The Difference Between Doing and Thinking About Doing

Hey, good morning everybody, happy Monday morning. I hope you had a good Easter weekend. We don't really go to church or anything on Easter weekend, but we do all the typical stuff that people do, you know. When my kids were young, we used to color Easter eggs. My kids are grown, so we didn't do that, but we're down to one. Let's see, it's my niece's kid, so great-nephew, is that what he is? But he's four or five years old, so he's still at the age where he likes to go hunt for eggs and do that. It's funny how the triangle flips; like there was a time when my nieces and nephews were young and my sister's kids were young, and we would have Easter, everybody over for Easter, and there would be ten kids running around the yard trying to get eggs and stuff while a few adults stood around and watched. And now you have a dozen adults and one kid standing around watching them. But we had a good weekend. We had family over, and everybody brings a dish, that sort of thing, and everybody just gets to get together and talk and hang out and eat and get together as a family. That's a big thing for us.

But it's Monday; it's back to the grind. I didn't spend a lot of time in my office over the weekend, so I came in this morning, and one of the things that's been on my to-do list is to clean my office. My office, I've had a messy room since I was five years old, or probably before that, but I've had a messy room my whole life. I've never been good at picking stuff up, keeping stuff clean. My wife says, my wife teases me, she says, you must really hate empty flat surfaces because anywhere there's a flat surface you're going to put something, you're going to stack something there. And she's right. And I've got a pile on the floor of stuff here next to me of, you know, a picture I was going to hang up and a spiral notebook and a hat and a little stool and a computer keyboard I was trying, and there's just no end to the stuff, you know.

So anyway, here's what I wanted to talk about this morning: I'm always looking for a new cleaning system. I'm always looking for a way, how can I organize all this stuff? Sometimes that means, how can I get rid of stuff? But how can I organize it? How can I, you know, what's a good cleaning, what's a good cleaning method? What's a good organization method? You know, I'm always thinking about that kind of stuff. And so years ago, I was at a bookstore, and I saw this book, and it was like how to declutter your home. I think that's literally the name of the book, how to declutter your home. And I bought this book, you know, and I flipped through it and had some good ideas. And then one day I was at a used bookstore, and I saw this book, and it was like, you know, I'm making up a name here, but it was like the infallible home organization system. And I was like, oh, that's a good, that's a good one. And then I found one that was like, you know, a better living through minimalism or something, you know.

And so anyway, here's my point: I now have on my bookshelf six different books on how to get rid of clutter. So not only have I not gotten rid of the clutter, but now I have six additional books on how to get rid of clutter. And I can see them right here; they're right here on my bookshelf. And here's when I look at those books, I don't stare at them all day, you know, but when I do see them, this is what I think. There's a difference between thinking about doing something and doing something. So I've talked to people who said, I'm thinking about writing a book, and I go, oh, why aren't you writing a book? Why are you thinking about writing a book? Write a book. You know, I'm thinking about starting a podcast. Well, I think you already thought about it; now you should start it, you know.

People can almost, you know what, I'm going to tell you something I learned. My wife and I like to go to casinos. We don't go that often. You know, we might go once a month or something like that. And we take a little bit of money. We're not big, you know, spending people like that. Like we might take a hundred bucks and go do that like one time a month, right? And so we read all this stuff about casinos. And I read a thing that they did a study, you know, if you've, maybe you haven't been to a casino in a long time. But casinos now, I mean, slot machines kind of look like video games, you know. Big bright screens, gigantic screens, and animation, and they play songs, and they make noises, and they do all this, you know. And there's this concept called loss presented as win. LPW, that's what we say. Loss presented as win, LPW. And what the idea behind that is, is that if you give people enough positive reinforcement or whatever, they'll be happy even when they win.

And so what they did on these slot machines is that they, you know, let's say you spend $1 and you spin. And when it's done, all these little things line up, and they go boopity boopity boop, and it plays a little tune, and they glitter, and you do all this, and you win. And then when you look and see how much that you won, it's like 90 cents. And you go, oh man, you know, and you feel all good inside. But really what that means is that you just lost a dime. You didn't win anything; you lost money. But what they've done is they've made these machines give you so much reinforcement like that that they did a study, and you get almost the same amount of dopamine in your brain for losing as you get when you win. So you're happy for losing your money, which is one of the reasons why people get addicted to playing these machines. It's because you spin, and you spin, and you're having a good time. And then all of a sudden your money is zero. And you go, oh boy, what happened? I was having such a good time losing.

And so when my wife and I play slot machines, we bet, and we win. But we win less than what we spent. We go LBW. And it's funny how many times you'll say that because it's almost every time. And so the reason I mention that is because the way that our brains work is we can change a situation to justify things. Buying a book about getting rid of stuff is, in our brains, the same reward as getting rid of stuff, even though it's not. At the end of the day, we have more stuff, right? It was LPW, if you think about it. And I'll go one further and say that watching people have a good time on YouTube gives us that same release, right? But it's not. We didn't have a good time. We watch people go camping on YouTube, and then we get that same thing. Like we went camping, but we didn't go camping. I didn't go camping; I was sitting here on my computer. And we watch all these shows on TV. We watch people bake, and we watch people have fun, and they go skydiving, and whatever they're doing. And we watch that, and we get that dopamine like, oh, that was great, but we didn't leave the house.

So thinking about doing is not the same as doing. So I have been thinking about working on this book. I thought about it all last week that I need to be working on, but I didn't get anywhere on it. And so today that's going to be my goal. It's not to think about working on this book, but to go work on the book. So now I'll leave you with that. I'm going to turn off voice notes, and I'm going to open up my folder, and I'm going to go work on the book. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.