Self Improvement: Progress Replaced with Performance?

Gareth King (00:34)

Justin, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Justin Leff (00:38)

Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Gareth King (00:41)

Before we get into it though, can you tell us a bit about your background and what it is you do?

Justin Leff (00:45)

So, what I do, I call behavioural coaching, but it's like, I like to joke a lot, you know, titles don't mean much in coaching. Basically, my background is that, I guess just on a personal level, I felt sort of frustrated with the quality of information that was out there when it came to self-improvement. So, there's a lot of people struggling with motivation. There's a lot of people trying therapy, trying self-help books. And obviously I didn't have a psychology background before I had this itch, but I had this itch that this kind of stuff was not working for people.

And so, then I started digging into the psychology and kind of confirmed my suspicions, correct my suspicions, and just get into the business of helping people with basic goals of self-improvement. So again, I think most of what I talk about with people are things surrounding discipline, mental health, or motivation.

The reason I kind of focus on behaviour in my title is because I just like getting people to do what they want to be doing, right? A lot of people have health goals, they have personal goals, they have emotional goals, they can't do them. So, it's about making actions match intentions. Yeah, I think that's the only background that's really relevant to this. Otherwise, I think I'm just a person who has opinions and it kind of led me to that passion.

Gareth King (01:39)

So, we are here to discuss the involvement of the internet, you know, across the ways that we try and improve ourselves. But in your opinion, how do you think that as it's evolved over time with society, that, you know, the internet and technology has potentially redefined what self-improvement means?

Justin Leff (01:56)

I think, like again, to kind of start broad, what we'll say in terms of how does it redefine what self-improvement means? Well, what does self-improvement mean? I guess it has to do a little bit with like identity or yourself, or improving yourself in a way that it's not contained to a specific domain.

So, if I'm trying to become a better basketball player, that's not really self-improvement unless I think that the process of becoming a basketball player might redefine my relationship with discipline or athleticism, right? So, it's really about like defining the self.

And so, then when we ask ourselves like, how do we set goals of self-improvement? And before the internet, if you think about before media in general, it was really the environment around us constantly feeds us ideas on who we want to be or gives us suggestions on who we're supposed to be. Society has an idea of what is good and what is bad, and then you have ideas of what is good and what is bad, and you kind of put those two together.

Now, when you introduce the internet, you get rid of the locality of that. When you're born in a country, it determines so many things about you, about your religion, about your ideologies, about your interest, about the careers you have interest in. And when you get rid of all of this locality, you just have one massive internet machine. It completely delocalises, right? It globalises completely where we are picking up these ideas from.

Whether it is suggestions we are receiving or information we are exposed to that sparks ideas within us, no longer is this being contained to the five-mile radius around your house.

So how do we even get into that? Right? But like, that's like the broad stroke of it is that that's what the internet does. Like that's maybe it's goal in general is to destroy locality. And so, we have to think about the way that it impacts how we choose goals and what goals are suggested to us.

Gareth King (03:25)

That's a really interesting point there around suggestions are now global, which my understanding from what you've just said, would be kind of aggregated, whatever's risen to the top of the algorithm and what's being suggested to you. What is the side effect then for the removal of the locality in self-improvement and goals then, would you say?

Justin Leff (03:46)

I mean, there's good and there's bad to it. I think that it exposes you to new ideas is like a good part of it. But then I think the bad part of it is that sometimes goals don't really match the values that you have grown up with. So, if you grew up in a small town and the things that have always been valuable and meaningful to you, and like rich to you in life, is a local community and hardworking and caring about your neighbours and that kind of stuff.

And then you get fed to you these ideas that you're not a real man unless you own a Bugatti and you're a millionaire and like, what's the grind? And like, what's the hustle? And this like really like, you know, ambitious city life kind of ideas, which isn't inherently wrong. But if you sort of get attached to this idea because it has such a surface level of appeal, then you have this complete disconnect between the options that are available to you and the values that are in the immediate environment around you. It's like one simple example of this.

Gareth King (04:31)

I think that's a good example there, that very city-driven millionaire, Bugatti driving goal. And that's kind of painted to everybody, and positioned to everybody via the algorithm as this is the goal you should be striving for. Now we know that whether we're online or social media or anything, like you can find an endless world of self-help, self-improvement, goal setting, guidebooks, playbooks, suggestions.

But I think where my mind goes on all of that is, is the stuff that rises to the top is, as you've alluded to there, that extreme version type of superficial goal, that potentially is detracting people from things that they should actually be working on in themselves. Would you say that that is kind of what's going on?

Justin Leff (05:18)

I would say it's definitely part of it, but I also think that the goal itself, it's not like we have, know, everybody has appealed to the ideas of New York City, but it's also the fact that the goals themselves are kind of ridiculously unattainable in most senses, or they're so aspirational to the point where they're kind of like, I don't know, like they're just a little bit delusional almost.

When you have people that are discipline gurus, where their entire identity is being hardcore, I think it's very analogous to something that has been, I think we're all more familiar with, which is the way that social media packs self-esteem in young girls. This is, think, one of the earliest phenomenons that we've all caught onto is that, this is actually pre-internet.

If you think about how we talked about how seeing airbrushed Photoshop supermodels in magazines really impacts the self-esteem of young women, and we eventually started applying that idea to Instagram as well. Same thing applies to self-improvement. When you have these people where, I don't know, like the only parts of them that they upload online are when they're in the gym lifting really heavy things and they have these bone filters that make their muscles look really defined. Like that's all you see, right? You just see what's on stage. You don't see what's behind the curtains.

And so, I think like in the same way that we understand that Photoshop beauty standards impacts the self-esteem of young girls, we should kind of understand that that impacts career goals and health goals and self-esteem. Like it becomes aspirational to the point of just destructive, I think.

Gareth King (06:33)

That's something that I've thought about many times, that notion that when you are online, you are seeing everyone else's highlight reel, which leads to those feelings of inferiority. And it doesn't matter whether it's body image, career success, creative success, whatever it is, you're only seeing the best of the best because that's everyone's kind of flex online.

And I think that if we are only seeing the best of the best, and then that's the kind of stuff that rises and attracts people, doesn't it sanitise the extremely wide pool of possible directions, and then everybody's potentially chasing the same goal because that's what they're seeing.

It almost leads to a standardisation of success where it kills their individual creativity in problem solving. And everyone's just like, okay, this is the millionaire super self-disciplined playbook. That's what I've got to do if I want success in life. What happens if we all just end up chasing the same goals? Where does that leave us on an individual level?

Justin Leff (07:26)

I think it leads to poor mental health. Which is what we see in research, right? Again, talking about the way that the internet destroys locality, another thing that the internet does is it destroys our concept of scale. So, if I'm in a town, let's say I'm in a town with hundred people to make it simple, right? If I'm in a town with hundred people and there's one guy in it who's really rich, then I go, okay, 1% of the town is really rich and I don't feel too threatened by that. And that's just the rich guy in town.

And every town has that, right? So, we have a thousand towns, all of them, hundred people in each town, one person's rich. Then the one rich person from every single town, like all 1000 of those rich people get together. And then that's what you scroll through online. So, you no longer feel like you're in a town of a hundred people where one of them is really rich. You feel like you're in a town of a thousand people and you're the one person that's broke.

So, like what the internet does is it just selects from all over the world, and it puts the top 1% of every single environment into one feed. And then you scroll through that and that's what the reality looks like to you.

You could have an Instagram feed where you scroll through it for eight hours a day and you will only see millionaires. There's enough millionaires on the planet where that's possible. So, your concept of scale is really fucked up because you don't see millionaires as the 1% anymore. You see them as, oh that's all I see. Everybody seems to be a millionaire. Everybody seems to be rich. That's a phrase that I hear a lot is everybody seems to be this, but just like statistically it's not even possible.

Gareth King (08:40)

No, for sure. Again, a lot of it in my mind comes back to what's going to sell, what's going to hook in that first few seconds. You've mentioned there that you could have the entire feed that everyone's a millionaire and I'm the broke guy that is falling behind. With that said, if we are feeling like we're falling behind simply based on what we're seeing online and what's being served to us, does that lead to us feeling like improving because we have to to keep up, rather than because we want to? What's the psychology on this and how do you think this has changed over time?

Justin Leff (09:14)

But when we talk about the psychology with that specific question, the psychological principle behind it, I think is really simple, which is that humans are socially comparative creatures. But there's kind of two ways where you can think about it, which is one, you set goals based on comparative standards. So, if you say, I need to make $100,000 a year, a lot of the time, like we're setting that number because it's above a certain threshold of other people, right? So, if you do that, you're in the top 8% of earners or whatever like that.

Then you can think about how much money do I need to live the life that I want to live? So, you could set goals based on standard, non-changing values or non-changing goals, which don't depend on the environment around you, or the environment around you can threaten you in a way that adjusts the ways that you shift goals.

If you've ever created something as like an amateur, you know this feeling, or like you spent a long time working on a painting or I don't know, like a sculpture, something like that, and you feel really proud about it. And then you look at everybody else’s, and you start to feel like shit about it.

So, the way that we feel about goals, of course, changes on how we compare ourselves to other people. And I think that we're just wired to this. We're wired to be comparative creatures. I think that you can sum up 50 % of psychology by just saying that the human brain is relative. We constantly look to the environment for feedback to tell us like, where like, are we viable? Like, what are our goals? What makes us valuable?

This is a little, I guess, sort of out there, but it reminds me of a scene I saw from like a Dracula mini-series where Dracula is like, he gets teleported to the future and he walks into the room of a very typical lower middle-class woman in the year 2000. And he says, I know kings who would enter this room and refuse to ever leave. She just had like a television and a lamp, but to a king in the past, it would be, you know, paradise.

So, we're not gonna be happy by having the TV or the phone or the 3D printer or in the future, whatever other technology sort of represents commercial success. We're gonna be happy depending on if we have those things relative to other people. So comparing yourself is a very dangerous game, and it gets absolutely lethal when the reference of people that you're comparing yourself to is the planet, because the internet is feeding you the most successful case studies from all over the globe.

Gareth King (11:13)

No, absolutely. And I think that that goes to my question around this standardisation of success. I think on that note, what is it doing to people's approach and desire for self-improvement? You know, are they trying to improve themselves or are they trying to replicate somebody else's life? Like what's going on there and where's the line drawn between the two?

Justin Leff (11:34)

This one, I don't know if I think that the internet has, I mean, like internet has its impact, but I don't know if I think the internet has too much of a unique impact here because what we're basically talking about, I think, are role models, which I think way predate the internet.

The internet, of course, changes role models and what kind of role models are successful ,and what kind of role models we have access to. So, you know, the type of role models that the internet defines is, of course, different. But again, then we get into that question of like, okay, well, how do we evaluate the way that our culture would have changed independent of the internet if that didn't exist, right?

The idea that we have like a media system that puts out this image, or we don't even need a media system for it really, we just need like any form of culture that celebrates like one particular image that people wanna live up to, because we accept that message that this is what a successful person looks like, and so that's the kind of person that I should emulate. I think that's always been around on some level.

Gareth King (12:20)

No, absolutely. And I think it's, it's obviously always been around, and we've always had role models of various sorts. I think where I'm going with this is the aggregation of the suggested role model that is driven via the internet, social media, whatever it is, does narrow it down into one type. You know, like once upon a time you might've been like, hey, I love Justin. He owns the hardware store in my town. He's a fantastic guy. He's a great role model.

But now you're not seeing that. You're just seeing the flash, what's selling within the algorithm. And the reason why I'm kind of pressing this point, is because people are spending so much time within these digital environments, which is obviously got to be having an effect on who they are choosing and accepting and following as role models. Is this something that you believe in as well? Or do you think that the internet and social media is not playing any part in that?

Justin Leff (13:11)

It's absolutely playing a part in it. I think specifically because we're talking about role models. Something that's worth considering is how large is the role model? I don't know if you remember when like Bill Cosby was the patriarchal role model for literally all of America. I mean, Andrew Tate was really popular for controversial reasons. I think more than beloved reasons. But Andrew Tate is the last example I can think of where we have this one person that was like really representing idealistic standards for an entire group of people.

But I think what the algorithm does is it kind of splits us up into different parts of the internet without realising it. Your YouTube homepage looks way different than my YouTube homepage. We're basically on two different websites. It's kind of like this interplay between what does the internet want to feed you and what are you telling the internet that you want to be fed?

Basically, your role models are something that the internet gets to decide for you, because everybody is visiting Instagram or everybody's visiting YouTube or everybody's visiting TikTok, and then based on any number of characteristics that that platform understands about you, it's gonna start giving you options to pay attention to. And so of course that's gonna define the role models that you get to choose from.

Gareth King (14:13)

No, absolutely. And I think the fact that that can happen leads to my next question, which is around that exposure. Once upon a time, these people would never have been able to have that reach, would never have had that global audience to have that influence and change culture, for good or bad. And I think that that is absolutely a by-product, which can not only change localised culture that we've already touched on, but global culture, simply by who can be the loudest and who can gain the digital realm the most.

I mean, look, an example from my childhood was someone like Michael Jordan, right? Who just completely broke down sport icon status and became a cultural icon. And obviously that has happened before the internet. Now anybody can reach that global cultural impact simply by making a viral video. And I think that whether the viral video is, is a silly song or silly dance, whatever it is, a recipe, who cares? People can have access to so many different potential things to chase, and try and achieve, and take inspiration from and go after, that isn't reserved now to only being people that were the 0.00001% of anything.

And whether that is fragmenting what we are trying to improve ourselves on, and giving us so many different options to chase at any given moment that we don't actually commit to anything, and do that hard work of improving in any one thing in particular, or we're just constantly chasing a different kind of self-improvement, which as we know, a lot of young people now want to be digital celebrities, influencers, et cetera.

So that kind of self-improvement work doesn't have to be real self-improvement. It's chasing status. Is that a good observation or am I taking all of that wrong, do you think?

Justin Leff (16:01)

I think it's a good observation. I agree with it, by the way, like I don't have any issues with it, but I'm trying to filter in my mind where I think the internet has a unique role in this, because I think that chasing status over genuine self-improvement has probably been an issue for people since the dawn of time. Like again, we are socially motivated creatures with a relative comparison framework.

So, when we talk about when we chase somebody because it achieves a status, I think that has almost always been true. And I think it's been true for more than people as well. Like it's true for professions. Like even if we're not idolising a particular person, we will idolize a particular identity or a vague amalgam of identities, right? Like being a fighter or being a lawyer, being a businessman, whatever it is that earns you clout in your mind.

So yeah, it's definitely true. And I think what you were talking about is with the viral video part of it is really important to understand. ‘Cause I use Bill Cosby as an example and use Michael Jordan as an example. Like these two like larger-than-life people where I just, I genuinely don't feel like they're people like that today.

And the reason for that is because every time Michael Jordan went out to a press conference, he had some sort of media strategist advising him on what he was supposed to based. Bill's Cosby was the flagship for an entire cable network. Everything about his image was managed. So, what you needed was the approval of massive media teams to decide what that icon was going to be. It was a lot more of a project.

But now, someone who is dirt poor can afford a second-hand iPhone, record a video, and become a millionaire overnight. That's possible. It's maybe the only time in our entire history that's ever been possible. The ability for people to income classes or socioeconomic classes is basically completely unprecedented in our entire human history.

So, I think the level of control of those idols is very different. What can happen is somebody can just be a sensation overnight, and then they run away with their opinions and there's no like control to their image anymore. Especially if you get like a million subscribers really quickly, or followers on some kind of platform, and you start to feel like such hot shit that you never start to question your opinions ever again.

And so, and suddenly, you know, versus like a traditional media network where like the higher you climb, the more pressure there is for you to control your image. So, the way that free access platforms changes the rise of stars, I think is very different, right? Even though it's kind of always been around.

Gareth King (18:11)

Totally agree. And you said something there quite insightful, which I think can lead on to my next question now. So, you said there around where this is the only point in time where someone could jump maybe one, two, more socio-economic classes simply by having a shitty second-hand iPhone and making a hit video. And I think that that's fantastic for many people, but that's a very self-improvement goal in terms of a financial and status.

What I'd love to get into now with you is the type of self-improvement that takes a lot of discovery, and takes a lot of work, rather than having everything served up to you through a quick search online. So, you're just looking for a result or being told what to do rather than the work of actually discovering and finding and experiencing it yourself.

How is this removal of, let's call it the journey to real self-improvement in whatever it is, changing people's not only desire for self-improvement, but I guess the effort that they're willing to put into it?

Justin Leff (19:11)

The first casualty is definitely self-awareness. lSo ike, you when someone's like, how do you get disciplined? I'm like, I have 500 questions before I can ever start to give you answers on this. And so that's the problem, right? How does it change what happens when we avoid the journey and we just look for answers? We have no fucking journey. And so, there's no stepping stones between you and the end goal. And the end goal represents something so vague.

Like, so when we talk about being disciplined, right? You could be really disciplined at being on the couch watching TV all day, or you could be really disciplined by being at the gym every single day at 6 a.m. So, the discipline is not specific to certain goals, it just describes consistent behaviours towards that goal.

The journey is really important because it audits the value of the goal. Why do you want to do it is really important because you find the process to achieve that goal by asking that question, but you also find out where within that goal you want to be, and what do you want to apply that new skill or that new status or that new ability towards.

There's so many things about a goal that can be audited and broken down that does not happen if you just look for answers. And that's what we've trained ourselves to look for, right? Are answers, is not processes.

Gareth King (20:16)

Absolutely. And I think that that point there, we're trained now to look for the solution rather than the process is fantastic. And then that leads me back to something that you previously mentioned here, which was around these self-discipline, we'll call them self-discipline influencers, you know, like their entire shtick is this crazy discipline.

Now part of me wonders whether there would be a market for that sort of thing if our self-discipline hadn't been hacked and disrupted through this ease of finding the solution.

Look, I think once upon a time, everyone would have just accepted that self-discipline, commitment, effort, whatever it is, would have been what's needed to achieve any sort of goal. Now we've got answer, answer, answer, answer. You don't actually have to work at anything. So, we're not disciplined in anything. And look, that's just in an online space, but let's not, not kid ourselves and say that that behaviour doesn't permeate out into other things, which is why we're now looking for discipline coaches, when all they're really saying is this classic knowledge of commitment, effort and consistency.

That feels to me like a symbiotic relationship within this digital ecosystem that has created a need for that very, very traditional, discovering the journey reminder, which seems crazy to me.

Justin Leff (21:28)

Yeah there's a lot to say about the way that the internet has changed. Yeah, just having this device that we can pull out and immediately search up the answers for everything is definitely decreased our tolerance for how long we wanna put in effort.

But I don't think it's as simple as it has trained us to be lazy. I think it's more along the lines of it's harder to be disciplined towards a goal when you feel like there's superior alternatives, right?

So, like an analogy that I use with people a lot of the time is that it doesn't take energy to consider the options on the menu. It takes the energy to pick up the phone and dial, right? And when you pick up the phone to dial is when you know what you want to eat. It's not when you have a menu full of delicious things. So, finding motivation is easier. If you have 19 shitty items and one delicious item, than 20 delicious items. Having too many options destroys your motivation to do anything.

Motivation is usable energy to pursue intentions. That's what motivation is. So, if you have an option of 20 delicious things, you will have no motivation to pick up the phone. The internet is constantly teasing this idea of like, what if there's a better career path for me? What if there's a better way to get to that career path? The amount of options that we have access to is really, I think, the threat of the phone.

It's not necessarily that we want to be able to do things in five days instead of a hundred days. I think it's that we go, I would be willing to go down a process that takes 100 days, but what if there's one that takes 90 days instead? And what if there's one that takes 80 days instead? Well, what if this one's a little bit less risky? What if this one has a higher payoff? Like this level of contemplation, I think, absolutely destroys people's energy. Because it's like, how do you navigate this shit? It's so hard.

Gareth King (22:59)

That's super interesting. The menu analogy is great. And I think that that's what, as we've kind of touched on a couple of times now, the online environment is doing. The ease of finding so many options does lead to that decision fatigue. And it's not from making too many decisions. Maybe I'll call it a decision inertia.

And I think that that was a really interesting point that you said, that you actually be so much more motivated with one good option and 19 shit ones, as opposed to 20 good options, that's not something that I'd considered, but it does make a lot of sense if you are presented at with this is the only way for you to do it. Are you going to do it or not? As opposed to which one do you want, which does require work to pick up the phone and dial and start something.

One of the things we see a lot online is, this kind of life hacking stuff and everything is around optimisation of time and effort. You know, like this hustle culture, this grind culture. Are we just overloading ourselves with stuff that we feel we should be doing to optimise every second of our life, that it leads to burnout and then subsequently less motivation to do anything? Is there any behavioural evidence on stuff like that?

Justin Leff (24:08)

Absolutely. So especially when we talk about sort of like the psychology of things like shame and procrastination and stuff like that. Basically how we kind of look at these behaviours is like, think a way that you could really easily look at them is they’re hiding behaviours.

So, this is the challenge when you have negative external motivators, like not falling behind or these are things that I should be doing, right? Should be statements are negative motivators most of the time. I feel like in my job, like I try and engineer the word should or have to out of people's language as much as possible, and make it more about decisions.

So, whenever you have these things that you either because you're feeling behind or because you're failing duties, or you're not being who you're supposed to be, whatever it is, whenever you have negative motivations behind something, you have something that you want to avoid. That's the challenge with it, right?

So, when we have like these hyper optimised things that you're like falling behind on, you start to feel bad about it. The challenge is, that then we avoid, then we procrastinate, then we go on our phone. You know what's worse than not optimising your daily commute, is doom scrolling on your phone during your daily commute, right?

So, like building people's tolerance for modest goals is so goddamn important because there's nothing that will cost you more time than taking shortcuts. The goal that you should be setting is the most ambitious goal for you that is still feasible, right? But to do that, we have to ask what is your level of skill? What is your level of difficulty? When you try and be productive, how are you managing your emotions? How are you managing your confidence? How are you managing how difficult it is for you?

Whenever you set a goal, it's like a really simple guideline for any kind of goal you set. What's the most ambitious goal I can set that is still feasible? Self-regulation is a skill. It is a skill. It is something that some people are good at and some people are bad at. Some people are amazing at, and some people are awful at. You can't treat yourself as if you're the same as every other person because again, like there's skills that vary between individuals.

Gareth King (25:48)

It's interesting around that, you need to have some sense of attainability within the goals that you're setting, to keep you motivated enough to pursue them. If we are seeing just the best of the best, the superstar level of everything, how is that affecting our, not only motivation, but our ability to kind of break down the longer-term goal, into smaller and smaller ones, which are actually attainable for ourselves?

Justin Leff (26:12)

Yeah, I think it affects it in two ways. So, one, the motivation of it goes down a lot because like this is kind of the trick of the unconscious mind is it knows things even if you don't. So, if you're setting goals for yourself that are ridiculously unattainable because you're adopting goals from things that you're seeing online, your conscious mind might think, okay, I got to do what this guy's doing because this is the path to success. And your unconscious mind probably understands that this is fucking ridiculous and it's not going to work. So why bring up any energy to do this thing?

If you don't have the motivation to do something, it's the sign that something in the back of your mind is disagreeing with the goal. That's one way that I think is a good way to think about motivation. There's always a reason for your level of motivation. Even if it's rooted in false beliefs, you have to acknowledge what those beliefs are, or you can't argue with them. You can't debate somebody if you don't enter the same room with them.

In terms of how it affects our ability to operationalise goals, whenever you operationalise something, you kind of reveal how much there is to do. So, if you go, yeah, I'm going to go build the Golden Gate Bridge tomorrow. That sounds great. And then you start thinking, what does that involve? Okay, I have to go to university for six years and then I have to organise a team. I have to work. The more you start breaking down the goal, the more barriers you uncover. You're like, Jesus Christ, this is way more of a project than I thought it was. This is why we always set big ambitious goals. And then when we get in the process, we go, shit, this is way more challenging than I thought it was going to be. Then we give up on it.

So, when you don't operationalise a goal because you're just engaging with that exciting surface level, ambitious, do this, do this, do this, you're not preparing your brain to get ready for those barriers, because those unexpected barriers destroy motivation.

You want to be able to anticipate resistance ahead of time because unexpected resistance is harder to get over than anticipated resistance. You'd rather know that something bad is coming than not know something bad is coming. Even if the outcome is going to be the same, even if the challenge is going to be the same, being emotionally prepared for it makes it more possible for you to regulate yourself through that process emotionally, motivationally, whatever. The surface level antics of it all really set people up for sabotage.

Gareth King (28:03)

Right. Look, that makes a lot of sense. What I'd love for us to move on to now is where things go from here. So, first question in that sense, you know, consider the hypothetical that we all deleted our social media tomorrow, we all stopped looking online for answers. How do you think that that would change our self-improvement goals, and perhaps the effort and methods we're willing to put into it?

Justin Leff (28:27)

Are we deleting the internet as well or just social media?

Gareth King (28:30)

Either, you know, if one has a different effect than the other, you know, let's break that down.

Justin Leff (28:36)

So, like assuming that this hypothetical is as simple as we're making it out to be, it kind of reminds you of like basically what is a good creativity or a good sort of mind mapping exercise in general, which is to go, okay, I'm no longer allowed to look up or acquire new tools. That can be really useful to do because if you have, again, we were talking about like the menu analogy, right? If you have a million options in front of you and you've researched six and you're hesitant to commit toward six because there's 9,994 others, if you just take away their ability to look into those other options, they have to choose between the six or in front of them.

Basically, we're forcing people to work within limitation. If you take away their ability to look stuff up, I think it makes them a little bit more willing to engage with the information that they have access to currently. It takes away that concern, that anxiety, that what if what I have in front of me isn't good enough to get me where I need to be, right?

In terms of the social media thing, I want to engage with the hypothetical, but I think it's like, it's so multifaceted. Like the first thing I think about is that it would just be so good for your mental health in general. To get off of social media. I think you'd be like a completely different person, the way that you engage with goals. It also depends on like, what is your social media feed filled with, right? Because it's not the same.

Trying to motivate yourself solely through identity. Cause that's what like a lot of people try and do. I think that like being engaged with that kind of media is part of the self-improvement identity, but it kind of keeps the person trapped from making actions a lot of the time. So, a lot of just like reinforcement of the kind of the stuff we've been talking about.

And I think that if you took that stuff out of their feed, I don't know. It's, I want to engage with the simplicity of the hypothetical, but when I think about like what happens when you take away social media, my mind just starts going everywhere.

Gareth King (30:11)

No, that's totally fine. And I think that leads me onto the next thing I'd love to talk to you about, which is what role do you potentially see AI playing in self-improvement moving forward? Now, if we are talking about people's social media feed where they are getting aggregated, generalised suggestions, guides, playbooks, et cetera, but we know that with AI you can get hyper-tailored suggestions and information, but it does scrape that aggregated stuff.

Is this something that you've got any thoughts on what might happen now that we can take the entire world of digital information, and customise it to our own unique self in the moment?

Justin Leff (30:52)

So, when we're talking about AI, are we talking specifically about like language learning models or are we talking about just like the general technology impacts of AI?

Gareth King (30:58)

Let's start with LLMs.

Justin Leff (31:01)

So, I think the trick with LLMs, we'll use ChatGPT because that's the big one, right? I feel like LLMs like ChatGPT are not good at authority, yet it's exactly why people use them. So, like Google is still better at authority than a lot of things, but people like to use ChatGPT over Google because, I think a good example this is just to talk about why do people want mentors and why do they want professionals like somebody that sells one-on-one guides for a living?

It's because they think that that person can give them the answers and take the questions out of their mind. They want that person to eliminate options and just tell them what they do. They want instructions. And so, when you go to Google, yes, Google will suggest the top link to you. And yes, there will always be a first results on YouTube, but there's still kind of a responsibility for you to decide how am I going to audit the quality of the information that's happening and what learning language models do, what ChatGPT does, it solves this so elegantly. It just hides it.

It just, doesn't tell you where the fuck it's coming from. And so, it just feels like this hyper professional that can give you the answers that can cut out the options. So, people use Chat GPT because they don't like sorting for authority. But the thing that AI is worst at is authority. Like what AI is good at is amalgamating information.

So, AI is kind of good at representing the semi-competence, more than average competent opinion about things, but I don't know. I think that it makes people question the information that they're being given less. Because they do, right? Like people are like, you can't trust AI and they say that, but then they still go ahead and use it.

Because your distrust of AI, turns out is not as strong a motivator as not having to sort authority for yourself. So, it turns out that not trusting AI isn't enough, and we still want to use it because the simplicity of AI is more appealing than its dishonesty.

Gareth King (32:51)

That's a really great observation that the way that the information is served to you does make it feel more confident, definitive, and as you said, you don't need to test it as much, which feels to me that paradoxically it could be super tailored, but it could also be completely wrong, and now we're putting in less effort finding out if it's right for ourselves, which could take all of our goals completely off course.

But yeah, it's quite insightful and a great observation that you raised there, that it hides the work that you've got to do and makes you not feel obligated to do it.

Justin Leff (33:28)

And if you ask ChatGPT for relationship advice, I actually think that it'll give you better than average advice just because it's not going to give you the opinions. And if you got that exact same response on Reddit, you would sit there and you would audit it more.

You'd be like, do I trust this person? It's like a random person commenting on my thing and saying, do they relate to my situation? When ChatGPT offers it, we just have this vague, I shouldn't trust AI thing, or we accept that as the authority. And we just kind of oscillate between the two depending on which one we're more desperate for in the moment. It doesn't provide bad information. I just don't think it's really good at tailoring yet. I don't know.

Gareth King (34:00)

Yeah, look, I think one positive of what you've just said there is it is emotionally neutral generally, you know, like I think a lot of…

Justin Leff (34:08)

As long as you don't corrupt it yourself.

Gareth King (34:10)

True, true. I think a lot of what happens in the online space is we know people are much more likely to say things out of anger or negativity or complaint or whatever it is rather than that positivity, happiness, et cetera. And so obviously, as you said, if you're asking for relationship advice, there's going to be people telling you so much more what not to do as opposed to, hey, here's a good thing to do. Because if someone is like, why are they giving good advice? They're just like going and enjoying the good advice that they've got to give.

So, I wonder whether that emotional neutrality does provide you a bit more of a balanced answer, but a bit more of a flat answer. It's not as suggestive in any way. It's just kind of there.

But anyway, one other thing I'd love to ask you is what advice would you give to anyone who might be feeling overwhelmed or even disheartened by the amount of self-improvement suggested content online? Like how do they filter what's actually good, what's bad, and should they be looking online or where else should they be looking?

Justin Leff (35:08)

I think that the best blanket advice that I can give to people is to look for peers. Here's an important thing. I think if you're someone who's caught in this media loop, the first thing I would say is distinguish the difference between causes and pain points. Okay?

You can have a thousand people that have the exact same pain point of like feeling lazy, doom scrolling on your phone, feeling like a waste of life, feeling like lack of potential, that kind of stuff, right? A thousand people with that exact same pain point and 1,000 unique answers for every single individual one of them.

One of the ways it's really good to filter this is to find peers. And so, what I mean by a peer is somebody that has gone through your journey. Not somebody that's in the same position as you, but like if you're the kind of person where you struggle with alcohol and you feel like, you know, I had a bad family and I use it to cope, and that like a very specific, elaborate investigation of why you are the way you are. Look for people that have gone through the same experiences as you, right? Shared experience, not shared pain points. Experiences are peers, pain points are from marketers.

And so, like whatever that takes form, but just somebody who it really feels like they've gone along the same path as you, and you're identifying with the process to where they've gotten there, not just what's frustrating you right now.

And the other one that I think is like a good reminder that every single self-improvement goal always starts with self-awareness. How did I get here? Why did I get here? Why is it a challenge for me and other people? Like, you know, as somebody that does this for a living, when people come with problems, the first thing I do is interrogate the shit out of them with questions, okay?

So, if you can't have somebody to work with that can help you with that, ask yourself the questions, but if you can, get somebody else to ask them because humans are social creatures, and we think out loud and we process feelings and express feelings and realise things about ourselves out loud. Find the person that you can talk to best, whether it's somebody like me, whether it's a therapist, whether it's your best friend, whether it's a peer support group, make it social and make it self-investigating. Stop appealing to answers.

Gareth King (36:50)

Great advice there, and an interesting point around finding peers, which ironically is something that technology and the internet does facilitate quite a lot. Finding those unique journey peers that you would never ever encounter in real life.

On that note then, just to finish up, what is one thing that you think that the internet and technology can never provide someone trying to become a better version of themselves?

Justin Leff (37:13)

Yeah community. Again, I'm somebody who literally like helps people find self-discipline for a living, but I'm telling you that humans are to their bone social creatures, and nothing motivates us more than being engaged with the people around us in the environment.

If you really want to understand what the difference is between somebody that has the discipline to go to the gym every single day, and you who can't get motivated to go every day, it's probably because they have a community built around that gym. It's like that is the commonality between every single person who is super into bodybuilding or weightlifting. They have a community based around that gym.

So, if you're going to try and find your superpower to be disciplined around something, build other people into it. Ultimately, what we want and why we care about goals and why we care about anything in life is because we're social creatures that want to hang around the campfire with other people like us in our community.

The internet will never provide you a community. Your community is always going to be somewhere in your physical environment. Yes, of course, there are online communities and for some people those are saving graces. Like there are some people where they need their online communities and they can be really powerful. But yeah, a digital community, it hits the ceiling kind of quickly. I think it's really important to eventually have a real local community around you. And like, that's where I feel like you're going to find real goals and fulfillment.

Gareth King (38:18)

Awesome. Well, thanks for that, Justin. What have you got coming up and where can people follow what you're up to?

Justin Leff (38:24)

Yeah, I'm, I'm again, always trying to find my relationship with social media. So, I'm trying, I'm going to try and get into sort of like brief Q and A stuff on Instagram soon. So, you can follow me on Instagram if you're curious about upcoming stuff.

But other than that, you can also like download some guides, which will sign you up for like a newsletter for stuff that I might do in the future on my website, which I imagine will be linked below. It's soliliumcoaching.com. And if you want to sign up to the newsletter or sign up on Instagram, then anything I do in the future, you can find out about there too.

Gareth King (38:48)

Justin, thank you so much.

Justin Leff (38:53)

No problem. was, I was really excited to come do this. I read the title for this podcast and I thought like I could co-host this. I have so many opinions about the internet. So, I was really happy to come here and do this.

Gareth King (38:59)

Maybe we'll do a follow up on something else. But yeah, thanks again, Justin.

Justin Leff (39:03)

Yeah, no problem.