Dean & Dan talk about the future-self paradox and the breakthrough while listening to a Kevin Smith video that our future self is just our present self, next week.
We all have aspirations that our future self will be able to 'do more', but unless we take steps today to set that up, our future self will be left blaming out past self for inaction.
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep006
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: You must be the organizer because the voice told me that you're the organizer. I would never have thought of you. I would never have naturally used that word to think about you.
Dean: Well, I can accept that. I can accept that. That was …
Dan: Obviously, yeah. Obviously, this whole thing about your organizing must be deceptive. You must be doing this under the radar.
Dean: Well, I've had a breakthrough. I've had an interesting understanding over the last, since we last spoke.
Dan: I want to hear it.
Dean: It's fascinating because it's something that maybe we've heard before or heard off of but it was regarding all this talk of future self and this was interesting. I'm calling this the future self paradox. I saw something on Kevin Smith's Facebook page the other day. Now Kevin Smith is a film director who's got a huge audience, cult following. A lot of people probably don't know who he is but he's quite popular. He's a down-to-earth guy. He had a thing on his site, a video where he was just explaining this idea of how our future self is really our present self, just next week kind of thing.
Future self is not going to be any different than our present self, no different than our present self today is any different than our past self was last week, right? That we all have these aspirations that our future self is going to figure things out. We put things off to the future self thinking that they're somehow smarter than we are and they're somehow you're going to be able to figure this out.
The reality is that our future self depends on present self to figure stuff out and make it so easy that our future self doesn't have to make any of the big decisions because they're not going to do anything different than what we're doing today.
I thought, I got that on a different level this time.
Dan: I mean it's really, the whole thing … I'm putting together a mindset scorecard on procrastination priority because this is the next book in the quarterly series so this will be March 1st book.
Dean: Nice.
Dan: I'm putting together the eight mindsets that we've really explored since we started talking about this in July. I just came up with something because I've been totally surrounded for 43 years by fairly ambitious entrepreneurs. I mean this is my daily activity is talking with entrepreneurs who are out of the ordinary in terms of talent. They're out of the ordinary in terms of success and they're out of the ordinary in terms of ambition. I'd notice that some of them are perpetually excited about this but a lot of them, it's a burden, all three of their talent, their success, and their ambition.
I was using the word future self but I said there's another word that has to be put in between future and self and it's whether a good word is that it's future-directed self or future-trapped self so I'm using the word trap in there. What I noticed the difference between whether the future selves and we all have this. I think it comes with the equipment. It's factory installed on human beings that we have this ability to imagine into the future and see ourselves in a better state and at a higher level of capability having greater confidence, we have this ability to do this.
For one of the crucial decisions in the world is whether that's an asset having that or whether it's a burden. It's a burden and therein lies the difference between whether your future sense of yourself actually makes you happy or makes you unhappy. I think this goes along with what you're saying is that we have this ability but different people treat it differently.
Dean: Yeah. I think you're right. What struck me about what that thought that Kevin was saying was that future self is no different than present self. Future self is really you right now just next week, right, and you're not. It's next week or next year and it's not going to make any difference any more than what your past self did to get you into the situation that you're in today. I thought, men, they're so … You know when you're working on things that are going to assist future self.
I'd look at the things that I get to and it's almost like this is the positive focus sort of things. It's like looking at the progress of saying, at one point you could say wow, I wish I could write books. That would have been the past self saying, someday I'll write a book but it wasn't until putting all of the pieces themselves in place that I could get present self to take action on putting together a system that makes it so easy for my future self, which is now present self, to write books in 90 minutes.
I guess my present self right now is basking in the assistance of what my past self did at some point in the present to make it possible for me to now write books easily. I wanted to …
Dan: Yeah. I was going to ask you a question about that. When you get to the bottom line of what ...
Dean: I lost you a little bit there at the end. You're a little bit muffled here.
Dan: Am I back?
Dean: You are but you're kind of muffled a little bit.
Dan: That's interesting because you're …
Dean: There we go. That's better. That's really good. That's good, yeah.
Dan: This line of thought that you're pursuing from the Kevin Smith's post, if you work backgrounds, what does the logic of that tell you are always your very best activities for today. And what I mean by this, always the very best activities for today that more or less guarantees that your future self will automatically be better without you having to think too much about it.
Dean: You hit it on the head. That's exactly it.
Dan: Yeah. I'm asking you as a question. I'm asking you as a question.
Dean: I think that yes, understand … First of all, I think getting clear on what you want, I think that's one great activity is being able to look up into the future and see what you want to set an aspiration that way and then to start figuring out well, how could I make that so that I could do that because I'm really just, I mean future me is just me in a week or a month or a year from now, unless I think any. Something's going to change I'm going to have to do something to make whatever it is that I want to be effortless, because that's what my present self enjoys is things that are effortless.
It feels like I always put off and that's really where we come right down to it with the procrastination is, I always want to put off the things that are perceived as not pleasant to future so let's let future self deal with that.
Dan: It's almost like … I mean there's the famous saying, the definition of craziness is expecting that you can do this today. You can continue doing the same things today and be absolutely sure that you're going to have a different future as a result of doing the same things today. In other words, if it's an addict, if it's an addiction, I can drink as much as I want today because I know absolutely that that will give me a sober future.
Dean: Yeah, because in the future I'm going to … I might as well do it now because in the future I'm not going to do so.
Dan: I'm going to drink myself into sobriety.
Dean: Oh man, that's what it is. I'm going to procrastinate myself into productivity. It makes no more sense than drinking yourself into sobriety, does it?
Dan: No, I mean it's the same logic and I think that one of these that I'd like to really because Joe Polish, your buddy, has really gotten me thinking probably more deeply about the whole issues of addiction because for Joe's very openly communicated personal history with it but also his passion for helping other people with it. But somehow I feel and I think it's probably the subject of another one of our joy of procrastination podcast that there's something that I sense almost right from the beginning that procrastination, the habit of procrastination may be one of the trigger elements that leads to addiction of different kinds of addiction.
I mean there's all kinds of addictions but that is the continually putting off of telling the truth about something that has to happen today. In our last podcast, you talked about now, you get up and you tell the truth about your procrastinations and then use the three most important ones to actually be the trigger for, okay, so these are the things that I have to accomplish today and it's driven by telling of the truth about the procrastinations and I think that a number one rule in the 12 step program, which was the original Alcoholics Anonymous, is all progress starts by telling the truth.
This is Bill Wilson who is the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous or one of the founders and the first step of the 12 step program is you have to tell the truth about what's actually going on. I would say that maybe procrastination, I'm just going to make this statement, it's o be proven but the habit of procrastination is actually the fertile starting ground for lots of other kinds of addictions.
Dean: I bet you're right, it's all in there.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but it's this notion that there's a reality to the future, that the future has a reality that's in some way disconnected from what you're doing today. I believe that you will become something but I'm not going to really prepare myself today for that future, something that I want to be.
Dean: Now it's really interesting because when you said, you asked that question about what does that mean about my activities, what was your observation?
Dan: I mean one of my observations since you've been in the 10 times program which goes back five, going on six years now, that this has become the most productive part of your life. I mean that just gives you … You're getting enormous numbers of things done which you talk about that as different from a previous period of your life.
Dean: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I agree 100%. Part of that is because of setting up things to support me in what we would call my unique ability. I think this idea when last week, we drew the diagram showing that A, B and C activities and the friction there of that really, it gets down to the most valuable thing that we can do today, the present you can do is to start paving the way to make things easier for future self.
Dan: It's really interesting, I've got and this really relates to what you work on today, the whole question and I have just really, really noticed a radical difference in mindsets among entrepreneurs and you can take two people who are talented, successful and ambitious but that doesn't really tell you about their mindset. It tells you about the result of a mindset but it doesn't really tell you anything about their mindset because we're born with certain capabilities.
We can be born in more favorable places, we can be born in more favorable times so it doesn't really tell you anything about how the person goes about being talented and successful and ambitious. What I noticed is that there's a spectrum here from left and what I worked out for myself, now this is my own personal system that I don't really think that much about money.
We have some big strategic coach. We have some really big future levels of profitability and revenues that we want to get to and we use that to work backwards to actually say, well, if that's the end result in the future then what's got to be the game plan right now. I've got a thing called the 6Cs and the last C is cash and cash is a capability. I mean there's no question about it, that's the future cash. There's a lot of problems in the world that disappear if you can use the cash to solve the problem.
What I notice is that most entrepreneurs get fixated in cash because they think that cash is the get out of the past card. It's the get out of the press and get out of the ... in other words if I have 10 times more cash, I would be able to get away from everything I dislike in my present circumstances or Id' be able to buy off the past.
Dean: Right, that's a really interesting line of thinking because I'm having a similar thought about that, about the role of money in things and that is it possible? I often, it's been … You think you and I both have this idea of looking at money as a resource, really. It's really a construct beyond a certain amount like it's not really in itself the thing that changes things.
I've had a conversation with people just even in the last 30 days where I've asked them, "How would your life change? Just give me the timeline if I deposited $100 million in your bank account right now. How would that change the way that your life is set up right now and in what order?" When you look at it right away there's either you can. There are things that are … I don't know what you call them, not symptoms but the consequences, I guess basically, of your past procrastination has maybe gotten people into a situation where they're in debt and that causes some stress and that causes some less than optimal performance there.
Certainly, money can push the reset button but it's not going to solve the problem that got you there in the first place, right?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very interesting. Peter Diamandis, he and I have had some really interesting discussions about his conversations with people who could write checks today that would launch tremendous competitions whose end result would bring about new technological breakthroughs, new scientific breakthroughs.
He says it's really weird. You would think that for them, someone, let's say, they're worth in the billions. They're 2 or $3 billion which there's actually quite a number of people in today's world who have at least net worth, I mean, total net worth. They might not have liquid, nobody has liquid. They're total net worth unless they're hiding it. They've got a really big pillow. The mattress is really big and they're spending a lot of money on guards just to … Then they have to have guards to actually supervise the guards.
The thing about he says it's really odd that, he says, he doesn't even bring up the topic with these people anymore. Peter's really mastered this, the art of having incentive competitions where you define a particular technological, scientific breakthrough. Then you out up a price for it and then it's open to the world because it's advertised on the internet and anybody who has an idea or a talent can actually compete for this price. He said, you think if you had let's say $3 billion that putting a $25 million price up.
You couldn't even round … If you're worth 3 billion you can't even round off with 25 million. I mean, that's such a small percentage of what you have. He said he finds people very, very resistant. I said, well, what is their incentive for having 3 billion? He says it's the status of having 3 billion and for them to write you a check for 25 million. They don't even have to write it up front. I mean, it's with the price. The check actually doesn't get written until the goods are in.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, right.
Dan: Some of these timeframes are like three years or four years so you don't have to write it right now. He said what he's noticed is that they passed into a different realm of thinking. That amount of money has actually put them in a realm where they become very, very nervous about next you're being known as having less than $3 billion. If the status … it's actually the status of being on the billionaires list which is now their main incentive. In other words, you started a conversation about talking about the future self and their future self is that they have more than $3 billion. They're certainly not worth less than 3 billion.
Regardless of how much actually productive and creative use that money could have been put to. For them, that's not a meaningful idea. It's that fact that they've now attained a status in the world and there're all sorts of privilege that comes along with that status and there's all sorts of admiration and even idolization that comes from having that amount of money. I said that's really an interesting thing. I said, first of all, he's in a position to have that conversation. I personally have never met a billionaire. Well, maybe I have but I mean the person may be an advertised billionaire but you don't know what the reality of it is.
It's very, very interesting is that's where money has become something besides a resource. It's become a status item. It's no longer an active what you and I would say is … If I put this into a new capability or I put this into a new form that would make my life easier in the future. If I invest it today then I'm going to get this. They'd somehow pass into another realm.
Dean: It doesn't sound like in a good way. I mean, it becomes the future self-trap that you mentioned, right?
Dan: Yeah. Well, it's a future trapped self. In other words, it's become static and one of the things that I say to the entrepreneurs in the program because you know who you're hanging out there. They look like pretty ordinary, average Americans, British, wherever they come from. It's not noticeable on the outside what their financial success is. The thing that I noticed about the happiest of them … Again, we go back to happy and unhappy here that they have a future dynamic self. They don't have a future trap self. In other words, there's a difference between the self they're seeing in the future and so it's really interesting then.
I would say the same for the task being I'd been going the other direction and I have a habit now, when I'm planning a goal in the future, I actually do a moving future before I'll do something like an impact filter or a strategy circle on the future thing. I'll actually do a moving future and for those who are not familiar with the moving future exercise in strategic coach is that you do a survey and you can make a time period backwards and a time period forwards but you start with backwards. For example, I'm just doing the one now for the new workshop which starts on Thursday and you'll be there.
What I do is I go back three months before Thursday, December 1st coming up so I go right back to 1st of September and I say, "What are the things that I've done since September 1st that I feel proudest about?" This could be in my personal life. This could be in my business life but anything that gives me a sense of pride. It's a real winning achievement and I'll go through and I actually listed 10 things that had happened since. All of a sudden I can feel a real jump in energy and then I just bring myself to the actual day of December 1st and I say, "So what am I'm doing right now that gives me a real sense of momentum?" Again, there were about eight or nine things including our podcast series.
I've actually reminded myself of about anywhere from a dozen to 18 things that are already true. They're done achievements or there's a lot of movement that makes the experience. I do that before I even think about what the future result is going to be now three months down the road. What it makes it … It's very, very interesting. By the time I get to that future and that's where motivation so I call it morale, I've raised my morale about the past. I've got a sense of momentum about the future and then I got a real sense of motivation. It becomes very easy for me to actually identify well, 90 days from now I got five or six things. If that represents my achievements over the next 90 days then I'd be really happy.
I picked the five best things to work on and that goes along the bottom of the moving future and I'm crystal clear now. I don't have to achieve everything during the next 90 days but if I worked on these five things and worked on them daily then I would take a jump and then I would be able to do an even better moving future three months from now. There's something if you're going to have a creative future you also have to have a creative past.
In other words, that you have to have a sense that the past has been really good, the present is really, really good before you can really establish a better view. I just wondered what your thought of that because I find myself, when I start any project that's going to require significant change in the future, I go back and I put some energy. I put some oomph into my past and present before I take on the future thing.
Dean: Yeah. I looked at that. I heard you talking about that and I've done many moving futures in our workshops and I haven't thought about it that … I mean, obviously, I know them when I'm doing it, that we're talking about the past but just for some reason, hearing you talk about it right now dawned on me that the thing that's going in the morale column next workshop is the thing that's in the motivation column for today's workshop. I mean it's just, that just dawned on me. I kind of feel silly to say that.
I had this epiphany right now when you said it like that.
Dan: It's kind of funny. You got your tracing like between feeling like you're learning or feeling silly.
Dean: Yeah. I feel like I'm learning. That's a great thing to know. Another epiphany. I feel like I've learned something.
Dan: Yes, you silly fool you.
Dean: Yes. This is great.
Dan: What's all this learning stuff, you silly person? The interesting thing about this, I mean we were having a discussion at the … one of my sales person. It was in Thursday, so this is Sunday, so this would be three days go, and a new client to the strategic coach, not in my workshop but in one of the other coaches' workshop had just come up and they were from Pittsburgh. His name was John. We got talking and we talked in the course of about 45 minutes. I just had, he came in to my café which is my office and I just … we were just hanging around the coffee bar and we got talking.
There's a whole variety of subjects, the elections which was very recent, presidential election and then things like technology. I'm really a history fan so I brought in all sorts of historical precedence for what's happening right now. While I got finished, the salesperson who's new to the coachings, it's been about a year that he's been at, and then he says, how do you know so many things. He says, you don't even have any fact finder. I'm a two-fact finder. A two fact finder and he says, how can you know so much stuff and I said, "Well, I have a feeling we remember what we think is important that I think we discard what we don't think is important and we remember.
Everything we talked about happened to be things that I think are really important and so things that are really important, politics is one of them, I think having a sense of how politics actually works. I mean everything, especially when an election has happened where a lot of people are angry about the outcome and then they make all sorts of statements of how well as quickly as possible we have to switch over to a popular vote system because the loser got more in the popular vote.
I said, "Well, you have to go back to the rules of the game which were established in 1787 and it currently says in there that you get the most electoral votes, you win the election. I said, "That's pretty … Those rules had been in place for a couple." He says, "Yeah, but popular vote is more democratic," and I said, "Well, there's another thing." I said, "The United States isn't a democracy. It's a republic and it's a federal republic so there are popular vote. You have to win the popular votes in each of the states to actually get the electoral votes. I said it actually combines.
He says, "Gee, I didn't know that and everything else." I said, "Well:" He says, "I just don't understand how you accumulate." I said, "I read." I said I'm a reader. He says, "Well, nobody told us that reading was really important." You went through the school system and nobody told him that reading was important.
I said, "Well, what about your parents?" He said, "They weren't readers." I said, "Well, I'll tell you something, I hated school. I hated school from day one." I love learning and my mother in the first month of first grade, this is 1950s, she got me and she said, I know you don't like school but I want to tell you something. In the first grade you're going to learn how to read and reading is more important than going to school. If you can read, you can go anywhere with your mind for the rest of your life.
I have to tell you. The way she said it and at the time I said, "You know something, I think I've just been told something really, really important."
Dean: Yeah. That's amazing. Do you remember that? Like do you remember thinking that thought then that you were just told something very important.
Dan: Yeah. Because I just became a super reader. I mean a day doesn't go by when I'm not spending three hours either in book form or internet forum where I read articles and everything else where I'm reading and yet, it's not a scale with a lot of emphasis. It's put on for I don't know what actually goes on but I know that landed 100% with me.
Reading is really a big deal with me and I've got 65 years of reading behind me so you become a more skillful reader, you have greater dimensions. Something that's positioned as new, you said, Well, I think the Greeks were talking about this 2500 years ago. I mean everything like the. One of the things I want to draw this whole conversation back to the question, what do you do today?
I'll tell you my answer to that is that the number thing that I look for is any growth of capability either my own or the company's capability counts as the number one thing that I do today. Anything that would represent a new capability that would produce bigger and better results of future, that's the thing I work on today and that's my first C.
I have the sixth C as cash but the first C is capability and then very quickly if you have capability you can be more creative so creativity. Then I'm going to use the capability to create new things and mine are all new things for the entrepreneurs and strategic coach in one form or another, either in workshop form or audio form or audio form or book form. That's the second C. The third one is that I get credibility out of that.
My doing the podcast series with you gives me credibility because a lot of people having a podcast is mysterious to them. I mean that's a person doing podcasts. It's like writing a book being the difference between you'd never written a book and then you wrote a book, you have a capability out there that enlarges and magnifies your image. It gives you a higher sense of credibility.
Dean: I'm writing furiously here.
Dan: Yeah. You got capability and creativity. Correct.
Dean: That's right. It's capability and creativity. Credibility?
Dan: Credibility is the third one and connections because of your credibility you get lots of connections. For example, you have a contact list of probably 100,000 or so for various reasons and ours is 130,000. By joining me in a podcast series you are given entry into my contact list of 130,000 people around the planet and then I get introduced in the same way to your contact. I just vastly extended my connection.
Then those first four, capability, creativity, credibility, and connections, just gives me an enormous sense of confidence, just overall confidence of these things are always growing as the result of what I do today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Then the cash just is a by product of that.
Dean: That's so great. It's …
Dan: I can work on capability. I can't necessarily work on cash every day.
Dean: Reality is when you think about money, that's what I was saying about. Money is just a resource, it's not something that you can just focus I'm going to go get money. How are you going to do that?
Dan: Yeah. Only bank robbers can get it as a scheduled activity today.
Dean: Right. Just go get money.
Dan: Let's go get money.
Dean: Well, that's where the money is. That's right.
Dan: Yeah. That shows the mentality of the bank robber, they don't think of any of the first five Cs. There's a very interesting study done that the most successful bank robbers who … It's big deal to rob a bank today because it's scary but still it happens. People rob bank. If they trace the bank robbers' lifetime, their lifetime, let's say they start when they're 18 years old and they live a full of life but half that life would have been lived in prison.
Dean: Oh man.
Dan: If you average the average bank robber's lifetime earnings it comes out just slightly below minimum wage.
Dean: Wow, that's something that doesn't pay.
Dan: Well, it pays for the next 24 hours. It's what happens in the 24 hours after that.
Dean: That's problem, exactly.
Dan: There's friction after the next 24 hours.
Dean: Yeah. I mean seeing like this whole V6, Steve, first time I've heard you talk about this one specifically I think. I think I would remember that if you had mentioned them in that contact.
Dan: No, I haven't done it in the workshop.
Dean: Okay. That was a preview of what we're going to get on Thursday.
Dan: It will be now because you're making a big deal about it.
Dean: Okay. Well, I'll tell you what though. The whole thing is that that … Remember when just sometime in this podcast I'm talking about my past self didn't have the capability to write a book and to be able … I mean the aspiration and the skills, I could certainly do it but I didn't have a pattern of a path to writing books. That capability now of going to work on creating up the capability has really sparked my creativity.
It really is that. It's a spiral, an upward spiral. I mean it's really …
Dan: Yeah, it's a virtuous upward cycle that you get there. I mean you have goals for cash. I mean we do because we've got a growing organization. We want the next fiscal year to always have greater revenues and at least the same level of profitability that we have during this year. We're always working backwards but I would say that the entire 120 team members we have in strategic coach, what they're doing today has been engineered by this year's larger, bigger, and better goals, bigger and better results.
We're not fixated on the future, it's just that we've created a future measuring stick which allows us to actually focus people's attention today.
Dean: Yeah. If I take this all the way down to and bring it around to what we could be working on today, the things that present self can do to set up future self, that's really our biggest win, that's really our biggest activity is doing everything we can is just getting our present selves to focus on setting up future self to make them of increased capabilities.
Dan: Yeah, I would say that there is enormous value to the future self and my sense again is that I think it comes with the human brain. I think it's part of the equipment that everybody has. What I've tried to do is confine my understanding of the future self down to just some very, very achievable measurements.
Dean: What do you mean by that? Let's say …
Dan: Well, in other words, you can put number to it. In other words, I'll go back to your ability to write a book and I can remember a very eventful dinner that we had in London.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah. You happen to be in London, I happen to be in London and we made contact and then we went out to this little restaurant. I said, "I'm going to write a whole book, start to finish, in a week." In other words, I will start it on the morning of the first day and I will have a finished book by the end of seventh day and you said well, I'm going to do that too, I remember. Each of us was putting out a future self and that was in a seven-day period.
We would have a great number of other things but we would have a result namely book in hand where on the beginning of day one it was just an idea. Over a seven-day period I'm going to go from idea stage to finished product stage. I remember I delivered and you delivered and both of us had acquired a great new capability in a one-week period and you went on. I mean I decided to write a book at quarter. That's one of my big things because if you can do a book in seven days you can certainly do a book every quarter for a hundred quarters which is my goal. You went on and created a company, the 90-minute book, where you've now helped dozens if not hundreds of other …
Dean: Hundreds, yes, really.
Dan: Hundreds of other entrepreneurs to actually in the easiest possible way requiring only that they have the idea and an outline around the idea that they then in a very short period of time within five or six weeks from starting, they can actually have a product in their hands, say first book. Everyone who does it makes all the difference in the world. Then yes, if you talk to each of the people who now have a book and ask them how long in your lifetime have you had a book in your future, it's almost a yes.
The other thing is how many of you would think about it but then never do anything about it and all of them would say, they would say, yeah, that was true. I don't have the foggiest idea how to write and produce a book today but I know in the future I will.
Dean: I mean really when you think about the impact of that dinner, that's the seed of creating that capability for myself but also creating that capability for others. When you think about the impact that hundreds of people who've written books now, who have a capability to write a book, the creativity that's sparked, I mean it's wow.
Dan: Yeah. I think my 6C model really holds, it holds firm in relationship. First, you got to have the capability and once you have the capability you become more creative because you can see all sorts of different uses. You can think of other books, okay, I did one book I can do another book, people become more creative and then their credibility go. They all say, "The moment I have my first book the world looks at me differently and I look at me differently." There's been a big jump in credibility.
The book spreads out in very mysterious and miraculous ways. Once you have a book, let's say you produce a hundred of them, you'll develop 50 or 60 connections you'd never had before if you get them fully distributed. Your overall confidence as an entrepreneur jumps you through and that first five Cs translates into bigger revenues and bigger profits that come in more productive way.
People are obsessed with cash. They're obsessed with number six but they don't spend any time on the first five.
Dean: What are you calling this? Have you got a name for it yet?
Dan: No, I don't have an overall name. I mean because it's been a backstage preacher but now you've given me enough applause here and spotlight that it will jump to the next level.
Dean: It will be named by Thursday.
Dan: Well, I don't know by Thursday but it will certainly be … I got a pretty full slate for Thursday already but …
Dean: I got you.
Dan: Definitely on the list for March 1st.
Dean: Yeah. Man, I think I feel really good about this idea that this really is about. That's going to be the number one thing that we can do, that present self can do is expand our capabilities to actually set up future self. That's really the thing.
Dan: I mean the one sure fire way of always having a future that's bigger and better than today is to create new capability today. New capabilities are always exponential.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: They're always exponential.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: That's why people who pay attention to their present and maximize the productive opportunity of the present really are pretty easy of the future. I mean they have benchmarks. I have benchmarks in the future. I know what they are but I don't obsess about them. There are people who obsess about the future. They're trapped in the future. What I noticed is that they have a very loose and shaky feeling about the present. They put the emphasis on being as busy as can be in today with activity. It's a quantitative look at today but not a qualitative. They don't have enough attention span today to actually really develop a new capability today.
They're continually trapped in this future where they don't have real measurements but they have this almost successive belief that the future is going to be better than the present but they're not actually doing anything in the present that would qualitatively make a difference.
Dean: I think that next time because we really got onto this which has been profound for me today, so thank you for that. Is one of the things that I wanted to explore was to share with you my observations of experimenting with that, waking up and asking what have you got for me today which I've been observing but the things that it has for me today are usually the things that are getting up to … There's expectation and an the urgency about them but procrastination. That question is not bringing to the surface proactively building this future capability. I want to really talk about that next time about the how to also really create that kind of question.
Dan: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, in the morning, you're going to get up in some way. Everybody gets out of bed and does something or don't get out of bed. The only ones who don't get out of bed and do something are the ones who don't get out of bed.
Dean: That's pattern as you say.
Dan: It seems to me like a fairly fundamental reality. I've got to do something first thing in the morning. The thing that I do is that, as I mentioned with the three important things, is that I actually do the procrastination thing the night before so that one, is I sleep better. I sleep better if I got a clarity about tomorrow and I just identity the three things. This conversation has sharpened my own previous understanding of that anything that expands capability either personally or organizationally automatically goes to the highest priority for tomorrow.
Dean: I love that. I'm going to experiment with that this week.
Dan: Yeah. Anyway, I'm still a procrastinator and I still procrastinate on things but I never procrastinate for dialing in when you said we're going to start one of these joy of procrastination conversations because it's such a pleasure.
Dean: I enjoy it so much.
Dan: I just want to tell you I feel deeply appreciative to have you as an exploration partner.
Dean: Me too. Thank you. I will see you this week. I'm flying up tomorrow.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Looking forward to a great workshop.
Dan: Okay, Dean. Well, see you on Thursday and then we have our table 10 where really the future of the world gets altered every time we have a table 10 discussion.
Dean: Exactly, right, I can't wait. I've got good things to bring to table 10 this time too, so that's exciting.
Dan: Excellent.
Dean: Thanks Dan.
Dan: Thanks a lot, Dean. Bye.
Dean: Bye.