you know people are aware of the future in ways that animals aren't or
animals are only partially aware we're very aware of the future and aware of our mortal
limitations in a manner that seems unique to human beings we constantly sacrifice the present to the
future that's actually the definition of work and that emerges very early on in the biblical
narrative corpus the idea that humans are destined to work but that also work is the sacrifice of the
present and that's part of the fall in some sense it's the sacrifice of the present to the future
and we regard that as the hallmark of maturity fundamentally right can you delay gratification
well if the answer is no it's well then you're two can you delay gratification well then i
mean that technically um because two-year-olds can't delay gratification which makes it very
difficult for other people to play with them for example um if you can delay gratification then
you can work if you can work then you're mature it's the definition of maturity and responsibility
and it does pervade it's so interesting to see that it pervades the act of attention itself
well one of the things that i think can be really useful and this is also a skill that will serve
you well for the rest of your life is to start using a schedule like like a gmail calendar and
and schedule in studying time for example now so i've got some thoughts about using a schedule
people often don't like schedules because it's like developing your own tyrant you know it's
okay well here's a whole bunch of things i have to do tomorrow that's my schedule and i better
stick with it or i'm a bad person i'm a failure and that's not the right way to go about it the
scheduling what you want to do with the schedule is design the day that you would like to have
now some of that's going to involve responsibilities that you have to live up to
or your life will get worse right so but i would say if you're trying to start
learning how to manage your school stress is like schedule in 10 minutes of homework
maybe before you go to school in the morning if you can get up you
probably can't because teenagers have a hard time getting up in the morning
but start with 10 minutes see if you can train yourself to sit down for 10 minutes after
dinner some regular time and do 10 minutes of homework and that's it put that in there as a
goal and then maybe if you've done your 10 minutes of homework you can schedule in i don't know
15 minutes of playing a video game if you want some sort of reward but start start figuring out
how to organize your day so that you get to do the things that you want to do and you do some
of the things that you have to do in a manner that you think you could actually do in a manner that
would be sustainable across time and that like the part of your brain that makes you anxious
is really unhappy if you don't have a plan and so one of the fastest ways to start to deal with
too much negative emotion too much stress related negative emotion is to make a plan and to make it
concrete and so i would say and the schedule is an unbelievably useful way of doing that
and you think in my mind well in your mind well why am i filling out this calendar for the week
so i know what i'm doing so that i'm not anxious so that i'm doing things i want to do so i have
something to look forward to and so that i'm doing things that i have to do so that my life
doesn't go spiral downhill and make myself might make me more miserable and resentful and bitter
and so you can start to use a schedule as your friend and like that'll take a year of practice
to get good at so if it doesn't work well in the first week don't give up just keep doing
it until you get yourself disciplined and they are able to stick more and more to your plants
and that that's uh that will help you so much in your life you just can't believe it
because you know i used to ask my students because i was trying to figure this out i'd ask a question
like well why are you why are you writing this essay or what are you doing when you're writing
this essay that's a better question so you think what is someone doing when writing an essay
and one answer is say they're doing it on a computer well they're moving their fingers up
and down and that's actually a really good answer because that's not an idea right moving your
fingers up up and down that's not an idea that's where your spirit meets your body you're actually
moving something physical and you don't really have consciousness of the musculature or
you know you don't know how you move your fingers but you can do it and so at the most the highest
level of resolution when you're writing an essay you're moving your fingers and now you know how to
type and you have automated structures for doing that and then you're composing words and the words
are in phrases and the phrases are in sentences and the sentences are in paragraphs and
the paragraphs are in sections and the whole thing makes an essay but then that's a subset of a class
and you want a grade for the class because you want to pass the class because you want to get
your degree but why do you want to get your degree it's well maybe you're interested in
that field of study and you think being a scholar is a good thing and you want to have a job and
so while you're writing an essay you're what are you doing preparing to have your career and then
does that are you doing that because you want to be a good citizen and a good father perhaps good
mother and do you want to do that because you want to be a good person and or are you mixed up in
all of that and but so you're doing all of those things well or badly at the same time all the time
with everything you do all the time and there's no way around that it can't be simplified the
whole structure has to be there and that's another reason why we don't have general purpose robots
yet is that they're just not embedded in that ethic that stretches all the way up from the most
minute motor patterns of action and perception to the highest possible ethical striving
so what you want to do is chop up that overwhelming infinity into a set of manageable
tasks and and you want to think well you know some of those tasks might be like well maybe you
could put some order into your room you know or maybe you could make your room a little bit more
beautiful or maybe you could think of one thing around the house that you could do that would
actually be helpful and and and you're doing that to improve your life that's the point you're not
doing it because someone's shaking a stick at you and telling you that this is what you have to do
if you're going to be a good person that's not the point and you also with your schedule you think
well i'm going to design this schedule for someone i like and that person that i'm designing the
schedule for that i like is going to be me and so it isn't the the schedule of a slave master to a
slave it's a negotiated schedule that you arrange with yourself so that you can have a decent life
but it's it's it's a very powerful tool to have a calendar at your disposal and if you can learn to
use that young just put a few things in it put in your classes put in a few assignments put in some
things that you might want to do just just start stupidly and badly and you'll get good at it over
and assume you'll get good at it over about a year and that'll change your life like if you if you
if you uh learn to listen to people if you decide that you're not going to say things that you know
to be untrue and that and if you learn how to schedule your time your life will change for
the better so much that you won't believe it and that will keep happening more and more and more
and more as you get older so it's a great it's a great thing to start practicing when you're
if you could start practicing that with when you're a teenager and you get that
under control by your by the time you're 18 you'll be absolutely deadly
you'll be so far ahead of other people who don't do any of that that that you won't
believe it and that'll just continue to you'll just continue to accrue benefits as a consequence
you know one of the things human beings did because we were preyed upon and became
predators one of the things we did was imitate the predator you know and so we were in awe of
a predatory animal like we still might be if you meet a grizzly bear in the in the woods you know
it's you might freeze and you're certainly going to attend to it but then there's part of you that
is deeply called upon to imitate the the capacity for aggression of the predator so that you can
defend your loved ones against predatory action and some of that would be to be the warrior that
can fight off the grizzly bear but then abstract it up into the religious sense it would be to be
the ethical actor who can protect your family from um from unscrupulous psychopaths you know
forces of malevolence that border on the on the satanic and so and that's all part of the ethical
enterprise and weirdly enough all of your acts of perception are necessarily nested inside a
structure that's pointing to what's what is at the highest or you're incoherent those are the options
well that's a strange thing right because you can say well maybe your hierarchy of value isn't
unified and there's nothing at the top it's like okay it's not unified well then you're confused
and if you're with someone and your hierarchies of value aren't unified then you are in conflict
or you're aimless or you're hopeless or you're anxious or you're lost that's the phenomenological
consequence of lacking this united pyramidal pyramidal ethic so you can't get away from the
necessity of this unless you want to live you know aimless nihilistic confused hopeless all of that
you