Highlights
- want to do something, Jim does a calculation:
How much time and energy will this take, and how much reward will it bring?
- If Jim thinks the reward on effort is too low, he puts a “tax” on that activity. It’s still possible to do it, but it requires a lot of willpower.
- Jim is stubborn and opinionated and skeptical and illogical.
- Taxum 1: Doing the thing is too unpleasant compared to not doing the thing
- Taxum 2: You don’t really believe that doing the thing will work
- You don’t think you have the ability.
- You don’t think you have a good plan.
- Even if you successfully did the thing, you don’t really think it will matter
- You think no one else will care
- You yourself won’t care.
- Taxum 4: The timeline is too long
- if you’re procrastinating, look for the bottleneck.
- Do a different thing. So far we’ve tried to outmaneuver Jim. But sometimes he’s right. Maybe you can’t do the thing, or it won’t matter.
- We say we want to get in better shape so we can “be healthier”. But really we want to be hotter so we can date hotter people or impress folks at work.
- be brutal about your motivations.
- Work on the thing with others