00:00:00A story about procrastination.
00:00:02In 1830, Victor Hugo was catastrophically behind deadline on the hunchback of Notre
00:00:07Dame.
00:00:08His publisher had given him only a few months left.
00:00:11But Hugo was a spectacular procrastinator, entertaining visitors wandering Paris and finding
00:00:17excuses not to write.
00:00:19Desperately, he invented a bizarre discipline system.
00:00:23He gathered all his normal clothes, gave them to his servant, and ordered them to be locked
00:00:28away.
00:00:29He kept only a massive wool shawl that draped around him like a monk's robe.
00:00:34And he was too embarrassed to leave his house, dressed like a hermit, so he confined himself
00:00:39indoors.
00:00:40He also bought a huge bottle of ink, a literal symbol of his siege that would go down over
00:00:45time.
00:00:46And each morning he sat half-naked at his desk, the cold air biting, with nothing to do but
00:00:52face the manuscript.
00:00:53From that point on, his study became a cell.
00:00:56According to the legend, Hugo would draft furiously and then slide the finished papers under the
00:01:01door where his servant collected them for safekeeping.
00:01:04He was so cut off that even small needs had to be negotiated through the barrier.
00:01:10Food and fresh paper were passed back the other way, so the routine never broke.
00:01:15Adele, his wife, said he had "entered his novel as if it were a prison."
00:01:21It was a less jail and more self-imposed monastic cell.
00:01:28And the result was that in a feverish burst, he wrote day after day, often for twelve hours
00:01:34straight, and finished the entire novel within the lockdown months.
00:01:39By January 15th, 1831, the manuscript was complete.
00:01:43Frantic burst that birthed one of the great novels of the century.
00:01:48Without that desperate, almost theatrical punishment system, the book that cemented Hugo's legacy
00:01:55might never have been completed.
00:01:57Basically, you will be amazed at what you can complete when you have no other option.
00:02:04And obviously, the modern world is the antithesis of this.
00:02:08We have an infinite number of other things to do, parties to attend in Paris, and virtual
00:02:13meetings that we can go to, even if we're not actually a participant, we're just observing them.
00:02:21I think when you commit yourself fully to one thing, and it's one of the reasons why multitasking
00:02:28in the macro, not even in the micro, is such a bad idea.
00:02:32When you commit yourself fully to one thing, you can really achieve an awful lot.
00:02:35I certainly know that it's one of the, if not the, biggest unlocks that I've had, ever, with anything
00:02:43that I've ever tried to be good at, whether it was playing cricket as a kid, or building
00:02:48my business, my first business, club promoting, trying to DJ, modeling thing, the fucking learning
00:02:56thing, the podcasting thing, the moving to America, the fucking 01 visa thing, like every
00:03:01single big achievement that I'm really proud of has had, it's required me to do some version
00:03:08of this Hugo jail cell thing, where, fuck dude, like, I bumped into a girl at Breathwork
00:03:17a couple of days ago and she, we haven't seen each other for two, three years.
00:03:23And she was like, I just wanted to say, like, I'm, you know, I'm really, I'm really happy
00:03:27for how everything's gone for you and, you know, it really seems like, like you've, you've
00:03:31got on well, cause I remember when we were talking about three years ago and I'd be speaking
00:03:36to you and it would be 11 PM at night and you'd just be in your office editing audio files
00:03:41for hours and hours and hours, and I'd be out with my friends and I'd be asking what you're
00:03:46up to and you'd just tell me that you were editing these audio files, you, you must have,
00:03:51I guess you have people that edit the audio files now, and I was like, yeah, thankfully
00:03:55that's not a task that I have to do anymore, but I had to, and so will you up until the
00:04:02point at which you don't anymore, but you can't get to the point where you don't have to do
00:04:05the stuff without having been the person that has to do them.
00:04:08I mean, it's different from Victor because even if he writes The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
00:04:12it's not like he gets a ghost writer in to write his sequel or his next book, but yeah,
00:04:18that thing in the macro, I think, which is just maybe worth lingering on is you can't
00:04:25multitask.
00:04:26There is no such thing as multitasking.
00:04:27Like what, what people think about when they think about multitasking is parallel processing.
00:04:31There is no such thing as that.
00:04:34Even switching between tasks has a huge fucking cost in terms of what you can achieve.
00:04:39But then doing it in the macro too, you, you miss out on all of the big context window,
00:04:45a word that everyone knows now from AI, the bigger the context window, the more information
00:04:49it's able to pull in and the more connections it's able to make.
00:04:52I'm watching George Mack write his book at the moment and the size of the context window
00:04:57he's got is fucking insane.
00:04:58Like he is, all he does is read, write, train, and sleep.
00:05:06That's it.
00:05:07That's all he's doing.
00:05:08He's just obsessed.
00:05:09He's so deep in this process.
00:05:12And it made me realize if I was trying to compete with him for writing a book while doing all
00:05:17of the other bullshit that I'm doing, I'm going to get eaten alive.
00:05:20I'm not going to get anywhere close to the types of insights because I'm not playing with
00:05:23the different ways that all of these ideas can lock together.
00:05:26And it doesn't matter what you're trying to achieve.
00:05:29If you commit yourself to your health, we're about to go into 2026, you would be much better
00:05:34off having 90 days or 180 days on a single goal and then changing it for the next three
00:05:42quarters or half of the year than you would be trying to do all of those things.
00:05:46Well, it's important to have a balanced life and you know, you'll get, you'll burn yourself
00:05:49out.
00:05:50If you do too much of one thing, it's like, no, I fully disagree.
00:05:53Find something that you can get obsessed about, allow it to climb inside you and wear you
00:05:57like a fucking parasite.
00:05:59And then once you are done with that thing, you will make more progress.
00:06:02Here's a good best example.
00:06:03You will make more progress in six months of dedicated training than in two years of half
00:06:08in half out training.
00:06:10And you will learn more and you will be spending all of your time fucking trolling forums and
00:06:14watching videos and doing all the rest of it.
00:06:16That is the unlock.
00:06:18Here's another insight about procrastination, like I've been thinking a lot about procrastination
00:06:23this year.
00:06:24Procrastination as far as I can see is often about fear.
00:06:28We like to pretend procrastination is a time management problem, but regularly it isn't.
00:06:34It's more like a self-protection strategy wearing a Fitbit.
00:06:39When we delay doing the thing we know we should do, we're sometimes not wrestling with our
00:06:45schedule.
00:06:47We're wrestling with our self-worth.
00:06:49And the logic goes a bit like this.
00:06:51If I try and fail, everyone will see.
00:06:56So if I never try at all, the failure is private and deniable and safe.
00:07:02This is the psychological sleight of hand at the heart of much of procrastination as far
00:07:08as I can see.
00:07:09It feels like avoidance, but it functions like armor.
00:07:14You convince yourself the task is scary, or the conditions aren't perfect, or you need
00:07:19to feel ready first, but really you're just terrified that doing your best might not be
00:07:27good enough.
00:07:30So you don't do anything.
00:07:31On the surface, procrastination looks like laziness, but underneath it's fear wearing
00:07:38a pajama top.
00:07:40The tragedy is how elegant the trap is.
00:07:43Number one, you procrastinate because you don't want to look bad.
00:07:47Number two, this fear stops you from doing things.
00:07:51Number three, you are afraid of failure, but by procrastinating, you guarantee failure.
00:07:57You inoculate yourself from failure publicly by certifying your failure privately.
00:08:05You get to say, "Well, I could have done it if I'd actually tried."
00:08:11This is the safety blanket.
00:08:13It's an emotional insurance policy, the psychological loophole that allows you to stay intact while
00:08:21your dreams slowly starve.
00:08:23It's weirdly one of the few behaviors where we congratulate ourselves for executing a strategy
00:08:30that literally delivers the opposite of what we want.
00:08:34It's like a man who refuses to play the game unless he can guarantee victory, not realizing
00:08:41that refusing to play is the only guaranteed loss.
00:08:46Every time you hide in procrastination, you choose the fake safety of hypothetical excellence
00:08:54of the real messy human business of trying and failing and trying again.
00:08:59You choose the version of you who could have done great things over the version of you who
00:09:04actually might.
00:09:06This is the uncomfortable truth.
00:09:08Procrastination is often not about indecision.
00:09:11It's a decision to live in theory rather than in practice.
00:09:16Once you see it clearly, the whole game changes.
00:09:18The question stops being, "Why can't I get started?" and becomes, "What am I so afraid
00:09:24will be true about me if I actually try?"
00:09:29That's a much harder question, which is why most people never ask it.
00:09:32They just carry on congratulating themselves for their caution while quietly guaranteeing
00:09:38the outcome that they fear most.
00:09:40The antidote isn't motivation.
00:09:42Motivation comes and goes.
00:09:44The antidote is surrender.
00:09:47You lower the stakes.
00:09:48You let yourself look foolish.
00:09:50You accept the embarrassment of being a beginner, the awkwardness of doing something badly, the
00:09:55exposure of your real effort being put on the line.
00:10:00Because once you remove the need to look good, the need to start becomes easy.
00:10:06It turns out that the hardest part of any meaningful work is not so much the work itself.
00:10:13It's the identity shift that you must endure from someone who protects their image to someone
00:10:20who risks it.
00:10:22If you can do that once and procrastination stops being a dragon, instead it becomes what
00:10:29it always was, which is a flimsy emotional habit built to protect a version of you that
00:10:37was never meant to survive adulthood.
00:10:41You don't need courage to begin.
00:10:44You just need the willingness to be seen beginning.
00:10:51Procrastination is a massive problem, and there are practical limitations, usually two as far
00:10:55as I can see.
00:10:56The first one, you don't know what to do.
00:10:59You have this big project.
00:11:00You don't write a book, you write a sentence or you open a Word document or you do research.
00:11:04Don't know what to do?
00:11:06Relatively easy solution.
00:11:07What is the next physical action?
00:11:09I need to write a book.
00:11:10Okay, well, where are you?
00:11:11I'm in bed.
00:11:12Okay, well, I fucking throw the covers off you.
00:11:15Then you need to get one leg out of bed, then another leg out of bed.
00:11:17Then you need to stand up.
00:11:18Then you need to go to the bathroom.
00:11:19Then you need to put your pants on.
00:11:20Then you need to go into the living room.
00:11:21Then you need to get your laptop out.
00:11:22That is the next physical action.
00:11:25Most people can go one more step but can't run a marathon in a single go.
00:11:30The same thing is true.
00:11:32Second big practical reason is you know what to do, but you don't know how to do it.
00:11:37And that with the world of ChatGPT and Google and YouTube and friends that you can ring and
00:11:44experts and coaches is pretty easy to fix.
00:11:51I don't know what to do.
00:11:52Break it down to next physical action.
00:11:53I don't know, I know what to do, but I don't know how to do it.
00:11:57Ask somebody, including a fucking AI agent.
00:12:02But the big bit, I think when asking why is it that I'm scared of even getting to that
00:12:08stage?
00:12:09Why do I not want to answer that question myself?
00:12:12Is because of this.
00:12:13It's this identity problem.
00:12:14It's the fact that you would rather assure your failure privately, inoculate yourself
00:12:20from failure publicly by assuring your failure privately.
00:12:25There is this bit of you that is kind of a coward in a way.
00:12:31It is.
00:12:32I'm not a coward, that sounds too mean.
00:12:33Look at me.
00:12:34Look at how gentle and fucking soft signal of effectiveness I'm trying to be here.
00:12:42It is maybe cowardly, but it's understandable.
00:12:46The thing that I would say is that version of you, that bit of you that needs protecting
00:12:57doesn't actually need as much protection as you probably think.
00:12:59It's quite a juvenile version of you.
00:13:02It's immature, it's nascent.
00:13:08What it doesn't want is to look silly.
00:13:10It doesn't want to be judged.
00:13:12It doesn't want its self worth to be damaged because it's failed at something.
00:13:15It doesn't want other people to think less of it because it's not performed in the manner
00:13:19that it should have done.
00:13:21This is one of the ruthless things about imposter syndrome, and especially as you progress, imposter
00:13:25syndrome doesn't necessarily go away that quickly because every higher rung on the ladder that
00:13:34you climb just gives you further to fall.
00:13:36Oh my God, look at what my minimum level of output has to be now.
00:13:40This means that the procrastination thing, if you're not careful, if you don't turn around
00:13:43and face or pick up that sort of part of you that's worried about being seen, that's worried
00:13:48about failing, that's scared about being judged from people.
00:13:55If you don't turn around and deal with that, he will or she will follow behind you.
00:14:00Every time that you try to sort of take a step back to run at something, you'll step on them
00:14:04and they'll yelp and they'll go, "Oh no, what if we mess up?"
00:14:09I don't think that that's a good situation to be in.
00:14:13The final point is, do you know what the tasks that you didn't go for made other people think
00:14:24about you?
00:14:25Nothing.
00:14:26They don't think anything about you because you didn't try.
00:14:32The very thing that you were worried of happening, which is becoming irrelevant and people not
00:14:37caring is going to happen if you don't go for it.
00:14:42I would much sooner.
00:14:43Maybe it's a maturity thing, it's probably going to get easier as you get older because
00:14:47people realize as they age that failure isn't that big of a deal and that somebody who tries,
00:14:55regardless of whether or not they succeed or fail, somebody who gives it a crack is worthy
00:14:58of respect way more than somebody who has this sort of sardonic, distanced, non-earnest,
00:15:03insincere cutting, "Cool, I didn't need to do that, man.
00:15:07I don't really try anything, man."
00:15:09All right, they're not the people that I want to hang around with and they're not the people
00:15:13that my friends want to hang around with either.
00:15:14So find your tribe.
00:15:15You can be around people who have the willingness to be seen beginning or the people who would
00:15:22rather look cool for fear of failing publicly at something that they might win at.
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00:16:25Congratulations for making it to the end of a clip.
00:16:27Your brain has not been fried by TikTok.
00:16:30Watch the full episode here.