The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 2 - Nir Eyal On How To Stop Procrastinating

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this episode Nir Eyal, International Best-Selling Author, lecturer and inventor explains the psychological reasoning behind our procrastination. As entrepreneurs we all have a clear vision for what we want and who we want to be. But no matter how strong this vision is, procrastination and distraction somehow find a way to stand between us and getting stuff done. Nir breaks down the science behind distraction and offers advice in how we can become ‘Indistractable’. Full Episode - https://g2ul0.app.link/cvqxeLjPEfb Nir: https://www.instagram.com/neyal99/ https://twitter.com/nireyal Watch us on YouTube - www.youtube.com/StevenBartlettYT 

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. The fundamental question, which I know everybody wants to have the answer to and you know your book is incredibly positively reviewed i checked everywhere and the reviews are you know astounding so i'm presuming you're the guy that has the answer the question is and this is the fundamental question i guess you're addressing in the book is why don't we do the things that we want to do?

And look, my life is full of things that I really, really want to do, as is everybody's. Whether it's calling my mom or like taking the trash out or buying that thing on Amazon I know I need in the house that's causing me great inconvenience. Or exercising or eating right or whatever it might be. I just think, imagine the entrepreneur, the family member, the boyfriend I would be if I could just bloody do these things that I want to do. Amen. So how do I do it? Yeah. So it starts from understanding why we don't do these things. That fundamentally, the reason we procrastinate, the reason we get distracted, the reason we don't do what we say we're going to do, the reason we don't live with personal integrity is because of an impulse control problem. That's really what it is. It's not that we're bad people. It's not that we're broken. It's not that we're

messed up in some way. It's that we are looking for the easiest way to get psychological relief. And that is what our brains are designed to do. That, in fact, if you think about what is the root of all human behavior, why do we do everything we do? There's this theory that many people are aware of, that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This is called Freud's pleasure principle. That is all about carrots and sticks. We've all heard this before. That is not what is going on in the brain. That, in fact, to get us to do everything that we do, everything that we do, the brain utilizes one thing, and that is discomfort. Everything we do is about the desire to escape an uncomfortable sensation. It's called a homeostatic response. If you think about this physiologically, right,

if you go outside and it's cold, that's not comfortable. You put on a jacket. If you come back inside, now it's too hot, you take it off. If you feel hungry, you feel hunger pangs. That's not comfortable. So you eat. What about sex? Sex is a great one, actually. So this is a terrific point. You think, okay, well, doesn't the species perpetuate itself through pleasure, through orgasm?

But think about this for a minute. In fact, the brain has two neural circuits. One is called the liking system, and one is called the wanting system, two separate systems. The liking system, the point of the liking system in the brain is to encode memories, right? Memories of what feels good. The point of the wanting system is to remind you of that with a painful prod. So let's take sex. The act of sex, the act of lovemaking or orgasm is fleeting, right? It's very, it doesn't take that long. Tell me about it.

Right, tell you about it. But getting up to that, that takes a lot of work, right? The wooing and the pursuit. And if you think about what's involved, you know, there's a very good reason why we say love hurts. Because wanting, craving, lust, desire, those are psychologically destabilizing states. And that is what gets us to have sex, is the discomfort of wanting someone, craving them, being obsessed with them. That stuff drives us crazy. I mean, literally, love does hurt, neurologically speaking.

Because remember, the brain doesn't get us to do things because they feel good The brain gets us to do things because they felt good It's the memory of that feeling that gets us that prods us to go get it, but it does that through discomfort so the reason this is so important is because if All human behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management. That fundamentally, if you don't do what you say you're going to do, if you procrastinate, if you delay, if you get distracted, it's because your brain has told you that the easiest way to find relief from psychological discomfort is with some

kind of distraction. So we talked about it physiologically, how we do this biologically, but when our body feels uncomfortable, psychologically, it's the same exact thing. When we feel lonely, where do we go? We check Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, right? When we feel uncertain, we Google. When we feel bored, stock prices, sports scores, the news, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, the options are limitless. We do these things because we feel discomfort and we want to escape that feeling as quickly and easily as possible. So the idea here is how do you train your brain to no longer get relief from this uncomfortable state through distraction, but rather through acts of traction? That's what this is all about. And you say acts of traction. That's what this is all about. And you say acts of traction.

Yeah. So to understand what distraction is, we have to understand what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? So the opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. That in fact, both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And they both end, you'll notice in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N. That spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you plan to do with intent, things that move you forward in life. The opposite of traction is distraction, anything that pulls you away from what you plan to do. So this is why this is super important. There's two reasons why this is very important. Number one, anything can be a distraction. And this gets entrepreneurs all the time. I used to sit down at my desk and I'd say, okay, now I'm going to work on that big project. I'm going to

do that thing that I've been procrastinating on. I'm finally going to do that hard task. Here I go. Right after I check email. Right? Right after I do that other thing that I need to do right now real quick. That thing that feels productive, it feels worky, right? It feels like that's something I had to do anyway, but that's what I call pseudo work. Because if we give into that distraction of email, which feels worky, right? Those are the more sinister distractions. It's really easy to say,

oh, you're reading the newspaper when you're supposed to be reading, or you're supposed to be working, or you're watching YouTube when you're supposed to be working. That's obvious. The more pernicious distractions are the ones that are hidden,

that we think are productive, but really are a distraction. Why are they so dangerous? Because when we do that, we are giving into the urgent and paying the price of not doing what is important. Why do we do that? When we've got that big project in front of us, which we know has a deadline of tomorrow, why do we do everything? You know, the procrastination, at least that's how, you know, people think of it in society. Why do I choose to do everything other than the big projects? Because you're looking to escape discomfort. And the big project to me, neurologically and psychologically is discomfort. And the bigger the project, the more things on your to-do list, we can talk about why I hate to-do lists in a minute.

The more your to-do list, ironically, you would think, oh, the more I have to do, the more I should want to do it, right? But you know, it's the exact opposite. The more you have on the to-do list, the more you say, ah, screw it. I'm going to go out, right? I'm going to go watch some videos or I'm going to go hang out with my buddies. I'm going to escape because it feels horrible. And so you don't want to do it because it feels bad. And especially when there are other things in our world that can relieve that discomfort, right? Go to the pub, hang out with some friends, watch a YouTube video, go on Facebook. Those things relieve that discomfort by distracting us.