EVERY SPOKEN WORD
135 min read · 26,701 words- 0:00 – 0:59
Intro
- CSChris Sparks
A good rule of thumb is that people chronically underestimate intangible value, right? There's familiarity that I'm sure a lot of people have at Goodhart's Law that once we have a measure, it ceases to be a reliable measure, 'cause we over-optimize around that. Think about, you know, you're talking about Instagram, you know, think about once you decide that followers is an important metric, you start to over-optimize towards followers, versus thinking about, "How do I increase engagement? How do I get these people to convert to something that I want them to do?" Et cetera. That, um, if we can understand what are these things that are bringing intangible value to us, things that we can't necessarily measure but have an effect spread across our entire system, we can find ways to unlock hidden value, because everyone is over-tied to things that are very easy to reduce to a number. (wind blows)
- 0:59 – 3:28
Meet Chris Sparks
- CSChris Sparks
- CWChris Williamson
I am joined by Chris Sparks, founder of The Forcing Function and former top 20 online poker players in the world. We are talking all things productivity. Chris, welcome to the show.
- CSChris Sparks
Hey, Chris. Hey, guys. Uh, thank you so much for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolute pleasure to have you on. Recently had one of your peers, Tiago Forte, talking about tools. Also had Nat Eliason, host of, uh, the Made You Think podcast saying that you and Tiago are the only two people in the world that he listens to about productivity. So no, no pressure, mate. No pressure. (laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Thanks. I'll do my best. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) So why don't you give us a little bit of a background? Before we delve into the, the dark world of productivity, why don't we, why don't we hear a little bit about you?
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, certainly. So I kind of got into this through the side door. Um, as you mentioned, I think a lot of people know me for my online poker career. Um, I still play at a pretty high level, but I had my, my peak, uh, right before the event we call Black Friday, so, uh, you know, 2008 to 2011. And I learned quite a bit, um, during that time about what it takes to perform at the highest level, and I realized that the people who were doing things that I saw as shaping the world were all becoming entrepreneurs, some of my other, some of my, uh, poker, former poker players, um, friends included. And I wanted to find a way that I could take all of the things that I had learned about peak performance and find a way to accelerate the growth of these people who I thought were putting things into the world that needed to exist. And so that's how I stumbled upon founding The Forcing Function, where I take everything that I have learned about how to produce at a very high level, so become the sort of person who can accomplish anything that you want, um, whether that's installing habits or systems or just removing roadblocks to accomplishing one's goals. And I've created a system which I've put together in my, uh, just released book, uh, Experiment Without Limits, which I'm happy to talk about. Uh, I work on, do workshops, I do one-on-one coaching, and it's, it's something that allows me to have, you know, really interesting conversations just like this one, um, get to learn something new every day.
- 3:28 – 5:17
Poker as a training ground
- CSChris Sparks
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Well, don't speak too soon. Might not be, might not be interesting yet. I might bore you to sleep. But, um, yeah. (laughs) Um, I, I totally get it, man. The, the world of online poker seems to be like a bit of a breeding ground for people that are polymaths in other areas or people that are real extreme high performers. Think a lot about, uh, Josh Waitzkin as well, former chess prodigy now turned executive CEO, coach, and all that sort of stuff. It seems to, there must be some real, some real intellects in there.
- CSChris Sparks
Absolutely. I mean, I'm a huge fan of what Josh is doing. And the way that I see it is that there's so many things that are transferrable. I mean, you see, you see this in Silicon Valley, you see this on Wall Street that poker is generally a training ground for business, and that's the way that I see it. Uh, as entrepreneurs, the, what we're doing all day is really making decisions, right? Decisions on what to focus, decisions on what audience to go after and how to reach them, where to spend our, our limited time. And I see poker as a, a very important framework on being able to make better decisions with imperfect information. Um, and so when you're playing poker at a high level, not only do you have to beat other players, but you have to conquer yourself-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CSChris Sparks
... that we are the common denominator in all of our productivity struggles. And so understanding what our own triggers are, understanding how things can go off the rails, or, you know, on the positive side, what are the conditions that allow us to have peak focus, to have, allow us to have peak energy, and how can we recreate those conditions? Uh, where if you understand what you're trying to accomplish, it's more or less understanding, "What are these conditions that I need to have in order to put myself in a position to accomplish that?"
- CWChris Williamson
I, I totally
- 5:17 – 9:15
Who do you want to emulate
- CWChris Williamson
understand. So when you were going through online poker and you were looking at the potential for The Forcing Function, who were some of the people, you've mentioned Josh, uh, who were some of the other people that you thought, "Wow, that, that's someone that I really need to learn from," or someone whose, uh, particular stance I really respect or you, you had admiration for like that? Was there anyone who comes to mind that you thought is, um, a role model in that?
- CSChris Sparks
Oh, man. That's a, that's a really good question. Um, you know, I'll, I'll take a step backwards in how I approach all of this, is I see my personal system as a collection of the best of other peoples' systems.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
So as a poker player, what you're doing is any time someone makes a move against you that puts you on your heels where you're not sure what the right response is, uh-... you realize, "Hey, if I don't know what I'm supposed to do here, this is probably a good thing to be doing to other people." Right?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. (laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
That- that they've probably stumbled upon a good strategy even if I don't understand it yet.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CSChris Sparks
And so, looking to emulate one part of that strategy until you can internalize the reasoning behind it. Right? And so the same way, when you're looking at, you know, who do I want to emulate, I always start from, you know, do I want this person's life? Right? Is this person giving advice like do I want to have a life that's similar to theirs where none, no, like, one dimension can be taken away outside of the whole system, right? So, people look at someone who's hyper, hyper productive, but the question is, you know, do you want to be that person? The answer is no, right? Classic example is everyone really admires Warren Buffett. No one necessarily wants to be Warren Buffett, right? I mean, maybe Warren Buffett 50 years ago. But-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
... I- I digress. Um, so where I'm looking for is, who are people who are living in a way that is in alignment with the way that I'd like to live? And high level, I want to be learning every single day. I want to go to bed slightly better than when I woke up. As far as I know something else I've discovered, want something new about how the world works. I understand myself a little bit better. And so when I'm looking for examples, I'm looking for people who embody that. Now, that being said, it can be really interesting to look at true believers, people who have a fully fleshed out system. Um, let's see, a couple people that come to mind, I mean I'm, as far as productivity goes, a huge fan of David Allen. Don't necessarily want to be David Allen. Huge fan of Nassim Taleb, don't necessarily want to be Nassim Taleb. But I can take off pieces of their system, people who are very, very opinionated about all things. What are the things that resonate with me and how can I integrate pieces of what they're doing into my own system? Um, I- I think a big error that many people make that they get onto this personal development treadmill is that they keep switching systems wholesale rather than taking off pieces of what other people are doing, forming what I call small experiments. Like if I add this, if I make this small change, does it have effect on myself overall? If it does, I can double down. If not, I stop it. And where- what a lot of people see is like, "Oh, this new tool, this new system, like this is going to change my life. This is going to solve anything." And the- the- the problem is that none of these things are going to solve your own problems, because we are always the common denominator.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Um, and the ironic thing is that this incremental approach in that I- I change one small thing every day in a positive direction adds up to compound returns, and that's the true way that progress is incredibly accelerated, not these one-time heavy lifts of, "Today is the day that I change everything," type of stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 9:15 – 12:55
Why are you laughing
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I'm- I mean, I'm laughing for a number of reasons. Firstly, because Jordan, who is one of the guys that's a part of the Modern Wisdom project, often uses a quote from Naval which is talking about you can't just have a piece of someone's life, you have to have the whole. Um, and that, just for people that are listening, it's a- a really lovely tool to use. Um, and especially, I've done a little bit of reality TV, uh, swimming waters of Instagram influences and- and- and stuff like that, and, um, a lot of people desire that, right? Like they look at that person and they think, "Oh, that's a cool life," or, "That person's got that- this and that going on." And it's like, I'm telling you from firsthand experience that a lot of those people, you would not be able to be paid to have their lives. It looks good. Some of the bits are great, but some of the bits aren't. You're totally right as well. The person who's incredibly industrious, you know, you have no idea what Elon Musk's relationship with his father is like. You have no idea what Elon Musk's bed, um, like routine in terms of his head space is like on a nighttime. Yeah, it's great to say that this guy's taking us to Mars and that he's making... that Tesla's this amazing cool company, and he is, but you only see, especially now with how curated social media feeds are, you only see what people want you to see. And then when there's a scandal and something happens and it comes out that, uh, uh, Jeff Bezos has been sending dick pics around or (laughs) whatever it might be, like everyone's super shocked because we never get to see that side of people. And I think that a much more rounded view and- and- and seeing things in that way is- is a lot more interesting. Uh, another one of the reasons why I'm laughing and I'm sure a lot of the listeners at home will be, we have an entire series called Life Hacks. Now these are to be done in a very piecemeal fashion. Like we literally did one the other day which is how to make the best toasty, like how you make the best toasted sandwich, and we all gave our opinions on the best toasted sandwich. And then sometimes we'll do things, we'll use tools for such a short period of time that in between recording the episode and releasing it, which is usually maybe two to three weeks, we'll have gone from the new relationship status, loving it, to not so sure about it, to no longer using it, and then I'm about to publish the episode and I'm like, "Oh God, I might be talking about something I don't even use now." So yeah, the falling into the trap of this is going to fix all of my problems is such a huge big deal. And you see this all the time, right? Like some of the guys that are in the office that I work in will come in with something new that they believe is going to be the solution to what it is that they do. One of the lads got ahold of a shit ton of Modafinil the other day and they're all doing their resits from uni because they're big party boys and they came in and he's like, "Man, like let's get on this Modafinil. I'm gonna do this, that and the other." I'm like, "Guys, all of you are taking Modafinil and you've got your notifications on your phone next to your laptop. Like am I not seeing... like is no one else seeing what I'm seeing here?" Like, don't focus on the quick fix, focus on the big problem. Um, but yeah, I think s- so much of the stuff that you've said there really t- strikes a chord with the- with my experience as well personally and it's difficult not to get seduced, right?... you see that clickbait-y title, like (laughs) you're putting your hand up, yeah. It's like, for me and perhaps for yourself as well, it's the equivalent of, like, I don't know, like a, a hot girl advert or something and you're like, "Ah." It triggers something in me so primal, like, these 10 new productivity hacks for iMessage. I'm like, "I've got to see these new productivity hacks for iMessage. I gotta go and have a look."
- CSChris Sparks
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And then (laughs) I get in there and I'm like, "You've done it again. You got, you got clickbaited. You thought it was gonna be really cool." But yeah, uh, uh, honestly, a- absolutely everything. Personal, uh, personal observation and personal experience, I totally agree.
- CSChris Sparks
Cool.
- 12:55 – 15:49
The only thing that matters
- CSChris Sparks
Couple things there I'd love to, love to touch on. Um, so many interesting threads here. And first you mentioned Naval, and one of his favorite ideas that I really try to internalize this idea of a single player game, that the only thing that matters is our internal scorecard and how our own personal definition of success, right? And that it's impossible to look around and determine whether people around us are successful because we don't know what their goals are, right? We're, we're continually projecting based on our o- our own definitions, and as you alluded to, many times we don't take the cost into account. This is what I call differentiating goals from dreams. You know, as everyone wants to be a rock star, no one wants to play 300 shows and live out of th- out of the back of a van for a year, right? It's like everyone wants the results but no one wants to put in the gym time, and the reason that, you know, we keep kicking ourselves is because we haven't reconciled, all right, well, if I want to achieve this goal, this is what it's going to take, and more importantly due to opportunity cost, here are all the things that I'm going to have to give up, right? That life is just one delicious buffet but you can't eat it all. You have to pick and choose to do some things at the expense of some things you also want to do-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
... but not quite as much. Um, and it's, it's this nefarious justification in the hindsight mirror that what we're doing is okay. It's like, "Oh yeah, that time I spent reading, you know, how to, how to hack iMessage productivity hacks, I'm, I'm really glad that I read that." But was that how you chose to spend your time in advance or are you just backwards rationalizing what you
- CWChris Williamson
Post-hocking the shit out of it, yeah.
- CSChris Sparks
... just added in. Post-hocking, right, where so much of our mental bandwidth is dedicated towards backwards rationalizing, "Oh yeah, that what I'm doing is great," and that, that's is really, really the importance of planning, that everything reduces down to what do you want. And once you understand that you can get yourself to want anything, it's what do I want to want? How do I sculpt my environment so that my values automatically coalesce around what I'm doing? And it's this fear that I have being in this productivity game that so many people follow and listen to things like this as entertainment, as-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
... like I am going to feel better listening to this because I have all these ideas that, oh, if I, if I start hugging people for five seconds instead of three seconds, I'm going to have a little bit more empathy, and if I, if I lower my voice one octave, I'm gonna have 20 cent- 20% more trust, when actually doing the hard work of looking down and understanding what do you want and thinking about skill acquisition as a just-in-time process. What are the skills that are in the way of accomplishing your goals and worrying about those rather than having this, you know, giant collection of things that you might actually use someday.
- 15:49 – 19:23
Focus on the results
- CSChris Sparks
- CWChris Williamson
The, um, (clears throat) the point about, uh, using it as entertainment is so right. Like, you don't know the people that wro- that I do the show with, but it sounds like you do, that all of us are the same and, and, uh, Johnny and Yousef are both two sort of real, and George as well, another one of the guys that's part of the project, very, very focused on the results. I lit- I don't think I can get any of them to read a fiction book. But if I, if, if Cal Newport or Ryan Holiday or eh, eh, whoever brings a new book out, they'll be s- they'll be straight on it, um, and bizarrely I think it applies a lot of pressure to them, and some listeners at home might be striking a chord with this too. Unless they can see a direct result from the investment of reading something, they're, a lot of the time they're not going to read it. It's reading for this weird profit sort of sake, and I, I caught myself doing that and then have managed to backtrack quite a bit. Um, the rule, for anyone who's listening, the heuristic that I've used is that I will read, um, nonfiction by day but by night I'll only read fiction or story-based stuff, just I don't want my brain sort of sparking away in that sort of a manner just before I'm about to go to bed. Um, yeah, but yeah, like, one of the problems with that is if the only th- time that you read is to read to, uh, make a profit, there's an awful lot of pressure on what you're reading. Like you have t- unless you can do recall and unless you can do recall with high fidelity and un- unless you can implement, there's always this, like, you're always gonna feel guilty, or at least I, I, I found myself feeling that. Like, oh, I r- you read, you read the five chapters of Cal Newport's Deep Work but only implemented one of them. Like, wha- wha- what a waste, because there's this desire for profit on the back end.
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, and I, and I think doing anything out of a sense of guilt is really poor fuel. Um, I, I try to identify anything that I'm doing out of a sense of obligation or fear and ruthlessly eliminate that because I want to enjoy everything that I do...... or it needs to be very clear towards my goals. And putting this pressure on yourself that, "Oh, like, I need to be extracting the maximum value out of everything," is, is not only irrational, it's not healthy. That we need to relax, we need to un- recharge, we need to unplug, and everything doesn't need to e- exactly tie to a goal. Um, I mean, I'm really big on, on reading fiction. I've actually cut way, way down on reading non-fiction because, I mean, any book, especially a- around 200 pages, doesn't actually need to be 200 pages. It's a 20 page blog post with 182 pages of examples, or stories around that. Does that sound a little bit like fiction to you, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
It's a very, it's a very blurred line, and when you're thinking about, how do you actually maximize your time reading, sometimes reading the thing that takes four hours is actually gonna be a lower hourly ROI than something that takes 20 hours because the 20 hour thing is high quality enough and it transforms the paradigms with which you view the world enough that everything you do changes after that. And that's, that's why I really love fiction. Plus that, you know, I happen to enjoy it and I want to read things that I enjoy, that the subset of books, eh, exist in the world that are both important and useful and enjoyable is far larger than the number of books that I love to read. I mean, my reading list is gonna be thousands of books long before I die, and I'm perfectly okay with that.
- 19:23 – 23:29
Speed reading
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah, totally. I read a ... So, sacrilege, I know, but I only read 1984 last year, um, and that book, some of the conclusions that I drew from that piss all over so many non-fiction, like, productivity books. So much stuff that came out of that and I was like, "This is, this is as useful, if not more useful than something which designs itself to be productivity." So...
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, and the whole notion of speed reading is that you can, you can extract information, eh, eh, faster. The, the point isn't to extract the information. The point is to, is to prompt yourself on your thinking and to sit with it and think about ways to apply, and it's the more time that you spend with a book, the more you get out of it. And it actually has compounding returns rather than diminishing returns. I, I mean that whole notion of, you know, how do I, how do I take in information faster? How do I listen to this podcast at 3X instead of 2X? It's just-
- CWChris Williamson
Yousuf, Yousuf-
- CSChris Sparks
It's just so counter-intuitive.
- CWChris Williamson
... you've got this on at two and a half X. I know you do.
- CSChris Sparks
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I know you've got this on at two and a half times speed, and Chris is telling you to slow it down right now. (laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, and I mean, man, I have so many rants today it seems.
- CWChris Williamson
No, no, no, it's fine. We can-
- CSChris Sparks
A good-
- CWChris Williamson
We can just keep on doing it.
- CSChris Sparks
A good rule of thumb is that people chronically underestimate intangible value, right? There's familiarity that I'm sure a lot of people have with Goodhart's Law that once we have a measure, it ceases to be a reliable measure, 'cause we over-optimize around that. Think about, you know, you're talking about Instagram, you know, think about once you decide that followers is an important metric, you start to over-optimize towards followers versus thinking about, "How do I increase engagement? How do I get these people to convert to something that I want them to do?" Et cetera, that, um, if we can understand what are these things that are bringing intangible value to us, things that we can't necessarily measure but have an effect spread across our entire system, we can find ways to unlock hidden value because everyone is over-tied to things that are very easy to reduce to a number. Um, and I think this is probably a good transition to talk about Experiment Without Limits a bit, is the huge reason why I decided to start it is because I felt myself falling into this trap over and over and over again, is, "I can't do anything to help people. I don't know enough. I'm not enough of an expert. I d- what, what do I have to offer?" Thinking that knowledge is the limiting resource for people, and if knowledge was the limiting resource, man, like these people who are reading 100, 100 books a day, like, why aren't they going to space, right? Clearly, clearly there's, there's something else that's missing in that equation and that it's action, right? That knowledge is only useful to the point that is getting in the way of acting, that we don't know what to do, and I realized that, you know, from poker, all we do is hoard information. That that's how we win against our opponents, is, is information asymmetry, that I was carrying this over to my personal life, that I was hoarding my information think that I, thinking that I had the secret. I, I, and I decided, it's like, "I want to burn these bridges by outsourcing, or sorry, by open sourcing everything that I know." And so I took, what I- if I could only, you know, the old, uh, like if, if we lost all information about science, Feynman is, "Okay, well, we know the universe is made from atoms. We can build everything up from that." I was like, "If, if everything we had learned about performance was forgotten, what could I share with people and so that they could build up from that and find a way to build upon these principles and install them in their own lives?" And that was the, the birth of Experiment Without Limits is, "Here is everything that I know. Like, take it for free."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
And my hope is that this will illuminate the opportunities that people have and actually spur them to take the action where the knowledge itself has no value until they actually
- 23:29 – 29:45
Action focused
- CSChris Sparks
act upon it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So, having gone through Experiment Without Limits, um, one of the things that I have to say first off is it is very action focused. Every page is a task. Every task has a time predictor of how long you think it's going to take you. There's, uh, like, uh, augmented ancillary re- or information which is like, "This is something that you might want to do when you're doing this," and all this sort of stuff. Um, a really cool point, I'm in the middle of writing my first ever online course, and, um, a really cool point that I came across was from LinkedIn and it said that the words strategy or strategist is in the top 10 bio descriptors on all of LinkedIn, top 10 words, strategy or strategist, but executor or execution...... doesn't even feature in the top 1,000. Um, and I think that that asymmetry of people who like to plan versus people who like to do, people of talking versus people of action, um, I think that you've hit upon a, a real, a real gem there, which is just by doing stuff and learning by doing and just trying things out, you get a lot further than kind of this circle jerk of, of information/reading/whatever it might be.
- CSChris Sparks
That's my hope. Um, a- as I'm trying to get myself out of the treadmill, these are all the things that I follow and I keep coming back to them. And I know that if... I think that one of these hacks is something that's holding me back, I should just redo one of these experiments instead, that I'm clearly missing something obvious as far as an opportunity or a bottleneck.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I get it. So let's, uh, let's take us through. What do you think people need to know first from, uh, Experiment Without Limits? Or if you were doing a, a productivity MOT for someone, if you were having a little bit of a breakdown, having a... taking them into the garage, looking under the hood, where would you start?
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, so I would say it, it breaks into two parts. So the first part is the fundamentals, right? So you need to have the fundamentals down before you start optimizing, right? Thinking about your, uh, your co-producer who's taking Modafinil before he hasn't turned off his notifications, right? Y- there's, there's these last mile solutions that everyone wants to jump to before they have the strong foundation. And for me, the foundations are goals, systems, and then habits and routines, right? So first, goals, uh, I structure out how you can figure out what you want and how you can frame it in such a way that it's achievable, it's actionable, that you know when you will achieved it, right? Once you, once you know what you want, you have a very easy litmus test for things that are on the path, that are not on the path. Um, systems is more or less my way of thinking about how do I accelerate progress around that path? How do I make it easier to make progress? And it, it really focuses on these three key principles of leverage, bottlenecks, and feedback loops. So leverage, how do I get more for less? Bottlenecks, how do I identify what is most holding me back? And then feedback loops, how do I know if I'm making progress, right? How do, how do I know if my efforts are tracking towards my goal? Um, habits and routines, you know, everyone knows how to create habits, how... knows how to create routines, but it's something that's very easy but not simple. And so I'm really trying to break down, if you follow this system, you'll be able to install a new habit every month, right? That's 12 new habits a year. How many people start 12 new habits a year? Thousands, millions. How many people actually add 12 habits a year? I would say, you know, one in 100 people. Um, and all it comes down to is just adding one at a time and making the... everyone knows kind of the power of habit, but people actually don't think through and practice and plan out when they create a habit, what the trigger is, how do I make it ridiculously easy to do, and why am I doing it. And, um, they kind of, you know, outline those in step by step portion. And then the second half, the assumption is once you have all these place... the system is, is, you know, humming, running well, how do you optimize? Um, so you have your key resources of time, attention, energy. How do you maximize those? So time is really getting your planning and reflection down. So I call this the, the cycle of I plan what I'm going to do, I have that experiment, I collect data, I reflect, how did that go? And based on that, everything is a double down or stop. And so I'm constantly having a bunch of these experiments going, one in each dimension, so that I assured progress in all the things that are important to me. Attention, you're talking about notifications. Attention's primarily about understanding that everything that is not your top priority at this given moment is a distraction. So how do you create a default so that the thing that is the most important thing right now is the only thing you're going to do? And that everything else, you, you make it harder, you add friction to it. Energy, uh, we were talking about last mile, uh, how do you get your sleep, your exercise, your diet nailed in, automatic solved, so that you don't even have to think about it? And then we can talk about, you know, what do you do next as far as, you know, caffeine, supplements, et cetera. But, you know, 99% of the value unlocked there is sleep, nutrition, exercise. Um, and then I go into what I call more mental games. This is a lot of crossover from poker in your motivation. So how do you get yourself to do harder things? How do you show up? Um, when things aren't going well, how do you get yourself back on track? How do you debug yourself? So getting into procrastination, getting into, you know, ensuring, you know, accountability and consistency. Um, and then my final is probably the, the... my favorite chapter, in that a core belief for me is that we can become and achieve anything that we want, and the meta skill there is learning how to learn, that the only thing that's in the way of our goals is the skills necessary to achieve them. So the final chapter, Accelerating Learning, I break down my process for self-transformation and how do you acquire any skill in an extremely
- 29:45 – 48:19
Obsession with optimization
- CSChris Sparks
efficient manner.
- CWChris Williamson
Recently, we had Scott Young, author of Ultralearning on. Uh, last year had Peter C. Brown, author of Make It Stick. Uh, Tiago Forte's been on earlier this year. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits has been on earlier this year. It does seem to me like everyone is kind of circling around a lot of the things that we're talking about today. Um, why do you think it is that so many people have this... I don't want to say obsession, but I'm going to use the word, this obsession with optimizing and, and productivity? Obviously, we all want to get more done in less time.... but is it just that no one or a lot of people aren't finding the solution or sticking to the program, and therefore there's constantly a gap in the market for someone to come up with something new? Is that why? Or is it something else? I wonder whether you've thought of that.
- CSChris Sparks
Uh, I'm happy to guess. Um, I- I would say that there are- there are a couple different schools of thought, right? So, why now? Why are people so interested in optimization? I, I think it's this, you know, transparency due to we can see what everyone else is doing and it's never been easier to compare ourselves with our peers, and particularly to compare ourselves with the best possible version of our peers, what they want us to see. And so I- I think a lot of it really is driven by competitiveness in that we are- we are relativistic creatures, right? We are concerned about our position in the pecking order and we want to improve relative to our peers. Um, now the positive spin on that, you know, why- why habits? Why now? A lot of the research on behavioral change is so well-established in the psychological literature and really has not changed since the '70s, right? What w- are the best practices today haven't really changed all that much in the last few decades. You know, now this will put a lo- you know, not counter to what a, you know, a lot of magazines and articles will tell you, right? You know, like Men's Health needs to put out a new workout every year, uh, you know, sorry, every episode, and, you know, there needs to be a new diet for people to try, that people are gonna go through phases, but the core habits underlying these behaviors, the science there has not changed at all. And why I think people are so interested is because we feel like we are powerless, that more and more of what we do every day feels outside of our own control, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
We're drowning in messages, we're drowning in emails. There are so many things that we could be doing and we've never been more aware of all the things that we, quote unquote, "should" be doing but don't have the time to do, that we don't have the energy to do. And so we look for solutions outside ourselves, right? Everyone that becomes a true believer of a system, and I think a lot of people finally settle on, you know what my consensus belief is that the solution lies within ourselves, and that if we can become the sort of person who can change our behavior as needed, who can learn any skill that we become- we- we increase our own capability, we feel more confident moving about the world, we feel, you know, less- less self-conscious and exposed when on the internet. Um, and I'm very- I'm very, very supportive of this- this movement, um, but as always, like, my concern is that people treat it as entertainment as they read about the solution and think they've accomplished it, right? The knowledge is not the action. And that's- that's my hope is, you know, I- you- you talked about James Clear, like, I read- I read James Clear's book and for me, someone who's been immersed in this world, I think, "Well, there's not really much new that's here," but he has put it more directly and concisely than just about anyone else, and it has reached a very wide audience to people who can actually implement and put these into focus. And, you know, that's my hope is that people don't treat this as a beach read, but they actually go and take the next step and say, "All right, given this information, how do I apply it? What is the next step? What's the action that I take?"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think it would be difficult for someone to go through this and treat it as a beach read. It's so action focused. There is a lot in there. Um, you know, even just the use of some of the- the highlight tabs for particular tasks and stuff like that, it's like, um, if you've been to a restaurant and they've got like a featured meal, like a featured meal of the month, and it's like your eyes immediately get drawn to that. If you're on a beach and you use this as a- a beach read, I will be- I'll be impressed and surprised. Also, uh, what you said about James' book is exactly the first thing I said to him. I was like, "Being honest, James, wasn't a massive amount that was new in Atomic Habits to me, but I've never seen it all put together in the same place and displayed with such wonderful examples." Um, and hopefully with this, this will be something similar. So why don't we- why don't we go through and why don't you pick? We can either go through each chapter or why don't we go through a couple of chapters, and why don't you give us, uh, your favorite... This is gonna be like making you choose your favorite child here.
- CSChris Sparks
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, why don't you choose your favorite task from within either all or a couple of sections or- or something like that?
- CSChris Sparks
All right. Um, okay, so maybe we'll do... We've been talking about habits, so maybe we'll kind of start with- with habits and routines, and then I can switch to one of the more, uh- more prescriptive kind of optimization chapters after that.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing.
- CSChris Sparks
Um, so my key takeaway from Habits is that our future behavior is deterministic, right? That it's- it's not only true, it's also useful to think about your future self as not having free will, right? That you do not choose what you're going to do in the future, but that your actions are determined by the context that you find yourself in and, right? So to unpack that, we take actions now that change what we do in the future, right? So one aspect of that is everything that we do makes it more likely that that action is repeated in the future. So thinking about habits, right? It's... I use this metaphor of a river digging a path through rock. You think about like, you know, the-... the river that created the Grand Canyon over millions of years. And so on the good end, everything that we do reinforces that we do that again, right? Every time we complete a habit that is positive, we reinforce iden- our identity as someone who does that. On the other side, when we have something that we call a "bad habit" that we don't want to be repeating, realizing that we have carved a path through the rock, and that it takes time to refill that river with sand, but that every time we have this impulse and we say no, the leve- level rises a little bit, right? So I think of this as an upstream effect, and that in order to change our behavior, I don't try to do anything in the present. I don't do things. I make things easier to do in the future, or if I don't want to do them, I make them harder to do in the future by adding friction, right? So if you understand and internalize that, you can change your behavior in any direction that you want. And so the how to of that, right, the, everyone knows this trigger, behavior, reward, but I'll just take, you know, 60 seconds to break this down into, how do you actually implement that? So think about, like with the trigger, trigger sets it in motion. So we'll, we'll use good habits as an example, but use the inverse for bad habits. Like if you want a habit to happen, understand what triggers it and make sure that trigger happens. Make sure that you notice it, make sure that what you do next is very clear, make sure that, you know, you can't avoid it. And, um, I have like a checklist that you can follow, specific, consistent, automatic, avoid- unavoidable. And if you, if you look at all of the things that you want to do and identify that trigger and make sure that trigger does all four of those things, the habit takes care of itself. You, you don't have to do anything else. Where people forget to do things is that they forget about their trigger, or, and they don't have a system to ensure that that trigger occurs and that they notice it. Um, behavior, at a high level, how do you make it as easy as possible, right? So when you're first starting off a habit, I always recommend something that takes two minutes or less, so you have no excuses, and it is like auto opt-in, that you just, it just happens. Like not worrying about the results, right? Everyone has this he- heavy lifter and like, you haven't worked out, it's, it's Jan- January 1st, and now all of a sudden you're gonna go to the gym every day for two hours. Well, that's not gonna work out too well. But if it's, "All right, you know, at, you know, 9:00 AM after brushing my teeth, I'm going to do five pushups every single day," right? How can you say no to doing five pushups? But before you know, you have a chain that you can start to build off of where five can become 10, can become I go outside and do pushups, can beco- I run around the block for 10 minutes, et cetera. And before you know it, you know, you're an Olympic weightlifter.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Uh, the final is like reward. It's very important to understand why you are doing a habit first, you know, connecting it to a long-term goal. You know, what, why are you doing this in the first place? How does it tie to your goals? But also having an immediate reinforcement. So the intrinsic reward is, why is this important? Extrinsic reward is, why does this immediately reward me? So we've been using gym as an example. All right, so I want to work out. Why? Um, because I want to look good. Why? Because I want to feel confident when I'm out, right? Or I want to feel better, I want to have more energy. Why? So I can make more progress towa- towards my goals, so I can build my business, et cetera. Um, the extrinsic reward is you walking outside of the gym, "Man, I feel really accomplished. Oh, this like sore feeling feels really good. Um, I can post on my Instagram a photo-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
"... of like how I look with my shirt, shirt off." You know, not, not pointing, not, not pointing any fingers there.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CSChris Sparks
I can, uh, you know, I can talk to a friend, right? A friend meets me at the gym and I have that, that social aspect that feels good, right? If you have these three elements in place, trigger, easy behavior, reward, you create a strong foundation for a habit that automatically expands with time. And the smaller and stronger that foundation, the easier it is to expand.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
But where people mess up when it comes to habits is that they take on too much too soon, and then anything happens, right? They go on a trip, their schedule's too busy for the day, they miss a day, and all of a sudden they're starting back at zero. As William James puts it, like they've let the ball of yarn unroll and they have to spend all the effort unroll- rolling that ball again.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Um, so one experiment that I really love here, this is in the chapter four, um, routines, right? Where routine is just a collection of habits that you, that so- that reinforce each other, is that you actually walk through your routine and practice it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
And so the example that I give that's a really common one for people is getting out of bed right away. And so I recommend people simulate waking up in the morning with their alarm and just getting out of bed, turning off their alarm, and going about their day over and over and over again before it's automatic, practicing it, identifying any ways that they could, they could get off track and adding friction to those ways, right? So making it really hard to hit snooze.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CSChris Sparks
And the more automatic it is, the easier it is. And people are like, "Well, I don't wanna spend a half hour practicing a routine." Think about it, like this half an hour could save you months-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CSChris Sparks
... in how long it takes for this to actually become solidified. So that's a really powerful one, I call that offline training. Highly, highly recommend.
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool. Uh, I've got so much, so many little threads open here (laughs) on the left to go through here. So, um, I'll work backwards. First off, um, my solution for, uh, getting out of bed has actually been to get a sunrise alarm clock, which I absolutely love. Everyone who's listening will know that, that I'm a big fan of that. But it's on the other side of the bedroom.
- CSChris Sparks
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So to get up-
- 48:19 – 1:09:28
Reframing
- CWChris Williamson
the things-
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, go ahead.
- CWChris Williamson
... to interject there, one of the things that Laura Vanderkam talked about, I don't know whether you're familiar with Laura's work, Off The Clock. So she's a time management expert. Highly recommend. I'll send you the ... That's it, I'm gonna get another play here. I'll send you the podcast once I'm done. Um, and on that she has this really cool little way that she reframes thing that she, things that she doesn't do. And, um, a lot of the time people say, uh, "I don't have time to do X."... "I don't have time to do Y." Whereas she-
- CSChris Sparks
It's not a priority.
- CWChris Williamson
... reframes that. Whenever she catches herself doing that, she says, "It's not a priority. It's not a priority." Because that changes it from being outside of your control to being in your control, and it forces you to question, "Actually, how much do I want this thing? And if I do want this thing and I'm not doing it, why?" I really like that reframing. It strikes a chord with what you just mentioned.
- CSChris Sparks
Yeah, I think that's a very, it's a very good thread that we've been coming back to, um, that, you know, time, how we spend it, is a reflection of our priorities, and that if we're not doing something, there's a reason, right? And getting in touch with that reason, understanding why, is a much more effective way of discovering why we aren't doing it or if it's even worth doing in the first place so we can eliminate that guilt we're feeling about it and, you know, sleep better at night, be happier, et cetera. Um, I love what you're talking about as far as Rick Hanson, where focusing on our subjective experience in, how can we make the things we're going to do anyway more enjoyable? And the habit that he recommends is take literally one minute after you do something and just say, "Wow," like, "Wasn't that great? Wasn't that fun? Aren't I glad I accomplished that?" And the transformation that makes me go through our life saying, "Wow," like, "This is so much fun." Like, "I can't believe I get to do this. I can't believe people pay me for that."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Versus like, "Oh, my God," like, "Monday again. I gotta show up and do this and do that," right? It's, it's, uh, if we enjoy things, we eliminate a lot of this perceived activation energy to get started. Um, I mean, you touched on something that's very core to me, which I call is a forcing function, where you put something in place that changes your default behavior, right? Where before, your default behavior would have been, "All right, well, I'll put a podcast out when I feel like it, right? When I have time." But you've made this commitment to your audience that says, "I'm gonna put two episodes out a week," and then you have to reorganize your personal system to follow through with that prog- with that promise, right? You've created a new default as like, "Well, I'm going to find a way to put two episodes out a week. I've now created that as a top priority, and now my time will have to reflect that." And all this is, I talked about like the reflection planning cycle, is just regularly reflecting, you know, where is my time going and is it in line with my priorities? And if it's not, you rebalance your time portfolio. You say, "All right, well, I've been spending a lot of time on this thing that's not really important to me. Maybe I should spend something o- my time on something else that's important instead," right? It's like, I say that relationships are really important to me, but I haven't been keeping in touch with my friends. I haven't been spending time with my significant other. I say my health is really important to me, but I haven't been setting a time aside to go to the gym. I haven't been setting a time aside to cook healthy food, right? And all you do is you just bring yourself back into balance as far as putting more time into what you say is a higher priority. Um, at a high level, this procrastination chapter is identify why you are procrastinating and then get rid of that reason.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
Right? So the four categories are: expectancy, value, impulsiveness, and delay. And so expectancy, that if I do this, I will get a reward, right? And so making sure that you can increase your perceived chances of success, or that if you do succeed, there will be a reward at the other end. Value, that you enjoy what you're going to do and that the reward you will receive is something that you place a value on, right? So how can you do what you're doing more and make, make what you're doing more enjoyable? Um, we'll, we'll come back to the... I guess we'll keep... we'll use you as an example, if you don't mind, Chris-
- CWChris Williamson
Fine. Fine.
- CSChris Sparks
... as far as producing a podcast episode, right? So it's like, "How do I, how do I increase my chances that putting effort into producing a podcast will have the results that I want? How do I make the pot- process of editing a podcast, which I know is a pain in the butt-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
"... more enjoyable," right? "How can I... You know, can I put on good music? Can I have s- a friend come o- who has a podcast over come and do it with me?" Et cetera. Um, impulsiveness. This is, this is the attention chapter in a nutshell, is like our ability to focus in the face of distractions. So we make these distractions harder to access. So everyone knows that as soon as we have something we're procrastinating on, that's the time that we want to clean our room, right? That's the time we want to organize our file structure. Like, how do we remove these options from our menu? And then finally, delay. A huge part of procrastination is like, "We have to do all the work, but this asshole in the future gets all the benefits." So how can we receive some of the benefits that we get from putting in this effort sooner? And if you discover which one of these four is most holding you back, you can immediately put something in place that's like, "Oh, this is more enjoyable. This is more valuable." And all it does is it allows you to get started, and once you're moving, you keep moving. Um, so I call this the procrastination algorithm. Notice why you're procrastinating. Try something. If it works, start working. If not, try something else. And th- and it's funny is that like you just go through this process for like five or 10 minutes, and you immediately start moving because you discover, "Oh, well, this is why I'm not doing it." Um, "If I change this, then I guess I will start moving," versus like, you know, you start, you know, in hours or days or in, you know, my case sometimes and, you know, "Oh, I'll start-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
"... this book months down the line," right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
It's, it's just like, take that few minutes to like, look at yourself and say, "Why am I not doing this?" Recognize, "This is actually a good reason, but I can, I can reason with this reason," right? "I can, I can strike a compromise," and that allows you to get moving.
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. I totally get it. I love the idea as well, what we're focusing on here with regards to procrastination, is the next step. One of the things that I use for me is, what is the smallest next step that I can take that kind of puts me on the way? Uh, so many of the guys that I'll speak to ... So, my, um, company, we run club nights. We deal with a lot of 18 to 21-year-old students. We would call it uni, you call it college. Um, and so many of those guys are like, "Oh, man," like, "I've got this huge assignment to do. I've got this, that, and the other." I'm like, "First question, if you're struggling with it, have you made the file? Like, have you created the Evernote or have you made the Word document?" "Oh, I haven't done that yet." It's like, "Man, just do that." Do ... 'Cause that is, that is the first thing, that ... Before the reading, before the that. And so if you're listening and you need to do an assignment, just make the file. Like, that is the next step that you can do, and you totally ... I love the body in motion stays in motion, body, body at rest stays at rest. It's, it is the, um, (smacks lips) third law of thermodynamics for pro- for procrastination. (laughs) It's-
- CSChris Sparks
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... perfect. Uh, so what we got next? What's your next, what's the next chapter that you want to have a little look at?
- CSChris Sparks
Oh, man. I mean, if you don't cut me off (laughs) , I'll keep going forever. Uh, I mean, I- I would probably, because of the way that we started, um, I would probably end with, with learning, right? So ...
- CWChris Williamson
Cool.
- CSChris Sparks
We talked about, at the high level, if we understand what we want to accomplish, we then identify what are the skills we need to acquire to accomplish this goal, where it's very easy to fall into the trap of here are all the things that would be fun to learn today. It's like, "I would love to, I would love to speak five languages. I want to be able to throw ninja stars. I want to be able-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
"... able to do a handstand. Uh, I'd-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
"... like to be able to, you know, to talk to 50 women a day." Right? It's like all ... Like, I have this long list of things that I'd like to do, but the question is, which one of these is actually in the way of achieving what you want? So, I call this identifying your highest leverage skill. First, like, what is your most important goal? What's the biggest goal that you have right now? And then create a picture, like, what is the version of yourself who is accomplishing this goal, right? So, like, what does a day look like for them? What are they doing? What are they a- capable of that you are not yet capable of, right? Whether you ... it's not something you do or it's something that you'd like to do at a higher level. And then decide which one of these is most on the path, right? If you can only pick to do one of these, which most puts you on the path towards, uh, being this person who can achieve this goal? And that takes you down from here's the long list of things I'd like to do, to here is what I'm going to learn next. And each one of these skills that you acquire raises the floor for yourself, right? They compound in that you b- ... Every skill you acquire makes it easier to acquire complementary skills, and that by adding one at a time instead of dabbling in a bunch of things at once, right, your- your speed of acquisition accelerates. And so starting with, like, if I can only learn one thing right now, what would it be? And then you create a plan and you decide, all right, well, how, how good do I need to get at this, right? We don't need to become experts in anything. Sometimes, if you think about 80/20 rule, that acquiring competence is enough for us to move on, and we frame this as an ex- ... as a hypothesis. Like, I think that I can accomplish X, then I will be able to move on to the next thing. For me, you know, I'm- I'm trying to relearn Spanish. I say relearn because I've forgotten quite a bit-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CSChris Sparks
... and so my test is I'd like to be able to have a half-hour conversation in Spanish with a local without them knowing that I'm learning Spanish, right? And if I think if I can accomplish that, anything I've ... anything beyond that is extra. But if I can accomplish that, like, I get most of the value, and so how do I get towards that? It's like that plan is what is the, what is the most direct path towards having a 30-minute conversation with a native speaker? It's probably having very short conversation with non-native speaker, and then working my way up to longer conversations with more accent. But you ... The- you see, once you know where you're heading, it's very easy to create a clear path to get there, and it's much more effective way of learning. Um, so that's- that's really what I recommend is, you know, for me, my dream was I just wanted to spend all day learning things, but I realize, like, the only point of acquiring skills is using them. And so let's start from what skills do I need and how can I effectively acquire them so that I can accomplish the things I actually want to do?
Episode duration: 1:09:28
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