Latest / Motivation study / Jordan Peterson_ Ambitious but Lazy_ Watch This

Transcript

Jordan Peterson_ Ambitious but Lazy_ Watch This · Motivation study

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: If you could have what you wanted in this moment,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and I could deliver it, what would it be? How
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: much of the mess that you see around you would
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: vanish if the mess that you could put straight was
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: put straight? The question always is, why do something? Because
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: doing nothing is easy. You just sit there and you
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: don't do anything. That's real easy. The question is, why
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: would you ever do anything? And the answer to that
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: has to be because you've determined, by some means, that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it's worthwhile. In many ways, that's what you should be
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: doing at university. That's exactly what you should be doing,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: is trying to figure out who it is that you're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: trying to be. And you aim at that. And then
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: you use everything you learn as a means of building
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that person that you want to be. And I really
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: mean want to be. I don't mean should be. Even
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: those things are going to overlap. You know perfectly well
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that if you put your mind to it and you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: make the proper sacrifices, there are things you can set straight.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: What advice do you have for a young man in
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: his 20s?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Make a plan.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Look at what you're interested in.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Get disciplined about something.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Allow for the possibility that you have something important to
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: contribute to the world and that the world would be
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: a lesser place without that contribution. Don't be afraid of
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: taking on responsibilities It's where you find what sustains you
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: in your life. You can take on too much responsibility.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: You have to be cautious in that regard, but that's
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: a less common problem than not taking on enough. A
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: lot of the things that people regard as traps are
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: actually the means to their life.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And then the next question might be, well, where should
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you look for worthwhile things? And one would be, well,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: you could consult your own temperament. And the other would be, well,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: you kind of look at how Look at what it
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: is that people accrue that's valuable across the lifespan. But
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the other way you do that is by having a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: little conversation with yourself. As if you don't really know
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: who you are. Because you know what you're like. You
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: won't do what you're told. You won't do what you
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: tell yourself to do. You must have noticed that. It's
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: like you're a bad employee and a worse boss. And
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: both of those work. you know for you you don't
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: know what you want to do and then when you
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: tell yourself what to do you don't do it anyways
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you should fire yourself and find someone else to be
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you have to understand that you're not your own servant
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: so to speak you're someone that you have to negotiate
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: with and that's and you're someone that you want to
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: present the opportunity of having a good life to and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: that's hard for people because they don't like themselves very
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: much So, you know, they're always like cracking the whip
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and then procrastinating it. Cracking the whip and then procrastinating it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, God, so boring. Such a pathetic way of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: spending your time. And you know what that's like because
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: you probably waste like six hours a day. You have
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to believe that your action has some redemptive possibility. Because
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: why would you do it otherwise? You might say, well,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I kind of believe that. It's like, well, that's not
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: good enough. You kind of got to throw yourself all
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: into it. And what's the cost anyways? It's not like
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you're going to get out of this alive. So you're
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: pretty much all in whether you want to be or not.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And maybe if you were voluntarily all in, things would
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: be a lot better than they are. If the world
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: isn't everything that you want it to be, maybe you're
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: not acting the way you should. One of the things
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: people do to buttress themselves against failure is to never
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: let themselves really gain clarity about what they need and want.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Let's say you try something, but you only do it half-heartedly.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And then you fail, and you think, well, I didn't
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: really fail because, you know, I held a bunch back
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: in reserve, and so I didn't get what I wanted,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: but maybe had I been all in... I would have.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And so you don't have to upbraid yourself too much
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: for the failure. Now, it's a catastrophic way to live,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: to sit on the fence and to not commit. Because
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: instead of risking the possibility of failure, you engage in
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: what's essentially the absolute certainty of failure. Because if you
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: want something worthwhile and difficult, which you probably do if
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you want to have an adventure and go somewhere, then
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: what's the chance you're going to get it if you're
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: halfway in? You can't be halfway in, but that sort
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of protects you against failure, because you can tell yourself, well,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: if I tried, I could have done it. It's like,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you tell yourself that 200 times and your
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: life's over. Okay, so once you get your goal structure
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: set up, you think, okay, if I could have this life,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: looks like that might be worth living, despite the fact
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: that it's going to be, you know... anxiety-provoking and threatening,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and there's going to be some suffering and loss involved
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: in all of that, obviously. The goal is to have
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: a vision for your life such that, all things considered,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that justifies your effort. Okay, so then what do you do? Well,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: then you turn down to the micro-routines. It's like, okay, well,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: this is what I'm aiming for. How does that instantiate
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: itself day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month? And that's where something like a
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: schedule can be unbelievably useful. Google calendars. It's like, make
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: a damn schedule and stick to it. Okay, so what's
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the rule with the schedule? It's not a bloody prison.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: That's the first thing that people do wrong. They say, well,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I don't like to follow a schedule. It's like, well,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: what kind of schedule are you setting up? Well, I
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: have to do this, then I have to do this,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: then I have to do this, you know, and then
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I just go play video games because who wants to
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: do all these things that I have to do? Set
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the damn schedule up so that you have the day
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you want. If I was going to set it up
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: so it was the best possible day I could have,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: what would it look like? Better have a valued goal,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: because otherwise you can't get any positive motivation working out.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And so the more valuable the goal, in principle, the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: more the microprocesses associated with that goal start to take
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: on a positive charge. And so what that means is, well,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: you get up in the morning and you're excited about
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the day. You're ready to go. And so as far
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: as I can tell, what you do is you specify
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: your long-term ideal. You specify your goal. You do that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in some sense as a unique individual. You want to
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: specify goals that make you say, oh, if that could
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: happen as a consequence of my efforts, it would clearly
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: be worthwhile. So if you keep yourself all vague and foggy,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: which is real easy, because that's just a matter of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: not doing as well, then you don't know when you fail.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And people might say, well, I really don't want to
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: know when I fail, because that's painful, so I'll keep
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: myself blind about when I fail. That's fine, except you'll
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: fail all the time then. You just won't know it
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: until you've failed so badly that you're done. Would it
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: really be so terrible if my life wasn't miserable? Would
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: it be so terrible if I got what I wanted
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: and needed, especially if I was doing that in the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: best possible way? you