Volledige transcriptie van Why Willpower Doesn't Work

WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.552 --> 00:00:03.556
Why do we not do the things we know we should do?
2
00:00:07.122 --> 00:00:08.223
Is that a rhetorical question?
3
00:00:12.479 --> 00:00:14.060
I was expecting you to answer, Drew.
4
00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:18.421
I was expecting you to resolve a 2,500-year philosophical conundrum.
5
00:00:19.102 --> 00:00:20.862
Why don't we do the things we know we should do?
6
00:00:20.882 --> 00:00:21.663
It's a simple question.
7
00:00:21.783 --> 00:00:26.244
Why do we know we should do something and then not do the thing?
8
00:00:26.304 --> 00:00:26.504
Right.
9
00:00:26.885 --> 00:00:28.205
How is that even?
10
00:00:28.225 --> 00:00:28.705
Right.
11
00:00:28.845 --> 00:00:29.766
Know exactly what to do.
12
00:00:30.166 --> 00:00:30.446
Yes.
13
00:00:30.626 --> 00:00:33.267
Information must not be the problem or I don't know.
14
00:00:33.447 --> 00:00:34.308
You know, it's interesting.
15
00:00:34.448 --> 00:00:39.233
I don't know if you remember this, but I actually started writing a book called Why Don't I Do It?
16
00:00:39.614 --> 00:00:42.817
And the entire book was – the goal was to answer this question.
17
00:00:43.398 --> 00:00:46.461
Like, why do we not do the things that we know we should do?
18
00:00:47.202 --> 00:00:51.527
Like, how is it that our behavior gets divorced from our knowledge to such a large extent?
19
00:00:52.268 --> 00:00:53.589
And that book, it –
20
00:00:54.790 --> 00:00:56.071
Anyway, I didn't end up writing it.
21
00:00:56.111 --> 00:00:59.532
But I did do some interesting research for that book when I was writing it.
22
00:00:59.772 --> 00:01:03.093
And this problem is as old as civilization, obviously.
23
00:01:03.874 --> 00:01:06.234
The Greeks referred to this as akrasia.
24
00:01:06.895 --> 00:01:10.536
And they took it very seriously as a philosophical problem.
25
00:01:10.676 --> 00:01:17.339
Like it didn't make sense to them that if you know something is good, why should you be capable of doing anything to the contrary?
26
00:01:17.359 --> 00:01:20.560
Like why should there be any resistance towards doing it?
27
00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:28.515
And it's interesting because the major Greek philosophers had, they each had kind of a different angle at which they tried to answer this question.
28
00:01:29.136 --> 00:01:29.817
Socrates...
29
00:01:30.962 --> 00:01:33.924
just rejected the premise outright.
30
00:01:34.565 --> 00:01:40.969
So in the dialogue, Protagoras, he argued that it was actually impossible to not do the thing that you wanted to do.
31
00:01:41.629 --> 00:01:51.516
He said that if you experience a discrepancy between what you want to do and what you actually do, he just said you don't actually want to do it, which to me feels like a cop-out.
32
00:01:51.776 --> 00:01:53.278
That's very circular, right?
33
00:01:53.318 --> 00:01:55.019
It's like, well, if you wanted to do it, you would.
34
00:01:55.611 --> 00:01:57.333
And the thing you did, it's because you wanted to.
35
00:01:57.413 --> 00:02:01.356
It's like, well, yeah, that's not very helpful, Socrates, but thank you.

36
00:02:01.636 --> 00:02:04.619
Thank you for your participation.
37
00:02:04.739 --> 00:02:07.221
It denies the real emotional experience of the whole thing too, right?
38
00:02:07.241 --> 00:02:08.382
Yes, it does.
39
00:02:08.963 --> 00:02:11.025
Plato was really the one that kind of nailed this.
40
00:02:11.465 --> 00:02:12.686
And he had this metaphor.
41
00:02:13.046 --> 00:02:14.808
He called it the tripartite soul.
42
00:02:15.208 --> 00:02:22.014
He basically said that the human soul is divided into three parts, and the three parts are all wrestling for control at any given time.
43
00:02:22.875 --> 00:02:35.054
And those three parts basically boil down to kind of our impulses and instincts, our animalistic side, our emotions and our passions, and then our rationality and our higher level decision making.
44
00:02:35.415 --> 00:02:36.076
And it turns out.
45
00:02:37.015 --> 00:02:40.618
Psychology has largely borne Plato's model to be true.
46
00:02:40.638 --> 00:02:48.424
I mean, there's some nuances and a couple little changes here and there, but we generally have these different parts of ourselves and they're generally wrestling against each other for control.
47
00:02:48.625 --> 00:02:55.190
Anybody who has struggled to follow through with something they want to do has experienced this where you intellectually understand what's happening.
48
00:02:55.915 --> 00:02:56.816
I should get off the couch.
49
00:02:57.076 --> 00:02:58.017
I should go to the gym.
50
00:02:58.177 --> 00:02:59.139
I should hire a trainer.
51
00:02:59.879 --> 00:03:05.966
But emotionally, you're like, these potato chips, they sure do taste good.
52
00:03:06.346 --> 00:03:16.897
So Plato had this metaphor to describe this, which is that our soul or basically our psychology is like a chariot rider trying to control two horses.
53
00:03:17.498 --> 00:03:22.519
So one horse is our animal instincts and our urges, and the other horse is our emotions and our passions.
54
00:03:22.899 --> 00:03:29.321
The chariot rider, which is our rationality, his goal is to control the horses and point them in the correct direction.
55
00:03:29.881 --> 00:03:37.362
But the interesting thing about this metaphor is that it shows us that ultimately feelings are what drive our actions and our decisions.
56
00:03:38.042 --> 00:03:44.904
And when it comes to changing ourselves, to trying to be a new person, ultimately that is a...
57
00:03:45.986 --> 00:03:47.867
emotionally based problem.
58
00:03:48.527 --> 00:03:54.748
Like the reason we don't do things that we know we should do is simply because we don't feel like it.
59
00:03:55.028 --> 00:03:56.509
It's not that we don't know we should do it.
60
00:03:56.589 --> 00:03:58.489
It's because we don't feel like doing it.
61
00:03:58.529 --> 00:04:02.050
The reason you don't get off the couch and go to the gym isn't because you don't know it's good for you.
62
00:04:02.230 --> 00:04:04.411
It's because you don't feel like doing it.
63
00:04:04.511 --> 00:04:12.893
And so identity change, becoming a new person is ultimately an emotional process, which fucking sucks because emotions are hard.

64
00:04:13.893 --> 00:04:18.456
They're like, they're hard to identify, they're hard to understand, and they're hard to deal with.
65
00:04:18.496 --> 00:04:19.696
They're hard to change.
66
00:04:19.776 --> 00:04:23.818
They're hard to change, and it's hard to do something contrary to your emotions.
67
00:04:24.158 --> 00:04:26.740
If I'm angry at somebody, it's hard to be nice to them.
68
00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:31.762
If I'm sad about something, it's hard to be enthusiastic and motivated.
69
00:04:32.183 --> 00:04:37.565
So the whole difficulty around change is fundamentally boiled down to this.
70
00:04:38.066 --> 00:04:40.447
How do you do things that you don't feel like doing?
71
00:04:41.448 --> 00:04:47.597
All this is to say is that behavioral change is primarily an emotional problem, not a rational problem.
72
00:04:47.917 --> 00:04:49.459
The information is the easy part.
73
00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:56.710
You know, as my friend Derek Sivers likes to say, if change was as easy as more information, we would all be billionaires with six packs.
74
00:04:57.190 --> 00:04:57.711
But we're not.
75
00:04:58.532 --> 00:05:04.637
Because the difficulty is getting our emotions to align with what we know is better for ourselves.
76
00:05:05.037 --> 00:05:10.261
As the chariot riders in our brains, getting our horses lined up and pointed in the right direction.
77
00:05:11.041 --> 00:05:17.726
Now, most people assume that the way to do this, the way to handle an emotional problem, is to just brute force it.
78
00:05:18.026 --> 00:05:25.292
Is to just summon as much willpower as possible, to push down any doubts or reservations and just like...
79
00:05:25.832 --> 00:05:29.638
almost like abuse yourself until you do the fucking thing.
80
00:05:30.622 --> 00:05:32.583
And that can work in bits and spurts.
81
00:05:32.683 --> 00:05:48.253
But as we're going to discover, willpower is generally overrated and overemphasized because it turns out that the human mind, we are very influenceable and susceptible to external triggers and influences within our environment.
82
00:05:48.273 --> 00:05:59.120
And so if we're smart about using our environment and if we're smart about utilizing the triggers around us, we can actually make it easier to adopt the behaviors that we want to adopt.
83
00:05:59.140 --> 00:05:59.240
Yeah.
84
00:05:59.420 --> 00:06:10.446
So by the end of this chapter, everybody's going to understand why simply knowing what to do and trying to force yourself to do it through willpower is not an effective solution.
85
00:06:10.886 --> 00:06:22.713
We're going to actually give everybody specific concrete tools to change their environment, to create triggers for themselves so that the right behaviors become automatic and far easier than they would be otherwise.
86
00:06:23.353 --> 00:06:26.515
But to begin, I want to tell a story about a checklist.
87
00:06:26.535 --> 00:06:26.935
Okay.
88
00:06:27.075 --> 00:06:29.377
And how it saved 1,500 lives.
89
00:06:29.797 --> 00:06:35.481
So in 2003, doctors at one of the best hospitals in the world were unintentionally killing their patients.
90
00:06:35.641 --> 00:06:39.783
What's worse is that the whole time they knew what they should be doing.
91
00:06:40.204 --> 00:06:41.384
They just weren't doing it.
92
00:06:42.205 --> 00:06:47.769
So the problem was is that a large amount of patients were dying from what is called central line infections.
93
00:06:48.489 --> 00:06:52.373
So central lines are simply a catheter that are inserted into a large vein.
94
00:06:52.393 --> 00:06:54.155
They're super common in ICUs.
95
00:06:54.175 --> 00:06:57.198
They're like, basically, you see them happen everywhere.
96
00:06:57.218 --> 00:07:04.705
But the problem was that the ICU was so chaotic and so crazy that inevitably some of these steps would be skipped.
97
00:07:05.306 --> 00:07:07.368
And then the patients would develop an infection.
98
00:07:07.468 --> 00:07:08.569
And then they would die.
99
00:07:09.029 --> 00:07:11.412
So the doctor, Peter Provenos, noticed this.
100
00:07:11.792 --> 00:07:12.092
And he said,
101
00:07:12.973 --> 00:07:14.114
He decided to address it.
102
00:07:14.214 --> 00:07:19.959
He addressed it in the most stupidly simple way possible, which is he created a checklist.
103
00:07:20.819 --> 00:07:26.163
It was just a physical piece of paper with the five steps that all the doctors and nurses already knew that they should be doing.
104
00:07:26.364 --> 00:07:34.390
And then he just made one change, which is that he gave all the nurses permission that if they noticed a doctor skipping any of the steps, that they could stop him and intervene.
105
00:07:34.710 --> 00:07:38.994
And within 18 months, deaths from central line infections dropped to zero.
106
00:07:39.674 --> 00:07:45.480
In fact, the checklist became so successful that hospitals across the United States started adopting it everywhere.
107
00:07:45.780 --> 00:07:49.744
Now, the interesting fact about this checklist is it didn't teach anybody anything they didn't know.
108
00:07:50.345 --> 00:07:53.788
It didn't force anybody to do anything they shouldn't already be doing.
109
00:07:54.649 --> 00:07:58.994
It didn't motivate them or, you know, completely change the system.
110
00:07:59.714 --> 00:08:01.797
It simply created an environmental nudge.
111
00:08:02.337 --> 00:08:10.487
It basically created a design within the environment that made it easier to follow the protocol than it was to not follow the protocol.
112
00:08:10.687 --> 00:08:20.378
And this is what we see time and time again, is that people change their behavior when it becomes more painful to not change the behavior than it becomes to change it.
113
00:08:21.199 --> 00:08:30.918
We like to imagine that it's more complicated than this, that there's like all these, I don't know, philosophical, emotional childhood trauma issues associated with it.
114
00:08:30.978 --> 00:08:32.221
But at the end of the day...
115
00:08:33.043 --> 00:08:52.932
If you can create circumstances and situations within your environment, if you can design the world around you to nudge you into a behavior so that it feels easier than not doing that behavior, something as simple as a checklist or a visual reminder or not putting junk food in the fridge, whatever it is.
116
00:08:54.185 --> 00:08:56.248
This is the 80-20 of behavioral change.
117
00:08:56.388 --> 00:08:58.791
Now, this is not a sexy or exciting thing.
118
00:08:58.991 --> 00:09:06.640
I think what happens is that when people want to change, we tend to think of the final order effect of that change, right?
119
00:09:06.660 --> 00:09:12.327
So it's like if I want to get healthier or if I want to fix my relationships, I'm not thinking about...
120
00:09:12.888 --> 00:09:16.449
the next meal I'm going to have or the next date I'm going to go on.
121
00:09:16.549 --> 00:09:21.770
What I'm thinking about is like me being married with kids and having a six pack, right?
122
00:09:21.810 --> 00:09:29.573
I'm like, my brain is immediately jumping five years in the future after I've done 10,000 different things to make that outcome come true.
123
00:09:30.173 --> 00:09:30.413
And so,
124
00:09:31.373 --> 00:09:38.995
A natural cognitive bias that we have is that we assume that we need to change much more in our life than we actually need to change.
125
00:09:39.055 --> 00:09:55.318
It turns out that not only are behavioral changes easily instigated by small alterations in our environment, like a simple checklist, but you don't have to change nearly as much as you think you do to create an outsized effect on it.
126
00:09:56.253 --> 00:09:58.354
down the line five years in the future or whatever.
127
00:09:58.794 --> 00:10:02.274
Now, this is a mistake I've made a million fucking times.
128
00:10:02.855 --> 00:10:09.336
Like, I can't tell you how many times I have convinced myself that I have to reorient my entire life.
129
00:10:09.596 --> 00:10:24.960
I'm going to start waking up at 430 and I'm going to go to the gym for 90 minutes every day and I'm going to start meditating for 30 minutes and I'm going to sign up for this new program that costs $1,000 and I try to do it all at once and of course I do it for three days and then I fail.
130
00:10:25.441 --> 00:10:28.576
Whereas what has actually worked for me is something as simple as
131
00:10:29.607 --> 00:10:36.012
putting my gym shoes by the front door so that it reminds me, hey, you're supposed to go run, asshole.
132
00:10:36.453 --> 00:10:37.534
That's why your shoes are there.
133
00:10:37.954 --> 00:10:42.738
For me to put my shoes on, it is easier to just walk out the door than it is to not walk out the door.
134
00:10:43.378 --> 00:10:48.803
That has probably done more for me than all of the drastic major changes I've ever tried to make in my life.
135
00:10:49.203 --> 00:10:55.268
Every change requires a certain amount of energy, especially if you're exerting willpower.
136
00:10:55.468 --> 00:10:57.430
There's almost like a budget of...
137
00:10:57.830 --> 00:11:13.737
emotional energy that you can dedicate into something i mean what makes this error worse too is that if you if like all those changes right if you just took them one at a time right accomplishing the first one will make the second one that much easier right so it's like if you just address your sleep
138
00:11:15.022 --> 00:11:20.627
Simply by going to bed an hour earlier, waking up an hour earlier, you're going to be more rested, have more energy.
139
00:11:21.308 --> 00:11:23.910
Your metabolism is going to function better.
140
00:11:23.930 --> 00:11:25.671
So you're going to make better decisions.
141
00:11:25.691 --> 00:11:27.293
You're not going to be as tired during the day.
142
00:11:27.313 --> 00:11:33.138
So you're going to have more energy to actually go to the gym when you want to go to the gym, right?
143
00:11:33.198 --> 00:11:37.762
So people should line these up sequentially rather than trying to do them all at once.
144
00:11:37.822 --> 00:11:39.404
Yeah, but that doesn't feel as sexy, does it?
145
00:11:39.544 --> 00:11:40.044
No.
146
00:11:40.064 --> 00:11:41.305
Like we're looking for the big change.
147
00:11:41.325 --> 00:11:42.506
We're looking for the montage.
148
00:11:42.606 --> 00:11:42.767
Right.
149
00:11:42.967 --> 00:11:43.207
Right.
150
00:11:43.667 --> 00:11:52.095
I think what people, what happens in this stage is people will, if you tell them, you know, just focus on one of these, let's say going to bed earlier or doing a workout every day.
151
00:11:52.115 --> 00:11:52.976
It doesn't matter what it is.
152
00:11:53.016 --> 00:11:53.697
Just go do the workout.
153
00:11:53.717 --> 00:11:53.917
Sure.
154
00:11:54.417 --> 00:11:57.280
What happens is it starts looking like you're kind of just running in circles.
155
00:11:57.901 --> 00:12:00.383
It doesn't feel, you know, it doesn't have that energy behind it.
156
00:12:00.523 --> 00:12:01.104
Like you're saying.
157
00:12:01.184 --> 00:12:01.684
It's boring.
158
00:12:01.844 --> 00:12:02.465
It's boring.
159
00:12:02.645 --> 00:12:13.979
And it feels like you're running in circles, but if you like step back a little bit, actually what you're doing is you're kind of like climbing the spiral staircase, but you're looking at it from the top a little bit, you know, and it looks like you're, it looks like you're just kind of running in a circle.
160
00:12:14.079 --> 00:12:14.479
Yeah.
161
00:12:14.499 --> 00:12:14.620
Yeah.
162
00:12:14.660 --> 00:12:14.820
Yeah.
163
00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:19.365
Um, so it's, it's slower and it's not as sexy, but if you step back and you're like, Oh wait, I've.
164
00:12:19.866 --> 00:12:19.966
I've.
165
00:12:20.066 --> 00:12:22.448
I've gotten 30 minutes more sleep for the last month.
166
00:12:22.828 --> 00:12:25.811
Like that right there is a huge, huge win.
167
00:12:25.831 --> 00:12:29.394
And you probably, maybe you haven't even noticed, but you have better energy.
168
00:12:29.894 --> 00:12:31.436
You have better emotional regulation.
169
00:12:32.176 --> 00:12:37.501
You are, your diet's better because you're not as tired and you're reaching for food for emotional regulation.
170
00:12:37.521 --> 00:12:41.765
Yeah, the boringness of it or the sexiness of like some big dramatic change.
171
00:12:42.105 --> 00:12:43.026
Like that's a piece of it.
172
00:12:43.426 --> 00:12:47.570
I also think people have misguided expectations in terms of like,
173
00:12:48.310 --> 00:12:50.615
what the result of change should be.
174
00:12:50.695 --> 00:12:55.566
Like, I think people imagine that it's going to be like this euphoric,
175
00:12:57.328 --> 00:13:01.751
people cheering confetti falling from the rafters, like you're a new person.
176
00:13:01.811 --> 00:13:02.652
Oh my God.
177
00:13:03.032 --> 00:13:04.433
You're never going to be the same again.
178
00:13:04.653 --> 00:13:06.174
And that's just not the case.
179
00:13:06.535 --> 00:13:13.139
What change actually feels like is you start waking up an hour earlier and you start exercising 50% more.
180
00:13:14.560 --> 00:13:16.842
You feel 20% better day to day.
181
00:13:17.542 --> 00:13:19.744
You have a little bit more energy every day.
182
00:13:19.824 --> 00:13:22.505
You have a little bit more patience in your relationships.
183
00:13:22.986 --> 00:13:24.527
You make slightly better decisions.
184
00:13:25.167 --> 00:13:25.608
It's like,
185
00:13:26.368 --> 00:13:28.990
barely above the threshold of perception.
186
00:13:29.511 --> 00:13:31.813
It's not a ticker tape parade, right?
187
00:13:31.853 --> 00:13:33.454
There's no applause for you.
188
00:13:33.695 --> 00:13:39.800
Nobody's showing up and handing you a medal or a certificate at your front door.
189
00:13:39.820 --> 00:13:42.903
It's just like, okay, yeah, you're just a slightly more functional human being.
190
00:13:42.983 --> 00:13:43.964
Good job.
191
00:13:44.144 --> 00:13:48.067
I also think it comes back to something I said earlier, which is life is practice, right?
192
00:13:48.167 --> 00:13:50.209
And it's those little practices you do
193
00:13:51.292 --> 00:13:52.473
every day consistently.
194
00:13:53.053 --> 00:13:57.795
And then when you do have something like big that comes up, you can, you do handle it a lot better.
195
00:13:58.195 --> 00:14:03.837
I've noticed this in my life, I guess, you know, once I did start working out more and just get healthier.
196
00:14:04.538 --> 00:14:09.740
Now, anytime I do have an actual like physical challenge of something, I need to stay up for, I don't get as much sleep.
197
00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:13.922
Because I need to take care of something in my life that's going on, I can handle that a lot better.
198
00:14:14.782 --> 00:14:16.363
Again, that's almost not noticeable, though.
199
00:14:16.743 --> 00:14:21.845
You just get better at the bigger thing because you practice a smaller version of it over and over and over and over again.
200
00:14:21.865 --> 00:14:21.985
Right.
201
00:14:22.465 --> 00:14:23.766
And it's boring as fuck.
202
00:14:23.786 --> 00:14:24.246
You're right.
203
00:14:24.346 --> 00:14:25.386
It's just so boring.
204
00:14:25.426 --> 00:14:26.307
And so nobody wants to do it.
205
00:14:26.347 --> 00:14:27.147
It's not sexy.
206
00:14:27.327 --> 00:14:27.567
Yeah.
207
00:14:28.247 --> 00:14:29.408
Hey, still hungry?
208
00:14:29.888 --> 00:14:31.229
Yeah, that's the whole point.
209
00:14:31.409 --> 00:14:33.930
The full video episode is on Spotify right now.
210
00:14:34.050 --> 00:14:35.710
Search for Solved with Mark Manson.
211
00:14:35.790 --> 00:14:39.632
It's the last podcast episode on this topic you will ever need to hear.