Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

 

Voiceover:

This is The Ultimate Advisor podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of.

 

Voiceover:

You'll be joined by your hosts, Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management. Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture. And Draye Redfern, who can help you systematize and automate your practice's marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So, what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor podcast.

 

Draye Redfern:

Hey everyone, Draye Redfern here and welcome back to The Ultimate Advisor podcast where this week we have a special guest, a friend of mine, a colleague, a business partner and a friend for several years now, the one, the only, Mr. Ben Hardy.

 

Draye Redfern:

But before I turn it over to him to introduce himself and share a little bit about who he is and what he's all about and all the fun things that he's got going on, I wanted to preface this with when I first met Ben, before he was a PhD, before he had several books at this point that have claim to notoriety and really put him in the map, Ben currently is the number one writer in the world on medium.com, and has been for several years.

 

Draye Redfern:

That being said, that means that his blogs have basically been read over 100 million times. That's a lot. And when you get that amount of traction and that amount of readership, you begin to build a big following. And so Ben has done some really cool things in his work and in his business to monetize the simple process of blogging.

 

Draye Redfern:

And the question that you may be asking is how would this impact you? And the answer is, in a variety of ways that we're going to touch on. But we've got a lot of things to cover and a lot of things that may go a little bit more in surface level, maybe than some of the other interviews, because I know Ben. I've known Ben for several years and I know some of the things that Ben talks about that could really move the needle for you all.

 

Draye Redfern:

So I'm excited to introduce you guys to Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Ben, I'm so glad to have you here.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah man, I get a sense that probably this interview is going to go different ways, because we do have plenty of experiences we can share, tactic strategies we can share that may be helpful specific to your audience, and obviously we can share some crazy ideas that may be in more the psychological stuff that you know I talk so much about.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But I will say this just in preference, I actually wrote an article about Draye. I think I've written a few, but you can find articles that I've written about Draye either in Forbes, Huffington Post and stuff. Draye, I will admit, and he didn't know I was going to do this, but we two are great friends and we've done great collaborations.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

He's totally transformed my business in many ways. So he met me at Genius Network. I was not making much money at the time, but I had an email list. I don't know at the time, maybe like 200,000. And he's like, "Dude, we've got to launch. We've got to do stuff with you bro." Because my main goal was honestly to get a six figure book deal, and my main focus was getting book contracts, which was you kind of have to have huge email lists to do that.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It wasn't to optimize and monetize all of these things. But I was open to that and I was getting that education, but that wasn't my primary focus. And so he came in, and just as the go-giver he is, did a lot of proactive service, immediately helped me monetize my new leads, help me make another 10, 20 grand.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But we've done some huge launches together. Our first major launch together, we did over 7k. We just did a launch, what, a couple months ago?

 

Draye Redfern:

700k, not 7k.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, 700k, and we just barely finished one like a month ago that was 680k, right?

 

Draye Redfern:

Yep.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And I feel like over the years your thinking and your strategies have just evolved so much. It's been fun for us both to... I feel like we've gotten very experimental, but we try and do things and we do things and it's always fun. That's what I love. I mean it's obviously stressful on both ends, and you do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that I don't see, but I feel like our collaborations have always been enjoyable.

 

Draye Redfern:

100%. And I think that being hands-on and rolling our sleeves up. So Ben has a PhD in organizational psychology. And actually before I go down the vain, I want to know, Ben, give a little bit of your background, explain what the PhD is, how you got there, and what your premise is, or a lot of what you write about?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah. So organizational psychology is much like organizational behavior. My dissertation was on a concept called transformational leadership theory. So organizational psychologists, usually they focus on leadership, they focus on organizational culture, on motivation, on productivity, on role development.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Just on allowing organizations to thrive. Usually they're internal or external consultants. I just like the ideas of training and development, things like that, and motivation. I just want to understand it from the inside out, and leadership and things like that. I never intended to work for big corporations. I just wanted to understand the ideas as I was developing myself as a writer.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So I started my PhD at Clemson in fall of 2014, and during the first semester or second semester my wife and I became foster parents of three kids in January of 2015, and over the course of my PhD program we fought the legal system or the foster system, eventually adopted those three kids, have had twins since then. So we've got five kids now. We now live in Orlando, and during those-

 

Draye Redfern:

So you went from zero to five kids in one year?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

In 2018. 2018 was the most crazy year of my life. I actually now realize it was more pivotal than I thought, because I had my first extremely major failures in 2018 as well. I almost got kicked out of my PhD program. Many aspects of the Willpower Doesn't Work launch, as you know, because you were deeply involved, and none of it was your fault.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It was just a total crap show, but it was probably the biggest failure of my life. And then we adopted three kids, we had twins, we moved to Florida that year, and it was just a wild year. So, that was crazy. But during the course of my PhD program is when I was doing all the writing, from 2015 to 2018 specifically on medium.com, and just was lucky to be writing in a specific style on a specific platform at the right time, and my blogs just crushed on there for so long.

 

Draye Redfern:

And what is the style? So people who don't know who you are, what is the style that you write in?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, it's a unique style. I think it's kind of probably more and more mainstream at this point, but I mean I use obviously marketing tactics. So obviously really extreme potent headlines with lots of numbers, listicles, but I write in a really aggressive tone, or at least I did in that time.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so it's very emotionally driven, very in your face writing, but it's also incredibly science based. And so it feels logical, while at the same time hitting you emotionally. Very motivational, but also it feels rational and scientific at the same time, because I'm backing everything up.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

I'm citing research and ideas and quoting key figures, but I'm speaking directly at the reader. That type of writing is nice, because it's not so technical that I can just write it on a single flow of consciousness and then push publish, and then I've got to go back after it's published and edit it.

 

Draye Redfern:

So one of the things that I like about blogging, especially from your side, is that someone who has never known about you, who's never read anything, any of your books, any of your other blog posts, could spend 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes or more, reading some of these long form blog posts, and by the end of it, there's a certain amount of trust and rapport that you have with that person, because you've clearly demonstrated you know what you're talking about and it's backed up by factual, science based evidence.

 

Draye Redfern:

In which, in today's culture, people throw around stats and metrics and all of these things that don't really mean anything and it's difficult to build that rapport. So I like that sense from a marketing side, because you have really built a massive audience and a massive following simply by writing and blogging and building that rapport, then people can opt-in and subscribe and these sorts of things.

 

Draye Redfern:

But through the writing and through everything that you talk about, there's four separate things tat are some of my favorites that I want to be selfishly talk about-

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Let's do it, dude. I love it. We're on your show. That's the best.

 

Draye Redfern:

... that I think is important. The four that I want to cover with you while we're together are goals and goal setting, investment, decision fatigue and forcing functions. So those are four of my favorite things, and so you can lead and talk about any of those in whatever way you see fit. But I think that those four are really good stuff for this audience.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Perfect man. Well, we'll go back and forth on all these and we'll see where we go with it. But goals are interesting. I know that there's a lot of people who go back and forth on are goals important, are they relevant, are the useful? From a psychological perspective, it's impossible not to have goals.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

If you go to the bathroom it's because you had a goal. You need to really do something. Every behavior is goal focused. Every single thing we do is motivated by outcomes, and so the thing you want to do then is, is obviously get very clear on the outcomes you want so that you can be more intentional about how you spend all of your time.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So I definitely believe in goals. I believe that they should start with an imagined future self where you frame out who you want to be. I think three years out is usually a good span, because it's harder to go beyond that. I think you can be general beyond that, but having a future self where you think about what's your situation like? What are you doing in that chapter of your life?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

There's actually a gaping void, I don't know if you've seen this one Draye, but it says career development or career hierarchy. Have you seen career hierarchy?

 

Draye Redfern:

I haven't. No.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It's like a pyramid and there's three layers, and the bottom layer is paycheck to paycheck. So the bottom of the career hierarchy. The next level is project to project, and then the top one is adventure to adventure. And so it's a good one, you can [crosstalk 00:10:27]

 

Draye Redfern:

I like that.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

... career hierarchy gaping void, but the reason I like that is because when you're going paycheck to paycheck, you're not seeing things that big. But once you get into projects, you start to have bigger and bigger goals and adventures. And I think that it's nice to break your life up into chapters, and so once you've accomplished this chapter, once you're into that next chapter, what's the next big adventure?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

What are you going to be doing? Who's your future self? What are you really after once you've accomplished all the stuff you're currently working through right now? What's that next level? So when I was in graduate school, that next level for me was that I was a professional author and that I was able to write books with the major publishers and make a living doing that.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so once I conceptualize out my future self, my future situation, and it's important from a psychological perspective to realize that your future self is not the same person as who you are. They're totally different, hopefully. Hopefully they're wiser, they've got different perspectives, different goals. They've gone through experiences that have hopefully refined their perspectives. They see things better.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so it's nice for decision making to say, what is your future self like? And then from my perspective, from a motivation perspective, it's really nice... Motivation requires three things. One is a clear goal, number two is a clear path to getting there, and then three is the confidence that you can do whatever is required.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And that's why I like one goal. I like what's the one major goal that would enable the future self to become real? And for me, when it was the book thing, I conceptualized the goal, "I've got to get a six figure book deal. If I can figure out that, then my future self will be possible, because then I'll be with a major publisher. That will be true. I'll be making enough money to provide for my family, I'll be an author."

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So once you define a very quantifiable target, you can then start to reverse engineer it, but also you can start to shape an identity narrative around it where your goal becomes the byproduct of your identity, rather than your past. And you can start to see yourself as that author, start to explain yourself, and then you start to figure out how to get there. So those are some kind of key steps and goals, I would say, at least as jumping points.

 

Draye Redfern:

And so the other thing around that I think that worth talking about is how does investment tie to goal or the future self? So making some sort of investment, either time or monetary.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, I mean I would say if your future self is going to become your current self, then the more time you spend being your future self, the better, because right now you're still being your current self. And so the more time you can spend doing activities that your future self would be doing, obviously that investment of time is good, and the less time you could spend... obviously there's going to be some crossover between who you are right now and what you're up to, versus who your future self is.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But if you really get clear on it, so obviously time is big, but I'm really big in investing money in your future identity. I see that as investing money into your subconscious. So your subconscious is what's autopilot. Your subconscious is who you are right now. It's actually more a reference of your past, and it's obviously unconscious and so it's who you can be without thinking about it.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Whereas your future self, you've got to have intentional thought and creation and be conscious about your future self, and then you've got to be conscious and act conscious and intentional in order to more fully be your future self. And so it's easy to drop back into autopilot and just be who you are. And so one of the reasons why making financial investments is powerful is that you're literally investing money into your future identity. Investing money into mentorships or into collaborations or into knowledge or into experiences that will transform you, transform your knowledge, your experience, your situation into the person you want to be.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And investment creates commitment, investment is also a huge aspect of identity. Where you spend your money really shapes how you view yourself. So, financial investment is big and I love it.

 

Draye Redfern:

So, you've mentioned a couple of things. I know what it is, but I want to define it. What is the difference between your current self versus your future self, and how do you craft or create that future self?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, I mean so your current self is just who you are right now. Some people might not even be able to define that.

 

Draye Redfern:

True.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So I do think taking some time to think about who you are right now. One of the things I do in all my journals, so I go through about a journal a month, but in the front cover of my journals I ask myself five questions. The nice part is that all I have to do is open up the front cover and I can get a quick reference of what my life was like at the moment of that journal

.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But the first question is just where am I right now? And I'll just answer in four or five bullets. It's like, "I'm 32 years old, working on the next book, trying to focus on my kids," and then the next question is what are my wins from the last 90 days? And this just kind of gives me a sense of what the heck I've been up to and what I've been accomplishing and what I've been focused on.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Next question is where do I want to be in the next 90 days? And just writing about the three to five wins that would be most meaningful in the short-term. The next question is who's my future self in three years? And it's just like literally three to five bullets of just what are the key attributes and situational factors of who I want to be, and then what do you want to accomplish at the end of this year?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So I think that that's kind of a good framing of who you are and where you want to go. But I really think journaling is a great place to start. I think journaling about and just answering questions about like literally asking yourself, "Who is your future self? What's their situation? What's their day to day life like? What do they wear? What are their clothes like? what are their habits? What's different about you and them?"

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You can actually define that. What has your future self learned that you currently don't know? What skills do they have? Who are they in relationships with? How much money do they make? Why do you want to become this person? Is a big one. This is just getting clear and intentional, and once you become intentional about a future self and you've clearly distinguished it from your current self, and you're pretty clear and excited about who that person is and what they're up to, then it's up to you how aggressively you pursue that person.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

One of the big things that I talk about in Personality Isn't Permanent is that a big problem that people have with their current identity, is that they assume that who they are right now is who they authentically and truly are. They overvalue their current self. They're not flexible psychologically. So there's two concepts. Psychological flexibility and confidence are both required for not only imagination, but not holding your current identity to tightly.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Because if you think that your current self is who you really are and it's black and white and you're dogmatic in your views of yourself, and if you overly defend how you define yourself, if you overly defend your labels as an example, then you've created tunnel vision. And then you have a hard time seeing outside of the labels. This is one of the reasons why I really don't like personality profiling tests, is because they create tunnel vision and they create a defensive identity.

 

Draye Redfern:

Talk more about that, because I know that's something that you have a lot of research to back up. Because there's a lot of people, and I know these people personally, where they're like, "I'm an INTP, or INTJ, and I'm a whatever else." You go down the personality test metrics, that they put themselves into a box. So you've got a lot of science to clarify that. So talk a little bit about that for a minute.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, this is interesting. It can be surprising to people, and honestly, it was not the motivation I had for writing this book. But when I was going through my PhD, and a lot of what we do in my PhD is we do test development. One of the big things that I heard over and over from every single one of my professors is that tests like Myers and Briggs and any type based test is non scientific, for a lot of reasons.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

One of the reasons is, is that they're not valid. They're not consistent. One of the reasons they're not consistent is because you're not going to get the same score in different situations, you're not going to get the same score over different periods of time. So there's lots of research that shows, like one research study showed they pulled the participants of this study and split then into two groups.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

The one group got the same test twice over a period of time from the same test administrator, and they got similar scores. But again, it's a short period of time. The other group got the same test, same period of time, but two different test administrators, and their scores were totally non related. They've done lots of tests where they... like now they're doing more longitudinal research where they're testing people and then testing them again like 10, 15, 20 years later, and they're finding that the longer the gaps, the totally less correlated the findings are.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so that's just one of the reasons why they're not considered scientific. One of the reasons... because it should be consistent. If it is a high quality measure, it should be able to get the same thing over and over. But with personality, it's not going that way, because people are more contextual, more fluid, they do change. The research shows that your personality is going to change over time.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

I mean a rally good example of this, so there's a guy named Dr. Daniel Gilbert, he's at Harvard, and he asks people... and you can think about this yourself, Draye, and anyone who's listening can think about this. Who were you 10 years ago? How different are you from who you were 10 years ago? What were your goals? What was your focus? How did you see the world? What were your habits? What was your peer group like? What was your assumptions? Have you changed a little bit in the last 10 years?

 

Draye Redfern:

Dramatically. Like night and day. The person I was 10 years ago, I would not even recognize the person that I am now, for the better.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, I would agree.

 

Draye Redfern:

Peer group up leveled, income is up leveled, success is up leveled.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Perspectives, you know?

 

Draye Redfern:

Perspective, relationships, all of the things.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And you're someone who's actively learning, so I would expect that. There's the Alain de Botton quote, if you're not embarrassed by you were 12 months ago, you didn't learn enough. So you're someone who's aggressively learning things like that. I think that everyone's changed over the last 10 years, because they've had experiences and stuff, but if you're someone like you, who has goals and is pursuing education, I mean you're in so many groups and Masterminds, you've got kids.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You're not avoiding difficult experiences, you're not avoiding new experiences, you're seeking learning, and you expect that you're going to keep doing that. But what Dr. Gilbert found and finds basically is a lot of people, if they look back on the last 10 years, they can say, "Yeah, I can see some pretty dramatic changes in my tastes and in my attitudes and my habits from the last 10 years."

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But then if he asks them, "How much do you think you're going to change in the next 10 years?" Most people think that their change over the next 10 years is going to be a lot less than the last 10 years. And it's a concept in psychology called the end-of-history illusion, and it basically just means that you think that who you are right now is pretty much the fully formed version of you, and you overly value your current identity.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So what Dr. Gilbert says is that human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished, which is really interesting. But he says the reason people do this is because it's a lot easier to remember the past than to imagine the future.

 

Draye Redfern:

That's powerful.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, yeah. People are bad at predicting the future, not because they can't, but because they don't. They don't take the time to imagine a future self. They don't take the time to... and he actually has a TED Talk called The Psychology of your Future Self, and there's a lot of research on this.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It's a great little TED Talk, it's like five, 10 minutes long. But there's a lot of research dipping into these realms now. But a few more just quick thoughts on the personality tests, and then we can go whatever way you want, but one of their problems is that let's just say you get a score. You take the Myers-Briggs, you get an ENTJ or whatever score you get. You take the DISC, you get a D.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

One of the problems is that they assume that that score is always true. So they actually ignore context. They assume that who you are in one situation is always true, which is not true. You're not always going to be the same person. In certain roles you're going to act certain ways, and so one of the things that psychology has found is that the role you're in is actually a big predictor of your personality.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You're an entrepreneur, you're a startup guy, how you act and operate as an entrepreneur is sort of the same, but also slightly different than probably how you are as a father and as a husband and as a son. Yes, certain things will cross over, but your role predicts a lot of how you operate and how you act.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So context is totally ignored with these tests. Also, I'll just tell you the one reason why I think people will really love these tests, is because what they do is they give people a sense of identity. You get a score back and you can clearly describe yourself. So identity is shaped by story, and a lot of people haven't taken the time to fully define how they describe themselves.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so what the test does is it does that for them. "Oh, I'm an ENTJ." And you can then explain yourself to other people, and so it gives you a sense of identity. The problem is, is that again the identity becomes tunnel vision and it becomes you believe it's who you really are, and the research shows that you become mindless when you overly adapt a label.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You believe that it's always true, so if you consider yourself depressed, you'll believe you're always depressed when that's actually not the case. You just selectively focus on the things you identify with, and then you come to defend the label, rather than assume that your future self is going to be different and seek what your future self would want.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You defend your label and it becomes tunnel vision and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

 

Draye Redfern:

So I love the idea of your current self and your future self in 10 years. The first time I heard you talk about that was sort, it opened up a lot of ideas for me. One of the other concepts that I think that would be worthwhile talking about is you've got this 10 year plan, this 10 year vision of your future self, how do we go about making that happen to a certain degree? And in particular I'd like to touch on what you call is forcing function. What is a forcing function, and how do we use those to craft that 10 year personality?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, I love it. I think one thing to think about, you and I have both heard of the concept of deliberate practice. So deliberate practice is actively engaging in an activity. Usually it involves coaching. I know that you get coaching, I get coaching, but it's called deliberate for a purpose. It's towards something and it's not just passive learning, it's active, intense learning.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And research shows that it's impossible to engage in that type of learning, in that type of practice without a clear future self. I even provide quotes of identity research, but you can't engage in deliberate practice without an envisioned future self with the attributes or the situation you're trying to develop.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It's impossible to engage in deliberate practice or the type of intentional effort and transformation and experiences and coaching and mentoring and training that would lead to becoming whoever it is you're trying to be. And so with forcing functions, forcing functions are just a brilliant method. A brilliant methodology to going against your current self. Unblocking yourself against your current self so that you don't subconsciously self-sabotage yourself, because that's often the case.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Just to give it a quick definition, it comes from design thinking. So a forcing function is some aspect of the design that stops a user from making unwanted errors. So in technology there's forcing functions put in place so that you can't go certain ways, because it just wouldn't be good for you. There's purposeful constraints put in place so that you don't make dumb decisions.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so you can use this type of thinking to design situations that allow you to not make stupid mistakes yourself, because it's easy for all of us to just make stupid mistakes. And they're just situations that you put in place, or they're situations that other people can put in place for you, such as a mentor or something like that.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You and I created a forcing function because we both want to do an Iron Man, and one of those forcing functions is we did it together. We paid $1,000 to be a part of it, and so we did financial investment. Financial investment we already talked about, but that's a powerful forcing function because it creates commitment. And so if I hadn't paid that $1,000 and if I wasn't doing it with you, it would just be an idea in my head.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But because I did it with you where there's social pressure, which is a great forcing function, and because we both invested money, then all of a sudden it was like, "Oh, I guess we're going to do this." So, that's a smart way of doing it. It's like my wife and I, we recently went to a restaurant called Alinea in Chicago that we've always wanted to go to, but it wouldn't have ever been real if my wife didn't just make the reservation and buy the plane tickets.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

That becomes a forcing function. So when you put things in place so that it's like, "Oh, I guess it's going to happen." So if you want, for example, to have an experience, is all you've got to do is just pay for it in advance, and all of a sudden it's on the schedule. Timelines are, in my opinion, the most powerful forcing function. That's why I like doing my most creative work in the morning, is because usually there's something between 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 or 11:00 that I have to be at, and so there's an embedded timeline in my morning, and so I know that if I'm doing creative work, it's going to have to end soon.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So Dan Martell, he's a entrepreneur and he's someone I write about in Willpower Doesn't Work, but one of the things he does as a forcing function is he'll go to workspaces, coworking spaces or libraries with his computer, but he'll purposefully leave his power cable home. And he does that because he knows that his computer's going to die in two hours, and he drives like 20 minutes to get there, and so he knows he can't just sit around, because his computer's going to die.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And he knows he's got timelines and stuff, so he's got to work. The purpose of forcing functions is to create flow states. It's to get you absorbed in what you're doing so that you can actually focus, rather than keep pulling yourself away. So timeline's do that, investment does that, social pressure does that, collaborations do that.

 

Draye Redfern:

I love the idea of going somewhere and your laptop battery only has a certain amount of juice in it, and when it's dead it's dead and you've got to bust out your work.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It's a forcing function.

 

Draye Redfern:

100%. We've talked about I think also like writers who would buy a business class ticket to Japan just so that they're not around and they're not getting phone calls and they're not getting internet, so they could actually just fly there, write all the way there, land, hop a flight and fly all the way back.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

That's a forcing function. You've put yourself in a situation.

 

Draye Redfern:

That's exactly it. And so finding ways in each of our lives, whether that's through health or through business or through income or through relationships, to create more of those forcing functions, consciously. I'm of the believe, I think that you would be able to back this up scientifically, that the more forcing functions that you have that are beneficial and that match your goals, the greater the likelihood it would be that you would achieve or attain those goals.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah. I mean what you want to do is you want to make a decision right now that allows your future self in your weakened state, like let's just say, as an example, and this kind of fits with decision fatigue as well. So decision fatigue and willpower go hand in hand, and the idea is that if you haven't fully made a decision but you've delayed that decision for some future experience, you're probably going to make a bad decision.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So let me explain. Let's just say you want to wake up at 5:00 a.m., but you haven't set yourself up to do that. There's no reason to get up, there's no either task to do, person to meet with, you just told yourself you want to do it, and so you have the alarm and there's no actual reason to get up.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You haven't actually made a decision. And so when the alarm goes off, you then have to make a decision about what you're going to do and why you're going to get up. So you've put yourself in a situation where you have to make a decision in that moment, and that's a really bad time to make a decision, and usually that's when situations win.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

The same is true of dieting. If you are going to be on a diet, this is why they say 100% commitment is easier than 98% commitment, is because if you're 98% committed, then in every situation you're in you have to make a decision. Is this one of those 2% of times? Is this one of those 2% of times when I'm going to eat sugar, as an example? Every time you're in a situation if you have to make a new decision, often the situation is going to win. The back and forth mental tussle is decision fatigue and it burns you out.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And just making single decisions is powerful. And so just as an example of a forcing function that eliminates decision fatigue and makes desired effort easier is just like let's just say you want to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and you had a person you were going to meet for a run, 10, 15 minutes away, and they were going to be there at 10:15.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And you had a reason for that run, maybe you were training for something together. You'd probably be more likely to get up at 5:00 a.m. if you had something to get up for, if you had some social pressure, if you had something to do. It's a lot easier for me to wake up when I've got a timeline and a deadline and I've got stuff I need to accomplish.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so it eliminates decision fatigue, and yeah, you're 100% right, the more of these things you can embed into your life and eliminate bad options. I mean this is what it's really about, it's about removing a lot of the options that you already know you don't want. It's about making a track for yourself, because you know you want the track, or you know you want the destination. And so it's about creating a track that forces yourself forward.

 

Draye Redfern:

So there's a couple things on that, that I think that I just want to have you elaborate on, is you used the words interchangeably, decision fatigue and willpower, and you wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work. So, could you just share a little bit more the premise of that book and any other additional underlying tactics or strategies that maybe overlapping with what we've talked about so far?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah, so willpower, there's really just two ways of looking at willpower. One is its energy, it's the amount of energy you have. So when you have less energy because you're fried, you're more likely to make bad decisions because you have low willpower. And so energy and decision making go hand in hand. That's why energy depletion and decision fatigue go together.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

They're pretty much the same concept. Your ability to make good decisions depends a lot on your energy, and a lot on the situation, and so if you're fried and let's just say your willpower is gone, you're probably going to make bad decisions. And when I say bad decisions, I'm mostly saying you're probably going to make short-term thinking decisions to create quick dopamine releases.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

You're going to just need consumption. You're going to seek technology, you're going to seek food and carbs and things that just give quick comfort, because you want fast paced energy, and often those decisions are obviously short-term thinking with negative consequences. And so you want to avoid that, and so basically the idea is that our environment, the world we live in, there's a lot of intense stimuli.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

We got technology at our feet, we've got access to food, we have decision overload right now. We have access to everything and anything, and we could spend our time in so many different ways that our decision fatigue is fried, because we've got too many options. There's a book called The Paradox of Choice, and he talks about choice overload and about how it fries your willpower.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so this is why BJ Fogg talks about how design beats willpower, is because you need to design situations to essentially shield yourself from most of the options out there. So in Personality Isn't Permanent I talk about strategic ignorance. About literally creating situations where you're just ignorant of most things. Like Peter Diamandis, as an example, he's ignorant of the news. He just doesn't want to be exposed to typical news, but he's a futurist, and so he's got to get current events, but he gets them from specific sources.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And so he's created systems and environments and things like that to shield him from most of the information out there that he knows is going to be unbeneficial. Like Seth Godin, as an example, used to read Amazon comments about his books, but it just destroyed his self-esteem and so he just realized he's better off being strategically ignorant about people's opinions about his books.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

He doesn't need to know that, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get feedback and support from his books. And so it's best when you start to come up with a plan of a future self and who you want to be, to start to eliminate as many options that you know are just ultimately distractions to what you're trying to accomplish, to become strategically ignorant. And forcing functions are just one method for making hard decisions to block off alternative options that you don't really want anyways.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And that's what they say the true definition of decision is to cut of alternative options. And so you want to just create scenarios and situations and environments that allow you to stay focused on the track you're on. And, yeah, you still want to be aware of new opportunity and things like that, but you also need to have systems in place where you're unaware of most of those things, because you've created rules about what comes to your consciousness, whether it be in the form of an auto responder, or an assistant, or anything.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

So my assistant, as an example, she's my filter. I give her the rules and then she says yes or no, and I'm only aware of the things that are above the line of the filter I've given her. Everything else she says no to, or she deals with.

 

Draye Redfern:

That's perfect. I think that a lot of our listeners, they're successful to a certain degree, but everyone wants more success and they're looking for that edge. And that's why I a lot of the things that I want to talk about here are for someone who is already a high performer, or they're already having some sort of success, you have something like small hinges swing big doors, that a lot of the things we've talked about so far are small hinges that could really just make big differences in people's lives.

 

Draye Redfern:

But I want to take a few minutes, and you've mentioned the book, Willpower Doesn't Work, came out a few years ago, but there's also Personality Isn't Permanent that is coming out pretty shortly here. We talked a little bit about as far as personality test, but what are some of the insights around the book that you can share? And then also where people can go to pre-order a copy and the next steps around the book.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Yeah man, so the book is going to be controversial, I will say that. You write a book with the title Willpower Doesn't Work, and half the people are intuitively, "That sounds like a lie." And so this book is the exact same. I have to start this book by breaking down the core perspectives of personality which most people have, and that's this, most people... so personality is generally viewed as your consistent attitudes and behaviors, which is a good definition.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

But how most people come to view it, is that it is your innate self that you have to discover, whether that be through experiences or through some personality profile. And once you finally discover who you truly are, then you can build your life around that personality. You can begin pursuing a career that fits who you are, you can marry someone who fits you perfectly. And so you're kind of a passive seeker of trying to figure out who you are.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And this is one of the reasons why when you're trying to figure out who you are, you go straight to the past, because the past is assumed to be the most powerful aspect of who you are, because the past is what's led you to who you are. And so rather than trying to create yourself, the whole goal is to find yourself, and once you finally found yourself, you can then pursue a life that fits who you are.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And I find that to be a very limiting perspective of personality. I also, given the science, know that your personality is going to change. If you become intentional, you can go through transformational experiences. And so rather than trying to figure out who you are, it's a lot better to decide who you want to be. Rather than setting goals based on your personality, it's better to base your personality on the goals you set.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Thinking about who do I want to become, what kind of characteristics? And yes, it is difficult. I'm not going to say it's easy. But the main thing that stops people is their own emotional development, and also their peer group and things like that. So we all have things like trauma, we've got a story, we've got subconscious baggage, and we've got an environment, and those are the real things that drive our personality.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

There's lots of research that shows that who you are right now and the decisions you're making, a lot of it has to do with unresolved trauma, and that trauma is a big thing that's driving who you are right now, not your true self. The other thing is your story and just how you've defined yourself. And then obviously your subconscious and just your embedded habits, which fundamentally are easy... I wouldn't say easy, but are totally changeable on a regular basis.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

And then just your environment. There's a lot of research that shows your social group predicts everything about you. It predicts how much money you're going to make, how moral you are, whether you're likely to become an entrepreneur, whether you're likely to become a criminal. And so once you become strategic about these levers, reframing your trauma, shifting your story, upgrading your subconscious and changing your environment, then you can start to actually move your life in an intentional direction.

 

Draye Redfern:

So I've already read it. I as privileged enough to get a copy of it ahead of time. I like it, I love it, it's better than the first, and I can't wait for everyone to get a copy as well. So, where can they go at this point to pre-order their own copy?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

Anywhere. They can pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes, just wherever you want the book, however you want it.

 

Draye Redfern:

And when does it come out?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

June 16th.

 

Draye Redfern:

Looking forward to it. Any final thoughts or parting words that you think that people should know about?

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

No, just get the book. I'm confident it will shock your system in a positive way and it will change your life. It will hit you hard and it will help you realize what's been keeping you in cycles, and it will give you, in my opinion, the most effective ways to becoming who you want to be. I think it's pretty comprehensive.

 

Draye Redfern:

I love it. So, what I encourage you to do right now is go to Amazon, go to Barnes & Noble, pre-order your copy, and I would also highly suggest that you go to benjaminhardy.com, and sign up for his newsletter. Ben sends two to three emails a week of just amazing content. If you like this podcast episode, you're going to love the blog posts.

 

Draye Redfern:

It's a lot of what we talked about earlier, that are long form content with incredibly valuable information to help you increase your productivity with morning routines, evening routines, we talk a lot about environment, he talks about goals and investment and forcing functions, a lot of the stuff that we've already talked about, he goes so much more in depth.

 

Draye Redfern:

So I highly suggest you grab your copy of the book, go to benjaminhardy.com, sign up for the weekly newsletter because you will not be disappointed. So that being said, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, thanks for being with us. So appreciated my friend.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

It's been fun man. We've done some transformational experiences together. Over the last two years I think it's safe to say we both evolved a lot since we first met.

 

Draye Redfern:

100%. And I expect that same amount of growth for our future selves another two years from now.

 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy:

I couldn't agree more man. We've got a lot to do. One of the things that Dan Sullivan says, he says, "If you're truly going to commit to your future, you've got to reject your present."

 

Draye Redfern:

Whoa, that's powerful. That's powerful. All right my friend, well, thank you for being here. Guys, go grab a copy of the book, and we will see you on next week's episode. Take care.

 

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