Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan, and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results. 

ONE Thing gang, I’m super excited about this episode. I just had so much fun recording it. This week we talked to Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She’s the author of Tiny Experiments and the brains behind Ness Labs, a massive hundred thousand plus subscriber newsletter that explores productivity and all things how we think. 

Now, what’s beautiful about Anne-Laure’s approach is that she’s super practical. She’s looking for ways for us to introduce new behaviors to your life. So, if you’ve struggled to get that new routine going, Anne’s going to share PACTs, some of her simple formulas for how you can start a new behavior in your life by lowering the stakes. You know, kind of like we talk about with the first domino, getting to that first domino and building that first parts of a habit, she’s able to give us some really practical advice on how we can start to transform our lives. Without further ado, let’s jump in and learn from Anne-Laure Le Cunff. 

All right, Anne-Laure, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. I’m so excited to talk about your book, which I literally finished this morning. So, it’s all fresh in my brain, super excited, and the parallels and where we can go with the one thing are really strong. But before we kind of go down the path of how do we tackle procrastination and how do we defeat perfectionism, which you write very eloquently about, but set it up. You talk a lot about making PACTs. What is a PACT? 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
What I call a PACTis a commitment to curiosity. It’s saying I am going to explore this specific action for this specific duration. It was inspired by the scientific method. So, if you think about the way scientists conduct experiments, they say, “I’m kind of curious about this phenomenon. I want to understand what’s going on here. And so, I’m going to design some form of test, so I can collect data and then make decisions,” but they don’t do it just once. If they did it once and something happens, you can’t really draw any correlation out of this. You need to do it several times and see if every time I do A, I get B. Huh, there’s something interesting here. 

So, that’s what a PACTis, is kind of testing a hypothesis that you might have about your work, about your life, about your relationships, about your health, by saying, “I’m going to try this one thing for a specific duration. I’m going to withhold judgment. I’m just going to do the thing. And at the end, I’m going to see what happens. I’m going to analyze my data and make decisions based on that.”

Jay Papasan:
Okay. And PACT stands for something, right? It’s an acronym. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes. It stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable.

Jay Papasan:
Is that the hard part, to design it to be trackable? Is that where people stumble?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Well, not really because people confuse it with measurable. And measurable means you have to have specific metrics that you need to measure and keep in a spreadsheet; whereas, what I mean by trackable is just tracking whether you did the thing or not. So, it’s yes or no. And you can use any kind of tracker for this. And as long as you show up and you do the thing, done.

Jay Papasan:
Well, we wrote about that when we talk about the 66-day challenge in our book in building a habit. The power of just tracking and building a streak, which is the old Seinfeld story we don’t have to go into. So, that makes sense, you make a PACT. Like right now, I know that you have a PACT that you publicly do these. So, what is your current PACT that you’re doing with yourself right now?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
My current PACT is to work for at least 20 minutes every day for 20 days. And the reason why I designed this PACT is, again, it always starts with observation, just noticing that something maybe doesn’t work or something you’re curious about. And in my case, I’ve been spending a lot of time in front of my computer lately, and there have been several days in a row where I would get to 8 p.m. and I realize that I hadn’t left the house. 

Jay Papasan:
Oh wow.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yeah, pretty bad, and this is the kind of thing where a couple of days might be okay, but if you keep on staying inside and not moving your body, not getting any sunlight, we know the effects this has on your mental health and physical health. So, I said, “Let me design a PACT here, so I can commit to doing this action.” I committed to walk for 20 minutes every day for 20 days and to create accountability. I’m filming a little video every day on my walk and I’m posting it on Instagram.

Jay Papasan:
Yeah, I think I saw you walking in the rain, which is like, “Okay, rain or shine, I’m gonna keep this PACT I’ve made with myself.” I think it’s funny, I share with you, just coincidentally, I commented on that, that we started out the year, and me and one of my coworkers, same thing, we’re gearing up for a convention, we get trapped at our desk, we just said, “Let’s go outside for 15 minutes every day.” And now, different groups of people that know we do it just join us. And we have like five paths around the building that we walk. And that little design, like you talk about it, we can go into it later, but motion, getting your body in motion is good for your mind.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yeah, absolutely. And really building that regularity and that accountability also, because it’s so easy to just skip one day, and then two days, and then three days, and then you just stop doing it. But when you either, in my case, filming a little video, in your case, doing it with colleagues, building that accountability is going to make it more likely that you actually complete the PACT.

Jay Papasan:
Yeah, I love it. And doing it with others is more fun, too. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes. 

Jay Papasan:
Yes. You talk about doing it in public. We can go deep into your book. Now, I want to talk about these are tiny experiments. So, some of these, you’re going to do. You may decide, like, why would I ever stop walking for 20 minutes a day? This makes me feel good. It gets me away from my computer. I appreciate nature. Whatever the benefits are, you have a little program I want to go into plus minus next, where you evaluate what you’re doing. But you’ve got this, and they’re tiny experiments. And some, you’ll just end, hypothesis concluded, some you’ll add. 

What I love about the words tiny experiments is you’re lowering the stakes. And what we’re going to talk about today, procrastination and perfectionism, they show up at the door of The ONE Thing every single day. We have a lot of high achievers that are listening to us right now. They’re in the car, they’re trying to squeeze this in, they’re probably listening to this on 1.5 or two times speed. Their maximum efficiency and those little time blocks that you write about and I get them. But they often, sometimes, will make the task so big in their ambition that they start having other emotions around it that cause them to procrastinate or that their perfectionism kicks in. 

So, I just want to say, I love the idea of tiny experiments because it lowers the stakes. And it just means, this is something I’m going to try. If you go into the clothing store and you try on something, the stakes are low. You like it or you don’t.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yeah. And that’s the thing with ambitious people, as you said, is that they want to be successful. We want to be successful. And because of that, we tend to sometimes focus a little bit too much on the outcome. That creates the stress and the anxiety. When instead of focusing on the outcome, you focus on learning, growing, evolving, just having this sense of momentum, having a sense of direction, something you can explore, it really completely changes your relationship to success and failure.

It’s not this binary thing anymore where if you complete the experiment and if you learn something new, including that that thing didn’t work out, that’s actually learning something new, I tried the thing, it didn’t work out. Then, that’s success. That is success.

Jay Papasan:
And it doesn’t hit any of those triggers about how we judge ourselves. So, it just compliments me. I know you’re actually a scientist. So, experiments came natural but it actually works for adult learners, especially the achievers that we talk to every day. So, like I kind of hinted at, when people aim at a big target, and they’re doing these linear goals, like this year I’m going to do this many widgets or I’m going to be first in this or that, they create these big goals, two things that show up with us a lot are people will start to procrastinate.  And in our teaching, perfectionism is a form of procrastination, I believe. So, you’ve broken it out as a large enough category. But procrastination, you really eliminated, it can come from multiple areas. So why do we procrastinate? 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
I’m really glad you’re asking this because I think one of the main issues we face with procrastination is that when we experience it, we just try to squash it, destroy it, deal it. If you go online and you search how to manage procrastination, a lot of the articles have titles like How to Beat Procrastination, which is pretty violent, right?

Jay Papasan:
Like you’re trying to beat cancer.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Exactly, and we just find, you know-

Jay Papasan:
It’s a disease.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
It’s a disease. We treat it like a disease. We treat it as something where there’s a lot of shame around it. This is not necessarily something where you’re going to tell people around you, including not your team or your boss, “Hey, I’ve been procrastinating a lot on this project.” That is just not something we do.  So, I’m glad you’re asking this question because I think the first step is to try to understand the source of your procrastination, not trying to beat it, to destroy it, trying to understand it.

Jay Papasan:
Why am I paused on this? And I want to jump in because you said the magic word. And I want to read a quote that you shared and it’s by, I guess, Susanna Newsonen. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yeah, Newsonen. That’s the way I would read it.

Jay Papasan:
Okay, got it. “Should is a shame-based statement that creates stress and anxiety in your body and mind.” And we talk about people shooting on themselves all day long. “I should be doing this now. I should be doing it. I should have done it earlier.” And I think that there’s something about, kind of, the way we judge success, we talk about the busyness trap. People will be busy. And I borrowed some of your research for a recent podcast and I gave you credit, like they will choose to be busy, just because it fits, kind of, their self-image better than sitting idle. Like idleness is a bad thing.

And so, the idea that you’re delaying doing, like we’re so much of our identity is attached to the doing of things. Like people, not only should on themselves, and they should on each other, and we should on our employees. And that creates this shame cycle. So, like the emotional element of how people deal with procrastination, I think, is very real.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Oh, absolutely. The shoot part is so important because when we procrastinate, we just assume that we should be doing the thing in the first place. So, I think this is why when you try to understand procrastination, it’s important to just start by questioning that assumption. And I break down how to understand the different sources of procrastination into three different buckets. You can go through them in order. I call this the triple check. And it’s head, heart, hand.

Jay Papasan:
And that nomenclature, you’re a student of history as well. Wasn’t there a scientist that started with that framework very, very early, or is that all yours?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
No, it’s Dr. Kerr, who I interviewed for the book. 

Jay Papasan:
Okay, there we go. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
So, he studied the science of motivation. And so, he doesn’t specifically talk about procrastination in his work, but when I interviewed him, I felt like the framework that he designed where he looks at the rational, the affectional, and the practical reasons behind motivation could actually be applied to procrastination as well.

Jay Papasan:
Yeah, am I motivated to act or not? It makes total sense to me.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Exactly, exactly. I do refer to his research in the book, and I kind of expand on it and tweak it a little bit and turn it into a tool. 

Jay Papasan:
Oh, you make it practical. Yeah, you make it very practical, and I only wanted to highlight almost everything that you share, even when you make it wholly your own, is based on deep research. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
It was.

Jay Papasan:
But hopefully they remember from the intro, like you’re actually a PhD scientist. Like you approach your work with seriousness. I wanna give you credit for that because, a lot of times, when people are promoting their books, the self-help is full of a lot of mythology. And a lot of things that sound true, the truthiness that we talk about, that isn’t really based on facts. I just want to appreciate, like, you’re building on real research to make your recommendations, which are practical. So, the head, how does our head play into procrastination?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
So, the head is the should that you just mentioned. It’s this assumption that we should be doing the thing in the first place. And so, the first step in the triple check is to question the task, the source of procrastination, at a rational level and asking yourself, “Should I really do this thing?” Because quite often, that’s not the case. That could be that you should not do the thing at all. Sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense with your values and your priorities and whatever ambitions you have for yourself and your business. Sometimes, it is that you’re not the right person who should be doing the thing, and maybe someone else should be doing this. 

And that’s very interesting because I don’t mention that in the book because obviously there’s so many different directions you could go into, but if I had written this book 20 years ago, another person that should do the work would have been a human being but, nowadays, maybe you should not be doing this, maybe an AI should be doing it for you. So, that’s a question that you can ask yourself, “Should I be the one doing it?”

Or if you should be doing this, is this the right way to do it? And sometimes, because we go straight into execution, maybe the way of doing it is not the right approach. And there’s resistance in our mind at a subconscious level where we actually think that this is not the right way to do this. 

And so, in those cases, you can actually tell your team, “Hey, actually, I feel like that’s not the right way to do this. Can we just go back to the drawing board for a second and talk about that?” So, that’s the head, that’s the rational. And again, that’s the signal from your procrastination telling you something’s wrong here, and maybe we should think about this a little bit more.

Jay Papasan:
Okay, I love that. And like when I think about how we would evaluate things, I would go to, kind of, like, is this a priority for me? We think about prioritization in our framework. And that’s a very subjective question. Is it the thing that I should be doing or should I be delegating this? Am I doing it just because we’ve always done it? Like some things, we’re just in a groove, and we’ve been doing it, and we don’t question, “Do we still need to be doing it?”

That’s actually one of the biggest things I see in organizations. The boss says, “Hey, on every Friday on this day we’re gonna unlock all the doors.” And there was a good reason for that, and everybody gets behind it, and they start doing it, and people kind of turn off the head, they aren’t asking, “Should we still be doing it?” And then, you’ll see, like in one of our corporate trainings, the boss will be like, “Y’all are still doing that?” And they just didn’t know. And people are doing it based on invalid information. 

So, just even asking the question when you’re doing a triple check, you can go revalidate it. Is this still something that we should be doing? And then ask, should I be doing it? And what’s the other one? Should I be doing it this way? 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes.

Jay Papasan:
Right, okay. So, past the head test, do we go to the heart next? 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Exactly. So, let’s say the head says, rationally speaking, good to go. Still, I’m procrastinating. So, something’s wrong. Let’s go to the heart. If the problem comes from the heart, it means that at an emotional level, even though rationally, you’re convinced you should be doing the thing, you don’t feel like it’s going to be fun. You don’t feel excited. 

And in those cases, again, that’s a great thing with the triple check is that not only does it help you pinpoint where the problem is coming from, but it also gives you potential directions and solutions to explore. So, if the problem might be coming from the heart, then it’s about redesigning the way you approach the task. 

For some people, that could be as simple as changing your environment. Maybe you want to do this in a coffee shop, not at your desk. Just go for a walk, go to a coffee shop and do the thing. Maybe you don’t want to do it just on your own. Maybe you’ve been looking at this thing, it’s quite daunting, and doing it with a colleague would actually make it easier and more fun.  So, why not organize a little co-working session, grab a couple of colleagues that you like and tackle the task. Just do it and make it more fun. Maybe you want to create some form of reward system around it where you say, “Okay, I actually cannot come up with a way to make this fun. Maybe it’s my taxes or I don’t know. It’s just-“

0:16:41  Jay Papasan:
Cardio.

0:16:42 Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Cardio, yes. So, maybe you walk while you do it and you do that at the same time. Or maybe you just say, “Actually, I’m going to have a really nice dinner with my spouse tonight if I manage to finish this thing,” which is just creating a little carrot that motivates you to do it and that makes it a little bit more fun, something to look forward to. So, that’s the heart. That’s the emotional aspect. You know you want to do the thing, you just need to make it a bit more fun, exciting, and enjoyable.

0:17:07  Jay Papasan:
So I’m hearing, change our approach to it. Maybe I don’t need to be doing it at my desk. I can do it in a different environment that would make it, maybe, less onerous. I mean, some work’s just hard. Work is work. And you have to find your motivation. Maybe I can do it with someone else. We talk about group accountability, and I work much better with witnesses. If I’m at home, I can rationalize 50 things that I should be doing for my wife instead of doing my next job task. And I can even say, “Isn’t that a higher priority?” but I’m really just procrastinating all day long. So I know the power of being around other people, it makes me perform better. And the last one is just to reward yourself, right?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes.

Jay Papasan:
I find sometimes I also can change just the order of work. Like I know that I’ve got to write things, but if I give myself choices, just the act of being able to choose what I’m going to do first, sometimes, can change my attitude around it. Or I know I have to write these three things, and I probably should do this one, but this one is speaking to me right now. And so, I’m gonna follow my interests, because it’s actually gonna be a better work product anyway.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
And this is really finding that connection with the heart. And especially for someone who likes to be quite productive, we have our systems, and we might have a bit of resistance around what you just described because we feel like we need to plan our time in advance, we need to decide what our schedule is going to look like, we have a task list that we need to follow. But I think what you’re proposing here is actually a lot more efficient because you are going to tackle your tasks in a much more efficient way if you go with the one that resonates right now and where your mental energy kind of feels aligned with the work.

Jay Papasan:
Yeah, we can’t go down there in the time we have, but you devote the beginning of a whole chapter to, kind of, energy and time management. And I guess that’s where I’m going with this is that maybe I’m going to flip the order of activities. They’re both have-tos, but just flipping the order, which changes my energy around it and leaning into where the energy is versus trying to force it. Because you can only grit your teeth so many times during the day or the week. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
And so, that brings us to?

Jay Papasan:
Yeah, we have the hand.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
The hand now. So, we’ve gone through the triple check. The head says, we should do this. The heart says, okay, I figured out a way to make it fun. And you’re still procrastinating. So, it might be a problem with the hand, and that’s the practical level. So, that means that although, rationally, yes, you’re convinced; at an emotional level, also convinced; you feel like at a practical level, you don’t have the right skills, the right tools, or the right kind of support to get the task done. 

And in that case, again, once you know that, it’s a lot easier to find a solution. You can just raise that hand literally, and tell your manager, your colleagues, or someone, “Hey, I actually do want to do that thing but I’ve been struggling.” And that may be as simple as taking an online course to acquire that skill, getting coaching, mentoring, going through some tutorials, having a colleague who’s done that before just sit with you and walk you through the steps because it’s your first time doing it. And it’s not that difficult to solve for once you know that it is just a practical issue. You just need to solve for that and then you’ll be on your way. 

Jay Papasan:
You’re almost in a loop now, you’re back in your head trying to come up with the problem-solving. I would throw another one out there. Like I think I read this year someone did like 20 ultra marathons in a row. So, you talk about a not tiny experiment. I think you can also just right-size the assignment. 

And we talk a lot about this and what’s the first domino? And the first domino is like if you believe in momentum, this idea, and I think you write about of kind of the short-term mediocrity for long-term excellence, that I’m going to make small investments that are actually meeting my abilities or the threshold of my abilities because, then, I’ll follow through and I get results and I get the feedback.

So, I have to say that out loud because so many people who listen to this podcast, they look up and they run straight for the 18th domino. It’s like, “Oh, the leaning tower of Pisa, it’s already leaning, I can knock that sucker over.” They just have to think so big, and there’s a tremendous impatience. So, right-sizing it, I think people forget the power of momentum, because getting into action, if you can’t do that, nothing happens. So, get into action with the right size. I love all of the practical tips. Any last things on the head, heart, and hand, because we probably need to go to break, and then come back and hit the other topics.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
The only thing I would say is that if you go through the head, the heart, and the hand, and you’re still procrastinating, and this is something that you find yourself doing all the time despite being someone who’s quite high agency and ambitious, it might mean that there is something deeper going on, and it’s very uncomfortable when we have to face this, but it might mean that in the way your work environment is designed or in the way the support that you’re getting from people, it might mean that you might need some hard conversations. And so, it can also be a diagnostic tool for some bigger issues if you keep on using it and still something is wrong.

Jay Papasan:
Right. That’s like you talked about it as you’re in the wrong system. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes. 

Jay Papasan:
And we talk about your environment doesn’t support your goals. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes.

Jay Papasan:
And that’s if the people and the place that you’re around is ultimately kind of the barrier, then you do have to ask some hard questions. Great, I love that. So, we’ve hit procrastination hard. Stick with us, folks. On the other side of this break, we’ll come back, and we’re going to dive into perfectionism, which I think is kind of a cousin of this conversation anyway. 

We covered some great strategies for overcoming procrastination, how we can use the three-point check – head, heart, and hand – to kind of figure out how we get through that and ultimately if we’re in the wrong system altogether. The kissing cousin to that and what we see is perfectionism is people, maybe because they’re aiming too high, they have crazy standards, they’re trying to please other people’s expectations, all the reasons and you may have even better ones for why perfectionism is a thing, this stops people in their tracks. So, when do you see perfectionism in the timing experiments and how do you coach people through it?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
And so, the problem with perfectionism is that we have this illusion that we can be perfect across the board, in every single area of our life and our work at all times, which, when you say it this way, sounds ridiculous. But somehow, this is still the standard that we’re creating for ourselves. And that creates a lot of problems. 

Well, the first one, obviously, is the pressure, the anxiety, the stress this creates to try and reach this impossible standard. The other problem that we have with this is just communication because instead of telling people, “Hey, I might not be fully present for this thing because I’m focusing on that other one,” we just try to do everything, we fail, everybody is frustrated, including ourselves, when if we had actually embraced the fact that there would be some level of imperfection in different areas, it would have been so much easier for everybody to be aware and to just know what to expect. 

And lastly, just in terms of general success, people who are clear with themselves and with others as to what are the areas of their lives where they’re going to aim for near perfect, and what are the other areas where, temporarily, they’re going to maybe put a little bit less focus on the energy. So, really practicing this intentional imperfection across work and personal life do tend to succeed more, to be more efficient, to produce better work and to have better relationships.

Jay Papasan:
I like that language, and you used Italy for that in your book, this kind of intentional imperfection. And that goes back to the very beginning of this conversation, tiny experiments, like getting into action is the first thing. How do we get all of the impediments out of the way? And if perfection’s standing in the way, how do we give ourselves permission without it feeling like we’re copping out or we’re lowering our standards? Because I think it’s not, “I’m lowering my standards, I think I’m extending my timeline.”

If you’re really attached to a high standard, and you used the example, and I’d like for you to share it, you were writing this book while you were completing your PhD. So, you had to make some very visible trade-offs in different areas in order to achieve your standards in one. Will you just walk through that because I think that illustrated the problem perfectly.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
I love how you say visible trade-offs, because I think that’s the key here. There are always going to be trade-offs, and it’s about whether you are accepting them and making them visible for yourself and for others. And so, that’s what I tried to do during my PhD. So, I was completing a PhD in neuroscience while writing the book, while running a business, and I also had a social life. I wanted to be here for the people I love. And so, that was a lot of competing areas in my life where I wanted to actually show up and do a great job. 

So, what I did is that for my PhD, I communicated very clearly to my supervisors that there would be some opportunities that we would have to miss just because I was not going to be able to be that superstar PhD student that goes to every single conference, that applies to every special issue to publish something in there, that gives every single presentation that they’re offered to do. I would complete my PhD. I would complete my research at a high standard. I would write the papers I’m supposed to write from a PhD. But I would probably not be able to do a lot more than that. And I communicate that fairly early in the process. And that made it-

Jay Papasan:
We call that setting expectations.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes.

Jay Papasan:
Right? When expectations are set well, things go so much better. And unspoken expectations are the source of a lot of heartburn. But I know a lot of people are afraid to have that conversation. Was that a tough conversation to have?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
I think, for me, it was a little bit easier because I have a lot of what psychologists call self-complexity. And self-complexity is when you derive value from different areas of your life. You’re not putting all of your eggs in the same basket. I briefly mentioned it in the book as well, but that’s why some people, when they lose their job, and if they have a really good relationship with their spouse, they end up being okay, because they have other areas of their life. 

Jay Papasan:
Their self-worth is generated from multiple areas. It’s not all tied into their job or whatever.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Exactly, exactly.

Jay Papasan:
I got it, okay. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
So same in my case, because I have all of those different things going on, I can say, “Actually, it’s fine, I’m not going to be perfect here.” The anxiety came more from imagining what their reaction would be. And that’s what’s interesting too, is that most people actually are very glad when you communicate clearly with them, because usually they also have other people to report to. And so, that allows them also to manage expectations at another level. And so, they can say, “I have those five PhD students this year. This one told me that she’ll do a good job, but don’t count on her to show up at every single conference and she just communicated that. I’m letting you know now.”

Jay Papasan:
And she’s also writing a book. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes. 

Jay Papasan:
Right? It’s like, “I’m not gonna do these things.” We call it saying no to say yes. But you’re communicating, I’m gonna say no to these things, but I’m also saying yes to this. I bet they’re really proud to have you as a PhD student with this book coming out.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yeah, they’re both coming to the launch, actually. So, both of my supervisors. And they’ve been really supportive. The fact that they knew also allowed me to say, “This week, I have a deadline for the book. So, I’m so sorry, I’m going to be a little bit late for this research paper, but I will get it on time by the deadline.” So just being transparent.

I think the main issue, in general, is that when we fall prey to perfectionism is that we create this impossible standard for ourselves when other people actually are not expecting that from us at all. So, if you tell them, “I’m going to write this book. I’m also going to use PhD. And so, obviously I’m not going to be able to be at 200% for both of them,” they will understand. Quite often what happens is that that pressure is not coming from other people. You’re the one who decides that you are actually going to be 200% across the board.

Jay Papasan:
You’ve created an imaginary standard in their head. And so, I look at this and I think about this as a leader. So, if you lead a team, this is real. Your people may be putting unrealistic standards on themselves because they think that you want that for them. And I know some people would be like, “Well, I’m happy for them to overperform.” I think there’s a limit though. Like you don’t want people to burn out and you don’t want them to have an unhealthy relationship with work because, then, you look up and your most talented people burn out and leave. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes. 

Jay Papasan:
It helps to, I think Brene Brown says like, “Paint it done for me.” Can we just talk about what winning actually looks like for people, and then have an honest discussion around it. So, perfectionism, you have to have that discussion with yourself. And if there’s other people playing, we have to have it with other people. Can we dive in a little bit into this idea of short-term mediocrity for long-term excellence? That’s a phrase that stuck with me on many levels. Can you explain what that means for people?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes, absolutely. I give the example in the book of Ben Trotsky. He is a trader, and he had a very interesting approach to trading. What he did was that in any given shorter time period, like at a weekly level, monthly level, he was not necessarily always trying to make the most amount of money. He was trying to make decisions that make sense to him and where he was performing great, but not taking too much risk. 

And at the end of the year, every year, I think it was 10 years in a row, he ended up outperforming all of the other funds by making those daily decisions where he aimed for good performance in the short term to achieve excellence over the long term. What he realized when he was interviewed a long time after, when he was done and he could kind of spill the beans and say why it worked, is that all of the other traders that try to achieve excellence in the short term were taking too many risks.

Jay Papasan:
There we go.

0:31:15 Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
And so, they were being reckless with the way they were managing their money. And so, they had those big losses that they could not compensate for by the end of the year when we would look at basically how much money you made over the last 12 months. You can apply this to your own resources. They were trading money, but we have our resources on a day-to-day basis. We have our time, we have our energy, we have our attention. And when we’re trying to be perfect, across the board, all the time over the short term, we burn through these resources to the point where we take too many risks. And as you said, we burn out.

When we’re a bit more strategic, and when we say actually, not going to use all of these resources here. And that means that I’m just going to do a good enough job here for now, because I have this other thing I need to pay attention to, I can trust that at the end of the year, when I look back, my performance would have been something that I managed to sustain over the past 12 months, and I can actually achieve extraordinary results when I do this.

Jay Papasan:
People underestimate the long-term impact of showing up, even in a smaller fashion, on a consistent basis. When I was interviewing Gary at the end of last year, he just said, people want intensity, but there is intensity found in consistency as well. And it’s incredibly powerful. It’s actually far more rare. A  lot of people can get up and say, “I’m gonna run really fast today.” There are very few people who will consistently get up and say, “I’m just going to run today.” And that makes them stronger and stronger and stronger

So, I just think it’s hard because this need to win, a lot of folks listening to this, a lot of the achievers, the people who fall prey to perfectionism, they don’t just want to win, they want to get the gold medal. They want to be on the top of the pedestal every single day. If we can teach them, if we can all teach ourselves to play a longer game, well, not only will we get to the top, but we’ll get to stay there, right? 

When the bond trader, like he’s looking up and people are cutting corners. They’re not being fiduciaries for their clients in an effort to be number one. And I bet some of them ended up in jail because that’s what happens a lot of times when people are too committed to the short-term win and they’re not playing a long game. Are you trying to have a great year? Are you trying to have a great career? They’re very different questions.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
And again, there’s the communication aspect of it, which, as you said, like with their clients, for example, and thinking about who are the stakeholders in your life, and being able to say, “That’s what I’m doing. I’m at 80% here, because I have to be at 120% over there.” Communicating that, making sure you get the support that you need, and winning together over the long term. 

Jay Papasan:
If you’re going to do anything well, you’re going to disappoint people. Let’s at least start off by disappointing the right people. Let’s not say no to ourselves to please other people. Let’s not say no to our families to say yes to our work. But we can have honest conversations. And this is for me, I’m 25 years into a marriage, there are years where I am leaning and trying to help Wendy. And there are like whole years where she’s having to be my support. And you can’t do that without communication. That’s how relationships work. 

So when you talked about resources and you burn through them, the word in my head was relationships. The biggest cost of that lifestyle, in a business, it’s resources. But you can also say, well, human resources is a really stale, kind of yucky name for people and relationships. And those are the things that are most precious, I believe, and we don’t want to burn through them in that pursuit either. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
You can’t really recharge these afterwards. Your energy levels, you can burn through them and then if you rest for long enough. If you heal, you’ll be able to come back. Relationships, that’s just not something you can do once you’ve burned that bridge. 

Jay Papasan:
I love that. All right, so you’ve helped us with procrastination and perfectionism. We’d like to give a thank you. And I’m gonna tell everybody, if you haven’t read this book, I marked it up. I showed you like I’ve got my marginalia all through it and I think that there are wonderful connections, like you talked about sequential success in the book. One thing at a time, we both rift on purpose and how we can connect to bigger things.

So, I think fans of The ONE Thing will find a lot to love here and they’ll learn new things. I want to give our listeners a challenge. Based on what we’ve talked about, maybe they’re identifying with procrastination or perfectionism, what’s a challenge we could give them between this episode and next that they could go and maybe take the first step?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
I would challenge you to go through your calendar for the past week, look at the way you’ve been doing things, and your routines, patterns, things that are just the way they are because they are, and you’ve just been doing them like this for a long time, and design a little PACT, just something different, a little PACT, something you want to change. I will do this thing differently for the next week, just one week. Try it. And see what happens. 

Jay Papasan:
A tiny, tiny experiment. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Yes.

Jay Papasan:
everybody can do that. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff:
Thank you for having me. 

Jay Papasan:
Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Fun fact, Ann-Laure was talking about her 20 minute daily walks, her new timing experiment. And I shared that me and my partner at work were doing 20 minute walks as well. So, what did we do after our recording? We went outside and we walked in the woods for about 20 minutes together, catching up and learning more about what each other do. Anyway, we shared it, we actually did it authentically, and I hope that you figured out a timing experiment to do in your own life. 

Next week, we got a fun episode. It was recorded live at our annual convention in Las Vegas. I’ll be talking to you about a framework that has proven to add hours back to your week. Can’t wait to share it with you. Tune in next week for a live recording of The ONE Thing.