Speaker 1: You see all this stuff in the culture about how
Speaker 1: you got to learn to say no. And I quote
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Gilbert in the book making the point that we
Speaker 1: just instinctively assume that what that means is saying not
Speaker 1: to all the stuff we don't want to do, so
Speaker 1: that there's enough time for everything that matters. And she
Speaker 1: says no, No, it's much harder than that. You've got
Speaker 1: to say not to lots of things that do matter,
Speaker 1: that you do want to do. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. In this episode, I talked to best
Speaker 1: selling author Oliver Brickman about his latest book, Four Thousand Weeks.
Speaker 1: On the surface, it's easy to mistake this book for
Speaker 1: another self help book on time management, but this book
Speaker 1: is very different. Instead of enthusing about productivity hacks and
Speaker 1: making sure that we're superhumans, Oliver challenges as readers to
Speaker 1: confront the finite nature of humanity. By doing so, he argues,
Speaker 1: we can live four lives without having to always carry
Speaker 1: the fear of missing out. We also touch on the
Speaker 1: topics of procrastination, positive psychology, flow realism, deep time, and patience.
Speaker 1: This was a really, really stimulating episode and I hope
Speaker 1: it helps you in this new year, live a very
Speaker 1: good wife. So now, without further ado, I give you
Speaker 1: Oliver Brickman. I'm definitely a fan of yours. Now, that's
Speaker 1: very kind of you to say, what a great book. So,
Speaker 1: how's your own time management coming along this year? So far?
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's been a challenge, right because I
Speaker 1: you write this book about things you've learned about time
Speaker 1: and how to use it, and then it does some
Speaker 1: it's kind of done better than I expected. And so
Speaker 1: now like I've got more emails to answer and more
Speaker 1: potential opportunities to pursue, and all these kind of all
Speaker 1: the issues I thought i'd got handled, you now a
Speaker 1: sort of you know, kick into a different, different degree.
Speaker 1: So I'm I mean, but you call that the efficiency trap, right?
Speaker 1: Don't you have like a fancy name for that exact
Speaker 1: phenomenon that is that? Right? Yeah? I mean that's funny.
Speaker 1: I haven't really thought of that what's happened in my
Speaker 1: life in the last few months as efficiency trap, but
Speaker 1: I guess it is could be. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: use that as an umbrella term for all these different
Speaker 1: ways in which getting better at processing your stuff attracts
Speaker 1: more and more inputs into the system, so you don't
Speaker 1: actually get through your your stuff. I think in a
Speaker 1: lot of context, it also attracts sort of lower quality inputs.
Speaker 1: So you if you think you can do it all,
Speaker 1: you end up with even more to do and with
Speaker 1: less and less of it is what you want to
Speaker 1: be doing. I think what what I'm experiencing in these
Speaker 1: last few months is not quite that, because you know,
Speaker 1: put this thing out into the world and it's resonated
Speaker 1: with some people. And so that's why my system has
Speaker 1: more inputs at the moment. It's not because I got
Speaker 1: any better handling my email. I have had the experience
Speaker 1: of getting really good at handling email and being punished
Speaker 1: for it with more email. That's that's certainly happened in
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, I mean we get punished. That's one
Speaker 1: way of looking at it. The more that we help
Speaker 1: someone than they say, wow, that person's available to help me.
Speaker 1: So then they you know, they come back to faster you. Right,
Speaker 1: you can certainly put out the feelers of like I'm
Speaker 1: unavailable and I'm not here for anything, and certainly people
Speaker 1: will ignore you, and that is true, But is that
Speaker 1: a life worth living? So I think that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's instant to question, at what point are you like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's enough for my life, you know, like this short
Speaker 1: particular threshold you know of of helping others, because I
Speaker 1: think people can get really obsessed with an obsessive in
Speaker 1: a sort of compulsive way of like I have to
Speaker 1: help everyone or else my life is worthless. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be so different for different people.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's also going to be a whole lot
Speaker 1: of people everyone to some extent, I think who has
Speaker 1: any kind of a job, you know, there are all
Speaker 1: sorts of emails that you can't fail to answer, and
Speaker 1: people who's bidding you can't fail to do just because
Speaker 1: you've decided you're going to say no to things and
Speaker 1: set boundaries. I think the really important part of this
Speaker 1: aspect of it all is like it's seeing what's going on,
Speaker 1: So it's seeing that and it's sort of seeing through
Speaker 1: that delusion that you could ever get on top of
Speaker 1: it all and handle it all is the important part.
Speaker 1: You may then still have to answer more emails than
Speaker 1: you would like if you want to keep working in
Speaker 1: the job that you want to keep working in, you
Speaker 1: may still have to, you know, attend to various family
Speaker 1: obligations that feel like an important part of life, even
Speaker 1: though you might choose to have someone else handle them.
Speaker 1: But you're no longer going to be thinking that if
Speaker 1: I can only get a handle on this with the
Speaker 1: right productivity systems and enough self discipline, then I'm never
Speaker 1: going to have to make any tough jobe between these things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, obviously it's a it's a privileged position to
Speaker 1: be able. I don't think I'm in it. Probably very
Speaker 1: few people are in it, you know, to be able
Speaker 1: to literally say, I'm just going to sort of answer
Speaker 1: precisely as many emails as I feel that I want
Speaker 1: to answer, right, like set a cap where like I'm done. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's take a step back here, singing. So you wrote
Speaker 1: this amazing, amazing book on time management, and I think
Speaker 1: it's amazing because it seems to have come out of
Speaker 1: left field. Right. So you see all these kind of
Speaker 1: books on productivity and time management that are so much
Speaker 1: about kind of make your life more efficient, how to
Speaker 1: in a way, how to be superhuman, And your book
Speaker 1: really is a book for mortals. It's a really not
Speaker 1: just for mortals, but it's a book about you know,
Speaker 1: being human and coming to terms with that and and
Speaker 1: facing reality as head on as humanly as humanly possible. Literally, right,
Speaker 1: Is that a fair summary? Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I
Speaker 1: think it's a bad Yeah. My argument, my hunch that
Speaker 1: I'm following through this book is that, you know, three parts,
Speaker 1: we are very, very limited and finite in our amount
Speaker 1: of time and our control over it. We put a
Speaker 1: lot of effort into avoiding the confrontation with that fact.
Speaker 1: And actually we'd be happier and more productive and have
Speaker 1: more peace of mind if if we confronted it a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Yeah. You know, when I said your
Speaker 1: book came out, I feel I meant as a compliment
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's very refreshing. It's very refreshing
Speaker 1: in a space where you constantly feel like you're something's
Speaker 1: wrong with your life. If you're not keeping up with
Speaker 1: the Joneses, if you're not constantly doing all the biohacking,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of latest things, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: kind of wasting your life in some way. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and I took it as a compliment. I think there
Speaker 1: is a sort of I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: big myself up too much. But I think there is
Speaker 1: a kind of a subversive aspect to thinking in this
Speaker 1: way because we you know, I think our human nature
Speaker 1: pushes us to want to kind of be superhuman so
Speaker 1: that we don't have to face what it is to
Speaker 1: be human. Our economic system takes advantage of this desire
Speaker 1: and sort of wants us to keep on keep on
Speaker 1: being dissatisfied, going for more, you know, never never considering
Speaker 1: that what we do is enough. And then you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of other cultural forces they're all pushing in
Speaker 1: this direction of you know, if you just keep going
Speaker 1: and you just push a bit more, then you can
Speaker 1: do more and you can get more done, and like
Speaker 1: that would be fine if it worked. I don't have
Speaker 1: any problem with and you know, sometimes people misunderstand what
Speaker 1: I'm saying here as some sort of case against being
Speaker 1: ambitious or something. But my argument is that things like
Speaker 1: being really ambitious work a lot better if they're done
Speaker 1: in contact with the reality of our situation as finite humans,
Speaker 1: because part of one of the big consequences of not
Speaker 1: acknowledging your finitude, I think, is that you end up
Speaker 1: spending your whole life trying to clear away all the
Speaker 1: little stuff and never getting around to the things that
Speaker 1: you were ambitious to begin with. Well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of very nuanced, interesting artic arguments in your book. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not just that we never get around to
Speaker 1: it some days that subconsciously you kind of insinuate that,
Speaker 1: subconsciously we're subverting ourselves. Where there's something there's there's a
Speaker 1: topic in psychology handicapping, you know, where sometimes we actively
Speaker 1: don't do the things that are most meaningful to us
Speaker 1: because we're afraid, well, we'll never do them. So it's
Speaker 1: too much to bear that thought, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I wondering if you have you connected some of your
Speaker 1: ideas to the idea of handicapping and social psychology. That
Speaker 1: particular phrasing of it is new to me, I'll admit,
Speaker 1: I mean what I think of it as relating to
Speaker 1: in psychology, and I don't know what your take on
Speaker 1: all of this is, but is is sort of psychodynamic
Speaker 1: psychotherapy and frankly Freud, I mean, you know, putting aside
Speaker 1: all the myriad ways in which the specific claims have
Speaker 1: been debunked, that basic idea that we invest a lot
Speaker 1: of energy in building lives and psychologies around the avoidance
Speaker 1: of certain feelings that we think are going to kill
Speaker 1: us if we have to feel them. I think that's
Speaker 1: deeply true, no matter what you're about to tell me,
Speaker 1: that the sort of the research that says and that's
Speaker 1: really what I'm I think I'm that's a big affinity
Speaker 1: with what I'm saying, right, which is like, I think
Speaker 1: we certainly me historically, we invest a lot of effort
Speaker 1: in trying not to face the consequences of being finite,
Speaker 1: the fact that we have to make tough choices about time,
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't ever really know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen in the very next moment and can't really
Speaker 1: plan our lives in the way that we'd wish. We
Speaker 1: really want to not feel that. And I think a
Speaker 1: heck of a lot of productivity techniques and systems and
Speaker 1: self help advice is actually just kind of enabling that avoidance.
Speaker 1: It's sort of helping us not feel it. And but
Speaker 1: that the way you describe it in terms of handicapping
Speaker 1: feels very similar, right, It's like if I if I'm
Speaker 1: understanding you correctly, it is another phenomenon of being motivated
Speaker 1: primarily by not wanting to think about or feel certain idea, yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: Another element of handicapping is, well, you don't. It's an excuse.
Speaker 1: You want to have an excuse if you fail, right,
Speaker 1: So if you fail, you want the excuse to be
Speaker 1: some external excuse. Do You don't want to be that
Speaker 1: you're not talented and that you couldn't have done it
Speaker 1: to begin with, So you handicap yourself a little bit
Speaker 1: so that you have a little bit like you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I was drunk last night, so I well, the truth
Speaker 1: means you could have maybe done it if you weren't
Speaker 1: drunk last night. But we do these things in our
Speaker 1: lives because it's like too hard to face the reality
Speaker 1: of the matter. If we do fail, then it might
Speaker 1: be us. It's a fault our talent. Yeah, totally. And
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, the stakes are high, and we'd rather
Speaker 1: do things where the stakes are low. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, an even more familiar version of that is
Speaker 1: just standard issue procrastination. In the short term, it feels
Speaker 1: better to think one day I'm going to write a
Speaker 1: novel and it's going to be brilliant than it fails
Speaker 1: to write a couple of pages of your novel and
Speaker 1: for it to not know whether it's brilliant, or for
Speaker 1: it not to be brilliant, Yeah, or to discover that
Speaker 1: it's not brilliant at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes some
Speaker 1: people will go their whole lives just it's just good enough,
Speaker 1: just fantasizing about having all the accolades, you know, and
Speaker 1: having you know, it's you almost don't want to know
Speaker 1: if you really could or not. That's a big risk.
Speaker 1: That's a big risk. Yeah, I totally feel I mean
Speaker 1: I can detect that even in myself today. I think
Speaker 1: in certain domains, you know, where you're sort of like,
Speaker 1: there are a whole kind of I don't know, certain
Speaker 1: kinds of fitness or versions of meditation, things like this
Speaker 1: that I sort of feel would probably be really good
Speaker 1: for me and that I'd get a lot out of,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna. Yeah, it's it's more comfortable to
Speaker 1: think about the idea that one day I'll be the
Speaker 1: kind of person who makes that a central part of
Speaker 1: my life, rather than doing it for half an hour today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: you talk about procrastination as you offer advice to people
Speaker 1: on how to be a better procrastinator, you say, quote,
Speaker 1: so the point isn't to eradicate procrastination, but to choose
Speaker 1: more wisely what you're going to procrastinate on in order
Speaker 1: to focus on what matters most. The real measure of
Speaker 1: any time management technique is whether or not it helps
Speaker 1: you neglect the right things. I think this gets to
Speaker 1: a certain core of your argument, right that. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that again. I'm just that's sort
Speaker 1: of the idea of becoming a better procrastinator and slightly
Speaker 1: sort of frivolous way of putting it. But I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be cheeky, okay, cheeky, but I'm trying to target
Speaker 1: You're British. I'm trying to target this fantasy that I
Speaker 1: think is going on most of the time when people
Speaker 1: think about these issues, which is that you might be
Speaker 1: able to get to the position, the point in life
Speaker 1: where you were not neglecting anything important. And as I
Speaker 1: sort of slightly relentlessly try to drive home, there's just
Speaker 1: no reason to believe you will ever get that. Because
Speaker 1: we are finite. The number of things that can feel
Speaker 1: important and feel as though they matter is effectively incident.
Speaker 1: There are reasons to believe that technology and changing culture
Speaker 1: is that making the number feel even larger. And so
Speaker 1: this notion that the key is to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get everything done that matters is like that sort
Speaker 1: of that ship has sailed just the moment you're born, basically,
Speaker 1: And instead, if you can acknowledge that at any given
Speaker 1: moment and with any given year or month of your
Speaker 1: life or season, you know you're going to be neglecting
Speaker 1: countless things that would be a very legitimate use for
Speaker 1: that time, then you see, oh, okay, right, So my
Speaker 1: job here is to make the wisest decisions about what
Speaker 1: to neglect, what to focus on, and to sort of
Speaker 1: learn to lean in a little bit to that discomfort
Speaker 1: of knowing that there are lots of things you could
Speaker 1: be doing that would count and don't and you're not
Speaker 1: going to have time for. And it stop me if
Speaker 1: this is all obvious at this point, but they I
Speaker 1: think it's particularly interesting. You know, you see all this
Speaker 1: stuff in the culture about how you got to learn
Speaker 1: to say no, And I quote Elizabeth Gilbert in the
Speaker 1: book making the point that like, we just instinctively assume
Speaker 1: that what that means is saying not to all the
Speaker 1: stuff we don't want to do, so that there's enough
Speaker 1: time for everything. That matters, and she says, no, No,
Speaker 1: it's much harder than that. You've got to say note
Speaker 1: to lots of things that do matter, that you do
Speaker 1: want to do, and that do count, just because that's
Speaker 1: our situation. You know, there are always going to be
Speaker 1: more worthwhile and meaningful things that you could do them
Speaker 1: that you will do. Oh, humans are so messy, our
Speaker 1: motivational structure. It fluctuates. Yeah, there's so many complications when
Speaker 1: we talk about humans. And in theory, I love exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying, right, but in practice, one's highest priority
Speaker 1: motivation can change based on one's mood, can change based
Speaker 1: on It's hard to understand sometimes which things are gonna
Speaker 1: bear the greatest fruit, you know, and how do you
Speaker 1: predict that ahead of time? But you know, with all
Speaker 1: that's I love this idea of in a essence, you're saying,
Speaker 1: to live life to the fullest, it requires settling on
Speaker 1: something that you're in a moment. Yeah, you make a
Speaker 1: really good point. I do get occasionally get askedlight, so
Speaker 1: what's the algorithm? You know, what's the hack your way?
Speaker 1: What's the way to decide which party matters the most
Speaker 1: and then stick to it? And I always shy away
Speaker 1: a bit from that, because I think, again, this is
Speaker 1: really about spending more of your life in the state
Speaker 1: of being conscious of how of what this situation is.
Speaker 1: It's not that you're absolutely right, you know you're not.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that people are going to use this
Speaker 1: figure out their number one goal and then pursue it
Speaker 1: every single day for the rest of their lives. It's
Speaker 1: just it's more about living with that awareness of inevitable
Speaker 1: sacrifice and of inevitable the deal inevitably fall short of
Speaker 1: ideals that are not consistent with being a limited human
Speaker 1: being in terms of how much you do and how
Speaker 1: many things you do. It's almost like living in a
Speaker 1: state of being disillusioned in a positive sense, right, It's
Speaker 1: like that you're sort of the more that you're in
Speaker 1: that mind space, the less likely you are to go
Speaker 1: down rabbit holes of trying to I don't know more,
Speaker 1: I don't know, empty your inbox completely before you turn
Speaker 1: to some important project, or wait until some milestone in
Speaker 1: your life has happened, before you get stuck in the
Speaker 1: to the ambition that you know is the central one
Speaker 1: in your life. It's it's just about sort of living
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, it's it's a tragic sensibility. I guess right.
Speaker 1: It's just living with an awareness of the of the
Speaker 1: mismatch that we're all born into between our ability to
Speaker 1: conceive of infinite things and only do a finite number
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah you talk, Yeah, Oh yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be calling you a lot today. You say so,
Speaker 1: when you pay attention to something you don't especially value,
Speaker 1: it's not an exaggeration to say that you're paying with
Speaker 1: your life. Holy come, no pressure, No pressure when I
Speaker 1: when I'm eating that pizza every now and then, can
Speaker 1: I be like, I'm gonna pay with my life this
Speaker 1: juicy pizza I'm meeting right now? Is that? Okay? Every
Speaker 1: now and then I give you permission and which you
Speaker 1: definitely needed from me right before you could eat a pizza. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: the again, I think you know, firstly, just the caveat.
Speaker 1: I don't claim perfection any of these of these approaches
Speaker 1: to life myself. But it's deeper than that. It's that
Speaker 1: it's that if you know that this is the way
Speaker 1: the situation is, and you know that you will fail
Speaker 1: to perfectly respond to that situation, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: a it's ultimately just a richer way of living. It's
Speaker 1: hard to it's hard to put into words in this
Speaker 1: context I'm finding, but like the pizza is an example,
Speaker 1: because I would have thought a really good pizza could
Speaker 1: absolutely be, by anybody's standards, a fully legitimate way to
Speaker 1: spend to focus your attention for a while, because like,
Speaker 1: really good pizza is really good. A more challenging question
Speaker 1: to me, I would have thought would be like, are
Speaker 1: you saying I can never veg out in front of
Speaker 1: a TV show that I don't particularly love just because
Speaker 1: I want to relax and like use an hour of
Speaker 1: my time on something that wasn't kind of consistent with
Speaker 1: my highest intentions. And even there I would say, you know, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's coax ourselves to be more aware more of
Speaker 1: the time that in spending that hour on that you
Speaker 1: were inevitably choosing not to spend it on countless other things.
Speaker 1: And if that kind of fairly relaxed kind of zoning
Speaker 1: out is truly the right thing for that moment, then
Speaker 1: you know fine. And if you're not capable, and I
Speaker 1: don't think any of us are of perfectly organizing your
Speaker 1: life for maximum meaning and value, then give yourself a break.
Speaker 1: But let's not fool ourselves that that's not what's happening,
Speaker 1: That when we spend an hour on something, we're not
Speaker 1: foregoing all the other things. I think, I think, I
Speaker 1: think that deeply building in to the human genome is
Speaker 1: the fear of missing out on those alternatives and what
Speaker 1: could be better or what could make us happier. We
Speaker 1: worry so much about that we don't focus on the
Speaker 1: beauty of what's in front of our eyes. Often. You
Speaker 1: have an interesting spin on this. You say, no, we
Speaker 1: should talk about the joy of missing out, the recognition
Speaker 1: that the renunciation of alternatives is what makes their choice
Speaker 1: a meaningful one in the first place. Talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the joy of missing out. Maybe we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be harnessing that that more in our lives. You think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think. The funny thing about the fear
Speaker 1: of missing out is that that's a kind of stance
Speaker 1: that says like, I'm really worried that I might miss
Speaker 1: out on some meaningful experiences or opportunities or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And I'm at pains to say, well, if you look
Speaker 1: at the situation a bit more. Honestly, it's absolutely inevitable
Speaker 1: that you're going to miss out on huge numbers of
Speaker 1: potentially meaningful opportunities and experiences. So it becomes a little
Speaker 1: strange to fear that that might happen when it's already
Speaker 1: happened and is definitely going to keep happening. And I
Speaker 1: find that a very liberating for myself, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's a possibility of not missing out, then it's
Speaker 1: really stress inducing because I have to do everything I
Speaker 1: can to make sure that I don't. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: know that you're going to be missing out on almost
Speaker 1: everything the world has to offer and you're going to
Speaker 1: not meet almost all the people you could in principal meet,
Speaker 1: this is incredibly liberating. Firstly because it's sort of it
Speaker 1: lets you off the hook. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: sort of constantly struggling to pack more in just for
Speaker 1: the just for the sake of it. And then secondly, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it it imbues the choices that you do
Speaker 1: make with more value. I think that if I take
Speaker 1: sort of a couple of hours on an afternoon to
Speaker 1: go on a hike, say if I'm kidding myself that
Speaker 1: I have all the time in the world, and that
Speaker 1: that is no sacrifice, and that nothing is that nothing
Speaker 1: is lost or no opportunities are foregone by doing it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the stakes the stakes aren't high
Speaker 1: enough for it to be for it to matter. It
Speaker 1: feels like it the stakes aren't high enough if you
Speaker 1: see the truth of the situation, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: in those two hours you could have done lots of
Speaker 1: other meaningful things, but you chose to do this one.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an affirmation of that choice. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the stakes are really high. I could be doing other
Speaker 1: things that really count, and I'm doing this one because
Speaker 1: I've chosen to do it. I think it does sort
Speaker 1: of plunge you to speak of it vaguely. I think
Speaker 1: it can sort of plunge you more engreasingly into the experience,
Speaker 1: to have some alearners of that. Yeah, this dovetails. This
Speaker 1: will segue nicely into this idea of deep time and
Speaker 1: topic that I've never actually heard the phrase deep time before,
Speaker 1: but in my field of posit psychology it's called flow.
Speaker 1: And Mihai chicks at me Hi, who passed away recently
Speaker 1: spearheaded a lot of that work as well as the
Speaker 1: humanistic psychology. Abraham Masow talked about peak experiences, and the
Speaker 1: kind of common thing about all these, whether you called
Speaker 1: peak experiences or flow, is that you become so locked
Speaker 1: into the moment, so absorbed that you're almost your sense
Speaker 1: of time changes, and things feel a little bit slowed down,
Speaker 1: and your full consciousness is on the task at hand
Speaker 1: or the activity, so that you're not thinking about what
Speaker 1: could be better, you know, and so those thoughts are
Speaker 1: not even your head in these kinds of experiences. So
Speaker 1: you know, how can we harness more of this deep
Speaker 1: time in our lives? And do you have any ideas
Speaker 1: and practically how people can do that? I mean, this
Speaker 1: question of making these insights practical in this area and
Speaker 1: others is the It's the really big, fascinating one, And
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking a lot about it because I do
Speaker 1: think that I do think that the sort of greatest
Speaker 1: contribution that I hope my book can make is in
Speaker 1: inducing a kind of a perspective shift. So I think
Speaker 1: if I communicate the thing that I'm trying to communicate,
Speaker 1: it enables you to see that the sort of clock
Speaker 1: time mindset that we spend most of our life in.
Speaker 1: I think it enables you to see that it's not
Speaker 1: the only option, and something can sort of fall away,
Speaker 1: something that you're sort of a struggle, that you're in
Speaker 1: a fight against time can sort of be relaxed, and
Speaker 1: then what I'm calling deep time follows kind of arises naturally.
Speaker 1: It's almost if it's in a natural state behind the
Speaker 1: clock time that we impose upon it. And the parallel
Speaker 1: to flow is fascinating because I do know a little
Speaker 1: bit about to accept me high as work and others
Speaker 1: on that kind of stuff, and I've never quite I
Speaker 1: quite see if I'm talking about exactly the same thing
Speaker 1: or not. And when I read sort of self helpy
Speaker 1: people talking about how to get into flow, I know
Speaker 1: he wasn't a big sort of self healthy person, as
Speaker 1: I understand it. But when I see people taking that
Speaker 1: idea and running with it, they have all these very
Speaker 1: proactive methodologies. Right. So sure, absolutely spend three minutes at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a work period meditating on your breath.
Speaker 1: Sure adopt certain rituals that you'll come to associate with
Speaker 1: being focused all great stuff, shut out in interruptions. I
Speaker 1: think that's all absolutely beneficial, and I do some of
Speaker 1: them myself. But I do think that the most profound
Speaker 1: level the thing I'm trying to point to with this
Speaker 1: idea of deep time, it is just sort of something
Speaker 1: that arises once you've once you've seen through certain things
Speaker 1: about illusions clock time. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm constantly I
Speaker 1: would really like to be able to say, you know,
Speaker 1: he's the technique, and there are some you know, the
Speaker 1: book has a bunch of stuff in the especially in
Speaker 1: the back, that is meant to be much more sort
Speaker 1: of tactical, But I sort of stumble a little bit
Speaker 1: because I do think that the most important thing is
Speaker 1: is like getting what we're talking about here, and so
Speaker 1: really the book is just an attempt to sort of
Speaker 1: offer people glimpses of this in like one hundred different ways,
Speaker 1: and maybe one or two of them will be the
Speaker 1: ones that do it for a given reader. Slightly avoiding question, no, no,
Speaker 1: I look, I totally understand what you're saying. And your
Speaker 1: book is, on the one hand about are on the
Speaker 1: surface about time management. But to me, someone who's deeply
Speaker 1: interested in the science of human potential and living good life,
Speaker 1: it's really about a book. It's really a book about
Speaker 1: what it means to live a good life, what it
Speaker 1: means to live a meaningful life. Your book could easily
Speaker 1: have been that could have been the framing of it.
Speaker 1: Not time management, you know, but time management is so
Speaker 1: bound up with that, and you can see it so clearly.
Speaker 1: Time managements so bound up with the meaning and the
Speaker 1: happiness and joy that you have in your life. How
Speaker 1: would you link this book with your prior book, The
Speaker 1: Antidote Happiness for People who can't stand Positive thinking? By
Speaker 1: the way, what a great subtitle that is. How do
Speaker 1: you link the two things? Because in a way both
Speaker 1: books are about right the life, about the well being
Speaker 1: and yeah, no, absolutely, yeah no, totally, and I think
Speaker 1: there's probably something more thematically consistent between them than that,
Speaker 1: although it's one of those things you only ever see
Speaker 1: in the rearview mirror, right. I Mean, all I thought
Speaker 1: I was doing when I wrote The Antidote was trying
Speaker 1: to sort of sum up my life, philosophy and the
Speaker 1: most engaging and useful way possible. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: I was doing in this book as well, And that's
Speaker 1: a changed to some extent, But in the lots of ways,
Speaker 1: I think there's a sort of a through line. That
Speaker 1: book is about happiness and the problems with positive thinking,
Speaker 1: and the problems with trying to sort of will your
Speaker 1: way into happiness and success, and this book is about
Speaker 1: thinking about how to use time. But I think the
Speaker 1: common thread is, yeah, the common thread is this kind
Speaker 1: of openness to negative experience and the sort of necessity
Speaker 1: of being willing to sort of befriend the feelings of
Speaker 1: insecurity or discomfort that sort of come with being human.
Speaker 1: And I think that positive thinking is one way of
Speaker 1: in its worst forms, you know, is one of one
Speaker 1: way of trying, in a very strenuous way, to sort
Speaker 1: of get outside of life somehow, to get to get
Speaker 1: outside of or on top of reality so that you're
Speaker 1: in this kind of emotionally safe place where everything is
Speaker 1: good all the time, and that this doesn't work, that
Speaker 1: actually it's far more meaningful and even happy in life
Speaker 1: eventually to be able to in the end, to be
Speaker 1: able to encompass all the downs as well as the up.
Speaker 1: So there's something sort of there's something inauthentic and about
Speaker 1: striving for the time when everything is cheerful all the time.
Speaker 1: So in both cases, I think I guess I'm talking
Speaker 1: about a certain kind of pessimism or like almost like
Speaker 1: a tragic outlook, to put it a bit pretentiously, that
Speaker 1: is about it's about accepting a certain kind of defeat
Speaker 1: as being the precondition of a life well lived, I think,
Speaker 1: And that defeat is the sort of to let go
Speaker 1: of this fantasy of perfect happiness, perfect efficiency, perfect whatever
Speaker 1: else it might be. Yeah, I mean. And the other thing,
Speaker 1: of course, which we could totally go into, is they're
Speaker 1: all just different ways of me doing doing my therapy
Speaker 1: in public. These are one of my books about productivity
Speaker 1: and time management. As you pointed out, it didn't need
Speaker 1: to be necessarily is because that's been my that's been
Speaker 1: my struggle. And you know, I think writing from writing
Speaker 1: from a particular point of view is usually the best
Speaker 1: way to say something more universally worthwhile. Well, everyone does it,
Speaker 1: or you know, you're not the only one who writes
Speaker 1: a book just to heal themselves. We all do it
Speaker 1: in disguise. You're just not disguising it, You're honest about it. Well,
Speaker 1: this is this is my question for you, because I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the thread that runs through both those books.
Speaker 1: To me, I would have said it's realism. It's about
Speaker 1: confronting the truth head on, the truth about your life,
Speaker 1: the truth about your limited time and earth, and the
Speaker 1: truth about about how not everything is positive all the time,
Speaker 1: right that that's not necessarily embracing the negative like you
Speaker 1: frame you framed it as like, you know, being more
Speaker 1: open to the negative. To me, that's just being more realistic.
Speaker 1: But what if someone takes the point of view most
Speaker 1: of you know, how does your philosophy apply to like
Speaker 1: an Elon Musk kind of mentality or someone who wants
Speaker 1: to be got alike? I mean, they want to be
Speaker 1: you know why? Like, who are you to say certain
Speaker 1: people can't be some people? Some people have such broad
Speaker 1: ambitions that it that they probably would not fundamentally change
Speaker 1: the planet if they were too realistic? Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? I do? And I think about this
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think it is it is the
Speaker 1: sort of Elon Musk cases that obviously push the press
Speaker 1: to the point the most at a slightly toned down
Speaker 1: level of ambition from Elon Musk, I think I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear to me how these ideas are not
Speaker 1: only not inconsistent with being ambitious, but they're kind of
Speaker 1: they're an important part of being ambitious, and in some sense,
Speaker 1: I mean, you cannot do what Elon Musk has done
Speaker 1: unless you are in some deep sense in touch with
Speaker 1: the reality of how things are right. You can't you
Speaker 1: can't build on at a certain point. However much you're
Speaker 1: sort of motivated at a certain stage by the refusal
Speaker 1: to believe that anything is impossible, at a certain point
Speaker 1: you have to like figure out how this is going
Speaker 1: to be manifested in engineering and silicon chips and pieces
Speaker 1: of metal. And on the one hand, it's probably not
Speaker 1: quite right to say that Elon Musk's achievements are sort
Speaker 1: of the consequences of not being realistic. I guess what
Speaker 1: it points to is a sort of double meaning in
Speaker 1: the idea of realism that we maybe are getting, there's
Speaker 1: potential to get tripped up on, which is like there's
Speaker 1: realism as in like, okay, don't aim for anything too impressive,
Speaker 1: like let's be realistic in the sense that you might
Speaker 1: well hear a British person say it. And I think
Speaker 1: in some ways this is a cultural culture bound thing.
Speaker 1: And then there's just then there's just like that much
Speaker 1: more precise meaning of realism which is to be in
Speaker 1: touch with the way things really are as much as
Speaker 1: you possibly can, and not to have your vision clouded
Speaker 1: by comforting fantasies of how you wish they were. And
Speaker 1: that I think is surely completely compatible with the most
Speaker 1: vaulting ambition. And so often when I'm talking about how
Speaker 1: you get my book is about helping you give up
Speaker 1: the quest to do impossible things and get stuck into
Speaker 1: doing what's sort of gloriously possible instead. There's one slightly
Speaker 1: silicon valley come back to this, which is like, if
Speaker 1: people didn't dream of doing impossible things, how had anything
Speaker 1: exciting done that changes the world. And then I have
Speaker 1: to make the most boring kind of objection, which is
Speaker 1: a semantic one, and say, you know, I'm all for
Speaker 1: people trying to do the very, very nearly impossible to
Speaker 1: think the things, and for sort of pushing through their
Speaker 1: artificially limiting beliefs in order to do more than they
Speaker 1: could ever have believed they were capable. That's very different
Speaker 1: from the idea of doing things that are literally impossible,
Speaker 1: like you know, answering an infinite amount of emails, or
Speaker 1: you know, dedicating your whole working life to two different things,
Speaker 1: because if you're dedicating it all to one of them,
Speaker 1: you can't be dedicating it to the other. I imagine
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk is pretty realistic about how many of
Speaker 1: the emails sent to him personally he has time to
Speaker 1: reply to. So I think it's all you know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a fine line to walk there, because I
Speaker 1: don't think any of this is inconsistent with those occasional
Speaker 1: figures who sort of really change history. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I think it's also great to not feel that your
Speaker 1: meaning in life is dependent on being one of those
Speaker 1: people and that you've somehow failed. If you're not Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: that's clearly also an idea worth getting passed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've what is the failure there? That you feel like
Speaker 1: you've failed as a human, You failed as I mean,
Speaker 1: you did fail in being Elon Musk. If you're not
Speaker 1: alannam Ask, that is technically true. You fail that creating
Speaker 1: a company that can potentially send us to Mars. You
Speaker 1: did actually fail on that. You know there's you're talking
Speaker 1: about you talking about realism and uh in positive psychology
Speaker 1: sometimes or you know, the over positivity, sometimes they'll say
Speaker 1: things like you are enough, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: you listen to these meditations, right, I mean you've all people,
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know what encerted instances want to
Speaker 1: be like face the reality here, you're you know, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're not enough yet in some in some instances,
Speaker 1: in some instances, I mean, it depends on, It depends on,
Speaker 1: It depends on enough for what. Right? I mean if
Speaker 1: somebody is listening to one of the question right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if somebody is listening to one of those meditations to
Speaker 1: help them feel that they're perfectly well qualified to you know,
Speaker 1: perform open heart surgery when they haven't actually studied the
Speaker 1: right skills, then then that would be disastrous. But I'm
Speaker 1: but in the existential sense, yeah, I mean, cheesy as
Speaker 1: they are. I think that message, as though some of
Speaker 1: those meditations are, I think that message that like your
Speaker 1: existence on the planet is already justified, which has a
Speaker 1: lot of religious resonances, and it's and it's sort of
Speaker 1: closely connected to like the Christian idea of grace and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things in different traditions. It's kind
Speaker 1: of it's really important. And this is where we get
Speaker 1: to like openly me just talking about the therapy aspect
Speaker 1: of this book, because I think that for a long
Speaker 1: time in my life, productivity and making good use of
Speaker 1: time was very tightly bound up with self worth, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think it's true for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They feel if they don't if you don't get through
Speaker 1: a certain amount of stuff by the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you haven't quite justified your right to be on the planet. Somehow.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of existential sense of not being enough,
Speaker 1: And I think it's tremendously empowering to consider instead that
Speaker 1: maybe you are enough. Maybe you wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning and you've done all you have to do to
Speaker 1: justify our existence on the planet, and anything you do
Speaker 1: beyond that to earn a living or to make the
Speaker 1: world a better place, that's fantastic. But it's not like
Speaker 1: trying to pay off some existential debt. So the person
Speaker 1: who is not qualified to perform open heart surgery is
Speaker 1: very much enough as a human being, they're just not
Speaker 1: enough as a surgeon. Yeah, I'm imagining as a comedy
Speaker 1: skit where, well, I guess maybe tragedy comedy skit where
Speaker 1: someone is a terrible surgeon and they have sort of
Speaker 1: killed everyone in the world and they feel terrible about themselves,
Speaker 1: so they put on a calm at meditation that says,
Speaker 1: just take a deep breath, you are enough, and then
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, I'm an that's okay, right, And that
Speaker 1: puts me in mind of the fact that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, probably an awful lot of damage is done
Speaker 1: to the world in politics, in toxic parts of business,
Speaker 1: in all sorts of areas by people who don't feel
Speaker 1: adequate in that sort of deep way and are using
Speaker 1: external power and you know, being a jerk to try
Speaker 1: to fill that hole. So, yeah, a lot of overweening
Speaker 1: ambition is, yeah, is trying to get to there. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Another major theme of your book is the
Speaker 1: importance of patience. The important I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: it's Zen philosophy is so also not just patients, but
Speaker 1: being comfortable with boredom, you know, is a big one.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's this fascinating study at Harvard where
Speaker 1: most people, when they're in a room alone and they
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything, they'd actually prefer an electric shock over
Speaker 1: just daydreaming or mind wandering. It's a mind blowing finding.
Speaker 1: And then you think about it and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably if the electric shot was mild, because at least
Speaker 1: it's something, right. Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think that patience.
Speaker 1: I think that the question of patience and impatience is
Speaker 1: just another way into this question of, you know, the
Speaker 1: degree to which we want to be superhuman. We want
Speaker 1: to make the world go at the pace we need
Speaker 1: it to go, which is, you know, instantaneous, and all
Speaker 1: sorts of technological developments, you know, convince us that we're
Speaker 1: almost there. You know that we're very close to being
Speaker 1: able to do everything in an instantaneous way, which is why,
Speaker 1: as I argue in the book, that you know, it's
Speaker 1: far more frustrating to wait for a microwave than it
Speaker 1: is to wait for a conventional oven, because the microwave
Speaker 1: sort of encourages you to believe that it ought to
Speaker 1: be possible to have your food instantaneously, and so it's
Speaker 1: much more frustrating to have to wait two minutes for it.
Speaker 1: If people never expected that in the first place, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be they wouldn't be so impatient. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it becomes very a very important skill in the
Speaker 1: modern accelerated world, you know, to be able to let
Speaker 1: things take the time they take to be able to
Speaker 1: sort of not read a book without without trying to
Speaker 1: read it as fast as you possibly can, or to
Speaker 1: consume a work of art in that way, or to
Speaker 1: be in a relationship without needing things to sort of
Speaker 1: without needing the day to flow at your own person
Speaker 1: you know, preferred speed and so and it's hard. It's
Speaker 1: really hard and unpleasant and a constant challenge and I
Speaker 1: haven't you know, figured it out for myself. But it's again,
Speaker 1: I'm just really attracted to that idea that there's something
Speaker 1: sort of subversive in being able to withstand that a
Speaker 1: bit instead of just jumping on board the acceleration train,
Speaker 1: as it were. Absolutely, you know, there's things, some things
Speaker 1: happen in their own time. That's an obvious statement I
Speaker 1: just said there. But there's a lot of deep profundity
Speaker 1: around that idea when you really think about that role.
Speaker 1: May the humanists the culture had a great book called
Speaker 1: Love and Will about how errors takes time to develop.
Speaker 1: Sex you can have instantly, you know, whilst you can
Speaker 1: have instantly, and we're kind of being pulled by either last.
Speaker 1: But when we instead want to grow arrows or grow love,
Speaker 1: that can only happen as an interaction between you and
Speaker 1: someone else that unfolds over time, when tensions get resolved,
Speaker 1: when you know, you go through a relationship and you
Speaker 1: you know that you can fight and then you can
Speaker 1: make up and then you can grow from that. It's
Speaker 1: a process. It's that thing you can biohack right right right.
Speaker 1: And you're reminding me also of not everyone appreciates the book,
Speaker 1: but I basically do the Roadless Travel Scott Peck where
Speaker 1: he talks about attention being the work of love. I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's a phrase from his writing,
Speaker 1: And there's like this wonderful passage about how like listening
Speaker 1: to the other person in a relationship takes effort, and
Speaker 1: you do it more and more, and like it just
Speaker 1: always keeps on taking effort and it never actually gets
Speaker 1: easy because there's that there's something about but putting in
Speaker 1: an effort that is that is the value of the Yeah, interaction,
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, that's where the meaning comes into play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the effort, the commitment, commitment and meaning are so deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply intertwined. You know, like the second we we commit
Speaker 1: ourselves to anything, we are in a sense committing ourselves
Speaker 1: to meaning. For that thing that we're going to find
Speaker 1: some meaning in it. Yeah, yeah, and sacrificing some kind
Speaker 1: of comfort in so doing, because you're sort of voluntarily
Speaker 1: binding yourself to certain experiences and speeds of things unfolding
Speaker 1: that you might not then choose if you were, if
Speaker 1: you haven't made the commitment in any given moment, but
Speaker 1: that you sort of yeah, yeah, fascinating. Sorry, that didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere, but it is fascinating. We're riffing. We're riffing.
Speaker 1: For the remainder of this interview, Let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the practical things you do talk about in your book.
Speaker 1: You have three principles of patients. You say, the first
Speaker 1: is develop a taste for having problems? Can I go
Speaker 1: through all three and maybe you could collaborate a little
Speaker 1: bit on each one. So the first one, develop a
Speaker 1: taste for having problems? Does that mean I'm trying to
Speaker 1: target there this sense that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have, certainly I had for a long time, that
Speaker 1: the problems in your life, and there are always a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of them that you're trying to work out,
Speaker 1: are sort of doubly problematic. Firstly, because you have the
Speaker 1: problem itself, but also there's some idea that you ought
Speaker 1: to you take yourself to be en route to some
Speaker 1: time when you're not going to have any more problems.
Speaker 1: And in a different not in the book, but elsewhere,
Speaker 1: I've quoted a talk that I heard Sam Harris give
Speaker 1: about this where he was sort of remembering some moment
Speaker 1: when he was moaning to a friend about all the
Speaker 1: problems that he was experiencing in his I think work
Speaker 1: at that time or something, and she said like, hold
Speaker 1: hold on, do you think you're going to get to
Speaker 1: a time in your life when you don't have problems?
Speaker 1: It's like, and that's a really big realization. I think
Speaker 1: that that's really that's really true. This idea that one
Speaker 1: day there's going to be the problem free time is
Speaker 1: very seductive, and I don't think that's ever going to happen.
Speaker 1: I don't think you'd ever want it to happen. Certainly,
Speaker 1: you know there are very grave problems that it would be.
Speaker 1: You know, it's nice not to have, and that it'll
Speaker 1: be nice to not have any more of, but the
Speaker 1: sheer fact of having sort of things that you need
Speaker 1: to address yourself to that are difficult or challenging. And
Speaker 1: that feel like roadblocks to where you want to get.
Speaker 1: I mean to approach those in the spirit that you're
Speaker 1: one day going to get rid of them. All is
Speaker 1: to sort of treat life as a problem in itself, right,
Speaker 1: I think, And and so there's something really powerful about
Speaker 1: letting go of that. There's a I think can't remem
Speaker 1: if I put it in that that point in the book.
Speaker 1: But there's a quote that I really cherished from the
Speaker 1: French perk called Chris Chiamboban, who says, she is translated
Speaker 1: obviously by somebody else, I was peeling a red apple
Speaker 1: from the garden when it's suddenly, when I suddenly realized
Speaker 1: that life would only ever give me a series of
Speaker 1: wonderfully and soluble problems to solve. At this moment a
Speaker 1: notion of profound peace. And in my heart, I think
Speaker 1: that's the approximate quote. And it's just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is life. The problems are life. My wife.
Speaker 1: Occasionally when I'm when I'm really when I'm whining about
Speaker 1: some aspect of my work, it's like, no, this is
Speaker 1: the job solving these problems, Like that's the thing that
Speaker 1: you do. The idea that you've got to get rid
Speaker 1: of all those so that you can get down to
Speaker 1: the real, the real stuff of life. That's the illusion.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful, it's so it's so true, it's just
Speaker 1: so darn true. I think there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: going to listen to this episode and and and just
Speaker 1: they'll need to hear that, you know, Like I needed
Speaker 1: to hear that. When I was reading your book, I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, this is life. Maybe that could have
Speaker 1: been the title of the book as well. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that is your life. That is life. And I'm always,
Speaker 1: you know, occasionally encountering people who think that I must
Speaker 1: have internalized this epiphany once and for all and live
Speaker 1: in a perfect state of equanimity. Certainly not I think that.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, obviously, this is stuff I
Speaker 1: need to remind myself of again and again all the time.
Speaker 1: But it is always liberating, and it's always a burden
Speaker 1: lifted from my shoulders when I when I do right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are problems to be solved, but this, the fact
Speaker 1: of having problems, is not a problem to be solved.
Speaker 1: If that, if that makes more money, more problems. The
Speaker 1: second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism. So what is
Speaker 1: radical incrementalism. I'm talking here about developing the willingness to
Speaker 1: make progress on your work, whatever it is, is is, in
Speaker 1: very small, consistent amounts. There's obviously plenty of research about
Speaker 1: the importance of a sense of, you know, small victories
Speaker 1: and small wins in keeping people motivated. But I think
Speaker 1: there's this, there's this impatient urge in a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Obviously depends on your sort of specific profession and things
Speaker 1: like that, but there's this sort of urge to race ahead,
Speaker 1: this idea that that accomplishment and progress is a matter
Speaker 1: of sort of binging your work, of sprinting forwards and
Speaker 1: making like vast, very very quick progress. And I'm sort
Speaker 1: of drawing here on lots of evidence from different places,
Speaker 1: but I am focusing specifically on writing just because it's
Speaker 1: something I so personally familiar with that the exact opposite
Speaker 1: is true, that actually that sort of willingness to do
Speaker 1: a small amount, do a small amount the next day,
Speaker 1: be quite dogged in that in that way, this makes
Speaker 1: accomplishments sustainable over the long haul. There's fascinating work by
Speaker 1: this psychologist Robert Boyce. I don't know if you've run
Speaker 1: into his stuff who spent a lot of time studying
Speaker 1: the writing habits of academics and made this really interesting
Speaker 1: finding that actually the most productive academic writers were those
Speaker 1: who made writing a moderately important part of their daily
Speaker 1: lives instead of the ones who tried to make it
Speaker 1: a hugely important part of their daily lives. It's less intimidating.
Speaker 1: You can come back to it day after day. You
Speaker 1: can actually create that situation where you want to return
Speaker 1: to it day after day because you haven't sort of
Speaker 1: permitted yourself to do so much of it that you've
Speaker 1: grown sort of exhausted by it, or or it feels
Speaker 1: like it sort of unpleasantly dominates your life and takes
Speaker 1: away from other things. The part of that that I'm
Speaker 1: always sort of really intrigued by and that has been
Speaker 1: so powerful for me is not just that you and
Speaker 1: this is in my own writing practice, I guess you know,
Speaker 1: not just that you only ask of yourself an hour
Speaker 1: or two's deep writing focus in the course of a day,
Speaker 1: but that you make sure you stop at the end,
Speaker 1: and even if you're on a roll, you actually sort
Speaker 1: of flex that muscle of getting up and walking away.
Speaker 1: And it's really hard to do. But Boyce argued, and
Speaker 1: I think he was right, that if you give in
Speaker 1: to that urge to just keep going and keep going
Speaker 1: and keep going, you're basically giving into impatience, like this
Speaker 1: idea that you that you must get it done now
Speaker 1: that you're never going to get another opportunity, that it's
Speaker 1: absolutely essential that you add another two thousand words to
Speaker 1: the chapter or whatever it might be. And when you
Speaker 1: see that it's not essential. When you see that, you
Speaker 1: can walk away. You can live with the discomfort of
Speaker 1: knowing that you could have carried on but you didn't.
Speaker 1: That's actually what keeps you sort of in this like
Speaker 1: more tightly coiled place where you're willing to, you know,
Speaker 1: come back to it day after day after day. Does
Speaker 1: that resonate and doesn't resonate with your own experiences? I'm interested,
Speaker 1: or you're a binge writer. I know some really accomplished people.
Speaker 1: Ask Stephen Pinker. I think I've heard him talk about
Speaker 1: how he totally disagrees with all things and just like
Speaker 1: rites for fifteen hours a day for a few months
Speaker 1: and then stops for ages. So that's me, oh, interesting, Well,
Speaker 1: if it I work on inspiration and when i'm feeling inspired.
Speaker 1: I need to capture that juice that sauce that energy
Speaker 1: for as long as I can ride it, or because
Speaker 1: it may be days before I get it again, or
Speaker 1: even months. So that philosophy of radical incrementalism does not
Speaker 1: jive with my sort of menia. But that's my own
Speaker 1: psycho pathology. I mean, it's really interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I do think that the sort of the deepest level
Speaker 1: of this, which is that things take the time they
Speaker 1: take and you need to give them that time, I
Speaker 1: think is universally and I'm sure that if we sort
Speaker 1: of dissected your writing habits, we'd see that emerging in
Speaker 1: some other form. But yeah, I think that the idea
Speaker 1: that the idea that of doing these sort of short,
Speaker 1: consistent amounts, that's probably a corrective that is needed by
Speaker 1: people like yeah, people whose tendency, like me, is to
Speaker 1: be sort of I don't know, perfectionistic, not necessarily in
Speaker 1: terms of the quality output, but perfectionistic in an absolutist
Speaker 1: in this idea that I ought to be able to
Speaker 1: write for eight hours a day, and then when I can't,
Speaker 1: it becomes incredibly depressing. You're talking as if it's a
Speaker 1: sheer pleasure maybe to write for eight hours a day
Speaker 1: when the juices are flowing, And I don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: to be a person who tries to get in the
Speaker 1: way of that. Although I suppose if you really followed
Speaker 1: Robert Boyce's ideas to them end and to be deliberately
Speaker 1: competive about it, I would say, is there any possibility
Speaker 1: that you're talking as if inspiration is only there sometimes
Speaker 1: and you have to ride it when it is there? Right?
Speaker 1: But it would be tempting, in a Devil's advocate way
Speaker 1: to ask, do you think that you're riding of the
Speaker 1: inspiration as long as it'll go? Has some causal influence
Speaker 1: on the fact that it only shows up sporadically, And
Speaker 1: if you could force yourself to work in much shorter bursts,
Speaker 1: would you find that there was a sort of low
Speaker 1: harm of inspiration that was there all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that's a really I'm just interested in.
Speaker 1: So it's a really good question, and I maybe perhaps
Speaker 1: experiment more with that idea. You seem to produce the books,
Speaker 1: so like, if it's working, I'm not sure I want
Speaker 1: to tell you to do something that might not work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So, well, maybe individual differences do play a
Speaker 1: role here, but I see the corrective that you're trying
Speaker 1: to make, and I think that's an excellent point, so
Speaker 1: we can focus on that. Okay. So the final principle
Speaker 1: is that more often than not, original lies on the
Speaker 1: far side of un originality, that mind blown, mind blown.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that means? Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: simplest way of putting of unpacking that is just that
Speaker 1: in creative work especially, but I think it probably applies
Speaker 1: in relationships and in a bunch of other domains. You
Speaker 1: often have to go through a period of things that
Speaker 1: feel derivative or not, you know, you being truly your
Speaker 1: unique self in order to get to the parts that
Speaker 1: are truly original and truly your unique self. I use
Speaker 1: this whole I lean on this whole story from the
Speaker 1: about the Helsinki bus station theory that I can talk
Speaker 1: about here, though it takes more than ten seconds, so
Speaker 1: you can you can ask me to or not and
Speaker 1: edit it out or whatever, but also be familiar to people.
Speaker 1: I think also in that as a fairly famous little
Speaker 1: piece of writing or speaking from Ira Glass, the radio
Speaker 1: host and producer, about how in the early stages of
Speaker 1: being a creative person in I think he's talking about
Speaker 1: radio specifically, your taste sort of runs ahead of your capacities,
Speaker 1: so it feels like what you're producing is substandard because
Speaker 1: you have a vision of something that is very good
Speaker 1: and you're not yet able to create it. And so,
Speaker 1: in a very sort of mundane way, I can look
Speaker 1: back on my training as a journalist and see that
Speaker 1: it was important to do a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily the most fulfilling writing imaginable in order
Speaker 1: to get to a place where I could. I think
Speaker 1: that it crops up in a different interesting way, in
Speaker 1: the sort of way in which there are so many
Speaker 1: sort of cultural messages pushing us at quite a young
Speaker 1: age to do very extraordinary things, right, to go to
Speaker 1: some different part of the world to live and work,
Speaker 1: to pursue sort of I mean, things that are the
Speaker 1: opposite of like settle down, get married, have children, all
Speaker 1: these things that feel like they're they're sort of insufficiently
Speaker 1: unusual in some ways, I think to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and that maybe actually you have to fall into these
Speaker 1: conventional grooves sometimes in order to get to certain things,
Speaker 1: like you know, the fruits of a long term it's
Speaker 1: a relationship or parenthood and deep roots in a location,
Speaker 1: things like that. So I guess that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: that's the general point that I'm getting out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great paper, one of my great one of
Speaker 1: my favorite journal articles by a sociologist called the Moondanity
Speaker 1: of Excellence where he did a really deep analysis of
Speaker 1: Olympic swimmers in their process leading up to their to
Speaker 1: their their greatness and he found that it's actually PREMI
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. Yeah, me too, me too.
Speaker 1: Somehow seems relevant to your point. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to kind of leave our interview today on making
Speaker 1: something very clear. You know, you are about realism, but
Speaker 1: to me, it seems like there's a correlation, of positive
Speaker 1: correlation between the extent to which you have embraced this
Speaker 1: realism and the awe that you experience in the world.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a connection to awe and to
Speaker 1: wonder and to being able to pay attention to the
Speaker 1: wonder that exists in the world. Is that right? I'd
Speaker 1: like to leave on this note. Yeah, I think there is.
Speaker 1: There must be. I'm just trying to think my way
Speaker 1: around that that idea because you do talk right, because
Speaker 1: in your book you do talk about wonder and you
Speaker 1: talk about how a lot of time management techniques are
Speaker 1: are taking us away from being able to appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the more on why ways of trying to manage our time,
Speaker 1: or ring more and more activities out of the same
Speaker 1: amount of time, and all the sort of unwise ways
Speaker 1: in which we relate to our time, they have this
Speaker 1: effect of sort of holding us back from full engagement
Speaker 1: with the reality that we're in. And so they are
Speaker 1: sort of awe killing in a way because they put
Speaker 1: you one remove from experience. This attempt to be superhuman
Speaker 1: with respect your time is kind of as I've said already,
Speaker 1: you know, it's attempt to sort of get outside of
Speaker 1: life and attempt to sort of bring the world reality
Speaker 1: in all its kind of infinite wonder and uncontrollable variety
Speaker 1: and everything into a sort of something that you can
Speaker 1: get your hands around and organize the way you want
Speaker 1: it to be. And if what I'm talking about here
Speaker 1: is letting go of that is letting go of that
Speaker 1: fantasy in order to actually do some good, meaningful things
Speaker 1: in the world, but to be part of the world
Speaker 1: instead of trying to sort of wrangle the world. Then
Speaker 1: I think that would be totally consistent with with AWE,
Speaker 1: which is that sort of sense of your that sense
Speaker 1: of being part of something almost sort of terrifyingly bigger
Speaker 1: and more unfathomable than oneself, and and not thinking that
Speaker 1: you have not thinking that you have reality's number right,
Speaker 1: that it's all that it's all totally sort of manageable
Speaker 1: and can all be turned into your to your lists
Speaker 1: and your task management system and your goals for the
Speaker 1: quarter or whatever. So yeah, I intentionally wanted to get
Speaker 1: this interview done so we could have it in the
Speaker 1: new year, and so I'm excited to release this a SAP.
Speaker 1: How does this advice relate at all to people and
Speaker 1: their their futile, seemingly futile New Year's Eve resolutions, New
Speaker 1: Year's resolutions that they make on New Year's Eve that
Speaker 1: don't seem to last more than any I mean, I
Speaker 1: do think this kind of there is something about this
Speaker 1: point in the turning of the calendar that does feel
Speaker 1: very conducive to having some of these deep thoughts and reflections.
Speaker 1: So I don't I'm pretty hostile to New Year's resolutions.
Speaker 1: In their most cliched form. But I do think this
Speaker 1: kind of period can be there's something about it, especially
Speaker 1: about that sort of week between Christmas and New ear.
Speaker 1: I think that has passed now. Of course, that is
Speaker 1: a great opportunity for reflecting on how these big issues
Speaker 1: how your life fits into how they fit into your life.
Speaker 1: But I think, yeah, the big sort of negative problem
Speaker 1: with news resolutions is this is this feeling of a
Speaker 1: fresh start, this idea that you can sort of wave
Speaker 1: goodbye to your old self and everything can be completely
Speaker 1: different and implicitly perfect in some domain from now on.
Speaker 1: And that is really, you know, a canonical example of
Speaker 1: the attempt to control more than you can control, the
Speaker 1: attempt to sort of say that, you know, from now on,
Speaker 1: one of the ways in which my time is going
Speaker 1: to be under my command is that three times a
Speaker 1: week I'm going to go to the gym with with
Speaker 1: no breaks. It's going to be an unbroken streak and
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. And there is in that sort
Speaker 1: of inherently, isn't there a kind of a refusal to
Speaker 1: accept the degree to which you don't control reality, the
Speaker 1: degree to which you're just totally shaped by everything that's
Speaker 1: brought you to where you are now. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's like I saw somebody tweet this the other day, right,
Speaker 1: that all one's plans for self improvement are sort of
Speaker 1: premised on the idea that tomorrow you're going to wake
Speaker 1: up with twenty times more self discipline than you've ever
Speaker 1: demonstrated without any day of your entire life so far,
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. It's again, it's an attempt
Speaker 1: to sort of leap outside of the situation in which
Speaker 1: we're we're all in. I think that probably perfectly healthy
Speaker 1: ways to make New Year's resolutions, But there's a general
Speaker 1: sort of cultural feel at New Year, summed up in
Speaker 1: that terrible publishing industry phrase new Year. And you you
Speaker 1: that that is unhelpful because it's sort of it fuels
Speaker 1: this this idea of bending the whole of the world
Speaker 1: to our will and bending our own selves to our will,
Speaker 1: which is impossible enough. Well, I'm sure that'll be a
Speaker 1: lot of comfort to a lot of people, right because
Speaker 1: it's like serious, serious, It seems like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's because it'll it's like you're giving people permission that, like,
Speaker 1: you know that you're human and in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways you're giving people self compassion, you know, do you're
Speaker 1: telling people have a little more self compassion as well?
Speaker 1: Like Chris and Neff talks about some ideas that I
Speaker 1: see are resonant with some of your ideas actually about
Speaker 1: embracing our common humanity, embrace are in perfections, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, yeah, totally totally, And I just think
Speaker 1: that the spirit to go into New Year with is
Speaker 1: something more like, you know, Okay, what if you didn't
Speaker 1: need to do make any changes to your life in
Speaker 1: order to be an okay person and to have justified
Speaker 1: your existence here? What if no changes at all needed
Speaker 1: to be made? Okay, Well, then what changes would you make?
Speaker 1: Because it would be fun to do? So? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Oliver. I really appreciate you coming on my
Speaker 1: podcast today. I find your book such a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air, and I'm glad we're finally able to make
Speaker 1: this work. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. Likewise,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at thus ecologypodcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page
Speaker 1: thus Ecology Podcast. We also put up some videos of
Speaker 1: some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll
Speaker 1: want to check that out. Thanks for being such a
Speaker 1: great supporter of the show, and tune in next time
Speaker 1: for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.