The Power of Imperfection: Make Better Decisions, Take Real Action | Oliver Burkeman

30:02I think maybe they both have a role, but there is another way, which is to say, well, if I'm going to bring these things into the world in reality, if I'm going to write the book I want to write, or I'm going to go the place I want to go build the business I want to do whatever I'm going to maybe it's time to accept that it's at least in the first iteration it's not going to be as meet the perfectionistic standards that I've been holding myself to maybe there's actually a way in which going a bit easier on yourself being a bit gentler with yourself releases action um that it's not just a recipe for not doing stuff like if you have that kind of response to that kind of eulogy exercise then you're already not doing stuff so all you're trying to do here is like um invite yourself over the boundary from thinking about it to doing it by by whatever means works and i've found having tried all sorts of different um approaches but the ones that work for me are not the ones that sort of set up life as a huge battle that i've got to um sort of beat life into submission but but instead um take it as a sort of lighter, more experimental thing where it doesn't really matter if the first attempt at something is not that good.

31:21What matters is zero to one. What matters is that it exists in the world in some form. And previously it didn't. We are definitely huge fans of week two and the importance of taking action. So we talk about all these heavy concepts of imperfectionism and comparison, and it could be easy then to just sit with that like ah life is finite and i have consequences and in that indecision not act and we have a saying that you can't think your way into acting but you can act your way into thinking you can take actions that change your beliefs that shape your values that move you closer to that eulogy that you wrote down um what does it mean to decision hunt because i think that concept that you introduced will be so powerful for our audience once i've sort of um encouraged people to give abandon all hope in the first week of this book.

32:11I was like, okay, that's now the perfect situation in which you can actually do cool stuff because you're no longer holding yourself to these crazy making standards. And I think one of the absolutely best tactics that I know for actually doing the stuff is this idea that I call decision hunting. I'll explain why I call it that. I think there's an awfully huge literature, right, about how to make good decisions and how to make the best decisions. But we always seem to imply in those contexts that decisions are these things that come along in your life. Like you're walking through life and everything's fine and then a decision comes your way and you've got to decide, like, do I take this job offer?

32:51Do I accept this marriage proposal? Do I make the marriage proposal to this person? Or do I, whatever. But that's a very reactive, passive stance on decisions. I think it can be really powerful to think of decisions as things to go looking for. In other words, if you feel stuck in some area of life, to look at that area of your life and say, what is some decision that I could make here that would take me down one path and close off other paths? And the really interesting thing about this is it doesn't need to be big, right? It doesn't need to be a big decision, like striding into your boss's office and informing him that you quit because you're going to strike off on your own and do something else.

33:42It can be any kind of tiny decision, as long as it is sort of more or less a real decision that sets you off down one path rather than some others. So an example I give in the book just deliberately to really drive home how mundane this can be is like, if you want to launch something that involves putting up a website, you can choose the platform that you're going to put it on. You can subscribe to that platform and pay the subscription. And of course you could back out of that choice, but on some level, what you've done is you've taken a point that you were being indecisive about, or that was part of the indecision that you were experiencing.

34:20You've got rid of seven of the options and chosen the eighth. and now reality is a little bit different and a new set of decisions present themselves and the new set of decisions might be about you know what what you put on that site these are kind of ridiculously everyday ideas right we're not talking about the kind of decisions that seem like change your life decisions but they are decisions they are decisions because they take reality where you had a number of forking paths you take one path you spurn the others and then you're in a different place. And you can move in that incredibly incremental way, decision by decision.

34:57No one decision being particularly massive or intimidating or crazy from all the way through, right? All the way from the start to the finish of a project or a big life change. So that's what I mean by decision hunting. It's getting out of a rut, basically by going looking for decisions that you could take, however small, as long as they're kind of real decisions.

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37:29So in the context for a lot of our clients, they're, they're struggling with, you know, friendship dwindling, kids, family, job changes, not staying in touch with people, just time and the loneliness epidemic that we've talked about. And of course, when they joined the program, they want to meet new people. They want to go out there and make new friends. And as the science shows us, that's hours and hours and hours spent with someone to become a real friend. One of the decisions that we encourage them to hunt around is what if you just reconnected with someone you hadn't talked to in a year? What if you just reconnected with that college friend?

38:03What's holding you back from reaching out? Oh, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to re-engage. Well, maybe they're thinking the same thing. And maybe just taking that one decision to reach out to them, say you're thinking of them, share a photo of the last time you hung out together, could spark that relationship that you've been missing and can start to work to build that wind behind your sails. Whereas it's completely a bigger decision to what event to go to, to find someone new, where to go seek out new friendship and how to create the time and space to build that new friendship. There are these little decisions that a small amount of fear, not knowing how to do it, are holding us back from taking that action.

38:42And oftentimes that decision will lead to momentum and more action and you feeling good socially again. Absolutely. And it leads to momentum, even if that friend has no interest in responding, right? That's the crazy thing. It's like the action is what creates the momentum because you learn from direct feedback that either it leads to something great or it doesn't lead to anything much. It's asymmetric. It's exceptionally unlikely that if you do the thing that you were suggesting there, that you get a incredibly hostile response. You just might not get any response. And that's okay. And I always think about this in the context of, as a writer, I think about this a lot.

39:27If you put something out online on social media or something that really energizes people and resonates with them, then hundreds of thousands, millions of people could see that. But if you put something out that doesn't really resonate with people, you're not going to get publicly shamed by millions of people. It's just going to vanish. And the loss to you is going to be the time it took and nothing else. So there's a lot of those situations where a decision is truly asymmetric. If it works, it could lead to great things. But the loss, if it doesn't work, it is really very small and tolerable.

40:01Well, with that publishing online, this is another concept that you cover in the book, which is this quality versus quantity. And so many of us, especially with the perfectionist mindset, want the first thing to be quality. And there's a recent study around virality of content. And with just the vast number of content being published every single day, one out of every 20 to 30 pieces will actually catch enough viewers to even be fed into the algorithms to be viral. So when you start to recognize how this all works, you start to realize, okay, I could post one quality piece a month, and then it's going to take me two years to build an audience and have other people find me fascinating.

40:41Or I could post 20 pieces a week, and then that one week I could go viral just due to the sheer quantity of me posting. And of course, the more you do something, the quality starts to follow. And now you have a bit more of a flywheel of you're building an audience, you're getting a response, you're getting better at delivery. And over time, a short amount of time, you could actually catch some actual fire and build the platform for yourself. And this happens in so many other areas of your life, not just online publishing. But oftentimes that quality, the need for quality is what keeps us from hitting publish, keeps us from doing that thing that's been holding us back or even has been gnawing at us.

41:22absolutely yeah and as you rightly say it's not just that letting go of that a little bit leads to taking action but it also leads to the quality right it's the that's how you're going to get to to quality and certainly with many things and i think writing is one of them there isn't even a particularly strong relationship in my experience between like how much time and care and furrowed brow I put into something that I'm writing and how good it comes out at the other end and how much it resonates with people. When I look back at my work when I was working on The Guardian newspaper, for example, there was no relationship between whether I spent weeks researching a piece or whether it was just some blog post that I wrote in an hour and a half.

42:06It could quite easily be the latter that was by all normal, sensible standards of a better piece because of its effect in the world. So, yeah, it's almost like we imagine that taking it, I think we're raised to think this, right? You put in a lot of effort, you do your homework, you sit down, you're really diligent about it, but then that quickly turns into sort of endless perfectionistic drama and never gets done. And even though it does get done, it can have a certain quality of being sort of slightly too worked on, slightly too thought through. There's something to be said for improvisation and spontaneity.

42:41going along with that the ability to take those small actions whether it's making the decision or creating something every single day the daily practice or the daily ish practice as you call it creates so much opportunity in our life that we're missing out on and you talk in the book about the seinfeld strategy and and how we can apply it to our own life so we look at someone like Jerry Seinfeld, who's incredibly successful comedic rear, and we see his polished specials, we see the best jokes that have always landed, but there's millions of failures along the way, jokes that no one laughed at, jokes that he got booed off stage, that were part of his craft.

43:23And I think so many of us avoid those little daily-ish practices for this quality that we're seeking to our own detriment. I think that's totally right. I think the other point I'm stressing in the Seinfeld case is people who are familiar with this Seinfeld strategy think that it means be obsessively consistent every single day, work on the thing. If you drop a day, that's a disaster. I interviewed Seinfeld for The Guardian ages ago and it turned out he didn't mean this at all, really. He was just totally bemused the way that this idea had come to take on a life of its own. He just means the very obvious truth that if you want to develop a habit, reaching out to new people, reaching out to old people, learning skills, sports, whatever, you've got to do a lot of it.

44:09You've got to do it more days than not. You've got to keep showing up. It's not about this kind of incredibly obsessive, like, if I miss one day, then it's all over. That's very counterproductive because life does get in the way in any cases, but especially if being a parent of small children is involved. I know that from personal experience. So that's not a very resilient, sustainable thing. I think one thing that I find really helpful when it comes to that kind of coming back and showing up and keeping doing it is to understand that really, in some ways, getting back in the saddle is specific, is the skill that you are developing.

44:54the skill is not so much meditating every day or working on your creative project every day or reaching out to people every day the skill is when you fail to do it for a couple of days for whatever reason developing the ability to come back and do it again even though your sort of perfect chain of X's on the calendar or whatever was disrupted for me it's asking myself is this can't or don't want to? If you can't do it, whether it's small children or some impediment in your schedule or you're gonna lose an opportunity, that's one thing. But is this me just not wanting to do it? Not really feeling like doing it today?

45:38Because if it's a matter of not wanting to do it, that's actually the time to do it because that builds the strength and the consistency that we're talking about here. But not to beat yourself up over the times you can't do it. Yeah, and it's a subtle balance because moods can be very strong for some people. They always seem to be for me. And it's like, you know, sometimes it would be a huge struggle to force myself to do something I don't want to do. But you're absolutely right that other times and many times it's really just like, okay, the price I would have to pay for this is that I won't necessarily feel good while I'm doing it.

46:15All right. I can tolerate that. And by the way, you probably end up feeling a lot better as a result of doing it. So yeah, there's lots to be said for that.

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46:59When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th, and never miss a meme or milestone, all protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Well, so many of us were raised on the golden rule and how to treat others. And you introduced the reverse golden rule and how important it is to treat ourselves. What do you mean by that? The reverse golden rule, I'm borrowing this from a philosopher called Ido Landau, who makes this very astute observation that, you know, uh well what he calls the reverse golden rule is um don't treat yourself in ways that you would never treat other people it is really striking i think how many of us go around with some form of sort of internal monologue berating ourselves for slipping up or not doing things right not not handling situations uh in the right way yeah in a way that you would just never um you would never behave like that towards your friends because you're not an asshole right i mean it's just like it's um it's it's it's just the double standard is extraordinary and one thing i found really useful about this is like there is a huge amount of uh literature and advice and all the rest of it about self-compassion and i've always struggled with it a bit because there's something about it that seems like kind of cringe basically there's something about that whole sort of idea that I find doesn't vibe with me.

48:51It feels a bit repellent in some way. I'm not saying it is, I'm saying I've got some problem that causes me to receive it in that fashion. But the great thing about the reverse golden rule is it is just the request that you treat yourself the same as other people. This isn't about saying, oh, I'm so special, I need to really think about myself as the greatest, most sensitive soul in the universe. He's none of that stuff. It's just like, okay, what if I just wasn't any meaner to myself than I am to other people in the world? Just a very sort of democratic approach. And something about that I really like.

49:24It's like, okay, I can do that. I'm not sure I can do all this kind of, all this self-love business, but I can certainly do the thing, I think, where I'm just like, you know, not a jerk to myself in the same way that I'm trying most of the time to not be a jerk to other people. Yeah. Or you can be a jerk to yourself and to others, but just don't be a bigger jerk to yourself. Right, of course, yeah. If you're a jerk to everyone, then the reverse golden rule is just like, make sure you're a jerk to everyone. Yeah, exactly. Equal opportunities jerk. I know we have a lot of people pleasers in the audience, myself included.

49:58And what was so interesting in that meditation is recognizing how it is a form of assholery, as Whitney Cummings calls it. and it's like even hearing that saying that knowing that I I do at times find myself trying to please others I'm not often thinking about well what's going on behind the scenes and how does that make me an asshole but I thought it was just such a a great reframe around what I think many in our audience are struggling so how do we get out of our own way with people pleasing that's a great observation that Whitney Cummings like and I think part of what she's getting at is that we're not talking about being good to other people, right?

50:37We're talking about this kind of anxious attitude that says, I must always put how people think about me ahead of anything else. I must always make sure that everyone around me is feeling happy and thinking good thoughts about me. This is not only a very poor way to achieve your own goals in life and the things you care about most, but it's a poor way to be good to other people, right? It's not actually helpful to other people because you're sort of, as Cummings points out, right? You're simultaneously treating them with kid gloves. People pick up on the fact that you're just trying to kind of make sure they don't get cross.

51:23It presents you in a sort of a pathetic light and it just doesn't help anybody. And I talk in a book about a moment that was very significant for me early in my career as a journalist where an editor at The Guardian had asked me if I could write this piece. And I had spent all day not giving her a reply because I was worried that I didn't have the bandwidth to at it to what I was already doing. But I also didn't want to disappoint her because I was an inveterate people pleaser at that point. And eventually I said, no, I just can't do it. And she said very kindly in a way that I was kinder than I had any right to expect at that point, she said, you know, it's often just easier for everyone if you can't do something, if you say no right away.

52:09And of course it would have been a simpler day for her if I just said no at 9.30 in the morning and she had the rest of the day to find someone else to write this piece. Instead, I left it till 6pm and caused her a problem because I was so concerned with pleasing her. So I think a useful kind of jujitsu move for people pleasers is like, look, if I can't persuade you that this is no good for you, can I at least persuade you that it's no good for the people you think you're pleasing? It's like, no good for anybody. And I think the sort of practical path out of this or the perspective shift that is really practical is just to understand that other people's emotions are one more thing to be weighed in the balance.

52:47They are giving you, if someone does express, you know, firstly, most of the time, no one's going to be mad at you like you think they're going to be mad at you. But secondly, even if they were to be, that would just be one more factor for you to think about. It's not this kind of total absolute thing that you must at all costs prevent from happening. It's just one more factor that you're thinking about. And, you know, sometimes you might decide to take the action that is primarily targeted at causing someone else to feel good. Sure, there's no problem with that. Other times you might say, you know what, I'm going to accept that they're going to perhaps be disappointed or a little bit irritated because the other thing is more important to me.

53:29Again, you're choosing the consequences and you're not pretending that there's a version of events that has no consequences. And that is power and freedom, Even if sometimes you then choose consciously and deliberately to, you know, do the thing that someone else is going to be more pleased by you doing. Well, we're often so bad at mind reading other people's needs in those scenarios. So in your example, you know, you're like, oh, I don't want to let her down. I don't want her to think I can't do this to help her. She's made this request of me. when in actuality, the relief she felt in finally hearing from you, I'm like, okay, I can move on.

54:08I can just get it to a writer who could actually do it. More people pleasing, you know, is getting in the way of like, she just needed an answer. She wasn't going to have any judgment on you. It's like, this just has to get done. But I think oftentimes we get so wrapped up in our belief of what we think the other person needs. And that's really where we get in trouble as people pleasers. I don't want to be unnecessarily mean to people pleasers in the audience. They've already got it. They've already got enough of a problem being a people pleaser, But it's interesting how egocentric it is, actually, right?

54:36It's interesting how egocentric it is to think that someone's whole day is likely to be completely made or ruined based on whether you decide to ask for something that you want or take the decision that you want. um i had a version of this when i was um i mean i think i'm a lot better at it than i used to be but even when i was writing this book and it was a little bit late past the deadline and i was sort of you know working fast to make sure it was uh completed and i caught myself like with some kind of mental image of my editor at the publisher who is a kind of high-powered guy who works with lots of like big shot authors but my mental image if i don't check myself is that he's got nothing to do all day but pace up and down his office, wondering where the hell my manuscript is.

55:32Of course, that's an incredibly self-centered thing to think. Of course, what you're doing is not that important to everybody else. Actually, that's a very liberating insight because it enables you to get on with doing what you want to be doing without imagining that other people's worlds will stand or fall on the basis of it. I had a very similar experience recently entertaining family with a newborn and in-laws were in town. And I was like, okay, we got to go out. We got to do things and experience LA and everyone's here. And I ran around and sitting in traffic and trying to get the perfect day.

56:10And at the end of the day, we're back home relaxing. And I just asked, what was your favorite part of the day? They're like, actually the last hour we've been home and we could actually enjoy the baby. and meanwhile I'm sweating it out in traffic and hauling all this newborn stuff around to different destinations in LA and that is not at all what they wanted but that's what I thought would make me the good son in all of this and in showing them a great time in LA no you need to pull that new parent excuse much more much more um forthrightly it's exactly what my wife said. It doesn't last for that long, right?

56:49When my son was born, all the people I was working with and I owed articles to and manuscripts to were suddenly wonderfully accommodating. And it lasted about a year and a half. And then they were like, okay. Okay, I'm on the clock. Good to know. Well, that means it's time to go for our second, right? Got to prolong it. Right, right, right. I'm curious, is there a meditation that you find yourself coming back to over and over again? There's a few of them, but I think the one that I really benefit from reminding myself about is this one that I put right at the end or almost at the end, which I call starting from sanity.

57:28And this is a sort of slightly obscure idea to communicate, but I'll have a go. It's the idea that if you want to be a certain way, if you want to show up in life in a certain way, you have to sort of find some way to do a little bit of that right now today, instead of seeing it as this thing that you're working towards and that you're going to one day manage to bring about. But for now, it's not for you. So one example of this is just one example, but like maybe you're at a stage in your life where you actually feel like a bit more rest and a little bit less frenetic action would be really beneficial for you.

58:09Well, some people will take that and they'll be like, okay, I want to live much more restful life. So in a year, I'm going to take a sabbatical, going to do all these cool things and be a relaxed person. But so to get there, I've got to, first of all, like really put my head down and work hard and get financial security and get all the projects out of the way. So you end up working way harder, right? Because you're seeing this thing that you want as something that you're getting to. The alternative would be to say, how can I find 10 minutes today to do something restful? How can I show up in that way at least a little bit right away?

58:52And I think that's the really important thing. I find it so easy if I don't stay conscious of this to see all the things that I really care about in life as things that I'm working my way towards instead of things that I'm seeking to embody right here. And of course, life is finite, so you can't spend your whole life planning to do things in the future. You have to do them in the present at some point. And unfortunately, we don't know when that finite end is. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us and helping us embrace our limitations, Oliver. Where can our audience find out more about the book?

59:31You can pick up the book or the audio book, which I narrated, wherever you standardly get those things. And then my website, oliverberkman.com, has information about my newsletter and all the rest of it. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Oliver. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

59:57And now comes the part of the show where we showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Sheldon. Hi, my name is Sheldon. I'm an engineer. Before the X-Factor Accelerator, I struggled with approaching new people as well as procrastinating for fear of saying the wrong thing. I joined the X-Factor Accelerator because I felt like my technical skills were recognized, but my ability to communicate was limiting my career. I thought if I could punch up my communication skills, I'd be much more likely to reach my potential. My favorite thing about the X Factor Accelerator is working directly with AJ, Johnny, and Michael.

1:00:31While working with them, I've had breakthroughs in my marriage, while getting better at my job and having more fun doing it. If you're on the fence, I would definitely encourage you to book a call to explore working with them. Thank you, Shelton. And it was a pleasure working with you too. And good luck to you and all of your future endeavors. If you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts, head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show. It means the world to us and helps others find the show. Before we head out, a huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery.

1:01:07Until next week, go out there and be epic.

1:01:19You threw your love away Like you were just a toy And you sold the world You sold the tragedy Cause you had your taste All black on the yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh, yeah, I remember you

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