"Infinite Jest" - Stop Procrastinating & Being Lazy... Get Your Life Back

today i got a little thought experiment for you i want you to think about every single thing that you interacted with today every single external thing you came into contact whether it was something you saw on your phone or something you saw as you were perusing the internet or something you saw on television or maybe even something you heard on the radio even in a passing vehicle now i'm putting forth the idea right now that every single one of those external things that you interact with is purposefully designed to waste your time and not just some of your time left unchecked this stuff will literally waste every single second of your time until you're sort of trapped and amber you're trapped in this state of hibernation of torpor where you have basically no agency of your own and you're just sitting there trapped at the mercy of these external things simply waiting to die things weren't always like this of course for the vast vast majority of human history there was no such thing as a distraction or even a hobby for that matter because you know back in the day you would spend literally every second of your life struggling to survive like every second was spent in activity that was designed to stave off your death okay much like the old aesop fable of the ant and the grasshopper if you ever heard that one basically you know there's an ant in a grasshopper they're in the summertime the living is easy and the grasshopper is kicking it at like a backyard barbecue by the pool he's fading a beer with the honeys he sees the ant going by carrying you know leaves doing putting in that work to collect his leaves for the winter he's like yo man come come crack a beer have a cold one with me it's like no man winter's coming winter's coming and he's like nah that's ridiculous and then lo and behold the winter arrives and then you've got the the ant who's kicking back in his well-apportioned ant home with a bunch of leaves enjoying his his delicious leaves and then you got the the grasshopper chilling out in the cold the snow freezing his ass off begging the ant to let him in and give him some of those delicious leaves and the ants like nah dog you should have worked harder in the summer right so basically again for most of human history that was the case if you screwed around when winter came you were gonna die straight up so you know this is a large reason why or in fact probably the main reason why civilization formed in the first place you know initially we had tribes then we had villages and over time the people in those tribes and villages they began to specialize they began to you know create a division of labor so each person could contribute according to their skills so you might have a guy who's good at hunting so he'd go out and he'd he'd hunt and you might have somebody else who was better at gathering the berries and then maybe you had someone who was the medicine man etc etc right and that was kind of the or the very simple order of things at first but then things began to get more complex and the specialization became even more minute right you'd have a maybe a butcher or you'd have a farmer or you'd have you know a guy who made the shoes or the blacksmith or the baker the candlestick maker so on and so forth now us humans being the relatively simple creatures that we are we ended up taking all of the specialization to essentially what amounted to its logical conclusion without really giving any thought to the eventual ramifications of all of this so then eventually we get to a point where a couple of centuries ago we now reach as a result of all this the industrial age you know industrialization comes up and then eventually in the 20th century now you're starting to see a lot of conveniences okay things like canned foods appliances like the vacuum and you know the the dishwasher and the clothes washer and dryer etc and all of this stuff gave rise to what was heretofore an entirely unheard of concept this concept of leisure time and by the 1900s now we got a situation where even poor people had leisure time now right whereas before they would spend all their time either like you know scrubbing their clothes on a washboard or sewing their socks back together now even poor people had free time and this was heralded as this you know incredible achievement it was going to usher in a golden era of human potential because now that people have time now you can learn latin or you can learn how to play the violin right well how many people actually end up doing this stuff though right very very few even today again we've got more leisure time than at any point in history yet everyone no one's really taking advantage of it and why is that well quite frankly it's because all growth all learning is essentially movement into the unknown and as such it's frankly a little bit scary and beyond that it's going to require some actual effort you got to get off your ass and do something and then of course there's also you got to take into consideration the fact that there's going to be that initial pain period where you don't see the results yet and it's confusing and it's frustrating and and again you just kind of want to give up right you want to take the easy way out and i remember when i first learned uh you know how to go out and meet people and i learned how to improve my social skills so to speak i remember it was very difficult for me i went through that exact same pain period where i didn't see results and i remember very distinctly one night it probably been a few months uh you know that i had you know begun the endeavor and i remember i was like tonight i'm gonna go out and tonight i'm gonna make a new friend to come home with and and have some nice fun back at the house with them possibly some canoodling you know a romantic time i'm gonna meet a new friend and come back home with my late night guest and i remember i prepared my bedroom for this eventuality i i was like cleaning the room i was cleaning all my socks off the floor cleaning the bathroom the toilet seat and you know preparing a disc of romantic music to put on that i downloaded from limewire or kazaa and actually burned onto like a cd getting all that ready making the bed okay it's everything's dusting with a feather duster i'm like yes now it's all ready i'm ready to go out and meet my new late night guest friend and then i went out and i did not meet a late night guest friend and i came back home alone and i remember just sitting in that room and i was just so gutted that i couldn't even cry you know because the cleanliness of the room was actually underlining highlighting and underscoring the failure in other words you wouldn't have cleaned this room unless you thought you were going to come back home with a guest right and it was just like putting a spotlight on the failure and i remember thinking at that moment you know having a little bit of a pity party i was like you know what are you doing dude you're not getting any better at this you're just making a fool of yourself and i remember very distinctly you know going out one night to this place i would always go this local bar and i remember as i walked by these two women i heard them say i overheard them say oh my god look it's that dude he's getting worse every week like in terms of like my my demeanor my behavior my garish attire and it again it just kind of cut me to the quick but i remember also thinking this what's the alternative what is the alternative to go on and just keep being a chode so to speak i was like no that's no longer an option i cut off that option right and i remember thinking to myself if this takes me down if this endeavor somehow defeats me i'm gonna go down with my fingers white knuckle wrapped around his throat so what happened there is i had emotional leverage and without that leverage if you can't find a way to get that kind of leverage you're not going to be able to get past that pain period where you don't see results why why is that well quite frankly in our society convenience is set up as the ultimate goal any sort of work any sort of effort any sort of discomfort of any kind is basically portrayed as a nightmare right this is what this is to be avoided at all costs in fact anyone who does anything that's even slightly inconvenient on purpose they're looked upon as some sort of eccentric right do you know somebody maybe who doesn't own a smartphone like oh i have this i have this nokia phone you'd be like why what is he doing what is this guy doing right it's considered eccentric so basically we're geared towards avoidance of exertion and so avoidance of exertion coupled with all of this free time gives rise to an entirely new phenomenon boredom right and again boredom was never something that we had to deal with for most of human history but now we're looking for something actively to fill all of this free time that we have and these days what do most people gravitate towards to fulfill that need to fill the time they gravitate towards quite frankly entertainment so last year i finally got around to reading the david foster wallace novel infinite jest now if you've never heard of this it's an absolute beast of a book it's about 1100 pages and it's got like a hundred pages of footnotes and some of the footnotes have footnotes right in fact it's a real pain in the ass to read let's just put it that way but i did end up getting through it and it actually became one of my favorite novels so the central conceit of this novel is a film called infinite jest also referred to in the novel as the entertainment and this is a film that is so entertaining to its viewers that they lose all interest in anything other than just repeatedly viewing the film and eventually as a result of this they die right they don't want to go to the bathroom they don't want to eat they don't want to sleep they just keep watching this film over and over again until they die and if somebody turns it off or tries to take it away from them they have like a psychotic break and they start screaming put it back on put it back on and in fact uh in the near the beginning of the novel this film is mailed to someone the guy like oh what's this opens it puts it on he gets sucked in and and he dies his wife comes home is like oh what are you watching she sees it immediately gets sucked in she dies their friends are like what's going on they go to their house to see if they're okay they go in they see it they die eventually like firefighters and emergency workers arrive they break in they see oh these people okay they see it they begin watching it they die more firefighters are sent and finally they're like you know what something's going on in there we need to cut the power and then they cut the power and then they finally are able to go in and ultimately like 20 people die right that's how it's introduced and then ultimately terrorist groups try to get a copy of it so they can broadcast it to the nation as an attack and and so basically this super entertaining film that makes you watch it till you die this is kind of the macguffin if you will that drives the entire plot so it's like the ultimate drug or the ultimate like addictive online video game right the viewing of it renders you catatonic now this is very interesting because this is a novel about entertainment that has been weaponized essentially to enslave and destroy the population in this book it was written in the 90s uh 1996 if i'm not mistaken and i think it's kind of eerie how he sort of foretold the danger of the internet and of social media today you know i mean let's face it we've all been stuck in a loop we've all done this where you have like your laptop open you've got the tabs open and you just kind of click from site to site you know you start you go through reddit and then you go to facebook then you go to instagram then you go to twitter then maybe you scroll tick-tock a little bit and then after all that you're like well maybe there's something new on reddit and then you go back to reddit and the loop starts over and over and over and over again and you're knowing damn well that you got to stop this you you know while you're doing it while you're doing this you're like i'm in this like insane procrasti procrastination loop i got to stop this but you just can't pull yourself away from it can you right or again maybe even to the point where you've had this experience where maybe you're like scrolling like tick-tock or something like this and it's like three in the morning you're tired as hell you're like i need to go to sleep i'm physically tired i need to go to sleep you can't stop you can't stop doing it okay so this is very similar to what wallace is talking about in this novel now the title of the book infinite jess it's actually from the shakespeare play hamlet uh in an act five you know hamlet uh it's that famous scene where he's holding the skull of the court jester and he's like a last poor yorick i knew him a fellow of infinite jest right so that's what we're looking for today we're looking for infinite jest but beneath that infinite jest is infinite sorrow this world of endless distractions endless amusements endless addictions and eventual recovery without any real reason for continuing to live your life is no longer your own and it's really no surprise then that suicide is is a major theme of that book and one of the characters in fact kind of in a a whimsical way he does it by putting his head in a microwave and turning it on right so the question is this how is it that we're so filled with amusements we're filled with so much information more information than we could ever cope with or ever process so much technology so many distractions and drugs and comforts such availability of education and self-development yet at the same time at the core of it all there's this emptiness right this this empty headedness it's that same sad grinning empty skull that hamlet holds the end of all our thoughts all our jokes all our plans it's like is this it is this as good as it gets this is the end this is the infinite jest of life and what the does it all mean look there's a lot to unpack here you know in that book especially and i'll probably end up doing another video just about that book but the one big takeaway for me was this when i read that i was like dude quit wasting your life on just stop it you only get one life and it's ending one minute at a time as old boy tyler durden said in fight club and ostensibly you know this already yet you still act like there's unlimited time in your life to waste you don't exercise you procrastinate you know i'll get around to it i'll start exercising next week you know i'm not going to die this week so who cares but here's the thing man your real life doesn't start next week or after you get the promotion or after you get your new haircut then i can do the video it's happening right now that's reality okay and here's a big red flashing neon warning sign for you if you don't change anything next year is gonna look pretty much exactly like this year and so will the next and so will the next and so on and so forth if anything is gonna change you are the one who has to step up and make it happen if you're totally happy with your life right now that's great however at least in my line of work as a coach you know i don't usually meet people who are like a hundred percent satisfied with their with every way with their own lives right now right the people that i meet on mentoring and in my life coaching programs these are the people who have made the decision to change right they got that emotional leverage and they're willing to suffer for it but in most cases they just need some kind of direction and you've got to decide and decide the latin root of that word is to cut off all other options you've got to get that emotional leverage that i spoke about a moment ago right i see it all the time my life coaching clients you know you'll get these clients and ostensibly their goal is to meet people i want to go out i want to meet people i want to form these new connections for business i want to form these new connections for friendship i want to form these new romantic connections but the problem is this they're not able to own their own intentions they cannot own their own intentions when they're meeting someone so they foot around in the conversation they never introduce the proposal that they want to introduce to the other person again whether that's a romantic proposal whether that's a business proposal whether there's just a proposal to hang out again in the future and so what happens they get about five minutes of polite conversation followed by the person giving some excuse to leave i gotta go find my friends i gotta go dance i gotta go get a drink i gotta go to the bathroom i gotta shoot myself in the face it was nice to meet you poof they're gone why because they simultaneously want two things on the one hand they ostensibly want to form these new connections on the other hand they want to avoid rejection embarrassment loss of validation possible confrontation so emotional leverage it's the idea that we move away from pain and toward pleasure and whatever you want more is what's going to manifest these guys want to avoid the the rejection they want to avoid the embarrassment so they never they never own up to the intention and they don't get rejected they don't get embarrassed but it never goes anywhere either now on the live program i'm pushing these guys very hard to go meet people and they might meet 30 people in a night and if they're not owning that intention then they're going to hear it was nice to meet you 30 times how long is going to take that individual going out on their own without that direction to get that response 30 times six months a year maybe never but again in that in that live coaching situation now it's this aggregate right this cumulative effect of nice to meet use and boom the scales tip and now the potential pain of making that change has now become outweighed by the very real very visceral pain of continuing to do things the way that they've been doing it and boom all of a sudden they've got that emotional leverage so you have to find a way to get that emotional leverage and beyond that you need a goal and you need a plan and again you cannot be afraid or too ashamed to get help don't let your ego make you arrogant your time is valuable you want to seek out mentors coaching courses whatever i spend tens of thousands a year on various mentorships and coaching programs to focus on areas that i feel i want to improve on okay so again this isn't just me saying it because i happen to be a coach i truly believe in this stuff right whatever you got to seek out to get that help seek it out and start today start now and stick to it even when you're tired or even when you don't feel like it or even when the opportunity for maybe some mindless fun presents itself do it right fun is the reward right it's the reward it's like dessert after you do the work it's going to be so much sweeter like that when you go to that party when you crack that beer when you've done your work first you know we all have that we've all heard that saying and i totally believe in the saying work hard play hard yes but of course the corollary to that is what business before pleasure right around screws you up not immediately that's the interesting thing when you slack off and you procrastinate the negative effects don't happen right then and there they happen down the road but you know this you know this on an intrinsic level as you're procrastinating right you can feel it slipping away while you play your video games or you watch your hentai which is an acronym that stands for wholesome entertainment that never involves tentacles or anime titties and i'm lying so steven pressfield in his book the war of art which is a classic book that i engage with almost on a daily basis actually he talks about this idea of resistance as almost being this supernatural entity that is trying to prevent you from accessing your higher purpose and staying on your path and this happens in part due to self-imposed success barriers right you limit yourself because and you know there's a variety of psychological reasons why this might happen in a nutshell you're kind of afraid of the additional complexity that would come with a higher level of success whether that's in your relationships or your finances you know if i were to step up to that higher level i would have to grapple with this new these new layers of complexity and i'm not sure about my ability to deal with that so i limit myself you limit yourself so i think it's very important to kind of take a bit of an introspective tack and really examine how are you limiting yourself and how does that manifest in your daily behaviors so and then take action on that so this could mean you know you set a limit no vid no more video games or tv or or puffing the weed until after work is done or for a set period or instead of watching tiger king you know maybe you watched something educational or inspirational like you know the last dance about michael jordan or uh the defiant ones about jimmy even and dr dre's billion dollar beats deal you know stuff like that that's kind of taking a more inspirational tack as was this mindless gibberish about a dude with a mullet case in point but or maybe you you know you read a book on self-development or business again become obsessed with that knowledge is power it's godlike power in fact it gives you an edge over the other people who are kicking it with tiger king and look i ain't gonna lie look i struck the reason i make this video is because i struggle with this just as much as everyone else you know very often when i'm about to sit down to write content for example i'll feel very reluctant to start the work i'm like oh just pop open reddit pop open the tiki takis right i feel that all the time but once i'm able to overcome that resistance again using various gambits i that i've you know discovered about how i operate once i sit down and start composing i'm like beethoven you know i'm fully immersed in the craft so back to the main point how are you spending your time if you're not where you want to be in life and you are currently watching any tv or playing any video games or watching college football if you're not doing any of that at all then you're a dumbass i'm sorry i'm sorry but it is what it is if you spend every single night partying your face off then you are the reason for your current failure not your circumstances not because your employer isn't supporting you enough not because life is unfair if it's you if you aren't engaging with as much new information and knowledge as possible you know within your desired field of study with clear goals and a plan then maybe you should just admit you really don't want the success that bad and guess what that's fine dude that's fine however if you do want all of the rewards that come from success start with yourself look within take note right take account how many books have you bought but you haven't read that are like sitting on the shelf we call that shelf help you know how many of those books are still sitting there waiting to be read how many opportunities are you ignoring how many invites for collaboration and help are you not bothering to accept because it's too inconvenient for you in other words are you just sort of believing that you know oh one day magically all of this is going to resolve itself and your life is going to begin your real life will begin look time is the only commodity that we actually have and once you get ahead of steam going you'll actually be shocked at how much you can accomplish in a few weeks and furthermore how quickly that time passes when you're fully engaged so look ignore those friends that are begging you to come out and take shots with them shots shots shots right ignore it they're not going to support you they don't necessarily want you to fail but they're not gonna really care that much if you do either they're like oh so sad about jeff how he failed anyway on with my life so look i'm gonna say it one more time time is the only commodity we have so what time is it it's time to decide it's time to get that emotional leverage on yourself to get on your path as they say and create something real and by the way that's always been our mission myself and my colleagues to help people stop being this like little leaf in the wind being blown around by all these distractions and entertainment and get in the driver's seat of your life this is very serious and quite frankly a lot of people i i think in today's age they become a little cynical to the degree where a message like this is very often dismissed as uncool right this sort of postmodern irony has become kind of an end into itself right you know this this hip sophistication people don't want to look sentimental they don't want to look naive self-development looked honest a little bit dorky and quite frankly this is a big part of why it created the charisma mentoring program right to help you create that sustained and permanent change to help you build those habits build those skill sets that you'll literally take with you for your entire life right to help you create the life that you want and do so very fast and the key is ultimately investing in yourself and investing in your future so if you're tired of living in that sort of dormant hibernation state and you want me to guide you through the process hit the link in the description below and go to charismamentoring.com and you get me and my team in your corner okay with the most detailed curriculum very detailed missions accountability factor and twice weekly personal calls for eight full weeks this program will change your life you'll approach interactions differently you'll make better friends you'll make powerful business connections you'll make stronger relationships and ultimately it's going to allow you to build the life of your dreams don't cheat yourself out of the opportunity for greatness okay everyone everybody want to talk about it who going to be about it and quite frankly i'm tired of seeing people not live up to their full potential all right it's game time let's go this program is designed to give you a process to open and sustain charismatic expression with increasing consistency remove the obstacles isolate the skills exercise them separately then put them together in a more completely realized hole how to speak to all the issues surrounding this inner relationship between intuitive and intellectual resources is arguably the most fundamental challenge facing anyone who's attempting to improve their communication skills so if you're looking to develop general charisma that you can apply across all areas of life definitely check out jeff's charisma mastery you

Channel: Jeff Allen Charisma Mastery

Views: 10,533

Rating: 4.9155354 out of 5

Keywords: jeffy, jeff allen, charismatic people, emotional intelligence, intellect, vocal mode, energizing, imagination, vibe, jeffy charisma, jeffy charisma mastery, presence, jeff allen charisma, charisma mastery, voice, self expression, jeffy videos, charismatic, giving value, charisma tips, facial emotions, rsd jeffy charisma, hot to stop procrastinating, how to be productive, how to stop procrastination, stop being lazy, how to stop being lazy, laziness, how to be more productive

Id: pSqHzkxW_2U

Length: 27min 41sec (1661 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020