Enter the cult of extreme productivity | Mark Adams | TEDxHSG

[Music] you thank you guys I'm very hungover and I have a hundred slides so this probably won't work in about I've been told that in 18 minutes a red dot will appear on my forehead and there'll be a gunshot and my body will fall into this stage and so that would be the end of it in the meantime let's try and learn some stuff so I've noticed from chatting to people today there's there's some really interesting people in this like families here there's people who support each other you guys were telling me at dinner yesterday how there's this real community to the to the whole you know the whole st. Gallen University so I want you to look at the people that you know in this room and kind of just kind of send them a psychic message of thanks for all the support and all the things they've done to kind of help you be the best version of yourself thank you this is good and then while you're doing that I want you to realize that according to statistics global statistics you're looking at the people most likely to murder you and the reason I say this it's a trap right you know those motivational talks and those are cause you read on LinkedIn about productivity and all those things this is the satanic inversion of all of that okay so please forgive me for what's to come so basically I have done a TED talk before and it was banned it was not allowed to be shown they didn't put up on the internet they said that the ideas in it were dangerous so let me present to you the most dangerous group in the world this is the most dangerous TED talk in the world apparently okay so let's see what we can do with it so me and my brother yes sorry about the hair and my brother and I will have always been complete losers and basically the one thing that my dad would always say to us was he's Scottish so he sounds a bit like Shrek you say boys even when he loved us we just felt cold you know it doesn't feel like you love us with him and so he'd say yeah boys remember a joke it's only a joke if both people think it's funny and honestly I'm in my 30s now and I still fundamentally disagree with that I think it's much funnier if one person thinks it's funny and the other one doesn't so all we would do me and my brother was play pranks and practical jokes on each other constantly so this is all we had the only skill we had was this and we lived in situations like this at University as we unleash er you guys know this feeling and why is he at a certain phase of our lives we think it's really awesome to collect a cone and take it home I don't I don't understand that and so strange yeah I really resonated right and so you know we lived in hell basically right this was our house we lived in absolute hell we were complete losers in every possible way our procrastination meters were through the roof we didn't do any workout sites either you're resonating with all this stuff and what's interesting is now my job as you just heard is I have to teach innovation right so it's an amazing situation I don't know how this happened well basically this complete loser is now the guy that's supposed to go and tell you no and I've worked with the biggest celebrities in the world the biggest CEOs in the world and basically I've realized that innovation is kind of BS unless it comes down to change and what's interesting is if I can change anybody on this planet can change okay and so what my current job is now is basically I go and meet with leaders you know I've met with some of them you know like I said some of the biggest CEOs and the biggest celebrities in the world and governments and politicians and I basically go in and I they say can you please change this person who just does not want to change and but what's interesting and this is the kind of serious point is that technology as Lulu was saying a bit earlier technology is growing at such a rate because of Moore's law and another another incredibly exit you know extremely extra thermic reactions to the way the world is changing our human adaptability our ability to change isn't able to keep up so this is actually why I think this information I'm about to give you is actually really really powerful and important because literally at this point in history we cannot keep up with the rate of change and it's going to get faster and faster and faster now obviously this is worrying for you know the mr. Burns's and the CEOs of the world but much more importantly it's worrying for every single business on the planet and for every single human being on the planet you guys are probably training to do things that may not exist in 15 years time I I do a job now that you know my careers advisor didn't there was no such thing as being the head of innovation anyway so it's an incredible moment but what we need to think is how do we update our human operating systems so that the rate of change isn't going to get ahead of us ahead of us ahead of us and leave us in a really bad situation so the common way to do this and because it's nearly January is this right you know this one don't you everyone's like oh yeah that thing and you sit down around January the first you like this year it'll be different you get rid of the cone right no I don't need that anymore I'm growing out of that and you write down all these goals and all these things you want to achieve right and then you're told will power will power will get you there and then you say my name is will power for like three days you are will power and you're walking around and whatever that thing that you're supposed to do is you did it and the thing you're not supposed to do you don't do and then suddenly you go ah I'm gonna read some books and so you get what the kind of success literature in you go on LinkedIn and five productivity hacks of Elon Musk and you go yeah amazing it's amazing I'm absolutely killing life right and then you get into this hacker mentality and everyone is you know you read Silicon Valley stuff you start eating food that they grow on the moon and anyway I've you can tell I was drinking last night and and then life comes along and just goes bang because everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face right and so what we realize is you know this is my contention I read every one of those books I did everything apart from eat the food from the moon because that doesn't even exist and it just honestly does not work right it's time to take a breath and accept but it is another trap this whole billion dollar success literature industry the whole I have to say 95% of TED Talks everything about hacking and changing and trying to alter yourself from the inside it doesn't work okay sorry to bear this news and you can see why Ted have not decided to publish previous TED Talks and and you know why it's a function of time in the film interstellar there's a great line where you notice the old the old scientist has asked you know who's your enemy essentially what you afraid of me says I'm afraid of time this is going to get a little bit conceptual but we constantly think that this person that it's going to do all these things that the five productivity hacks that we read on LinkedIn said to do is to get this person that we're going to be tomorrow right but tomorrow is this place this fictional land where 99% of all human productivity happens but when it actually comes it's just the now again and we're the same person so this version of ourselves so we set ourselves up with like I'm going to be this person I'm going to go to the gym I'm going to stop collecting cones I'm gonna do whatever it is right but when that moment comes it's for now and we're the same person so we think with this guy but we're this guy and what's really interesting is we've been told you know this is the information age we've been told that more information can solve this problem so we read more and we think I'm going to download more audiobooks and then I've got friends that listen to audiobooks at like three times the speed so they can consume more information so they can learn more so they can change but that doesn't create change as someone just went yeah it's one guy dad anyway so we're really in this and I fundamentally believe it's a trap and I think it's a very profitable trap for a lot of people so we're told if you consume more information if you read that other book I'll have you read then you stop oh yeah well if you read the other one the long long tail I don't know you you've got to read this one well and I'm not saying don't read I mean I've never done any reading number doing me any harm but whatever but the point is it's a fundamental situation when we have to accept that we don't need any more information I've learnt from teaching celebrities CEOs governments you know even politicians how to change and how to move with technology is they don't need me to come in and tell them more stuff they know what they've got to do like you all know what you need to do to pass through exams and all the things you need to do to do the be the people you are the question is will you do them so at certain point you've got to kind of fess up to this it's you versus you and I'm not certain that the version of you that you think you want to be and the version of you that acts in the way that you're not so happy with I'm not sure that those two can honestly be said to be the same continuous self over time it's more actually I think we might be modelling this wrong and I think economics the economic paradigm has given us this Homo economicus kind of you know transient preference all doing they call it it's basically the same person now as we will be at 2 o'clock in the morning you'll see at 2 o'clock in the morning at the after party I will not be the same person so I'm just going to be totally honest with you I went through a period where I was very very very affected by this I was reading everything there was to read I was really getting into all this stuff and it wasn't working for me I was my procrastination me it was through the roof roof as I said and I really honestly began to sell flows I thought I knew I could and I knew what I needed to do but I just wasn't doing any of it and instead of doing it I would read more and so actually I started to get to the point what I was suffering from unbelievable anxiety and and panic attacks and I'd be sitting there and it was basically because I literally chronically was building up this expectation of who I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to do and never ever delivering on that expectation and I hope this is therapy because I think we never talked about this we're told that we're supposed to always feel like yeah we're moving forward and the BS that we tell each other was yeah you know it's not going well actually but I think that we're building this anxiety and the moment that it really kind of changed for me was my Nana you can see in the middle here and you can see my brother and me and my family running around this is my family so you can see kind of where I'm coming from really and my Nana was diagnosed with cancer and I'll never forget this my mum I'm a Nana had a chat and the Nana said she would love when she's in the hospital to have a little tape back in the day of music so you know she couldn't use iTunes doing this stuff so my brother and I said we will make you this tape and we will get it to you in your hospital bed and my mum phoned of a couple of tensions at Nana's really looking forward to that tape it's gonna be great like can you can you can you hurry up though because you know she's not well and we said yeah yeah went out on another night out got Conan Doyle at home and went crazy and did other things and kept procrastinating kept the crass name kept putting it off kept putting it off remember Nana sent him on the phone loved that tape I'm literally in this hospital room all on my own all the time is you know really appreciate that tape yeah sure we'll definitely do it tomorrow absolutely you know what's gonna happen right one day mum called and said Nana's gone no don't worry about the tape and that was the final straw me and my brother just went this is it we have procrastinated our way through 95% of our life we've sucked both suffering from crippling anxiety and now the one person that we absolutely loved that we owed something - we didn't do because we were caught in the in the moment and it was going to be this future self that was going to do it that never arrived so this mixtape really changed things and we really tore apart in the middle and said write never again and we basically found through research research this global subculture of people who actually this was back in the days of the dark web and you could get on there quite easily and do sorts of things and anyway that's enough now and I'll submit to am and and what we realized was that from Silicon Valley to Shanghai there are people with a system that doesn't run anything like the system we talked about just a min ago and this system is called locking and I want to give you this this is a dangerous idea okay this is this is the dangerous bit lock-in is one of those things where if you want to go down the rabbit hole you can go all the way down so this is kind of cover your ears if you don't hear anymore lock-in takes the idea that we are not the same person over time very very seriously and it basically says that the person you are at time a is a very fundamentally different person that you could be at time be because of your preferences and the way that you're set up and basically those as I said you know you have a critical self a self knows you've got to make that tape for your Nana and knows you've got to do that work knows you've got to do your TED talk tomorrow and not go out on the night before like I did and an experienced yourself that wants to live in the now so this future self this critical self that knows what it needs to do and consists consider time and this myopic experience yourself that wants to maximize in the present moment and they as I said are not friends this is a very famous footballer George best you can see him having his experience himself on the left-hand side here and his critical self was the one that paid so you have this moment where you have something that's what we call in law a distributional issue of justice over time well that basically means is that you maximize so much at one moment that you completely take from the futures that and the person you take from is yourself in the future so smoking drinking all these things they essentially take from someone but that someone is someone that you don't have any relationship with yet but it's you so this becomes this really metaphysical thing and it was really interesting when George Best's died he you know he literally wrote this this this thing saying don't do this and so we started researching this and going really deep into this and there's actually this thing in demonology where in in Judaism is this demon called the yet sir and the yet sir basically pulls you away from the self that you could be into this this this more this this far lower self that actually tears your life apart so actually we started to take this idea really really seriously and if you look at it personal decisions are now the leading cause of death and you have this situation where whatever it is that there was this distributional issue of justice that we have to deal with it's causing so much angst so much pain and now with the economy changing so fast if we can't find a way to upgrade ourselves we're in deep deep deep trouble so that's what I thought now is the time to bring this idea out and it makes sense because we're foraging animals right we literally maximizing the moment because of our evolutionary psychology and like you know the classic example of this is Adam and Eve Adam and Eve got chucked out the Garden of Eden they got chucked out of paradise for an apple I mean maybe there's a metaphor there which I haven't got but you know there's an Apple right and look they look like they fell out mom dad I'll come on like but so what you end up is is it is this moment wait we forage we take what we can eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die so we're constantly maximizing the present moment so how do you escape this demonic trap you've got to find a way to lock in your critical self yourself that knows what time what time is gonna is gonna require of it and lock in so when that werewolf self starts to come out you can't let it control you and Ulysses is the classic example of this so Odysseus knew that the sirens were going to be calling him and he tied himself to the mast and told his men to completely ignore everything he said and this is this is game theory so in game through it's all about mutual assured destruction it's all about changing the payoff matrix so you've got to make it really expensive really painful and massively consequential if you don't do what you know you must do so these things don't work these things do and we built the world on contracts we built the commercial world that we live in on contracts I can contract with you about sorry about this but I can contract with you about anything almost right and we accept that there are penalties and punishments and enforceability to that contract consequences if I don't come through with what I'm supposed to do but there's no such thing as that with promises that you make to yourself so we started to say what if we support each other what if my brother makes a promise and I enforce it because promises without the sword are nothing but words and so this is the kind of Apocalypse Now if you've got to make fear your friend so you've got to be so afraid of not achieving that the cortes when he arrived in south america burnt all the ships so there was no way back for the men he made fear their friend there's now ways of self excluding yourself from casinos so the you literally can't get in and what will happen is this other version of yourself will try and fight back it'll be like an exorcism right but eventually it's gonna finish with this if you embrace the fact that it's more terrifying to fail than it is to succeed you will achieve insane things and this was me at buckingham palace collecting an award this is my brother don't to Harvard and and we only achieve this stuff through this and I just want to say if we can achieve anything and update the human operating system that fast I think there's something in this for everyone and hopefully we can use this get a bit more specific about it and build into a system and actually try and try and update ourselves as far as technology is having us to update ourselves thanks so much guys Cheers [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 2,176,456

Rating: 4.6824861 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Future, Productivity, Self improvement

Id: 2paoNvG5Nmo

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ferocioushulk]

I quite enjoy watching tutorial videos though. Sometimes I'm actually not in the mood to be creative, so I watch someone else doing something I can't do yet. It's educational and quite interesting watching someone who is good at their craft.

[u/thewholeisgreater]

It’s called ‘procrasturbation’. Pretending you’re honing your craft by watching hours of tutorials on YouTube but actually avoiding the one thing that’s going to make you better: practice.

[u/tbone28]

I watched the video. After it was done I was left feeling confused and I didn't know why. It took me an hour to figure out why. See, I have been producing like mad in my free time on music. I finished my 90th Bad Song so far. Procrastination isn't a huge issue for me. I mean it's an issue of course because doing what we know we need to do is always a problem for anyone. But the reasons we procrastinate are not so simple. Sometimes we are telling ourselves to take a break or some other need is getting ignored.

But what this video did to me was bring me out of my normal relationship with things in my life. He lulled me back into this idea I use to have that there are things in life can be certain about. That idea is what creates a ton of anxiety. My normal approach to life is one of facing chaos head on. It's a life of improvisation by listening, paying attention to what's going on and choosing the best course of action knowing full well that I don't know what the results will be. Being comfortable with uncertainty and making my best guess all the time as opposed to the certainty that I think things will work out.

The fact of the matter is that every other person in my life is just a walking ball of chaos coming to hand me problems for me to react to. But my job is learning to make decisions as fast and efficiently as possible, to train myself to deal with the uncertainty of life by honing my ability to handle things I might not be prepared for.

Go confidently into chaos with the knowledge that you can and will figure out how to handle it. Oh and you will fail. That's the one thing you can be certain about. But failure only solidifies when you give up. Turning failures into stepping stones of success IS the process. Believe that you CAN do it is where it all starts. And it's crazy to believe that. I hope you all are as crazy as I am.

[u/alkot04]

What's with this video popping up every where

[u/Thefriendlyfaceplant]

Reminds me of a hilarious Reddit showerthought:

"Future you will be talking shit about present you."

And the top response:

"Joke's on him, I'll ruin his life."

[u/koolcat1101]

IDK I feel like I was able to learn much faster by spending almost all of my time copying video tutorials while they play during the first few months of starting production. But after that yea I agree. It’s just I feel ur doomed before you start a song if you don’t watch enough tutorials.

[u/genesis_rebirth]

True. Pretty much what I'm actually going through right now and not throwing myself into it like I used to. I kept thinking that I needed to learn more, and worry whether I am doing it perfectly before I make the next song, but in fact I should just make it, have fun, and enjoy it with what I already know.

[u/CashyoOfficial]

Oh man exactly what i need

[u/just_some_gomer]

im going to watch this later