The Daily Stoic - Tim Urban On Procrastination, Changing Habits, And Slow Improvement

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Ryan speaks with Tim Urban about his new book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies, why everyone who wants to improve at something should aim to do it slowly, what it really means to “trust the process,” why they like writing so much, and more.Tim Urban is a writer, illustrator, blogger, and entrepreneur. He earned his A.B. from Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a major in Government. Since starting his long-form, stick figure-illustrated blog Wait But Why in 2013, he has become one of the most popular writers and thinkers on the internet. His articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Business Insider and Gizmodo, and his 2016 TED Talk: Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator has been viewed over 50 million times on YouTube alone. Wait But Why regularly receives over 1.5 million unique visitors per month on average, and his blog is read by over 300,000 email subscribers. His work, which covers a wide range of topics, including technology, human behavior, self-improvement, and more, can be found at waitbutwhy.com and on Twitter @waitbutwhy and Instagram @timurban. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives

and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. It wasn't a casualty of the pandemic in the true sense, but one of the things that I was looking forward to every year, and I haven't done since the pandemic happened, was I was in this sort of writers group or mastermind, and this group was, you know, it's people like James Clear, Shane Parrish, it's Farnham Street, Steve Cam,

who does Nerd Fitness, Eric Barker from Barking Up the Wrong Tree. I don't know, I won't list everyone. It was a great group. And one of my favorite people in that group was Tim Urban. And, you know, the pandemic happened, so we couldn't do it for a year.

And then some of us had kids, and we got busy, and we just fell out of the habit, and I do hope we get back into it. But today's episode was the longest conversation I've got to have with Tim, since we would spend three or four days in this house in Arizona, and just give each other feedback, kick around ideas, have long dinners. So it really felt like an awesome throwback and you get to listen to this one. Tim is a fascinating dude, way smarter than me. He's got a bachelor's from Harvard, he graduated Magnum Cum Laude, started an SAT tutoring company that was super successful.

Like the idea that you'd be so good at the SATs, you could teach other people how to be good at them, it's incredible to me. You've probably seen a million of his super viral blog posts and articles over the years. Actually, I was just talking to Paul Ravel, the great lacrosse player I'm working on this project with, and he was, he was like, if you ever seen that woolly mammoth post from Tim Urban,

and wait, but why? And we ended up having a big conversation about my favorite post from Tim Urban and Weight But Why. We ended up having a big conversation about my favorite post from Tim. There's this one about like all the potential future options that are available to you, that like the past is limited, but the future has this unlimited potential. That's one of my absolute favorite ones. But my real favorite one from him is this apple theory about how there's the skin, the fruit, and the core of the apple. Some people, the skin's not so good.

They've got the sort of rough exterior, but the fruit is good and the core is good. Some people, the fruits okay, but the core is rotten. Some are rotten all the way through. It's just a great example, I think, of what makes Tim such a smart thinker and an interesting dude. He just thinks about stuff differently, and he manages to express it, articulate it, illustrate it in a way that really sticks with you, that makes you think about things differently, that opens you up to something.

And he talks about science, he talks about AI, he talks about space, but my favorite stuff is when he's talking about procrastination, about the writing process, about making stuff, about trying to get better as a person. That's what we ended up spending most of this episode about when he got off. He was like, you know what? Thanks for talking about it that way, because his book is a bit controversial. His book is called What's Our Problem, A Self-Help Book for Societies, It's Available Only as an e-book on most major platforms and an audio book. It's not up as a print book yet, but it's brilliant, provocative.

I don't agree with all of it. Not what I expected from Tim, but it's as always well done and a lot to chew on. So we don't talk about the book too much here. If you've listened to Tim on other podcasts talking about the book, this is me talking to one of my favorite people, one of the most interesting people writing out there in the world. And I think you're really going to like it. You can check out the book at weightbutway.com. You can follow them on Instagram at Tim Urban. You can follow him on Twitter at weightbutway. You can check out what's our problem. A self-help book for societies, anywhere you get your audio books or your e-books.

And you'll see, I think in this episode why that book took him six years is peculiar vices and virtues when it comes to creativity. And as always, his unique way of thinking about this. So here is my conversation with Tim Urban, who I hope to see in person one of these days very, very soon. Enjoy. It's funny, I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time.

They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy. All my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover.

And as an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness' The Key, The Daily Dad. I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books, so all those are available

and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something.

Obviously, I use my journal, obviously, I turn to stosism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote. So I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient, it's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable, so why wait? And Toxbase can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers.

As a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic. To match with a license therapist today, go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic. That's Talkspace.com slash stoic. How old is the baby? The baby is seven weeks old. Oh, man. Well, good time to do the book launch. That was smart. Yes. No, so it's hilarious. Like, you're supposed to come like two weeks after the book launch. And I was like, okay, I'll have two weeks to like get my shift together and process everything and like do my promo, you know, do all my

podcasts and then she came the day after book launch as it turned out. So kind of, yeah. So it was, it was one night in between these two projects. Well, I was, I was thinking of you, I heard this expression. The expression is, a writer is someone to whom writing does not come easy. And I heard this expression, the expression is, a writer is someone to whom writing does not come easy, and I thought that that is the perfect description of you. There you go. That is definitely me. Yeah, really, I don't know of anything that I supposedly care about, once it's actually the thing I'm supposed to do, I don't know of anything that I supposedly care about once it's actually the thing I'm supposed to do.

I don't think anything has come easy. I always like I'm doing one activity, one activity, and then I think I'm procrastinating on that activity with some other passion. And I'm like, that's what I should be doing. And as soon as that's what I'm supposed to be doing, it becomes not easy. Yeah, it doesn't seem like any of it is easy for you. It seems like it's hard to be Tim Irvin. In a very sort of first world privilege, like, not way, it doesn't seem like it's easy

to be Tim Irvin. Yeah, well, my goal is, and I'm going to all report back on this, but I'm doing another book now, and I'm starting my own podcast, and I'm like, all report back on this but I'm doing another book now and I'm starting my own podcast and I'm like I have a bunch of new projects which I've been dying to start but I've been stuck in this other book for a while and I'm trying to reconfigure my life in a way that it isn't hard to be to it which is nice to be to where it's like I can okay this is fun. Why is it so hard to be to urban?

What gets in the way? You know, it's a combination of, it's like there's so muscle that people like you have somehow you got it, I don't know where. And I don't have that muscle where you can just make a grown-up plan for yourself with no external person telling you you have to do it. There's no teacher saying you have to be in class at this time and there's no parent saying that and you don't have a deadline. And you just do it because it's the right thing to do because it's the right thing to do. It's what you've chosen is that it makes sense to do it. And that muscle for me is I resist, I just resist that usually.

So procrastination may be perfectionism, these are kind of two sides of the same coin. But I will say that I also am someone who believes in growth. I think it's like very easy. When you've been some way for your whole life, or when you're stuck in a long time habit, to just think this is just to give up and say, this is just who I am.

And I don't believe that actually, because habits are just kind of, it's the automated software running in your head, and if you can train it differently, like a dumb dog. And so I'm, I'm, this amusing this transition period to try to like actively make some very like obvious changes and you know do better. So to mix metaphors you're you're broken but you're not fixed. Well I would say I'm broken but I'm fixable., that's what I mean. So you're not fixed like a growth or a fixed mindset, right?

Are you capable of changing? Not fixed. Not that kind of fixed. Yeah. Okay, yes. Exactly. Okay, you were being more clever than I realized. Yes, I'm broken, but I'm not fixed.

Yeah, I just think about it. Humans are so plastic. I mean, think about humans who have had to, you know, my wife's parents grew up in Iran and that's what they thought they were going to live their whole lives and they had family and life and careers there and then they had to suddenly in 1979 move to the US where they didn't speak. It's like people can make giant, massive adjustments and we are survival machines, right? And so it's like, it's, it's, there's no reason I can't make some tiny, much easier life adjustment at any point in my life.

I'm very convinced about that. So, is the muscle that's not there for you? Is it not there for you in all things, or is it only in certain kinds of things? It's there in the category of things where A, it is the thing I'm supposed to be doing. It's the job. It's not the procrastination from the job. If I, I'll be working on one thing and then suddenly I get excited about doing this chart showing how long history has been. And I'll spend four deep focused hours doing it and then tweeted that, right? And because it's not the thing I was supposed to be doing. So, A, it has

to be the thing I'm supposed to be doing in B, it has to be something where no one else is involved. There's no other, if I have a collaborator, I don't, I'm much better about this. If I'm working with someone, it's, it's, it's, it's much, it's a, it's a much better situation. You know, it's really when I'm really left to my own devices. And so then this other part of me kicks in. That's like, ooh, this is hard though. Let's do it in a few minutes. It's just not right now, not this exact moment. And then that goes on for five hours.

Or I'll get into research that I'm supposed to be doing, but I'll then go away too far with it and end up watching like an hour and a half YouTube video about it. I don't really shouldn't be, but it's interesting. And so there's a lot of like kind of compulsive parts of my personality that I think like take over. But it's a source of misery. It's like when I'm better in more control on that, I'm like much, you know, and that's why for me having shorter deadlines, like having weekly blog posts was actually a good match for me, or doing like a weekly podcast, because then the misery's contained.

I'll be miserable with three days. I panic monster comes in, I go and freak out and finish it, and now I'm so happy. And so when it was all worth it, when I published something, it's always all worth it. Oh my God, this is so gratifying. I'm so happy, it's done. And I'm so proud of this now.

So the goal is to just try to like, change that equation a little to, to, I think it's a part of it again, it's this, it's this delusion where I, you know, we are a mutual friend near a y'all, right? He and I would co-work together. And near is very productive. He writes a book and then he writes another book and then he writes another book and then, and he also has a child and he's very, you know, he gets stuff done. And I work with him and we write for 45 minutes

and he's like, okay, that's a good day and he stops. Or maybe maybe we can be like, oh, let's do a long one, it'll work for an hour and a half and then he's like, okay, good long day. Now I'm thinking that my amany, I'm going to write for eight hours today. But if I actually add up the time when I'm deep focused writing, it's probably less than, Neil, the near is actually deep focused writing. So it's just a delusion that you can do more than everyone else. And actually, you're under the, less than everyone else. And so like, it's just accepting reality, which is like, A, I'm not going to do more than two hours of deep focus writing on average day. That's just not realistic. And B, that's a lot. If I just do that, it seems like it's so it's too good to be true.

I can just do two hours. It's like no. There's some kind of like a mass-acoustic thing that's like no, you know, that's not hard enough work. You know, you have to, you know. And so it's a kind of a double delusion there. Yeah, someone emailed me once and they said something about how we always

seem to underestimate the power of consistent but average like contributions or results. And so I think people would be shocked to hear that a writer might only work for 45 minutes or an hour a day because they also buy into the idea of eight hours or marathon sessions, but that can't be done consistently very well or very often. And meanwhile, if you work 45 minutes a day every day for a lot of days in a row, that actually does add up very quickly. Whatever, writing or... It's tortoise and that.

In the air activity. Yes. It's right there should be a tortoise. If you think about it, you're trying to drive, if the book, if doing a book is driving from New York to LA, it's like, if you actually think, if I want to spend 300 total days of work on this, which is like a little over a year of week days. Okay, 3,000 miles. I got to go 10 miles a day.

And the problem is for a certain, for someone who, if it's a very grown up thing to realize that I'm going from mile 340 to 350 today, and that is a success of a day, and that's the unit of a finished book in one year, right? But when I was writing short, one week blog posts, there was this adrenaline where the thing I'm writing right now is gonna be seen by all my readers in two dates and it's gonna be so exciting.

And I can't wait to see what people think of this. And the adrenaline, it's like this is, this is the dumb part of your brain, the kind of instant gratification, kind of unconscious primitive part of your brain it thinks that can see the end there. It's like, oh yeah, your brain, the kind of instant gratification, unconscious, primitive part of your brain, it thinks that can see the end there. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm excited too. But when you're from mile 340 to 350 out of 3000, the dumb part of your brain can't see LA.

This can't even understand that LA is going to happen and just sees as this isn't exciting, nothing new, my life won't be any different at the end of this work day. And so it can be very hard to actually, you know, that's where the resistance comes in. Like what's the point even of going from 10 miles in this mid, it's like it just feels so hopeless, but of course it's not. Yeah, I find the other thing about,

so like let's say you're working on a singular blog post, something you're gonna publish in a few days. Not only is there the validation, but there's also the sense of mastery or confidence that comes from like you have the whole thing more or less in your head, right? You're like, you can imagine, even if it's a 10,000 word blog post,

you're doing it in short enough time and it's contained enough that you're like, I know everything that I think about this. Whereas a book or any kind of longer project like starting a company, you actually don't know all the twists and turns of that road. It's impossible for you to have it all in your head at one time. And so the sort of fortitude to sit with the fact

that actually all I know are the 10 miles in front of me and the sort of intellectual humility to stick solely with that. It takes a lot of discipline. It's easier to just do a lot of self-contained, smaller things than to work on a component piece of a larger hole. Yeah, because if you every day could be team up and be one big brain, they could see the whole thing. And they could see the whole project.

But you're in one little slice, and that's why you have to basically, there's a lot of self-trust. It's like the dumb part of your brain that needs instant gratification and there's not going to get it from this random Tuesday of work. Needs to learn to trust the the smart party or brain that can that understands that this is a big project that it will come together in the end. And it used to be some kind of like yeah like just like seeding of the authority to that party or brain which is what procrastinators have a hard time doing. They are just you know that they're at the whim of this Instagram vacation monkey, as I would call it. Like, but you know, all you have to do is just,

so I'm really forgiving advice to others. Like I can just, you know, I just don't follow it myself very well. But that's what I would say to a writer. I would say the difference between, like, so just say there's two wannabe authors and they've never written, either one's written in a book. And then one starts just really, you know, light.

Just doing, you know, I was gonna say one page three days a week. So four days does nothing. Three days, you know, wakes up in the morning, pulls their laptop on their bed and types for half hour or an hour before they, you know, or maybe two hours before they get up and brush their teeth and do their thing, right? And the other one to be writer is just like that writer, because it doesn't do the three pages a week, because thinks that it's helpless, you know, it's the point of doing the page, you know, I'm in love. So, it's like, actually, and there's 112 waking hours in the week. The one-up be writer has 112.

The person who writes three pages a week, maybe they have 106 or 108 of those. And that's almost the same, right? They're living almost the same exact week except Flash two years later and there's a 300 page book, 300 page manuscript and there's nothing. And it's like, you know, once you realize that, it's just like the idea that, you know, it's this idea that thing is compile over time, but it's just that intuitive. You know, our brains aren't really wired to think that way, to understand that because think about, you know, we're wired for being in a tribe sometime a long time ago. You just didn't have slow annual projects. It's just, that's not how it really works. I mean, maybe you're building a new hut and that's, but it's

like you can see in front of you and you're desperate and there's panic and like, you know, so you have to do some overriding of our intuition You know the other obviously writing is one place you can talk about this But the other place where this where our sort of minds obviously fail us in this regard is like saving for retirement Remete who we both know talks about this a lot you just have to make pretty consistent automatic transfers or deposits in an account that captures the compounding returns of the stock market. You don't have to save that much money for that long, for it to start to get very powerful

very quickly, but we're not good at it. We delay getting started, and then every year. We delay getting started and then every year that we delay getting started or every dollar that we don't contribute, that we could have contributed because we did something else we weren't supposed to do or we thought of a get rich quick scheme or something. It actually moves the goalpost further out of view makes it less likely that we'll actually get where we wanna go.

That's a double way to me because you have the time component of investing a little now for long-far away, which is not intuitive. There's another not intuitive thing there, which is compound growth. We are not wired to understand X-Planetial.

X-Planetial. Right? Again, someone in 20,000 BC, there was really nothing exponential in their life. Everything was linear, right? So they think in straight lines. And of course, today, in an advanced civilization, this exponential curves all over the place. And we are so bad at internalizing that you have to kind of override our in linear mind to see the power of that and to understand, you know, how that works.

So when you do a book, because you do books, I mean, this is true every time it's... Yeah, yes, that's true too. It's like getting your first, getting, sorry, we're having some, getting your first 10,000 followers, getting your first thousand followers on Twitter is like each order of magnitude is an equal

step. Getting from one, getting from one thousand to ten is as hard as the first, getting to a hundred, getting to a million. Getting to, you know, when you get to a thousand, you're actually like, in some way, you're like, you've done one of the four steps on the way to, you know, a million or whatever. And so, you know, it doesn't feel like that at the time. Because again, you're thinking linearly, but it's really more logarithmic in this case. And a lot of people give up in that first thing before the hockey stick takes off because they're just projecting,

they're extrapolating the linear curve from where they're going and it doesn't look very good. Yeah, you have to, when they talk about like trusting the process, right? Like whether it's trusting the process of retirement or trusting the process of mastering the skill or trusting the process of, you know, turning around in sports franchise, I don't think we're good at comprehending

how much trust is actually required, right? Because there is that early period where you're doing all the stuff right and you're gaining one follower a day, or you saw the interest in your account, you know, you got a $2.75 cent interest payment. You're like, this is never going to get me to the point where I don't have to worry about money anymore. Or on a book, you're like, I worked all day and I am one page closer. Like, I can't do this, you know?

But it's really the ability to sort of suspend disbelief to leap into the dark and to hand yourself over to some process that people before you have been through, I think that's the main thing. Like people who have the ability to trust a process are gonna be people who can take advantage of that process. But if you are ultimately cynical, or as you were saying earlier, like if you don't believe you're capable of change,

like deep down you don't think it will work. You're probably not going to commit to said process to a level that actually lets you take advantage of it. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard. The also, it's not even quite as simple as like, oh, you made one page of progress or you gain this much money. Because sometimes you lose money in the stock market. It goes down or you write a bunch of pages and you realize that the whole last 20 pages, and I'm cutting it, it doesn't even, it's not, I don't like where I've been going with this.

And the point is, again, if you zoom out, what you see is a stock market chart, both with your writing and whatever, it's gonna go up up and then it's going to go down, but it's going to go up over time. And so again, you really, people really give up on those little downswings. And that's, you know, there's so much of life, is a broadly upward moving stock chart that has lots of downs along the way. And it's hard not to lose your nerve in those down because that again, the dumb part of our brain truly can't see more than three feet ahead of you.

So you have to be able to, and you lose a lot of motivation, you know, it's very demotivating in those moments. And that trust in the process, I mean, I think once you've seen it work once, it's easier to work to have it, you know, trust it again. But a lot of especially people who have never really, they've never been able to get themselves to do a big project. There's just no confidence in a process. And it's, you know, somehow you have to, David has to be Goliath in that first time to see it work. And then they can release it. Give you that faith. Because, you said, you said the words deep down, you don't believe, right? And I think that self-affilling prophecies are very real.

And it's like, if you consider these two characters in your brain, the kind of rational character that knows about exponential curves and understands that it's a process and wants to have good work ethic. And then the other part of your brain that can see two feet in front of you and needs gratification, needs adrenaline to do anything and panic.

And it's almost like you're not either of those. It's like they're like in a gladiator painting, you know, battling and you're a spectator and you're watching. And it's like, who you believe is going to win, you know, who you're, if you could bet, who you're truly betting on with the rational bet, that's, that gives that character so much strength in your mind. And that's where your confidence is. So your confidence is that the,

I'm confident that the monkey's gonna win, and so I'm not confident that I'm gonna do what I wanna do. That monkey just got like Popeye's finish, you know, and it's like on steroids. And so that's why it's like, you have to somehow have David B. Goliath a few times. And now the better the observer in the stands actually starts to think, I'm not sure if the smart smart bet to bet, and the monkey may lost three times

in a row. I might bet on the other guy. And that's like, whoa, that's a totally different like self-image. Your whole storyline is different in your head right now. And so, uh, yeah. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so- so expert experts.

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So, okay, so you are the opposite, right? Every time I finished a page of the book, you had another book out, okay? It's like one page for me and one book for you. And I'm just in general, I've seen you do your thing where you'll like, we'll have like, you know, you'll have 15 minutes in between two things and you'll just like open a laptop and knock out some edits in your book. And for me, it's like, you know, perfectionism. I'm like, no, no, no, I need like a five hour clear window with every single thing perfect,

right? Of course, which is not a grown-up way to think about it. So were you always like that, or did you like grow into that person? Well, you know, it's funny. We always look at the people that are wired or act differently than us, and we think that it's somehow better, even though it comes with its own demons, right?

Like I remember one time I was in my swimming pool with my wife. We didn't have kids yet, whereas in the pool, we just got in, and all of a sudden I'm like swimming around, like looking at, there's something about it that was bothering me. Like I thought it was broken or I thought we could fix this thing. And then I was like, do you wanna swim laps?

And she was like, you know, we could just be in the pool. She was like, we could just be in the water. We don't have to like do anything. And so for me, it's usually the opposite problem, which is, I think, I do. I think there's a certain part of me that's always been sort of wired towards doing stuff. And then obviously that becomes self-fulfilling, and you get momentum, and then you believe in the process, and it works, and it's a virtuous circle.

But the vicious part of it is it makes it hard for you to not do stuff because you understand that not doing stuff has, there's an opportunity cost to not doing stuff or to not taking advantage of every moment or not being fully optimized. And so for me, like I'm in the middle of this right now, I was supposed to do, I'm doing this series on the Cardinal virtues. So I did the first two books and then the next book was supposed to come out this fall, and it's more or less done. And then I would be starting just about now,

I would be starting the fourth book in the series. And I made the decision to kick that whole process out a year. And weirdly, like I have been dealing with a whole bunch of sort of existential issues stemming from the fact that when I wake up in the morning, I don't have a thing that I have to be doing to hit a deadline that I've given myself. And there's a sort of an un-mordness to that, that like clearly at some point, I felt when I was younger and really didn't like that feeling

and built a life around not ever having that feeling and that's not healthy either. Yeah, I was one dirt of like, you know, I was, you know, people, you know, I was assumed, okay, if I dug into my, why I self-defeat in this way, it must be some kind of like deep inner, you know, shame or self-esteem or something. And then I was thinking one day that I wonder if it's maybe the opposite, which is that, is that I, maybe there's some kind of like,

feeling that's, that most people develop from maybe from their parents values of shame for not going outside all day or shame for not being productive and that's like a stick that gets implanted in their head that hits them when they you know and they're scared of that stick and maybe I lack that maybe it's like I don't know but I hear you say that because that thought bag like you know maybe you know yeah like your you know, yeah, like your thing to overcome would be like you said, with the wife in the pool, which is like, there's a dependency on the feeling that you're achieving something. There's some kind of emotional dependency there, which again, serves you really well in so many ways, but it's

interesting digging into like what that is. Well, work for me, like sitting down and writing, in the flow state of writing is a wonderful feeling. It's very soothing and it's more or less in my control, like the world is complicated, the world is unpredictable, the world is all of these things. But when I sit down and I have the material that I've researched, I get to move these things

around at will, I get to live with these ideas and people and characters and concepts that I find very stimulating and meaningful. And I'm the master of my domain, right? I'm moving the words around on the page. I'm doing the thing that I'm the master of my domain, right? I'm moving the words around on the page. I'm doing the thing that I'm really good at. I don't have to listen or do any other things that the volume on the inconveniences of life

is turned down for that brief period. And so to not do that, either because I'm procrastinating or because I'm practicing self-restraint and I'm saying, hey, to do this sustainably over a long period of time, you have to pace yourself. There's distress in that. You're sort of willingly feeling a discomfort that's maybe akin to the discomfort you're feeling from actually concentrating. But maybe we're both the four, I think, as humans, we try to stay in our comfort zone.

Right, so we're actually maybe just both avoiding suffer and that it's like we're both doing the least painful thing, right? And so the question is, and I'm probably, rather than try to, you know, you know, it's like you can do, you can, if you want to change in life, you can do one of two things. You can try to go, you try to go for suffering. What's the most separable thing?

Let me do that and train yourself to be more massacistic in a way. Or you can try to reconfigure your psychology, reframe, change the way your schedule looks, change your reward structure, such that you reconfigure what is the most suffering, right? So you can still, okay, let's suffering be the runner, that's fine, but I'm gonna like change the direction of the wind or something, you know, so yeah. Well, it's like discipline for some people is like buckling down and doing the thing, and then discipline for other people is like taking your foot off the gas, right? And not doing something.

And I'm probably more in that second category than the first category. I mean, there's definitely things where I'm not that way, but it's just sort of understanding like, what is the harder thing for you? And then why is that the harder thing? And then do you have the resources or the willpower to go towards that thing? Because I think ideally you wanna be in control, not your desires or your aversions. The Stokes would say at the end of the day,

those are the same thing, right? Like if you're repulsed by something or overwhelmingly attracted to that thing, in either case, you're not really in control. Some deeper part of the... The electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic, negative field is driving you or everything.

Yeah. And that's probably not good. Right. Right. Yeah, I think I think I'm probably very, like, yeah, I'm probably very, I'm very much inside the electromagnetic field. And that's, I guess I was saying that there's two ways you can go towards the suffering.

You can try to reconfigure the field direction that's what's pulling you up or, I guess, with the stoics, it says, no, no, no, you're not thinking big enough. You need to step, you'll ascend above the electromagnetic interference. Now you're in control, which is, yeah, that's really interesting. Could be hugely empowering, I imagine, if you can pull it off.

Why was just thinking about something you said, though, about sort of building the muscle or having the experience with finishing projects? Because I know you just became a parent. And one of my favorite Paul Graham assays, his kids are and he was talking about, you know, do you send them to college? How do you prepare them for the world? And he basically comes up with this idea that the most important thing you can give a kid are a series of projects, like things that they get really interested in, that they work on,

and that becomes a microcosm of learning some of the lessons that we're talking about. So for one kid, maybe it's building model trains, for other kids, it's making the football team, for other kids, it's learning a foreign language. But I am a big believer in the idea of having projects because once you've done something like you built an audience or you've written a book or you've lost 200 pounds or you've moved across the country, it doesn't matter what

that thing is. If you've done stuff like that, then to me that's the transferable skill where you're like, I leapt off the ledge, I felt the terror falling down and then I built the airplane and I didn't crash, right? Like the ability to have that sort of to see a process or a project all the way through, that's like the most valuable skill you can acquire as a person. Because that's the evidence. That's the evidence you talked about, right? Yes.

And it is an interesting thing where when you haven't ever succeeded in something, whether you've tried it or not, even, it just, it's just again, and it says something about our nature, it feels impossible, right? It feels like, you know, all that's one in a million, or it takes, it just takes so much luck or whatever. And there is, you know, this is a Steve Jobs quote about once you realize that the world around you is built by people no smarter than yourself and you can get in there and you can push things and that's something else falls out and you can change the shape of things.

Your life is never the same again. It's this great epiphany and I do believe that it's this, it's this, it's this, um, a combo of, you know, it's not necessary that you realize that you're more powerful or you're more special than you, you are instead. You realize that the world is not that awesome or impressive and then like, yeah, any game you want to get in and try to win, you know, like the, the people who are currently winning it, are, they're just humans also. But the same amount of time you have, they have flaws also. You know, granted, there's hardware games in others. You want to, you know, play in the masters and when they, okay, you're going to have to,

you know, even there. You know, it's like, I'm sure a lot of people that actually could have gotten there, just give up right away. That's impossible. You have to be so lucky. And it's like, well, it's actually these other guys are there. And they're just humans. They were just a baby with a bottle at some point.

And, you know, they're not magical. You know, okay, if you want to be in the NBA, okay, you need a certain height or whatever. But really, for most things, I would just give, you know, our careers as an example. Like, there's a lot of people out there with a ton of insight, they observe things, they have interesting ways of thinking about things, their friends love hearing their way of thinking because they're so interesting. And that person, like person has everything they need to go and suddenly be a big time writer, author,

whatever kind of thing. And they have this barrier, where it feels like they just don't realize that it is totally doable. And so they don't even try it. A lot of people don't even try it in the first place. But that's why the Paulgram thing makes sense. You're teaching a kid early.

You put your mind to something. You move, you go in some ups and downs, you get experience going in the downs, and then boom, look what happens at the end. You get there, or you don't get there. And you realize that feeling. Feeling isn't it? Yeah, actually, it was kind of cool.

It was kind of a fun experience and like, now you're, so it's either way, it's gotta be so useful. Yeah, I wrote about this in the daily data a little bit. Like, everyone today is talking about this idea of NEPO babies and we're sort of all very upset and outraged at it. I wonder how much of the nepotbaby thing,

like why do the children of successful people become successful in that chosen field? Obviously, there's genetic advantages, obviously there's relational advantages, but I wonder how much of it is like, you saw your mom or dad do that thing, and it made it very humanizing to you. You're like, yeah, dad goes to work at an NBA arena

and that's a normal place to go to work. And there's a path to getting into that thing that isn't unattainable and crazy. Like when I was growing up, none of my parents' friends didn't have jobs. Like all my parents' friends had jobs. They didn't know a single entrepreneur. I didn't know a single creative person.

So it wasn't in the data. I went to college and then I met people, like professors and writers and stuff, and realized that these were just normal people and that it was a job, not unlike being a school principal or having a construction company or something, that it's just a job. And so I think one of the things that, like, growing up the child of a person who is in a path, an untraditional path like that, is it becomes a lot more familiar to you and

thus a lot less intimidating. And that's actually the real advantage more than money or genetics. Yeah, you're also just witnessing someone whose worldview is that society is my plaything, society is my canvas. And I'm like, you know, and like, I have fun with, I go and like, I do my thing in society. He's opposed to someone who's cowering before society and thinking like, you know, who's, you know, the opposite of the opposite of that attitude, I think is someone who's a pair's parents, and which is a lot of parents around me when I grew up. They're very to prestige.

And, you know, prestige is just another way of saying like, you're getting a pat on the head from society. You know, you're, you're treating society like this really important thing, big scary thing to approve of you. And as opposed to thinking of society, it's my playground. Now, let's get out there and mess around with it. Totally different way. So if you're seeing, if you're around the vibe of society is big and scary, you're just going to absorb that.

And you're going to have to override that. One of the ways I remember reading Rich Dad or Dad, and it was mind blowing. It was actually a terribly written book, and it's like run on sentences, and it's like redundant, and it doesn't matter. The concept I had never heard, I was like 20, I'm reading it, and it was this idea that like, you can have make money by just being creative

and not having a job. And it was like, it was just, but some people are just around that from the beginning. They're just, of course, and their parents are always, Paul Graham's case, imagine how ahead they are in this regard. They're just hearing from someone who's very wise in this, he's a great communicator,

but he also, his life has been in turning, you know, teaching people how to make society theirs. So yeah, I mean, it's absorbing, it's not just watching them go into the arena or whatever, but it's like just thinking, you know, you absorb so much from your parents, just osmosis just in, and I think, yeah, I grew up in a suburb where everyone, everyone's parents were lawyers, doctors, teachers, and yeah, nothing else. That's what I think so funny about that college

admission scandal, right? Like, these were all extremely rich, extremely powerful families, most of whom had become extraordinarily successful through untraditional paths, right? Entrepreneurial, creative, you know, acting, whatever. And the message they were sending their kids is that actually all of that is totally worthless.

At the end of the day, society is a set of rules. It's this fixed competition with a fixed number of spots available if you wanna do something in life. And these spots are so valuable that we actually have to cheat to get them, but if we don't cheat to get them, you will be a loser and nothing will happen for you, right? Which is like the exact opposite of their lived experience, and I think there's an irony in that these people so wanted to secure advantages to their kids, like a degree from Harvard or the networking that would come from this school, that school.

When they already had, given them the enormous advantage of showing them that the world is flexible and malleable and you can make your own path, and they are like, if you're a billionaire hedge fund manager, what kind of advantage is networking-wise? Do you think your kid is gonna get at Harvard? Like, you can just introduce them to those people from your own life.

Like, the whole thing just struck me as such a weird commentary on how humans can abandon the very thing that made them successful in the first place. Well, let's go back to, again, our wiring. It's really intuitive to humans. To be inside whatever game is being played around them. And so those parents are talking to other parents and their kids want to hear and their kids want to hear. And that's actually like, and you just even though they have every reason to see this game is not what we should be playing,

you just get sucked in. It's not the right. It's me of like, no, but okay, so I remember I was on a, I love traveling alone. So one of my favorite things. Just going on like a trip by myself and I meet people, I'm like, my, my, this outgoing side of me comes out and it's never out in, in the US. And I made a ton of friends, I'm still in touch with them, whatever. So I go on this one thing, I was in some like thing, and I got a 3-2-3-day thing in the Amazon.

And there's a group of other, you know, backbackers there from, like, you know, I don't know where they're from, Britain, other places in Europe. And normally, it's just very, I just make friends with Europe being backbacker, right away we would all be buddies, right? I don't know whether I was being annoying or they weren't my type or they ate Americans or maybe I was in my head, but I felt out there. I felt out there. It was like maybe I think it was four or five of them. I don't know whether I don't even know whether they remember what they knew each other or not, but they weren't being very friendly. And so every part of my smart brain would say, but all right, it's kind of interesting. Like, why are they being like and then going,

oh, I could dig into my book on this trip instead. I thought I was gonna be hanging out. I'll never see them again either way. Like, cool, I'll go see you. It just, and yet what happened was, I got really upset about it. I found myself really feeling, and I felt like I was in middle school. And I felt like, and I was like, I was like, wishing they would be friendly and inviting me over to their, and I was like, I was like, you know, wishing they would, they would be friendly and inviting me over to their house like, what is this is makes absolute. How am I suddenly

upset about being out group by four randos? I will never see again, why just met. And it's just a point is we are, if there's, and that's one of the games, of course, we are really susceptible to is the in group out group, you know, middle school game. This is, you know, I think a lot of like political tribalism comes around, you know, from this. It's like, as soon as that game is being played around us, it's like, there's pheromones in the air and the dumb part of our brain wakes up and it's like, I need to win this game and it can't see, it can't zoom out at all.

And I feel like that's another version of what's happening here when suddenly everyone around you, it's, you're, you're worth as a family, is about, does, is your kid going, you know, maybe you're a big movie star, but you're a dumb movie star, or do you have an actually smart family whose kid goes to, suddenly, I'm stuck in this game. And it's like, it just makes no sense at all. So you have to ask, what game, what game am I right now caught up in? Now I even realize, it makes no sense to care about.

Yeah, this kind of relates to your thing about the mammoth, the woolly mammoth of caring what other people think. To be a person who didn't give a shit what other people thought for almost all of human history is a losing proposition. But in our artistic field, not caring what people thought think is how you break out, is how you do something unique. It's how you break through convention. And so it's very hard to turn off a piece of wiring that has been there since before we were even

conscious of there being such a thing as that kind of wiring. This is like comedians think about what what does a successful comedian do? Obviously, they have a knack for comedy. That's a big thing. But the other huge part of what they're doing is they realize that they find the things that everyone's thinking but no one's saying either because everyone's scared to say it or sometimes just because everyone has that experience that they don't realize it's universal. And so when someone else says they say, oh my god, I did that too. So what it is is this ability to know what everyone is thinking that no one is saying and understand that no one is actually offended by everyone just like think society thinks it's offensive but it's not actually like actually.

And then they go and say it out loud and the audience is in stitches. They are so delighted that someone is saying this thing, and it's a reflection not on the comedian, but on the audience. Like, why are we all so delighted to hear that? Because we're all scared to say this thing. For some weird reason, because we're all and we're conformist people who are terrified

of being different. And so yeah, it's... Well, you know what's fascinating is we were talking earlier, like some people discipline is doing stuff, and for some people discipline is not doing stuff. What's interesting about the sort of non conformity thing that you just mentioned is that, and we both know some of these very successful,

interesting people, like most people sort of think like everyone else. And so there is a skill in thinking not like everyone else, right? Of sort of pausing when you're on the side of the majority and thinking differently. And then I think what's been interesting the last couple of years is watching some of the people

who are really good at thinking differently. And this is how they built multi-billion dollar fortunes or totally unique or interesting companies to watch them struggle to grasp fairly obvious or straightforward or common sense things that the majority of the people have come to see. They're like, I guess what I'm saying is sometimes that non-conformist person actually has to have

the ability to turn off that non-conformity because what they're disagreeing about is say the existence of gravity. Or, you know what I mean? Like, they're outsmarting themselves, basically. Like, the public is actually right here, or the consensus view is actually more or less correct here, and your contrarian thinking or your non-conformist thinking is actually getting you in trouble. And I don't mean trouble in the sense that some people disagree with you. It's just taking you further afield than you think you are because you're running the

same playbook that served you well in the past, but it's actually screwing with your bearings in this case. Like an actual independent thinker, which is really hard to do. True independent thinking. It's not that you don't have everyone has influence, it's just but like you can observe and you can come with it and you can run with it,

what you think, that person's gonna sometimes come up with the contrarian things that are gonna shock everyone. And a lot of the other times they're gonna come up with the thing everyone else has because it's actually, it's not like the public's always wrong. And so you're talking about it's you know when it's like when there's a contrarian position to be taken there's kind of two kinds of people taking it.

There's the independent thinker who happens to kind of have come there for this particular topic and then there's the person whose identity is being contrarian and who it's they're not actually independent. You know that's not actually independent thinking it's it's it's more independent than a total conformist but it is actually like you're in your own prison, which is that I can never conform because now my self-esteem is tied to being someone who doesn't conform. And that's not really great either. And I think some people can start as the first kind and then get hooked on the feeling

of, and it's a lot more fun to be right when everyone's wrong than it is to you know be right when everyone's right but yeah you know real actual independent thinking you have to continue to kind of remove prison walls that your your mind's gonna put up because you're gonna start to get like your ideas you know you're also gonna get attached to your ideas that were really brilliant but maybe times of change and you have to so it's a continual struggle to just throw push down the prison walls and kind of humble up and continue to be truly independent. Yes, it's not just putting, I think Peter Till said this,

it's not just putting a minus sign in front of what everyone else is thinking because what if they're right? Right. Yeah, and there's, you know, it's in some ways you end up, and this is a little different, but like, I've learned a little bit about the flat earth society, which is real. And it's, you know, the people who, there are, you know, at least when I

checked last, there were 10,000 members in counting, and probably bigger now. And the, what you find is that they don't just believe the earth is flat. They also believe the moon landing was fake. And the JFK was, you know, an inside job. And that, and that, um, 9-11 was, you know, done by the Americans. And every single conspiracy that's out there, they believe. Because they're, they have a paranoid mindset that anything that the consensus believes is wrong, which of course, no one wants to,

you know, that's not a good thing, right? And so it's, and then of course, what you also find, and this is kind of a signal that something is wrong, is that people who are super-conturian, they end up with these pet theories, though, and they become the opposite of the other, they have almost like an overload of skepticism, but then they go flip the other way and have go completely gullible when it comes to their pet theories. So the flat earth, you can bring them up in space and show them the earth and they'll say, oh, this is a screen or you've drugged me or something. There's nothing, right? But as soon as you say, oh yeah, because ships, you shouldn't be able to see them there

if the earth were round. And the fact that without any, they don't do the math, they just say, see, there we go, more per- Yeah. They just believe whatever they do, right? So you see a lot of that as the same people who are uber-contrarian are actually supremely gullible when it comes to things they do like.

Right. And because there is usually not a lot of good evidence for what they're talking about, when a study that would otherwise be discredited or looked at weirdly or whatever, they need even the slightest veneer of sort of support or credentialism, right? So they'll jump all over, you know, some weirdo academic that thinks the same way they do, even if in every other aspect, that person is a crazy person. This happens, you know, on all sides of the political spectrum, right? Like you don't like the other side.

So then somebody agrees with you that the other side sucks. You're willing to overlook a lot of things about that person because it buttresses your side of the argument or it gives you some appeal to authority that you otherwise wouldn't have. Which is an independent thinking. You know, that's that you're thinking settings are being configured based on the belief of the person you're hearing from. And so your skepticism filter opens

up wide, you let all and then it goes super tight. And it's not being based on any any kind of good metric. It's just on this thing. You've been basically in this happens to all of us. Your mind, your thinking process has been captured by an ulterior motive, which is to believe this and to not believe that thing. You can't have two sacred motives. So, as soon as truth can be the sacred motive, but some of something in that case has come up above truth, and now your settings, all we can figure around that sacred motive. So now suddenly believing this thing, proving this thing correct, is now the sacred motive. So now suddenly believing this thing, you know, proving this thing correct,

is now the sacred value. And that's not independent either. You know, actual independent thinking should not be that interesting a lot. And if a person should say, I don't know a ton, because unless it's something really, you know, straightforward, most things,

we just don't know that much as a species, there's not enough evidence, or there is, but you have to put the time it really dig into the evidence. So you're. And so like that's a sign of an independent thinker is there often, you know, they don't have an opinion, they're saying, I don't know, and someone who's, you know, every opinion is really strong, there's a sign, something there's some other proxy going on there for their beliefs. their beliefs. So let me ask you about the new book, because one of the things I was interested in, we were talking about projects earlier, like how do you know you finished a project, trust, you have the evidence. But you're six years into this project. It's taken so much longer than you thought. It's turned into a bunch of things,

it got in a bunch of different directions that maybe you didn't think it would go. How did you know not to quit? Like how did you know that you were heading in the right direction as opposed to, you know, stuck in a dead end? I'm not sure I even knew it was the right direction as much as, well, first of all, there's just a lot of silly human things, like some cost fallacy.

I don't know if I'm grown up enough to spend four years on a project and then throw it away. I just don't know if I can handle that. If I thought this thing was trash and I was like, this thing is actually just not. It's not what I wanted to do. Okay, I think I in the end that would win out. But like if I think something has potential, a lot of times I've learned from blog posts. I'll put something out that I think is awesome and it doesn't really pop and vice versa. I'll put something out that I think, oh, it's a cute thing and it went viral. And so I also just thought this is this certainly qualifies as any of, as the quality of any of those

other blog posts, some of which you know, it surprised me. And so I felt it was it was it was it crossed the threshold where it was like who nuts, but this out in the world and see what people think of it. So I don't think it was some like some you know, fully binary thing. I think there would have been a pretty intense threshold to actually quit. Because, you know, look, the worst case is this is my, this is what I've been thinking about for six years. And here's all the tools that I've been using. And I did a lot of, you know, what I've used Twitter for is so many of the images in the book. I would just tweet out

and it's a way to throw it against the wall and see if it sticks and just see how people react. So most of the things in there were pretty well well-tested, and run in my friends. And it was what I was thinking. And I was like, so if this is what I'm thinking, I don't know whether people were resonating or not, but I want to, that's kind of what I do. I'll put out things I'm thinking. It's not an academic paper that has to have be replicated.

It's just, this is, so it wasn't really much of a chance I was going to toss it. I did toss huge parts of it, because it couldn't get that long. But the hard part was just went to stop adding in new things, and I will never do a book on current events again. Maybe an article on current events, and I'll do books on universal topics, evergreen topics. A book on current events is a nightmare, because you want part of what makes it interesting. Someone's writing a substack on current events.

It's great because they're the thing that happened yesterday. Okay, here's what I think. Now imagine that substack is a year delay. So it comes out in March of 24, about, you know, April 24 for something, and they're writing about this last week. No one wants to read it, right? So you have to, so that's one of the things I didn't do print book for that reason,

and I might do print on demand now, but I was like, if I don't do print, I can have this one month only versus a year old, which is just not a good plan, or maybe not a year might have been nine months old. And so the hard part was, you know, like I almost, you know, I almost published this in 2020 and then George Floyd happens. And I'm writing about society politics. It's just a seismic earthquake just happened in our society. For a lot of reasons, just one of those times when societies

take tonic plates are pretty stubborn. And movements try to move them and it's hard. And then something happens, whether it's a war or a giant protest, movement or something, 9-11 was one of these. It's an earthquake. The plates are moving. You know, they're not going to be moving for long, maybe a couple months, and then they settle into a new stubborn equilibrium right last 10 years.

So the Bush administration said, boom, let's start over right now. The mood plates are moving. We can, this is all this opportunity is there for movements, for politicians in this one moment, and it's also a danger. It's a scary time. The plates are moving. All the rules, desperate times, desperate measures, things go crazy.

So anyway, there'd be things like that when I see an earthquake. And I'm like, well, the book has to, I can't have the book come out, and the pre-earth week book come out post-earth week. So anyway, I finally decided, you know, the things are gonna keep moving, and that's okay, and I just need to publish. So I just finally, you know, it's hard finishing because I had to cut a lot and cutting his

nightmare-ish. But yes, finally, it got out, and I think I feel good about the timing. I feel like, okay, it was and still, I believe, is an expression of the current moment. Maybe in a year, it'll be feel like a little dated. Right now it feels like it's still on point. That is a weird thing that you learn. I think who is the screenwriter? I'm forgetting his name, but there's a great William Golden.

He said, nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything about what is or isn't going to work. And one of the things you learn putting stuff out there is that some of the things you had the most doubts about turned out to be fantastic and people love them. And the thing you were most certain about didn't work at all. And there's some freedom in that, but it's also disorienting because now you don't know whether to trust your own doubts. Like I relate to what you're just saying. It's like, when I published Daily Stoic, I remember I sent it to my editor and I was like,

this is like, it was all designed, it was all ready to go. I was like, can you look at this one last time? I don't think we should publish this. I was like, I'm not sure this is good enough to publish. It came together too quickly, too easily. I'm just not sure this is the right career decision for me. And that book changed my life. It sold 2 million copies.

It's in all these different languages. It's been incredible. But I tried to remind myself all the time that literally days before publication, I was like 51, 49, not publishing it. And that's helpful, but it also, I guess it could also be dangerous because what if there was actually something I shouldn't publish, and now I'm like, oh, I'm going to hit publish because last time I thought that it turned out, it turned out I was just having cold feet. So it's a, it's a weird feeling

when you, when you realize that you don't really know anything. Yeah, but I think that, I, um, I think that the best way, the best way you can do your thing in your one life and contribute is unless it seems really bad, throw it out there. And by the way, you might not, something might, you know, sell one tenth of that, but it really impacts the people who love it, right? Maybe sometimes it's something that's like a cult classic.

It doesn't go viral, but it's deeply beloved by the people. I have a few posts like that, which are the ones that I feel like the super fans talk about, always reference, but they're not actually, they didn't do very well in like, you know, as far as numbers. And then other ones that were mega viral, that I've never heard like an actual big time wait, but why reader mentioned, because it's just not really. So I think there's, if you put time into it,

there's something in there that someone will love, but I also like to think about the Beatles, like they put out 200 songs about, and a hundred of them are bad. I don't think people realize how, there's a great, I think it's Vanity Fair article that is, that goes, or maybe it's culture. It goes through,

a hundred, ranking the Beatles songs from worst to best in disguise in mind, but it's these really big Beatles fan, big music person. And it's amazing how long you have to go before you've heard of the songs. Like, you know, I've, you know, you, you, they wrote a lot of just bad forgettable songs. And it's really their top 70.

Their top 70 were good. And it's really, and what made them the Beatles was like their top 20 or 30 were amazing. But they put out 200 to find those. And so I feel like the best thing, if you take the big zoom out, it's like, rather than obsess over which finished projects or put them all out, rough and dirty, make a new one,

don't be perfectionist, make stuff, put it out, and you never know when you just strike magic and it's the right thing at the right time. And yeah, I think that is kind of the mentality. And I say this is someone who regularly starts a long post and then says, nah, and goes the other way. But yeah, I think you're remembered for your hits. And you've got to give yourself a lot of swings at the bad, you know, swings at the bat, you know, to get those. Which is by the way, part of why I hate doing a six-year project.

A six-year project blows because it's not, it's all in a six-year swing of the bat. Well, it's also just like, I don't want to take it. I don't have enough time to take any six-year swings. It doesn't matter what it is, you know. And so it's like, I feel like that's, I should have one year limit on future projects. May be two. Well, it's, quantity is a way to get to quality.

And that's really hard if you're a perfectionist or you have high standards. The idea that you have to accept that objectively, a good chunk of your stuff is not only not going to be as good as your other stuff, it might not be good at all. That is a hard bit of acceptance and realism that you have to come to terms with. Or just the thing, I mean, Bill Belicechek has lost a lot of super bulls, right? Like that. Yeah.

You tend to focus on when it works. I think it's power failures. Yes. Like, but ultimately, the only way you can win a super bull is by taking a trip to the super bull, right? And so if you focus more on like sort of getting in the ballpark and you're, and you're, you get in the ballpark a number of times, chances are, you're going to walk away with whatever that metric of success is if you do that often enough.

Right, yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, if your general average work is good, right? If you're putting out 10 bad things in a row, well, now you're going to lose people's trust. If your general average work is good, right? If you're putting out 10 bad things in a row, well, now you're going to lose people's trust. But then you probably, honestly, then you're putting in, you might not be, I mean, it depends on if you're really early, then you might have a long way to a lot of growth left. But if you're just, you know, if you've been doing this for a long time, you put a 10, maybe you need to adjust what you're the medium or whatever.

But the point is, if you're having a hit, you know, we're here and there and most things are, you know, a lot of things are pretty well like somethings are right. Then you just just pump it out as long as your average is pretty good because you're going to hit get some hits along the way. And then the bad things won't be the norm. And so screw it. Like, but that, you know, and I think it is actually a superpower to not be terrified of having a flunk. I have a friend who is a standout comedian and one of the things he did early is he just went out there and intentionally bombed. He just went out there and just made just really stupid jokes and long pauses and people

eventually was going and he just said, I want to deal it and realize this guy didn't follow on me and now I can just relax and it's kind of a superpower I think to accept that some of the things are going to be bad and that's totally okay. Yeah, I think about it. It's like as long as you're making contact with the ball, that's what you want, right? Sometimes it's going to go far over the back wall. Sometimes it's going to go high up in the air and someone's going to catch it, right? Sometimes it's going to go foul.

But the important thing is that you're making contact with the ball consistently. And if that's how you're judging success, you're gonna hit up, you're also gonna probably have a number of home runs to show for that. And yeah, to go to what your comedian friend is talking about. If you're also aware that the worst thing that can happen is that you strike out or the worst thing that can happen is people are bored or they laugh

at you or you get fired, you realize that that's not so bad either. So, you're sort of open to the upside, but you've capped the downside. That's like the ultimate, you know, position to be operating from. You have to be able to, the human superpower is to realize that embarrassment is in that big a deal because we really hate being embarrassed, publicly embarrassed. And you know, doing something publicly, putting it out there, your art, your work, your thoughts and people don't like it, It gets made fun of whatever. People are writing mean comments.

It's, you know, people in your life, your friends, if you're seeing notes, right? Everyone, you know, you know, is it seems, it's a little embarrassing. It feels bad, right? It feels, and then you step back and realize, like, I'm a writer, my job is to put myself out there. This is gonna happen.

It's gonna happen, and especially if I'm trying to be bold and do different things. Also, if other people are saying, I don't care. It's part of a much bigger picture, and it's this amazing thing to realize, yeah, it feels bad, but there's so many people who do everything in their power. Number one priority is make sure that never happens. Make sure they're not publicly embarrassed ever. Publicly, they don't look bad publicly ever. They don't look like they made a mistake,

I mean, it's like that is such a limiting thing. Yeah, I think self-consciousness is the enemy, right? Because it's the opposite of being present. It's usually rooted in fear, or like a sort of a thirstiness, like you really want validation or approval or a certain thing to happen. It's very outcome dependent.

The best position is where you're not thinking about that shit at all. You're just thinking about what you're trying to do. You know, one thing I've done that's been very, one of the wise things I do is when I get a flat tire or a fender fender, or I twist my ankle and need to be on crutches. But it's something really annoying. And I'm like, wow, I still have to do all the things I had to do on my list. And now I also have this thing, right?

It's so easy to just be like, this is, I just be like, the world has wronged me, this is now, I can't believe this. Or you can say five to 10 of these things happen every year. It is 100% five to 10, these things. I just got one out of the way. Oh, here we go. Here's one of those five to 10.

Here it is. I didn't know what was going to happen today, but there's the flat tire at 2 a.m. And it's just, once you have that, you suddenly shrug, you put on a podcast to start changing your tire or you're waiting for AAA, and it happens, oh, I got one out of the way. So you can apply this as well, too.

I put on a blog post, and it's just being hated on, right? Oh, my God, I'm reddit, they hate me. This, oh, as a writer, you think I'm gonna go through a writing career and not have 20 or 30 of these? Oh, here's one, here's one, getting it out of the way. So that zoom out and understand the inevitability of this thing totally takes the sting away because it doesn't feel like something bad happened. I fucked up.

I made like, I wish I could go, it's like, well, yeah, but like, I'm going to fuck up and that's okay. And so it's kind of baked in and then you don't care nearly as much. Well, there's a there's a passage in meditations. Remarks to really talk about this in regards to people. He goes like, look, is a world without assholes possible? He's like, no, obviously not. And then he's like, so when you meet an asshole,

say to yourself, this is one of those people. This is one of that number, right? I was never, it was statistically certain that I would bump into this person. It was unavoidable. By the way, there are minority. I know this statistically also. And now that I know, now that I didn't,

because I wasn't telling myself that this was impossible or even unlikely, I'm not only less surprised, I get to say what you said, which is, okay, I've just, I've met one out of the 100, and now it's probably going to be a little while before I bump into the next one of these people. You also, you also don't take it personally because you think this person has been being an asshole to everyone, not just me.

And just the same thing with Abadou way, I'm a real troll in the comments section. Sometimes you can click on their thing and see what other comments they've been making, right? I'm reddit or on my on Discuss, on WordPress. And so often, oh, they're ship talking 10 blogs right now, right? Oh, the last, and then you suddenly don't care anymore. So you say, this isn't about me. One of these people passed through. And they got shit on this. I think I should, it's not like, oh my God, I'm work, why would I engage with this?

It's nothing to do with me. It's nothing to do. And you just, yeah, again, that just, all you're doing is, yeah. And even to say to yourself, this person is doing their job. This person is a troll, this person is an asshole. That's their role out of a hundred people. Why would I expect them to be anything other than

whatever they were apparently assigned by circumstances or their personality or whatever? This is what they do. My, and then you said yourself, my job is to not be an asshole, right? So when I'm being an asshole, I'm neglecting my responsibilities. And when I'm being an asshole, I'm neglecting my responsibilities. And when I'm being nice and when I'm being good and when I'm not treating people terribly,

that's me fulfilling my job on this planet. And if we can kind of see people as being assigned to these roles, it does allow us to be, I think, a bit more accepting of the fact that they're not always going to be and do what we want them to do. And get rid of that, like, this feeling, this a name feeling, like, I need to show them that they're wrong. I need to punish them, I need to, like, come back with a snappy retort and it's like, no, I don't. That is not the point here. That's not the goal with this person. And then what you're letting them do is do something much worse than being asshole.

You're letting them become an asshole, a whirlpool that pulls other people into it. Now they're all acting like assholes. They're letting them spread the thing. It's like none of our quarantine, the assholeness, in that one person by shrugging and saying, I guess this person is that person who's an asshole. Yeah, don't let the son of a bitch turn you into a son of a bitch, I sometimes say. Yeah, so Twitter is really good at doing that. It's part of the problem. I think uh You know, I mean yeah, it's just funny when you meet people

I'm sure you've experienced this where you've gotten you know negativity online and then you meet people in person Who know your stuff and just like it's even people who don't like you know, it's just everyone is so simple and so kind and nice and normal in person. And I'm not sure I've ever met someone who does it like my work in person. Like I'm sure they exist, but no one has ever told me to my face. Yeah, that I suck. The worst thing I've heard in person, pales in comparison to what I hear online every single day. Of course, or the people will be gentle about it. They'll say, I really, really like your stuff.

Did you ever consider this aspect of it? Because I feel like maybe you skipped over that a little bit more like it online. They're saying, this really shows the type of person that Tim is just as personal nasty just as, you know, personal nasty. And it's, you know, it's the same, you know, I'm sure some of those, you know, it's, there's something about, yeah, being online

that just, because a lot of what we've been talking about this whole conversation is the dichotomy from what our stupid brains get full fall for. And then when you can zoom out and see the truth, the real thing, what are smart part of our brains can see is rude. And so this is another example where it's just like there's something about being online when it's hard,

when you can just fall for the fact that this is, you can think this is a non-human, who is not a real person. And then in person, you're forced to zoom out and say, oh, this is a complete human being here. They are. Plus, it's just social etiquette. It takes a lot more courage to be a dick in person than it does behind the screen.

Well, no, I think the new book is a great meditation on what happens when that is happening on the societal level. And I like the idea of a self-help book for the world. What do we collectively have to be thinking about in terms of our collective values or traits if we don't want to blow ourselves up or destroy each other? And I think this is very well done. I'm sorry it took six years,

but I'm also glad that it finally came out. Yeah, never again, but I'm happy and stunned. Well, that's perfect. Let's not have that be the rule for the podcast and when you come out to Austin, sometimes let's do it again in person. Agreed, we'd love to. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.

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