bullshit yourself into doing big things

dissolve resistance and make progress on what actually matters

It’s daunting to take on a big project that you know will require a lot of time and effort… even though you know it would change your life.

Starting that Youtube channel, Substack publication, recording an album, writing a book, making a movie. Whatever it is you want to do.

You say you’ll start it tomorrow. But it’s always today, and never tomorrow. And time is slipping between your fingers, one day at a time.

Resistance creeps in and you keep putting it off.

Guilty.

But I found a weird trick that short-circuits the resistance:

Reducing the barrier to entry.

First off, let’s reframe what a “big project” is:

Take “making a movie” as an example. On the surface it appears to be one monumental task. However, “making a movie” is not a single action. It’s an umbrella term for a series of lots of smaller projects: writing the script, scouting locations, hiring actors, filming scenes, editing, scoring, and so on.

Your imagination makes it seem bigger than it is.

In reality, any “big project” gets done by tackling a ton of those smaller, individual “projects” that eventually add up to one big result.

There is a TED talk by a guy who lives by this principle. Stephen Duneier is his name. He reduces big projects into small, manageable steps.

He learnt to speak German, fly a helicopter, wrap trees in yarn, crochet granny squares (which he got a Guinness record for), whatever. All from just doing the smallest steps, one at a time.

We can do the same with our big projects.

But…

Most of us don’t have the freaking patience for that.

Doesn’t matter how small we make the task, we know the road ahead of us is gonna be extremely long. You just want the thing done, preferrably.

Why rely on patience which you don’t have?

Let’s leverage our ability to bullshit ourselves instead.

We’re already bullshitting ourselves in all kinds of ways. Like when that cute cashier smiled at you and you made yourself believe she wanted to do you right there and then on the spot. See?

You can also bullshit yourself into doing the things you want to do.

Here’s how:

In Alcoholics Anonymous they teach the attendants to take things ‘one day at a time’. Like “I can have a drink tomorrow if I want, but not today.”

The trick is they ‘bullshit’ themselves into sobriety. Because tomorrow never comes does it?

There is only today.

You can think of it as ‘outwitting the devil’.

What if we applied the same method to our ‘big projects’?

A way to trick your impatience is to say “I will work on this today, but I can drop it tomorrow if I want to.“

Your brain goes “Yeah, that’s fair.”

You stop projecting into the future, and focus on today.

It effectively dissolves resistance, because you reduce the importance of the task. If your whole life depends on working on your project today, it creates too much pressure, and you get paralyzed.

You can use this tactic for starting work too.

If you don’t feel like starting, you can just say:

“I’ll work on this for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes I can stop.”

And actually give yourself the freedom to stop after those 5 minutes. Don’t say you can stop after 5 minutes, while believing you’re lying to yourself. Mean it.

Basically, you want to reduce the mental friction to minimum.

From ‘making a movie’ to ‘write one sentence of the script’.

If you feel like this is stupid or silly, it is. We’re running on pretty obsolete hardware my friend. We have to game it somehow.

But good news.

Because everyone thinks it’s stupid, nobody does it. Those who don’t mind the silliness actually make progress while others make excuses.

So there, I fixed it.

Bullshit yourself into success. Go start your big project.

Much love, talk soon,

Matt