October 26, 2022 • 31 mins
You think you’ve got a procrastination problem? TIm Urban, the man behind the sensationally popular blog Wait But Why reckons he might have you covered. He’s so well-acquainted with procrastination, in fact, that he gave a TED talk on the topic… And finalised it at the last minute.
However, for a self-proclaimed master procrastinator, Tim sure gets a lot done. And thankfully, among the many, many articles he’s written are some antidotes for the serial procrastinator.
Tim shares his process for researching and understanding big, complex ideas, and turning them into digestible, entertaining reading.
Connect with Tim on Twitter or his website, Wait But Why
***
My new book Time Wise is out now. You can grab a copy here.
Connect with me on the socials:
If you’re looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
CREDITS
Produced by Inventium
Host: Amantha Imber
Production Support from Deadset Studios
Episode Producer: Liam Riordan
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're a knowledge worker, the quality of your thinking
ultimately determines the quality of your work. So how do
you improve the quality of your thinking?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, that's a pretty big question now.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
One person trying to answer that question is Tim Urban,
the author of the incredibly successful blog called Wait But Why.
Tim writes about everything from careers to the state of
American power, to Elon Musk's vision for the future, and
of course he writes about thinking and how we can
(00:36):
get better at it. Tim shares how to break big,
difficult ideas into smaller, more manageable components, and outlines how
he fights procrastination.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
can so Inventium, and this is how I work, a
show about how to help you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Do your best work.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
One of Tim's most notable public appearances was his ted
talk about procrastination, which has been viewed by over sixty
three million people, and if you haven't seen it, if
you're not one of those sixty three million people, you
should check it out immediately because it's brilliant. I wanted
to know whether Tim had developed new strategies for beating
(01:30):
procrastination since he delivered that Ted talk several years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
My life's work is trying to conquer my own procrastination.
So yeah, I like that you said that they're working
because there's a lot of articles on how to beat procrastination,
a lot of advice. And what I find is that
most procrastinators, like myself, read one of those articles, we
get super inspired.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
We think I'm doing this, this is it, I'm doing
that from now on. I'm all set. I just figured on.
And then maybe we do it for.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
A day or two, or we don't even do it
at all. Uh, and then and then move back to
where we were right. So what actually works? I think
there's two categories of solution here. One is a picture
that your habits are kind of a boat that you're in,
and if you're a procrastinator, it means something about the
boat's not working well, like there's a there's a leak,
(02:20):
or there's something's broken. And so the two categories of
solution for something like this are you repair the boat
in a permanent way, like you actually fix the thing
and it's fixed, or you you put temporary duct tape
or something over the pole and it's not permanent.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
It's not actually fixed.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
The boat's still broken, but it's the leak isn't happening
right now because you've you've taped it up for a one.
And so what I've been trying for the obviously ideally
you're the first category where you're actually changing your habits
and you're growing as a human and you're you're not
the way you used to be anymore. And so for
(03:00):
that category, the it's I've been trying to.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
A couple of things. I've been trying to remind myself
that even a.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Big you know, we have this idea in the US
at least that forty hours is a good work you know,
eight hour day is a good work day.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
It's like half the half the day.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You know, you have sixteen awaking hours, put in eight
good hours of working done a full day. If you
actually go into most people's offices or most people's workplaces
who say they work forty hours a week, can you
look at what they're actually doing and how much of
that is really on focusing deep focus, on real work.
The number is usually a lot less than forty. And
I would say I've found that I think as a writer,
at least if I put in three deep, focused hours,
(03:40):
that's a huge that's a great day, like I I I,
but but but it's the psychology is weird where in
my head it's like if I wake up at you know,
eight thirty, and I think, if I just pulled my
lap up onto the bed and work till eleven thirty,
I'm done. Something about that doesn't It's like the perfectionist
to me is like, well, no, I have to work
all day. And what I find is that I'll spend
(04:02):
the whole day sitting around working, except I'm like in
this kind of gray areas where I'm supposed to be
working but I'm not, or that I am a little
and then I stop and there's a lot of breaks,
and so it's this kind of gray area, not really playing,
not really.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Working zone that I spend a ton of time.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
And I call it the dark playground where you're you're
kind of in leisure time you're not supposed to be
in leasure time. I will, i will put in a
huge amounts of hours each week, and then I'll find
that in the end, if I really were honest about
how many of those are real hours, it adds up
to about three hours a day at a really good week.
So the point is what I'm trying to get better
at is less of this permanent gray area between work
(04:37):
and play and more like, I am going to get
my three hours done, and the psychology of that to
be like instead of you know, thinking I have this
whole work day ahead. No no, no, If I just wait
three hours, I'm free for the whole day. But really
doing it. Doing those three hours because it compiles that's
fifteen hours a week, that's sixty real hours a month.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
You can fly through projects and then genuinely on the
other side of it having time.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
So it's turning grades to black and white where you're
not just doing one side of the yin yang, but
you're actually doing the other two. You're genuinely playing when
you're you're not giving yourself guilt free off time where
you're doing high quality stuff and you're having fun in
guilt free fund.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
That's it recharges your battery for the hardcore work.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Zone the next day. So it's either going to be
a hardcore work zone or nothing at all. That's where
I'm trying to get That is much more effective than
kind of sitting here all day not.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
You know, kind of working. So there's a bunch of things.
I have a bunch of strategies like that.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Now the second pile of strategies is the duct tape, right,
And so what I'm trying to do is while I
build that habit, for example, is I'm trying to duct
tape the boat into that habit. I have colleague Alisha,
and she is the wise manager of lots of things,
the one week of why employee, and she does like
a million things.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And one of the things that her job entails is dealing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
With my uh flaws and like procrastination. And that's why
my procrastination has very much become her problem. And so
one of the things one of the things that we've
been doing, which has been great, and again it's treating
myself like a baby, but it sometimes that's what you
need to do, is we have as either in person
(06:15):
or on slack video nine thirty to twelve thirty, you know,
these three hours in the morning, the three hours I
want to be deep focusing at minimum. We have her
either sitting next to me or she can see my
screen or I share my screen with her on zoo
and she's working on her own stuff. She's not just
staring at my screen, but I me knowing that she
might be looking at my screen, it's enough external pressure
(06:36):
to be like, well, I'm not going to go dick
around right now like someone's watching me, and then I
find get my work done. I mean, she knows exactly
what's supposed to be in my screen and what's not.
I'm not going to go start texting when she's looking
at my screen.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
So I'm just going to work.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And it's not like procrest enters often you don't have
to drag them, you know, clawing and fighting to work.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
You just have to give them like a little.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Push when they're like I don't want to It's like,
oh okay, fine, right, So that to me is enough
of a push to get me to do those three hours.
So again, that's duct taping the boat because I still
if Alicia's not there, then I won't do it. Probably
fixing the boat means I don't need her anymore. I'm
just going to do this because that's what I do, right,
So that's what I'm aiming for. But in the meantime,
I'm having someone who is going to make me feel
(07:13):
ashamed to not be working when it's supposed to be working,
and people do other kinds of duct tape. They'll have
a friend, they owe a friend will they'll pay a
friend some money and that money that that friend's going
to donate that money to a cause they.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Hate if they don't get their stuff done right.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
So there's a lot of ways you can kind of
you know, duct take the boat in the meantime, and
that's that's mostly what I'm doing now.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
But I'm my goal in life is to not need
the duct tape anymore.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Working on let's talk about how do we fix the
boat so you don't need the duct tape. What are
some of the strategies that you're working on there to
get to that utopian work life.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well, I mean, if you read on you know, books
on habits, you know there's real it's some you know,
this is not some mystery thing. Your brain is a
machine that has automated program that's running at all times.
And that's kind of like sometimes have to go I
will It'll be I'll woken up, come out out into
the kitchen and I'll say, did I brush my teeth?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
And I literally don't know. I have to go and
check it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
The tooth brushes wet because brushing my teeth in the
morning is so automated that my conscious brain doesn't even
have any knowledge whether it happened, just unconsciously, I was
thinking about something and I did it, and you.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Know you usually answers, yes, oh yeah, I did, but
I only remember because it was so it's so unconscious.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Right, So that can be good, or that can work
in our favor or against us. Right, if we have
good habits, that's incredible. Like for example, like I never
have to never procrastinate in brushing my teeth. I never
miss a debt. It's not hard. I don't put any
willpower into it because the automated program hasn't come. And
so when we have good habits in general, our brain
doesn't put it much resistance.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
We just do it. It's just it's just not even
a question mark.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You know, of course we're going to do it, and
just do it and it's over and you don't think
about it. It's it's when you don't have the habit
you have to put in willpower. Now, especially when usually
when you don't have the habit, it's because you have
a bad habit. For a procrastinator, that habit, but you
sit down in the computer to get to your work,
and as soon as you look at the work and
it's this is icky, without even thinking about it, your
hand will just keyboard shortcut over to the chrome window
(09:09):
or to your texts, and you'll start doing something else
without even thinking about it or you know, like so
you'll just be in a habit of procrastinating at the
beginning of your work block, which then might you know,
when you start procrastinating, it becomes even harder.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The longer you go, the harder it is. See it
out of that and get get to work.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
So so I would say that, like, that's what you're
trying to do, is you're trying to have as many
of the automated programs in your head working in line
with your long term goals as possible. So I think
that if you can get this is part of what
I'm trying to do with.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Alisha is just train my brain to like think, I wake.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Up and procrastination like isn't happening right now, Like fun
is not it's not what's on the menu.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
It's not even an option.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like I'm just like obviously i wake up and I'm
like it sucks, but I'm in workmode and then suddenly
I'm free in the afternoon and get my beau because
you know, before I got into this routine, it would
be the opposite.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I wake up and I love waking up. Ah, there's
my phone and all the things to look.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
At on my phone, and then like the way to
make coffee and then maybe take a walk, maybe I'll
call a friend. Like it would seem like oh so much,
and it's like no, no, no, I want to train my
brain to think this is that's later. None of that
stuff happens now. This is this is serious time. So
I think, yes, you want to And when you build
those habits, you don't need the willpower anymore, right, and
so it becomes a lot easier. So it seems like, oh,
this is impossible to maintain these, you know, this kind
(10:25):
of good schedule at first. If you've done it for
a month straight, you will find often that it's kind
of just happening now.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
It's not as hard as it used to be. Now
to go one notch a deeper.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Here's like the to me, like the true like long
term underlying strategy underlying all of this is you have
to change your identity from a procrastinator to a non procrastinator,
you have to change your storyline. You have to convince
yourself that you are someone who doesn't fuck around during
your work block.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
I'm the kind of person who just does this.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
And I know that not because I think I am,
because I know I am, because I just look at
the last ten weeks, look at the last year.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
I'm just just just what I did right now. I
don't have to convince myself I'm someone who brushes my
teeth every morning.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Because I actually am, and I have full confidence, self
confidence that I'm going to do it again tomorrow, and
I'm going to When it comes to will I procrastinate tomorrow?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Will I will?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
I will? I work in my work zone right the
way I want to. It's less of a I don't
feel as confident in it now. I view it as
like there's kind of this awareness in your head that's watching.
I call it the spectator, and it's watching everything that
happens and a picture that spectator is betting on, whether
you know. I always think of the you know, the
(11:38):
procrastinator's mind as a rational decision maker and an instat
gratification monkey.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
And that's what I talked about in the Ted talk,
and these two.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Characters are battling for control of the wheel and the
procrastinators everyone has that. But the procrastinator's problem is that
the monkey is winning the wrong times. But I don't
think you're either of those. I think that you truly
are behind them. Your spectator is watching this, and if
that spectator thinks the monk he's going to win, the
monkey's probably going to win. That spectator believes no, no, no,
(12:05):
Like I think that the rational, the grown up in
the head, is going to win out here, Probably the
grown up will because that spectator's belief is like self confidence,
and that feeds into what's going to happen. So this
is why I think self fulfilling prophecies are very real.
Like whatever the spectator believes is going to happen usually
does because that's where your confidence lies, and.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
The spectator isn't Again, it's just rational.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's just looking at, well, what happened before, Like if
I procrastinated money through Thursday, the spectator I wake up
in the morning, and that spectators on Friday thinking this
is you know, deep down, no way, no way am
I going to.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Actually do what I'm supposed to do today. Right there,
When you have that thought, you're probably going to mess
it up.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
You're probably not going to do what you're supposed to
do that day because you don't believe it yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
So how do you change that?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Right? How do it? That's this this vicious cycle. That's
why procrastinators get stuck for years. The vicious cycle is
because you believe you're going to fail, so you do,
which enforces the belief that you're going to fail, so
you do again. Right, you have to David has to
beat Goliath somehow, Right, you have to.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
See.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
That's why I'm using, for example, my colleague Alisha as
a kind of an assistant in this. I'm trying to
create ways to help David beat Goliath. A few times upset,
and then the spectators start to think, huh, well, maybe
actually here, maybe I've changed, Maybe this is a different
person now, Maybe I am not the procrastinator I used
(13:23):
to be. That's the kind of thinking that can lead
to genuine like I really don't do it anymore.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I just stop doing it one day.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
So there's a lot of jumble thoughts because I'm like
I think about this all the time, obviously, but I
think It's like things like you know, you can talk
about habits and stuff all day, but deep down, it's
like you have to just do it enough you start
to believe that I am someone who has changed, and
then you actually will be someone who has changed.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'm intrigued that you go straight to habits as opposed
to purpose when we talk about procrastination. I remember a
while ago when I had Adam Grant on the show
and he talked about how he will reward himself after
doing a chunk of deep focused work, which social media,
and then I asked him, well, what brings you back
to your work, Like how do you not get lost
(14:05):
in that social media spiral? And he says, well, I
want to work. I'm really clear on why I work
and I love it and I feel that way about
my work too. But I procrastinate a lot, and I'm
curious what role does loving what you do? I mean,
you write and draw for a living that is most
people in many people's dream job, and you get to
do it, yet you're still procrastinating. So where does purpose
(14:28):
and loving what you do fit in?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
My work has a ton of purpose to me? Right,
I feel like you don't feel very lucky to get
to do what I do, and I feel like it matters.
And so I do feel that way, right, and like
you that that's not enough.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Because here's the thing. The work I had, the work.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I do has a lot of long term meaning, right,
it has macro meaning finishing a blog post and putting
it out feels amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Right, It's this reward you get. But that's not so.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
The instant gratification monkey in your head can't think launch.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I can't see that big picture.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
So the rational decision maker is this is this prefrontal
cortex part of our brain that can see the big
picture and plan I had. It's this amazing thing that
separates humans from so many other animals. The instant gratification
monkey is much more of an ancient part of your
brain that is shared with a lot of animals that
wants to that is not in the world it evolved into.
It's like a software program that evolved to live in
(15:23):
a world that we don't live in anymore. So this
idea of writing, working on writing that sometime fourteen months
from that is going to be published as a book,
that part of my brain just like doesn't it can't
get excited about it now a tweet. On the other hand,
I tweet a ton because the tweet is instant gratification.
So and when I tweet, I try to write meaningful
(15:43):
stuff too. The purpose exists there too, and it's much
easier to do and not procrastinate because you get immediate
feedback and mediate reward. Is the rational decision maker knows
about how much purpose and meaning there is, But the
instant gratification monkey isn't that meaning to me? Usually it
comes I don't like the doing the actual work very much.
I love putting the work out there. I love when
(16:03):
I hear that the work resonates with other people, right.
I love when the work connects my brain to other brains.
That doesn't happen while I'm working there. That's just me alone,
And so then the reward's not there yet. The reward's
all coming later. And so the purpose I can know it,
you know rationally in my head that there's purpose, but
I don't feel it in that primal part. And that's
the reason that I will go on the internet and
(16:24):
start sticking around as a five minute break, and now
it's four hours later, because it.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Becomes this the instant gratification.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Monkey just wants to resist something that you have to
actually work hard on that's not perfectible. You know, I
once was wondering, I've spent so much time crushing these
hard crossword puzzles, you know, New York Times Saturdays and Fridays,
and I'm thinking, why don't I procrastinate on that? Right?
Why is that somehow fun? It's hard? It's a challenge,
right Versus then working on this Microsoft word doc when
(16:55):
I'm trying to figure out how to outline this next section?
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Isn't that also a puzzle?
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And I think the answer is that it's it's not perfectible.
You know, there's some there's some kind of thing, primal
thing that the crossroad puzzle taps into that the that
you know, working on long term, more abstract stuff just
doesn't that, you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
We will be back with Tim soon where we talk
about his process for visualizing ideas. And if you have
read any of Tim's incredibly popular blog posts, you will
know how amazingly talented Tim is at visualizing ideas to
make them stick. If you're looking for more tips to
improve the way that you work, I write a short
(17:38):
fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered
that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets
that I'm loving through the interesting research findings. You can
sign up for that at Howiwork dot code That's how
I Work dot co.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I want to dig into the.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Three hour workday which he just described where you're sharing
your screen with a lee shot and I love the
sound of that strategy. What are you doing with the
other five hours? Like, are you making that more black
and white? Because you were saying the problem is that
it's gray and it's this dark playground.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So what do you do with that other five hours
of the workday.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Well, first of all, there's just always a lot of
stuff to do.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
When I say deep focus, I mean it's like to
deep focus on the thing that's most important, right, and
sometimes that's.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Something that's not urgent. You know, have you've heard of
the Eisenhower matrix?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right, So it's.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Arranging everything by how urgent it is and how important
it is. You make a square, right, so important is
the top, and then it gets less important as you
go down, and it gets more.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Urgent as you go to the left.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
The point is that a lot of times we spend
a ton of our time gets sucked.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Up doing the stuff that's urgent but not important.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
So that's emails, that's meetings often you know, sometimes there
you know, it's errands, it's paying bills, it's taking care
of your dogs or your kids. Again, it's not that
this stuff isn't important, but it's stuff that has to
happen urgently and and and the definition of important here
is does it contribute to your long term goals, values
(19:10):
or mission. And usually we spend a lot of this
time doing this urgent stuff. It doesn't actually contribute to.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Our long term goals, values and mission.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Now, ideally, of course the important stuff would also be urgent, right,
so then you're forced to do the importance. But for
most of us, the really important long term work we
need we want to work on, you know. And you know,
whether it's improving as a person or getting better at
you know, building a new skill, or working on a
book that you've always wanted to write, or trying to
get good at the guitar because you want to put
(19:37):
out an album and that really, we deeply would affect
our happiness if we could just do it. Those things
usually don't have deadlines, on right. Those things often are
very important, but they're not urgent.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
That can also extend outside work, seeing your family enough,
you know, you know, spending quality time with your your
your family, or going to the gym whatever, that's that's
this this this this important but not urgent pile of stuff.
And that's kind of the thing I think a lot
of us need to be spending that three hours, you know,
just like stuff where it's like this is a sacred
space for whatever.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
The most important project.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Is the stuff that's really itchy, to stuff that's really
hard to do, the stuff that like matters that in
thirty years I'll look back and like this will be
part of something that mattered and I'll still know that then.
Right now, if you can do that for three hours,
five days a week, that's huge, right, that's a ton
of time.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Sixty hours a month. I mean, you will make incredible progress.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
You can write a whole book just with those three hours,
five days a week in one year, right, even less
for some people.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Outside of that.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Is all the other stuff, right, there's so there's a
huge everyone if you just live in a civilization today,
we have a huge amount of this emails, there's texts,
There's there's bills and errands and things that need to
get done.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
There's just your to do list, right, and a lot
of stuff at work.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Sometimes it's just you're trying to you want to reorganize
your all your folders.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
You want to like, you know, you know, meet with
the developer who's going over your new website.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
You know, you want to have a.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Meet all that stuff. It's it matters, and it's work
you have to do. But but the three hours is
reserved for something that if you could just make.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Progress on it, your whole life would be totally changed.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And if you don't make progress on it, like you'll
really build up long term regrets.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
It's this really important project.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
So now I'm saying this as if like every day
I do my three hours of like you.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Know work for me.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That for me, the really important thing right now is
finishing this book I've been working on and getting you know,
writing right, writing and putting out making content, creating you know,
the content that I want to put it. That's the
most important stuff. This is a plan, This is a
work in progress, right. I often hear some mistakes on me.
Sometimes I will We'll do it for a while, and
(21:44):
then I'll have a couple early meetings, so then we
won't do it for a couple of days, and then
I find like a week later, oh and then Lisha's like,
you want to get back on the nine thirty three,
and I'm like, yes, but it's easy to kind of
just let it slip. Secondly, it's easy too if I
have made a good a lot of progress to power
through and keep working, which isn't not not isn't necessarily
a bad thing. But I find that it's very hard
to have a streak of good days if I have
(22:05):
one like great, great day, you know, as weird as
that sounds. If I like power through and I work
like six hours, it's really hard to come back the
next day and just do those three. So I'm trying
to stop after three, but I often find myself not stopping.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
But yeah, I think I think the way to think
about it.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Is what this is for me, at least three hours,
five days a week of is sacred time that no
one else And this means when I say deep focus.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
I mean you're not on your phone.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Maybe you take a five minute break, you know, each hour,
something that's planned. But like you're not cooking food, you're
not taking phone calls, you're not checking your email or
anything like you are like, it's like, think of it
as a final exam. You know, you know the zone
you're in when you're you go and do a final
exam right in college or whatever, and you're there and
you're like, you know, it's just like hardcore and you finish,
you're like, ah, done, time's up, right, that's the goal.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
That's where you want to get.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Where you're in, like final exam of the three hours,
which means you've all your your whole schedule, your calendar.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Takes this into account.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Like that is you might as well be you're just
off the map for those hours and you plan everything
around that. And then when that's done, you could say okay,
and now you could say the rest of the day,
you know, you can work on the rest of your life.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Maybe you fail at that and you just procrastinate. It
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
The days already success you already want. And likewise, the week,
even if the week you didn't get all the other
little things done, you got behind your to do list,
for what really matters, the week is a success.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I want to talk about visualizing ideas. I feel like
it's something that you're incredibly well known for, and I
feel like some of the ways that you've visualized ideas
in your blog posts, it just I feel like.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
They're images that are etched in my head.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Like I think about the tail end blog post that
you wrote quite some time ago, and I feel like
I will, you know, semi regularly think about the way
you illustrated the course of a life and how much
time we have. What's your approach to firstly deciding what
concepts you're writing about deserve worthy of an illustration.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, that's that's always a question mark, is when to
use writing versus.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Visuals to get a point across.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
There's there's certain times for both, right, There's obviously writing
needs to take the meat of the stuff for me
at least, and there's something that writing can do that
visuals can't write like writing you can. There's just you know,
language has has a lot of ability to get certain
(24:30):
things across that that that.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
You can't do in a visual.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
But if there's certain times when like nothing is like
a good visual Like so for example, with this how
much time you have in your life? I could describe it.
I could say here the number of weeks you have. Here,
the number of months you have, But big numbers were
not very you know, in writing, big numbers don't really
(24:55):
have as much impact if you can, you know, so
like I can say you have forty five.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Hundred weeks the life.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Okay, that kind of sounds like an endless number, and
I'm not endless, but that's like forty five hundred okay whatever.
You know, it doesn't sound that different than if I
said forty five thousand. It's just kind of like some
big number, right. But if I suddenly illustrate it and boom,
you're looking at them all there they are, that's it.
And especially I'll test it out sometimes I would do
something like that and look and say, that looks like
that looks like what the number sounds like. So what's
(25:21):
the point of putting the visual in there. The wording
is going to get the same is going to have
the same effect. But when I've made that particular one,
I looked at it and I said, wow, that is
so much smaller than the number sounds. So that's a
perfect time to do it, right. So I think sometimes
there can be something that's funny, a like a comic
(25:42):
can can be funnier than wording a lot of the time.
Sometimes it can be more sticky and more memorable. So
like I can talk about the instant gratification monkey and
the panic monster and the rational decision maker all I want, right,
But if it's just these long words, these terms versus
a visual boom, it can stick.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So so a visual can help it be, can help
something come through that that it's not going through writing.
It can help make things clearer, and it can help
it be more memorable. So for me, I'm always there's
no formula as I'm writing. I'm always thinking about you know,
I don't want to do a visual just for the
sake of doing it. Would would a visual help here?
What a visual will help a lot here? Would it
(26:21):
make things better? Can this whole paragraph, this whole section
just be is one good visual.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Can be better? I've also made mistakes before.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I've done a visual that is kind of convoluted or
doesn't accomplish that much, and I often and I will
later come back and just look at it and think
like this didn't pop, Like actually I would have just
described this concept. I tried to get too cute here
with like a visual that has like four dimensions and
like has all this stuff, and I'm looking and I'm like.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
This just didn't work.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
And so I'm always trying to get better at that
and like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
How does one get better at visualizing things?
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, honestly, like I have a again, I'm lucky.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
The way my work works is that I try something,
then I publish it, and then if it's not good,
three hundred people are going to tell me how bad
it is, and likewise, and likewise if something's if something's good, likewise,
I can tell which drawings really clicked because I see
them on Twitter. You know, people repost them, people want them,
(27:23):
you know, people talk about.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Them years later. That's the best way I know.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
If if a year later, you know, or multiple years later,
I'm still seeing people talk about the visual, I know
that it worked right, it was it did what I
wanted to do. And then other visuals, there's visuals like
there's so that the tail end was like kind of
the second version of a post I did. The first
one was called life and Weeks, which was just the
(27:48):
week's thing before I started talking about time with people,
and I did this, you know, fifty two week by
ninety year grid right, and that I know has clicked
because people have bought poster that I've made with it,
people have bought t shirts and if people talk about it. Meanwhile,
late in that same post, there's this other visual where
I have this like really convoluted ven diagram, and I
(28:08):
have never once heard anyone mention it again or talk
about it or appraise it or tweet it. I've never
And I looked at it and I barely remembered it
was that there you go, So right there, I'm getting
feedback and learning what's good and what's working what's not
in real time by feedback.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
So that's huge.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Now, some people obviously don't have that particular thing. Maybe
they write, but they don't have comments on their blog
or whatever. You know, there's a lot of reasons that
you wouldn't be able to get feedback, and I think
it's just experience.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
I think, like it's doing a lot of visuals.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Each one you often have an idea of what it
should be, and then as you do it, it evolves
into something different and you just learn so much about
your own skills by doing that. You just you know,
sometimes you stumble upon as you're making a visual upon
like a new idea that you could use with the
visual and then.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You can repeat that in the future.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
But you never would have learned that just by like
you know, so I think just a lot of repetition,
and ideally repetition with feedback, yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Helps them. The same thing goes for writing, of course.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean the best way to be good at writing
is to write a lot, especially if you can write
a lot.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
And get feedback as you go.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
I mean, but even just writing a lot in a
journal alone, like, it's just it'll it'll improve, like anything
shooting a basketball a million times, like you'll get better
at shooting the basketball.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Tim, I wish, I wish I had like all day
with you because it's it's just been so absolutely inspiring
connecting with you after having followed your blog for so
many years.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So thank you so much for your time. For listeners
that want to consume more Tim Urban and wait for why,
what is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Just my blog way dot com and the email list
is where you like can go to know that a
new post is up, because otherwise I post very sporadically
and it's really annoying to just check the site for
a new post. So go to the site and you
can sign up for the email list there. And then also,
I'm with wy on Twitter. I tweet a lot because
(30:12):
that's what I do, and I'm procrastinating.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Tim, and thank you for
spending this last hour with me.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Yes, thank you so much for RepA.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
One of the highlights of this chat with Tim for
me was his accountability strategy with his assistant Alisha. So
I recently hired a new assistant who has just started
working with me, and I'm very keen to give this
strategy a go. I know that I personally find it
so helpful to know that I'm accountable to someone other
(30:44):
than myself when I am.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Trying to plow through hard, deep work.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
How I Work is produced by Inventim with production support
from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
The producer for this episode was.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Liam Riordan and thank you tomt Nimba, who the audio
mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
See you next time.
If you're a knowledge worker, the quality of your thinking
ultimately determines the quality of your work. So how do
you improve the quality of your thinking?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, that's a pretty big question now.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
One person trying to answer that question is Tim Urban,
the author of the incredibly successful blog called Wait But Why.
Tim writes about everything from careers to the state of
American power, to Elon Musk's vision for the future, and
of course he writes about thinking and how we can
(00:36):
get better at it. Tim shares how to break big,
difficult ideas into smaller, more manageable components, and outlines how
he fights procrastination.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
can so Inventium, and this is how I work, a
show about how to help you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Do your best work.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
One of Tim's most notable public appearances was his ted
talk about procrastination, which has been viewed by over sixty
three million people, and if you haven't seen it, if
you're not one of those sixty three million people, you
should check it out immediately because it's brilliant. I wanted
to know whether Tim had developed new strategies for beating
(01:30):
procrastination since he delivered that Ted talk several years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
My life's work is trying to conquer my own procrastination.
So yeah, I like that you said that they're working
because there's a lot of articles on how to beat procrastination,
a lot of advice. And what I find is that
most procrastinators, like myself, read one of those articles, we
get super inspired.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
We think I'm doing this, this is it, I'm doing
that from now on. I'm all set. I just figured on.
And then maybe we do it for.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
A day or two, or we don't even do it
at all. Uh, and then and then move back to
where we were right. So what actually works? I think
there's two categories of solution here. One is a picture
that your habits are kind of a boat that you're in,
and if you're a procrastinator, it means something about the
boat's not working well, like there's a there's a leak,
(02:20):
or there's something's broken. And so the two categories of
solution for something like this are you repair the boat
in a permanent way, like you actually fix the thing
and it's fixed, or you you put temporary duct tape
or something over the pole and it's not permanent.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
It's not actually fixed.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
The boat's still broken, but it's the leak isn't happening
right now because you've you've taped it up for a one.
And so what I've been trying for the obviously ideally
you're the first category where you're actually changing your habits
and you're growing as a human and you're you're not
the way you used to be anymore. And so for
(03:00):
that category, the it's I've been trying to.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
A couple of things. I've been trying to remind myself
that even a.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Big you know, we have this idea in the US
at least that forty hours is a good work you know,
eight hour day is a good work day.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
It's like half the half the day.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You know, you have sixteen awaking hours, put in eight
good hours of working done a full day. If you
actually go into most people's offices or most people's workplaces
who say they work forty hours a week, can you
look at what they're actually doing and how much of
that is really on focusing deep focus, on real work.
The number is usually a lot less than forty. And
I would say I've found that I think as a writer,
at least if I put in three deep, focused hours,
(03:40):
that's a huge that's a great day, like I I I,
but but but it's the psychology is weird where in
my head it's like if I wake up at you know,
eight thirty, and I think, if I just pulled my
lap up onto the bed and work till eleven thirty,
I'm done. Something about that doesn't It's like the perfectionist
to me is like, well, no, I have to work
all day. And what I find is that I'll spend
(04:02):
the whole day sitting around working, except I'm like in
this kind of gray areas where I'm supposed to be
working but I'm not, or that I am a little
and then I stop and there's a lot of breaks,
and so it's this kind of gray area, not really playing,
not really.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Working zone that I spend a ton of time.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
And I call it the dark playground where you're you're
kind of in leisure time you're not supposed to be
in leasure time. I will, i will put in a
huge amounts of hours each week, and then I'll find
that in the end, if I really were honest about
how many of those are real hours, it adds up
to about three hours a day at a really good week.
So the point is what I'm trying to get better
at is less of this permanent gray area between work
(04:37):
and play and more like, I am going to get
my three hours done, and the psychology of that to
be like instead of you know, thinking I have this
whole work day ahead. No no, no, If I just wait
three hours, I'm free for the whole day. But really
doing it. Doing those three hours because it compiles that's
fifteen hours a week, that's sixty real hours a month.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
You can fly through projects and then genuinely on the
other side of it having time.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
So it's turning grades to black and white where you're
not just doing one side of the yin yang, but
you're actually doing the other two. You're genuinely playing when
you're you're not giving yourself guilt free off time where
you're doing high quality stuff and you're having fun in
guilt free fund.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
That's it recharges your battery for the hardcore work.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Zone the next day. So it's either going to be
a hardcore work zone or nothing at all. That's where
I'm trying to get That is much more effective than
kind of sitting here all day not.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
You know, kind of working. So there's a bunch of things.
I have a bunch of strategies like that.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Now the second pile of strategies is the duct tape, right,
And so what I'm trying to do is while I
build that habit, for example, is I'm trying to duct
tape the boat into that habit. I have colleague Alisha,
and she is the wise manager of lots of things,
the one week of why employee, and she does like
a million things.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And one of the things that her job entails is dealing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
With my uh flaws and like procrastination. And that's why
my procrastination has very much become her problem. And so
one of the things one of the things that we've
been doing, which has been great, and again it's treating
myself like a baby, but it sometimes that's what you
need to do, is we have as either in person
(06:15):
or on slack video nine thirty to twelve thirty, you know,
these three hours in the morning, the three hours I
want to be deep focusing at minimum. We have her
either sitting next to me or she can see my
screen or I share my screen with her on zoo
and she's working on her own stuff. She's not just
staring at my screen, but I me knowing that she
might be looking at my screen, it's enough external pressure
(06:36):
to be like, well, I'm not going to go dick
around right now like someone's watching me, and then I
find get my work done. I mean, she knows exactly
what's supposed to be in my screen and what's not.
I'm not going to go start texting when she's looking
at my screen.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
So I'm just going to work.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And it's not like procrest enters often you don't have
to drag them, you know, clawing and fighting to work.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
You just have to give them like a little.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Push when they're like I don't want to It's like,
oh okay, fine, right, So that to me is enough
of a push to get me to do those three hours.
So again, that's duct taping the boat because I still
if Alicia's not there, then I won't do it. Probably
fixing the boat means I don't need her anymore. I'm
just going to do this because that's what I do, right,
So that's what I'm aiming for. But in the meantime,
I'm having someone who is going to make me feel
(07:13):
ashamed to not be working when it's supposed to be working,
and people do other kinds of duct tape. They'll have
a friend, they owe a friend will they'll pay a
friend some money and that money that that friend's going
to donate that money to a cause they.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Hate if they don't get their stuff done right.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
So there's a lot of ways you can kind of
you know, duct take the boat in the meantime, and
that's that's mostly what I'm doing now.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
But I'm my goal in life is to not need
the duct tape anymore.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Working on let's talk about how do we fix the
boat so you don't need the duct tape. What are
some of the strategies that you're working on there to
get to that utopian work life.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well, I mean, if you read on you know, books
on habits, you know there's real it's some you know,
this is not some mystery thing. Your brain is a
machine that has automated program that's running at all times.
And that's kind of like sometimes have to go I
will It'll be I'll woken up, come out out into
the kitchen and I'll say, did I brush my teeth?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
And I literally don't know. I have to go and
check it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
The tooth brushes wet because brushing my teeth in the
morning is so automated that my conscious brain doesn't even
have any knowledge whether it happened, just unconsciously, I was
thinking about something and I did it, and you.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Know you usually answers, yes, oh yeah, I did, but
I only remember because it was so it's so unconscious.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Right, So that can be good, or that can work
in our favor or against us. Right, if we have
good habits, that's incredible. Like for example, like I never
have to never procrastinate in brushing my teeth. I never
miss a debt. It's not hard. I don't put any
willpower into it because the automated program hasn't come. And
so when we have good habits in general, our brain
doesn't put it much resistance.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
We just do it. It's just it's just not even
a question mark.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You know, of course we're going to do it, and
just do it and it's over and you don't think
about it. It's it's when you don't have the habit
you have to put in willpower. Now, especially when usually
when you don't have the habit, it's because you have
a bad habit. For a procrastinator, that habit, but you
sit down in the computer to get to your work,
and as soon as you look at the work and
it's this is icky, without even thinking about it, your
hand will just keyboard shortcut over to the chrome window
(09:09):
or to your texts, and you'll start doing something else
without even thinking about it or you know, like so
you'll just be in a habit of procrastinating at the
beginning of your work block, which then might you know,
when you start procrastinating, it becomes even harder.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The longer you go, the harder it is. See it
out of that and get get to work.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
So so I would say that, like, that's what you're
trying to do, is you're trying to have as many
of the automated programs in your head working in line
with your long term goals as possible. So I think
that if you can get this is part of what
I'm trying to do with.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Alisha is just train my brain to like think, I wake.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Up and procrastination like isn't happening right now, Like fun
is not it's not what's on the menu.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
It's not even an option.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like I'm just like obviously i wake up and I'm
like it sucks, but I'm in workmode and then suddenly
I'm free in the afternoon and get my beau because
you know, before I got into this routine, it would
be the opposite.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I wake up and I love waking up. Ah, there's
my phone and all the things to look.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
At on my phone, and then like the way to
make coffee and then maybe take a walk, maybe I'll
call a friend. Like it would seem like oh so much,
and it's like no, no, no, I want to train my
brain to think this is that's later. None of that
stuff happens now. This is this is serious time. So
I think, yes, you want to And when you build
those habits, you don't need the willpower anymore, right, and
so it becomes a lot easier. So it seems like, oh,
this is impossible to maintain these, you know, this kind
(10:25):
of good schedule at first. If you've done it for
a month straight, you will find often that it's kind
of just happening now.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
It's not as hard as it used to be. Now
to go one notch a deeper.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Here's like the to me, like the true like long
term underlying strategy underlying all of this is you have
to change your identity from a procrastinator to a non procrastinator,
you have to change your storyline. You have to convince
yourself that you are someone who doesn't fuck around during
your work block.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
I'm the kind of person who just does this.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
And I know that not because I think I am,
because I know I am, because I just look at
the last ten weeks, look at the last year.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
I'm just just just what I did right now. I
don't have to convince myself I'm someone who brushes my
teeth every morning.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Because I actually am, and I have full confidence, self
confidence that I'm going to do it again tomorrow, and
I'm going to When it comes to will I procrastinate tomorrow?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Will I will?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
I will? I work in my work zone right the
way I want to. It's less of a I don't
feel as confident in it now. I view it as
like there's kind of this awareness in your head that's watching.
I call it the spectator, and it's watching everything that
happens and a picture that spectator is betting on, whether
you know. I always think of the you know, the
(11:38):
procrastinator's mind as a rational decision maker and an instat
gratification monkey.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
And that's what I talked about in the Ted talk,
and these two.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Characters are battling for control of the wheel and the
procrastinators everyone has that. But the procrastinator's problem is that
the monkey is winning the wrong times. But I don't
think you're either of those. I think that you truly
are behind them. Your spectator is watching this, and if
that spectator thinks the monk he's going to win, the
monkey's probably going to win. That spectator believes no, no, no,
(12:05):
Like I think that the rational, the grown up in
the head, is going to win out here, Probably the
grown up will because that spectator's belief is like self confidence,
and that feeds into what's going to happen. So this
is why I think self fulfilling prophecies are very real.
Like whatever the spectator believes is going to happen usually
does because that's where your confidence lies, and.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
The spectator isn't Again, it's just rational.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's just looking at, well, what happened before, Like if
I procrastinated money through Thursday, the spectator I wake up
in the morning, and that spectators on Friday thinking this
is you know, deep down, no way, no way am
I going to.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Actually do what I'm supposed to do today. Right there,
When you have that thought, you're probably going to mess
it up.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
You're probably not going to do what you're supposed to
do that day because you don't believe it yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
So how do you change that?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Right? How do it? That's this this vicious cycle. That's
why procrastinators get stuck for years. The vicious cycle is
because you believe you're going to fail, so you do,
which enforces the belief that you're going to fail, so
you do again. Right, you have to David has to
beat Goliath somehow, Right, you have to.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
See.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
That's why I'm using, for example, my colleague Alisha as
a kind of an assistant in this. I'm trying to
create ways to help David beat Goliath. A few times upset,
and then the spectators start to think, huh, well, maybe
actually here, maybe I've changed, Maybe this is a different
person now, Maybe I am not the procrastinator I used
(13:23):
to be. That's the kind of thinking that can lead
to genuine like I really don't do it anymore.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I just stop doing it one day.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
So there's a lot of jumble thoughts because I'm like
I think about this all the time, obviously, but I
think It's like things like you know, you can talk
about habits and stuff all day, but deep down, it's
like you have to just do it enough you start
to believe that I am someone who has changed, and
then you actually will be someone who has changed.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'm intrigued that you go straight to habits as opposed
to purpose when we talk about procrastination. I remember a
while ago when I had Adam Grant on the show
and he talked about how he will reward himself after
doing a chunk of deep focused work, which social media,
and then I asked him, well, what brings you back
to your work, Like how do you not get lost
(14:05):
in that social media spiral? And he says, well, I
want to work. I'm really clear on why I work
and I love it and I feel that way about
my work too. But I procrastinate a lot, and I'm
curious what role does loving what you do? I mean,
you write and draw for a living that is most
people in many people's dream job, and you get to
do it, yet you're still procrastinating. So where does purpose
(14:28):
and loving what you do fit in?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
My work has a ton of purpose to me? Right,
I feel like you don't feel very lucky to get
to do what I do, and I feel like it matters.
And so I do feel that way, right, and like
you that that's not enough.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Because here's the thing. The work I had, the work.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I do has a lot of long term meaning, right,
it has macro meaning finishing a blog post and putting
it out feels amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Right, It's this reward you get. But that's not so.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
The instant gratification monkey in your head can't think launch.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I can't see that big picture.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
So the rational decision maker is this is this prefrontal
cortex part of our brain that can see the big
picture and plan I had. It's this amazing thing that
separates humans from so many other animals. The instant gratification
monkey is much more of an ancient part of your
brain that is shared with a lot of animals that
wants to that is not in the world it evolved into.
It's like a software program that evolved to live in
(15:23):
a world that we don't live in anymore. So this
idea of writing, working on writing that sometime fourteen months
from that is going to be published as a book,
that part of my brain just like doesn't it can't
get excited about it now a tweet. On the other hand,
I tweet a ton because the tweet is instant gratification.
So and when I tweet, I try to write meaningful
(15:43):
stuff too. The purpose exists there too, and it's much
easier to do and not procrastinate because you get immediate
feedback and mediate reward. Is the rational decision maker knows
about how much purpose and meaning there is, But the
instant gratification monkey isn't that meaning to me? Usually it
comes I don't like the doing the actual work very much.
I love putting the work out there. I love when
(16:03):
I hear that the work resonates with other people, right.
I love when the work connects my brain to other brains.
That doesn't happen while I'm working there. That's just me alone,
And so then the reward's not there yet. The reward's
all coming later. And so the purpose I can know it,
you know rationally in my head that there's purpose, but
I don't feel it in that primal part. And that's
the reason that I will go on the internet and
(16:24):
start sticking around as a five minute break, and now
it's four hours later, because it.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Becomes this the instant gratification.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Monkey just wants to resist something that you have to
actually work hard on that's not perfectible. You know, I
once was wondering, I've spent so much time crushing these
hard crossword puzzles, you know, New York Times Saturdays and Fridays,
and I'm thinking, why don't I procrastinate on that? Right?
Why is that somehow fun? It's hard? It's a challenge,
right Versus then working on this Microsoft word doc when
(16:55):
I'm trying to figure out how to outline this next section?
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Isn't that also a puzzle?
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And I think the answer is that it's it's not perfectible.
You know, there's some there's some kind of thing, primal
thing that the crossroad puzzle taps into that the that
you know, working on long term, more abstract stuff just
doesn't that, you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
We will be back with Tim soon where we talk
about his process for visualizing ideas. And if you have
read any of Tim's incredibly popular blog posts, you will
know how amazingly talented Tim is at visualizing ideas to
make them stick. If you're looking for more tips to
improve the way that you work, I write a short
(17:38):
fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered
that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets
that I'm loving through the interesting research findings. You can
sign up for that at Howiwork dot code That's how
I Work dot co.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I want to dig into the.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Three hour workday which he just described where you're sharing
your screen with a lee shot and I love the
sound of that strategy. What are you doing with the
other five hours? Like, are you making that more black
and white? Because you were saying the problem is that
it's gray and it's this dark playground.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So what do you do with that other five hours
of the workday.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Well, first of all, there's just always a lot of
stuff to do.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
When I say deep focus, I mean it's like to
deep focus on the thing that's most important, right, and
sometimes that's.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Something that's not urgent. You know, have you've heard of
the Eisenhower matrix?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right, So it's.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Arranging everything by how urgent it is and how important
it is. You make a square, right, so important is
the top, and then it gets less important as you
go down, and it gets more.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Urgent as you go to the left.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
The point is that a lot of times we spend
a ton of our time gets sucked.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Up doing the stuff that's urgent but not important.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
So that's emails, that's meetings often you know, sometimes there
you know, it's errands, it's paying bills, it's taking care
of your dogs or your kids. Again, it's not that
this stuff isn't important, but it's stuff that has to
happen urgently and and and the definition of important here
is does it contribute to your long term goals, values
(19:10):
or mission. And usually we spend a lot of this
time doing this urgent stuff. It doesn't actually contribute to.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Our long term goals, values and mission.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Now, ideally, of course the important stuff would also be urgent, right,
so then you're forced to do the importance. But for
most of us, the really important long term work we
need we want to work on, you know. And you know,
whether it's improving as a person or getting better at
you know, building a new skill, or working on a
book that you've always wanted to write, or trying to
get good at the guitar because you want to put
(19:37):
out an album and that really, we deeply would affect
our happiness if we could just do it. Those things
usually don't have deadlines, on right. Those things often are
very important, but they're not urgent.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
That can also extend outside work, seeing your family enough,
you know, you know, spending quality time with your your
your family, or going to the gym whatever, that's that's
this this this this important but not urgent pile of stuff.
And that's kind of the thing I think a lot
of us need to be spending that three hours, you know,
just like stuff where it's like this is a sacred
space for whatever.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
The most important project.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Is the stuff that's really itchy, to stuff that's really
hard to do, the stuff that like matters that in
thirty years I'll look back and like this will be
part of something that mattered and I'll still know that then.
Right now, if you can do that for three hours,
five days a week, that's huge, right, that's a ton
of time.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Sixty hours a month. I mean, you will make incredible progress.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
You can write a whole book just with those three hours,
five days a week in one year, right, even less
for some people.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Outside of that.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Is all the other stuff, right, there's so there's a
huge everyone if you just live in a civilization today,
we have a huge amount of this emails, there's texts,
There's there's bills and errands and things that need to
get done.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
There's just your to do list, right, and a lot
of stuff at work.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Sometimes it's just you're trying to you want to reorganize
your all your folders.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
You want to like, you know, you know, meet with
the developer who's going over your new website.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
You know, you want to have a.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Meet all that stuff. It's it matters, and it's work
you have to do. But but the three hours is
reserved for something that if you could just make.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Progress on it, your whole life would be totally changed.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And if you don't make progress on it, like you'll
really build up long term regrets.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
It's this really important project.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
So now I'm saying this as if like every day
I do my three hours of like you.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Know work for me.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That for me, the really important thing right now is
finishing this book I've been working on and getting you know,
writing right, writing and putting out making content, creating you know,
the content that I want to put it. That's the
most important stuff. This is a plan, This is a
work in progress, right. I often hear some mistakes on me.
Sometimes I will We'll do it for a while, and
(21:44):
then I'll have a couple early meetings, so then we
won't do it for a couple of days, and then
I find like a week later, oh and then Lisha's like,
you want to get back on the nine thirty three,
and I'm like, yes, but it's easy to kind of
just let it slip. Secondly, it's easy too if I
have made a good a lot of progress to power
through and keep working, which isn't not not isn't necessarily
a bad thing. But I find that it's very hard
to have a streak of good days if I have
(22:05):
one like great, great day, you know, as weird as
that sounds. If I like power through and I work
like six hours, it's really hard to come back the
next day and just do those three. So I'm trying
to stop after three, but I often find myself not stopping.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
But yeah, I think I think the way to think
about it.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Is what this is for me, at least three hours,
five days a week of is sacred time that no
one else And this means when I say deep focus.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
I mean you're not on your phone.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Maybe you take a five minute break, you know, each hour,
something that's planned. But like you're not cooking food, you're
not taking phone calls, you're not checking your email or
anything like you are like, it's like, think of it
as a final exam. You know, you know the zone
you're in when you're you go and do a final
exam right in college or whatever, and you're there and
you're like, you know, it's just like hardcore and you finish,
you're like, ah, done, time's up, right, that's the goal.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
That's where you want to get.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Where you're in, like final exam of the three hours,
which means you've all your your whole schedule, your calendar.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Takes this into account.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Like that is you might as well be you're just
off the map for those hours and you plan everything
around that. And then when that's done, you could say okay,
and now you could say the rest of the day,
you know, you can work on the rest of your life.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Maybe you fail at that and you just procrastinate. It
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
The days already success you already want. And likewise, the week,
even if the week you didn't get all the other
little things done, you got behind your to do list,
for what really matters, the week is a success.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I want to talk about visualizing ideas. I feel like
it's something that you're incredibly well known for, and I
feel like some of the ways that you've visualized ideas
in your blog posts, it just I feel like.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
They're images that are etched in my head.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Like I think about the tail end blog post that
you wrote quite some time ago, and I feel like
I will, you know, semi regularly think about the way
you illustrated the course of a life and how much
time we have. What's your approach to firstly deciding what
concepts you're writing about deserve worthy of an illustration.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, that's that's always a question mark, is when to
use writing versus.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Visuals to get a point across.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
There's there's certain times for both, right, There's obviously writing
needs to take the meat of the stuff for me
at least, and there's something that writing can do that
visuals can't write like writing you can. There's just you know,
language has has a lot of ability to get certain
(24:30):
things across that that that.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
You can't do in a visual.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
But if there's certain times when like nothing is like
a good visual Like so for example, with this how
much time you have in your life? I could describe it.
I could say here the number of weeks you have. Here,
the number of months you have, But big numbers were
not very you know, in writing, big numbers don't really
(24:55):
have as much impact if you can, you know, so
like I can say you have forty five.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Hundred weeks the life.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Okay, that kind of sounds like an endless number, and
I'm not endless, but that's like forty five hundred okay whatever.
You know, it doesn't sound that different than if I
said forty five thousand. It's just kind of like some
big number, right. But if I suddenly illustrate it and boom,
you're looking at them all there they are, that's it.
And especially I'll test it out sometimes I would do
something like that and look and say, that looks like
that looks like what the number sounds like. So what's
(25:21):
the point of putting the visual in there. The wording
is going to get the same is going to have
the same effect. But when I've made that particular one,
I looked at it and I said, wow, that is
so much smaller than the number sounds. So that's a
perfect time to do it, right. So I think sometimes
there can be something that's funny, a like a comic
(25:42):
can can be funnier than wording a lot of the time.
Sometimes it can be more sticky and more memorable. So
like I can talk about the instant gratification monkey and
the panic monster and the rational decision maker all I want, right,
But if it's just these long words, these terms versus
a visual boom, it can stick.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So so a visual can help it be, can help
something come through that that it's not going through writing.
It can help make things clearer, and it can help
it be more memorable. So for me, I'm always there's
no formula as I'm writing. I'm always thinking about you know,
I don't want to do a visual just for the
sake of doing it. Would would a visual help here?
What a visual will help a lot here? Would it
(26:21):
make things better? Can this whole paragraph, this whole section
just be is one good visual.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Can be better? I've also made mistakes before.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I've done a visual that is kind of convoluted or
doesn't accomplish that much, and I often and I will
later come back and just look at it and think
like this didn't pop, Like actually I would have just
described this concept. I tried to get too cute here
with like a visual that has like four dimensions and
like has all this stuff, and I'm looking and I'm like.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
This just didn't work.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
And so I'm always trying to get better at that
and like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
How does one get better at visualizing things?
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, honestly, like I have a again, I'm lucky.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
The way my work works is that I try something,
then I publish it, and then if it's not good,
three hundred people are going to tell me how bad
it is, and likewise, and likewise if something's if something's good, likewise,
I can tell which drawings really clicked because I see
them on Twitter. You know, people repost them, people want them,
(27:23):
you know, people talk about.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Them years later. That's the best way I know.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
If if a year later, you know, or multiple years later,
I'm still seeing people talk about the visual, I know
that it worked right, it was it did what I
wanted to do. And then other visuals, there's visuals like
there's so that the tail end was like kind of
the second version of a post I did. The first
one was called life and Weeks, which was just the
(27:48):
week's thing before I started talking about time with people,
and I did this, you know, fifty two week by
ninety year grid right, and that I know has clicked
because people have bought poster that I've made with it,
people have bought t shirts and if people talk about it. Meanwhile,
late in that same post, there's this other visual where
I have this like really convoluted ven diagram, and I
(28:08):
have never once heard anyone mention it again or talk
about it or appraise it or tweet it. I've never
And I looked at it and I barely remembered it
was that there you go, So right there, I'm getting
feedback and learning what's good and what's working what's not
in real time by feedback.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
So that's huge.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Now, some people obviously don't have that particular thing. Maybe
they write, but they don't have comments on their blog
or whatever. You know, there's a lot of reasons that
you wouldn't be able to get feedback, and I think
it's just experience.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
I think, like it's doing a lot of visuals.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Each one you often have an idea of what it
should be, and then as you do it, it evolves
into something different and you just learn so much about
your own skills by doing that. You just you know,
sometimes you stumble upon as you're making a visual upon
like a new idea that you could use with the
visual and then.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You can repeat that in the future.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
But you never would have learned that just by like
you know, so I think just a lot of repetition,
and ideally repetition with feedback, yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Helps them. The same thing goes for writing, of course.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean the best way to be good at writing
is to write a lot, especially if you can write
a lot.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
And get feedback as you go.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
I mean, but even just writing a lot in a
journal alone, like, it's just it'll it'll improve, like anything
shooting a basketball a million times, like you'll get better
at shooting the basketball.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Tim, I wish, I wish I had like all day
with you because it's it's just been so absolutely inspiring
connecting with you after having followed your blog for so
many years.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So thank you so much for your time. For listeners
that want to consume more Tim Urban and wait for why,
what is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Just my blog way dot com and the email list
is where you like can go to know that a
new post is up, because otherwise I post very sporadically
and it's really annoying to just check the site for
a new post. So go to the site and you
can sign up for the email list there. And then also,
I'm with wy on Twitter. I tweet a lot because
(30:12):
that's what I do, and I'm procrastinating.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Tim, and thank you for
spending this last hour with me.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Yes, thank you so much for RepA.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
One of the highlights of this chat with Tim for
me was his accountability strategy with his assistant Alisha. So
I recently hired a new assistant who has just started
working with me, and I'm very keen to give this
strategy a go. I know that I personally find it
so helpful to know that I'm accountable to someone other
(30:44):
than myself when I am.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Trying to plow through hard, deep work.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
How I Work is produced by Inventim with production support
from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
The producer for this episode was.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Liam Riordan and thank you tomt Nimba, who the audio
mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
See you next time.
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