Modern Wisdom - #197 - Petr Ludwig - How To Overcome Procrastination

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

Petr Ludwig is a speaker, author and CEO of Procrastination.com. Procrastination is a speedbump in many a would-be productive person's life. Thankfully Petr has given keynote speeches all over the world on this topic, so hopefully he has the solutions. Expect to learn how to train your willpower, why finding meaning is a productivity tool, the relationship between failure, self-forgiveness and high achievement, how to take an entire month off per year while becoming more productive and much more... Sponsor: Check out everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (35% off everything with the code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Check out Petr's Website - https://procrastination.com/ Follow Petr on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/petrludwig/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello people in podcast land. Welcome back. I have returned in one piece from Ibiza, which was a very, very unique experience during the lockdown. Some of you that follow me on Instagram may have seen that mask wearing is mandatory on the street at the moment in 35 degree heat and the Balaric Islands of Spain, which was a very different way to experience Ibiza, but I'm back feeling very refreshed, which is lovely, beautiful change of scenery to get myself out there. So yeah, looking forward to getting stuck back into some more amazing episodes. Other than that, I've got a lot of my time dedicated to the modern wisdom academy right now. That is still maybe a month away, maybe a little bit longer, but it is consuming every waking moment of my time and I just can't wait to get it out.

It is by far the coolest thing that I've ever worked on. So with that little bait dangling in front of you, let's get on to today's guest. Peter Ludwig is the CEO of Procrastination.com and has given keynote speeches around the world talking about procrastination. It is the bane of many of would be productive person's life, the reason that you're looking at your phone when you know that you need to be completing that important email for work. So today, expect to learn how to train your willpower. Why finding meaning is a productivity tool, the relationship between failure, self forgiveness and high achievement, how to take an entire month off per year while becoming more productive and

much more. This is a really cool conversation, tons and tons to take away lots of strategies that hopefully you'll be able to apply in an hour's time. You know one hour from now, you're going to be totally different person when it comes to the world of procrastination. But you're going to guide us through the murky waters that are procrastination today, right? Of course I will. I love it. So, let's get into it. What is procrastination?

Define it for us. Wow. Is this situation when you know what to do, but you are doing something very different? So basically you know that you want to write a new book and you are spending endless amount of time on social media or you know that you have 10 emails that are very important, but you are answering to those that are unimportant. So basically procrastination is a situation when you know what to do, but you are failing in doing that. Not fulfilling the things that you say that you're going to do is such a

huge hole, I think, and it becomes, it can quite easily become an existential crisis for a lot of people, right? Because if you don't have faith in your own word, in the promises that you say you're going to keep to yourself, the next time you say you're going to do something, you have less faith in the fact that you're going to do it. Exactly. And the main idea about procrastination is that procrastination is not a time management problem, but it's emotional management problem. So basically, the more you fail,

the more you have negative emotions, and then the more you fail in the future. So it's like a feedback loop that reinforce itself. So the more you procrastinate, the more you procrastinate. Oh, yeah. So dangerous. And I think that it's a main topic for 21st century. Basically, everyone is procrastinating.

And we see that it's much worse than it was 10 years ago, because we have social media. We are overwhelmed at work by so many emails priorities. So I really believe this, that to know how to fight procrastination is a key skill for not just to have a successful life, but to have like happy life and calm life and not to be crazy. I love it, man. Where do we start then? We want to not procrastinate. We want to be able to do the

things we say that we are going to do to ourselves. Where do we begin looking at procrastination? Yeah, in my book, I have three chapters. And first chapter is about motivation, how to find long term intrinsic motivation. And still, I believe that this first chapter is the key to understand why we procrastinate because if we have right motivation, if we truly believe in what we are doing, if we see meaning in that, then it's much easier to push ourselves. The second chapter is about willpower, but willpower is just a little helper, but it's not the key for procrastination, because if you have strong willpower and you are pushing yourself to things that are meaningless to

you, then at the end you don't feel good. So, first motivation and then will power. I know a lot of people that they have strong will powers, and they are working on projects, they don't procrastinate, but they are working on projects that they are not meaningful to them. So, strong will power can backfire. And so, first, interesting motivation and then willpower. And the third chapter is about how to overcome failures and how to get back on track when you somehow fail or if you experience

some tough moments in your life, so how to get back on track. So meaning, how do we find meaning? How do we ensure the things that we're doing? And meaningful. No, no, no small question. Yeah, basically I probably read all scientific papers about purpose at work, about meaning. And the key to understand this topic is to really know your strengths and use your strengths doing something

greater than you. So not to be just selfish, but ask yourself how you can use your strengths to do a something meaningful to others, how to improve communities that you are part of, how to somehow slowly improve the world and so on. So using your strengths for others, it seems that it's the key for long-term inter-sick motivation. So basically, those people that are just selfish, and if you just want to have more money, or if you want to be higher on a corporate ladder, that's not the right motivation because

then you are still empty because you are just serving to yourself. Well, a lot of people might say, I'm at university or I'm doing a degree of some kind or I'm studying, I want this degree, sometimes work feels a little bit like a drain, but I want this low degree, this doctor's degree, this marketing degree, whatever it might be. But yet, when it's exam time, I still sit down at my desk and I get distracted, I don't do the things. What's happening there with meaning and procrastination? How do those two link in? Right. I do a lot of procrastination, how do those two link in? Right, I do a lot of projects with students too. And it's a huge difference if you are studying just because of the degree at the end,

or if you are studying because you really want to understand the law and then help others or be a good lawyer. So intrinsic motivation, it's always about purpose, long-term purpose, but extrinsic motivation is about goals. So and if you read a lot of motivational books, they tell you to set goals. And I really don't believe in goals because it seems that if you have a goal, then okay, it motivates you. But when you reach the goal, you experience what is called a hedonic adaptation. Yeah, you get used to that goal very quickly. So there was a study and it seems that,

like the positive emotion after you finish your university or if you get a degree, it's only few hours, maybe a few days, but then you are empty again. So this is the pitfall. Potentially studied for five years. Yeah, for a couple of hours of satisfaction. And in a psychology they call it hedonic adaptation and it seems that we adapt it also on the biggest things like if you win a normal prize or if you win a gold Olympic medal still the the happiness the lifespan of the the happiness is one week or less. So I have a

friend and I had a in podcast she was a gold Olympic medal winner. And what she told me was that after she won the battle, then the next few days were crazy happy. And then she was empty. And now what? I win the Olympics. So what's the next step? So what's the alternative then? So what's the alternative then? So what's the alternative? If we're not setting goals, what are we doing? Yeah. In my book, I described two kinds of intrinsic motivation. If one is intrinsic motivation on goals, and the second is intrinsic motivation by journey,

focusing on path rather than the destination. It's the old saying that the path is much more important than the destination is, but it seems that the recent psychology really uncovered that it works like that. So basically, what we want is to be in a state of flow. If you're doing something and you enjoy the process, then you reach even more goals. If you are just focusing on goals and you don't enjoy the process, at the end, it's much worse. So, and I have a great example. It's one of top hockey players.

And they made an interview with him and they asked him like, what is the core of your motivation? His name is Seattle Miriagher, he's one of top NHL players. And the answer was that his motivation is that he loved the process, he loved trainings, he loved playing hockey. And if he loves playing hockey, at the end, he's winning medals.

And it's not about medals, it's about the journey more than about the destination. So I truly believe in this. So basically, if you love the process, you don't procrastinate doing those things because you already love the process. So that's why I'm focusing on a project that I really enjoy doing, and at the end

you don't procrastinate it. How do people who perhaps don't have as much degrees of freedom to change what they want to do? You know, does everybody's got to do their car insurance or file their taxes? We can't find meaning in everything. So is the rule to find meaning where we can, and then is there an alternative strategy for in the things like the taking the bins out, the filing, the taxes? What do we do there? Right, right. I really don't like the saying,

like, do what you love, because if you are telling people do what you love at the end they don't know what they love. So basically I'm telling like love what you do. So in the beginning you should try to find passion in things that you are already doing and there's a lot of science behind it. It's a research from Emir Riznetsky from Yale University, and he called this process a job crafting. Basically, it's about to ask yourself, what is your strengths and how you can use those strengths on daily basis? Or there's the meaning of your work, how you can increase the meaning, so how you can serve your clients even more, how you can do some little things that can help your colleagues, little things that can help your colleagues, can make them happy and so on and so on. So there's a process how to craft your career, craft your daily work in routine. And if you change this mindset about your work, at the end, you enjoy your work much more.

So even though you, in the beginning, you don't like what you're doing, at the end, you can do the same, you don't like what you're doing, at the end, you can do the same job with the different mindset. So it's more about mindset than about the real work. I understand. I think one of the things that's interesting is when someone is on a path to a higher purpose for themselves, that might be being amazing, brother, mother, father, son or daughter to someone. It might be to do with contributing to their community or it might be becoming the best athlete

that they can become. All of the other things fall in line to be in service to that, right? You have to have the job that pays the wage so that you can take three weeks off a year to go and race basically in France or whatever it might be. You're happy to go to work as you're like, look, I feel like my higher calling is this sport and this, all the hours at work, like cool, I'm just going to do it, I'm going to get through it. But you're right, like,

I think a lot of people struggle with purpose and meaning because they're just spinning the wheels. They don't actually know what the reason is for them doing the thing. And we recently had a couple of podcasts that have touched on this as well, but Explore versus exploit. Being one of those paradigms is really important, right? In the beginning, try all the different things. Greg McEwen from Essentialism was on talking about this. All the different things that you can do, what do I like this? No, do I like this? No, do I like this? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's okay, it's okay. And then eventually you find something that actually is the reason that you're here, and that might change over time, but just find something that allows you to transcend the chance.

So, okay, I like the meaning and stuff like that. We've not a willpower. What do we know about willpower? How can we utilize willpower for reducing upper crustination? It seems that willpower can be trained in a long term. So basically, they made some research on identical twins. And it seems that one of those twins, if they are raised in different

families, can have strong willpower and the second can have very weak willpower. So it seems that it's not that much inborn, basically, okay, it's inborn for, let's say, 30, 40%, but those 60, 70% are in your hands. So that's a good news. And the best way how to train your willpower is really to exercise. Basically, we have one willpower for all domains. So if you do like 20 push-ups daily, and if I scan your brain on a femur eye, what we can see is not that just your muscles are growing in a long term, but also your prefrontal cortex,

this part of the brain that is evolved for will power. So the good news is with regular exercise, you can really improve your well power. And if you have stronger well power from doing exercise, then you can use this stronger real power at your work, in a relationship, and so on. So this is the first way how to boost your well power to exercise daily. Physical exercise. Physical exercise. Right. And the second way how to improve your willpower is to manage better your emotion. So mindfulness techniques can really boost your productivity. There was a scientific study like one or two years ago and they linked mindfulness with willpower with procrastination.

And basically the outcome of this study was that the more you meditate, the stronger your willpower is. So it's a good news. So to boost your willpower, you just need to spend 10 minutes alone daily and do some mindfulness techniques and be able to self-regulate better and be able to overcome some bad emotions with calmness. It's interesting, as we're talking about this, like a lot of what some of the listeners might have expected as we were talking about how to overcome procrastination in 2020, it would have been a bunch of hacks. This particular use rescue time on your MacBook and keep your phone outside of your bedroom and do

this and do that and do the other. We're going more high level than that, right? Right, because that's the only way how to solve procrastination. I think that procrastination is like red, blink in light and it's telling you, you don't have a right motivation, you don't see purpose that we are work, or you don't have strong willpower. It's not about installing a new app. Come on. Yeah, no, but the fact of the matter is that we are told

in this gig economy with constant new courses being released or a new application or this MacBook or whatever it might be, that that is the tool, right, that is the thing which is going to fix it. And it seems like that's just the icing on top of the cake. Yeah, I truly believe that the solution, it's much, much deeper. For example, there was another interesting study and the study was about self forgiveness.

And it seems that if you are able to forgive yourself after you fail, then you procrastinate less. And the idea behind that is that if you are unable to do self forgiveness, to then you have much more negative emotions and it can backfire again. So sometimes when you fail, it's not about failure that much, it's about your mindset about the failure. And if you are able to forgive yourself, and if you are fine with that, and you are okay,

I was able to run for two weeks, and now I failed, just forgive yourself, and start again, and that's why self forgiveness is one of those hacks, how to decrease your procrastination. And it's very counterintuitive, the unice to yourself. So accept yourself for not achieving the thing you said you were going to do. Right. So it's just the opposite what you should expect.

So we often think that those people that are hard to themself, they procrastinate less, but that's not true because they are in even worse situation. Because they're hard to themself, but at the end they have much more negative emotions when they fail and that failure pains themselves like three times more than if they're able to forgive. You're right, I can see I know a ton of buddies who will be listening that will lambast themselves. They're the self-flagulation, right? They'll whip themselves into wanting to do more

because it's easy to think that that's the solution. I didn't do enough. I need to lean into this even more so. But what we were talking about at the beginning, I love this idea of having trust in your own word, like being able to keep promises to yourself. Like if you trust that you're going to keep a promise to yourself and you break it,

you don't make it better by telling yourself, oh, you're such an idiot, like you need to do better next time. What do you do? Think about what happens with a friend. You and a friend get into an argument, they're a dick or you're a dick or you're both dick. So whatever it might be. You say, hey man, look, I'm sorry. Let's go for a coffee. Let's put that behind us. Let's move on.

Exactly. Yeah. And you need a self-esteem to be productive. So if you are undermining yourself, then at the end, you don't trust in yourself and you have much high risk to fail again. So I think it's much wiser to be nicer yourself. Yeah, I mean, Jordan, please be friends. Treat yourself as if you are someone you are as possible for helping. Exactly. It's such a wonderful world view, but it's so hard, right? Especially if you want to be driven type A personality, you wanna do the work and be as good as you can. It's a slippery slope to go from thinking, I am able to accept when I don't meet my own standards to I am simply allowing myself to be lazy,

I am allowing myself, and that line, right, finding where that line is, is difficult. Yep, and I have a great tool for that because I told my sir, self this year, to only work for four days in a week. So I have one day off, and basically, in that day, I'm much more productive because I don't have to be productive. So, and for me, it's the best day in a week because I don't plan anything, so I don't have meetings, I don't have webinars. It's just a free day. But I wake up, then I'm doing some

unimportant things. And then I'm like, okay, what's the most important thing to do now? And basically, in that day, I'm working on the most important projects and I love it because I don't have to. So it's just the opposite motivation to compare to other days when I have to. If I have a meeting, I have to be there. But then day, I also can have a meeting, I have to be there. But then they also can have a meeting, but I really want to have that meeting. So it's just the opposite mindset. And

I really recommend this tool or hack to all my clients because it's an investment into your mental health. Well, I mean, isn't it Google that gives its employees 20% of their time to work on whatever they want to do? I think that they used to do that. Now they cancel this rule, but they had this rule in the beginning of Google. Now they don't have this rule. That's a shame. But, but, uh, what are you doing? Listen to us, we're talking about procrastination. Yeah, and, uh, I come up to, to the, to the, this idea, uh, when I go on a holiday, I always book one day before a holiday, like holiday before a holiday, then I book one more day after the holiday, like holiday after the holiday.

And if you have this like bump or bump, it works much better because you are not in that high level of stress that tomorrow I have to go for a vacation. I feel that, like I travel quite a bit, or at least I used to before there was a pandemic. Right. And I think I went on like 10 or 12 holidays last year, and the number of times where one of my housemates will say to me, hey man, you all set for tomorrow? Oh dude, no, I got so much to do before I can even think about leaving tomorrow. Like I go, you do this and prep the podcast and do this on the other. And you're totally correct. Like, you so much of our enjoyment in life

comes from the anticipating of things we are anticipatory beings, right? In fact, there's some fairly good research that shows we enjoy the anticipation of something more than the thing itself, which is right, which is super, super interesting. But like, I ruin that. I ruin a big chunk of that because I work right up until the limit. I remember, I remember sometimes I would get like an early morning flight and I would pull an all-nighter before the flight on holiday. And then obviously the first day of my holiday was just a complete like, right, total chaos trying to recover from the day that allowed me to go on holiday. Yeah, and I have another example of that is Japan.

I go to Japan every year for one month and I do nothing there. It's just my empty month. I'm not writing a book there. I'm not working on new projects. I'm just there. And it's an investment because the month after I'm back from Japan, I'm not working on new projects, I'm just there and it's an investment because the months after I'm back from Japan, I'm like three times more productive because you restart everything in your brain, your restart, your willpower again, you are back in the mood that you

are able to do things because your brain is restarted. So I really recommend to have long holidays, to really do nothing for three, three, four weeks. And at the end, you are much more productive. So if you sum the whole productivity of the year, it's bigger altogether, even though you spend one month doing nothing. So this was the best for my

productivity and for my procrastination. How about people who have concerns that they might fall out of a good habits whilst they're away. So they go to Japan or Texas or Romania or wherever it is for a month and they're just getting up whenever they want and they're not in the rhythm of training or working or doing whatever and they're scared that when they get back they're not going to have that routine and they're just going to all the habits going to be out the window. Yeah, then you have to ask why you want to have those routines and often you want to routines because you don't have willpower to push yourself to those things and if you spend one month alone then you have

much stronger willpower so then you don't need routines that much. So the answer is that after your back you are doing everything much easier and everything is very easy after being back from such a long holiday. The second very important argument for this is that I'm an entrepreneur. I had 35 employees and I do business for, let's say, 14, 15 years now. For me, this is the definition of the freedom to be able to spend one month alone and not to be a slave in your own company. So I really had to change many things and many processes in my company to make the company ready for me to not be there. And when I moved to the US, because I moved to the US two years ago, at the end, the company was ready for me to not to be there. And that was the best

in my life, because now I'm very free. I can do whatever I want. And the company works without me. So have you read the E-Mith, the entrepreneur's myth, the book? No. Okay, so in that they talk about the fact that if you have a business or if you're a business owner and you can't leave that business for more than two weeks without everything breaking, you don't have a business. You just have a highly leveraged job. You'd love that book. It's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. So, okay, we've got the fact that we need purpose

and meaning, we need to find that we're getting that through explore and exploit, we're also trying to connect to a higher purpose, that higher purpose also tends to be serving other people, transcending ourselves. Right. The listeners who heard my most recent episode with Scott Barry Kaufman on his book, Transcend, which is all about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They'll know that already. And after that, we're talking about willpower. We know that willpower, ebbs and flows and it can be trained that we need to do physical

exercise. And what was the second thing that we need to do? Mindfulness? Mindfulness. To regulate your emotions. Cool. Because the size of the beginning procrastinities is emotional problem rather than time management problem.

I love it. Before we move on from willpower, what side of the fence do you sit on about whether or not you get willpower depletion through the day or not? Yeah, basically I believe in depletion because my experience is whenever I'm tired, it's much more difficult to push myself to do things. And whenever I'm tired, I procrastinate much more and it's easier to me to drink beers and so on. So I believe in the tradition during the day, but I truly believe that you can overcome

the depletion with small rest during the day. So basically, sometimes I'm tired and then I have a big talk for, let's say, 500 people. And at the end of the talk, I have new energy and I'm able to restart everything. And I truly believe that working on projects that are meaningful are not draining your energy, but they give you the energy. So that's why if you procrastinate at the end, you are empty. But if you are working on meaningful projects, at the end, you have even more energy than at the beginning.

That's the problem I have when I do this podcast, because I'm often recording with people in America. And that recording time tends to be about 6 or 7 pm at night. And then I've got to try and wind down. And I'm going to bed at like 10 o'clock. And my mind's still buzzing the exacty about all of the cool stuff we've just talked about. So yeah, I get that a lot.

The reason that I wanted to ask, some of the listeners who haven't delved into the ongoing internet battle that is, is ego depletion true or is it not? That does seem to be this constant, like first Roy Baumeister does a study, and then you say yes, and then there's someone else who says no, and then it's yes and no. And it's just like,

yeah, like trends with, is it cool to have skinny jeans or loose jeans? Is it cool to wear like a sleeveless t-shirt or a t-shirt with sleeves? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but I truly believe that both sides are right, because sometimes it's depleting, but sometimes not. So I believe that if you read all those arguments, it's depleting but sometimes not so I believe that if you read all those arguments It's not like Black or white. I think that the truth is again somewhere in the middle So it's possibly be both. Yeah, the funniest The funniest argument that I've heard so far for ego depletion is ego depletion exists if you believe it exists.

Have you heard that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'm like, it's gonna like that, yeah. Fuck, like, I need to, can I unlearn, can I unlearn the word ego depletion? So yeah, I don't know, I'm like, okay, so that's two chapters down, third chapter. Third chapter was about a handling failure was about Handling Failer? And I truly believe in some deep experiences. And I want to explain you more in detail what those experiences are. I have two examples that I experienced, something that is called a near death experience. First was that I was like 19 years old

and I was playing basketball and I had some like brain of kind of paralysis and after a few hours right side of my body was completely paralyzed. And it was the first situation in my life that I was experiencing the situation when you were listening that you can die. And it was fucking scary. But it really changed my values. It was very humbling experience. So I was in the hospital.

I was thinking that's the end of my life, but at the end I survived that after a few days without any side harm, side effect. So basically it was the best experience because since then I'm thinking slightly differently about what is meaningful or what's not. So for example, during the pandemic, I only saw one film on my Netflix, only one. Because I don't really don't want to waste my time. What did you watch? What was the film? It was serious about Zal Trump. Was it the American Dream thing? Yeah, it was. That's good.

That is pretty good. That's a worthwhile series to watch. After the beginning of the pandemic, I switched everything and I was working on the project masks for all to help as many people as possible to wear a face mask and so on. So I switched my focus from procrastination to face mask from one day to another. So I spent like three weeks in a row every day,

like 12 hours doing on that project. So, and it was very meaningful. So I was not procrastinating. I remember when I got a number, telephone number for one lady that is one of top executives from WHO, and I called her directly because I didn't procrastinate it because I was in like, okay, if I procrastinate there are people dying. So it was the most fulfilling period in my life, the beginning

of the pandemic. So good. I watched, I'm going to give you a potential second thing to watch on Netflix during the pandemic. And the guys from Vox have done a series called Explained and it's many, many documentaries that are around about 20 minutes long. And they've done one on the coronavirus and it's three parts. The first part explains how a virus works. It talks about sort of the biology of what viruses are. And then the second one talks about the implications,

I think more nationally and internationally, and then the final one talks about what vaccines are and how vaccines work. And do you like, when you look, I think there's about 70 to 100 vaccines that are the front runners, and there's maybe two or three that are really at the highest likelihood of this.

And when you see the epidemiologists and the virologists and the vaccine creators in their labs, these people are living, eating, sleeping, everything in their laboratory. They're not having problems with procrastination. Right, you know? Because they're doing something meaningful and they're using their strengths.

So it's just interconnected. What was the second story? The second story was that it was 2015 and I had a flight from Amsterdam to Prague. After the take of, after like 15 minutes after the take of our right engine blew up and there was fire. And yeah, you really don't want to experience that during the earthquake, but I experienced something terrible. And we had to perform emergency landing. So the thing that they are telling you in the beginning, like put your head in front between your knees and so on, I really experienced that in person.

Oh my god. So it was terrible because I was sitting just next to the engine. So the guy next to me told me like, look there is fire and I was like, no, I want to see that. Don't remind me, mate. All right. And it took us around like 15, 20 minutes to to land. And those were like the the longest 15 20 minutes in my life. If you land an airport. Yeah, we get back to the Amsterdam to Amsterdam airport. But only with one engine and the airplane was shaken and it was very noisy. Amsterdam. Amsterdam Prague will be a small plane.

It's not a big 747, right? No, it was just the standard size plane, like the normal one. Yeah. But it was quite scary. And when we landed, a few people were crying there, and we were hugging each other. And the pilot, he went outside of his cockpit and he shaked the hand with all passengers.

And it was a very strong experience. And again, if you experience something like that, at the end, it's very humbling. Since then, I'm like thinking, okay, like how to really invest my time wisely. What are those main things to do? And I how to really invest my time wisely. What are those main things to do? And I rather than want to waste my time with social media, for example, because it's

mostly meaning class. You are just consuming things, but you are not creating. And so on. So I think that the coronavirus is similar to those two stories from my life because we were all in the similar situation. We were in danger of pandemic and I want the coronavirus to be similar to those two minor death experiences of myself for the whole society. And I truly believe that we can change because the old world had many problems. So I truly believe that we need some changes in societies around the world. Like we are many societies are divided, many people are working on projects that they don't believe.

So there is a huge lack of meaning at work. And kindness is not a virtue for many people. So I really believe that this situation can change things. Man, I couldn't agree more. There's a ton of quotes and thinkers that have been referring to recently. One of them being Naval Rava can't

and he says, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And that touches on the social media thing. Like what's the prize? What's the prize for always checking your Instagram three times a day? Like you don't get anything for that. You just satisfy yourself. There's this quote from John Paul Satra here that I've got.

It is a duty to risk the easy and common place for the unique and great to work toward our full potential in the face of all obstacles including ourselves to take responsibility for our life and what we make of it. Ultimately, no matter what we do or say or believe, there will always be a great many who disagree or judge or ridicule or become upset by our decisions, but it is of essential importance that we try as often as possible to ensure that among these people, our self is not one of them. That's it, man. is not one of them.

That's it, man. That's it. Incredible. Yeah. And I truly believe that we are all on the same boat because we are all global citizens. And I have experienced living in Europe, in the US, in Asia, in Japan. And so what I feel is that we are all the same.

We have the same Instagrams, we have the similar struggles, the virus basically was everywhere. So now we know that we are on the same boat, so why not to cooperate more? Why not to be more collaborative as a mankind? Because we are divided by so many stupid things. Because we are divided by so many stupid things. Man, again, it's so counter to, I think, innately what we feel we should do, because maybe a little bit of social norms, you see these guys crushing it, always working hard, type a mentality, me with my Rolex, me with my Fast Car, me with my big head. But every single person that

I know that is well respected within the field of evolutionary psychology or cognitive psychology or leadership or organizational psychology, everything everyone says that the best way to improve your life is to improve other people's lives. And it's right, there's not some big fucking conspiracy going on here. There's not, there's not like some Masonic lodge hiding with big cloaks over their heads in a darkened room with a big pentagram on the floor saying, we need to get everyone to think that they need to work with each other. So it makes it easier for everyone else. That's not the way it is.

All of you guys, everyone that is an expert in this field is converging on the same outcome because there is truth in it. Yeah, and I truly believe that we have only one enemy and that's our ego because if you have a big ego, like if you are egoistic and if you think about yourself, then it's very difficult for you to help others, because you are only thinking about yourself. So humbleness in my world is the key antidote for the ego. So basically those near-death experiences or those difficult moments, those humbling experiences, then help you to help others more, because then you understand that the world is not about yourself. It's more about others because if you die, well, the life continues without you, so that's why you should help others and improve the society because you live your life after

because you live your life after in those people. That's your legacy, right? It's your legacy and it's your immortality if you are self-wise. So being selfish is very... How to describe it? Being selfish is not that wise, let's say. Okay. How do you have, how do you hold in reality

at the same time, the fact that humbleness is a virtue which helps you to remove the ego, which is bad for you, but you need to be able to have pride in doing things well to encourage you to continue to do things well. How do you hold those two things together? I truly believe that it's not one or another, but you can have both. You can be healthy, egoistic, focusing on others, but being able to say no, being able to have your private room that you are able to have your time for yourself and so on. So basically, if you are too selfless, for example,

those mothers that are only investing their time in their kids and they don't have their hobbies anymore and so on, they're not that good mothers at the end. So being like a healthy selfish means that you invest in your health, you invest your time in your sleep and at the end if you are healthy, selfish, you have energy to help others even more. So, and it's all about to have a courage to say no because you have to have time for yourself. I understand. To help others.

Okay, so talk to us about how near-death experiences and being humble relates to failure and procrastination. I truly believe that everyone experienced something similar. Everyone experienced failure, everyone experienced some problems in their relationships and so on and being able to overcome those problems in terms of changing your mindset about those failures is a key for boosting your self-esteem for the future and then you procrastinate less.

So basically what I advise is to do a simple exercise like to take a blank piece of paper and write down the graph of your happiness during your life. So for example, when you were a kid, it was nice, then studies was bad, it was good again and so on. So basically have your lifetime graph of your happiness. And if you are somewhere down, those are those moments that are the best in terms of if you recognize what the situation gave you, for example, in terms of your values, for example, if you ask yourself, like, how that situation shaped your values. For example, my near-death experience, the first one shaped my values because since then I don't want to waste my time, so I appreciate time much, much more than before. So even though it was like very unpleasant

experience, at the end it changed my life in a positive manner, in a positive way. So, and I truly believe that everyone has those situations, and if you ask yourself how this situation helped shape your values or what was the positive outcome of that, then you can gather some, some, some, some, wisdom for the future. And you have much more positive emotions and then you procrastinate less because you know that even though you fail, then you gain something positive. So you don't, you are not afraid about failure that much. Does that mean that traumatic experiences are better learning opportunities

that are successful experiences? It, it, it, there, there, there is a huge meta analysis from 2009 about post-traumatic growth, and it seems that if you have a traumatic event, then you can have post-traumatic PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, or you can have post-traumatic growth. And the key or the difference between those two people is really the mindset. So basically there are many examples of survival, of concentration camps. And at the end, they lived to their 90s, hundreds. And they wrote many books and they lived many full the lives, but there are, it's also examples of many people that after they liberated those camps, they committed suicide. So, and basically, I truly believe that not the

situation, but our mindset about the situation shapes the future for us. So even though I survived two near-death experiences, I think that I'm very happy that I experienced those two events, even though it was so scary. I know, I said this at the very beginning of the coronavirus that it's one of the few things that can unite us as a species, right? It doesn't even rain everywhere on the planet at the same time, but I know what it feels like to be in lockdown the same as someone in Italy, the same as someone in America,

the same as someone in Brazil or Wuhan. You know, I know what I don't have the perfect, but I'm united. I'm reading Toby Ord, his new book The Pressapist, and he's from the Future of Humanities Institute, and it's all about existential risk. I insight, make no mistake about this. We are a thin veneer of surviving on top of what is everything is trying to kill us. From natural risks to anthropologic, anthrop,

anthrop, whatever it is, that risk to the future risks that are going to come from bio-weapons, from artificial-generated intelligence, whatever it might be. And he, weapons from artificial general intelligence, whatever it might be. And this guy has written 500 page, 400 page book on it from the premier existential risk department in the world. And he puts our chance of surviving the next 100 years at 50%. Why, that is a reason to live your life. That is a reason to try and find the most meaning, to try and be the best person that you can be.

And again, like, when you reframe that, and you realize I've spent 150 hours during lockdown watching Netflix movies that I didn't even like, it does shine quite a harsh light onto that. And that's not me saying I don't do it. Like, I waste my time just as much as anyone, but, you know what I mean? No, I had a great example, like, when I don't do it. Like I waste my time just as much as anyone, but you know what I mean? No, I had a great example.

Like when I started the movement masks for all with the first video, it was the most fulfilling experience in my life because slowly after a few days people started to wear face masks outside here in Prague. And then I took my good friend and she was studying in L.A. She's a director and we made a English video and the video went viral. Now the campaign masks for all has reached more than 1.2 billion. So we made a video and that was your video. That was your right. It was my and the Harris video and it was featured in CNN, BBC, in the main media around the world. And then it was served by a few American senators and few candidates on the US president and politicians around the world,

but from both sides, both parties. For example, Ivanka Trump shared the picture that she is viewing her own face masks. And it was incredibly positive moment of my life when I saw that we are all united in front of the virus. And it was so strong to me because now we have volunteers around the world. Basically we have more than 1000 volunteers in New Zealand for example. And the solution for the pandemic was to really wear a face mask.

And now there is a lot of new scientific evidence that it really works. So, and it started with my simple video and then another video and then it went viral and now 70 plus countries have masks mandatory. And we have had the evidence that it's really started with video. Like, that's so, you managed to change the world.

What do, what do you think they do? want to I want to kind of book end what we know about procrastination. We've given us a nice framework there. Let's say someone's listening and they just keep procrastinating. They've got a bunch of tasks that they've got to get done. Maybe they don't quite have the degrees of freedom to be able to not do them. They can't get rid of them to find meaning. You're sitting down now to start to do the things that you have to do. What would you say or what are some of the things that those people can do in terms of actual takeaway tactics that will actually move the needle for them?

Well, do 20 push ups daily. Basically do exercise on daily basis because it really can boost your willpower. Ask yourself, what is the real reason why you are doing those things? So what is the purpose? So basically ask the question, why? Why are you doing those things? And how you can improve those things that you are doing in terms of a greater meaning. So how can you add some small details

that can help your clients or your colleagues even more? And then ask what are your strengths and how you can improve those strengths because if you already believe in what you are doing and if you believe that you are skilled in those domains you enjoy the process even more. And focus on the process more than the destination. So goals are not important because we are getting used to them

because of the hedonic adaptation. So try to enjoy the process more and try to enjoy it every minute. And I call this health aid perfectionism because I have this concept from Japan. So whatever you do, try to do it as good as possible. And if you are focused on details, you enjoy the process even more. So that's cool.

I notice today you haven't mentioned anything about next actions, about next physical actions, or about breaking large tasks down into their next iterative step. Is there a reason for that? No, I have this in my book too, but I think it's too obvious. So I wanted to discuss some non-intuitive ideas. Well, I mean, for the people who don't see it as obvious, would you be able to explain the concept of using an extraction?

Okay, for example, when I was writing the book, in the beginning I told myself, well, write a chapter. So I had in my to-do plan write a chapter. And write a chapter is a huge task, so I had a very negative emotion towards that task. But if you cut the big thing into smaller parts, then it's much easier. So for example, if you tell yourself to write two paragraphs daily,

it's much easier than to write a whole chapter. So basically this is a key hack how to overcome procrastination. So if you procrastinate something, just cut the task in the middle or divide the task into three smaller tasks and then it's much easier. Because as I said procrastination is emotional problem so you have to really decrease the negative emotion, the aversion against the task and if you divide the task then you have a smaller negative emotion. I like that I like that a lot. I think the the marrying of the big overarching meaning-based conceptual stuff with breaking things down. So for instance,

the next action is one of them. I know that you have on your website, you talk about a lot of the time people might not continue a task because they don't actually know what to do next. Right. Like, what should I do? And you talk about, I think it's going to do some research or ask someone for advice. So those are the two. Yep. I mean, the number of times that people sit down to try and do a task or ask someone for advice. So those are the two. Yeah. I mean, the number of times that people sit down

to try and do a task and they procrastinate on it because they don't actually know how to do the thing that they're trying to do. But obviously, if you don't know how to do the thing you're trying to do, you're not going to do the thing you're trying to do, right? Exactly. So that's why I love some visual plans, like mind maps.

You can, for example, if you are starting a new project, I highly recommend to start with a mind map because then you know what to do next, for example. When I was writing the book, I had a mind map for each chapter. And when I was about to write, I already had a map and it told me like, today you should write about a little power, for example.

And to have a visual plan helps you to know what to do next. So it's like a real map. If you are lost in a city, without map, you are confused. But if you have a map, then you know what to do next. So I highly recommend you to have mind maps for every project that you are working on. Yeah, I'm someone who naturally doesn't plan a whole lot. Which I know, yeah, it's shocking.

But the more that I've trained myself to be able to do it, I, it changes. It's such a game changer. And I think previously I had a resistance to planning because I thought this time that I'm spending planning could be spent doing. I don't need to do the plan. I can just start doing it. This is all wasted time. Why would I spend two hours planning something? I can get two hours of work in. What you don't realize is that that time at the beginning makes such a difference.

You're like 10 times more efficient. 100 times more efficient. Exactly, yeah. 100% right. The writing, it's like that because if you sit and tell yourself, okay, now write, you don't know what to write. If you have a good plan and if you have a like mind met for almost every paragraph of the book, then it's much easier to write. You just write what and you know what to write. So like if you spend some time with planning, at the end, as you said, about 10 times more productive. Probably. Yeah, that's awesome, man.

Anything else to say? Any final notes that we haven't covered today? Any bits that people need to know about procrastination? Well, I really want people to really rethink their lives in the era of the virus. And I truly highly recommend people to be more humble after the crisis. So humbleness should be the outcome of the crisis. So that was the main idea for me for today, I guess. Man, I think, well, anyone that's leaving the last few months,

anyone that's leaving 2020 and feeling like it's time to have it to build an ego up, like you just haven't existed in the same reality that the rest of us have. How can you see this is anything other than wow, mortality and humanity are so tenuous and so delicate. And you know, it does say a lot for the way that people are developing that I'm speaking to my neighbours more as I do a morning walk now that people are developing that I'm speaking to my neighbors more as I do a morning walk now and people are coming up and they seem to be, I haven't

seen road rage. Like do you remember road rage? I haven't seen road rage in like four months. There's no road rage. Everyone's, this guy's having a bad time. This is challenging. There's more understanding, more empathy, right? So maybe, maybe you're right.

Maybe that's what's going to happen. Or perhaps people's memories are going to be short and it's going to take Mother Nature to fire another shot across our bow for us to realize that we need to get our egos in check. Right, yeah. So probably this crisis can help us and it's not we need another crisis. So, fine. Well, I'll tell you what, if we haven't fixed it, you can not we need another crisis. So, to find, well, I'll tell you what, if we

haven't fixed it, you can just order us another crisis. Right. Amazon probably have a couple of crisis that you can just buy. So go and get yourself one of that. Where can people get your book, Peter, and what else should they check out? What do you want to plug? Send it to? Yeah, it's very easy. Our domain is procrastination.com, so you can remember it easily and it's I guess everywhere it's in 18 languages now so we have Japanese translation, Korean translation, many European languages so you can get the book in your favorite language. And then what about you? You want social media people want to check you out? Yeah of course it's at P at P-E-T-R-L-U-D-W-I-G. So my name and surname.

I'm mostly on LinkedIn and Instagram. I don't like Facebook that much because my timeline is full of crazy, political, Facebook's assessment. Facebook's been never been as bad as it has now. The final fatality of COVID-19 is? Facebook news feeds. That's what it is. Right, right.

Yeah, and they really pay the best edictologies around the world to make the timeline more addictive to you. So basically it's your like a personal tabloid for you. And it's all about your emotion. so they know what makes you crazy so so that's why my It's been great. I hope that it's helped helped a lot of people to get over their procrastination Everything that we're talking about we linked in the show notes below.

If you've got any questions, comments or feedback, you know where to get them at Chris WillX, or find Peter online and give him some hassle as well. Dude, thank you so much and congratulations on your amazing social campaign for the masks. Chris, thank you so much for this interview. I really enjoyed it. And next time we should do that in person because, yeah,

I mean, with Matt like to do everything online. So yeah, we can do it in mass. So thank you for having me and listen to us. Take care and stay safe. Thank you.