but it's not perfect.