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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:43
Putting off Procrastination
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Hi everybody, I hope that you're doing well.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I'm going to do the long-awaited and oft-requested video on procrastination, and here, if you like, you can insert your own joke about how long it has taken me to get to the video on procrastination, but the reason for that It is a very complicated topic.
And you would hope so, because if you do suffer from problems with procrastination, it would kind of be a bummer if it turned out to be something pretty easy to solve.
So I'm going to take a swing at running you through at least my theory as to how procrastination develops within us.
Why it is so paralyzing and so hard to overcome and why it is that the more we work to overcome procrastination, the worse it seems to get.
And I have certainly suffered from my own problems with procrastination in my life.
And so I thought I would share with you the approaches or the understanding that I have about it and the ways in which I've overcome it.
And now I don't really suffer from it too much anymore.
So I'm going to start off with a fairly startling statement, which with any luck I will be able to back up with some examples and perhaps you will find as relevant within your own life.
And that statement is that fundamentally we suffer from procrastination, or we have tendencies towards procrastination, because as children we are treated as slaves.
Because as children we are treated as slaves.
And let me explain sort of what I mean by that, and we'll see if we can't make a little bit of sense out of it.
So, when we look at just a pure slave relationship, the old historical southern pick-cotton-on-the-back-forty kind of slave relationship, we've got the master up here and the slave down here.
Well, the way that it really works in that situation, of course, is a top-down situation.
The master tells the slave what to do, orders the slave to do something.
The slave has no capacity or practical ability to be able to resist or oppose the orders of the master.
The master says, go do X, and the slave just goes and does it and doesn't have the ability to say no or to negotiate or to provide alternatives or to express preferences in any way, shape, or form.
If he tries to do that, then he's going to get attacked or punished by the master.
And this, sadly, is all too common, and I would say it's pretty much the default position For children.
When we're children, we are simply told what to do.
We are ordered around.
We are managed.
We are ordered to perform certain chores, to obey, to sit still, to do our homework.
We're just ordered what to do.
do.
And we're not consulted in any way, shape, or form.
And we get little sort of inconsequential consults like, would you like hot dogs or hamburgers for dinner?
But our preferences, our foundational fundamental preferences are not consulted when we're children.
So I'm just finishing up a book called Real-Time Relationships, The Philosophy of Love, which I've written two books before, On Truth, The True, and Evolution, which is primarily about your relationship with your parents in the past and other authority figures.
And then I wrote a book called Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which is about your relationship with virtue and reality in the present.
This book is about your relationship with yourself and others in the future.
So I sort of Swinging the spotlight from the past over towards the future, so you're not driving by looking in the rearview mirror.
And in that book, I'll just sort of mention a little thing that I talk about here to highlight what it is that I mean.
So when I say that our preferences or our feelings were not consulted when we were children, what I mean is that your local pizza parlor will sort of ask you from time to time, if you've ever been part of one of these surveys, you know what I mean.
They'll ask you from time to time and say, what kind of pizza do you like?
How soon do you want it?
What kind of toppings do you want?
All of this kind of market research is done in order to try and tailor The pizza experience to your particular preferences or tastes.
And this also occurs with children.
So if you are a toy manufacturer, you do massive amounts of playtesting with children.
You do massive amounts of research to figure out what the children like, what the children want, so that you can tailor toys that will work for them.
You don't just sit there to the children and say, you will like and play with these toys, damn it!
So, when we want to interact with people in a positive way, we ask them what they want, we negotiate with them, and when the pizza parlor says, what do you want, and the recipients say, I want all the pizza I could ever eat for free, well, they say, well, we can't do that.
It's a negotiation based on reality.
It's not just a top-down ordering.
But there's mutual consultation that's involved.
So, when we understand that children's needs, wishes and desires are consulted by toy manufacturers and other people, then we can understand that This is all possible.
So, compared to your experience within your family and your experience within your school, compare that to the toy manufacturer or the pizza place or any software vendor, whoever it is that asks you for your opinion about things and tries to tailor what they offer to your particular desires from a realistic standpoint, from a what-is-possible standpoint.
Imagine that Your mom or your dad sits down with you and asks the following.
And again, this is from the upcoming book, Real Time Relationships.
Sits down across with you and says, listen, I wanted to get your feedback on my parenting.
I wanted to know what is working for you in my parenting and what is not working for you, what you like and what you don't like, what you find productive, what you find not productive, what you find useful, what you find frustrating or irritating.
So obviously I tell you not to eat the third candy bar.
Do you generally understand, even if you don't like it in the moment, do you generally understand later why I say that or are you just kind of obeying orders?
The negative feedback that I give you or even the punishments, the timeouts, do they work for you?
Do they make sense? Or are you just doing it because I'm telling you to do it?
Or does it make sense to you what it is that I'm asking you to do?
Even if it doesn't in the moment, like later on, does it make sense?
Is there any way that I could improve your experience of being my child?
Is there any way that I could become a better parent for you?
And what I mean by that is, if you could imagine the best conceivable possible parent for you, what would that look like?
If you could choose any parent in the world, would you choose me or would you choose someone else?
If you would choose someone else, why?
Help me understand how I could improve my parenting and improve your experience of being my child.
Do you see that you've never been asked that?
Do your parents never asked you that?
Do you see how we consult our customers on toys and pizzas and software and airline flights and all these sorts of things?
We consult.
Other adults, children and so on, on their preferences in this area.
But we do not consult our own children, or as children we are not consulted by our parents, on how the family experience can be improved.
This can happen with adult parents as well.
Your adult parents can say to you, How do you feel when I call?
Do you feel like we're having a good relationship?
Is there anything that I could do to improve the relationship?
Is there anything that you want that I'm not providing or that I am providing that you don't want?
And that kind of honest feedback.
We consult people on pizza.
We don't consult people on parenting.
That's very sad. And this has a lot to do with procrastination, as I'll get to shortly.
If we look at something like your education as well.
You went to school. Let's say you went to public school like the majority of people did.
Did your teacher ever sit down with you and say, listen, is there any way that my teaching could be improved for you?
When I teach you, do you feel like I'm just asking you to do things and you don't know why?
Or does it make sense to you?
Am I awakening a desire for and joy in knowledge in you?
Or are you just kind of going through the motions because you've got to do it, right?
Is there any way that my teaching, that my class, the structure, that the topics, that the approaches, could it be improved in any way, shape, or form to make your learning experience more enjoyable?
Think about that.
That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about that we are treated as slaves as children.
Because our desires, our feedback, our preferences in a foundational, in a fundamental way are never consulted, are constantly rejected.
And if you understand that you never had that conversation with your parents and that you never had that conversation with your teacher, you can understand just how little your needs, your preferences, your desires were taken into account.
And when you think about it, when you really think about it, that's astounding.
That's astounding that we would apply that kind of objective feedback and request for information for every conceivable service except for the most important ones, which are parenting and education for children.
So with that in mind, let's have a look towards how this affects the question or the issue of the problem of procrastination.
When a slave master tells a slave what to do, orders a slave to do something, the slave resents it.
Of course, just as any human being resents being treated as an object, being treated as a machine, being ordered what to do with no...
Account of the slaves feelings or preferences or desires and the reason I've talked about this in the book on universally preferable behavior the reason of course is that the slave master is saying my Feelings are really really important my desire to get you to do something is really important so feelings are Really important.
Ah, but your feelings as a slave?
Completely unimportant. Inconsequential.
Negative. I don't want to hear about them.
I don't want to know them. Just do it.
Damn it. Feelings are very important.
Feelings are completely unimportant.
Feelings are very valuable and must be obeyed.
Feelings are not at all important and must be suppressed.
Ignored. I don't want to know.
This is the contradiction that's involved, of course, in ordering people to do stuff.
My preferences, my wants, my desires are absolutes.
Yours don't exist, don't have any value.
I don't want to know. That's the hypocrisy that's involved in this kind of relationship.
And that's why we feel resentment, right?
So when the slave master orders a slave to do something, the slave can't say no.
Because he'll be punished, right?
The slave can't refuse, the slave can't negotiate, the slave can't fight back, the slave can't reject the order, because the slave will be punished for doing that.
But that doesn't mean that the resentment goes away.
In fact, that makes the resentment worse, actually.
So what recourse, what option does the slave have when the slave is ordered to do something?
To express the resentment.
Everything we feel gets expressed in one form or another.
Everything we feel, all of our experiences get expressed in one form or another, whether we like it or not.
That's why it's so important to make these things conscious.
So we have some control over our reactions and manage them more productively.
Well, I'll tell you that the slave's resentment at being ordered about Manifests itself in passive aggression.
What I mean by that is, if the slave master orders the slave to do something, the slave, who is not allowed to negotiate or to respond, will simply do it badly.
The slave will make mistakes.
The slave will postpone.
The slave will act stupid, act like a retarded child.
The slave will break something, the slave will do it in an unproductive way, and that is how the slave's passive aggression goes back up against the slave owner.
Because the slave feels frustrated at being ordered around, and since that feeling is going to manifest itself, the way that that feeling manifests itself is the slave then makes the slave master frustrated by doing a bad job.
So the slave master says, you know, move these rocks.
And so the slave moves them a foot, and the slave master comes back and says, no, move the rocks over there!
And then the slave will move the rocks over there and then will do nothing more.
No initiative, no entrepreneurship, no thinking, no feedback, just becomes a passive empty bag of muscle and bone that will accept orders but do nothing more.
What this means, of course, is that the slave master actually becomes a kind of slave.
The slave master becomes a kind of slave.
And Because he's got to order the slave to do every little thing, and he's got to constantly check up on what the slave is doing.
Because the only way that the slave can express a desire for freedom or can express his resentment is to be inefficient.
So slaves are always inefficient.
That's why it doesn't work economically.
They just order people what to do, and they express their resentment and frustration by making you resentful and frustrated, by driving you crazy.
So, to translate this into a typical teenage scenario, let's say you've got a mom who just tells you to do stuff and then gets angry if and when you don't do it.
And so you're sitting there on your Xbox and playing Halo 9 million or something, and your mom comes in and says, hey, take out the garbage.
Well, what do you feel?
Master, slave, bang!
You feel resentment, of course.
Of course. It would be mad to not feel resentment.
It would be very unhealthy. It would mean that you'd be completely broken.
So you feel resentment, and what do you do?
You say, in a minute.
And if your mom is particularly aggressive, then you might roll your eyes.
Yeah, okay, in a minute.
Jeez. Take a pill.
Take a chill pill, mom. You're going to respond to her aggression and order by putting things off, by doing it badly, by making it really frustrating for her to order you to do something.
You are going to respond to the frustration and humiliation that you feel from this top-down hierarchy by flipping it and making it really frustrating and annoying for your mom to do this.
So you're going to say, in a minute, right, you're going to keep playing your game, maybe you start a new game or whatever, and your mom's going to have to come back, hey, take out the garbage!
Yeah, mom, relax, I'm just about to do it, right?
This is the game that slaves and masters play.
And it's an ugly, vicious, unending game unless you make it conscious and break the cycle.
So this resentment, this balking, this passive aggression, this doing things badly, this delay, this feigned stupidity that occurs from a slave perspective is foundational to the problem of procrastination.
Because when you live in a master-slave relationship, as we all did in schools and almost all of us did in families, then what happens is...
Any time there's a goal, you resent it, right?
Any time, because you have had your, quote, goals set by other people, not generated organically and spontaneously from your preferences or pleasures.
Now, this is not the normal state of things at all, at all, even remotely, even closely.
When I was a teenager, I taught in a daycare for a couple of years, and I had a class of, like...
35 to 10-year-olds.
And I found invariably, invariably, when I treated them with respect and asked them to do something and told them why, it was a forest of volunteer hands.
You couldn't tell these children what to do.
They'd just grudgingly do it if you forced them and then resentfully, passive-aggressively do it badly and you'd end up more frustrated.
I'll do it myself, right?
But when you treat children with respect and you ask them, you know, tell them why it's important and so on, then they want to be, you know, the big person like the adult and do the right thing and help.
I've had children, my nieces, when they were very young, a three-year-old, she wanted to help me fold my laundry.
And I took her, I had to take her to do my laundry because I didn't have laundry in the house.
She, like, wanted to.
She got irritated if I didn't let her help.
Our default position as children is to want to help, to want to contribute, to want to...
Do things. Just coming back from the Miami symposium, Christina and I were at the airport and we saw a guy hauling off these suitcases from the carousel.
And his daughter was there and she was like four years old.
And she was like, she wanted to help.
She wanted to carry one of these suitcases.
She wanted to contribute. Right?
And she got irritated when he sort of tried to say, look, they're too heavy, this and that, right?
So we ended up having to let her try, and then, oh, can I help?
And, you know, the children want to help.
They want to contribute. So how is it that we get turned from people with that kind of...
children from that kind of initiative who want to help, who want to contribute, who want to participate, who want to be part of the running of the household?
How do we turn from that to being these balky, passive-aggressive, don't-wanna, put-it-off, do-a-bad-job kind of people?
Well... The way that we end up like that is that we're ordered around all the time and our needs are not consulted and we resent being treated like animals, like robots, like machines, like objects.
And we don't like being dominated, mistrusted and bullied and dictated to.
Who would? Who with any shred of self-esteem would want that or enjoy that?
So the reason that we end up with procrastination is that every to-do feels like an order that we want to put off, that we want to passive-aggressively resist.
So everything, going to school, getting an education, going to college, getting a job, filling out form, anything that we have to do that isn't even remotely unpleasant, puts us back in that phase of just being BAM! Ordered around, which we then resent and put off and postpone and we evade and we distract ourselves by playing video games or watching movies or doing anything other than the things which are kind of piling up that need to be done.
Because we never were able to maintain and sustain that desire to participate and to work and to get things done because we were, bam, just bullied around and ordered around when we were children.
Now, this doesn't just occur in the parent-child relationship, of course, or in the teacher-student relationship, but it occurs very strongly, of course, in marital relations or boyfriend-girlfriend relations.
So we see this kind of stuff all the time, where the husband's sitting there wanting to relax or something, and the wife comes in.
It could be the reverse. I'm just going with the stereotype.
And the wife comes in and says, I thought I told you to do the dishes.
And it's aggressive or hostile.
And the husband is like, yeah, in a sec, right?
And then the wife feels stymied, paralyzed, frustrated.
He wants the dishes to get done, doesn't want to do them herself because she doesn't want to reinforce him not doing the dishes.
But at the same time, she doesn't want to push it because it'll end up in a fight, right?
So he feels attacked and diminished.
So by saying, in a minute, and then mocking or attacking her if she raises the stakes and becomes more stressed...
He's simply reinfecting her with what he feels infected by through her diminishment of him, through her attack and through her negativity, right?
Because the moment we own somebody else's initiative, we turn them into a slave.
The moment we say, hey, you should want to do this, you better do that, you got to do this, you got to do that, then we're substituting our bullying with the implicit punishment that that involves, our bullying for their initiative.
Just turns them into a slave.
It means that they will do it badly.
They won't want to do it.
We'll constantly have to remind them.
We will get ever-escalating frustration.
Controlling other human beings just doesn't work.
It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work.
I mean, you've got a gun.
You're the government, right? So the husband will eventually get up.
Oh, fine, you know, and I'll go and do the dishes.
And he'll do with loud sighs and unpleasant noises and...
Maybe he'll drop a dish or maybe he'll just do it badly so she's got to come and check the dishes to make sure that they're clean and she'll hand them back to him and he'll...
Right? This is just doing the goddamn dishes, people.
And this is the kind of fight and control and humiliation and passive aggression and resentment that these simple actions can generate.
Why? Because we're raised as slaves.
Because our initial desire to participate and contribute to the family is crushed and snuffed out by being bullied and ordered around without any requests or preferences, right?
Or those false preferences, you know, like, would you like to do the dishes or take out the garbage, you know?
Whenever you order people to do something, you're automatically assuming that they're lazy and dishonest and that they won't want to do it.
And you say, well, I have to order him to do the dishes because he won't get up and do the dishes, right?
It's like, I would say that he doesn't want to get up and do the dishes because he was ordered around by his parents and now you're ordering him around.
He hasn't solved anything and does not produce a happy and harmonious and contented relationship.
So, that having been said, we sort of get that master-slave thing that we end up with procrastination, tendencies towards procrastination because we're just ordered around when we're children and told what to do.
How do we break that cycle?
Well, I'll just spend a few minutes on it.
I don't want to make this too long. I'll just spend a few minutes on it.
And if you're really curious, just let me know and I'll go into it in more detail.
But there's a great secret, of course, to life, which completely deflates the tensions that we have around procrastination.
Would you like me to tell you? Shall I whisper to you?
It's a great secret.
It's a wonderful secret about life.
And when you get this secret, you will absolutely start unraveling the whole Gordian knot of procrastination and other difficulties that you have within your life.
Okay, let's come in a little close for this one because it's very important.
The great secret, the great secret of life, the way to unravel and undo procrastination, my friends, is this.
It's very simple. The great secret is you don't got to do squat.
You don't have to do anything.
You don't have to do anything at all.
You don't have to get out of bed in the morning.
You don't have to eat.
You don't have to go to bed at night.
You don't have to wear clothing.
You don't have to shower. You don't have to get an education.
You don't have to get a job.
You don't have to do anything.
I mean, you're bound by gravity.
That's not much of a choice.
And if you don't do things...
Negative consequences may occur, but so what?
You don't have to go to the dentist.
Maybe you'll get gingivitis, and maybe you'll lose some teeth, and maybe...
But you don't have to go to the dentist.
You don't have to fill out forms.
You don't have to get a new driver's license.
You don't have to do your dishes.
You don't have to pay your rent.
You don't have to go to school.
You don't have to do any of it.
Any of it! There's no have to anywhere in the universe...
Of any kind. Not a single shred of a must or have to anywhere.
You don't have to be nice to your wife, you don't have to be married, you don't have to take care of your children, you don't have to do anything.
Isn't that nice?
There is no Master, after you leave home.
I mean, even with this, you don't have to do what your parents say.
It's just that they'll get mad and they'll punish you and whatever.
But you don't have to do anything.
You don't have to do anything. I get up every morning and I say, well, what do I want to do?
I want to do a video. I want to write an article.
I want to pick my nose and watch soap operas.
I want to eat bonbons. What do I want to do?
I don't have to do anything. Even when I was getting up and going to work, I would wake up and say, do I want to go to work today?
I don't have to. I don't have to at all.
I don't have to get out of bed.
I can sleep until noon if I want.
There may be consequences to that.
I lose my job, but I don't have to.
Because the moment that we externalize these have-tos, we set up Enslavement for ourselves, which then becomes resentment and procrastination.
The moment we set up the have-tos, I've got to finish this education, I've got to write that exam.
No, you don't. You really, truly, seriously and genuinely don't.
You don't. There's no have-tos, there's no got-tos, there's no...
Compulsions anywhere in your life.
You don't have to pay your taxes.
There'll be consequences, but so what?
You don't have to pay your taxes.
You don't have to eat. The consequence, you'll get hungry.
You don't have to drink. The consequence, you'll get thirsty.
But you don't have to do anything.
If you're in school, you can walk out tomorrow.
You can go and hitchhike to New Orleans and live as a panhandler.
You can do anything that you want.
The next five minutes, the next day, the next year, the next decade, the rest of your life is a completely blank canvas and you can write in it anything, anything, anything, anything that you want.
Anything. You don't have to do anything!
Once you get that, then procrastination just dries up and blows away.
Just dries up and blows away.
Not tomorrow, not the habit that takes some unraveling.
But through that act of saying, my future is a blank canvas, I can write anything, do anything that I want.
I can become a clown, I can become an astronaut, I can do nothing.
I can find some kind friend and live on his couch.
Or whatever. Anything.
You don't have to do anything. Once you recognize that life is a blank canvas and you can write whatever you want, Into the next five minutes, five years, or 50 years.
Once you get and understand that, then there's nothing to put off.
Because everything that you do then becomes your choice, your preference.
I go to the dentist because I don't want teeth problems.
It's my choice. Nobody's saying, go to the dentist or else, or I'll punish you.
No, it's my choice. It's my choice.
Once things become your choice, once you reawaken and reown your capacity to choose based on your own preferences, without have-tos coming clouding in from everywhere else, once you get that process underway, There's nothing to put off because you're actually choosing things.
You're actually making those decisions.
You're not just letting other people's expectations and desires and wants and anxieties bully you into X, Y, and Z, which then, the moment that you force yourself to do something, you immediately generate the slave resentment.
Immediately and irrevocably.
It's unstoppable. The moment you force yourself to do something, the moment you make yourself gotta do something because...
Because, because. The moment you've got to do something, boom!
Slave resentment. Procrastination.
Annoyance. Frustration. Self-castigation.
Self-abuse. Inevitable.
Can't be stopped. You can throw yourself off a cliff.
Can't avoid gravity. You can choose to bully yourself to do things or to internalize other people's expectations.
Boom! You just get slave resentment.
Immediately, irrevocably, can't be stopped.
That is the inevitable cause and effect relationship.
So if you want to deal with the problem, Of procrastination.
First of all, you need to recognize that it's not natural.
It's not natural to procrastinate.
It is an artificial scar tissue that results from being controlled and bullied when you were a child, in school, in church, at home, in your extended family, from not being consulted, from not being treated with respect.
It's a sad, sad situation that results from this kind of control and bullying.
So if you understand that procrastination is a slave, passive-aggressive response to being ordered around, and you're an adult, then it's very simple.
Since procrastination is a slave response, if you want to stop procrastinating, stop being a slave.
And if you want to stop being a slave, that means stop ordering yourself around and recognize there's nothing you have to do.
Anything that you do is your choice.
There's no order. There's no one ordering you around.
There's nothing you have to do.
Make your own choices.
When you own and make your own choices based on what you actually want, Then you are free and you don't have to postpone anything because what you're choosing is your life and your preference and we don't postpone pleasure.
We may defer it for a short time for the sake of greater pleasure later on, like going to the dentist.
But you won't procrastinate because you are loving what you are doing.
You are living in your preferences, your desires, not taking orders from other people.
From the past, from history, from ghosts, from ancestors, from family, from parents, from schools, from governments, from churches, from popes.
Your choices. Your choices.
And when you own your choices, you won't procrastinate, because it's your life.
And we don't put off that which is pleasurable to us, which we live richly in the moment.
So I hope that this helps.
Thank you so, so much for watching.
As always, you guys make this conversation what it is, and I hugely appreciate your attention, generosity, financial support, participation in this conversation.
Thank you so much, and I hope this has been helpful.
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