Smash Notes
The Only 12 Lessons Buried In Every Self-Help Book - Spencer Greenberg - #1161
Spencer Greenberg is a mathematician, founder, CEO & creator of ClearerThinking.org Expect to learn the most valuable lessons from over 500+ personal development books, why understanding values are so hard, which popular self-help advice turned out to have surprisingly little substance behind it, why intelligent people seem particularly vulnerable to…
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Notes
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Spencer Greenberg says many people are limited by fear and could benefit from not letting fear stop them from the things they find most valuable. He was anxious his whole life from childhood. Going up to a stranger at a party made his heart pound, and his brain predicted he was going to die, even though he knew it was safe.
In his early twenties he found a specialist who works on anxiety. The therapist said he could help, but Spencer Greenberg was not going to like how they would do it. Homework was to go to a bar every weekend alone and talk to five strangers. They built a fear hierarchy. The bottom was stressful but bearable: going up to people and asking what time it was. When that got easy, the next level was asking what they were drinking and saying it looked good. At the top, in Manhattan, he went up to men at bars and said, excuse me, would you give me a hug? He thought he was going to die. He did not get punched in the face. The worst reaction was people laughing or saying no.
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When people are highly emotionally dysregulated, Spencer Greenberg says grounding outside the body helps. Look at three different things outside the body, notice three things that can be heard, then notice three things in the body, and switch between them. Chaos is going on in the mind, and getting out of the mind is what temporarily feels better. Chris Williamson puts the same sequence as a focus outside the body, a focus on the body, and a focus inside the body.
When the grounding does not work, a stronger shock can. Not electricity. A brief splash of super cold water can suddenly shock a person out of an emotional disruption. Chris Williamson asks whether the splash sits next to the mammalian dive reflex. Spencer Greenberg says the splash may be related, because the reflex triggers in cold water and, as far as Spencer Greenberg understands it, lowers respiratory rate.
The cold-water technique was developed, as far as Spencer Greenberg understands it, for people with borderline personality disorder, who become emotionally dysregulated easily. A conversation cannot land while a person is in such a dysregulated state, so people are taught to splash themselves and come out of the state on their own. Chris Williamson jokes about throwing a bucket. Spencer Greenberg says a thrown bucket would probably make them more upset.
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People with a lot of anxiety hold beliefs about worry that work against them. Worry feels urgent, so it has to be handled now. They believe they cannot do anything except worry, as if they are not capable of stopping. They also believe worry is valuable, because something bad would happen if they stopped.
The method Spencer Greenberg loves is worry time. Pick one time of day, for example 5 p.m., and do not pick a time before bed. Through the day, write each worry down once. The example is not knowing whether a project will go well tomorrow. When the same worry returns, leave it off the list and wait until 5 p.m. The wait is batch processing: defer the worry, and if it comes back, say it has to wait until 5 p.m. At 5 p.m., worry as much as possible about every item on the list. Chris Williamson calls the session high-intensity worry training. After 15 or 20 minutes, switch to problem solving, pick one worry, and make an action plan.
People notice they can send a returning worry back to 5 p.m., so they have more control than they thought. Sitting down to worry on purpose often feels ridiculous and not useful. Spencer Greenberg says the routine can shock someone who has worried for a whole life.
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Spencer Greenberg says cognitive restructuring is learning to change the thoughts a person has over time. A person often cannot change the first thought. A person can often change the second thought, the response thought, and Greenberg says the change can make a tremendous difference.
In the example of fighting with a girlfriend a lot, she asks why the dishes were left in the sink. The first thought is wanting to do things one's own way and feel comfortable at home. A person is not necessarily in control of that thought, then asks whether it is the most helpful thought right now. The next step is a more helpful thought that is at least as true, without self-delusion. Greenberg offers that the home is hers too and the pair need to find a balance. After the first thought, a person trains that second thought, and the second thought sets up a better position for success.
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Spencer Greenberg says healthy productivity equals time times efficiency times importance. It is the value you produce each week from what you fundamentally value, across everything you care about, rather than one kind of output.
Time is the number of hours you work. Efficiency is the fraction of a project you complete with each hour. Importance is the total value, based on what you care about, of finishing the project. Chasing only how much you create at a job can cost family life, relationships, and hobbies.
The equation shows where to tune. When the hours on things you care about are low, raise time. When the week is already 70 hours, pushing time is a trap. The last few hours cost a lot and return very little.
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Spencer Greenberg says the first way to work more efficiently is coming prepared. He knows many people who type a lot as part of their job, and some of them are really slow typers. Five hours spent improving typing gives gains for the rest of your life.
On his phone, he worked on typing speed and felt significant benefits after five hours of practice. He thinks the gains stuck. He is faster than he used to be, he is not the fastest typist on his phone, and he says he is not amazing. Practice includes a game where you blow things up by typing, plus many other apps.
Coming prepared also means the desk is ready before work starts. Chefs lay everything out in the perfect position so the focus stays on cooking, and the same preparation fits many kinds of work, including clearing away the windows on the computer. The second step is avoiding distractions. Silencing notifications, changing the work environment, or using noise-canceling headphones removes what pulls people away once work begins.
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Spencer Greenberg calls them glad you did it activities. Afterwards, you are glad you did the activity. People often scroll on a phone or watch too much television instead. Replacing all downtime with something productive denies your own needs. Coming home from work tired means you need to relax, which is why the phone scroll happens. Swapping the scroll for more work denies the need to relax, and Spencer Greenberg says it is not a very healthy thing to do.
Spencer Greenberg loves documentaries and still has many unseen. Instead of doing whatever bullshit to relax, Spencer Greenberg pulls up a documentary long wanted. Watching it feels like a meaningful use of time. The documentary stays memorable for years and gives something to discuss with people. The point is meeting existing needs in ways that give more benefit in the long term.
Chris Williamson calls the switch probably a favorite from the book. He says a glad you did it activity is not only something you enjoy in the moment. It is also the story you tell yourself about what you did and about being the sort of person who does that sort of thing. What you do with your time is the pebble at the top of the avalanche. Habits, fears, story, narrative, and identity fall downstream from one switch, like going for a walk with the dog instead of lying on the couch.
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Spencer Greenberg says the least sexy, highest-impact part of self-help is that you cannot just learn techniques. You have to sit down, make time, and do them. Many people read self-improvement books and do nothing differently afterward. Reading will not change your life until you put the ideas into action.
Chris Williamson says it is better to read one chapter and then go away, or to follow a single strategy. Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits keep you on one track, so you are still doing a thing while you learn how habits happen. Chris Williamson contrasts that with a 500-page collection of disparate protocols. He says reading the material is not doing the work, and reading can hand you a simulacrum of progress. Until you practice long enough for the work to land, it will not have an impact on your life.
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