https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=0HTnw55Ya_c
This is always something I’ve been interested for something that I’ve wanted to enrich myself with I think a lot of people You’re you’re a busy guy as far as I can tell you do speaking engagement lectures you operate a YouTube channel presumably you’re a voracious reader So you on the couch you had a book open you like a moment you’re reading and you’re a prolific tweeter you tweet a lot So my question is how do you want to tweet it? You are a prolific How do you organize your time? How do you remain focused and productive in the face of insurmountable work? lists Schedules and I have help I mean my wife in particular in the last year has been unbelievably helpful I mean it’s become a full-time job for her really helping me manage my schedule and keep me on track But a lot of it is like I get up in the morning. I have like everything’s scheduled I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. There’s a hierarchy of Priority and and I’m really operating on a day-to-day level right now because there’s so many things to do I can’t look more than about a day or two ahead although. It’s it’s it’s basically scheduled now, but I learned to discipline myself when I was in graduate school when I was writing I wrote a book called Maps of Meaning that was published in 1999 and I worked for that on that for about 15 years about three Hours a day, and I really sort of grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and like Forced myself to learn how to concentrate without without deviation. How do you do that? I mean, what do you how do you how do you focus that intensely because I I often have trouble like yeah, I Get overwhelmed sometimes when I have a lot of work And the worst feeling is like when I feel like I have a ton of work, and I do work all day But I still feel like I didn’t get anything done. Yeah Yeah, but you probably did you probably did probably are you a conscientious person? Do you know I don’t even know what exactly that means? Okay, well okay, so that’s another thing we could mention briefly I have a website called understand myself calm and I set up a Coupon code for your viewers. Oh, yeah, so it’s h3h3 What say that you are the understand myself calm okay? And you can go there and take a personality test that was devised in my lab the main researcher was dr Colin deyong who is now a professor at the University of Minnesota But we took the standard big five trait model, which is the standard modern personality model so that’s extraversion which is a positive emotion dimension and extroverted people are Enthusiastic and assertive so you’re both enthusiastic. You’re really assertive that would be my can be yeah Yeah, well you wouldn’t be doing this sort of thing. Yeah, you want extra Yeah, so because you know you’re you’re you’re verbally fluent and and you’d like to engage in that sort of thing So that’s a positive emotion dimension. It’s associated with the positive emotion that you feel when you’re moving towards desired things And the next dimension is sometimes. It’s called neuroticism and sometimes. It’s called negative emotionality People who are high in neuroticism have some anticipatory anxiety You know you know you have anticipatory anxiety if you’re worried about going somewhere And it really bugs you and then you get there and like 20 minutes later You’re calm, and it’s okay big time Okay, so that’s withdrawal That’s that’s an aspect of neuroticism known as withdrawal and the other aspect is volatility and volatile people are touchy and irritable huh, so and and that’s that’s the second dimension the third dimension is agreeableness and agreeable people are compassionate and polite and disagreeable people are competitive and blunt and So women are higher in agreeableness than men So if you take a random man and a random woman out of the population General population and you bet on who is more agreeable if you bet on the woman you’d be right 60% of the time and The other place where men and women differ is with trait neuroticism women are more susceptible to anxiety and depression So how can you say that if genders don’t exist? Yeah, that’s another thing that I’m general genuinely accused of is that biological essentialism? Yeah, but what I feel like I experiencing those different feelings depending on the day. Yeah, sometimes a more extroverted Some days are more reclusive, you know Is it generally that’s probably volatility to it’s like variation in mood? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so have you ever had periods of depression? Yeah, how long are you don’t have to tell me no I can tell you it’s okay in college. I’d say a couple years Oh, yeah, okay, so that’s a long time well, so that would be an indication Well, it could be an indication of many things But that’s often associated with higher levels of trait neuroticism because you see it isn’t obvious How much negative emotion you should feel like let’s say you wake up in the morning and you have an ache in your side It’s like well, is that nothing or cancer? Well, you don’t know like you shouldn’t jump to the whole cancer conclusion Right, but You can’t tell like it’s not necessary like and you think well if it is cancer and you miss it well That’s not so good. Yeah, you know so Sometimes there’s some utility and being on edge all the time, especially in a dangerous environment. Yeah Yeah, okay. So the next dimension is conscientiousness and conscientious people are industrious And so they’re guilty if they’re not working they have to work. Yeah, I have that you’re like that. Yeah, you do it Oh, it’s awful. I hate it. Yeah, cuz I’m very self-aware of it Like I feel like I can never relax right I feel like I never got anything done right, right Okay, so we figured out why that is okay. The reason is is you’re conscientious So that that’s associated often with well feelings of shame or guilt if you haven’t got what you should have got done And then if you’re also high in negative emotion, then you worry about that So, you know, so that’s that that can be rough And so and the last dimension is openness and openness is basically interest in ideas and creativity Essentially and so if you take this test at understand myself calm it will tell you Where you are in relationship to 10,000 other people on those dimensions and it’s useful for cut We’re gonna make a couples version of it so that you’ll get a we haven’t got it up yet So you’ll have a report saying well, you know, you’re really orderly and you’re not and so you’re gonna have tension in your relationship Because the orderly person is always going to be annoyed by your Disorderliness and end up cleaning up after you all the time And so you’re gonna have to be aware of that because that’s gonna be and you know You’re open and your partner isn’t well You’re gonna want to go to plays and movies and read books and discuss ideas and they’re not gonna be interested in that at all And you know you kind of think of those as opinions, but they’re really deeply rooted No, it sounds so are we doomed to just possess these characteristics that we hate about ourselves Even if we’re self aware of it, how do you address these issues of self-improvement? Okay, well people get more conscientious and more and less neurotic and more agreeable as they get older So you could think about that perhaps as the development of wisdom I also think that you can you can learn the opposite traits through practicing micro habits So for example in my clinical practice I’ve often had introverted people who need to act in an extroverted way in order to say to be successful lawyers Because they have to go out and drum up business And they can learn the habits of an extroverted person, but they have to learn them From the bottom up. It’s not natural to them And if you’re not very conscientious for example like a schedule is Learning how to use a schedule and then learning how to stick to it can be really useful as can Making a life plan With our YouTube channel and the podcast because I’m I was usually not In front of the camera and I’m very uncomfortable with it And so I’ve learned how to be more extroverted I think yeah by like being on video and sheer will of force yeah Yeah, well I’ve watched a number of your videos And you’re clearly more introverted than Ethan you know and I can see the way I can see it in your body language Because you kind of pull back and you’re you’re more hesitant to jump into a conversation Yeah, and but but but you have a fair bit of positive emotion you smile a lot So so that’s you know so so that’s that might also make it somewhat easier But my guess is you’re far lower in assertiveness than Ethan so See that’s interesting. You look at me pretty she could be pretty scary. It’s that Israeli in her Yeah, but in public or in private If you don’t push her yeah It could be in public uh-huh yeah Yeah, well it’d be interesting would be in see I want to take the test because my issue is like I’m aware of my flaws. I’m aware of the things to drive me crazy, but I’m not really sure How do how to improve it Right, I don’t know. I’m not maybe that’s the problem is that I don’t know How to instruct myself to to to improve well one of the things okay, so I have this other program That’s the future authoring program. I mentioned okay, so the way it works is that it first of all asks you to think about your life along Six or seven dimensions okay, so here’s the idea Imagine you were treating yourself like someone you were taking care of you know someone you loved and you were taking care of Okay, so you want the best for you. Whatever that is so it’s not like magic wishes. It’s nothing like that It’s you’re taking care of yourself like a responsible person okay, so then it asks you right it right a bit Three to five years down the road What do you want your friendship network to look like? How do you want your intimate relationship to be going or what should it look like? How are you gonna stay educated? How are you gonna handle? Temptations of drugs and alcohol are gonna keep yourself healthy mentally and physically What are your career goals, and what are you gonna do with life outside of work? No, so if if you could have what would be good for you. Just what would that look like okay? People don’t Aren’t encouraged to take the time to think that through and it really matters if you think it through okay, so then it says okay now You’ve warmed up write for 20 minutes about what your life could look like in three to five years If it was going the way that you wanted it to go so be good for you Be good for you good for your family good for society like it’d be good. You need a vision Okay, then the next step is okay now imagine that you let your weaknesses and character flaws get the upper hand and like drive you Into the ground What does that look like in five years? So that’s like a horrific vision right and so that’s a good thing because now you’ve got something to run away from and so if you’re anxious Having something bad to run away from is really motivating because you think well You know like maybe I should watch what I eat. It’s like yeah, well I’d look better That’s that’s not enough motivation I’m gonna be fat and really unhealthy and half dead in five years. It’s like okay. That’s not so good You know and so you can run towards the positive thing and run away from the negative thing that Increases your motivation and then in the next part you’re asked to make that into a detailed and articulated plan And so that can help like you say well You’re not sure what habits to change or or or what what what personality traits to transform You got to kind of think about that in relationship to what you want You