3015: The Art of Looking Like a Fool by David Cain of Raptitude on Procrastination

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 3015, The Art of Looking Like a Fool by David Cain of Raptitude.com And I'm Justin Malik, and I'll jump right into our next post as we optimize your life. The Art of Looking Like a Fool by David Cain of Raptitude.com

[00:00:23] You've probably experienced a phenomenon we could call the spiral of delay. You put off an obligation repeatedly until it seems so stupid that you haven't done it yet that the thought of doing it becomes almost humiliating. So you delay a little longer. You can't always know what costs

[00:00:44] you'll face in embarrassment and penalties to say renew your tenant insurance 11 weeks late, but we all know that those costs can only get larger when you make it into 16 weeks or 6 months.

[00:00:57] Yet so often we procrastinate anyway for a very predictably worse outcome. I suppose some of you do everything more or less on time and don't know what I'm talking about. You can tap out now if

[00:01:11] you like, or you can continue to listen, not have curiosity about what's quietly tormenting many of your fellow humans. From the emails I get, I know that many of you are horrendous procrastinators like I am, and that for you having something on your to-do list that's two months

[00:01:28] or two years overdue is totally normal, if not exactly comfortable. Part of what we procrastinators worry about is that everyone will find out we aren't really adults. We avoid a task for the

[00:01:43] usual reasons at first. We can't find a good time this week. We need to look something up before we do it, but once we've delayed 6 weeks or 6 months or 6 years on it, we start avoiding it

[00:01:55] for a different reason because doing it so absurdly late is revealing to the world and maybe confirming for ourselves that we are failed adults, incompetent people all around. About a year

[00:02:09] ago I realized it had been about a year since I paid my yearly fee for my PO box. Not sure what else happened that day, but I definitely didn't go down to the post office. I remembered it again

[00:02:21] three months after that. I knew it had almost certainly lapsed by then and it needed to be sorted out, but already I felt dumb for not having acted when a responsible person would have. By

[00:02:34] that point, doing the task wasn't just an annoying prospect, it was an embarrassing one. The usual rationalization surfaced. They hadn't phoned yet, maybe I had inadvertently paid for two years. Knowing I'd feel sheepish and stupid no matter when I went, it seemed not entirely

[00:02:53] unreasonable to do it later. Stupidity grows when we hide it. That was 9 months ago and finally I went down there yesterday having thought about it at least weekly for the last few months.

[00:03:08] This tiny to-do was so built up by this point that walking down there felt like I was doing something much more serious, like reporting for the draft or getting baptized. No matter how

[00:03:20] small the thing, the act of avoiding it for so long makes it huge in your mind. And in a way, it is huge because now the clerk or revenue agent or doctor you're dealing with can finally

[00:03:34] call you out on not being an adult. You would have no defense against this charge, they would only have to ask you the perfectly reasonable question, why are you only doing this now? And you would have to say, well, you see, I'm a moron. Some clever famous person,

[00:03:52] maybe Oscar Wilde or Jerry Seinfeld, once said something like, if you're caught in a vicious circle of your own doing, just turn left some place where you normally turn right. My normal impulse when I do finally tackle an overdue obligation is to do my utmost to conceal

[00:04:11] my stupidity despite the evidence. I feel like I need explanations prepared that are more satisfying than, yeah, I just took an absurdly long time to get around to this. But this time, I did something totally different. I decided to embrace my general incompetence and make no efforts

[00:04:30] to obscure it or minimize it. I figured, it's better to come off like Forrest Gump than to make another vain attempt to come off as the 99% organized person I for some reason think I should be. I walked into the post office fully willing to represent myself as obtuse,

[00:04:49] incompetent, and completely oblivious to what's expected of a functioning person. And wow, was it liberating? I felt bulletproof because there's nothing I felt the need to defend against. There's a strange sensation for me to have no vital areas I felt I had to protect with

[00:05:07] excuses or rhetoric or hope. The truth is, most people you deal with will do anything to avoid openly implying that you're an idiot. That's at least as embarrassing for them as being one is for you.

[00:05:22] Admitting an embracing personal incompetence is a lot easier when you first recognize and embrace the incompetence of our species in general. If you've ever had to hire someone, you've seen at least one convincing sample of human ineptitude in the flood of completely un-hierable

[00:05:39] people that respond to every job posting and who won't hesitate for a second to insist they're perfect for it. Nobody's a grown up at everything. I now believe that all adults are grossly incompetent in at least a few areas, maybe many. Everyone's failings are just

[00:05:58] distributed differently across their respective lives. We meet society's standards and our own in a few areas and fall pitifully short in others. And that's normal. What's not normal is accepting it. We're all adults when it comes to certain things but never everything. Sure,

[00:06:18] I push certain easy things off for weeks or years, but I do floss at least 360 days a year and I wonder how many Fortune 500 CEOs could say the same. So what happened when I finally

[00:06:30] went down to the post office with my usual determination to avoid looking dumb? As you might have guessed, it was completely painless, took less than five minutes, and went down in a way I

[00:06:42] could never have predicted anyway. Apparently they have no record of my having rented the box. At some point they rented it out to someone else even though I was never notified and even

[00:06:54] though I still have a working key. Oddly, or maybe tellingly, the four pieces of mail sitting in the box were addressed to four different people, none of whom were me or the current renter.

[00:07:07] The young clerk was about as embarrassed at the post office's bumbling as I feared I would be about mine and I ended up being the one graciously fielding the apologies. Oh it's no problem,

[00:07:19] I'm sure I'll get cleared up, I said with genuine compassion. The situation itself isn't resolved, she'll call on Monday, but my need to avoid it certainly is. I'm fully aware that at least

[00:07:32] some of the incompetence that created this mess is mine and I'm enjoying this new feeling of being completely okay with that. You just listened to the post titled, The Art of Looking

[00:07:48] Like a Fool by David Kane of raptitude.com. Thank you to David, I don't know about you but I could definitely relate. I've postponed things for years for sure and it really does seem like

[00:08:02] it becomes a bigger and bigger thing the longer you wait, even if it's something really small. And I think what he's getting at here is not really just admitting that we're incompetent

[00:08:15] or a fool, as that would imply that we're all fools since we all do this from time to time, I think. Instead it's a sort of plea for vulnerability right? Or maybe simply being genuine.

[00:08:29] It's something lacking right now with everyone it seems painting the best picture of themselves that they possibly can on social media making everything look glamorous but that's not relatable and being relatable is what makes us truly like each other. I think I'm going to try this next time

[00:08:48] I need to bite the bullet on something and get it over with hopefully you'll try along with me. And with that thank you for being here have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow over the weekend. Wear your optimal life. That waits.