Ep 127: Procrastinating Procrastination
“The area where the brain is most sensitive to and most willing to change is in the area of a risk to survive. So, risk is the area that is rich pickings for changing your behaviour. If you can set up a risk, your brain is interested. Because your brain just wants to survive, right?”
“But what we notice is true about that is that for anyone who does that, it just stops working. Because you can't trick yourself, you can't hold those two things at the same time. Your brain knows now that there's really no valid threat there.”
TIME STAMP SUMMARY
03:04 Procrastination is ingrained in us
09:39 Group accountability
15:20 Consistency pays off
21:21 Using technology to help with procrastination
Where to find Bret Treasure?
Website https://stakesomething.com/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettreasure
Who is Bret Treasure?
Bret is a co-founder of Stake Something, the anti-procrastination app that's just launched in Australia. Behavioural science says if you want to get into action, it works to have something at stake. First, you make a promise what you're going to do - exercise, study, weight loss, quality time, business-building etc. Second, you put something at stake. Money works best.
At the end of the week if you've kept your promise, you keep your money - and you've got into action. If not, the proceeds go to charity. You win or the charity wins. The app works best if you have a coach, so we make it available through gyms, personal trainers, life coaches, dieticians, and business coaches.
Bret married a Brazilian lady and spent 18 months travelling around South America, when they came back to Australia he wanted to continue with Spanish, to get fluent in it but completely dropped the ball. So, when he started the business, he decided to stake studying Spanish. If he doesn’t study Spanish every day for 45 minutes, he has to donate up to $100 on Sunday. He had never thought of himself as a money motivated guy but now he has done 900 days in a row, without missing any! The threat of losing $100 was all it took to make him a super-reliable student.
