Episode notes
What are you actually waiting for? I am 49, I have everything I need to do the work, and I am watching Netflix instead. So I am asking you to hold me to it.
Mark Twain said a person who will not read has no advantage over one who cannot. That landed hard. I have the chair, the arm, the time, and I still am not doing it. For years I told myself I was frightened of letting people down, then realised I let people down by not doing it. So no grand promises. Just accountability, and something told to you each day.
One thing to try: Name the one thing you keep not doing, then tell somebody. Not a plan. Just say it out loud to another person.
In this episode
- (0:02) Enough is enough, and why I am asking for help
- (1:44) Doing the things that give pleasure in the moment, ironically
- (4:04) Mark Twain, and the line that landed hard
- (5:34) I have everything I need, so what am I waiting for
- (6:49) Why funerals frighten us, and what they remind us of
- (8:15) Frightened of letting people down, while letting people down
- (9:21) No big promises, just accountability
- (12:04) One thing a day, told to you, whatever it is
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Steven
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The story behind this one
I am forty nine, I have everything I need to do the work, and I am watching Netflix instead. So this episode is me asking you to hold me to it.
It starts with an admission about the episode itself. One of the things stopping me publishing is wanting each one to be perfect, so I have given that up. You get the rough edit, the mistakes left in, and no fiddling with the title for two hours.
The book is thirty one years old now. I have written it ten thousand times in my head. Bits of it are in Evernote, bits in OneNote, chapters scattered everywhere. During lockdown I was going to finish it and get fit. You know how that went.
What I actually do is pick the low fruit. Netflix at bedtime. The wrong chocolate bar. Buying the item that I have convinced myself is the thing standing between me and getting started, of which there have been thousands, because I have two Kindles. Two. I bought the second one believing it would make me read.
I used to say I work best with my back against the wall. That is not a trait. That is a way of saying I will not begin until the deadline forces me.
What it taught me
A person who will not read has no advantage over one who cannot read.
Mark Twain
I wear a memento mori round my neck, which means remember that you have to die. If that does not wake a person up, nothing will. And yet the longer you live the more confident you get that you will carry on living, which is exactly backwards.
That is why funerals unsettle us. Somebody else dying reminds us we are not staying either.
Don't die with your music still in you.
Wayne Dyer
Here is the bit I had wrong for years. I told myself I was frightened of letting people down. Then it landed that I am letting people down by not doing it. I am trying to write a New York Times bestseller and I am not even an author yet. Every book starts out as a mess and gets rewritten.
So no grand promises, because I know myself and I would fail them. Instead: Netflix cancelled, games off the tablet, the television out of the bedroom, and something told to you every single day about what I actually did.
Questions people ask
What are you asking listeners to do?
Hold me to it. If I say I will email you, chase me. If I promise something, make me deliver. That is the whole ask, and it is not rhetorical.
Is this an episode about productivity?
No. It is about the gap between knowing and doing, which is the same thing I keep circling. Knowing what would help you and not doing it puts you level with somebody who never knew.
What should I take from this if I am not writing a book?
Name the one thing you keep not doing, and tell somebody. Not a plan, not a system. Say it out loud to another person, which is exactly what this episode is me doing.
Read the transcript
The transcript follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
0:02Steven Webb: Enough is enough. I'm 49 and I need your help.
0:10Steven Webb: Let me explain.
0:12Steven Webb: Just before I start, just a little bit of time out a moment. Because when I went through to just
0:18Steven Webb: chop out the bits that I wasn't speaking, I realised I didn't say something very important.
0:24Steven Webb: One of the things that stops me doing all these podcasts and all the other things is the fact that
0:29Steven Webb: I think I need to make them perfect. I'm going to give up on that. You're going to get the
0:35Steven Webb: rawest um Editing you're going to get literally I'm going to chop out the bits where perhaps I make a
0:41Steven Webb: mistake or there's blank bits. But I'm not going to play around with titles. I'm not going to play around
0:46Steven Webb: all those other things because that's what stops me publishing. So I'm just going to throw it up there. So
0:52Steven Webb: it is going to be what it's going to be. So I'm Steven. This is Stillness in the Storms podcast
0:59Steven Webb: and I will allow it to continue.
1:04Steven Webb: So, like I said, I'm 49 soon. I've been paralysed now, September the 1st, for 31 years. You know, we've
1:12Steven Webb: had lockdown. During lockdown, I was going to write my book. I was going to get fit. I was going
1:16Steven Webb: to do all these things. For the last 31 years, I was going to write a book. I wrote it
1:22Steven Webb: 10 000 times in my head. I wrote it on the computer, different chapters here and there. It's a mess.
1:27Steven Webb: It's in Evernote. It's in one note It's in all these different places. It needs to be brought together and
1:34Steven Webb: some kind of... And I I just feel like I'm getting nowhere fast. I'm doing the things that need to
1:42Steven Webb: be done as opposed to the things I want to do. And I'm doing all the things that... I don't
1:48Steven Webb: want to do, ironically. But they're the things that give me the moment pleasure in that moment. Like watching Tv.
1:54Steven Webb: Like binge um Watching on Netflix. Doing all these different things like eating the wrong kind of chocolate bar. Things
2:02Steven Webb: like They all give me those little pick-me-ups in the moment. But they're not nourishing. They're not going to give
2:08Steven Webb: me anything later on. And I'm constantly picking the the low level fruit in order to
2:15Steven Webb: in
2:17Steven Webb: In some way, I think something's going to snap and something's going to really push me into getting on with
2:22Steven Webb: my life but You know, put my backside into gear. And I always remember saying, especially when I was a
2:28Steven Webb: teenager or even older even even probably recent years, you
2:33Steven Webb: know, I'm best when my back's against the wall when I'm under pressure. Really, that was an excuse for saying
2:38Steven Webb: I'm not going to bother doing it until the deadline is almost here um you know and You
2:46Steven Webb: know, I always thought that was a trait. That was a wonderful, like, thing. But no, that's what I do.
2:51Steven Webb: I I don't reply to emails till I have to reply. I've got a to-do list as long as my
2:57Steven Webb: arm that I really need to get on and do. And I feel like I'm letting people down. They
3:05Steven Webb: may not feel the same way, but I I that's the way I feel. And you cannot argue with feelings
3:10Steven Webb: you know If someone feels a certain way, don't argue with it because that's the way they feel. Even if
3:16Steven Webb: it doesn't fit the facts, that's the way they feel. So I feel like I let people down and But
3:22Steven Webb: above all, I'm starting to realise at the age of 49, I'll be 50 to 78
3:30Steven Webb: And what have I done with my life? I
3:34Steven Webb: know people will come back and say, well, you've done a lot and all that. Yeah, maybe. But unless I
3:38Steven Webb: feel that,
3:39Steven Webb: then it's not really that important. And you can do this with yourself now. You know, are you really where
3:47Steven Webb: you want to be? You might be doing well in other people's eyes. You might be doing all these other
3:51Steven Webb: things. But is it where you really want to be? And the reason why I say enough is enough, you
3:57Steven Webb: know, you can have all the knowledge in the world, but unless you put it to use, what's the point
4:03Steven Webb: in that knowledge? It
4:06Steven Webb: reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain. A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't
4:12Steven Webb: read. So the person who won't read has no advantage over the person that cannot read. Think about that for
4:20Steven Webb: a moment.
4:22Steven Webb: Yeah. I've got a necklace around my head, the Memento Mori.
4:28Steven Webb: And I I got it from Ryan Holiday that writes lots and lots of books it's I'm a huge fan
4:35Steven Webb: of his. And he he does the daily stoic. I read the emails. And I think every day I'm going
4:40Steven Webb: to make changes. And every day I go to bed and I put up my tablet and I put on
4:45Steven Webb: Netflix and I do a bit of reading and I read those and my head goes Like it doesn't want
4:50Steven Webb: to read anymore. It goes blank. Because I'm reading the wrong time of day. Really, I should be going to
4:54Steven Webb: sleep. No, what do I do? I put suits on on Netflix. I try to kid myself. I'll do it
5:00Steven Webb: tomorrow. I
5:02Steven Webb: buy that item on Amazon because I think when I buy that item, that's that's the one item that I
5:08Steven Webb: need in order to sort my life out. That's the one item I need to do my next podcast or
5:12Steven Webb: something like that. Well, I bought thousands of items I've You know, I'm a gadget freak. I buy and sell
5:20Steven Webb: things. I upgrade I
5:23Steven Webb: You get the point. You get the point. And I have a Youtube. I have a Tiktok I
5:31Steven Webb: have I
5:34Steven Webb: have my chair. I have my arm for the chair. I have all the things I've always wanted to do
5:39Steven Webb: what I want to do, and yet I'm still not doing it.
5:42Steven Webb: What am I waiting for? Well, I don't wait until I die. You
5:47Steven Webb: know, that necklace around my neck, memento mori. You know it's it means in Latin, remember
5:55Steven Webb: that you have to die.
5:59Steven Webb: Boom that
6:02Steven Webb: doesn't wake you up, if that doesn't wake me up, what is? I'm going to die. And when I broke
6:08Steven Webb: my neck, what, 31 years ago, this September, I didn't think I'd live 10 years. But
6:14Steven Webb: the problem is, the longer you live, the more confident you get that you'll live fine. Even when you hear
6:20Steven Webb: a friend dying or you hear somebody else you like you have that, oh crap I'm not I'm not immortal.
6:29Steven Webb: Immortal? Mortal. I get the words wrong way around. Kind of different. It's my dyslexia um But yeah,
6:38Steven Webb: we kind of for a few days we're like, oh my God, I could die? Because really when someone else
6:44Steven Webb: dies, it freaks us out because it awakens us to our immortality. And
6:51Steven Webb: that's the reality. That's why it freaks us out when someone dies. It's why we don't want to go to
6:55Steven Webb: funerals. It's why we don't like those things. It reminds us that we're not going to live forever. But yet
7:01Steven Webb: we're planning to live forever. I'll do all these things one day. What did Wayne Dyer say? Don't die with
7:08Steven Webb: your music still in you.
7:11Steven Webb: Don't die with the music still in you.
7:14Steven Webb: Boom. How powerful is that? And I know that. I know all these things.
7:21Steven Webb: You know, Stephen Covey says, start with your funeral. Start with your obituary. What do I want people to say
7:26Steven Webb: about me? Well, at the moment, they would probably say, well, I was waiting for his book.
7:32Steven Webb: It's a shame it didn't happen.
7:36Steven Webb: And I think that's the one thing. I've had a wonderful opportunity of a guy called Robert on a chance
7:42Steven Webb: meeting in town with somebody that's down here on holiday that's seen my bling, the Mayor of Truro chain. They
7:49Steven Webb: said they oh I wonder what that is. And they looked it up on the internet. And by the time
7:52Steven Webb: I got over there I said you're the male true You're Steven Webb. And they see me on the internet.
7:56Steven Webb: And I don't know what they typed in. A chain true merchant I don't know. But
8:03Steven Webb: they they introduced me to a guy called Robert that works for crowdfunding and all that. And he sent me
8:09Steven Webb: a brilliant email with loads and loads of details. I'm gonna meet him on Zoom. But then I procrastinate and
8:14Steven Webb: I pull away. What am I frightened of and
8:18Steven Webb: for For years I've convinced to myself that I'm frightened of letting people down. Well, I'm letting people down by
8:24Steven Webb: not doing it.
8:27Steven Webb: By not sharing my story, I'm already letting people down.
8:31Steven Webb: Yeah.
8:35Steven Webb: I'm worried about getting it slightly wrong.
8:39Steven Webb: You know, most books start off out of crap They need editing and rewriting and editing and all that. And
8:45Steven Webb: yet I'm trying to create a New York Times bestseller and I'm not even an author. So
8:51Steven Webb: what's going on? What's
8:54Steven Webb: going on? So I need your help. This is what this this podcast is about. And I'm going to share
9:00Steven Webb: this podcast wide. I'm going to share that on everywhere I'm going to share this on my Tiktok um my
9:06Steven Webb: Youtube. I'm going to share it on my Stillness in the Storms podcast. Oh, by the way, you're listening to
9:12Steven Webb: Stillness in the Storms podcast. I'm your host, Steven Webb. I'm a little late, but that's the reality. Oh, come
9:19Steven Webb: on. Now my computer's gone sleep Okay, now you're back. Thank you um But I want your help. I
9:27Steven Webb: need some accountability. And I'm gonna I'm not going to make promise any big things. I'm not going to promise
9:33Steven Webb: you I'm going to do this every day and all those things because I will fail. And I know you
9:38Steven Webb: are what you tell yourself. I know that you
9:41Steven Webb: know I am You know, I'm preaching to my own choir, but
9:47Steven Webb: I know me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop this um When I finish this
9:53Steven Webb: podcast, I'm going to go and remove all the things off of my tablet. And offer my phone I don't
9:59Steven Webb: need. I'm going to cancel Netflix tonight. Sorry, family
10:04Steven Webb: subscription we're gonna have to do it. But my life and my book and what I really want to do
10:10Steven Webb: is more important than your Netflix binge. So I'm going to do that um I'm sure we can
10:18Steven Webb: work out something, even if I help you out, but I need to get it off my devices um By
10:25Steven Webb: the end of this week, I think I'm even going to remove the Tv out of my bedroom. I don't
10:29Steven Webb: need it. I don't need it. I'm I'm going to make those changes. I'm going to make it so difficult
10:36Steven Webb: for me not to read a book, not to take notes
10:40Steven Webb: but it'll become second nature and it'll become part of a habit. So when I go bed I haven't got
10:48Steven Webb: Netflix. So I'm paralysed. I can't get out of bed. So if I haven't got it there, I can't go
10:51Steven Webb: and get it. You know if you know I need my carer to go and get me the tablet. So
10:59Steven Webb: if I don't have the tablet next to me on bed on the bed. If I take my Kindle, I've
11:04Steven Webb: got two Kindles for Christ's sake. Why? I
11:09Steven Webb: thought buying a new upgraded Kindle will make me read more. What
11:14Steven Webb: the hell is all this about? Well, the the human mind is amazing and crazy. It hasn't
11:22Steven Webb: got, your mind hasn't got your best interest at heart. It's just got the easy road. It
11:31Steven Webb: just wants to sit back and relax and let it let things happen.
11:37Steven Webb: So, yeah, I'm going to cancel Netflix. I'm going to cancel my Disney. I don't know what other subscriptions I
11:41Steven Webb: got. I'm not going to cancel Spotify for the net because I need to take time out and listen to
11:45Steven Webb: my music. I like that um And also it's great for podcasts. My podcast is on it. Stillness in the
11:52Steven Webb: Storms. And I'm going to commit. And my commitment to you, my commitment to
11:59Steven Webb: myself.
12:01Steven Webb: Is I'm going to document at some point every day. Even if it's just a one minute video on Tiktok.
12:07Steven Webb: I'm going to tell you what I did that day. Whether it's read a chapter. Whether it's um go for
12:13Steven Webb: a walk. Or whether it's cancel delete something. I'm going to do something every day. Moving towards my goal.
12:20Steven Webb: And
12:23Steven Webb: I want you to hold me accountable. I don't know what that looks like. But give me some ideas. Let
12:27Steven Webb: me know in the comments. Does any of this resonate with you? Do you struggle with any of this?
12:32Steven Webb: Because you're gonna die
12:36Steven Webb: I'm gonna die And
12:39Steven Webb: do you have a message the world needs to hear? Have you done something awesome in your life? Have you
12:45Steven Webb: been a good parent? Have you done all these things that the world needs to hear? Have you got some
12:49Steven Webb: advice? Don't die with that advice in you
12:55Steven Webb: I Just ask you. Imagine the world a better place if all of that wisdom that died within people was
13:03Steven Webb: here and alive today
13:06Steven Webb: it's it It would really change things. So
13:11Steven Webb: yeah I enough is enough. I'm 49 and I'm 50 on December the 8th. And by December the 8th, I
13:18Steven Webb: want to, I really, I'm going to enjoy reading books. I'm going to enjoy doing more videos. I'm going to
13:24Steven Webb: enjoy putting myself out there in the world and helping you guys a little bit more um But that's going
13:31Steven Webb: to help me because that's what I really get nourishment from. Hold
13:35Steven Webb: me accountable. If I say I'm going to email you, get hold of me and say, you haven't emailed me
13:41Steven Webb: you know If I promise, make sure I deliver.
13:44Steven Webb: Thank you. And I really do appreciate this. It really will make a difference um I
13:53Steven Webb: don't know how to sign off this podcast apart from go to StevenWebb.uk. That's just StevenWebb.uk
14:01Steven Webb: and you will have a link, a list of links as to where I'm going to document how this is
14:08Steven Webb: going and what I'm doing on a daily basis. Thank you and Take care. Oh, don't forget.
14:15Steven Webb: On those list of links there's a there's a podcast that's doing really well. And that's Inner Peace Meditations. That's
14:22Steven Webb: my meditations. So take care. Thank you. And I love you. And let's
14:29Steven Webb: do this. Let's do this. Make changes at arm's length. So important.
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