The Behavioural Economics Of How We Spend Our Time | Koen Smets | Modern Wisdom 127

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Introduction

   1. KSKoen Smets0:00

      The Estonian Police in, a few months ago, I think, tried out on a particular piece of, of road, um, an alternative way of, uh, penalizing people who were speeding. In most, uh, countries, when you get caught speeding, you get a ticket and in some, uh, situations the fine can be quite, um, extensive depending on h- by how much you exceed the speed limit. But here in Finland, they come- they came up with a different idea, um, and so they stopped people speeding and they gave them a choice between paying, I think for a sort of, an average, um, excessive speed, the fine would be something like 400 euros, so just like a good 350 pounds, or they could wait for an hour. Just stay there for an hour and then they could be, could- they could go again. Didn't have to pay anything, but they just had to wait by the roadside for an hour. About half of the, the people they stopped opted to wait. About half didn't. So you can imagine, uh, from that how much these people value their time.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:59

      (wind blowing)

2. 1:00 – 2:38

   Welcome to the show

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00

      I'm joined by Koen Smets who I've been fighting to pronounce that name, but I think I've managed to nail it. Welcome to the show.

   2. KSKoen Smets1:10

      Thanks very much, uh, Chris. Um, you did it, uh, proud. I think I've heard numerous, uh, strange mispronunciations, uh, mispronunciations of my name all the way from Akin to Cohen to Koen, um-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:23

      (laughs)

   4. KSKoen Smets1:23

      ... and anything in between. So yeah, I think you, uh, you passed with flying colors.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:27

      Fantastic. Well, we've got over the first hurdle. Um-

   6. KSKoen Smets1:30

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:30

      ... to the listeners at home, I'm, I'm starting to calm down a little bit now. Uh, you might not know, Koen, but I was away in Bali and while I was away it meant I couldn't record. Um, and you do not know true fear until you have a twice a week podcast publishing schedule and no podcasts left to publish. And that is, that is where I've been over the last couple of weeks. But, uh, very fortunately for the people that are listening, I have this episode with yourself, which I'm sure is gonna be fantastic, behavioral, uh, economics, and all sorts of decision-making theory that we're going to go into, which I can't wait to do. Also, coming up, Naval Ravikant's brother, uh, Kamal Ravikant, talking about, uh, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, his brand new book, uh, and a bunch of other people that are really, really interesting over the next couple of weeks. But today we're gonna get to talk about some behavioral economics and some, uh, classical, uh, working strategies for organizations, human behavior, decision-making and motivation. That's right.

   8. KSKoen Smets2:36

      That's the kind of stuff I do, yes. (clears throat)

   9. CWChris Williamson2:37

      I love

3. 2:38 – 5:43

   The world is our oyster

   1. CWChris Williamson2:38

      it. I love it.

   2. KSKoen Smets2:38

      That's true.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:38

      So what have you been thinking about recently? We've got the, the world is our oyster. The world of whatever you've been working on is our oyster.

   4. KSKoen Smets2:45

      Okay. Um, well, one of the thing, one of the themes I've been thinking of recently is, uh, is time. Um, as you, as you may know, uh, economics is about scarce resources. It's about allocate- it's about allocating scarce resources, it's about weighing up, uh, costs and benefits. And this is, in the, the economy as we know it, there's usually is to do with money or with some kind of equivalent of money, some resource that you need to manage. Um, but of course, another very important scarce resource we all experience is time. Um, we get, uh, every midnight we get 24 hours (laughs) for the next, uh, the next day, so to speak. And once that's gone, it's gone. Um, and of course then there is another 24 hours, but we can, just like we can spend a pound, um, or a euro or a dollar or any other currency only once, so we can only spend a minute or an hour or a second once. And we've, we spend it on one thing, we can't spend it on another. (clears throat) And so our, our general use of time follows similar patterns, uh, to the way we use money in the sense that we are, we are confronted with the fact that we don't have unlimited amounts of it. And so we need to be careful in, uh, how we use it up. Um, and I think that, that is a, a fascinating topic for me because in many, particularly also behavioral economics experiments and eco- economics experiments, you get people, uh, in a lab, you give them some tokens, you give them a little bit of money. Sometimes you see people go to, um, developing countries, to India, uh, for instance, where, uh, amounts in dollar go much further so you can really intervene in people's lives, um, on the scale of magnitude that is like comparable to, um, a month's wages for instance, and still be affordable for research. But the problem is with whatever experiments you do with, with, um, tokens or money is that it's usually in much smaller quantities than really impacts on us in real life. And so my thinking is that if we looked more at how we could, uh, we use time, where we all have the same amount of time, whether you're rich or whether you're poor, you get 24 hours a day. Um, it's not because you're rich you get 36 hours a day.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:06

      (laughs)

   6. KSKoen Smets5:06

      We all have exactly the same amount of time. And I think how we would respond to, um, having to weigh up gaining or losing time might reveal, um, uh, things or clarify things that perhaps are unclear or ambiguous when you work with, um, you give people 10 pounds or $10 and you make them bets on something, or you make them, um, pay for something. It, it, it doesn't work the same way, I think, and I think there is some, uh, some mileage to be had, uh, out of, uh, using time in, in research, uh, on economics and on behavioral economics and on human

4. 5:43 – 6:58

   Time is money

   1. KSKoen Smets5:43

      behavior.

   2. CWChris Williamson5:43

      Well, time and money are intrinsically linked, aren't they?

   3. KSKoen Smets5:49

      Uh, they are. Uh, as you know, the, the old adage goes that time is money. Um, but i- is it really that equivalent? Is time really always money? And I think if you think about it, um-... not every minute is, has got the same worth to you, and to me, or to anybody else. Um, if you, if you, um, are, uh, in the middle of something that's really important, then your time will be much more valuable-

   4. CWChris Williamson6:13

      (laughs)

   5. KSKoen Smets6:13

      ... than if you're just lazing about on the, on the settee watching The Simpsons. Um, and so I think, um, you, you see it as well in, uh, in overtime for instance. Uh, people demand to be paid more when they go over a certain limit, uh, in terms of working for a, for an employee, uh, for an employer, for a boss. So, the, the concept itself of being paid 50% more or double time for overtime, people are being paid more for working at weekends, reflects immediately that, uh, time doesn't have a, an intrinsic stable unique value. And I think that in itself is a, is an interesting and important, um, observation that affects the way we behave and we handle and we manage

5. 6:58 – 8:06

   The finiteness of life

   1. KSKoen Smets6:58

      our time.

   2. CWChris Williamson6:58

      Absolutely. There's a, a short blog post I remember reading quite a while ago that was talking about how as a child you'd happily give up your day for a dollar, and as an old man, you'd happily give up your fortune for a minute.

   3. KSKoen Smets7:13

      Yes. Very true. And I think it's, it's quite kind of extreme. As a child, of course, you have no idea of the, um, uh, the, the, uh, finiteness of life. Uh, you're, I don't know, five years old, eight years old. Remember, uh, when, when school broke up, uh, at the end of the, of the spring earlier summer, you had... In Belgium, we, we had two full months of, um, of holiday, uh, h- all of July and August. Well, the 1st of July is like you can't even see as far as the-

   4. CWChris Williamson7:42

      (laughs)

   5. KSKoen Smets7:42

      ... 31st of August. So it was like an, an unlimited amount of holiday. Obviously, by the time mid-August came and then need to go and buy out, I don't know, new books and pencils and everything else. Well, school is starting again. So you, you get a sense of time, but yes, you have no idea of the finiteness. Whereas if you're an old person, uh, then yes, you're, you are counting down and, you know, well, um, maybe, I mean, my dad is 92.

6. 8:06 – 11:45

   How we look at time

   1. KSKoen Smets8:06

   2. CWChris Williamson8:06

      Wow.

   3. KSKoen Smets8:06

      Um, he's, he's-

   4. CWChris Williamson8:08

      That is a, that is a testament to some good genetics that you've got there.

   5. KSKoen Smets8:10

      Um, well, I hope I, I inherited, uh, his. I didn't inherit his, uh, his hair genes in the sense he's, he's quite bald and most of my, most of my hair-

   6. CWChris Williamson8:19

      Look at you. You got brilliant, brilliant-

   7. KSKoen Smets8:19

      ... is still there. So that's-

   8. CWChris Williamson8:20

      For the listeners at home, it's a fantastic head of hair.

   9. KSKoen Smets8:22

      Yeah. It's, uh, it's a good, good bargain. But, um, but yeah, he's 92, he's still in good health, but of course he knows that he's, he's likely to live another 20 years or maybe another 10 years or maybe five years. So you're really looking at time in a very different way. That said, it's interesting that we, we sort of go, go down this particular rabbit hole. He lives on his own, um, and, uh, he hasn't got much to do. Most of his friends and his, uh, his relatives, uh, except for his children and so on, but, uh, his, his sort of siblings and peers and all that, they've all died. So there's very few people left of his generation. And so he's, he lost purpose a little bit. And so he's got lots of time and doesn't really quite know what to do with it. Um, he loves gardening and all that, but obviously it being winter, um, it's not a good time to, uh, spend too much time in the garden. So he struggles to fill his days with, uh, with something. So I think if you look at time as something that you would, uh, you would analyze in terms of willingness to pay or willingness to accept, he would be willing to pay for something to do-

   10. CWChris Williamson9:27

       Mm.

   11. KSKoen Smets9:28

       ... rather than having to be paid to do the something, um, in a sense. But yes, I think these are all examples of how we, we look at time with different, different eyes depending on how old we are, depending on what, what day of the week it is, depending on what time of day it is, depending whether we're on holiday or not. All of that matters and makes us look at time differently. Same at work as well. At work, basically what we do, we, we give our employer an amount of time and we get money in return. And somehow we, we tend to view that time as sunk. We've, we've sold it. So it's now our employer's in a sense. So we are less concerned with wasting our time, and we're, we're certainly less concerned with wasting other people's time. Um, I, I did exercise once with a client of mine, um, where we had a workshop with about 50 people or so joining. And, uh, one of the things we had to look at was sort of budgets and how much money was being spent. And I made them do the exercise of what's this workshop costing? And I even revealed my fee so they could take that into account. Um, and then they looked, okay, well the hire of the venue and the meal and this and that. What they didn't take into account at first was their own time. When you get 50 people earning what between say, 60,000 and 120,000 euros, uh, a year, when you get these, that, that amount of people together for two days, that is a huge amount of money or time equivalent of money that you divert into something. So, but we don't really think about it in those terms. We don't... we think the time we, where it works, so now it's work time. We don't really worry about what we do with our time, whether we are using it well, whether we're using other people's time well, and that's why you get so many complaints about, um, meetings being a waste of time and, and wall-to-wall meetings and all day and looking back and say, "Well, I have no idea what I've done today, but it's not very much."

   12. CWChris Williamson11:35

       Yeah, I suppose-

   13. KSKoen Smets11:36

       So I think time, time, time really is a, a fascinating topic that is I, I think understudied, um, and under, under-researched.

7. 11:45 – 14:16

   Opportunity cost

   1. KSKoen Smets11:46

   2. CWChris Williamson11:46

      I've had a couple of conversations that listeners may be familiar with Laura Vanderkam's episode, who's a time management expert, that was more from the productivity side, uh, Nayal Al as well also to do with task prioritization, um, you know, as a...... a sympathy card that I'll throw out to some of the people that will be listening, many of whom will be knowledge workers, I sympathize wholeheartedly with the fact that your days are messy and you haven't got a clue what you did with them. Um, and when you look back at your day and you think, "How did I spend my time?" You know, we even use-

   3. KSKoen Smets12:19

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson12:19

      ... we even use that language. Linguistically, we're talking about it like it's money. How did I spend my time-

   5. KSKoen Smets12:25

      Yep. Yep, yep. Yep.

   6. CWChris Williamson12:25

      ... today? This allocated number of units of, uh, temporal, uh, tokens.

   7. KSKoen Smets12:32

      Mm-hmm. Yep, yep.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:32

      How did I decide to spend my time today?

   9. KSKoen Smets12:35

      Yes, yes.

   10. CWChris Williamson12:35

       And, you know, I, uh, I, I, I feel for you because it is, as you say, you've got, "I went into a meeting, then I sat down, I had a coffee, I did a this." Uh, you know, and it, it just fritters away. But yeah, uh, you, you bring up in a couple of your, uh, recent blog posts talking about opportunity cost.

   11. KSKoen Smets12:53

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson12:53

       Uh, and obviously how that relates to... Uh, well, I'll tell you what. Why don't you, why don't you explain to the listeners what opportunity cost is, definitely?

   13. KSKoen Smets13:01

       Yeah. Opportunity cost is really, is, is what you, what you do not do, what you cannot do when you do something else. Um, so, uh, to give a simple example, uh, take a taxi driver. You, you take a taxi somewhere and you ask the guy to wait for 20 minutes. Um, and then because you're gonna do something and then you come out again and you still want the taxi to be there waiting for you to take you back home or something. So, he's not going to say... He's not, he's not gonna do that for free. To the taxi driver, the 20 minutes he's standing there is 20 minutes he could not be carrying somebody else, another paying customer. So he's going to have to charge you enough to compensate that, and that is the opportunity cost. So he, the cost to him is not sitting there, because he could be, um, looking at his Facebook account or reading a paper or, uh, just looking out the window or having a sleep. But that's neither here nor there. It could be working as well, and that's how we will measure, uh, the cost of sitting there for 20 minutes. So that is what opportunity cost is. And that applies, uh, to time as well as to, to money of course. It also applies to money. If you spend money on a meal, then that money is ... You cannot use that money for something else, so there is an opportunity cost expressed in what else you could buy with the money that you spent on, uh, on going out

8. 14:16 – 15:56

   Money for time

   1. KSKoen Smets14:16

      for a meal.

   2. CWChris Williamson14:16

      Let's try and dig down into the nuance of the difference between opportunity cost for money and for time, because I think this is really fascinating.

   3. KSKoen Smets14:23

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson14:25

      You can't not spend time.

   5. KSKoen Smets14:28

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson14:28

      Is that a fair statement to make?

   7. KSKoen Smets14:30

      Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Time goes by-

   8. CWChris Williamson14:32

      But you can not spend money?

   9. KSKoen Smets14:34

      Yes. Absolutely. You can still, you can say, "I'm not gonna spend it, I'll keep it for something else." You can't do that with time, or not, not easily at least. In the same way you can't bank, uh, time. Uh, maybe if you, if you play, um, uh, television quizzes, then sometimes you can bank, uh, you can bank money and time.

   10. CWChris Williamson14:52

       Yeah.

   11. KSKoen Smets14:52

       But in practice, yes, a time, a second, last second, the second that's just gone is gone. Um, we cannot reuse this at all. Uh, of course you can say, "I'm going to bring certain activities forward and do them now," and that is a good way of, of managing time over a longer period of, of time, as it were. When you say, well, for instance, what people do when they travel, um, they, they do something useful while, while they're traveling or while they're waiting. And so they can make time that would otherwise be wasted, as in time spent without anything tangible, anything, uh, meaningful, uh, getting, uh, gotten in return. You can change that by... You can say, "Well, I may be waiting for... The plane may be 30 minutes delayed, but actually I can start writing my report." And so you actually make good use of your time. Um, but it requires an, a degree of awareness and deliberation to do that, and we are not... We don't always do that. And also, we, we are worse on the other, on the other hand, on the other hand as well, we, we waste time as well. We, we are not always consciously using our time in the best possible

9. 15:56 – 18:15

   Awareness and deliberation

   1. KSKoen Smets15:56

      way.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:57

      I want to get you to elaborate on awareness and deliberation in a second, but I'm thinking as you're talking through that, I'm hoping that some of the people that are listening might be in a situation like that. They might be in this sort of little pending waiting room-

   3. KSKoen Smets16:15

      (clears throat)

   4. CWChris Williamson16:15

      ... of hell in between one thing that they gotta do and another thing they gotta do, and this thing would have sucked.

   5. KSKoen Smets16:20

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson16:20

      And maybe me and you, Chris and Koen are making this, uh, this afternoon or this little waiting thing a little bit easier. Maybe we're in their ears right now. They've got their headphones in-

   7. KSKoen Smets16:29

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson16:29

      ... listening away.

   9. KSKoen Smets16:30

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:30

       Perhaps that's the way that they're doing it. So, if that is the case, I hope that we are, uh, I hope that we're making your, your day a little bit better. Um, but yeah, let's, let's talk about-

   11. KSKoen Smets16:38

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson16:39

       ... um, uh, what was it that you said? Deliberation and...

   13. KSKoen Smets16:42

       Yes. Awareness.

   14. CWChris Williamson16:43

       Awareness, yeah.

   15. KSKoen Smets16:43

       Awareness. Awareness and deliberation, yes. (clears throat) I think it's... The, there are... The parallels with money still go a, a long way here as well. I think we often spend money a little impulsively. We don't really... I mean, we, we are not what, what economists used to call, and some still do, Homo economicus, the sort of rational-

   16. CWChris Williamson17:04

       (laughs)

   17. KSKoen Smets17:05

       ... maximizing self-interested individual. Um, so in, in other words, if you spend a tenner on, on, uh, I don't know, some, some gadget or, or a sandwich or, and a, a drink or something, you're not considering, "What, what else could I spend this tenner on? Can I just bring to mind everything else I could possibly spend this tenner on?" And, and then sort of rank them and say, "Well, the very best way I can spend this is this. Not this sandwich and this drink, so I'm not gonna buy this. I'll buy something cheaper." We don't do that. We, we sometimes spend money totally impulsively, but we also have sort of, um, preset limits. We think, "Oh, well, for, uh, uh, for a tenner, I'm not going to spend half an hour, um, cogitating about, uh, uh, where else could I spend this even better than, than here." Um, but we, we don't always weigh up the opportunity cost of, of spending money. Um, if you go on holiday, it means you can't buy a new car.... um, for instance. And that's the kind of thing that some people are aware of and other people are not aware of. Um, and so the same applies to, to time in a sense. If you,

10. 18:15 – 24:38

    Time

    1. KSKoen Smets18:16

       uh, uh, to give you an example from when I was little, um, I was maybe 12, 13 years old, and, uh, this is the, this was a time when self-service petrol stations started popping up. Before that, it was all s- full service, so you drove up and a guy in a uniform came along and sort of opened your filler flap and, and filled up, filled up your tank with petrol, and then you could start doing it yourself (clears throat) . And these petrol stations gave a discount. And of course, some gave a little discount, others gave a big discount. And I remember my dad, uh, we'd, we hadn't had a car for a long time. We, we went, we drove like 20 minutes to get some discount of, I don't know, one franc a liter or something. Not, not particularly. And I realized even then that there was no calculation being done, so there was an awareness of how much time, let alone the distance driven, but how much time are we spending to drive, I don't know, 10 miles, 15 miles to get petrol that is just a little bit cheaper? And I think we, we often do not think about that, and we think about it even less when it's about time. We, we don't really think about how much time something takes. We, we think we need to go to a meeting. That meeting is like two and a half hours drive away, so we, we just say, "Well, there's some traveling time. We, that's just part of the equation." We don't, especially because time is not even as tangible as money. There is salience. Time is not salient in the same way. You just take it as a given that, okay, I'll have to, to drive for two and a half hours and, and get there. When we're stuck in traffic, we don't really calculate how much time we waste stuck in traffic. I mean, I, I try to avoid driving as much as I can, but when I, when occasionally I have to take the car and I have to drive during rush hour, and I see these people and they're all sitting there and sort of bumper to bumper, and for me it's just once, and so I, I say, "Well yeah, I had no choice. I really had to do this."

    2. CWChris Williamson20:07

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. KSKoen Smets20:08

       "There's no other way." So I rationalize it, but I then think of these other people sitting left of me and right to me and b- in front of or behind me, and they experience this every day. Do they, have they ever worked out what this is costing them in time? How much time this is, this is wasted for them, multiplied by five days a week?

    4. CWChris Williamson20:30

       The cumulative load. (laughs)

    5. KSKoen Smets20:32

       Thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty-five weeks a year.

    6. CWChris Williamson20:35

       Oh.

    7. KSKoen Smets20:35

       So we, we, we don't think about it, and that's, uh, that's what I meant by, by awareness. And I think by being deliberate is once you're aware of the, the, the time you spend, you're, you can sort of account for time more easily. Then you can begin to be deliberate about what you do. For instance, you, you mentioned, um, uh, where people might be listening to this podcast. Um, I, I don't particularly like driving, but I see driving as something, a, a great opportunity to listen to podcasts. Um, I sometimes listen to the radio, um, but most of the time I accumulate lots of podcasts, and then when I need to drive, and I often drive from here to the continent, so these are long trips. That means I can listen back to back to several episodes of, uh, Freakanomics, uh, or of your podcast or of, uh, um, EconTalk, or, um, uh, you name it. I mean, there's, there's a whole raft of things, um, I tend to listen to. And I think to me that is like good management in the way, in the same way that you use your, you manage your money well. Good money management is as good time management. Time management is not just about diary management, it's about being aware of where there is a sort of a, a, um, a downtime, a time that is otherwise not very well spent, because as you, as you mentioned earlier, we can't bottle up time. We, it just goes by. And so we either use it or we lose it, and that awareness can attune you better to use it better. There is a, a concept in behavioral economics called mental accounting. I don't know whether you've heard of it. Uh, maybe some of your earlier Behavioral Economics guests may have mentioned it, but I'll, I'll quickly, um, I'll briefly, um, explain it. Mental accounting is like having multiple virtual bank accounts, and you have one account for the rent and one account for, for the, the bills, and one account for, uh, going out for a meal, and one account for food and, and clothing or whatever. So you, you cut it up. It's basically, it's all the same money because money is, as I say, it's fungible. You, dollar is a dollar. Whatever you spend it on, it's, it's exactly the same dollar. But by dividing it up into, um, virtual pots or accounts, you can manage it better. You can have a, a savings account where you save up for Christmas or for, for the holiday. And basically it's there. It's got, it's earmarked, there's a label on it, and it means that you're not really supposed to take money out of that for something else.

    8. CWChris Williamson23:13

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    9. KSKoen Smets23:13

       And, um, there is, there's an anecdote. I think it, it's, uh, I forget, I forget who they were. One of them is Dustin Hoffman, Hoffman, and the other one is, I forget, two actors who used to live together in, in Hollywood, uh, when they were young and, uh,

    10. NANarrator23:26

        (laughs)

    11. KSKoen Smets23:28

        ... in their twenties. And, uh, and one of them goes back home and, and, uh, um, wants to borrow some money because they've run out of money to, for food or something, and they, they actually literally have jars on, on the kitchen, uh, uh, counter. Um, and there is money for something else in another jar, but they are unwilling to take the money from that jar to pay for whatever it is they, they need to pay. So that is mental accounting. (clears throat) And we can do the same thing with our own time. We can dedicate time to a certain activity and not use it for something else.... all too often, we begin a task and we just carry on. And we, we keep on going. It's like throwing good money after bad, because it may not be the best use of our time at a particular moment. Um, and so if we're deliberate about how we're going to be using our time and say, "Right, I'm going to be working on this for this amount of time, and then I'm going to be doing something else that is also important at that moment in time," it's that kind of deliberateness that I was alluding to earlier on.

11. 24:38 – 30:53

    Parkinsons Law

    1. KSKoen Smets24:38

    2. CWChris Williamson24:38

       I understand. The listeners will be familiar with Parkinson's Law as well-

    3. KSKoen Smets24:44

       Mm-hmm. Yep.

    4. CWChris Williamson24:44

       ... which is work expands to fill-

    5. KSKoen Smets24:46

       Yep.

    6. CWChris Williamson24:46

       ... the time given for it.

    7. KSKoen Smets24:48

       Yep.

    8. CWChris Williamson24:48

       It's one of the reasons that time boxing your tasks throughout the day-

    9. KSKoen Smets24:52

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CWChris Williamson24:52

        ... is, uh, an important way, because (clears throat) everyone will be familiar from when they were at school of, well, if you're like me, you might be familiar, uh, of leaving your assignment until the last minute-

    11. KSKoen Smets25:01

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CWChris Williamson25:01

        ... and, and handing it in. You've actually got some students of yours, uh, submitting assignments ready for-

    13. KSKoen Smets25:06

        Yes.

    14. CWChris Williamson25:06

        ... midnight tonight, so I guess you'll be suffering with the 11:59 PM submission deadlines and all that-

    15. KSKoen Smets25:13

        Yep.

    16. CWChris Williamson25:13

        ... sort of stuff.

    17. KSKoen Smets25:14

        There are the few that have asked for an extension.

    18. CWChris Williamson25:16

        Oh, well, I mean, uh, th- they're just leaving it until 11:58, aren't they? And then they can ask for one. But yeah, (clears throat) I, I, I totally understand. One-

    19. KSKoen Smets25:24

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson25:24

        One of the, um, examples that you used in one of your blog posts I thought was hilarious and fascinating. Can we talk about the Estonian Police speeding fines, please?

    21. KSKoen Smets25:35

        Oh, yes. Yes, that's a fantastic idea, I think. (clears throat) Um, the Estonian Police in, uh, a, a bit earl- a, a few months ago, I think, tried out on a particular piece of, of road, um, an alternative way of, uh, penalizing people who were speeding. Um, in most, uh, countries, um, when you get caught speeding, you get a ticket, and in some, uh, situations, the fine can be quite, um, extensive, depending on h- by how much you exceed the speed limit. But here in Finland, they come, they came up with a different idea, um, and so they stopped people speeding and they gave them a choice between paying, I think, (clears throat) for, for a sort of an, an average, um, uh, uh, excessive speed, the fine would be something like 400 euros, so just like a good 350 pounds, um, or they could wait for an hour. Just stay there for an hour and then they could be, could, they could go again. Didn't have to pay anything, um, but they just had to wait by the roadside for an hour. Um, about half of the, the people they stopped opted to wait. About half didn't. So you can imagine, uh, from that how much these people value their time, um, because effectively, they paid 400 euros for an hour. I don't think even... I think there are very few people who get paid that amount of money. So stopping by and saving 400 pounds, for some people that was, uh, that was not enough, uh, so to speak, so they, they, they went off. But the others, uh, did stay. Now, I, I sort of mused on that a little bit, because I think if you look at some of, some common behavioral economics principles, one of them, uh, which comes from an acronym, uh, that was, uh, put forward by the people of the Behavioral Insights Team here in, uh, UK, the, the former Nudge Unit, and they have this sort of simple, very clear framework for behavior interventions, uh, going by the name of EAST. The acronym stands for easy, um, attractive, social, and, uh, timely. So any intervention should score highly on those four things. So it sh- it should make life easier, it should be, um, appealing so people would want to do it, it should be social, other people do it, it should be timely. An intervention that is done at the moment that it, it matters has more effect than an intervention that is happening at some unrelated time. And when you think about it, when you get fined, well, even worse. So you drive along, you get flashed. You get, you see the flash in your rear view mirror, "Shit, um, I've been caught. Okay." So you forget about it for... or you, you drive a bit more slowly for a, for a little while and then you forget about it, and then a fortnight later, the, um, uh, the, the, the, you get the note, uh, that you, uh, you got caught and you got a little sort of payment slip, uh, you need to pay what, 100 pounds or something? It's, "Oh, bloody hell, 100 pounds." But the connection between the behavior that incurred the fine and the fine itself is really very, very loose at that point. It's such a long time ago that you will, you don't make the connection. So in this particular case with the Finnish police, the connection is immediate. These people, most of the time will have been speeding because they were late, they, they left late. This is anoth- another aspect of poor time management, it's leaving things too late. So they try to make up for lost time by speeding and get to the d- destination on time, and then they get stopped and they have to wait for an hour.

    22. CWChris Williamson28:56

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KSKoen Smets28:56

        So all the benefit they would have had is gone. So they made the effort to try and get there in time by breaking the speed limit, and yet they don't get there on time. So this is a kind of reinforcing mechanism applied at the right time, uh, that might... I don't know. There was... They didn't really properly research it, but I think this is one of the things that I would, uh, uh, I would like to see researched, uh, more, uh, to see whether the effectiveness in terms of, um, recurring speeding of this kind of penalty would be superior to the conventional, uh, penalty of just basically fining people.

    24. CWChris Williamson29:38

        It makes me think about when, um, when people buy things on a credit card as well or when people-

    25. KSKoen Smets29:46

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson29:46

        ... use contactless.

    27. KSKoen Smets29:48

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson29:48

        There was a, there was a study, I think Rory Sutherland cites it.

    29. KSKoen Smets29:51

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson29:51

        People walking out of a supermarket and they're being asked, "How much do you think your receipt-"
12. 30:53 – 33:30

    Relative judgments

    1. KSKoen Smets30:53

       so to speak.

    2. CWChris Williamson30:53

       I agree. Um, you also had a look at, um, the relative judgments for people who were offering to do charity work-

    3. KSKoen Smets31:05

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson31:06

       ... about whether or not they were going to spend money to contribute to a particular cause, uh, or whether they were going to spend their time. And this gets onto a point as well that I'd love to move onto, uh, which is talking about, um, outsourcing tasks to other people based on your own value for your time. So, let's, let's get into that. Can you tell us about that study?

    5. KSKoen Smets31:28

       Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's, uh, that's an interesting study. Um, I forget who, who it was done by. Um, it's somebody at the University of Cardiff. Um, and they looked at, um, what... How people value people donating to charity, um, depending on whether they volunteer or whether they, uh, donate money. And they normalized it so that the, the value of the donation was similar to the value of a week's work, so to speak. So, it was entirely equivalent. And what they found is that in the eyes, in the eyes of others, the donation of time was, uh, seen as much more valuable. Um-

    6. CWChris Williamson32:07

       Like 70%, wasn't it?

    7. KSKoen Smets32:10

       Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, that's, th- that's interesting in itself. So, whereas the... If you, if you take the old time is money, um, equivalence, that is clearly not true, because people feel that people who, um, volunteer and donate their time are more praiseworthy than, uh, than people who simply dip in their pocket and give some money.

    8. CWChris Williamson32:32

       Why do you think that is?

    9. KSKoen Smets32:32

       The interesting... Um, well, I, I can, I can theorize, and my theory, um, is that we, we all experience time in a much more similar way than we experience money. Um, money, uh, our experience to money is very much dependent on our point of reference, um, and therefore how, how wealthy we are. So, uh, t- to an economist, a dollar is a dollar, but to somebody who's a millionaire, a dollar will be worth less than to a homeless person who has no money at all. But time, time is much more, um, equal for, for multiple people. And so, we are... It's easier for us to put ourselves in the position of somebody who gives up a whole week of their time, of their personal time, to do something for somebody else, than for somebody to give up, I don't know, $1000.

    10. CWChris Williamson33:28

        Mm. Yeah.

13. 33:30 – 38:13

    Giving money

    1. CWChris Williamson33:30

    2. KSKoen Smets33:30

       And, uh, because-

    3. CWChris Williamson33:30

       I wonder, I wonder how much of that as well is, uh, effortful signaling about the fact that I know I can tell you people who have donated chunks of money-

    4. KSKoen Smets33:41

       Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson33:42

       ... to, to charity, but I don't know many people that have donated a week.

    6. KSKoen Smets33:46

       Yes. Exactly. Well, th- that is because we only have 52 weeks in a year. We have basically... There is no limit to the amount of money we can have. Now, of course, we, we will not give, give away half our wealth. Uh, very few people do that. I mean, let's, let's-

    7. CWChris Williamson34:01

       Unless you're Bill Gates.

    8. KSKoen Smets34:01

       ... leave out... Leave Warren, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates out of the equation.

    9. CWChris Williamson34:04

       (laughs)

    10. KSKoen Smets34:05

        Um, but generally, the amount of money we give is relatively modest compared to our total wealth. Even though it may in absolute figures be quite substantial, it's, it's rarely something that will make a difference to our lifestyle. Very few people donate, um, amounts that make a difference to how they will live their life after they've made the donation. But we all have limited, limited time, so we can... We find it much easier to imagine what it's like to give up our week. We have a limited, uh, amount of holidays. Uh, there's, uh, four or five weeks of holiday a year, so that's 20 or 25% of your holiday time you're giving up to do something for somebody else. Bloody hell. That is... That's quite significant. Now, there is definitely, um, the likelihood that some of that is signaling. Um, with donations of money, we can s-... We can donate, um, anonymously, and some people do. Um, not many. The, the, the proportion of anonymous donations is very, very small. Um, so people really want others to be able to see that they, they gave a certain amount of money because it gives them a warm feeling, but it also gives them a bit of status in the eyes of others. But you can't donate time, uh, anonymously, so they're, uh, that is... It's pretty obvious that you're donating the time, and so this is something where you can... Even if you're a modest, humble kind of person, you can still say to yourself, "Look. See what I, what I did here?"

    11. CWChris Williamson35:33

        (laughs)

    12. KSKoen Smets35:33

        "I sort of... I went over there for a whole week."

    13. CWChris Williamson35:35

        Yeah.

    14. KSKoen Smets35:36

        And just going back to the study, what's interesting is that even if the, uh, the participants through the study were told that if they had given money to this, um, charity, the charity could have bought much more time with that money from local people than the one week that they were giving up and the, and the equivalent amount of money they gave up or their ho- holiday time, and still third party, the other people viewed the donation of time as more praiseworthy than the donation of money. So, the utility of giving time may be less, but the status it gets you is still more. And so, so time... And, and I think there, there are some interesting implications to that, both, um, in our private lives and at work, I think. I think we should...... be more aware and make other people aware of the value of our time at work. So when we, when people come an- and ask for our time, or when, when we go and ask somebody else for some of their time, we should be more appreciative, app- appreciative of that time and understand (coughs) that this is a precious, scarce resource they are making available to us (clears throat) . And so likewise, the, in, in the, um, the other way around. And it's the same thing, um, at home. We, uh, at home, we sometimes treat the time of other people as if it's, uh, as if it has no value. "Will you just go and do this? Uh, can you just go to the post office?" Or this or that. And okay, what's the opportunity cost for the person, um, concerned? Um, is that the best they could be doing with their time? I mean, it's 20 minutes walk either way to the post office, and they could do, could be doing something else. "So why are you asking me this? Because you forgot yesterday to go to the post office? So it's very easy for you to forget if you can then ask me today to go to the post office." So I think, again, more awareness of the value of time can lead to not, not l- not, not only a better use of time, but also better, uh, relationships. Because if I can waste your time, if for whatever reason I have some power over you, um, and I can, I can instruct you to go to the post office with me because I forgot to post the letter or to send this package off yesterday, then there'll be resentment. You will think, "Well, bloody hell, I could be doing, I could be doing something interesting, something nice, something useful for me, but now I need to go to the post office and waste 25 minutes, half an hour or so, to, uh, to make up for some, um, something you forgot to do yesterday."

14. 38:13 – 39:03

    Selling our time

    1. KSKoen Smets38:13

    2. CWChris Williamson38:13

       Mm. Isn't there, isn't it interesting-

    3. KSKoen Smets38:15

       So-

    4. CWChris Williamson38:15

       ... that with that, you, we've identified that as being something that people might be quite cognizant of at home?

    5. KSKoen Smets38:21

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson38:21

       But if you were at work in a job-

    7. KSKoen Smets38:25

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson38:25

       ... and your boss said, "Hey, I forgot to take, I forgot to do this, to take this to the post office. Do you fancy going?" You might actually think, "Oh, fuck, get in. I got 40 minutes off work. I get to go and have a, I get to go and have a walk," despite the fact that your time-

    9. KSKoen Smets38:40

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson38:40

        ... at work could also be spent doing something.

    11. KSKoen Smets38:44

        True, but as I said in the beginning, one of the, one of the things that we tend to do when we are at work is we, we treat it as sunk time, in a sense.

    12. CWChris Williamson38:51

        Mm-hmm.

    13. KSKoen Smets38:52

        We've sold our time to our boss already, so if our boss wants to use that time... Because it's, it's his or her time now.

    14. CWChris Williamson38:58

        Mm.

    15. KSKoen Smets38:58

        So if they think that time is best spent by me, by sending me to the post office, who cares?

15. 39:03 – 40:23

    The inefficiencies in wasting time

    1. KSKoen Smets39:03

       I'm, I might be either way.

    2. CWChris Williamson39:04

       I suppose this is exactly where... It's literally the tip of the spear of where the inefficiencies in wasting time come from within a business, don't they?

    3. KSKoen Smets39:14

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson39:14

       That people are like, "It's eight o'clock, I'm here. It's five o'clock, I'm gone."

    5. KSKoen Smets39:19

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson39:19

       Wha- whatever we do during that time. And it takes a very... It either takes a very particular type of mindset or, um, a special sort of remuneration package, um, for people to start to bring that in, 'cause you are right. Some people hate meetings. They don't want to spend their time. Naval Ravikant famously, he, he doesn't do meetings. "I don't do meetings." And you're like, well, you know, there's a lot of businesses, and he's on the board of all of these, like, angel investment companies and stuff. Like, how do you not do meetings? And that's because that is how much he values not only his time but the time of everyone that's around him. Or there's other companies that I know that, um, their meeting rooms are deskless and seatless. So they are simply a room in which everybody can stand.

    7. KSKoen Smets40:06

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson40:06

       And it, it just re- it totally reduces down-

    9. KSKoen Smets40:09

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson40:09

        ... e- increases the effortful friction of someone wanting to call a meeting. It's like, okay, cool.

    11. KSKoen Smets40:13

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson40:13

        You can call the meeting, but everyone's, everyone got to stand and everyone's got to hold their laptop like a, uh, like a waiter in front of them (laughs) while, while they're here. Um...

    13. KSKoen Smets40:22

        True.

    14. CWChris Williamson40:22

        So

16. 40:23 – 42:28

    Selfemployed vs salaried

    1. CWChris Williamson40:23

       yeah, I mean, I- (sighs) it is, it is so interesting, especially for me, as someone who's never worked, um, in a typical salaried job. That's never been my industry.

    2. KSKoen Smets40:35

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson40:35

       I've always worked for myself.

    4. KSKoen Smets40:37

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson40:37

       Um, but I know that that's non-typical. And, you know, I, I really do hope that some of the people that are listening can start to, if you are in a, a more typical sort of salaried job, you can start to assess your time while you are at work and think, "Well, hang on."

    6. KSKoen Smets40:51

       Mm.

    7. CWChris Williamson40:51

       "Like where, where, where can I make my experience either more productive or more enjoyable for, for me-"

    8. KSKoen Smets40:59

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson40:59

       "... or whatever it might be?"

    10. KSKoen Smets41:01

        Well, yes. Yeah, absolutely, and I think your, your, your parallel is quite, uh, quite interesting. I think if you're self-employed, then you are, you're really the owner of both your money and your time, and you will treat them with more respect, I think, than the time that you spend at work, because you've already sold it. It's not yours anymore. I think the comparison is with, imagine that you're, you go on a, on a business trip and you get some cash from work. You get, I don't know, 150 pounds to spend on, on, uh, a hotel and a meal or whatever. Will you be worried about how much you spend? Probably not. You, you can't keep anything, so you can't keep the balance. You have to give back... You have to have receipts for a certain amount and a balance you need to give back, but you can spend up to 150 pounds. So you're not going to be too concerned about how you spend that money. Well, I think it's very much the same with the time you spend at work. It's, you've given it to your employer, so if, if the, if for whatever reason you need to go and sit in meetings five hours, uh, in a day, that's what you're going to be doing. Um. Now, of course, it's not true for everybody, not to-

    11. CWChris Williamson42:09

        Mm-hmm.

    12. KSKoen Smets42:09

        ... 100% o- o- of the time, but too much of the time, we, we really treat that time as if it's, it has no, no particular value to us. We just do whatever, um, whatever comes along and we, we don't, um... We're not deliberate

17. 42:28 – 47:56

    Externalities

    1. KSKoen Smets42:28

       enough with it, I think.

    2. CWChris Williamson42:29

       I understand. I think that's such a, a-... brilliant example, the people that, you know, do have a company card that, uh, uh, are listening will know that it's, if you got 150 pounds to spend, it's 149 pounds, 50 pence that goes on the-

    3. KSKoen Smets42:42

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson42:42

       ... steak, and you've bought a milkshake that you don't even want to have, and this, that, and the other. Um, I think-

    5. KSKoen Smets42:47

       (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson42:47

       ... you're right. There's, there's something probably a little bit more, um, worrying or a, a little bit more sort of malicious going on. It feels to me a lot when I speak to people, some people who have these sorts of roles, there's almost an adversarial relationship between the employer and the employee, or the employee and the employer. That it's like they will drag their feet/spend the money/do whatever they can as much as possible sometimes, especially in a job perhaps that you might be not too enamored by.

    7. KSKoen Smets43:20

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson43:20

       Um, and, you know, uh, I, um, I don't really know either from an employer or an employee's standpoint, if there's not a passion to sort of make the most of every minute, as Ben Bergeron would say, um, I don't know what the solution would be for that. I don't know if there is one.

    9. KSKoen Smets43:37

       (sighs) Well, yeah, yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, it's not normally malice, I think. It's just, um, no appreciation for something that has no value. Um, I mean, even in, in social policy, um, there is th- the... A case can be made, um, for making people pay for much of the services they get, because once you pay for something, you, uh, you attribute value to it and you start caring for it more. So I'm not even remotely suggesting that at work we should pay our, our colleagues for their time, um, although as a principal, it's probably not bad. And I think there have been experiments even at Google, where there were sort of, there was a virtual Google dollar being used that you could use to, to buy, uh, colleagues' time.

    10. CWChris Williamson44:24

        Mm-hmm.

    11. KSKoen Smets44:25

        But, uh, I think... And not, not a concept that I, I use in my work as well is the, is, is an economics concept of externalities where, uh, this is where a transaction between two parties, uh, involves a third party or actually doesn't involve them, but the third party bears the consequences of it, wher- So, um, I mean, a good example of externalities in, in, in society is pollution. So you, um, take plastic pollution, for instance. Uh, the plastic that is, uh, uh, now filling up our, uh, rivers and oceans. So you go down to Tesco's or Sainsbury's, and, uh, you get some plastic bags for your... because you can't be bothered to take your own bags. You get a handful of free bags, you, you get home, you, uh, you unload them, and then you just throw them away, and they blow out of your waste bin on the outside, and they blow into the local river, and they find their way to the sea. So the seas are being polluted, whereas the transaction was just between you and Sainsbury's. You got some, some free bags, and so somebody else is suffering the consequences. Likewise, pollute industries that pollute the air or the water and so on. The same can happen within organizations where, I mean, to give you an example, um, where finance tells procurement, "You need to squeeze down our suppliers. We want to pay less because we have price erosion. We need to compensate for that, so we are gonna pay less for our raw materials next year than this year." So they go and negotiate, and they get a better price. What they don't at that moment realize is that the supplier is saying, "Right, okay, if we are getting less money for our product, we're not going to give as much support anymore. So if, if there is a problem with our, our supplies daring us up, we're not going to be on their doorstep within half an hour. We might give them some telephone support, but, um, obviously it's not part of the... It's not part of the official written contract." Mm-hmm. It was part of the unwritten total agreement. And so the people somewhere else in the organization who need the help of the supplier will suddenly find that they don't get the help anymore. So that's an externality. The finance and procurement were happy because finance said, "You must shave 5% of the bill of materials," and procurement shaves off 6% and says, "Look at us, we did really well." And then somebody else is suffering the consequence of that, of, yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson46:45

        Operations and logistics are fucked, yeah.

    13. KSKoen Smets46:48

        Yes.

    14. CWChris Williamson46:49

        (laughs)

    15. KSKoen Smets46:49

        Th- those kind of things. Precisely. So, but I think there is so many situations at work where what we do on our own or what we do with another, a colleague affects third parties, and we don't know in what way, and it may well m- It may well waste their time. But if we don't know, we'll happily waste their time because we don't pay for it. We... It's not even visible. So that's why I, I, th- I, I again, I keep on hammering on this notion of awareness. We d- We need to be aware of the consequences of what we do on other people, including of their time. And it may not... It may... I mean, we could do it this way or that way, it doesn't make much difference to us, but if we did this way, it's gonna waste somebody's time, maybe half an ho- half a day. If we do it that way, it won't waste any time at all. But if we don't know, we can't do the right thing. And this is because within an organization, you don't have a market mechanism to show the expense of something, uh, that is a, is a, a specific burden to a, to a colleague, which is a... if you see what I mean.

18. 47:56 – 55:33

    Deadlines

    1. KSKoen Smets47:56

    2. CWChris Williamson47:56

       Absolutely. Um, so I've got, I've got a, a question that I want to finish on, but before we get onto that-

    3. KSKoen Smets48:01

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson48:01

       ... is there anything else? Do you want to bookend the discussion on time, or are you, are you happy with everything we've covered so far?

    5. KSKoen Smets48:08

       Well, I think maybe one final thing that I wrote about it recently is, uh, is deadlines, the, the use of deadlines and particularly self-imposed deadlines. Um, we, um, we sometimes set deadlines where, "Yeah, I mean, we must get this done by then," and it, it can be a, a very good mechanism for making, um, the limited amount of time we have salient, and we have a countdown clock mentally, or we can have a real countdown clock. And so we, "Okay, this much time left," and we can plan it. We know that we, as we get closer, we really need to get it done.... um, whether or not it's at work, or whether it's at home, um, we can do this. But we should be careful not to be too dogmatic about using deadlines like this because there's always a trade-off to be made. And so sometimes time not spent by ... Because a deadline is basically saying, "No further time spent beyond this moment in time." And if you, if you don't go beyond that, then presumably there is some kind of value of finishing whatever you have, um, by then. I mean, you, you, uh, you gave the example of, uh, of my students and their, uh, final, uh, assignment for this, uh, this course. So they need to submit it by midnight, uh, tonight. It's midnight Central Time, so they've got another, uh, another 11 hours. They've got, they've got a little while to go. But (clears throat) so some of them ha- have asked for an extension, and, uh, they, they got it because they, they were in time. Um, if they ask for one now, then they won't get it. They will get penalized. Um, but so they need to think about, "Should I submit my assignment on time and meet the deadline, or should I submit it late, get a penalty, but have a better assignment?"

    6. CWChris Williamson49:49

       Mm-hmm.

    7. KSKoen Smets49:50

       And I think that's the kind of trade-off that we don't always make. We can become obsessed by a deadline and not really work out what the true cost would be of exceeding a deadline.

    8. CWChris Williamson50:06

       Or meeting the deadline as well, I suppose.

    9. KSKoen Smets50:08

       Or, or... Well bo- both. Uh, both, indeed. So we need to look at-

    10. CWChris Williamson50:11

        Yeah. You can, you can set, set a self-imposed deadline which forces you to make a sub-optimal decision. One that potentially-

    11. KSKoen Smets50:17

        Yes.

    12. CWChris Williamson50:17

        ... given only a small increase of the deadline, would have increased the quality of the decision by a significant margin.

    13. KSKoen Smets50:24

        Correct. Correct. And I think, I mean, to give, to give another sort of practical example, um, you need to catch your train, um, and it's really quite important you, you get that train. But how important is it? Are you go- are you going to be leaving the house without checking that you've actually closed the windows and doors because, "Yeah, I really need to get the train?" Or are you gonna say, "Well, I'd rather check the house, and I'll take the next train. Okay, there's gonna be some cost involved with that, but at least I know my house will be secure, and the iron will be unplugged, and I'll have, uh, sort of switch off the gas stove and, and everything so my house is not burning down." So when you s- when you put it so extreme, then clearly nobody's going to say, "I'm gonna rush out of the house, leave windows and doors open and the iron, um, on the ironing board-"

    14. CWChris Williamson51:09

        Mm-hmm.

    15. KSKoen Smets51:10

        "... um, because I need to catch my train." Nobody's going to do that. But if it's not that extreme, we don't always think about it, about what it is we would gain by catching the train and meeting our deadline, uh, or what we would lose by not meeting that deadline, or what we'd gain in terms of the benefit of our house being secure, or the equivalent. So I think deadlines can be, can be useful, but we should be careful not to treat them as something that then begins to dictate us. I think we need to, um, be willing to look at compromising either way and what the cost and the benefit of, of, uh, going either side would be.

    16. CWChris Williamson51:49

        It's interesting. Now, I, I love thinking about where the rubber meets the road with these sorts of discussions. Exactly what ... Would, would you be prepared to have one window half open? Would you be prepared-

    17. KSKoen Smets52:00

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson52:00

        ... to have one window-

    19. KSKoen Smets52:02

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson52:02

        ... fully open, but it's an upstairs window? Or would you be-

    21. KSKoen Smets52:05

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson52:05

        Da, da, da, da. Like so we do (clears throat) We, we always do this, and it's ruined ... We used to have a big section on the Propain Fitness podcast, which I was a guest on before I started this one. Uh, and we used to have a big section called Would You Rather, and it was-

    23. KSKoen Smets52:17

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson52:18

        ... Would You Rather submitted by listeners, and there would always be something which had a value that was negotiable. And we would find a value that someone would accept and then do ... It ruined, it completely ruined the segment, and we got rid of it because we just kept playing the same game, which was we would pick the value someone would accept and then take it down-

    25. KSKoen Smets52:36

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson52:36

        ... by a unit and then take it down by a unit-

    27. KSKoen Smets52:38

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson52:38

        ... and then take it down by-

    29. KSKoen Smets52:39

        Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson52:40

        Oh, so you'd do it for 50 grand? Okay, so would you do it for 49,999?
19. 55:33 – 1:04:43

    Meditation

    1. KSKoen Smets55:33

       what you do when.

    2. CWChris Williamson55:34

       Yeah. The tool doesn't really matter, but the deliberateness does. It's, uh, the-

    3. KSKoen Smets55:38

       Yes.

    4. CWChris Williamson55:38

       I can't remember. I read the quote earlier on today, so I'm kicking myself for not being able to remember it, but, "Uh, many of the problems of man are due to the fact that he can't sit alone with himself in a room for half an hour."

    5. KSKoen Smets55:49

       Ah, yes.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:49

       Um, and you know, it sounds like you are... Uh, also interestingly, if my meditation coach, Brian, is listening, um, he will know that my particular pathway of meditation at the moment is Do Nothing Meditation by Shinzen Young.

    7. KSKoen Smets56:04

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson56:04

       And (clears throat) that specifically, for anybody that's interested, um, is what he calls completely taking the hands off the wheel. Um, and it is the practice of no practice. So my meditation on a morning doesn't even have me clearing my mind of thoughts. If thoughts arise, they're allowed to. There's no fixation or suppression. But the only thing-

    9. KSKoen Smets56:26

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CWChris Williamson56:26

        ... that I do is drop an intention to control. So it's like e- the, the thought about putting my hands back on the wheel gets... That's the only thing I'm allowed to think about thinking about, and that's it.

    11. KSKoen Smets56:36

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CWChris Williamson56:36

        Which is-

    13. KSKoen Smets56:37

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson56:38

        ... uh, doing that, like learning to let go of controlling thoughts, even in a meditative practice, is because medit- meditation in itself, in some forms, especially some of the ones that I've been doing, is still about, we're bringing the focus back to the breath, we're bringing the focus-

    15. KSKoen Smets56:52

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson56:53

        ... back to the somatic sensations in the body, or the self-talk, or the mi- the mental imagery, or whatever it might be. And, um, yeah, the, the power of literally doing nothing, um, is, is an interesting one. I think it was really, really good to go through that. But I have a final, uh, question for you, which I asked, uh, Richard Shotton. I'm gonna ask you-

    17. KSKoen Smets57:16

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson57:16

        ... the same thing as well. So you're stranded-

    19. KSKoen Smets57:18

        Okay.

    20. CWChris Williamson57:18

        ... on a desert island, stranded-

    21. KSKoen Smets57:20

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson57:20

        ... on a desert island on your own, and you're only allowed to have three mental models with you. You can take three mental models-

    23. KSKoen Smets57:28

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson57:28

        ... onto the island with you. So they can be either the most novel or the most interesting. They can be a bias, heuristic, whatever it is that you, you want, but you gotta choose three and you gotta take them with you. Which three are you gonna choose?

    25. KSKoen Smets57:43

        I'm gonna be on my own there.

    26. CWChris Williamson57:44

        Yep.

    27. KSKoen Smets57:48

        Hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson57:49

        Oh, uh, I'll tell you what, you can, you can imagine that there might be other people there as well, 'cause that'll probably broaden the, uh, broaden it. But you gotta choose three. You gotta choose a favorite three.

    29. KSKoen Smets58:03

        Hm. I'm not quite sure what you mean by, by mental model though.

    30. CWChris Williamson58:08

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:04:43