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.
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.