I'm Dr Orion Taban and this is Psychax Better Living Through Psychology and the topic of today's short talk is don't waste her time. So, this is I hope a timely episode. I was inspired by a meme I came across the other day.
I love memes because they really do capture the zeitgeist of a particular moment. You can get a very good feel for the ideas and attitudes that are circulating at any given time by viewing memes. And one of these memes provoked a response in me that I'm going to share with you today.
It was a textbased meme and I'm going to paraphrase it as I don't have it up in front of me. It went something like, "If you're dating a woman in her 30s and you're not serious about moving things along, then don't waste her time because in the next 6 months, she's trying to get married, start a family, launch a business, get her mental health in order, lose 20 lbs, and travel the world. She just doesn't have time for your bullshit.
" And this was clearly a sentiment that resonated with people. The meme had tens of thousands of likes and many supportive comments almost exclusively from women that validated this perspective. However, my reaction to this attitude was slightly less than supportive.
In fact, I believe that the popularity of this opinion is a big reason why women and especially women in their 30s are failing to get what they want in the sexual marketplace. Let me explain. First of all, if you haven't watched it already, I would refer you to an older episode of mine called I don't want to waste my time, in which I argue that it's not actually possible to waste another person's time and that it falls to each individual to assume responsibility for his or her decisions with respect to the allocation of said time.
So, I'm not going to repeat those same arguments here. Though the real flaw in the attitude represented by the meme is that it sets women up for failure. With the exception of maybe losing weight, not a single one of those goals can realistically be accomplished in less than 6 months.
Think about it. If you have no prospects whatsoever, the notion of going from complete strangers to married in 6 months is probably a terrible idea. Both parties are likely still in the limrance period and haven't yet encountered the crisis of disillusionment.
This is not recommended. Next, last time I checked, the human gestation period is 9 months. So, starting a family in the next six sounds like a physical impossibility.
Starting a business, well, it takes about a month to file all the paperwork, but it typically takes years for the business to become successful. Expecting your hustle to flourish six months after launching it is an unreasonable expectation. Entrepreneurs generally have to grind for years before they start to see an appreciable profit.
Working on your mental health? Well, if you've been living with certain ineffective models of reality for the last three and a half decades, it's going to take more than a few months to disabuse yourself of them, even assuming perfect willingness to do what is necessary, etc. , etc.
It's like none of these projects can realistically be accomplished in half a year. And not only that, women want to do all of them at the same time. That's what sets women up for failure.
One of the rules that I have for myself is that I have to give myself enough time to succeed. A lot of plans fail to come to fruition due to impatience. We don't give them enough time to succeed and therefore we are complicit in their failure.
To give an example I've shared in interviews, when I started this channel, I committed to publishing regularly for 3 years. 3 years before I would allow myself to evaluate whether or not I would continue. Why?
Because according to my research, it could take 2 years of consistent production before a YouTube channel sees any appreciable uptake. And since in my experience, things often take longer than I expect to succeed, my rule of thumb is to add 50% to any due diligence I conduct to establish a realistic time frame. Since my due diligence said 2 years, an additional 50% would be another year.
So, I gave myself 3 years. That's enough time to succeed. If I didn't succeed in three years, I was doing something wrong or it wasn't the right moment or it wasn't for me or I didn't have what it takes.
But it certainly wasn't because I didn't give it enough time. Do you understand? If you're interested in taking your understanding to the next level, I would encourage you to check out the captain's quarters, my membersonly self-improvement community.
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Now, on some level, I think I can appreciate where these women are coming from. They are functionally trying to make up for lost time. They spent their 20s not prioritizing these goals and now they feel like they are behind.
Same thing happened to me. It wasn't until my late 20s that I finally got my head out of my ass and started to seriously devote myself to building a life worth living. However, by that time, a lot of my friends had already graduated law school or medical school, had already gotten married and started families, had already bought houses and established their place in the world, etc.
When I started to get myself in order, I felt like I was behind because I had chosen to spend my 20s in a different way. Now, I don't regret this decision. I couldn't have done otherwise anyway since that's who I was at the time.
But when I decided to launch my career, I was a decade behind some of my peers who had placed themselves on that track to begin with. But here's the thing. I couldn't demand that life give me what I wanted faster as a consequence of starting late.
I had to start from zero at 28. Establishing a career can take 10 years. And it doesn't really matter if you start at 18 or 38 or 58.
No one is going to give you a pass on the needed experience and competence simply to accommodate your abbreviated timeline. By the same token, vetting a person for a long-term relationship can take several years, and it doesn't really matter if you're 22 or 42. These things can't be rushed without consequence.
And an unwillingness to devote the appropriate amount of time to these projects. The attitude of give me what I want now or get out of here represented by the meme functionally guarantees that person will be cycling through failures as she is not giving any of her projects enough time to succeed. However, there is still another issue here.
Not only is not giving things enough time to succeed a recipe for failure, but taking on too many projects at once is a great way of ensuring you succeed at none of them as well. In my own experience, I had to devote myself single-mindedly to my career for a good six or seven years before I had the bandwidth to take on a new project. If I tried to also say start a family or prioritize my self-care at the same time, I don't think I would have been nearly as successful.
A good life is characterized by flourishing across a number of important domains. Health and fitness, sex and relationships, money and wealth, creativity and growth, friends and community, etc. On some level, the best a person can aspire to is a sustainable situation in which all of these various plates are mostly just humming along.
However, any one of these plates is very, very, very heavy. Each requires a great deal of time and effort and attention to get spinning. Given their weight, it is very difficult to get more than one of these plates spinning at the same time.
Better to focus on one until it's humming along before devoting yourself to the next. Otherwise, the time will pass, and the most you'll likely have to show for it is a number of wobbly, precarious accomplishments, which is not only stressful, but likely unsustainable. So, not only is 6 months not enough time for functionally any one of those projects to succeed, attempting six of those projects simultaneously is absolutely absurd.
Done well, any one of those projects will likely require many years of a person's full and undivided attention. While it may be possible to have it all, it's certainly not the case that you can have it all all at once. Decisions must be made with respect to sequencing.
And since no one is guaranteed anything in life, it's a good idea to prioritize the most important goals first. In any case, this is one reason why women in their 30s are failing in the sexual marketplace. As a consequence of their choices in their 20s, they become impatient to make up for lost time.
And this impatience both restricts the amount of time they allocate to any individual project and motivates them to take on too many projects at once, both of which are associated with sub-optimal outcomes. Couple this with an entitled attitude that life should accommodate their abbreviated timelines and you're off to the races. Women, if you want better outcomes, you have to make better choices.
What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience? Let me know in the comments below.
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