The Only 12 Lessons Buried In Every Self-Help Book - Spencer Greenberg

1. 0:00 – 4:57

   Why Have We Become So Disillusioned With Self-Help?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      A quick note. Lots of people tell us that YouTube unsubscribes them from the channel even though they already pressed it. So just check down there and see if the subscribe button is pressed. You get access to episodes before anybody else if you do. Supports me and the show, helps me to bring you bigger and better guests, uh, and it makes me very happy, so just go and give it a tap for me. I thank you. You researched nearly 500 self-improvement strategies. What'd you learn?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg0:24

      Yeah, so my coauthor, Jeremy Stevenson, and I, we had this crazy project where we're like, "What if we could gather all the good stuff in self-improvement and try to cram it down into one book?" But there's a big problem with that, which is there's so much stuff. How could you possibly make sense of it all? So our idea was, can we find the underlying psychological drivers behind each of the self-improvement techniques? So once we'd gone through over 100 self-improvement books and over 20 types of therapy and taken out every method that they had, we asked ourselves for each one, "What is the psychological method behind it?"

   3. CWChris Williamson0:56

      Hmm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg0:56

      And much to our surprise, we were able to boil it down to just 12 levers, which is these 12 underlying psychological strategies, and that's the name of our book, is 12 Levers.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:05

      Why do you think so many people have become so disillusioned with self-help?

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:10

      I think one of the problems is that they're taught that there's a silver bullet. You know, someone has some new cool idea and they say, "This thing is gonna solve your problem." And often the author says, "I used to be like you. I can relate to you. But look, I turned my life around, and look how great I am now." And the reality is there isn't one silver bullet that works for all people at all times.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:31

      Hmm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:31

      There are some really, really good methods, but even the best methods, they're contextual. You have to use them on the right person at the right time.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:38

      Hmm.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:39

       And it may not be the first method that you use that's actually gonna solve your problem.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:42

       What's been interesting to me, uh, working with doctors and, and working in health and stuff like that since I moved to America, every single, uh, specialist has... And these are the teachers, right? Not even the students, who are maybe even more fervent or ardent about, like, whatever the thing is that saved them.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:59

       Hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:00

       Every single person, the sleep guy has a story about how someone started using CPAP and went from being a brain foggy mess into a superstar, and he went on to become a millionaire and all of this great stuff happened to him. Or the nutrition people will tell you about how someone was allergic to Blue 40 and peanut butter and seed oils, and they cleaned their diet up and it, it totally transformed them, and now they're a Olympian bodybuilder or something. Like, there... For every single strategy, there is an outlier success story, and those people, if you went to them and you were to say, "Hey, man. Like, my health's not feeling too good" or, "I wanna be a bit more productive," and they go, "Dude, I've got the strategy." And it's weird because those people, it's quite easy to accuse them of being, like, grifters or overzealous or overselling what the strategy can achieve, but no, what you're doing by a process of selection, like, by selection, by a self-selection bias, you are seeking out people that are hyper responders to that particular strategy, and they are telling you, sometimes they're lying, but a lot of the time they're just telling you their real experience. "This is actually what happened to me," or, "This is exactly what happened for a client of mine." And then if you embark on this, but it's the wrong context, the wrong time, you don't apply it right, it's not right for your physiology or psychology or particular situation or whatever, you're like, "Well, this is bullshit. You lied to me about what it does for you." And it's like, no, no, no, no. It is right for the right person at the right time applied in the right way, and that, you know, the idiosyncratic nature of any intervention is why blanket coverage advice is probably bullshit.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg3:34

       You know, if you look at lists of cognitive biases, you'll see there's over 100 of them. But I've been thinking about recently, what are the ones that the smartest people fall for?

   15. CWChris Williamson3:41

       Hmm.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg3:41

       And I think this is one that the smartest people fall for. They find something that was genuinely life-changing, like truly life-changing and amazing, and then they just say, "Everyone's gotta do this thing." And I know so many smart people who have done this. And I don't blame them for it, but it's a huge mistake.

   17. CWChris Williamson3:56

       One of my friends, Gwenda Bogle, has got this idea he calls, um, the, the golden hammer, and he says that, uh, a public intellectual, usually one that's got famous for a small number of principles, sees that principle in everything. And then he's got in brackets afterward, "Every definition of this should come attached with a photo of Na- Nassim Taleb," which is like, you know, someone who's got an amazing idea set but is able to, like, retrofit lots of insights to this idea set. And it's kind of the same as this. "What's your problem?" "Oh, athlete's foot." "Allow me to show you my CPAP machine. Like, I fixed fucking athlete's foot with a CPAP machine." Like, all of these things. And you're right. Like, this, uh, this golden hammer kind of approach seems to be a master cognitive bias that a lot of smart people, that are the kinds of people who have gone through lots of these spirals, uh, that they're gonna fall for.

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg4:45

       Right. And there are methods that really don't work, like they're genuine bullshit, and then there are genuine grifters out there that are lying to you. But there's... A lot of what's happening is that people genuinely found something really useful, and they're just trying to apply it to everything.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:56

       Hmm.

2. 4:57 – 6:52

   Is Self-Help Just Old Advice Repackaged?

   1. CWChris Williamson4:57

      How much of the self-help industry is just old school psychological techniques repackaged with new terminology?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg5:05

      Well, it's so funny because sometimes you're reading about some cool n- new technique and you realize it was discovered by the Buddha or something [laughs] . And you're like, "Wow, this has been around well over 1,000 years." Uh, but that doesn't mean it's not useful. Like, maybe it has a new twist on it. Maybe it's better adapted to a modern audience.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:20

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg5:20

      Right? We can't necessarily work with this thing that's thousands of years old. Uh, but I would say a lot of it rhymes, right? You're seeing the same thing again and again and again.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:29

      Hmm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg5:29

      And this is part of what, uh, set us down this journey of writing the book, the 12 Levers, was that my coauthor and I had both seen the same methods come up again and again and again, and it started to make us think maybe there's a pattern here, right? Maybe there's less behind it all than you might think at first when you look at hundreds of techniques.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:46

      Why these 12? Like, what was special about this particular bucket of 12? Was there one that was nearly 13 but that actually got fucked off?

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg5:54

      It was really that once we sat down with this list of almost 500 techniques, we went through each one one by one and said, "What's the psychological principle?" and just attached it. And then when we got to one where we didn't have a psychological principle, we had to add one.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:05

      That's new. Yeah.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg6:06

       And then sometimes we would go back and merge some. We were like, "Oh, that one's kind of the same as that one" and merge them. And literally by the end there were 12 that we... All the techniques fit into 12, which was shocking.

   11. CWChris Williamson6:14

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If- Self-help is already, for a lot of people, overcomplicated. Is this not risking just being another complicated system? Like, uh, is this the last personal development book that I'll ever need?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg6:28

       We give references to tons of really great books that can help you go deeper on any topic here. So I think of this as a map.

   13. CWChris Williamson6:34

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg6:34

       It lets you see the whole space of what are all the levers that you can pull to improve your life, and we give you really concrete steps that you can put them into action. But you may wanna go really deep on that specific lever that's helping you or the specific technique, and there's... We have references to sm- so many great books in here that can help you go follow that thread.

3. 6:52 – 8:56

   The Biggest Self-Development Strategies That Aren’t Backed Up

   1. CWChris Williamson6:52

      What were some very well-known personal development strategies that had surprisingly little legitimacy backing them up in terms of effectiveness, science, et cetera?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg7:03

      Yeah, so one interesting one is cold exposure, and so we focus on, we focus on psychology, right? Our book is about psychology. But we do talk about the intersection between the body and the mind. At the end of the day, we're minds attached to these biological robots, and what happens in our bodies [laughs] just has a great impact on our psychology. So you kind of can't ignore that. And, uh, techniques like cold exposure really have an influence psychologically, and we, uh, one thing that we did for our book is really go through the evidence looking at, like, what's known, what studies have been run, what's been tested in the psychological space, and trying to navigate through an evidence-based lens while also bringing in our experience. Jeremy Stevenson, my co-author, is a clinical psychologist who treats patients. I've built many, many tools for people on our website clearthing.org, where we teach people psychological skills. So we, we also bring in our own experience from that. Um, but if you look at something like cold exposure, many people report more alertness. Uh, many people report feeling good doing it, and that's fantastic.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:01

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg8:01

      But the evidence base for having long-term health benefits is actually much weaker than you might think.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:05

      Mm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg8:06

      There's some suggestive evidence. There's a little bit of research. But we really need way more research, like looking at long-term people. So, you know, randomizing some people to do it for a year and some people not and really looking at what changes about them.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:16

      I imagine that cold exposure is gonna be very difficult to do a double-blind placebo-controlled [laughs] trial. Like, it's very hard to convince someone they've been in cold water when they actually haven't. Uh, but yeah, so the point around cold exposure is not it doesn't necessarily make people feel better, because it can, and it can improve their performance over the... like from a state perspective.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg8:36

      Right. Short-term effects. Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:37

      But getting into a trait perspective, the evidence is much more wishy-washy.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg8:41

       Yeah, yeah. And you just need much longer term follow-up to really see what happens when people do it for a long time.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:45

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg8:45

       Yeah, that's a funny one also because it traces back so long. Like, early humans were doing cold exposure, right?

   13. CWChris Williamson8:49

       Mm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg8:50

       But it's, but it's obviously some people get really good benefits out of it. And if you feel great doing it, that's awesome. That's good enough reason to do it.

4. 8:56 – 12:53

   How to Find the Right Self-Help Strategy

   1. CWChris Williamson8:56

      How should people go about diagnosing their actual problem then so that they can actually choose the right technique?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg9:02

      Yeah, so this is why we put this as literally the first lever of our book. We call it unravel the causes. It's about figuring out the deeper controllable causes of your life challenges. And we put it at the beginning because often without really understanding your challenges, you can't have good solutions. Better understanding leads to better solutions.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:20

      Mm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg9:20

      Uh, so one example you might think about, suppose you're having fights with your girlfriend regularly. And you might think, "Well, I know why we fight," right? Like she wants one thing. I want another thing. And that's like one level of understanding. We call it level one causal understanding. But then you could ask yourself, "Huh, but I know other couples where they want different things, and yet they're not fighting about it all the time. What's going on?" And you start reflecting, and you realize, well, every time we try to have a, a discussion about it, we both start getting angry. So that's level two understanding. But there's an even deeper understanding of that. Well, why is it that you're both getting angry? W- what's bringing up that anger? Is it some deep-seated resentment?

   5. CWChris Williamson9:55

      Mm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg9:55

      And that could get you to level three understanding. So the idea is these tools that can help you figure out what are the deeper level causal structures.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:02

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg10:02

      It's kind of like if you were trying to fix your car that won't start, and you just start fixing things at random.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:07

      Right.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg10:07

       It's gonna take you a really ti- long time to fix it. If you go get a diagnostic, now you can fix it right away.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:12

       What is the best diagnostic tool or your favorite one, the simplest one that you found?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg10:17

       Uh, a simple one that's quite powerful is called the ABC technique. A stands for activating events. So that's what is the event that occurs, right, when the situation's happening. So maybe it would be, you know, your, your girlfriend sees dishes in the sink and says, "I told you not to leave dishes in the sink." That could be the activating event, right? Uh, B stands for beliefs, which also includes thoughts. And so that would be like, well, what, what do you, what do you think in your mind when your girlfriend says that? Maybe you have the thought, "Well, I just wanna be able to, like, live in the peace. I don't wanna have to think about the dishes all the time," right?

   13. CWChris Williamson10:47

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg10:47

       And then C stands for consequences, which could be behavioral, could be emotional. So maybe you start feeling annoyed. Uh, maybe you start engaging in a, a certain behavior, like you raise your voice. And you can start tracking these situations where things are going badly for you with a simple ABC technique.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:03

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg11:03

       And as you map it out that way, you can begin to see things that you never noticed before.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:07

       What happened? What was my belief about it? And what were the consequences that came of that? Why is that format... W- how can that be revealing? Like, what's... what happens to somebody's life if they start to investigate that more deeply?

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg11:19

       Well, fascinatingly... Let me ask you a question. How many thoughts do you think you have in a day?

   19. CWChris Williamson11:24

       Fuck. I remember... It, it... Is it, like, seventy thousand or something?

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg11:26

       I, I, my, I, I think estimates are re- you know, five thousand, seven thousand, something like that. But it, it's tough to estimate. It's honestly tough to estimate.

   21. CWChris Williamson11:32

       Yeah.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg11:32

       But it's a huge, it's a huge number.

   23. CWChris Williamson11:34

       Yep.

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg11:34

       At the end of the day, if I asked you, how many do you remember? How many could you write down?

   25. CWChris Williamson11:38

       Essentially zero.

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg11:39

       Essentially zero. Like a few, right? It, it's fascinating, that discrepancy. What it shows us is that we're not very aware of our mental life after the fact. But when it's happening, if someone were gonna ping you right in that moment-

   27. CWChris Williamson11:50

       Mm

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg11:50

       ... and say, "What did you just think, like, five seconds ago?" You could tell me, right?

   29. CWChris Williamson11:54

       Yep. Yep.

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg11:54

       So-
5. 12:53 – 18:15

   Should We Focus on Intrinsic Values?

   1. CWChris Williamson12:53

      What did you learn about values? I think a lot of people with personal development really begin there. Every time that you sign up for some new personal development course or coaching or whatever, like the first place that they'll get you to start is their values. What did you learn about them?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg13:06

      So value is a topic I've actually done a ton of research on. We try to make a categorization system of the entire set of human values. To start, we created a little training program that taught people about the distinction between intrinsic values and instrumental values. Intrinsic values are things that you value for their own sake. You d- don't value them merely as a means to an end.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:26

      Mm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg13:27

      Whereas instrumental values are things you value because they get you other things. So for example, a watch. You know, a watch is really nice to have. It's convenient and it helps you in a bunch of ways, but nobody values it intrinsically. You value it because it gets you stuff, right? Or cash, you value it because it gets you stuff.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:40

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg13:40

      But happiness, you value it intrinsically. If someone said, "Well, well why do you care about being happy?" You'd be like, you don't even know how to answer that because of course I care. Or connection with other human beings, you probably care about that intrinsically. Uh, there... But there are a lot of things that people care about intrinsically. We try to map them all out.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:56

      Mm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg13:56

      Because these are at the core, at the root of everything else. These are the things we're fundamentally after, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson14:02

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg14:03

       And what we found is 22 categories of intrinsic values, so it's quite a bit, big set. Includes everything from longevity, like living a long time, reducing suffering, not just for yourself, but it could be for everyone in the world or all conscious beings. Different pe- you know, people have different values. It could be arou- you could have values around nature, or you could have values around spirituality, many different things. So it's really a diverse set, but almost everyone has multiple intrinsic values.

   11. CWChris Williamson14:27

       Mm. Okay. Why is understanding your values so hard? I think a lot of the time people do their self-investigation, uh, this one and this one seem in conflict with each other. Uh, I like connection, but I also like autonomy perhaps. Uh, or this one and this one kind of overlap, but they also feel distinct. And sometimes I have this, and other times I have another. Like, uh, why is, why is there so much conflict when it comes to understanding our own values?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg14:54

       It's funny because the human brain seems to encode values directly, but not intrinsic values. If I showed you something, you could say whether you wanted it, right? Whether you valued it.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:03

       Mm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg15:04

       But to figure out whether it's an intrinsic value actually takes this extra cognitive effort. To figure, do I really like that for its own sake, or am I just trying to get something out of that, right? There's something else I'm after. It's, it's a tricky kind of thought experiment you have to do. We developed a test called the intrinsic values test. It's totally free. It's on our website, clearerthinking.org. It's exactly for this purpose, to help figure out what their actual intrinsic values are-

   15. CWChris Williamson15:25

       Mm

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg15:26

       ... and separate them from the instrumental. And it's kind of shocking because sometimes people will go years and years or decades and confuse their instrumental values with their intrinsic values. I, I had a funny example of this where a friend of mine was feeling very depressed, and she came to me and she said, "You know, I can't really tell why I'm depressed. I think it has to do with my boyfriend, but it's really confusing because he's a really great guy." And I said, "Okay, interesting. Like, tell me... Like, why don't you write down his positive qualities?" And she wrote them down, and I was like, "Yeah, he seems like a really awesome guy. He has all these great qualities. Now write down your, your values." And she wrote those down. Zero overlap in the lists. And I was like, "Wow, that's fascinating." And then I had this idea. "Write down your parents' values." And she wrote them down, and it was a com- perfect match to her boyfriend.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:09

       Wow.

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg16:10

       And I was like, "You're dating your parents' [laughs] ideal person. Of course you're not happy because that's not the person that you want to be with."

   19. CWChris Williamson16:16

       Yeah.

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg16:16

       And she broke up with him [laughs] and was much happier after. So yeah, we can easily confuse these things.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:22

       Mm. Is it your perspective then that people should focus on their, uh, intrinsic values? Uh, but presumably we can't always get directly to happiness. I value happiness, right? Or I value adventure. We can't get directly to that. That means that I need to, uh, work or travel or spend time in the sun or whatever. The proximate versus the ultimate in EP language. How much should I work on the first order thing, and how much should I work on the end result thing?

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg16:56

       There's a funny paradox where some things when you try to do them too directly, it undermines it.

   23. CWChris Williamson17:00

       What like?

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg17:01

       So in meditation, if you say to someone, "Okay, I want you to con- I want you to meditate as well as you can right now." Trying to meditate well actually tends to undermine your ability to meditate.

   25. CWChris Williamson17:09

       Sleep is another one.

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg17:10

       Sleep. There's a really funny study where they had two groups, and one group they said, "Okay, we want you to try to sleep." And the other group we said, "We want you to try to stay awake even though you're in bed." [laughs] And the group they told to try to stay awake fell asleep faster.

   27. CWChris Williamson17:21

       Hilarious.

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg17:22

       So, uh, happiness can be a thing like this, where trying to be happy is not actually the way to be happy usually. To be happy, you focus on the things that generate happiness rather than trying to get it, like straight on.

   29. CWChris Williamson17:34

       I imagine human connection is not one of those, though. Human connection, to me, seems to be the sort of thing that you actively can seek directly. I am at the checkout counter in front of the lady, and I'm gonna say something nice to her or ask how her day is going. That is the most direct way. Yeah, it's intrinsic, like I'm using words to get connection, rah, rah, rah. But, like, that's pretty direct, and I do think that that's one of those. So this begins to get a little complex now, which is, I guess, where the, the devil is in the details.

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg18:03

       Yeah, and for some things, even with human connection, some people, as soon as they think, "I want to make more human connection," they're gonna know exactly how to do that, and other people are gonna be like, "How the hell do you do that?" And you know, that's where tools start to come in, right?
6. 18:15 – 20:44

   How to Work Out What You Actually Value

   1. CWChris Williamson18:15

      What is your advice for people about working out what they actually value in terms of, uh, stuff that's in conflict with each other? A lot of the time their intention, this, th- these things feels opposite.

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg18:26

      Yeah. So our values genuinely conflict, and the reason that they conflict is because trying to get one thing often is at odds with getting another thing. If you're gonna put time into seeking adventure, that's gonna be less time for your family, right? There's a fundamental conflict there. Also, the world sometimes puts them into conflict. For example, suppose you go to your friend's play. They're really excited to have you there. Afterwards, they come up to you and they say, "What did you think? Did you like it?" And you actually hated it. You thought it was terrible, or you couldn't think of a single good thing to say about it. What do you do? And that's a genuine values conflict. And some people are gonna say, "Well, that's easy. You just say, 'Oh, it was great.'" And other people are gonna say, "Well, no, I like... I care about being truthful more I, than I care about protecting their feelings." Right? And suppose here that they're not gonna learn a great lesson from you. They're just gonna feel bad, right, if you tell them it sucked. So yeah, the world puts our values into conflict, and effort puts the, our values into conflict. The only thing you can do, because they're your values, they're the things you care about-

   3. CWChris Williamson19:23

      Mm

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg19:23

      ... is you have to then carefully reflect and say, "Well, how much do I care about this thing versus this thing in this situation?" And thought experiments can be really useful. Sometimes you can ask yourself, "Okay, suppose I knew that it was gonna... my friend was gonna cry for three days and be brokenhearted if I told them their play sucked. Would it still be worth it?" And you can start to play with this to figure out the trade-off between your values, right?

   5. CWChris Williamson19:44

      Mm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg19:45

      You're, 'cause you're figuring out your own trade-off curve. Essentially, it's a form of introspection.

   7. CWChris Williamson19:48

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7. 20:44 – 25:39

   The Science of Building Habits That Stick

   1. CWChris Williamson20:44

      at checkout. I think when people think about personal development, self-growth, self-help, habit building, habit setting is maybe at the top. It'd certainly be in the top three. You tested a bunch of habit building techniques. What'd you learn?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg20:59

      We ran a giant study on habit formation. It was kind of like a horse race, pitting the techniques against each other.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:05

      Were you the one that was trying to embed the habits?

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg21:07

      No. We ran it on hundreds of people.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:09

      Okay.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg21:09

      So we, we took 20 different habit formation techniques. We randomized people. So each person in our study got five out, out of the, the 20, picked at random. Plus, there was a control group, and we tracked them for a month to see who stuck with their habits better.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:23

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg21:24

      And the fascinating thing was that almost none of the techniques worked, first of all. But-

   9. CWChris Williamson21:28

      Brilliant

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg21:28

       ... we did find some things [chuckles] that worked. Uh, the things that were most promising, we actually ended up doing a follow-up study with the things that most worked. We bundled them together into a package that you can use. We actually call it Daily Ritual. It's also available for free on our website, clearthinking.org. But you can use this habit, uh, packet that worked. But the things that worked were, one, the ridiculously stupid method of writing on a note, uh, like a, a piece of paper and sticking it somewhere in your office or your home that just says, "Here's my habit." It actually increased people's sticking to their habits.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:58

       What... Was there a particular category of habits that that worked more effectively for or less effectively for?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg22:03

       It tends to work for people that tend to be more forgetful because some people, they just are gonna remember. Like, memory is not even gonna be an issue. But for people like myself, I'm kind of forgetful, like, that actually probably would help me, just, like, reminded every time I walk by, "Oh, yeah, I have an intention to do that."

   13. CWChris Williamson22:18

       Mm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg22:18

       So that was one that worked. A little bit silly. A second that worked that's kind of a famous technique, sometimes called tiny habits or, or similar names, is you make a version of your habit for days when you can't do the whole habit.

   15. CWChris Williamson22:29

       Mm.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg22:30

       Right? And the idea is you, you never miss your habit because this tiny version you're allowed to do instead, and there's no excuse ever to not do the tiny version.

   17. CWChris Williamson22:39

       You didn't get to the gym. You do 10 squats on a day that you don't go to the gym.

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg22:42

       Exactly. There's no excuse not to do 10 squats. You should be able to hit it every time. And what's really cool about that is it helps not break the cycle. So the, the mental, uh, machinery of forming the habit never gets broken, which makes it stickier. And you might think, well, aren't people just gonna start cheating, right, and just do that instead? But in our study, they actually didn't. They actually were more successful with the big habit even though they had the option of doing the tiny habit, which is kind of fascinating.

   19. CWChris Williamson23:06

       What are some of the best habits that you found the tiny habits intervention effective for?

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg23:11

       Well, I think it tends to be good for things where life really will get in the way sometimes of doing it, and you're just like, "Look, today's just too crazy. I cannot go to the gym for 30 minutes. Like, it's just not gonna happen."

   21. CWChris Williamson23:21

       Mm.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg23:22

       And, you know, and yeah, just having that, that fallback plan.

   23. CWChris Williamson23:24

       Meditation for one minute.

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg23:26

       Exactly.

   25. CWChris Williamson23:26

       Reading a single page, half a page, a fucking poem, whatever.

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg23:29

       Exactly.

   27. CWChris Williamson23:30

       Okay. That's-

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg23:30

       So you're never gonna miss it. But I'll tell you the, the most effective technique we found. The most promising one in our study was one that we call habit reflection, and the way it works is you first think about a habit you succeeded at in the past. Then, and I, I recommend you write it down. You write down, what did you do that helped you succeed? Did you tell your friend that you were gonna try to do it? Did you pre-plan it in advance so it was easy to do every day? What did you do that helped? Then the final step is you write down, how can you apply what you learned from doing that past habit to this new habit? So that was sort of the, the one standout technique from our study.

   29. CWChris Williamson24:04

       What do you think's going on there?

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg24:06

       It's self-adapting. Many habit techniques, they assume you have a certain challenge, right? Tiny habits is great, but it assumes that your problem is that you kind of don't have time to do it some days.
8. 25:39 – 27:39

   Are You Setting Goals the Wrong Way?

   1. CWChris Williamson25:39

      What do people get wrong about setting goals? 'Cause habits and goals, typically a habit is a daily or, you know, hourly, weekly engagement to move somebody toward an outcome, and goals feel slightly different to values, like sort of instrumental. Like, I, I have this value. There's this goal, which is like a physical thing that's typically gonna get me towards something that I value. But habits also aren't goals and values aren't goals. So is the, is, does goals deserve its own set here?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg26:06

      Absolutely. Actually, I'll tell you about one of the biggest disagreements me and my co-author [laughs] Jeremy Stevenson had when writing the book, which is that he doesn't find thinking about values that useful, which I think I find it incredibly useful, and I know many other people that do.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:18

      Mm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg26:18

      So we kind of had this, "Well, what do we do about that?" 'Cause he's like, "I don't know. I don't know if that's that useful." So I was like, "Well, how do you do it?" And so through this discussion we realized there's this broader set of things that we call your guiding foundations. Your intrinsic values is part of it, but also your principles, which are the, essentially the rules you decide to live by to help implement your values. So you might have a principle like always tell the truth, or principle like family comes first. It's essentially pre-deciding on how you're gonna make your decisions-

   5. CWChris Williamson26:46

      Hmm

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg26:46

      ... so that you live by your values. And then the last one is priorities. These are the areas that you, you're deciding to focus on. So you're gonna say, "I'm gonna prioritize health in the next three months. I'm gonna prioritize family in the next three months," whatever, whatever it is. So that's your guiding foundations, and the thing about guiding foundations is you never complete them. They're ongoing processes. You just keep going and going and going for the rest of your life.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:07

      Hmm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg27:07

      Goals then relate to those, but they're, it's, but are distinct because goals, they end. You, you achieve a goal.

   9. CWChris Williamson27:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg27:14

       You're done with the goal.

   11. CWChris Williamson27:15

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg27:15

       But my view is what people often get wrong is they don't build them on their guiding foundations. Your goals should be built out of your guiding foundations. They should be reflective of your deepest values.

   13. CWChris Williamson27:26

       Fuck, it's complex.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg27:28

       It is. [laughs]

   15. CWChris Williamson27:28

       It feels, it feels like very ... It doesn't surprise me that you had to do, what, 450 different techniques in order to refine them down and bucket them into 12 and ... Yeah, that, uh, that doesn't surprise

9. 27:39 – 38:10

   Why is Focusing On Fear So Important?

   1. CWChris Williamson27:39

      me. Why, why is focusing on fear important?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg27:43

      You know, I know some people that don't feel afraid ever, but much, much more common is that people are limited by fear. And it's just such a big problem that, um, I would say many people could benefit from not letting fear stop them from the things they find most valuable.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:59

      Hmm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg28:00

      And I'm a perfect example of this. I'm someone who was always anxious my whole life, from, from childhood. And in particular, there were certain s- situations that were devastating to me. If I had to go up to a stranger at a party, my heart would be pounding in my chest. My brain was, like, predicting that I was gonna die. Now, obviously that's ridiculous. It's totally silly.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:20

      As a educated, rational person who knows how the world works.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg28:23

      Yeah, and I didn't believe ... You know, on a reasoning level, of course I knew it was safe. But my brain did not perceive it as safe. And if you've ever had a phobia of anything, whether it's snakes or spiders or flying, you know what it's like. You c- your brain is like, "I know that's safe," but it, your body is completely freaking out as though it's the end of the world.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:41

      Hmm.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg28:42

      And finally, when I was in my early 20s, I said, "I have to do something about this. This is ridiculous." So I went to find a therapist, and I found a specialist who works on anxiety. And he said, "You know, Spencer, I can help you, but you're not gonna like it how I'm gonna do it." And I said, "Well, how are you, how, how are we gonna do this?" He said, "You're gonna have homework to go to a bar every weekend alone, and you're gonna talk to five strangers." And for me, this was, "Oh my God, I can't do that. That, it's insane." But we started small. We built what's called a fear hierarchy. The bottom of the fear hierarchy is something that's stressful to you, but bearable.

   9. CWChris Williamson29:16

      Hmm.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg29:16

       Right? So a one. For me, that was go up to people and simply ask what time it was. And I was quite afraid doing this, but I could handle it. It wasn't too much fear.

   11. CWChris Williamson29:24

       Yeah.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg29:24

       And then when that got easy, we took it to the next level, which was going up to people and saying, "Excuse me, what is that you're drinking? That looks good."

   13. CWChris Williamson29:30

       Hmm.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg29:31

       And we worked our way up, all the way at the very top it got really crazy.

   15. CWChris Williamson29:35

       Hmm.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg29:35

       The, the final culmination of this is I went up to people at bars, and this was in Manhattan, and I said to men, "Excuse me, would you give me a hug?" And-

   17. CWChris Williamson29:43

       [laughs] Fuck me. That's brilliant

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg29:45

       ... my, my, literally, I thought I was gonna die. Like, I thought that I ... Now, but amazingly, not only did I not get punched in the face, like the worst reaction I had was, like, people laughing or being like, "No." [laughs] And it was shocking. It totally transformed me.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:58

       How many hugs did you get?

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg30:00

       I, I definitely got a few hugs. I definitely got a few hugs.

   21. CWChris Williamson30:02

       Oh, that's nice.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg30:02

       Yeah. Um-

   23. CWChris Williamson30:04

       I like that

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg30:04

       ... you know, maybe that wouldn't work everywhere. I don't condone, I don't condone doing that-

   25. CWChris Williamson30:07

       Yeah

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg30:07

       ... depending on where you live.

   27. CWChris Williamson30:08

       Yeah.

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg30:08

       But, um, but my social anxiety fell dramatically.

   29. CWChris Williamson30:11

       Hmm.

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg30:12

       Uh, and I certainly still have social anxiety sometimes today, but it's shockingly less than it was, and it, it all took place over, you know, maybe six months. Um, and there's some situations today where I'm sitting in a room of people and I'm like, "I think I'm less socially anxious than the other people here. This is amazing."
10. 38:10 – 40:33

    How Your Mental State Controls Your Performance

    1. CWChris Williamson38:10

       What about mental states? How do people control the state that they're in to control their performance?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg38:16

       Uh, you mean if you're feeling like emotionally dysregulated?

    3. CWChris Williamson38:19

       Yeah.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg38:20

       Yeah. So it's interesting. When people are really highly emotionally dysregulated, often kind of grounding outside of the body is really, really helpful.

    5. CWChris Williamson38:28

       Mm.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg38:28

       So there's a very simple technique where you simply look at three things, notice three different things outside of yourself. You notice three things that you can hear, and then you notice three things in your body, and kind of you switch between these, and it kind of grounds you outside of your mind because when you're feeling like really emotionally dysregulated, often there's sort of chaos going on in your mind-

    7. CWChris Williamson38:49

       Yeah

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg38:49

       ... and you have to kind of get out of there to temporarily feel better.

    9. CWChris Williamson38:53

       I'm gonna focus on that outside of me. I'm gonna focus on this that's on me, and then I'm gonna focus on this that's in me.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg38:58

        Yeah. And then, um, if that doesn't work, um, there are more intensive techniques, like you can kind of shock yourself. And so what... Not with electricity, but with, uh, for example, you could do it with cold water. So just splashing yourself with super cold water briefly, um, actually can suddenly shock you out of a k- emotional disruption.

    11. CWChris Williamson39:15

        That's interesting. Is that mammalian dive reflex adjacent stuff?

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg39:19

        That's, that's interesting. So th- I, I... You know, it may be because I think the mammalian dive reflex, which triggers when you're in cold water, uh, does lower your respiratory rate as I understand it. So it might be related to that.

    13. CWChris Williamson39:29

        Hmm.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg39:29

        But this was a technique that it was developed, as far as I understand it, for people with borderline personality disorder-

    15. CWChris Williamson39:34

        Hmm

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg39:35

        ... because people with that disorder tend to be very emotionally dysregulated easily, and so they had to figure out techniques. Like what do you do? 'Cause you can't, like, have a conversation and reason with a person that is in such a dysregulated state, so you need to give them something to do.

    17. CWChris Williamson39:46

        Just throw water at them.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg39:47

        Well, you have a whole... You teach them to do it for themselves.

    19. CWChris Williamson39:49

        You get a bucket, and then you throw the bucket at them.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg39:51

        [laughs] I think that'd probably make them more upset. But you teach them to do it for themselves-

    21. CWChris Williamson39:54

        Yeah

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg39:54

        ... so they can use it to kind of, uh, yeah, come out of that state.

    23. CWChris Williamson39:57

        How many self-help books do you think should have just said, "Move your body and go outside"?

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg40:03

        Well, you know, it depends on y- [laughs] it depends on the person. It depends on your goals. Yes, there are so many people that would benefit from just like move your body and go outside.

    25. CWChris Williamson40:10

        Hmm.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg40:10

        100%. But if you're depressed, is that gonna solve your problems? Maybe it'll, it'll help a little bit.

    27. CWChris Williamson40:15

        Hmm.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg40:15

        But why are you depressed? You know, what's really going on? Is it because you're think you're ultimately worthless and unlovable? Well, okay, you may feel a little better moving your body and going outside, but it's probably not gonna solve the underlying issue. So my view is that there are a number of kind of powerful techniques, and we need to know the right one at the right time for the right person.

11. 40:33 – 42:24

    The Relationship Between the Mind and Body

    1. CWChris Williamson40:33

       What did you learn about the relationship body, mind?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg40:38

       Yeah. So there's so many ways that our mind and body kind of affect each other and interact, and a really fascinating one is that when we're anxious or stressed, we tend to tense our muscles, and presumably this is because tensing your muscles prepares you to fight, prepares you to run. But you then find that people who have chronic anxiety will have neck pain, shoulder pain, lower back pain, right? So because it's actually this chronic anxiety impinging on the body.

    3. CWChris Williamson41:04

       Hmm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg41:04

       And they might go out and spend years trying to, you know, solve their back pain with surgery or something like that, only to discover, oh, shit, it's [laughs] like literally muscle tension from chronic anxiety, right? Not always, obviously, but, but sometimes it is. And so it's kind of remarkable. But it can also go the other way, too, which is fascinating. So there's a method called progressive muscle relaxation where you alternately tense and relax different muscle groups.

    5. CWChris Williamson41:28

       Hmm.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg41:28

       After each one, tensing and relaxing, you kind of like feel into the relaxation of it, and it works in reverse. By relaxing your physical body, it actually starts to relax your mind, just the way a tense mind tends to produce a tense physical body.

    7. CWChris Williamson41:40

       Hmm. I think, uh, a lot of NSDR is similar to that, right? Yoga Nidra-

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg41:44

       NSDR? Oh, mm

    9. CWChris Williamson41:45

       ... body scan type things, and you're realizing, uh, just how much tension was held in your eyebrows, right, or in your lower back or something despite the fact that you're laid on the ground. If you do, classically as an entrance into a meditation sit, "Okay, so I'm gonna scan through my body," and there are weird places that you go, "Huh, I, I had loads of tension in like my right forearm for no reason," and you... it's just like ambiently sat there, and until you pay attention to it, you don't really notice it.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg42:12

        A technique I just started exploring just the other day out of curiosity was one where you find the point in your body that has the most tension. You try to relax it. Then you try to find the next point that has the most tension.

    11. CWChris Williamson42:21

        Hmm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg42:21

        You relax it. You kind of work your way through. It's kind of interesting.

    13. CWChris Williamson42:23

        That's cool.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg42:23

        Yeah.

12. 42:24 – 50:19

    The Best Ways to Combat Overthinking

    1. CWChris Williamson42:24

       That's fun. I imagine that a lot of the people who are into this sort of stuff, one of the biggest afflictions that they need to get past is overthinking, that, uh, overcomplication, intrusive thoughts, rumination. Uh, what did you learn about how to combat overthinking itself?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg42:45

       So there's an interesting bifurcation here. There's strategies that try to combat thinking with thinking-

    3. CWChris Williamson42:51

       Mm-hmm

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg42:51

       For some people with overthinking, that can be a problem. Like, people with obsessive compulsive disorder, trying to go that route of combating thinking with thinking can be problematic. Uh, and then there's trying to combat thinking with not thinking. And so if we're taking that route, there's methods known as diffusion, where you're trying to take the thought, diffuse from it. So you're noticing you're having a thought. You're diffusing from it, like separating yourself from it, and viewing it from an outside perspective. So an example is suppose you have the thought, "I suck. I can't believe I did that." You can notice, oh, I just had this thought. That's not reality.

    5. CWChris Williamson43:25

       Mm.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg43:25

       That's just a thought about a thing. A thought is not always true. A thought is a process in my mind. It's not the reality of the situation. And then once you've stepped outside of it, you can do things with it. You can let it go. You can imagine it drifting away on the clouds. You can make fun of it. There's literally... One of the most ridiculous techniques that, um, we talk about in our, in our book, The 12 Lovers, is you can literally sing the happy birthday song to your thought or use- do a silly Daffy Duck voice to your thought.

    7. CWChris Williamson43:50

       Mm.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg43:51

       Because the idea, the idea is just finding separation, saying, "Yeah, I have the thought that I suck, but it doesn't mean I suck."

    9. CWChris Williamson43:56

       Mm.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg43:56

        That is literally just a thought.

    11. CWChris Williamson43:58

        Mm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg43:58

        And some people actually find this really useful, especially people who are overthinking and, and trying to engage in thinking with thinking maybe is part of the problem.

    13. CWChris Williamson44:05

        Mm. That is interesting. I guess a good bit of the problem with overthinking is thinking that overthinking is useful, like believing that if I do this more, some sort of outcome will... some beneficial outcome, desirable outcome will, will happen on the other side. The same with worry. I, I'm gonna worry and that's gonna give me some degree of maybe control or a sense of ownership or sovereignty about the future, reduce uncertainty or whatever. So yeah, it become... Even if it never actually becomes effective, it can feel effective during the moment.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg44:36

        People with a lot of anxiety tend to have these beliefs about anxiety that are counterproductive. For example, they tend to believe that anxiety and worry is urgent. If you're having to worry, you have to worry about it now. They also tend to believe that, that they can't do anything ab- other than worry about it. Like, oh, ha- like, literally I'm not capable of not worrying.

    15. CWChris Williamson44:54

        Mm.

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg44:54

        Um, and they tend to believe it's really useful. Like, "Oh, it's really valuable that I'm worrying. If I didn't worry, something bad would happen." And there's this technique that is really not well known, but that I love, that's sometimes called the worry time. And the way it works is you pick a time of day, let's say 5:00 PM. You don't wanna pick before bed. That's important. Say 5:00 PM. And throughout your whole day, every time you have a worry, you write that worry down if you haven't yet written them down. So let's say you have the worry, um, "Oh no, I don't know if my project's gonna go well tomorrow." You haven't had that yet, so you write it down.

    17. CWChris Williamson45:26

        Mm.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg45:26

        The next time you have that worry, you don't write it down, right? You're just gonna write it once per day. And then the idea is you're not allowed to worry about it. You have to wait till 5:00 PM. So you're essentially batch processing. You're saying, "I have to defer my worry until 5:00 PM."

    19. CWChris Williamson45:40

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg45:40

        And if it keeps coming back, you just say, "Nope, I need to wait till 5:00 PM." And then when 5:00 PM rolls around, you worry as much as possible about all those things you wrote down.

    21. CWChris Williamson45:48

        High intensity worry training.

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg45:50

        Yeah. And the, the really funny thing that happens is that, first of all, people start to realize, "Huh, I seem to be... to have more control over my worry than I thought. Like, yes, my worry might keep coming back, but I can keep just redirecting and say, 'I'm gonna worry about it at 5:00 PM.'"

    23. CWChris Williamson46:01

        Mm.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg46:02

        Second, when they get to the worry time and they sit down and, like, try to really worry about all this stuff, they often are like, "This is not that useful. Like, what am I doing here? This is ridiculous."

    25. CWChris Williamson46:11

        Yes.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg46:11

        Like, it kind of calls it out as not that helpful. And then when you finish worrying for the, for 15 to 20 minutes, you can then transition to the problem solving and say, "Well, what am I gonna do about this stuff?"

    27. CWChris Williamson46:21

        Uh-huh.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg46:21

        "Let me pick one of these worries and actually create an action plan to try to improve it." And so it can be a shocking intervention for people that have worried their whole life.

    29. CWChris Williamson46:29

        One of the interesting insights from CBT is worries and fears are often like bullies on the playground, that they want to come up to you when you're not ready for it. But if you go to the bully and you're saying, "Okay, now's the time," it's like, "No, no, it's not. Like, I want to jump scare you as you're walking around a corner." You go, "No, no, no, no. I'm choosing the time." And I think that, that there's something about that, uh, volitional versus surprised relationship between you and a fear or you and a concern-

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg46:59

        Mm
13. 50:19 – 55:22

    Can Anyone Rewire Their Thinking?

    1. CWChris Williamson50:19

       What's cognitive restructuring?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg50:21

       Cognitive restructuring is this idea that you can learn to actually change the thoughts that you have over time. Now, of course, you often can't change the first thought, right? If something, you know, if someone jumps out, you might have a thought, and you're, you're not in control of that necessarily, but you can often change the second thought, the response thought, and that can make a tremendous difference.

    3. CWChris Williamson50:40

       Mm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg50:41

       Uh, so for example, let's say, um, let's go back to example of fighting with your girlfriend a lot, right? And let's say when your girlfriend asks you, "Oh, you know, why do you, why did you leave the dishes in the sink? You know I don't like that," um, your first thought might be, "Well, I just want to do things my way," right? "I, I wanna feel comfortable in my home." Right? Maybe you don't control that thought, but you can learn to have a different thought after that, and you can, you can ask yourself, "Well, is that the most helpful thought to have right now? And what would a more helpful thought that's at least as true," so not a self-delusion, but "at least as true be?" And you can, you can actually learn and practice to have that be your response thought. So maybe a more helpful thought that's at least as true is, "Well, this is her home too, and we need to find a balance," right?

    5. CWChris Williamson51:22

       Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg51:23

       And so after you have that first thought, you can train yourself to have that second thought, and then that can set you up in a better position for success.

    7. CWChris Williamson51:29

       Similarly, I learned about parts work when I went to a meditation retreat recently. Why did that make it into the book?

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg51:36

       Well, there are a lot of people that find that thinking of themself as having parts gives them self-insight. And, um, so we included it just because there are a lot of people out there that particularly like this set of techniques.

    9. CWChris Williamson51:48

       Mm.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg51:49

        Uh, it's most famously associated with internal family systems, but it's actually used in other therapies. For example, I believe it's used in schema therapy, which actually has surprisingly more evidence for its efficacy than terminal, internal family systems.

    11. CWChris Williamson52:01

        Mm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg52:02

        Um, so I think it, it actually does work for some people. The, the basic concept as I think about it is we're not literally different parts, right? We have one brain, but we have sort of activation patterns of emotions, beliefs, motivations, drives that get activated together. And when you have these things get activated together, it's almost like you're a different person temporarily.

    13. CWChris Williamson52:23

        Mm.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg52:23

        Like, maybe there's a child part of you that never got enough love, and sometimes in certain situations in adulthood, that gets activated, and suddenly it's almost like you're back there being that child that didn't get enough love, and you're being really needy, and you're having certain fears come up, et cetera.

    15. CWChris Williamson52:39

        Mm.

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg52:39

        And so the idea of parts work is you can learn to try to communicate with these metaphorical parts, try to really understand where they're coming from, what they're trying to do, validate what their needs are-

    17. CWChris Williamson52:50

        Mm

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg52:50

        ... try to help their needs be met, and really approach them from a place of, of deep compassion and understanding. And some people find that really unlocks insights for them.

    19. CWChris Williamson52:59

        I wonder how much of that strategy is to do with the same principle around fears and worry, that in the fighting with it is the reinforcement of it. That, like, you're not pushing it away. You're sort of bringing this thing in. "Oh, there I am again, worrying about being perfectionistic. Oh, well, that's the part of me that wanted to get a lot of love as a kid and felt like love was gonna be predicated on performance. Oh, well, like, if I saw that version of me now, I'd pick him up and give him a hug. Wouldn't that be nice for him? Oh, well, that's like, there's compassion. I'm no longer in tension with that thing. I am that thing, and it is a part of me, and I'm trying to offer it some, some care."

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg53:41

        It's often recommended that you give these parts names because it kind of e- makes it easier to talk about them, like the scared part or the perfectionist part or whatever it is, and it's often also recommended you not give them mean names. And-

    21. CWChris Williamson53:52

        [laughs] The idiot.

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg53:53

        Yeah, the idiot or that guy who's ruining my life or whatever.

    23. CWChris Williamson53:56

        The loser. Yeah.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg53:56

        And the reason for that is that the parts of you are trying to do something.

    25. CWChris Williamson54:01

        Yep.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg54:02

        Right? They're trying to achieve something. And it's useful to think about that. They're trying to protect you. Even if they drive you crazy-

    27. CWChris Williamson54:07

        Mm

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg54:07

        ... they're trying to protect you, and it's a, it's a useful reframe to say, "Hey, that thing that's beating me up, it's because it's scared that I'm not gonna achieve enough if it doesn't do that. And holy shit, maybe I can, I can explain to it that I can achieve my goals in other ways-

    29. CWChris Williamson54:22

        Yeah

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg54:22

        ... and it doesn't have to beat me up so much."
14. 55:22 – 1:00:04

    The Peak Productivity Formula

    1. CWChris Williamson55:22

       Talking about achieving things, productivity is kind of the buzzword of the decade.

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg55:26

       [chuckles]

    3. CWChris Williamson55:27

       What did you learn about productivity?

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg55:29

       Well, I'm a mathematician as, as... I don't know if you know that. And, uh, I... So I was so tickled when I realized I could create an equation for productivity. It's literally an equation that's... It's true. And, uh, it's that productivity equals time times efficiency times importance. And I'll break that down. So productivity is the amount of value you produce each week based on what you fundamentally value, and that's what I like to call healthy productivity, where it's based on everything you value, not just producing one type of output. If you focus on productivity on just one type of output, like how much can you create, you know, just your job, the problem with that is it can often come at the expense of the other things that you fundamentally care about, like your, your family life, your relationships, your hobbies, et cetera. So, so that's the first part. Productivity is the value you create each week based on what you fundamentally value. Then we can break down the equation. It's time, which is the number of hours you work, times efficiency, which is the fraction of your project you complete with each hour-

    5. CWChris Williamson56:31

       Mm-hmm

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg56:31

       ... times importance, which is the total value based on what you care about of completing your project.

    7. CWChris Williamson56:36

       Hmm.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg56:37

       And having this equation, we can then start to think about how do you tune it? For some people, you're gonna tune it by saying, "Well, if you're not working very many hours on the things you care about, you're gonna wanna get up time."

    9. CWChris Williamson56:48

       Hmm.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg56:48

        But if you're already working 70 hours a week, that's a trap. Trying to push up time, you're not gonna get much out of that. Those last few hours are gonna cost a lot, and they're not gonna give you very much.

    11. CWChris Williamson56:57

        Hmm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg56:58

        Okay, well, what else? You could work on efficiency. There's a whole bunch of techniques you can use for efficiency, but often one of the most overlooked ones is importance.

    13. CWChris Williamson57:05

        Yep.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg57:05

        That by... You know, you can't work 100 times more than another person. It's literally impossible. There's 24 hours in a day. But sometimes you can find something 100 times more valuable for yourself.

    15. CWChris Williamson57:13

        Hmm.

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg57:14

        So you, you can get sometimes incredible gains in thinking about the importance part of what's actually truly valuable to you and what do you wanna work on.

    17. CWChris Williamson57:21

        How long you work, how well you work, and what you're working on.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg57:26

        Basically, yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson57:27

        Right. Yeah, that's cool. That's, that is cool, and you're right that work done is time times intensity, but that work done can be in service of a thing that you don't really care about, and, and you're saying you're being productive, I suppose. So like, you have produced things. You have certainly produced something, but whether that is salient or valuable to you in your life, or even the thing that is being given to you that sometimes you don't get to always choose what it is that you need to work on. Like, someone might not want to work on their taxes. But I would imagine that you can link that to a deeper value, something that you do care about, and then you go, "Okay, how efficient can I be at filling in the spreadsheet, and how much time are we gonna spend doing it?"

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg58:05

        Yeah, ex- exactly. And, um, and when you take that broader view of productivity, you realize that some things are just not worth it. You know, imagine a truck driver who's trying to get, you know, valuable merchandise, you know, from point A to point B. Well, if all they care about is getting the merchandise there, they can drive over the speed limit, they can not sleep in the entire trip, but, you know, clearly that's not worth it. Why is it not worth it? Maybe the merchandise would get there faster on average, but they're gonna put people's lives at risk, they're gonna be absolutely miserable, et cetera, right? So they're gonna burn the things they care about-

    21. CWChris Williamson58:36

        Hmm

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg58:36

        ... to produce this sort of narrow view of productivity.

    23. CWChris Williamson58:38

        Yeah. Most productivity advice then is focused on efficiency. Like, very little of it is like, "Just work longer." It'd be an incredibly short book.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg58:46

        Well, there are some interesting techniques around time as well.

    25. CWChris Williamson58:48

        Okay. What are they?

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg58:49

        Yeah. So, uh, one thing we, we, uh, talk about in our book, The 12 Lovers, is doing a time audit, and you can... If you have a, a very d- uh, the same schedule every single day, you can just do it for one day, but you could also do it for a few days if your schedule tends to vary. And it's just looking for how do you actually spend your hours. So every time you transition activities for a few days, just simply write in a notepad, what were you doing and for how long? And when people do this, they're often shocked to discover what they're actually spending their time doing.

    27. CWChris Williamson59:16

        Hmm.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg59:16

        Oftentimes, people spend way more time scrolling their phones than they realize. Like, they often underestimate [chuckles] by like literal hours sometimes. They think that they're working more than they're actually working. So a time audit can then help you look back and say, "Hmm, maybe I do have like an extra hour or two more than I thought," and then you can start being strategic. So obviously, you can't make time out of nowhere-

    29. CWChris Williamson59:35

        Hmm

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg59:35

        ... but you can make time out of time that you're, you just think is not a good use of time.
15. 1:00:04 – 1:03:02

    How to Become More Efficient

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:04

       What about efficiency? What were the best ways for people to improve efficiency?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:07

       Yeah, so in terms of effi- efficiency, we talk about, first of all, coming prepared, and there's different versions of coming prepared to work. One is, I know so many people that like type a lot as part of their job. And some of them are really slow typers. And it's fascinating to me because it's like you type so much better at your job. Maybe you type a lot on your phone, but you, like, actually kind of suck at typing.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:29

       Hmm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:29

       If you just spend, like, five hours [laughs] improving your typing, that's gonna give gains for the rest of your life.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:34

       Hmm.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:34

       So that's one version of coming prepared. Another version is when you sit down to your desk, is everything there ready to go? You know, chefs have this idea of having, like, everything laid out in the perfect position, all ready to go, so you can just focus on cooking. And so we can take that to heart with many different types of work, and it could be just clearing away all the fricking windows on your computer-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:53

       Hmm

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:53

       ... so you can focus on what you're doing, right? Um, so coming prepared. The sec thing, second thing is avoiding distractions. So this is a big one. When pe- when people start getting into their work, uh, things often pull them away. And, you know, there's a bunch of things you can do, whether it's, you know, silencing notifications, changing your work environment, uh, using noise-canceling headphones, whatever distracts you in figuring out how do you remove that so it's not gonna be a problem.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:16

       Hmm. I love the idea of the component skills. I totally didn't think about if you're writing anything ever, which almost everybody is. Hey, dude, how good are you at writing? How many errors? How quick can people become better at typing shit? Five hours of training?

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:31

        That's a good question. So I was, uh, working on improving my typing speed on my phone, and I felt like I got significant benefits after, like, five hours of practice. But, I mean, you know, I'm not the most amazing-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        Is there a website where you can go to, like-

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:43

        There... You can literally-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

        ... type fast dot com or something?

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:45

        ... get, get a game that's like a game where you have to blow things up by typing. Like, there's, like, a... There's so many different apps and all kinds of stuff you can do to practice.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:01:50

        Has that stuck about, your, your typing?

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:52

        I think I have. Yeah, I think it, it stuck. I mean, look, I'm not the fastest typist on my phone, but I'm, I'm faster than I used to be.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:57

        Bro, my girlfriend's a freak. Like, the, uh, uh, she is able to get stuff out quicker than I can think it. Like, what the fuck is going on?

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg1:02:04

        [laughs]

    19. CWChris Williamson1:02:04

        Like, watching... What's that? Watching Dead... not Daredevil. Who's the guy? The Flash. It's like watching The Flash on the, on the, on the phone. Anyway.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg1:02:09

        [laughs]

    21. CWChris Williamson1:02:10

        Um, well, I, that, that's an interesting insight that your voice, especially now, ChatGPT, uh, voice commands and stuff, I wonder what, uh, additional efficiency gains will be able to be made by people that are using voice as opposed to having to... And then we go to Neuralink, and we start to speed these things up.

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg1:02:30

        [laughs]

    23. CWChris Williamson1:02:30

        But that will change some of the input restrictions that people have in terms of that being the rate limiter, the skill of being able to do that into, okay, well, how often are you being distracted? Okay, well, how are you prioritizing the sequence? Are you coming prepared in terms of making sure that you actually have everything that you need before you begin that task? A lot of stuff like that.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:02:50

        Yeah, absolutely. I mean, technology, I think, is gonna be huge for efficiency. I mean, I'm just going crazy trying to figure out all the ways to use [laughs] AI to make my life more efficient and, uh, I d- I think there's tremendous opportunities there.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:03:01

        Hmm.

16. 1:03:02 – 1:08:23

    Why Everyone Needs ‘Glad You Did It’ Activities

    1. CWChris Williamson1:03:02

       What does the research say about scheduling fun? Like, a lot of what we've talked about so far is kind of grindset, grindset adjacent. I'm making things happen. I'm dealing with my problems, and I'm expediting my goals and stuff, but, like, presumably fun is good in and of itself and also a strategy for a more fulfilling life and presumably a more effective life too.

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:03:23

       Sometimes I worry about saying things that are too obvious, but then what, what I came to realize over time is if you say something obvious that someone hasn't heard before, it can actually be really valuable because they just immediately get it. They're like, "Oh, shit, you're right."

    3. CWChris Williamson1:03:34

       Yeah.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:03:35

       Because it's obvious, right? And we were worried about this with one section of our book. We call it Glad You Did It activities, and the idea of a Glad You Did It, did it activity is very simple. It's just an activity where afterwards you're glad you did it.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:46

       Yeah.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:03:46

       You're like, "Yeah. Hell yeah, I'm, I'm glad that I did that thing."

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:49

       Yep.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:03:50

       Very often, we do non-glad-you-did-it activities, right? We scroll on our phones or, you know, we, we watch too much TV or whatever it is, and I think sometimes people make the mistake of thinking, "Oh, I should be replacing all my downtime with something productive," right?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       Yeah.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:04

        But that's a denial of your own needs. When you get home from work, maybe you're tired. You need to relax. Yeah, that's why you sit and scroll on your phone. It, it makes sense. To just replace it with work is to deny those needs, and it's not a very healthy thing to do.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:18

        Hmm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:18

        But you can be smart about it and you can say, "Well, how do I replace that with a glad-you-did-it activity?" Because you probably aren't glad afterwards that you scrolled on your phone.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:26

        Yep.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:26

        And for me, for example, I love watching documentaries, and there's so many I haven't seen that I wanna see, so a simple thing I can do is be like, instead of doing whatever bullshit to relax, pop a documentary I've wanted to see-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:38

        Yep

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:38

        ... and watch that, and I'm, and I'm like, it feels like a meaningful use of time. I'll remember having watched that for years and be able to discuss it with people. And so it's about finding ways to meet your existing needs that give you more benefit in the long term.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:04:50

        That's such a good switch. That's really good. That's... I think that's probably my favorite one from the book. For me, uh, if... A- a- a- and you can even switch screen for screen, I guess, if you count a s- a Kindle as being a screen. But, uh, I'm obsessed with this. Uh, I'm wearing my new Dungeon Crawlercarl T-shirt today.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg1:05:06

        Sure.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:05:06

        Shout out to the people that know my T-shirt collection is ever-expanding. Um, and this, it's a, a eight-book series, at least at the moment, and there's probably gonna be, like, 18 or something w- when Matt Dinniman finishes up. And, uh, I'm like, well, I'm already on my phone. If I just do... That device goes down, and this device, or I guess even, like, the paper book comes up. My felt sense of... A- and this is interesting as well. Glad You Did It activities aren't just things that you enjoy doing in the moment, but even longer than that is the story that you tell yourself about what you did and about being the sort of person that does that sort of thing, and then the identity that is built up by being the sort of person that tells yourself the sort of story about being the kind of person that does that sort of thing. Like, it is so recursive, and just what the fuck you do with your time is kind of the pebble at the top of the avalanche. And then downstream from all of this are, uh, habits, fears, uh, uh, a, a, a story, narrative, identity. All of this shit sort of falls downstream from just, like, this one switch or going for a walk with the dog instead of lying on the couch and vegging out or whatever.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg1:06:17

        There's this interesting f- uh, word that most people haven't heard of, which is choice points. The idea is that we make many micro decisions where we can move towards our values or away from them throughout every single day, right? Your mom calls you, do you pick up the phone? [laughs] You know, what do you decide to buy at the grocery store? And there's ac- these tiny little decisions add up. Are you moving towards your values or away from them? And I think it's empowering to realize that because you don't have to transform your life with giant, bold actions. You can also do it-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:48

        Hmm

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg1:06:48

        ... through tiny micro decisions.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:06:50

        Yep. Yep. Yep. Other than Figu documentaries, what are some of the most commonly rated Glad You Did It activities that people can do easy switches for?

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:07:02

        If you have a pet, like, spend time with your pet, right? Like, that's relaxing. It's, you know, fun and, uh, uh, typically [laughs] more meaningful than, like, a lot of the things that people, you know, do for relaxation.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:07:12

        Yeah.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg1:07:13

        Um, obviously, you know, if you're not in Gen Z, you can call a friend. I don't know if Gen Z does that anymore. Um, you can, uh, take a walk outside. A lot of people like being in nature. Often people feel good about having done that.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:07:23

        Do a call and a walk at the same time.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg1:07:25

        Oh, it's great.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:07:26

        Yeah. Is... And, uh, how... This is the problem. [laughs] What... I guess when you distill things down, they end up being so cliché or tried or s- like, seemingly obvious, like shock horror. You've got to be an hour and 10 minutes into a podcast to find out that going for a walk and calling a friend-

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg1:07:39

        [laughs]
17. 1:08:23 – 1:12:13

    Is Willpower Enough to Solve Your Problems?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:23

       Did you look at discipline? Because discipline, willpower, resilience, motivation, you know, it's second after maybe habits and productivity, sort of the buzziest of buzzwords coming out of this kind of world.

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:08:38

       So there was a lot of research on what they called ego depletion, which is the idea that your, your willpower is kind of like a muscle, and it gets tired out after you use it. So there were a whole bunch of studies where they would do things like, you know, get people... [laughs] They would give people, like, cookies, but then have them not eat them, so they'd be, like, exerting willpower.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:56

       Hmm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:08:56

       And then they would test them afterwards and find that they had less willpower after that. So it kind of would get depleted. And they built this whole beautiful theory around it. And then researchers tried to replicate it, and it did not replicate.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:07

       Yeah.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:09:08

       Like, they could not replicate the ba- like, a bunch of the basic findings.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:09:11

       Hmm.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:09:11

       Now, does that mean willpower doesn't exist? No. Willpower, like, clearly there's a thing, willpower.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:15

       Yeah.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:09:16

        But unfortunately, our scientific understanding of it kind of collapsed when, due to the replication crisis, which-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:09:21

        Roy Baumeister's been on the show, and I've, like, harassed him a bunch of times. And each time he comes, like, he comes out with a new weapon. He's like a, a guy that's going through a rotating door. And every time that you throw him in, he's like, "Now I've got a mace."

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:09:32

        [laughs]

    13. CWChris Williamson1:09:32

        "Now I've got a lance. Now I've got a flamethrower." Like, um, so that battle is kind of gonna be fascinating to unfold, I think. Like, what does ego depletion tell us? Because they, they're constantly iterating at least. Sorry for interrupting. Go. It was-

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg1:09:43

        Yeah. Um, but what I would say is that one of the things that people do too much is they try to use willpower to solve their problems. And the, the problem with willpower, like, yes, there are, there are savants who are, like, willpower savants, right? They're just gonna... They're gonna, like, use it to do everything. Uh, you know, I know someone like this who's a ultra runner, and nothing's gonna stop her. She can just use will- willpower to solve her problems. The rest of us, though, willpower is usually not the best solution. And the reason is because, well, you might be really psyched up today-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:11

        Yeah

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg1:10:11

        ... and be able to push through, but will you be able to do it tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that? And as soon as your motivation flags, you're in trouble. So I prefer easier methods that require less willpower.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:10:21

        Hmm.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg1:10:22

        So for example, if I encounter someone who doesn't exercise at all, and they say, "I really wanna exercise," and I say to them, "What kind of exercise do you most love? What's the most fun type of exercise that require the least willpower possible?" And if they say, "I hate all, I hate all exercise. It all sucks." Then I say, "Have you heard of temptation bundling?" So this is a, a, a phrase coined by Katy Milkman, the psychology researcher. The idea is pairing something that we don't like but that's good for us with something we really do like. So you hate exercise? Well, go run on your treadmill and play video games, right?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:10:52

        Hmm.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg1:10:52

        Combine the thing you really like with something you don't like to do the healthy thing.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:10:56

        Let's say that you didn't enjoy walking. Call a friend.

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg1:10:59

        Yeah, exactly. Walk when you call a friend.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:11:01

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:11:01

        Find a way to make it enjoyable. Make it good enough that it's no longer-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:11:04

        Or if you hated calling a friend, you could walk at the same time if you enjoy walking.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg1:11:07

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:11:07

        That'd be fun.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg1:11:08

        [laughs] There you go.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:11:08

        I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk to... Ah, mom's ringing. Fuck, I don't want to answer it. I do enjoy walking.

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg1:11:12

        Or go for a run.
18. 1:12:13 – 1:20:35

    The Power of Positive Thinking

    1. CWChris Williamson1:12:13

       How does positive thinking factor into all of this? The framing that we place around it, optimism, resilience, stoicism, stuff like that.

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:12:21

       Positive thinking is often talked about like, oh, you know, if someone's depressed, they should think positively. That is probably the most annoying thing you can say to a depressed person, is think positively.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:12:31

       Hmm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:12:31

       And I think in general, people are confused about it because they think, "Well, when I have positive thoughts, I feel good." So then what I should try to be doing is having positive thoughts.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:39

       Yeah.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:12:40

       But I think that's actually not the most health- healthy way to think about it. Um, I think in terms of... So strangely, oftentimes positive thinking follows our behavior rather than something we generate from nothing.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:53

       Yep.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:12:54

       There was a really crazy study done on depression. It kind of blew everyone's minds, where they had one group that was getting kind of standard cognitive behavioral therapy, very well proven to help with depression, and they had another group that was getting... Basically, they were saying, "Okay, just find things you really enjoy doing, and you're gonna schedule them, and you're gonna go do them regularly."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:13:13

       Mm.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:13:14

        Right? And like the researcher talks about how, like, they kind of felt bad for [chuckles] that group that was randomized to that.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:13:19

        Mm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:13:19

        'Cause, like, nobody thought that was gonna be very effective, and shockingly, it worked really well. And it-- now there's a whole therapy around it. It's called behavioral activation, and the strange thing about it is you think you take a depressed person, and they have all these negative thoughts, and you think, "Well, if they're having all these negative thoughts, like surely just getting-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:13:35

        The problem is the thoughts.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg1:13:36

        Exactly. But fascinatingly, just getting them to do more positive activities that they really enjoy actually tends to produce more positive thoughts, which is kind of mind-blowing.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:13:44

        What do you make of this battle between sort of bottom-up and top-down, um, for behavior change, for mood change especially as well? Like, it seems to me, I don't know, very seductive to a lot of people, and maybe it's the, uh, "Look at how smart I am. I'm going to think my way out of this problem." Um, presumably there is a limit to how much we can just bottom up create the state. If people could do that, they would be, by split testing the evolution of their own s- life strategy, constantly going for a walk or playing pickleball or dancing with a friend or whatever it is that they're supposed to do. How do you come to think about the top-down versus bottom-up for moods approach?

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:23

        Well, have you heard of the jhanas? [laughs]

    17. CWChris Williamson1:14:25

        That's the, that's the meditation retreat that I went to.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:27

        Oh, great.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:14:28

        I went to Journey.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:29

        Oh, you went to Journey. So I had the, I had the founder of Journey on my podcast-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:14:32

        Stephen

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:32

        ... Clear Thinking the other day. Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:14:34

        Yeah. He's great.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:34

        Um, yeah, so, so interesting. So it's funny because you really can learn to generate positive feelings.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:14:41

        From nothing.

    26. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:41

        From nothing, and actually part of my morning routine is I spend one minute trying to generate the most positive feelings I can.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:14:47

        Okay.

    28. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:47

        Just do it.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:14:48

        Have you ever managed to hit any of the jhanas in a minute?

    30. SGSpencer Greenberg1:14:51

        Uh, no, I can't hit it in a minute, but I, I have, I've have had a couple experiences with jhanas, which was-
19. 1:20:35 – 1:21:59

    How Much of Self-Development is Following Your Focus?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:20:35

       So when you're sort of thinking about this as a whole, how much of the fundamental strategies of self-growth, personal development are just where you focus your attention, that's where your life goes? There's this famous piece of advice. We, Neutonic-

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:20:52

       Mm

    3. CWChris Williamson1:20:52

       ... this company, we've got a, a Formula 3 racing team at the moment, AIx, and there's this famous piece of advice from racing which is, "Don't look at the wall."

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:21:00

       [chuckles]

    5. CWChris Williamson1:21:00

       Like, where you put your eyes is where the car goes. Don't look at the fucking wall. If you're in Monaco... We were in Monza last week. We're in Monaco, don't look at the fucking wall 'cause there's walls everywhere. How much of this is where you focus your attention, that's where your life ends up, where you-- when you look at the wall, that's kind of where you're driving the car?

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:21:17

       This goes back to the idea I mentioned before, which I call the unsaid obvious, the things that are so obvious but you usually don't think about. Everything you experience is where your attention goes. Like, that literally is your life, what you're paying attention to.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:21:30

       Mm.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:21:30

       And when you realize that, you're like, "Oh, shit. [chuckles] What I pay attention to matters a lot." If you're walking down the street and you're the person that notices the beautiful flower beds rather than the person that notices the dog shit near the flower beds, that's gonna have a big difference in your life. Of course, you need to make sure you don't accidentally step in the dog shit. But that is really a profound difference between people, and you can learn to begin to control your attention and pay more attention to things you want to.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:21:55

       Mm.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:21:55

        More to the things that, that bring good things to you, that make life happy.

20. 1:21:59 – 1:26:52

    The Self-Development Strategy You Shouldn’t Ignore

    1. CWChris Williamson1:21:59

       Was there anything that you struggled to categorize or is there anything that's important when it comes to people framing the way that they should think about a psychological toolkit for improving their life that isn't in the book or that you struggled to communicate?

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:22:14

       You know, we thought a lot about how do you communicate which tool is right for which person because it is a difficult challenge. Uh, we wanted to catalog, uh, all the best tools, but then you still have the question of, okay, you've got a bunch of tools. Which do you use?

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:28

       Mm.

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:22:28

       We tried to map it out, and we actually [chuckles] at the back of our book we have a decision tree to help you [chuckles] a little map to help you figure out which tool. But I think it is really hard to capture-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:22:36

       Mm

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:22:36

       ... when is a tool gonna be right. And, you know, maybe the first thing is which tool resonates with you, but there's probably a more nuanced way to kind of get to the really core of, like, who's gonna benefit from what.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:22:46

       Mm. What do you think people are going to overlook the most? Like, what's the least sexy but high impact strategy that probably more people should pay attention to?

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:22:58

       The least sexy, highest impact thing is that you can't just learn techniques. You have to literally sit down and make time and do them. Like, and it's, uh, it's so stupid and obvious, but many people read self-improvement books and they do nothing differently afterwards.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:23:14

       Yes, yes.

    10. SGSpencer Greenberg1:23:14

        It will not change your life until you actually put it into action.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:23:17

        Mm.

    12. SGSpencer Greenberg1:23:18

        And w- we [chuckles] like I don't know how to say it more emphatically than you have to do something.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:23:22

        Yep. Yeah. So it would probably be better to read one chapter and then go away or to have a single strategy. I suppose this is probably one of the advantages of a book like, let's say Atomic Habits or Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg, and you go, okay, there is a s- I'm aware there's varieties of interventions and you sort of, it, there's this lattice work that you're building or your understanding of how habits happen. But it's like you're still doing a thing. It is a singular track. You're sort of following along with this as opposed to having, uh, like much more disparate, uh, like, o- for instance, Human, Human's new book, Protocols, it's a fucking tome. It's like 500 pages and there's all of this stuff in there. But there really should be, I don't know, like a, a way that you can register that you went away and did a thing for long enough time for it to actually impact you because reading the thing is not doing the thing and unfortunately until you do the thing it's not gonna have the impact on your life. And then reading sometimes or learning about something can give you a simulacrum of the progress that doing the thing would have given you. So like the consumption of more knowledge about it feels like progress whilst actually taking away from the time that could have been spent acting in a way that could have given you real progress.

    14. SGSpencer Greenberg1:24:39

        You know, this reminds me, some people in this world of AI they're like, "Well, why write a book? Why not just like, you know, talk to ChatGPT about it or something like this?" And I think, I think the best argument for a book is that a book isn't just a packet of information Ideally, a book is an experience.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:24:55

        Yes.

    16. SGSpencer Greenberg1:24:56

        And the hope is that from the beginning of that experience to the end, you've written the words in a certain order for a certain purpose to change a person, right? So that's the ideal.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:25:05

        Mm.

    18. SGSpencer Greenberg1:25:06

        Is the process of reading the book creates some kind of change in them.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:25:09

        I completely agree. I also think part of the Socratic dialectic relationship that you have when speaking with an LLM or now with using voice and, you know, ChatGPT's got like this live thing where it can just sit and, like, it- it'll only pipe up when you want to speak to it, which is pretty fucking cool. But it, there is something about the, uh, optionality which can, I think, take you out of the experience of what you're doing. It's like a choose your own adventure book a little bit, as opposed to just reading something that is a linear path where an expert who has spent fucking ages crafting this thing to make it into an arc that brings you into land at a place that they have predefined as useful to you from a place that they have predefined as probably the, like, normative starting point for most people, and this is where we go. As opposed to you kind of ripping yourself around all over the map, and sometimes you have insights, and sometimes you get bored, and sometimes you're not sure if you'd, should stop, and sometimes you should maybe change to another, da, da, da, da. Like, the optionality that is baked into that, um, choose your own adventure with LLMs, I... It's a blessing in some ways. But on average, for this kind of stuff, I actually think it's, I think it's just less effective.

    20. SGSpencer Greenberg1:26:24

        Yeah, it is, it's really fascinating now having written a book for the first time of, like, how much effort you put into the order of the words and the w- exact words. I've, I don't think I've ever had that much care before in the words that I've written in a certain order.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:26:36

        Mm-hmm.

    22. SGSpencer Greenberg1:26:37

        And, you know, I love podcasts. I think podcasts have a ton of value. But it's almost like the opposite end of the spectrum, where like a podcast is an unstructured conversation. You don't know where it's gonna go.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:26:44

        Free flowing.

    24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:26:44

        You don't know what's gonna happen. And a book is like, "No, you're gonna read this exact thing." [laughs]

    25. CWChris Williamson1:26:49

        Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so curated, so carefully put together.

21. 1:26:52 – 1:27:28

    Where to Find Spencer

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:52

       Dude, you're the best. I, I, I love everything that you do. I think Clearer Thinking podcast and website are great. I keep on sending people back to our IQ and astrology episode from-

    2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:27:00

       Oh, cool

    3. CWChris Williamson1:27:00

       ... a couple of years ago. Uh, where should people go to keep up to date with everything you've got going on?

    4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:27:03

       Oh, thanks so much. It's been so fun to chat with you. Um, yeah, so I actually have a new YouTube channel. So search Spencer Greenberg on YouTube. Just had my first video, had 1 million views, so I was really excited about that.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:27:12

       Congratulations. I was looking at it the other day. Very good.

    6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:27:14

       Um, and, uh, yeah, our website clearerthinking.org. If you're interested in the book, go to twelveloversbook.com. We've got three cool free bonuses you can get when you get the book, including a little AI bot that will help you apply what's in the book, so that's fun.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:27:25

       Awesome. Dude, you're the best. Appreciate you.

    8. SGSpencer Greenberg1:27:27

       Fantastic.

Episode duration: 1:27:28