The Art of Manliness - Finally Follow Through

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast you get really

00:00:12.280 excited about an idea to start an exercise program or become a better partner or get organized and

00:00:17.600 then you do nothing absolutely nothing it's said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions

00:00:23.660 even if they don't send you straight to hades good intentions that go unfulfilled can lead

00:00:28.600 to real suffering when you fail to act on your perennial plans for progress you end up feeling

00:00:33.260 frustrated demoralized and stuck my guest is a clinical psychologist who has spent his career

00:00:38.600 obsessed with how to tackle the stubborn issue of human existence his name is steve levinson and he's

00:00:43.860 the co-author of following through a revolutionary new model for finishing whatever you start

00:00:48.800 steve first explains the unhelpful ideas we have about why we don't follow through and that its

00:00:54.060 real cause comes down to a tension between two different systems within us he then shares the

00:00:58.840 aha moment he had as to how to reconcile these systems in order to consistently follow through

00:01:03.200 on your intentions and offer strategies on how to put his follow-through method into practice

00:01:07.360 we end our conversation with the idea that the greatest strategy for increasing your follow-through

00:01:11.660 is treating your intentions with a seriousness that borders on the sacred after the show's over

00:01:17.160 check out our show notes at awem.is follow through steve levinson welcome to the show

00:01:36.740 well thank you so you co-authored a book called following through and it's about a problem that a lot

00:01:42.960 of people have we have good intentions but then we just don't follow through with it you're a clinical

00:01:48.400 psychologist and you've spent a lot of your time and career researching and writing about the problem

00:01:53.800 of poor follow-through and helping people who struggle with that what led you down that path

00:01:58.060 well when i began my career i worked at a medical center and spent day after day after day working with

00:02:08.000 and observing patients who didn't get better or didn't get better fast enough or got sick in the

00:02:14.100 first place because they failed to do things that they knew they should do and actually told themselves

00:02:20.740 that they would do and i was just struck by how much of the problems that people have in the realm of

00:02:27.640 health are caused by poor follow-through by just not doing what they intend to do and as i got fascinated

00:02:35.640 with this topic and i saw that there was relatively little research done on it i became interested in

00:02:42.920 the fact that people don't follow through in all areas of their life it's not just it's not just with

00:02:47.320 regard to health care that may be especially consequential but people don't follow through with

00:02:52.960 their good intentions when it comes to relationships they intend to be a better partner a better parent

00:02:59.520 a better child a better anything and they often don't do it despite the fact that they sincerely

00:03:05.500 intend to do it and i i was uh frankly puzzled and perplexed by why this topic which seems to affect

00:03:15.080 just about everyone in various ways didn't get more attention than it did get so i decided i was

00:03:22.320 going to make this my life's work this was going to be my contribution if you will to somehow shed some

00:03:28.620 light on why it is that we humans do such a lousy job of following through on our own good intentions

00:03:36.280 so you mentioned some of the problems that poor follow-through can have so in the health care

00:03:40.820 world i think people see that all the time they go to the doctor the doctor says hey you need to lose

00:03:45.460 some weight but they're like yeah i'm going to start exercising watch my diet but they don't do it

00:03:50.340 but i think we've seen in other parts of our life i think new year's resolutions are the perfect

00:03:55.280 example of poor follow-through we intend to do all these things but we don't and it it ends up hurting

00:04:01.240 us in the short term and in the long term exactly yeah it's just unbelievable the kind of chaos and

00:04:09.220 havoc that poor follow-through wreaks on our lives in every respect i mean just think about relationships 1.00

00:04:15.720 people all the time make promises to themselves that they're you know going to be a better partner

00:04:21.900 they're going to do this thing that will help their partner in some way and they just don't do it

00:04:27.780 they decide to improve their posture and they just don't do it they start off with a bang but they

00:04:34.240 fizzle out very quickly before the job is done in every sphere of life finances people intend to save

00:04:41.940 they intend to curb their spending to achieve various financial goals and often they just they just don't

00:04:48.240 do it so if in fact there was a pill that one could take that would enable them to immediately

00:04:54.880 and consistently follow through on all their good intentions it would have an amazing result on the

00:05:02.020 quality of that person's life so you start off your book following through by unpacking unhelpful

00:05:09.100 ideas about why we don't follow through with our intentions so oftentimes when we have a failure of

00:05:14.080 follow through we think well why did it happen and you in your research and just working with people

00:05:18.760 as well you found some common explanations people tell themselves as to why they didn't follow through

00:05:25.100 and the first one you talk about is the follow-through fairy tale explain that myth well the follow-through

00:05:33.040 fairy tale has to do with the fact that we believe something that just isn't true about follow-through we

00:05:39.260 believe that if we have a good intention if we're truly motivated to make some kind of change to make

00:05:45.180 some kind of improvement to make some kind of adjustment and if we're motivated enough we'll do

00:05:50.760 it that's all it takes it's just automatic if we're convinced that we should do it we'll do it and that's

00:05:57.220 very appealing and it's very logical unfortunately it's a fairy tale it's just not true it doesn't work

00:06:03.540 that way we have a very complicated frankly messed up system for dealing with intentions that just

00:06:11.180 doesn't produce that kind of result it isn't automatic it's not automatic that if you intend to do

00:06:17.140 something even if you're highly motivated that you will necessarily do it so we are suckers for logic

00:06:24.680 frankly we humans always assume that things will be logical and it makes perfectly good sense frankly

00:06:31.560 to assume that if we use our intelligence to figure out what we should do we would just do it i mean

00:06:39.240 why wouldn't we but unfortunately logic does not prevail in this case we don't do what we intend to do we

00:06:46.080 often do more what we feel like doing okay so the fairy tale is just because we think something's good

00:06:53.020 we intend to do something good we should just naturally want to do it and even uh you point out like even

00:06:58.020 when those good things are easy doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna follow through with like i think

00:07:02.660 flossing is a perfect example like what's so hard about flossing we know it's good for your teeth but

00:07:08.600 when people intend that they don't do it they still don't do it they don't do it and it is amazing it's

00:07:13.520 been amazing to me and i'm no exception to the rule how easy something can be to do and we still won't do

00:07:20.800 it we still won't follow through there is something about the way the mind is designed the way the human

00:07:27.300 mind is designed and i'm sure i'll get into more of that later that makes it very very difficult to do

00:07:33.860 even the easiest thing consistently and enough to actually create a self-sustaining habit so the next

00:07:41.800 unhelpful theory that people fall to when they fail on their intention putting to action their intentions

00:07:47.200 so i think well okay i intend this good thing it's easy to do i didn't do it therefore it means

00:07:53.380 that i have no willpower and you call this the it must be me theory walk us through that theory

00:07:58.880 well the it must be me theory is just a it just follows from the follow-through fairy tale if in

00:08:06.040 fact it's logical that if you intend to do something you'll do it if you don't do it it's obviously your

00:08:12.180 own damn fault and that's what people do they blame themselves for poor follow-through and from

00:08:19.040 my own research study immersion obsession with making sense of why people do such a lousy job of 0.98

00:08:26.540 following through i came to the conclusion and i'm utterly convinced of this that it's not our fault

00:08:32.660 that it's actually the fault of the way the mind is designed to treat good intentions we have a very

00:08:39.780 mixed up system well so let's talk about this system you've been alluding to this so what is it

00:08:45.820 about the system in our mind that often prevents us from following through on the good intentions that

00:08:53.340 we have well it's somewhat complicated but if you look at us from an evolutionary standpoint we are the

00:09:00.220 crowning achievement of evolution we have a system an extremely sophisticated system which is based on

00:09:06.880 intelligence to guide us through life to make decisions big decisions little decisions and all

00:09:12.540 kinds of decisions in between big and little as to what's in our best interest should we do this should

00:09:17.600 we do that should we do the other thing we figure things out we know what we should do we hear from

00:09:23.160 other people what we should do we can collect advice from others who are collecting advice themselves

00:09:28.520 and so we're very good at figuring out what we should do of knowing what we should do but there's still a

00:09:37.440 primitive system in place that is shared by many other living things on this planet including single

00:09:43.840 cell organisms that causes us to automatically move in the direction of the least amount of pain and the

00:09:52.140 most amount of pleasure that's what we do we're we're kind of automatically inclined to do what we

00:09:59.100 feel like doing and not do what we don't feel like doing even though at the same time we're intellectually

00:10:05.400 capable in fact incredibly talented at figuring out what we should do the problem is that when we figure

00:10:12.360 out what we should do it's often at odds with what we feel like doing and what we feel like doing has an

00:10:18.900 advantage because it's automatic whereas figuring things out is manual and you call these two systems

00:10:25.620 the system that guides us by our reason you call the intelligence guidance system and then the one

00:10:31.600 based in evolution you call the primitive guidance system correct correct yes and the primitive guidance

00:10:38.160 system i mean to me it seems like mother nature sort of chickened out when she was you know making plans

00:10:45.680 to install this incredibly sophisticated intelligence based system she thought at the last minute you

00:10:53.180 know what maybe i better not disconnect the primitive system that everyone else has that all other

00:10:59.060 species have i'll just leave it in place without realizing that leaving the two systems in place

00:11:06.360 causes conflict over and over again not just once in a while but many times every day every day

00:11:13.460 people have essentially a war between what they intend to do what they intelligently decide what

00:11:21.080 they intelligently conclude they should do and what on the other hand their primitive guidance system

00:11:26.780 urges them to do based on how they feel yeah there's lots of examples that happens on a day-to-day basis

00:11:33.180 like let's say someone intends to eat better well that's a reasonable intention because it'll help their

00:11:38.460 health etc etc but then they see the potato chips and their primitive guidance system says

00:11:43.380 well carbs and fat you need to eat that because that's good for survival and so you eat the carb fatty

00:11:49.420 potato chips the same thing with distraction well i need i'm going to spend my time just working on my

00:11:54.600 work and not being distracted by social media but the primitive guidance system loves novelty because

00:11:59.920 novelty can help you maybe find new resources that can help with survival or novelty could be a danger a

00:12:07.180 threat so we're just cued into novelty and so we have this intention to work on a document but then

00:12:14.560 that pgs says now let's look at this new shiny thing on facebook exactly exactly and this is constant

00:12:21.960 it's not just once in a while it's constant and we're stuck with these conflicting systems that

00:12:29.080 coexist but don't cooperate and often the instructions they give are at odds with one another

00:12:34.640 and unfortunately the primitive guidance system has the edge because again it works automatically

00:12:41.620 we automatically know what we want we automatically feel things we don't automatically come to

00:12:49.280 conclusions and we don't automatically have those conclusions actually control our behavior in fact

00:12:55.420 our behavior is controlled more often than not by how we feel and not by what we decide this reminds

00:13:02.740 me of daniel kahneman's idea of like brain one brain two like thinking fast thinking slow same same

00:13:08.620 sort of idea both of them are useful in certain situations but they can often work at crosshairs

00:13:13.120 against each other exactly exactly and they don't work together there's a possibility that coincidentally

00:13:19.440 they can but they don't deliberately work together there's nothing about the wiring

00:13:24.040 in place that guarantees that they will work together in our best interest often it's very

00:13:31.920 much the opposite i mean you decide you should do this it's really important and then you end up

00:13:37.480 doing that because the automatic primitive guidance system pushes you in that direction so how do we

00:13:44.100 resolve this tension between the primitive guidance systems and the intelligence guidance system

00:13:48.720 well many years ago when i was uh profoundly obsessed with this whole matter of why people don't follow

00:13:57.400 through and what i could do what kind of contribution could i make to helping people follow through better

00:14:02.680 i had this aha moment and the best way for me to describe it is is to give an example if you feel tired

00:14:10.900 and you intend to go to sleep you're in good shape because the feeling tired which is an expression

00:14:18.280 of your primitive guidance system happens to be in compliance with or in alignment with your intention

00:14:27.260 so when you feel when you automatically feel like doing what you also intelligently intend to do you're in

00:14:35.260 good shape because you have the power of the primitive guidance system pushing you to do exactly what your

00:14:42.720 intelligence based guidance system has advised you to do so if you're sleepy and you intend to sleep

00:14:49.180 you'll sleep if you're hungry and you intend to eat you'll eat the problem arises when those things are

00:14:55.520 not in alignment which is often so what i discovered or the path that i went down in my thinking was that

00:15:02.620 if we can figure out if we can essentially trick the primitive guidance system into wanting to do exactly what we

00:15:10.920 decide what we intend to do will be in good shape if you can make yourself feel hungry because you need

00:15:19.260 to eat that's good if you can make yourself not feel hungry because you don't want to eat that also is

00:15:25.480 good so it's a matter of tricking the primitive guidance system into wanting to do feeling like it needs to do

00:15:34.300 the same thing you intend to do this reminds me there's an analogy i've heard about our faculty

00:15:40.260 to reason and our emotional faculty and it's our emotional faculty is often like an elephant it's big

00:15:46.440 it's powerful and if you try to you know tell the elephant where to go through brute force you're going

00:15:54.240 to lose exactly and so what you need to be is you need to be like a rider on top of this elephant

00:15:59.380 and guide it gently with your intelligence but like you're letting the elephant it's not like you're

00:16:04.860 using brute force again i think it's kind of like you use the word trick but yeah i think that's what

00:16:08.540 you're kind of doing you're guiding this big giant elephant of emotion and desires that we have to do

00:16:13.760 the thing we want to do yeah brett the way you put that is is actually perfect we are at once the

00:16:19.860 elephant and the elephant trainer so through your research and your writing and you're working with

00:16:24.820 people on this problem of poor follow-through you've come up with different tactics tools techniques

00:16:29.940 that people can use to to get their primitive guidance system to line up with their intelligence

00:16:36.020 guidance system and the first one you talk about is called spotlighting what is spotlighting and how does

00:16:42.660 that help us follow through well spotlighting is is based on the observation that good intentions

00:16:49.600 only work when they're at the top of your mind plain and simple if you decide for example i always use

00:16:56.820 this example because i think most people can relate to it if you decide at 8 30 one morning that you

00:17:03.340 really need to improve your posture you think you would give a better impression to others you would

00:17:09.420 seem more alert you'd seem more engaged more involved it would just be good for you besides it being good

00:17:14.880 for your back so you're going to improve your posture that's what you've decided that's your

00:17:19.500 intention if you start that at 8 30 by 9 a.m if you're like most people you've forgotten about it

00:17:26.560 you'll remember if you happen to see someone who's slouching rather badly or if you slouch rather badly

00:17:32.580 enough that you notice it or you nearly fall off your chair or someone calls attention to it that's

00:17:38.700 fine that will bring the intention that sunk to the bottom of your mind up to the top again

00:17:43.980 and it will work for a while but on its own intentions no matter how important they are

00:17:49.900 they tend to sink to the bottom of the mind and they become useless so spotlighting is about using

00:17:56.960 prompts around you around cues reminders anything at all that will take a good intention that you have

00:18:04.140 and bring it to the top of your mind so for example people who intend to improve their posture for

00:18:10.140 whatever reason they can use a little reminder device that every 10 minutes sends them a private

00:18:16.220 signal that they have decided means i'm no slouch it says to you i'm no slouch i intend to sit up

00:18:24.840 straight to stand up tall that's important to me it just reminds them of what they already know

00:18:30.320 what they've already decided and that's all it takes to get them to actually make the change

00:18:36.120 improve their posture and if they do it often enough it will become a habit but without that

00:18:41.520 intentions just again they sit at the bottom of your mind and they don't do you any good at all

00:18:47.540 one example you gave in the book that i liked about spotlighting you were working with a guy

00:18:52.360 who had an anger issue at work when he would talk to his co-workers that he was in charge of he would

00:18:57.980 be really gruff with them and he knew it was a problem and he had all these intentions like i gotta do

00:19:01.740 better and he always failed and then you told him well is there a situation where you're you're not

00:19:06.860 gruff with people that you're leading and he was like yeah when i coached my kids little league team

00:19:11.220 like i'm really i remember that yes yeah i that means a lot to me to help these young men develop

00:19:17.100 their talents and to develop their capabilities and i i just i love that that's when i met my best

00:19:22.540 and what you had him do is like well put up reminders in your office about being a little

00:19:27.480 league baseball coach and that was his spotlighting he uh yeah he he went uh he went pretty far with

00:19:33.360 that and he he actually printed up little memo pads notepads with a bat and ball on it and used

00:19:41.340 baseball as a theme for everything he could possibly do so that he was immersed in it all the time and

00:19:46.860 it always made him think about that aspect of his identity where he behaved in accord with his

00:19:53.060 intention and he wanted to bring it over to areas where he wasn't behaving in accord with his

00:19:58.340 intention a key thing however is that you know a lot of people will put up motivational posters or

00:20:04.500 something and think that that will do the trick it won't because anything that's just static in your

00:20:10.080 environment will eventually fade to the background and it loses its ability to actually bring your

00:20:16.620 intention up from the bottom of your mind so you have to keep at it you have to keep coming up with

00:20:22.640 new prompts new cues new reminders that keep an intention alive and well and active at the top

00:20:29.460 of your mind we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:20:32.920 and now back to the show all right so spotlighting is the first tool the next tool you talk about is

00:20:43.200 willpower leveraging what is that willpower leveraging is really important and it's at the core

00:20:50.280 of my whole program of my whole program or my whole system for improving the ability that people have

00:20:56.500 to follow through willpower leveraging is is well let's let's first talk about willpower willpower is

00:21:04.140 basically a measure of a person's ability to do something they believe they should do when they

00:21:10.920 don't feel like doing it or to resist doing something they do feel like doing when they feel like they

00:21:17.560 should resist it and it's like physical strength in many respects and it's especially like physical

00:21:25.240 strength in the sense that how much you can accomplish with the strength you have depends on

00:21:31.100 how you apply that strength so for example i always consider if you had to change a tire on your car

00:21:37.560 you would have enough physical strength to lift up the car if you apply the physical strength to a tool

00:21:44.800 that's designed to leverage your strength like a tire jack if you tried to lift up the car with your

00:21:51.940 own bare hands and then just set the bumper on your knee while you unscrew the lug bolts with your hand

00:21:58.440 that wouldn't work very well so you have enough strength if you apply it correctly you don't have enough

00:22:05.260 strength if you don't apply it correctly and the same is true with willpower for example someone who

00:22:12.080 doesn't have the willpower to resist eating their absolutely favorite food but a food that they've

00:22:18.980 put on the list of foods that they shouldn't be eating they could resist the temptation if they took

00:22:25.620 that food and put it in a safe somewhere behind armed guards in estonia or you know someplace very far

00:22:34.260 away where there there ain't no way they can get to it they would have enough willpower to resist it so willpower

00:22:42.400 leveraging is about using your willpower to take an action to take a step that actually causes you to require

00:22:50.980 less willpower going forward to follow through on your intention it would take less willpower to make a phone call

00:22:57.940 to have somebody come and take away a temptations than it would for you to have the temptation right in

00:23:03.740 your face every day and have to resist it so so that's what it's all about okay so it's using your

00:23:10.860 willpower to basically modify your environment exactly i think people this is often called an odysseus pact

00:23:16.400 right from the odyssey where when odysseus is about to go into the sirens he wanted to hear how the

00:23:22.460 sirens sounded but without going crazy so he had his crew time to the mast so he could hear and but

00:23:30.340 not go crazy so yeah sort of you're binding yourself preemptively so you don't have to worry about it

00:23:35.800 when you actually face the temptation correct you know often people have trouble with you know what i

00:23:41.420 refer to as follow-through hygiene practices that you can engage in that will improve your ability to

00:23:46.940 follow through because they feel like it's restricting their freedom who wants to be tied to a mast

00:23:51.540 right who wants to be locked in a cage who wants to be prevented from accessing something that you're

00:23:57.800 drawn to but to me freedom from failure is the highest order of freedom in my book that you can

00:24:05.140 ever achieve the ability to intelligently restrict yourself so that you're unable to do something that

00:24:12.120 violates your own important intention that to me is the ultimate form of freedom okay so different ways

00:24:18.180 you can do willpower leveraging that came to mind you mentioned uh if there's a snack that you like

00:24:22.700 to eat just get it out of your house is one thing get it out of your house yeah it takes less willpower

00:24:28.160 to do that than it does to have it stare in your face and call your name all day long some other

00:24:34.800 tactics i've seen say someone likes to check their smartphone a lot you can delete the apps that are the

00:24:40.320 most addicting for you or you can even set up things where you can't even access the apps or

00:24:45.100 there's apps that do this willpower leveraging like well you only you only get 30 minutes on instagram

00:24:50.780 and after you used your 30 minutes you're done other tactics i've seen with that you can turn

00:24:55.060 your screen gray apparently that makes the screen the smartphone less enticing money i think you talk

00:25:01.560 about in the book people who had uh problems with credit card debt they just got rid of their credit

00:25:06.520 cards if they weren't willing to do that i've heard people freeze their credit cards like in the

00:25:10.920 freezer um so if they ever needed it ice yeah it would it would take forever to get it that was

00:25:15.620 like a last minute emergency thing for their credit card right so all these people are are using

00:25:21.440 circumstances they're using their environment as an aid in following through they're making it harder

00:25:28.220 to do the wrong thing the thing that they don't intend to do and easier to do the thing that they do

00:25:33.540 intend to do again can i give you an example of my the co-author of uh following through pete grider

00:25:40.520 had a problem he and his wife had a problem they they wanted to get on an exercise regimen like many

00:25:46.540 people do and they thought the easiest way to do that is to buy an expensive piece of exercise equipment

00:25:52.480 which very quickly became a clothing hanger then they bought a more expensive piece of exercise

00:25:58.340 equipment thinking that they just hadn't spent enough and that became a clothing hanger also

00:26:02.900 so nothing worked and then they had a brilliant idea they would follow through by going to the humane

00:26:10.060 society and adopting a large dog that needed a lot of exercise and that was quite lovable and from

00:26:19.520 there on that was their exercise machine that worked because from then on every morning they would get up

00:26:26.380 when they used to think oh boy we should really get on that exercise bike or that treadmill or whatever

00:26:32.720 it was that they had at the time and they didn't really feel like it and ultimately they often

00:26:37.160 didn't now they had casey who was lovable and who had to go out and they cared about casey and they

00:26:44.600 cared about their carpet so they got up and they took him out whether it was raining or whether it was

00:26:49.360 snowing or it didn't it didn't make any difference they did what they had to do and he had to get

00:26:53.960 exercise so he got exercise so they took one step they took one step they adopted a dog

00:27:00.500 and it solved their problem with exercise whereas trying to solve the problem by relying on the right

00:27:07.760 reasons to exercise didn't work but going around and creating a change in their environment that would

00:27:15.800 push them that would make them feel like they had to do the very same thing that they intended to do

00:27:21.680 then they got the job done it's all about you're trying to line up the pgs with the igs that is 0.90

00:27:26.780 exactly what you're trying to do and this idea of willpower leveraging it made me think of this idea

00:27:31.360 of temptation bundling from the psychologist katie milkman and she has this idea same sort of thing

00:27:37.040 it's basically if there's something you don't like to do you bundle it with something you do like to do

00:27:42.520 and so the example she gave from her own personal life is she did not like exercise so what she did was

00:27:49.980 she said well i'll allow myself to watch my really trashy tv shows or read a trashy book that i really

00:27:57.480 really enjoy but only when i exercise and so she was able to actually exercise became this thing she

00:28:03.380 looked forward to because she got to watch her shows that she wanted to watch and read the books

00:28:07.120 she wanted to read so it's yeah tentational bundling so another thing if you're like your taxes for 1.00

00:28:11.980 example if you want to get your taxes done early instead of waiting to the last minute you could do

00:28:16.780 something like well i don't like doing my taxes no one likes doing their taxes but i'll allow myself

00:28:21.740 to eat you know some snack that i really really enjoy but it's not great for me but i'll allow

00:28:28.860 myself to do that so you're bundling something that yeah you're basically bundling that pgs like that

00:28:33.300 primitive guidance system with your igs yes again you're you're being the elephant trainer to your

00:28:39.960 elephant yeah can i give you yeah go ahead can i give you another example sure this there's my favorite

00:28:45.420 example of creative following through so this fellow had trouble like so many people have getting

00:28:52.660 into an exercise regimen he joined a fancy health club thought that would do it it didn't joined

00:28:59.900 another health club he thought that would do it it didn't and then he came up with this idea here's

00:29:05.160 what he did he decided that from now on he made a deal with himself from now on he said i will only own

00:29:11.560 one stick of underarm deodorant number one number two i will keep that underarm deodorant in my locker

00:29:19.760 at the gym so he would wake up every morning and he would feel like he did before he made this deal

00:29:26.620 with himself i don't really want to get up i don't really want to go to the health club i don't really

00:29:31.740 want to exercise but oh heck if i don't i'm going to stink all day and i don't want to stink all day

00:29:40.440 i'd rather go to the go to the health club so he would go to the health club use his deodorant 0.95

00:29:46.060 and would feel like a total idiot if he just used his deodorant and then snuck out went home because 0.73

00:29:51.140 everyone had greeted him and so he stayed there and he exercised so again he couldn't get something 0.94

00:29:57.540 done for all the right reasons he had so many reasons to stick with an exercise program so many

00:30:04.720 reasons good reasons excellent reasons real reasons they didn't work what did work was when 0.83

00:30:11.260 he created a bad reason a stupid reason a silly reason an irrelevant reason but one that moved him

00:30:18.740 and the key here is that what moves you moves you what doesn't doesn't if it doesn't work it doesn't 0.97

00:30:25.220 work and if it does work it does work it doesn't matter if it's silly if it's foolish if it's irrelevant

00:30:30.040 if it works it works and that's one of the things that people have to get used to if they're going

00:30:36.480 to become a follow-through champion okay so spotlighting keeping those intentions front of

00:30:41.360 mind is the first tool willpower leveraging the second tool and you said these are the two most

00:30:46.020 powerful tools to help you have more follow-through but you also list some other ones as well that can

00:30:51.220 help and one of them is the leading horse to water strategy what is that this is one of my my

00:30:57.480 favorite strategies that i've used a lot and i still use a lot and as i have before let me give

00:31:02.280 you an example because that's the best way to describe the strategy i had decided and again i

00:31:07.520 seem to be preoccupied with exercise today but i was going to start myself on an exercise routine

00:31:14.600 using an exercise bike that i had purchased and what i found was that the whole idea of exercising

00:31:22.560 sitting on a bike and pedaling for 20 minutes was it felt like it was an eternity and it was very

00:31:29.340 unpleasant and i did it and then i didn't want to do it the next day and i didn't want to do it the

00:31:35.160 day after that and i did it sometimes but not much and it was awful so i decided that i would lower the bar

00:31:43.860 in terms of what i was requiring myself to do so that i would have a chance to actually behave in

00:31:50.400 accord with my intention i would make my intention much easier so that i could behave in accord with

00:31:56.260 it and maybe build some momentum to get going and eventually do what i fully intended to do so here's 0.95

00:32:02.960 what i did i basically reformulated my good intention to getting dressed and sitting on the damn bike 0.98

00:32:10.140 and so i did that i did that every day but what i noticed was that as i was sitting on the damn bike 0.94

00:32:16.460 sometimes i figured well what the heck i'm sitting here anyway i might as well pedal i'd pedal a little

00:32:22.320 bit sometimes i pedaled a lot sometimes i pedaled 20 minutes and eventually what happened was i created

00:32:29.120 the shell of a habit so to speak i made a foundation for a habit of exercising every day without fail

00:32:38.120 and uh even though i didn't always exercise for 20 minutes the more i did this the more i did the more

00:32:45.760 i did exercise for 20 minutes and eventually it just became automatic i i did this years ago and now

00:32:52.160 i would never even consider for a moment not exercising it's just it's just now a habit and now it works on its

00:33:00.360 own so the key to leading the horse to water is to take away to sort of detoxify the task that you

00:33:10.640 intend to do to get all the things that make it avoidance worthy out of it and make a promise only

00:33:18.680 to do the parts that are easy that don't turn you off that don't repel you and to do that and just to

00:33:26.400 keep doing it without requiring you to do any any more at all not one iota more than the basic that

00:33:32.900 you've required until you actually build the foundation of a habit so the lead the horse strategy

00:33:40.120 is basically just make it as easy as possible just show up you just got to show up and show up

00:33:45.660 if you do the thing great if you don't no big deal that's fine just showing up is all you got to do

00:33:51.120 exactly because that allows you to do something that normally you don't do i talk about the avoidance

00:33:57.240 monster every time you feel like oh geez i don't want to do that that is the kiss of death for

00:34:03.640 following through so you want to you want to allow the avoidance monster to stay asleep so you want to

00:34:09.840 tiptoe around it and the way to tiptoe around it is to detoxify your intention to make it as as easy

00:34:17.340 as possible to do as much as you can to establish your intention so so that means you're not going

00:34:25.700 to do the whole thing but you're going to do part of it so that you pave the way to do the whole thing

00:34:31.460 another strategy you talk about is the right before wrong strategy what's that one well in a way it's

00:34:37.920 very similar because you with right before wrong you're doing the same kind of thing in that you're

00:34:43.080 trying not to wake up the avoidance monster which is again going to destroy your effort at following

00:34:48.980 through in right before wrong you essentially allow yourself to do the wrong thing as long as you do

00:34:56.380 the right thing first best example of this is if you're on a diet and you've sworn off donuts and

00:35:03.580 pastries that you make a deal with yourself that you'll eat an apple before you eat a donut or pastry so

00:35:11.200 you're not prohibited from doing the thing that you eventually intend not to do which is to eat

00:35:17.600 the donut but you're going to eat an apple first you can do the right thing before you do the wrong

00:35:22.920 thing and that makes it much easier to establish the pattern the habit of doing the right thing

00:35:29.100 because if right away you require yourself to stop doing the wrong thing that your pgs wants you to do

00:35:36.420 you're not going to make it you're going to fail so you say to your pgs i'll make you a deal you can

00:35:42.060 have your donuts but first i'm going to eat an apple and you can do that and then you'll establish

00:35:47.760 the pattern of doing the right thing often what happens when you use right before wrong is that by

00:35:53.220 doing the right thing consistently you no longer feel as much like doing the wrong thing right you

00:35:59.760 might just eventually find yourself craving apples and not having as much interest in donuts

00:36:04.960 yeah you eat the apple you might be full you don't want to eat a donut either exactly another

00:36:10.000 strategy you recommend people doing is striking while the iron is hot what's that strategy

00:36:15.060 striking while the iron hot is it's really more of a i would say an insight than a strategy but it's

00:36:21.960 based on the fact that when you have an intention that's born out of inspiration excitement enthusiasm

00:36:29.700 you better realize that that intention isn't going to last i call these intentions carbonated

00:36:35.840 intentions they're full of fizz but they also fizzle out very fast and go flat so an example was a

00:36:44.180 salesperson i worked with who went to a conference he had gone to many many conferences and workshops and

00:36:50.780 symposia before and usually he would hear some idea that he thought was practical and insanely positive

00:36:59.420 and would definitely work for him would improve his business increase his sales and and uh why wouldn't

00:37:05.820 he do it and by the time he got home from the conference he had pretty much forgotten about not

00:37:10.760 literally forgotten but he didn't do it he didn't implement these tactics well so he learned about this

00:37:17.120 strategy of striking while the iron is hot and when he heard of a strategy for improving sales

00:37:24.360 that involved making appointments with his clients to get feedback from them about his services he thought

00:37:31.720 this is a great idea i'm going to do it but this time instead of just saying i'm going to do it and

00:37:37.160 waiting to get home and not do it he immediately called his assistant told her about it and told her to

00:37:43.160 call his clients and set up appointments right now so the appointments will be scheduled when he gets

00:37:48.500 back and he followed through so the key to striking while the iron is hot is to do something anything

00:37:56.640 that's in the direction of implementing your intention at the time that you form the intention

00:38:02.560 because otherwise you might as well just kiss it goodbye if it's a carbonated intention it probably

00:38:08.640 won't last it won't last a day two days three days it's it's just not going to make it so you want

00:38:15.140 to get something in motion right away and that motion will help you get in motion the rest of it

00:38:21.720 to implement it well and another thing you recommend too besides these other strategies is when you make

00:38:27.160 an intention make it you got to make it a very serious matter i think oftentimes we make intention we do

00:38:32.680 kind of flip and like oh that'd be great but you said you actually need to make these things

00:38:36.320 have some moral weight to them so what does that look like and how does it help us follow through

00:38:40.740 well that's you know if someone asked me well what is the single thing i can do i you know appreciate

00:38:46.440 all these strategies and you know i'm sure they would work but you know i'm not really interested

00:38:51.040 in that what's the simplest single thing that i can do to be better at following through than i am now

00:38:58.160 i would say it's to take your good intentions seriously and what i mean by that is that

00:39:04.980 to consider a good intention to be a solemn promise that you make to yourself you make

00:39:11.520 promises to other people all the time and if you don't keep them your promises they lose clout

00:39:18.140 they lose credibility they lose their effectiveness and the same thing is true with promises you make

00:39:23.980 to yourself when you form a good intention you're making a promise a solemn promise to behave in a certain

00:39:30.460 way so you have to take that seriously you shouldn't just lightly make the promise it's not

00:39:35.400 just you know oh boy you know it would be good if i did this or if it would be good if i did that

00:39:40.240 that's not good enough can you actually do it will you actually do it do you have the resources you need

00:39:46.880 to do it are you prepared to make the sacrifices you need to make to do it and only after vetting

00:39:53.500 a potential intention should it be adopted now that means that you probably will adopt fewer intentions

00:40:00.140 than you normally do than you do before you take your intentions seriously seriously but that's a good

00:40:07.800 thing because we adopt too many attentions we treat them as if they're a dime a dozen and frankly when

00:40:13.680 you treat them as if they're a dime a dozen that's about what they're worth they have they just don't

00:40:18.400 have clout they're just not effective so the more careful we are about adopting an intention and the

00:40:24.640 more we treat it like the solemn promise that it is the more likely we are to behave in accord with

00:40:31.240 them and you make this analogy i like the live like you should date intentions and then when you're

00:40:36.220 ready to commit like then you marry the intention right when you date somebody you're kind of figuring

00:40:40.300 out are we compatible is this someone that i like i get along with and so there's a flexibility

00:40:44.860 there if it doesn't work out you can just okay it's not working out we move on to someone else

00:40:49.760 uh but when you finally marry somebody that's a big deal you can't do that anymore you're with this

00:40:55.160 person uh for better or for worse yes and i'm a clinical psychologist so i think about mental health

00:41:01.660 and i think about general happiness satisfaction in life to me there is nothing more unsatisfying in

00:41:09.720 life and nothing more that drags people down in terms of their outlook and their attitude than

00:41:16.180 hauling around a whole bunch of intentions that they're not behaving in accord with so one of the

00:41:24.200 things that i recommend which is somewhat controversial to go a little further with the marriage analogy

00:41:29.960 is that if you've adopted an intention and it's not going anywhere you're just not doing anything

00:41:35.200 with it for crying out loud just divorce it get rid of it don't haul it around with you as a reminder

00:41:41.940 of how you're not following through just make an announcement to yourself if you have to make it to

00:41:48.560 other people that you no longer intend to do xyz it's just not workable maybe some other day but for

00:41:55.980 now get rid of it this idea of taking your intention seriously reminds me of some research that a group

00:42:01.280 of psychologists did at mac ewan university in alberta canada and we wrote about this i will link

00:42:07.820 to it in the show notes but they talked about how gandhi and this guy he's a prussian prince from the

00:42:13.940 19th century named herman von puckler muskow they had this idea of unbreakable intentions you know

00:42:20.700 gandhi when he made an intention he called it a vow and puckler muskow he called it a grand expedient

00:42:26.800 and they both thought if i break this thing it was a blight to my character i mean this is what

00:42:32.380 muskow said if i were capable of breaking it after such mature consideration i should lose all respect

00:42:39.980 for myself and what man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative so he took this really

00:42:46.920 serious like it was like a sense of like i mean it was like existential for him to keep i like his

00:42:51.340 thinking these intentions he had for himself and he said that like he only made an intention after he

00:42:55.560 thought about it a long time and then only then he would make it and then once he did it's like this

00:43:00.240 is life or death here that i keep this and i'm sure his follow-through record was outstanding because

00:43:06.240 he took his intentions truly seriously you know just to illustrate how important this is most of the

00:43:13.660 time we're full of baloney when we make an intention for for example we can decide where okay i'm going

00:43:21.600 to work on this report that i've been putting off because it's very unpleasant i'm going to work on

00:43:26.600 it this afternoon okay so we make that promise it seems like a sincere promise but it's not a sincere

00:43:33.080 promise and here's the way to test how sincere it is would you give up your new car if you didn't do

00:43:40.300 that would you give up your firstborn child would you give someone the deed to your house if you don't do

00:43:47.520 what you intend to do and most people would be horrified if asked those questions of course i'm

00:43:51.960 not going to do that i'm not going to risk my car my house my firstborn i'm not going to do that

00:43:56.320 well then the truth is if you won't then you're not really serious about what you intend to do

00:44:03.400 and most people are not serious about what they intend to do and that's why their intentions don't

00:44:10.060 work very well okay it's taking intention seriously and i guess you also talk about in the book

00:44:14.720 what tactic you use or how you're gonna implement these tools it's going to vary from person to

00:44:20.140 person it's going to vary from maybe task to task like maybe some tasks you'll use the you know lead

00:44:26.760 the horse to water strategy another one you might use the right before wrong strategy it's going to

00:44:31.780 take experimentation and some flexibility as you try to figure this stuff out yes yes and what you know

00:44:38.540 what i offer is a toolkit not instructions on when to use the hammer when to use the screwdriver when

00:44:44.700 to use the pliers it takes experimenting and the key thing is to be honest about what works and what

00:44:51.320 doesn't work if it works it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense doesn't seem logical doesn't seem

00:44:56.400 appealing it doesn't matter if it works it works if it doesn't work it doesn't work do more of what

00:45:01.480 works do less of what doesn't work i always recommend that people start out with gentle strategies but

00:45:08.160 if gentle doesn't work don't hesitate to take out the explosives you have to follow through and you

00:45:14.740 can follow through on virtually anything that you want if you're willing to take out the explosives

00:45:20.500 well steve this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your

00:45:24.920 work well they can learn about following through at amazon it's available at amazon and the audio version

00:45:31.680 of it is available at audible and also right now i've got a i've created a website with a colleague

00:45:38.300 of mine called following through.org which is dedicated to helping people do a better job of following

00:45:44.940 through fantastic well steve levinson thanks for time it's been a pleasure thank you brett my pleasure

00:45:50.220 my guest today was steve levinson he's the co-author of the book following through a revolutionary

00:45:54.900 new model for finishing whatever you start it's available on amazon.com you can find more information

00:45:59.460 about his work at his website follow through.org also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:46:04.340 slash follow through where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:46:07.820 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:46:53.440 but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - March 20, 2023

Finally Follow Through

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