Transcription
You have a productivity hack, an easy productivity hack. Instead of spending time getting in the mood to work, just start working. Confront the work. People think they need perfect conditions to start when in reality starting is the perfect condition. I'm married to that. I love that because if you think like I, you know, I obviously am somebody who always wants to optimize how much work I do per unit of time. And so I I was, you know, there was definitely times earlier in my life I was really romanticized by these like very extensive morning routines and supplement rituals and like all this stuff of mental masturbation around the work that needed to be done. But when I looked at 2 hours later and nothing had actually gotten done, the moment you begin working is when your output per unit of time goes up. And so that makes beginning the single greatest hack that you can have >> for everything else that you do in work.
Because thing is when you start working you start getting in the mood to work right like everything else is procrastinating around the work that you think you should do but like I have noticed for me at least I have these I have some big mental tasks you know what I mean like big content piece or big thing that you need like you know it's going to take real mental effort it takes me like five minutes of actually being in it to then get a a little bit of a lay of the land to then get into it but I used to take hours to delay to start the first five minutes and so my time compression of when I thought I should start doing something and when I started doing it. Over time, it's just compressed to the point where it's like the moment I think that I need to start doing it. Sometimes I just start it because then what happens? I get this open loop. And so rather than complete work at like because a lot of people are like, I want to complete it at this really nice clean point. Stop halfway through the sentence cuz it'll drive you mad. >> That's the zygic effect in full work. Do you know this story? Zyonic. Oh wow. This is way more than I did. >> That's what you shut up. That's what you're leveraging here.
So, um, the zyagonic effect was a study originally done on servers in restaurants, >> okay? >> And they realized, you've ever been at a restaurant and a server comes up and stands with their hands behind the back and go, "What would you like tonight, sir?" And you say, "I'll have the lobster roll and a glass of red wine and a blah blah." And you're like, "This [ __ ] is not he hasn't got a pen or a pad of paper. He's crazy." And then they go off. And what they realized was servers in restaurants were unbelievably good at being able to recall exactly what a table's order was while that table's order was still open. So, uh, guys in table 16, uh, they want to swap the peas out for a little bit of extra rice and they're doing this thing. As soon as the table was closed, >> they couldn't remember anything. So, this is an openloop closed loop system and it's built into the brain. The brain abhors an open loop. It's the same reason why Netflix cliffhers at the end of every episode guarantee that you'll watch the next one because you can't bear the fact. There's even novels in the dark romance genre that make guarantees that there won't be cliffhers. They make they put it on the front or the back of the book and they say no cliffhers guaranteed, which is people have so much distaste for it that it's a selling point that you get the closure at the end of it. and finishing halfway through a sentence reduces the activation energy required to begin that sentence the next day and it keeps it in your mind too overnight. So, I think yeah, whether you've stumbled on it or whether you knew about it, you've managed to leverage a pretty powerful piece of psychology there.
>> Going back to the work thing, uh, another one from you that I absolutely adore. It just takes work. Shitloads and shitloads of work. Every time I try and dress it up or cut a corner, I get brutally reminded the work just needs doing. The work doesn't care who you are. It just cares that it gets done. I'm actually going to reverse quote David Gogggins on this one, but uh I love this quote that he has which he says, "There's no shortcuts for you, David." Or, "There's no shortcuts for you, Gogggins." I heard him say that and I just love that as a refrain, which is that a lot of people look for a shortcut, but the idea that you say like, "They're not for you. You don't get to use them. You are immune to shortcuts." I just love it because then it it just further shortcuts the path to the work that needs to get done. And I wrote that tweet on my I don't know 11th run of this presentation that I'm doing because that's a recent one.
>> Yeah. >> And so I was it was like 11:00 at night. And so right now I'm working triple shifts which is not common for me. I usually do two not three. Um so for me in normal work days like I wake up uh I start working at you know 6 or 7 and then I go until about 6ish. So it's like 10 to 12 really concentrated hours work and that I can do six and a half days a week. I usually take Saturday afternoons off. Um, and it's really just because at that point I c I can't work anymore and my brain's stew and then I I get my one half day and then I'm good to go and I'm rearing a kick on, you know, to work on Sundays. My triple shift is I get I go to dinner and I come back at 7:30 and then I work from 7:30 until 11:30 or 1 or whatever, right? And when I'm putting in triple shifts is when I know I'm like really gassing it. Um, and that's that's when I'm like repeatedly doing 16 17 a day of actual productive work. And I I hear the same thoughts that everyone does, which is like it's not going to matter. Like it's fine. You've like it's good enough. Like I hate that. Like it it makes me sick to even say that, right? Because the thing that I like David Gogggins, right? He's got like there's no shortcuts for you. I would say the one that I have two that are like my internal ones. One that is probably the most common is I will do what is required and this work needs doing. and there's just no way around it. And it's just it's just looking at the face of the work and it's like smiling back at me like no one else is going to do it. Um, and like I love that one. Like when we're recording content in the early days, we were doing like a hundred shorts every time we did it and it was direct to camera and it was the only time I could fit it in with all the portfolio stuff they were doing. And so I was it was always like I will do what's required. And that's been a really helpful refrain for me when I'm confronted with especially when you know what needs to get done. And the second one is but I'll know. And so like even if it does go well and even if everyone else says it's great but I'll know. And it'll then rob me of all of the joy of all of those moments in that experience because I'll know that I could have done better. And the thing is is like to to quote myself from earlier like I've never regretted working harder ever, not once. And some people are like on your deathbed you're going to like no cuz I lived every moment of my day doing what I wanted to do. And I remember I had a boss when I um my first boss after college. She said this thing. I had had a a particularly good weekend and she said, "I'm pretty sure happiness is stringing as many of those days in a row as you possibly can." And although I hated the job, that piece of advice has actually been probably what I has been my blueprint for how to live, which is like my birthday looks the same as my Tuesdays, which looks the same as my Sundays.
You know what the original name pool for this podcast was? It's the only time in history I've done branding my entire adult life. And with club nights, all you're doing is coming up with brands. Paradiso. Oh, it's it's tropical. There'll be a flamingo, a skint. Oh, it's a cheap night. It's for people to get fingered in the corner. Like is we all I did was branding, right? I was the branding guy. I'm pretty good at copywriting. All I did was branding. The one time I've had divine inspiration 3 in the morning. wake up with the name was modern wisdom the one time out of every business every night every brand I've ever come up with that was the one time but on the list of the others mind and matter was one of them the other one was a quote from Tim Ferrris it's called crushing a Tuesday and he said that what you should aim for in life is for your average Tuesday not the spectacular one-time private jet with the friends to go for the whatever whatever not the UFC power slap launch party with staring at the back of Dan Bilzerian's Dirty Mullet. Like, not that. You want your average Tuesday to look the way that you want most of your life to do. And when I think about the days that I look back on at the end of my day and think like today was a good day, invariably, it's the same few things. It's I worked very hard on something that I felt was worth doing. I worked out and I spent time with people that I enjoy being around. If I do those three things, I had a good day. And so that's been my, you know, Alex's simple blueprint for doing things. And I think the point that you were making earlier, I think it's worth hitting on again, which is just that like most people's definition of work is a negative one, which is why they abhore it. Which is also why they misunderstand so many people who quote, I'll say quote here, are successful or ahead of them or whatever. Is that both people, one person says the word work and the other person hears the word pain. And so the first step to like becoming more successful is understanding the language that the people who are successful are using. They're actually defining the word differently. And so whatever that thing is that you actually enjoy doing where you lose track of time when you're in it, even if it's challenging, but usually it is challenging, right? Like it's not easy because then it's boring, right? Which is also why the uncertainty thing is so key, right? To not knowing if it's going to if it's going to work or not. You are going to work though either way. um is that the people who are quote addicted to work make it easy to be addicted to work because they do things worth doing. And I think a lot of it is coming down to making sure that you take the few precious seconds that we have to do the few things that are worth doing for the rest of your