Nice post! I definitely agree that being willing to call friends on their BS can be a super valuable service.
I think the right way to pull it off depends on the person you’re talking to though—it’s easy to get somebody else feeling defensive, or overwhelmed, and this detracts from the actual goal of getting them to do something. I have two approaches that seem pretty widely effective here:
1. “Socratic butt-kicking”—when I think somebody is obviously procrastinating, rather than outright telling them, I come up with an argument in my head for why I think this, and then ask a series of leading questions to lead them through that thought process. Eg, if someone is procrastinating on applying for something, I might ask “How long has it been since you decided you wanted to apply for this?”, and “Would you be surprised if it’s 2 weeks from now and you still haven’t gotten round to it?”. Or, if somebody is being insecure/imposter syndrome-y, asking “what’s the worst thing that could happen if you apply?” and “do you think you’d learn anything valuable from applying?”
I think this works really well for avoiding defensiveness, because you’re leading them through the thought process, which is generally a lot more motivating than it being externally imposed on them. And, if I am wrong in my thought process, this fails pretty gracefully, because they’ll give an unexpected answer to a question.
It can also be a good way to get them to take the Outside View—thinking about whether a typical candidate might feel the way they do, or whether they’ll ever get round to it. And to appreciate the value of cheap tests—that you should obviously do low-effort things with no real downside, even if they’re stressful. Which are both pretty obvious insights that take a lot of willpower and attention to ensure you do yourself.
2. Ensuring they leave the conversation with a concrete next action. I think a lot of stress/procrastination comes from something feeling fuzzy, stressful and overwhelming. And that there’s a lot of cognitive work in processing an overwhelming task and figuring out what to actually do about it. So I think a really valuable thing to do is to ask “what’s a concrete thing you could do to make progress towards ___?” And then once they give a vague idea, poke at it until it becomes specific and concrete.
It’s also great to ensure they have a specific time and plan—especially if you can get them to explicitly put time in their calendar for it. Long-term admin like applications sucks because it never feels urgent compared to short-term stuff in your life, so the default state of the world is that they put it off indefinitely. I often offer to message them after that block to check on them, and set myself a reminder afterwards to follow-up.
Thank you Neel! These are great points. It is very helpful that you wrote some concrete questions people might ask others to get them to take action.
Regarding 1: I would say the butt-kicking I got was pretty similar to what you referred as “socratic butt-kicking”. The person I talked to did ask several questions and poked around before they decided to be more direct. So one could start in more of a coach role before acting like a parent. I think what helped not to get defensive when they became direct was that they genuinely conveyed having my best interest at heart, which fostered trust between us very quickly.
Regarding 2: This has worked similarly for a specific independent project I started. I had all these fuzzy ideas of something I wanted to do and the person made a bunch of notes while I talked (in a very unstructured way), asked several questions and set accountability systems for me. This made the next steps to take as well as the specific motivation behind the project very clear.
Great post! We all know encouragement is often great, but I hadn’t considered that it might be necessary or more effective in those specific situations. One of the things that caught my attention in your personal experience is that the person was a recent acquaintance. I wonder how friendship might insert other nuances into the process of butt-kicking; I mean, that’s what friends are for, but they may end up being more protective (like “Hey, you’re a great ukulule player, but maybe you should get your Master’s first”), and maybe butt-kicked may end up discounting their feedback because of that (“Of course, you think I can do anything, look at your Christmas Card).
Thank you Ramiro! Excellent point. I think it really depends on the person (how open they are and have been to criticism, if they have a growth-mindset, etc.). I think that overall, my friends have learned that I’m very open to get a little push as long as I’m in the right state of mind.
Regarding “discounting the feedback”: This can be a risk indeed. It happens to me rarely though, because the type of friends kicking my butt are usually very honest giving feedback and I allow them to be honest. The protective kind of friends tend not to do much butt-kicking anyways.
Thanks for the post! I agree with the importance of peer accountability and I have been trying to apply it myself. Some comments about helpful and unhelpful butt-kicking:
You say the butt-kicking is called for when the person has a better understanding of the opportunities to be considered, but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. I think hardly someone else will have a better idea of how opportunities fit within our own plans but the value can come precisely from the butt kicker´s ignorance about all of the uncertainties involved (the factors paralyzing our own decisions). The butt kicker is able to “zoom out” of the actual situation and “remove the noise” from the decision...maybe? That’s how I feel it sometimes haha.
You also mentioned that butt-kicking is not ideal when the bottleneck is related to financial or psychological issues. I think this one could go both ways; I can imagine a situation in which the person is stuck with a harmful decision (such as a terrible boss, burnout, etc) but justifies not taking the next step due to psychological issues that come as a result of those harmful environments. In that case an external person kicking your butt can be particularly useful, perhaps even more than in other situations. I think this butt kicking thing can be a way of acknowledging and avoiding your own biases and motivated reasoning to stay in harmful situations that stall your career.
So in general thanks for the post and for sharing your ideas. Hope to see more butt-kicking tools inside EA community.
In that case an external person kicking your butt can be particularly useful, perhaps even more than in other situations. I think this butt kicking thing can be a way of acknowledging and avoiding your own biases and motivated reasoning to stay in harmful situations that stall your career.
This is true, but perhaps it’d not extrapolate so well for everyone—I can imagine the risk of making the butt-kicked person just feel even more pressured. But if you really master the Art of Butt-Kicking (I’d say “softly butt-kicking,” but it sounds creepy), I see how this can go well ;)
I was thinking some more about how I approach butt-kicking, and generally helping debug others and helping them to be agenty, and wrote up a blog post on my thoughts
Nice post! I definitely agree that being willing to call friends on their BS can be a super valuable service.
I think the right way to pull it off depends on the person you’re talking to though—it’s easy to get somebody else feeling defensive, or overwhelmed, and this detracts from the actual goal of getting them to do something. I have two approaches that seem pretty widely effective here:
1. “Socratic butt-kicking”—when I think somebody is obviously procrastinating, rather than outright telling them, I come up with an argument in my head for why I think this, and then ask a series of leading questions to lead them through that thought process. Eg, if someone is procrastinating on applying for something, I might ask “How long has it been since you decided you wanted to apply for this?”, and “Would you be surprised if it’s 2 weeks from now and you still haven’t gotten round to it?”. Or, if somebody is being insecure/imposter syndrome-y, asking “what’s the worst thing that could happen if you apply?” and “do you think you’d learn anything valuable from applying?”
I think this works really well for avoiding defensiveness, because you’re leading them through the thought process, which is generally a lot more motivating than it being externally imposed on them. And, if I am wrong in my thought process, this fails pretty gracefully, because they’ll give an unexpected answer to a question.
It can also be a good way to get them to take the Outside View—thinking about whether a typical candidate might feel the way they do, or whether they’ll ever get round to it. And to appreciate the value of cheap tests—that you should obviously do low-effort things with no real downside, even if they’re stressful. Which are both pretty obvious insights that take a lot of willpower and attention to ensure you do yourself.
2. Ensuring they leave the conversation with a concrete next action. I think a lot of stress/procrastination comes from something feeling fuzzy, stressful and overwhelming. And that there’s a lot of cognitive work in processing an overwhelming task and figuring out what to actually do about it. So I think a really valuable thing to do is to ask “what’s a concrete thing you could do to make progress towards ___?” And then once they give a vague idea, poke at it until it becomes specific and concrete.
It’s also great to ensure they have a specific time and plan—especially if you can get them to explicitly put time in their calendar for it. Long-term admin like applications sucks because it never feels urgent compared to short-term stuff in your life, so the default state of the world is that they put it off indefinitely. I often offer to message them after that block to check on them, and set myself a reminder afterwards to follow-up.
Thank you Neel! These are great points. It is very helpful that you wrote some concrete questions people might ask others to get them to take action.
Regarding 1: I would say the butt-kicking I got was pretty similar to what you referred as “socratic butt-kicking”. The person I talked to did ask several questions and poked around before they decided to be more direct. So one could start in more of a coach role before acting like a parent. I think what helped not to get defensive when they became direct was that they genuinely conveyed having my best interest at heart, which fostered trust between us very quickly.
Regarding 2: This has worked similarly for a specific independent project I started. I had all these fuzzy ideas of something I wanted to do and the person made a bunch of notes while I talked (in a very unstructured way), asked several questions and set accountability systems for me. This made the next steps to take as well as the specific motivation behind the project very clear.
Great post! We all know encouragement is often great, but I hadn’t considered that it might be necessary or more effective in those specific situations.
One of the things that caught my attention in your personal experience is that the person was a recent acquaintance. I wonder how friendship might insert other nuances into the process of butt-kicking; I mean, that’s what friends are for, but they may end up being more protective (like “Hey, you’re a great ukulule player, but maybe you should get your Master’s first”), and maybe butt-kicked may end up discounting their feedback because of that (“Of course, you think I can do anything, look at your Christmas Card).
Thank you Ramiro! Excellent point. I think it really depends on the person (how open they are and have been to criticism, if they have a growth-mindset, etc.). I think that overall, my friends have learned that I’m very open to get a little push as long as I’m in the right state of mind.
Regarding “discounting the feedback”: This can be a risk indeed. It happens to me rarely though, because the type of friends kicking my butt are usually very honest giving feedback and I allow them to be honest. The protective kind of friends tend not to do much butt-kicking anyways.
Thanks for the post! I agree with the importance of peer accountability and I have been trying to apply it myself. Some comments about helpful and unhelpful butt-kicking:
You say the butt-kicking is called for when the person has a better understanding of the opportunities to be considered, but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. I think hardly someone else will have a better idea of how opportunities fit within our own plans but the value can come precisely from the butt kicker´s ignorance about all of the uncertainties involved (the factors paralyzing our own decisions). The butt kicker is able to “zoom out” of the actual situation and “remove the noise” from the decision...maybe? That’s how I feel it sometimes haha.
You also mentioned that butt-kicking is not ideal when the bottleneck is related to financial or psychological issues. I think this one could go both ways; I can imagine a situation in which the person is stuck with a harmful decision (such as a terrible boss, burnout, etc) but justifies not taking the next step due to psychological issues that come as a result of those harmful environments. In that case an external person kicking your butt can be particularly useful, perhaps even more than in other situations. I think this butt kicking thing can be a way of acknowledging and avoiding your own biases and motivated reasoning to stay in harmful situations that stall your career.
So in general thanks for the post and for sharing your ideas. Hope to see more butt-kicking tools inside EA community.
This is true, but perhaps it’d not extrapolate so well for everyone—I can imagine the risk of making the butt-kicked person just feel even more pressured. But if you really master the Art of Butt-Kicking (I’d say “softly butt-kicking,” but it sounds creepy), I see how this can go well ;)
I was thinking some more about how I approach butt-kicking, and generally helping debug others and helping them to be agenty, and wrote up a blog post on my thoughts