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The Stoic Solution To Procrastination (Episode 105)
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The Stoics are always reminding us to improve ourselves now. But how do you actually do that? What advice do they have for us? Caleb and Michael discuss a simple 3 step approach to procrastination we can glean from the ancient Roman Stoics.
(03:33) The Stoic Solution to Procrastination
(08:42) Marcus Aurelius on Procrastination
(12:16) Putting Off Writing
(15:01) Directness
(28:28) Motivating Yourself With Philosophy
(36:39) The Virtues
(39:24) Trust
(46:09) Putting It All Together
***
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Transcript
The Impact of Procrastination on Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes. It denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to life is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies and fortunes control and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?
Introduction to Stoic Views on Procrastination
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to Estoy Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:00:30
Speaker
And today we're going to be talking about procrastination. What did the Stoics have to say about putting things off that we should be doing? What kind of advice did they have about procrastination and how did they think about it that's distinct from other ancient and modern philosophies?
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I love procrastination as a topic. I mean, first of all, because everybody's experienced it, it's going to be relatable to anybody listening. It doesn't matter what you do, you've experienced some sort of procrastination about starting it. Another part is that we did an episode on weakness of will or these kinds of situations of where you find yourself having trouble doing what you know you should do. And I think procrastination is one of the perfect examples of that. That's what makes it so frustrating. It's not procrastination if you don't want to do it, it's just not doing it.
00:01:20
Speaker
At least I think procrastination is combined with some sort of guilt or anxiety with the fact that you know you should be doing it in some sense.
00:01:30
Speaker
And it's a question of motivation. I also think it's a question of consistency, being the kind of person that follows through on the kinds of things you set out to do. And I think that's one of the most important practical skills we can develop. So interested in what the stomachs have to say about how we can attack procrastination, change our perspective to help defeat it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a serious issue in a sense that
00:01:57
Speaker
All of us procrastinate maybe on things that don't matter so much, whether it's homework or some kind of bureaucratic form that we need in some sense need to do. But of course, procrastination comes up when in people's careers and their work. And of course, when it comes to relationships as well, people put off things that they ought to be doing earlier.
00:02:23
Speaker
And I think all of us can think of different examples in each of those three domains.
Stoic Strategies to Combat Procrastination
00:02:30
Speaker
And so we'll cover what the Stoics have to say about procrastination. And one way to describe what the Stoics advise us to do in the face of procrastination is
00:02:42
Speaker
I think can be captured in a three-step approach. It's not the only thing they have to say about procrastination. One can certainly find other important insights, but we'll cover that and we'll use that to explain what's unique about the stoic approach. And then I think you should be able to find anything of use for whatever you happen to be procrastinating on, if anything.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited to learn. And I think you did a good job of setting the stakes. There's procrastination, as you said, of you're not giving yourself enough time to study, so you crunch a bit. And this procrastination, like, oh, I never traveled like I wanted to, or I never wrote that book, or I never did that thing that I thought I should. And that's, in a sense, that's also, as you said, it's also kind of procrastination. That's pretty significant. So maybe a bit higher stakes than maybe first come to mind when you think of procrastination. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely.
00:03:36
Speaker
Cool, so my three-step summary of the Stoics on procrastination is that one should do, when facing it, one should do three things. First, identify your judgments. Second, once you've done that, tackle the relevant task with directness and simplicity, now in this very instant.
Understanding Judgments Behind Delays
00:04:03
Speaker
And then finally, motivate yourself with reminders. Form that practice of going back to reminding yourself of who you want to be, what those ultimate ideals are, what your life philosophy is. So let's dive into each of those three parts, starting with the first. So first has to do with identifying your judgments. And this is a key, I think this,
00:04:32
Speaker
step reveals one of the most important parts to the stoic approach to procrastination, which is that putting things off reveals judgments. So if you think about procrastination simply as delaying doing something you should do,
00:04:52
Speaker
How the Stoics think about that is that's going to be driven by value judgments you're making. Remember, this is sort of how the Stoic model of the mind works. It's not that we are thrown around by subconscious desires or something like this. It's that
00:05:10
Speaker
are judgments shape who we are. So if I'm procrastinating due to being impulsive, that reveals a judgment that I have that something else is more worth doing. If I am being indecisive, that might indicate that I don't know whether this task is worth doing at all or if there's something more important.
00:05:34
Speaker
If I'm putting something off out of fear, then there's some judgment that this could harm me or maybe if I do this, I'll do it poorly and my reputation will suffer and that'll be bad for me.
00:05:46
Speaker
And finally, I think there are even cases where you might procrastinate on doing something just because you have the sense that what I'm being asked to do is actually wrong or something like this. So you might have beliefs about justice, maybe that whatever your boss told you to do is not ethical and that's why you're procrastinating it. And I think this brings out an important point, which is just that sometimes these judgments are accurate. There are cases where
00:06:13
Speaker
uh procrastination may even in fact be better than doing the task either because the task is wrong or probably in other cases it's you have you haven't thought about it clearly enough yet and it requires more deliberation.
00:06:28
Speaker
So, you know, some interesting points here. There's different kinds of procrastination, being impulsive. So you're supposed to study and you go out to a party. That's very different than, you know, I'm not telling bad news to this person because I'm kind of afraid of the reaction. It kind of makes me uncomfortable. So fear and impulsiveness, indecision, justice, all different. They also speak to our judgments. We're not procrastinating a vacuum. We procrastinate because procrastination reveals a certain way we think about something.
00:06:57
Speaker
I think those are great. One thing you've defined procrastination is putting off something you should do.
00:07:04
Speaker
So if our procrastination is right, I guess it means putting off something that we think we should do in one sense. Like, so if I don't wanna do what my boss tells me to do because I think it's immoral, you know, scam some customer or something, then I should do it in one sense as an employee, but then I shouldn't do it in another and that's the conflict because, yeah, how could your procrastination be right if it's something you should do, I guess is what I'm asking. Right, right, yeah, I think we could make the,
00:07:33
Speaker
The definition was imprecise and I would have...
00:07:39
Speaker
not made it to the next stage of some Socratic questioning with this definition intact, I think. So it's putting off something that you believe you have some reason to do and perhaps you haven't decided yet whether you have reason on net to do it. And in particular, there's something unresolved that
00:08:08
Speaker
I think even in the case where your boss asks you to do something unethical, it's not the case that what you should do is that task rather that the procrastination indicates that you are skipping out on a hard conversation or have some unresolved matters to attend to either within yourself or with respect to your boss.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I'll take my Socrates hat off now. All right, cool, cool.
Insights from Marcus Aurelius
00:08:45
Speaker
Well, I'd like to read a passage from Marcus Aurelius from his Meditations because this captures both the universal experience of procrastination, I think, and also how it is driven by judgments.
00:09:09
Speaker
So this is a well-known passage from Meditations 5, 1. This is the Gregory Hayes translation. At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
00:09:35
Speaker
but it's nicer here. So were you born to feel nice instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands? And
00:09:59
Speaker
One reason I love this passage is that first it does have this universal elements, even the emperor of Rome struggles getting out of bed sometimes putting off the day's action.
00:10:13
Speaker
And then there's this dialogue, a Socratic dialogue thinking about what am I made to do? Is it to stay under the covers or is it to be an excellent human being? And there is that temptation. What I'm made to do is to pursue pleasure. It's nicer here, it's nicer under the covers. And then that immediate follow up with another judgment. But were you born to feel nice?
00:10:41
Speaker
instead of doing things and experiencing them. And that shows, I think the importance of identifying the judgments at stake and then thinking through, okay, what should I be doing here? What is this thing I'm putting off that I am called to do in the traditional stoic sense, because that's what my nature demands.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, I can almost think of it like, so identify the judgments. It's almost this thing of, it's like a diagnosis, right? Diagnose the cause. And sometimes the judgment's true, right? So sometimes the cause is a justified one. So I think of the example of pain, right? I don't know, I'm thinking if I'm putting my hand on the stove, oh, what's the cause of this pain? Well, it's that my hand is burning. Well, that's probably, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't ignore that pain, right? I should respond to it, accept it, adjust to it. And sometimes the pain is,
00:11:40
Speaker
I don't know for a less good reason or I don't know if the metaphor stretches that much. Maybe I'm lifting weights or I'm going for an exercise and it's like, well, a certain amount of pain is expected here and it has a good end. But you need to first, I diagnose, you need to first understand the source of the procrastination. In this case, he wants to stay in bed probably from some mix of fear. He's afraid of going out and doing these tasks and dealing with these frustrating people and probably some mix of
00:12:07
Speaker
maybe impulsiveness in this desire to stay warm and do what's nice. But once he's diagnosed, he can then introduce counter-arguments, right? Right, right.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, so I think if I think about a case that I encounter fairly often, when I'm writing, I often feel writing is one of the most difficult things I do on a day-to-day basis, and it can be easy to put off. And when I'm in that moment where maybe something's half written or just needs to be finished, and I'm thinking through this, something doesn't,
00:12:46
Speaker
feel right or there's something wrong about this piece and I just want to quickly take a break, do something that feels, that seems more productive, handle some emails. What's actually driving that is taking that break, useful for finishing the piece, often I think probably not, but sometimes of course going for a walk can affect
00:13:10
Speaker
be a useful thing to do. Is this sort of unpleasant sensation of sitting at my laptop and not knowing what to write next? Is that an indication that a piece has gone awry somehow? Or is it instead just something that I need to push through and really figure out how to phrase the next few sentences? Yeah, it's a good example. And I guess that
00:13:36
Speaker
I mean, you speak to something there too, about how do we know, how do we know the correct judgment, right? Like how do we know the right reason for wanting to procrastinate? Right. Cause there could also be the situation where we say, well, I'm not procrastinating or I don't want to do this cause I have to answer those emails. I do that productive thing. So I don't know. I guess there's that, there's that point there. Your story made me think of, we got to identify our judgments, but that's not always easy to do because sometimes we come up with false explanations for the procrastination too.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a, you know, like someone related just to follow up in different scenarios. If you, I think in these writing type situations, I might think, no, this piece actually, there is something wrong in the thinking here, or if not mistaken, at least not ideal, this isn't the piece I should be writing right now, or not the right edition, what have you.
00:14:28
Speaker
And then it's the next move to redo, rewrite a new piece, or move on to another task. And if it's that strong temptation to move on to another task, maybe that something else is driving that judgment, right? It's not just the sense that the piece needs to be reworked, but perhaps even avoiding coming to really wrestle with the ideas
00:14:56
Speaker
and how to state them clearly. That's the main issue.
Simplifying Tasks for Effective Action
00:15:02
Speaker
So the next step is tackle these tasks with directness and simplicity. And I think that this can help with these sorts of situations where
00:15:17
Speaker
What the Stoics advise is to not be distracted by the whole, but think about things in a step-by-step, simple way. So I'll read another passage from Marcus Aurelius.
00:15:38
Speaker
where he says, don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don't try to picture everything bad that could happen. Stick with the situation at hand and ask, why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it? You'll be embarrassed to answer.
00:15:54
Speaker
that remind yourself that past and future have no power over you, only the present, and that even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can't hold off against that, well then, heap shame upon it. So there are some strong words of self-talk from Marcus Aurelius. That's meditation 836. And here,
00:16:21
Speaker
There's this, I think, so if we continue the situation, think about writing a whole piece, that's a huge command, or it can feel overwhelming. One can judge that's an overwhelming prospect, but
00:16:37
Speaker
whenever one's faced by a task like that, you can always break it down into its simpler or more constituent parts. Instead of writing a whole piece, what's the thing about the key idea? If the key idea is still opaque, well, I have a list of things, writing ideas. Why don't I just look at that and then pull one off that shell and then start working it out.
00:17:06
Speaker
was working it out means, it means trying an outline, trying just adding a few sentences and approaching things with that kind of direct manner can be a, at least for me, I feel like is all nearly always a useful, useful thing to do. Yeah, I love that. I think it's one of the most appealing parts of stoicism is
00:17:31
Speaker
Even though it's a philosophy, it's willingness to be direct. There's that other quote of you're wasting no more time thinking about what a good man is and be one and just this thing of like reorienting yourself towards directness and action, but then also this cutting away the before and the after and just, I mean, what a beautiful quote, right?
00:17:54
Speaker
You only live in the present and that's endurable and the pain there is minimizable. And if you think, well, I can't survive this, you know, heaps of shame upon yourself, but just means like, you know, understand your own capacity and power to handle it.
00:18:10
Speaker
I mean, I think about anything that I've done long-term that has been successful. People talk about embrace the grind and I think there's some unhealthiness to that mentality. I think that anything that I've done and I've been successful at, I've found a way to genuinely enjoy the present moment of doing it.
00:18:28
Speaker
When I did my PhD, I think one thing that set me apart from a lot of people who had trouble finishing was that I, I just kind of just every day did like, I don't know, maybe four hours of good work. But if you just do that every day, that builds up into the thesis, right? Or with my jitsu, you know, I just continue to show up to practice, even if I don't feel like it and feel feel like in the moment in like a non I'm hating this long-term, but sometimes, you know, we all have ups and downs day to day.
00:18:58
Speaker
So that idea of cutting off the present is important, but then finding any way we can to enjoy the presence. I mean, that's been my secret. That's, that's like the longterm, uh, defeat of procrastination. Like we've done with these moments of like, well,
00:19:16
Speaker
Your boss has asked you to do something or to deliver some bad news. We've been giving these examples over the, those are not things that happen consistently in your life, but the kind of consistent procrastination you were talking about, like, I don't want to write this today. Or, you know, I don't, I don't want to go to work every day or things like that. I think the solution is that it's such a brilliant one to cut off the present and find a way to enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. Circumscribe yourself to the present is one of the phrases that.
00:19:44
Speaker
Hadeau uses for this. It's a great strategy. And I think something else that you're touching on there is that part of the Stoic approach along with the other ancient philosophies is to think about this
00:20:00
Speaker
not as these one-off decisions, but creating yourself into the kind of person who gets everything done that needs to get done. And that moves your focus to character, your systems, what have you, as opposed to putting yourself in a spot to
00:20:22
Speaker
always be doing these one-off type heroics. Instead, you're creating a life to avoid procrastination. And it's a longer term process. Marcus Aurelius has one other line about this sort of approach, this circumscribing the present, action by action. He has one other section in Meditations 8.32 that I also love.
00:20:50
Speaker
You have to assemble your life yourself, action by action, and be satisfied if each one achieves its goal as far as it can. No one can keep that from happening. But there are external obstacles, not to behaving with justice, self-control, and good sense. Well, but perhaps a some more concrete action. But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given, an alternative will present itself. Another piece of what you're trying to assemble,
00:21:19
Speaker
action by action. I just think that's so inspiring. It's so motivational. You have this picture of the relentlessness, but also this focus on intention. It's a discipline of action and practice. Just thinking about my role is to make
00:21:39
Speaker
good decisions, good judgments, step by step, you know, slowly building myself up into this kind of person and the thought, the obstacles, those are just something one needs to take into account, something one needs to
00:21:55
Speaker
overcome or play with whatever it is. It's just, you know, those are other externals on the game board, what have you, but your role is to just intend the right things, make the right judgments with respect to what's up to you and do that action by action.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. Also thinking about how Marcus must have been going through something rough whenever he was writing book eight. He's writing the motivational quotes for himself in this section. Yeah, as you said, action by action. It also makes me think, I think you put it really well with something like
00:22:40
Speaker
you know, relentlessness, but direction, something like that, like this forward momentum, but a sense of where that momentum is going. And I think something that can happen
00:22:52
Speaker
Procrastination is one thing, giving up is another. And one way to get rid of procrastination is to stop wanting to do the thing that you're procrastinating, right? It's to just reject that goal because the procrastination makes you uncomfortable or the delay makes you uncomfortable.
00:23:10
Speaker
And this is something I like this idea of like, well, just keep moving and keep working towards whatever you're aiming at. Focus on doing something. If you're hitting the wall, accept the wall, but keep moving towards the goal instead of quitting the game or saying, well, I'm not going to play because it's getting uncomfortable. I'm not going to try because I'm fighting myself kind of hitting a roadblock. And that's, that's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. I think you also have this thought of.
00:23:37
Speaker
moving directly to whatever the action at hand is and not getting stuck, prepare constantly preparing for it or doing sometimes people talk about fake work, work that feels productive, but isn't actually pushing, pushing the needle forward. Isn't actually getting done what you need to do. Um, and you go ahead. Oh, like what?
00:24:03
Speaker
something that's very new to me since I started working in a business environment after my PhD, there's this real hate of fake work, which I appreciate, at least at my job, and this focus on failing fast, this focus on being agile. I would have no idea what agile was before I was in a business environment, but just this idea of
00:24:27
Speaker
do something, put it out there and then get feedback on if people like it or not, whether that's the customer or the client, get feedback and then integrate that feedback back into the next version and just consistently improve. And I think when, when it comes to a lot of fake work, there's a lot of different ways it can manifest, but a lot of ways you can procrastinate with fake work is in ways that don't expose you to anything.
00:24:51
Speaker
I'm realizing now maybe this is when procrastination is motivated by fear. You don't want to really put yourself out there. You don't want to write that book you wanted to write because you don't want to learn from people that you know you're not a good writer. You don't want to change jobs in case you don't like the one you change into or you're bad at it.
00:25:09
Speaker
these kinds of fear things. You don't ask that person out in case they reject you. And one thing that's like action by action is this way of kind of not making this giant thing. This is not the do or die moment.
00:25:26
Speaker
This is not, your entire life does not depend on this, the success of your business or your personal life or your art or your project or your business, like your work. It doesn't depend on the moment. Just, just take the action, integrate the lesson and keep moving forward. That's something that I, I've really appreciated from my consulting work life and has really changed the way that I've approached procrastination else.
00:25:50
Speaker
Hi all. Michael and I are running another cohort of our Stoicism Applied course in January. If you'd like to start your year with us and with others who are seriously focused on walking the Stoic path, learn more about our course at stoameditation.com slash course. Where, but that's the, that's what this is making me think of is this idea of this action by action.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah. Just if you, if you do something, you will get feedback and you can use that feedback to make yourself better. If you don't do anything or you, you, you do, uh, the pointless work as you were saying, you won't get that feedback and you won't be able to get better.
00:26:34
Speaker
Right, right. I think something else that comes up, at least for me with writing, is that thought that if I just read this other additional piece, then I'll have the perfect formulation of how to put together what I need to be writing instead of, you know, there's that Epictetus line, if you would be a writer, write.
00:26:55
Speaker
not be a reader, though of course reading matters. So we've got, oh go ahead. Just to use your framework, do you think that's fear? Is the idea that if I write it now, it's gonna be bad? Sometimes I could see that, but I think mostly when I'm in those sorts of situations, it's probably closer to avoiding
00:27:22
Speaker
Doing the it's closer to avoiding doing the hard work of thinking something through and thinking that someone else has Thought this through like they have a technique or a framing that is useful For me that will sort of be the key to unlock the writing that I am thinking about doing I think people always think about their writing differently, but when I'm
00:27:50
Speaker
going through something, it often feels kind of messy or tangled, not as conceptually clear as I would like. And I just want some solution to help clear that all up. And maybe instead of, you know, doing the work myself, finding some other, some quick solution to that that someone else has put together.
00:28:11
Speaker
So yeah, using your framework, it's a kind of impulsiveness then. I mean, it's still, it's still impulsiveness in terms of like writing and thinking of a philosophy, but it's impulsiveness for like, well, maybe I'll be able to skip that hard work if I can just in the next article or the next, you know, the next argument will unlock it for me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And the impulsiveness, I think that's exactly right.
Philosophical Motivation and Life's Brevity
00:28:33
Speaker
So we have these first two steps, identify your judgment, tackling the task with the directness and simplicity, once you've done that thinking work. Last one, motivating yourself with philosophy, surrounding yourself with your philosophy. And what I mean by that is you see the Stoics are always writing down these maxims to encourage them to
00:28:58
Speaker
essentially be more virtuous people and to not put off what they know they need to be doing. They have all sorts of different kinds of ways
00:29:14
Speaker
to do this, but one of the key ones is just reminding oneself that life is short. You see all the major Stoics doing this. Marcus Aurelius writes, not to live as if you've had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you while you're alive and able. Be good. That's from Meditations 4.17. And then you have Seneca on the shortness of life.
00:29:39
Speaker
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes. It denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to life is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies and fortunes control and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately.
00:30:08
Speaker
And what the Stoics are counseling themselves, counseling others, is that life being short, of course, means that we have limited means to fulfill our roles, to live well, to obtain happiness. As such, if you're thinking about reforming your impulsiveness, facing something you fear,
00:30:36
Speaker
Don't put it off. Don't assume that you'll do so in the future. And doing one's best to internalize in that reminder is one thing one can do to make oneself into the kind of person that doesn't procrastinate. So that's this final step. I love that line, Seneca. You're arranging what lies in fortune's control and abandoning what lies in yours.
00:31:11
Speaker
We often think of control in stoicism as being almost defensive or greedy, or I'm trying to make somebody act a certain way or think something about me, or I'm trying to make the world be not the way it is. And I'm frustrated at something that I obviously shouldn't be frustrated at. But just this idea of even just like, oh, there'll be tomorrow. Or, oh, I can do it next year.
00:31:31
Speaker
that speaks so well to this attempt to control.
00:31:39
Speaker
Those are, that's the kind of thought of it's a little bit more morbid, right? It's a bit more memento mori, but it is an idea that like, yeah, you're, you're banking on what's outside of your control. You're treating it like it's up to you when it's not. And that's pretty, I know that'll be my, that'll be something that I'll have to, to ruminate on for a bit. I find that pretty, pretty inspiring. Right. Yeah. That's a great line.
00:32:03
Speaker
So I think that's one kind of reminder that focus on what's in your control, taking account for what's up to you while you still can.
Virtues in Overcoming Procrastination
00:32:16
Speaker
And then there are many other resources in stoicism to motivate yourself, remind yourself of your ideals such that when you're identifying your judgments, you'll be better at assenting to the ones that are.
00:32:31
Speaker
true that set you on the right path and whether that's thinking about role models, how would a role model act in this situation, what counsel would they give, whether it is taking the opposite approach and bringing to mind anti-models and using that to spur your action
00:32:58
Speaker
Or thinking about, we had this episode on shame and one's self-image. How do you cultivate your self-image as someone who takes justified pride in getting things done, doing them well, and uses that to motivate yourself in a positive way, where you enjoy getting things done, enjoy doing them well.
00:33:22
Speaker
hold yourself to that standard of performance or whatever domain it is. It may work more work related things or perhaps more even more relationship related related aspects of our lives. Yeah, so there's some idea here about you diagnose the problem, step one. You need to act on it.
00:33:45
Speaker
And then it's like, well, how do I get the motivation to act? Well, it's going to be through some sort of perspective shift through bringing some sort of idea to mind, whether that's the shortness of life, whether that's the fact that you're doing this for a reason or role models, as you said, or shame. Um, I mean, shame, that's like in the stoic context, but all of these kind of self-respect holding yourself to a high standard, right?
00:34:09
Speaker
uh holding like demanding demanding you know the good high things of yourself um these are the kind of motivational push you can need to get out of inaction into action understanding that the bar for action has been lowered the bar for action is not to write the book the bar for action is to do some writing today you know navigate the present moment well um and i think that also changes the
00:34:37
Speaker
You know, not a dramatic, well, life is short, so I'm going to quit everything, but just using that even as just a kind of a day-to-day push. And that's something I do. I found I've really been kind of memento moring recently and really been using the fact that I will die as a great reminder to just, I guess, be intentional day-to-day and be careful about the decisions I make.
00:35:00
Speaker
Um, and it's been, it's been really helpful. It's been really helpful. Yeah. I think motivating to be like, what kind of life do I want to live? Uh, because I'm not going to get to do this again. Um, that's been really, really, that's re that's helped me recontextualize my priorities in a way that has a lot of, uh, benefit to procrastination. When, when you think of procrastination, just as kind of a jumbled up set of priorities, right? Or just a jumbled up set of beliefs.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. Something I've been thinking about that it's related is I'm going through the process of moving right now. And although it's not as extreme as Memento Mori, I think it adds a little bit of a different frame to as I think about where I'm moving to next. What will I...
00:35:51
Speaker
What would I do differently in certain contexts? What sorts of friendships would I try to foster more knowing that those two could be, those two are temporary and ensuring that, you know, how do I take, how did I do in terms of taking advantage of what this city has to offer and where can I improve in my next spot?
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, the change in location, the change in life circumstances offers this kind of opportunity to take a moment, take a step back, recontextualize what you want out of things. And then maybe that clarity will help you deal with moments of procrastination moving forward or moments of conflict.
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah, yep. One other part of Stoicism that it's important to mention here is just that the Sostoics, they're focused on living in accordance of nature. What does that mean? It means living virtuously, and you can think about virtue as having different aspects. So some of the key virtues, courage, discipline, or moderation, prudence, and justice, I think are each relevant here.
00:37:08
Speaker
What's the courageous thing? It's not avoiding what needs to be done due to fear. It's doing what one ought to do, even if it's uncomfortable to do so. And you want to, of course, be moderate, be disciplined. That means not acting impulsively.
00:37:29
Speaker
building up the, the, don't want to say muscle. I feel like that's sort of overused, but just building up the capability to the stick. Building up the focus.
00:37:44
Speaker
filling up your capability to focus on what matters and not acting impulsively. And then of course you have prudence approaching your problems practically, thoughtfully with skill. And then I think justice matters as well. If you're thinking about what are people owed as a matter of justice and not putting off obligations you might have to others too.
00:38:11
Speaker
Because I think the justice one is interesting because I think that's like, I think that's where I procrastinate in the ways that's most painful to me. I wouldn't say I have the kind of life or, which is to say, I know, I know many people have this problem and it's a, but for myself personally, my procrastination is usually not, oh, I can't get things done that I want to get done. I'm not productive.
00:38:31
Speaker
It's usually, oh, I know I should do this. You know, I should apologize to this person. I should have that conversation. I should do this thing for somebody that I promised I would. But I don't want to because it's difficult or painful or I'm afraid. And so one way you can do is you can kind of limit the fear, but another way you can do is kind of be more strongly motivated by justice or more strongly motivated by what's right and use that to kind of punch through the procrastination.
00:38:58
Speaker
which is really kind of a delay in doing what you think you should do already. So I guess you can attack that by really committing to the fact that, yeah, I really should do this. And I think that's part of where justice comes in. Or in the examples we used, listening to the procrastination, if you're feeling weird about doing something that might not be the right thing to do, or might leave you feeling guilty. I think something I've noticed is that
00:39:27
Speaker
Simply doing what you say you will do, keeping your promises in a timely fashion seems very simple, common sense, but makes a huge difference in one's career and in one's personal life.
00:39:44
Speaker
I think is something that, of course, everyone is taught early on, but it's true. And I think that those small things can, when done often enough, cause one to be living an entirely different life, a much better life than one would have if you didn't have the trait of sticking with your commitments and whether it's in work or in one's relationship.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it kind of goes both ways. Like what I was thinking of when you said that, well, it goes a long way because it builds trust, right? People start to trust you and there's a kind of respect that comes with trust. Uh, well, you know, maybe, maybe Caleb isn't, uh, you know, the right person for everything or, or, you know, but they, they, they are who they are. They, they, and they do what they say they're going to do. And there's like, I can trust, I can trust them and I can really, really respect them.
00:40:44
Speaker
But then I was thinking, you know, the next level to that is almost the self-respect, right? The self-trust. Like I realize I'm the kind of person that, um, I will, I will commit myself to long-term plans. I will say, well, I'm going to do this for a couple of years and I can trust myself to make that commitment because I've shown to myself that I'm the kind of person that follows through on things. Right. And that is a powerful skill to have. And I think that's a.
00:41:13
Speaker
more so than being procrastination. So you can be productive or avoid the kind of unpleasant feeling of procrastinating. But if you can be procrastination to have self trust, that's a really transformative, I think, a skill to have or not skill that it's not a skill. It's like, uh, evidence, I guess, a true belief.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose it's that model of confidence where what is confidence is the expectation of success and how do you get that by succeeding and that doesn't mean
00:41:46
Speaker
hitting a home run on whatever task it is, but building up those smaller successes into a track record where you can have success for your other endeavor. I think a corollary of that point is ensuring that you are setting your target in a way that's realistic. So you always want those two aspects of
00:42:08
Speaker
continuing to be ambitious, relentlessly improving, but nonetheless being realistic in what can be done. Otherwise, if one sets one's target too high and fails, one is, in a sense, eating into that self-trust in the same way that if you had promised to deliver something to someone else so the doubt falls through, that's going to eat into their trust of you as well.
Maintaining Focus on Goals
00:42:35
Speaker
you got to find that sweet spot right and I find that so much so frustrating when people you know start jiu-jitsu for example like I see a lot of people lose because or quit because they just didn't expect to get better faster than they do or they set some sort of external goal like I'm gonna win this tournament or I'm gonna get a belt by this time
00:42:53
Speaker
And, um, I mean, again, that comes back to not circumscribing the present in one sense, but I guess realism, realistic goals is about looking into the future, but it's about, you know, give, give yourself an opportunity to build trust and do that by, by giving yourself things that are achievable, I guess. Um, I agree. I agree with you. And I think that's tied into people. Uh, I think that's a big problem for people.
00:43:17
Speaker
Right, right. When I think about running, if you think the Stoics have advice, sometimes they say, don't think about you're the world from this narrow prism, step outside and view the world from above. But other times they say, circumscribe yourself to the present and focus just on what is now. And you might think, isn't that just straightforwardly contradictory? And I think what the Stoics are getting at is that
00:43:48
Speaker
often the way we set up our character or life plans is too narrow and we forget that we're part of a much bigger story, forget that the world is a very complex place and that's where you want that view from above so you don't overreact to what is trivial so you take into account the complexity of the world.
00:44:16
Speaker
and so on. But once you've thought through what you ought to be doing, then that's where you do that action by action until you have some line of evidence that maybe suggests that your bigger picture is mistaken, whatever that happens to be. So if I think about an example of that,
00:44:34
Speaker
in running, at the large scale, you often want, say, if you're running a marathon, half marathon, what will you, if you think about that large scale, you want some pacing plan so that you're going at the appropriate pace, you don't burn out fast in the first couple of miles because of your excitement.
00:44:53
Speaker
So in that sense, you want to keep the hole in mind, but you also, you know, when you're on one of those later miles, don't want to be thinking, oh, I have to run, you know, seven more miles. I still have so much further to go. That's when you think about I have this system, this pace, and all I need to be doing is putting one foot in front of another right now and not bringing the hole into mind such that it overwhelms me.
00:45:23
Speaker
I'll say this beautiful example, like the large scale view tells you what to do in the moment. And then in the process of doing it in the moment, focus on the moment. Right. So you set a large scale goal to run a marathon. You know, you need to do.
00:45:38
Speaker
whatever, a eight minute mile. And then you, you set yourself in the moment, it's one foot in front of another, uh, at a certain tempo and that's the action. But the action has been set by that broad perspective and contextualized by that broad perspective. Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. Anything else you want to, you want to add to this? And did you want to touch on this, on how this compares to the other models of procrastination?
00:46:09
Speaker
I guess in terms of summary, I think what's most important about what sets the civics apart from other approaches of procrastination is that focus on judgments, thinking about
00:46:24
Speaker
how to improve your thinking. You're not merely procrastinating because of how you feel, but also because of how you think. And that's an important insight from the Stoics. And then they counsel us to move forward in a direct way, a simple way, action by action, and motivate yourself with that larger philosophy.
Recap of Stoic Techniques
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:46:49
Speaker
So one more time, putting it all together, we've got, how do we deal with procrastination in a stoic way? You recognize that the procrastination reveals a judgment. So first thing you do is try to find that judgment. Then you try to tackle the task. Once you've identified what the issue is, you try to tackle it with directness and simplicity in the moment.
00:47:11
Speaker
and motivate yourself with reminders as you go. These reminders help change our perspective, whether that's broader, smaller, or in terms of a self-image or role models. And what we hit on at the end as well was this idea of
00:47:26
Speaker
the importance of tackling procrastination, not just to get some sort of external result like productivity, but to get some sort of internal self-trust as well as build the trust of others. And really you trust yourself because you're cultivating virtue, right? You're cultivating excellence in terms of either courage, moderation, prudence, justice, depends on what that procrastination is, which, you know, it's a pretty good model. I'm fine. I'm, I'm motivated already to do some difficult things. All right, let's go.
00:47:55
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to Stoa Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. And if you'd like to practice stoicism with Michael and I as well as others walking the stoic path, we are running our three-week course on stoicism applied. It'll be live with
00:48:20
Speaker
a forum interactive calls that I think will be an excellent way for a group of people to become a more stoic together. So do check that out at stoameditation.com slash course. And if that's not to your fancy, you can find links to the stoa app as well as the stoa letter, our newsletter on stoic theory and practice at stoameditation.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time.