DOD264: Choice Paralysis Analysis

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's not quite sure what it's about. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:40 Thomas: Let's talk about you quitting caffeine. You said it before, I'm dying to know how anyone could survive that and why you would do that to yourself.

0:00:48 Tom: So just to set the stage here, the maximum daily allowance for caffeine that is safe for most people is about 400 milligrams a day.

0:00:55 Thomas: Oh, here we go. This is where Tom's going to tell us we're all doing something wrong or something and we...

0:01:00 Tom: No, no, I swear, I'll tell you how bad this was. No.

0:01:02 Eli: Yeah, no, this is definitely Tom about to tell us and exponentially speaking.

0:01:10 Tom: This 400 milligrams is the maximum amount of caffeine that you're supposed to drink in any given day. Your average cup of coffee, about 80 milligrams, so you can have, you know, pretty good amount of coffee, about five, six cups of coffee, depending on the strength and how it's brewed and everything. I have been consuming, for years, somewhere around a gram of caffeine a day, so about two and a half half times

0:01:31 Eli: So between 10 and 12 cups of coffee a

0:01:35 Tom: Yeah, so I typically, well, you know, like, life is a little hard, life is a little tough The sleep situation is a little low, so like what I will do is I will make a giant, like, 30 ounce thing of cold brew concentrate, and then I typically just drink the concentrate and I would drink that, you know.

0:01:35 Thomas: Oh my god.

0:01:41 Eli: Day. Sure.

0:01:42 Thomas: What? What's going on?

0:01:56 Thomas: Yeah, I remember you telling us when you accidentally were drinking the literal... oh no, I didn't know that.

0:01:58 Tom: Yeah, well, I realized it was concentrate and what I did to solve for that is nothing and continue to drink the concentrate. I did nothing. Yeah, I'm not going to change. That's what I decided for that is I was like, I

0:02:07 Thomas: Oh wow.

0:02:07 Eli: Yeah, yeah, no, the the first day that the eyes popped open willingly on their own with cold blue concentrate, Tom was like, this is the system now.

0:02:14 Tom: Don't

0:02:15 Thomas: Yeah, and now another human might then be like, oh, I know what I'll do, let me pare back a little bit. Tom can't do that.

0:02:24 Tom: Think we know each other very well. No.

0:02:26 Eli: One!

0:02:27 Tom: So Haley, one of the things Haley has to do to monitor herself is she has to take her blood pressure. So we have an at -home blood pressure cuff. So she takes her blood pleasure periodically and has to kind of take note of that. And it influences kind of how her meds are structured. So I put the blood pressure cuff on like you, you know, I am curious of mine as I put it on. I am like, that is high. I have never had high high blood pressure ever before. So I messaged my doctor and he's like, yeah, it's not going to be accurate for you. You got to come into the office. Those, those things are for people with smaller arms. Like you got to coming to the office was like, okay, fine. So come into the office and like, he takes my blood pressure and he is like, no, actually your blood pressure is high. I've never had, I've always had low blood pressure. I never had high blood pressure. He's like how much caffeine do you consume? And I know I have a thing. I do not lie to the doc.

0:02:26 Thomas: Yeah, and You pled the fifth. Yeah, you're Like, I, I had an advice to my counsel, um,

0:03:14 Tom: And so like, I firmly believe like you can lie to a lot of people. You you never lie to your doctor. You know, if he asked you how much you drink, you tell him how much you drank, you know? So I told him and he's like, that's dangerous. Uh, you definitely should not do that. He's like plus you take Adderall. And I'm like, yeah, I take Adderall.

0:03:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just, oh. Wow.

0:03:20 Eli: I believe half of that.

0:03:31 Tom: And he's like, he's, like, you don't want to have like a stroke or pass out or whatever. And he's so

0:03:34 Eli: Travel through time, be stuck in the future. Everyone thinks you're a caveman.

0:03:37 Tom: He's like, we can give you some blood pressure medication, and you'd have to take blood pressure medication every day, and I'm like, I don't take a medication that I need every day. I take Adderall because I don't sleep. It's a substitute for sleep, and I I don't take it on the weekends, and, you know, like, it's, I don't even really need it.

0:03:55 Eli: Yeah.

0:03:53 Thomas: That's the problem Okay, I have a rule, I don't take any medications I need every

0:04:02 Tom: There's some things, like, you know, if I got a headache or something, I'll take Tylenol, but like, so now I have blood pressure medicine. It makes me feel fucking old. I don't want a daily blood pressure medication, so I was like, well, fuck, I guess I about this, so I looked up, like, well, how much can it really affect me, you know, like how much can it has such an effect, like it is a really dangerous amount of caffeine that I've been consuming. So I was like, well, I can't cut back, that's not a thing I can do. Like, my brain does not allow scale back.

Like, I can have something that's a yes, I can have something to know. I am not good with the middle space, especially for something that I love, right? If it's something that, like, doesn't matter much to me, sure, I can moderate that, no problem. But if it's something that I'm like, but I fucking love coffee, like, I fucking love it, so it's like, well, I just gotta go. So I, it's my second day, I cut it out entirely and, like, I actually feel like a hundred times better. I know I do now. I, I still take the Adderall because it's a substitute for sleep, it's not actually a medication that I should take. I don't have ADHD, but

0:04:23 Eli: Yeah? Yeah.

0:04:30 Thomas: Day No, don't, no, don't fucking tell me that. Shut up. Sure.

0:05:09 Tom: I do take the Adderall as a substitute for sleep. That's not good. Probably don't do that. It's not my advice, but like, I will tell you my heart doesn't seem like it beats out of my chest all the time. I don't sweat randomly, like I just, like, there are, like, oh yeah, like, it's a wild amount of, like, I would just, like, have, like, a sheen of sweat. My heart would be just, like, randomly beating 120 beats per minute for a while for no reason. Like, it was not a smart thing to do for years, years. Yeah.

0:05:09 Thomas: Oh.

0:05:21 Thomas: Was that happening? Oh.

0:05:35 Thomas: Okay. For 20 years? Yeah.

0:05:38 Eli: May I speak on your doctor's behalf and say that I think you should just describe your everyday lived experience every time you see him so that he can say, "Oh, oh no, that's not good. That's not normal."

0:05:43 Thomas: Oh. Yeah.

0:05:44 Tom: Man, yeah. So I've, I decided to cut it out. So far, mild headache today. So far, that's it. I am absolutely aware that I could have, like, some real pounding fucking migraines from this transition.

0:06:04 Thomas: Especially with how much you were doing. If I skip my coffee, I get a headache instantly. I guess I'm different. Yeah, I understand the whole all or nothing thing. I actually do relate to that in some ways, but I also form these routines so I don't forget stuff, and my routine is I have my one coffee a day, and that's my routine. So I have no, it's weird, I don't do, I love coffee, but somehow I don't do more than that. I can imagine if you're drinking concentrate of literal fuck, I don't even know what, like, just Nuclear

0:06:06 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, oh.

0:06:34 Eli: Chemical caffeine. You know the No-Dose Owl? He just slays the No-Dose Owl every morning and drinks deep from his neck. Oh,

0:06:41 Tom: When I was in high school, I would take either No-Dose or Viverine. I would carry coffee with me, and then I also, this is now illegal, but there used to be a supplement called Ripped Fuel Back in the mid-90s when I was in high school, Ripped Fuel had caffeine and something called ephedra in there, which they've banned because it, like, gives people heart attacks and whatnot. So I had decided that, like, one, I would wake up and I would drink caffeine and then give myself fucking No-Dose and caffeine pills throughout the day, like an idiot. But then my pre-workout was, I would take a coffee from the thermos I carried in high school, like an idiot, and I would crush up some No-Dos or Vibrin, dissolve it into the coffee, and then pound a thing of rip fuel, like, whatever the thing of rip fuel was.

0:06:52 Eli: Yeah, yeah.

0:06:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:24 Thomas: What is wrong with you? Why?

0:07:27 Eli: Yeah.

0:07:27 Tom: And I would do that right before my seventh period class, because I would work out right after seventh period. No

0:07:33 Thomas: Oh, okay, so you don't have an anxiety disorder. Okay, I see. None of this is an option for someone with any sort of anxiety at all, or most

0:07:37 Tom: No, so, but I would sit. Yeah. Oh yeah, no, this is why. And I would sit in my seventh period class, one, struggling not to shit myself because it is just an immense, immense amount of stimulants and sweating and, like, shaking slightly and just waiting for that class to be over so I could go work out. I've since learned that it actually depletes my workouts.

0:07:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:07:51 Thomas: Humans.

0:08:00 Thomas: So then you could go shit yourself working out. I get it. Yeah, man.

0:08:05 Tom: Like, I have a shittier workout when I'm that jazzed out, but yeah.

0:08:08 Eli: Probably.

0:08:09 Tom: When I was 18, I didn't know.

0:08:09 Thomas: I How could you not know that I would ever have caffeine and try to do anything? I, like, fall over, I can't do any exercise. No, seriously, like, any exercise.

0:08:11 Eli: I

0:08:11 Tom: Well, because I was 18, you know. Yeah, no.

0:08:19 Thomas: I can't have a lot of caffeine. I guess, yeah, that was sort of an unspoken assumption of mine, but I guess you hadn't. Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:24 Tom: Like that, I've tried pre-workouts exactly twice. So I tried a pre-workout once that had a ton of niacin in it, and I got this crazy niacine flush, which you've, if you've ever had it, it feels like your skin is lightly on fire. If you're sensitive to it, it's very unpleasant. And then, like, I did a CrossFit competition with some friends and we came in third and we got a little gift bag full of just sponsored shit, and one of the things I got was this thing, and this is like in 2016, this little thing of, like, Bang brand pre-workout. And I woke up and I was going to go to my trainer's house and I was feeling like really fucking tired and not into it. I'm like, "Oh, I have that pre-workout, I'll try that." I mixed up the pre-workout, I chugged it, I got in the car, I drove to my trainer's house, about a 20 minute drive. I got there and I'm like banging on the door. I'm like, "I gotta use the bathroom

0:08:36 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:08:37 Eli: Like Yeah.

0:09:13 Tom: Right now." I ran into her door, I felt like fucking Eli Boss, like I ran to her door, barely made it, explosively shit, like came out, was

0:09:21 Eli: The Bosnian classic. No, I get it.

0:09:23 Thomas: Oh, shit.

0:09:23 Tom: Shaking. The boss at classic, yeah. Was shaky, started my warm-up for the workout, ran out of her garage and into her yard and started throwing up in her yard. That stuff is rat poison, absolute, absolute rat poison. Good.

0:09:33 Eli: Okay, Tom, I'm not here to defend pre-workout, but I do think it's fair to say that your base level is not how anything is meant to be used.

0:09:40 Tom: It's terrible. That's probably the case. That is probably the case.

0:09:50 Eli: You can't be like, "That's bad," right? Because I imagine that also would have happened with, like, a particularly strong Cheez-It, right? Based on your, based on your current, uh, homeostasis.

0:09:57 Thomas: Yeah,

0:10:00 Tom: That's the thing is I tend to have an iron stomach. Like I tend to be able to like treat my body pretty poorly and do whatever I want. But like that pre workout was a nightmare.

0:10:08 Thomas: You'd have to.

0:10:11 Eli: Hey, Tom, do you feel good? Because I don't think you can do whatever you want. I think you're just like, like, I'm not dead, so I did it.

0:10:16 Tom: I don't think you're supposed to feel good. People don't just people People don't just walk around feeling good. That can't be true.

0:10:20 Thomas: I don't think you're supposed to feel good.

0:10:24 Eli: Most people. You

0:10:26 Thomas: Oh, boy, I'm

0:10:26 Tom: You can't just walk around like not in some pain all the time, right? That's a ridiculous thing to say.

0:10:30 Eli: Gotta have a little pain. It's about choosing the pain.

0:10:33 Thomas: Definitely a lot in pain. I'm not in, like, heart attack, fucking, whatever chemical-induced thing you're talking

0:10:40 Eli: Yeah. Thomas can eat a sour warhead and not be hospitalized for six and a half months. Not have to go to rehab for it. Yeah. But gentlemen. Yeah, exactly. You beat me to it. Gentlemen, do you know the only thing worse than the homeostasis of Tom Curry's body? Why? It's the auto ads. Dads, interrupting your podcasting experience in the way nobody wants them to, but you can make those go away over at patreon.com/dear-old-dads, where you'll get a commercial free version of every single show, plus a little parenting story at the end, all sorts of fun stuff there, and you can get all of it. Oh, wait, I don't want to forget, the monthly bonus episode, because this month, I don't know if it's aired yet, probably hasn't, but if it hasn't aired yet we have an AMA with Tom's stepkids, Aislinn and Donovan. So, if you've been wondering just what kind of stepdad Tom is, what his kids really think when the cards are on the table, you can check all that out over at patreon .com forward slash dear old dads. Like a single speck of pre -workout into Tom's rectum, rip into it.

0:10:46 Thomas: About. Oh boy. The only thing worse. Yeah, yeah.

0:11:48 Tom: Alright,

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0:11:58 Tom: We're going to do an email here. It's an email from Susie. I love this email because it starts off with happy holidays, so maybe we've been sitting on this one a minute. I was talking to a friend of mine just now about how when I was a kid, I was always stressed from building houses and video games because I was too scared of committing to a layout or decor style. When the ads came out for Animal Crossing on the Switch during the pandemic, I immediately decided I would not get it because there was too much creative freedom. After talking with my friend today, I realized that this level of stress over having too many options has really carried into my adult life. I've heard it's very Very common for kids. My question is, how have you guys parented when your kids are dealing with indecision? I'm hoping it's not too late for me to try to parent myself here. Absolutely love the show. Thanks, guys. Susie. So choice paralysis question.

0:12:49 Eli: Mm -hmm. Yeah, not an issue with a neurodivergent son. I'll just throw that out there right now. Now Max has no problem making choice. It is unmaking his choices that is our family struggle for.

0:12:50 Thomas: Oh, That's Interesting, that's, it's interesting. Arlo struggles with it.

0:13:02 Tom: With choice paralysis?

0:13:05 Eli: Oh man, we spent 40 minutes the other morning explaining that he could not jump up into the sky and pull the sun down back to night because he had woken up at 635 instead of 630 and was unhappy about that.

0:13:15 Thomas: Oh, to like undo the routine.

0:13:20 Eli: The paralysis is not the issue.

0:13:21 Tom: Yep.

0:13:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Arlo, like, I mean, I mentioned it. Maybe it's a good time for an update because Arlo quit video games. I completely tommed it.

0:13:30 Eli: He's an author now. He's a great

0:13:32 Thomas: He just, yeah, he's an author and he's a reader. He read, yeah. He read, um, he actually read Harry Potter one. This dude's in first grade.

0:13:33 Tom: He loved it too much. He couldn't hold himself back.

0:13:41 Thomas: I don't know how he does it.

0:13:42 Tom: Good for him.

0:13:42 Eli: Book.

0:13:43 Thomas: Yeah and, oh, I love it. And, uh, he started the second one. He's really proud of it. But he does a whole lot of like, instead of reading, he'll just sit there and be like, there's 15 pages until chapter two. It's just like he just counts pages. I'm like, are you actually reading? I'm not convinced he's actually reading, but he says he is. Now, he definitely reads somewhat. But then he'll Just frequently. Oh, I mean, almost every fucking day. He'll just be mad at us. I guess mainly me and just be like. I don't know what to do. It's like, why are you mad at? What did I do? Why am I to blame for that? And then I'll be like, well, you know, we could play a video game.

0:13:54 Eli: Mm.

0:14:19 Thomas: And he'll be like, no, not doing that. No, he was, no. He actively hates me. No.

0:14:14 Tom: Oh, He's done. He's done, done, done. Yeah.

0:14:21 Eli: Hmm. It's not just, "I'd rather read." It is that he's not open to That's tough.

0:14:29 Tom: What's

0:14:30 Thomas: I don't know what it is. It's that he decided that reading was more fun, but then sometimes he'll like lose steam on that and then not know what to do. I think it could be the ADHD part that makes you have the choice paralysis. Cause yeah, Arlo definitely, he just feels like he never knows what to do, and then he's mad because, like, he didn't like do the most fun thing or whatever.

0:14:52 Tom: Interesting here, because all of the kids here have ADHD to some degree. Hayley has it, but Hayley's the only one I think that really struggles with choice paralysis. It's funny, because they all have, like, little bits of it, but Hayley will, let's say she's shopping for, I don't know, a dress. As She goes to a website and she'll be upset, like, "Oh god, there's like 40 pages of dresses that I gotta look through," and my brain is like "No, you find one dress, and that's the one you liked, and you click on it and you buy it, and then you stop looking at things once you find something you like."

It would never even occur to me that you have to look at all of the options. But, like, for her and for a lot of people that I've talked to, actually, that have this, and I've written a little bit about this on my blog for that reason, because I didn't know if the kids were going to struggle with it or not, but, like, for a lot of people the more options or the more choices they have, the more stuck they feel, because they feel compelled to choose the best one.

0:15:19 Thomas: What? Yeah.

0:15:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:50 Tom: And you can only choose the best one if you've considered all of them, and if you choose something that is not the actual best one, even if it's sufficient to your needs, if you could have had something that it was a little better, people will feel like real intense remorse, and like they'll get upset about it. Like, it's a whole thing. So a lot of people would choose, actually, to limit their options rather than to be in a position where they have to choose among too many.

0:16:20 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, it's common enough that, you know, you learn about in, like, business school. They're like, "All right, in terms of your advertising, your layouts, or your stuff, like, you don't actually want to give people too much choice, because then they won't, you know." It's actually taught in that way, so, like, it's, it's definitely not just, like, a tiny niche problem. It's a real thing. But so you don't ever experience, like, when you're doing your, your stereo buying stuff that you've been doing.

0:16:43 Tom: Options?

0:16:43 Thomas: Like you never, I'm trying to think of a time maybe when, when it would happen to me, like that's when I'll do it. If I'm like, Oh, I want to get something or I'm looking at, I don't know, computer or something or whatever. It's like, God damn, there's so many options that never, never happens to you when you're looking at your old stereo stuff maybe or anything like that.

0:16:58 Tom: Not so much. I think that's a good analogy. Well, maybe that's not the right analogy, because I always feel like, well, if it's not the right thing, I'll just, I'll just swap it out, sell the old one and get a new. So there's kind of like, there's an out, you know, if it's like, well, I don't like it. But, like, I'm shopping for a car. So I'll give you an example. Like I, next year I'm going to give Aislinn my car that I drive. And then I'm gonna convert to a fully electric car. We just got solar panels on the roof this year. So we're going to go full electric for all of our cars at some point, starting with mine.

0:17:07 Thomas: Yeah. Nice.

0:17:26 Eli: And Cybertruck is your first choice.

0:17:29 Tom: Oh, hard. Yes. Hot. Right.

0:17:29 Eli: But just in case, just in case they're sold out, they won't let him put truck nuts on it. Is the problem, is then it explodes if you put truck knots on it.

0:17:34 Thomas: Yeah, you're like, Like, which color of Cybertruck do I get?

0:17:41 Tom: So, you, that's something that I've been reading about and trying to figure out what I want and what my options are, because obviously I'm going to eliminate all the Teslas. I would never support Elon Musk and his company knowing what I know now.

0:17:52 Eli: Doesn't that suck so much? Those were the most fun cars, and you got to be like, "Oh, maybe someday I'll own a Tesla," and now you have to think about Teslas the same way you might think about a blood diamond, which is like, no, I can. Oh, Tesla

0:17:55 Tom: Yeah.

0:18:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:03 Tom: No. Yeah. I used to want a Tesla like crazy, and now I'm like, yeah, I don't want one at all because of the issues around it. So I'm not going to do that. But anyway.

0:18:12 Eli: Is such an undesirable brand that most of the Tesla owners I know have a bumper sticker that's like, "I bought this before Elon was great." Imagine having to put an apology. No one's like, "Hey, I know about Ford, but I promise I didn't know what he thought about jazz music when I bought his car." That's how evil Elon Musk is.

0:18:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:27 Tom: Yeah. So there's a lot of options out there. There's a lot of things to consider. But I also, like for me, I personally don't have choice paralysis because I'm very comfortable with something being good enough for most choices. I'm like, yeah, this is, like, it doesn't matter that much. Like if I buy the wrong car, I'll just be like, well, that's not exactly what I wanted. And then it doesn't really matter that much to me. There's so few things to me that, like, really matter in a way that I can't just shrug off, you know? Like, it's like if I order the wrong meal at a restaurant, I'll be like, well, that

0:19:00 Thomas: Yeah, I don't have it at all there.

0:19:04 Tom: Wasn't exactly right. I just don't care that much.

0:19:05 Eli: I've been at multiple meals where he's been brought the wrong food and he has begun to eat it before everyone has insisted. Yeah.

0:19:11 Thomas: For starting the sentence that it was wrong. Yeah.

0:19:11 Tom: You know, Eli, you brought this up. You asked me a question the other day on the show, and I don't think I properly answered it, but you, you asked, like, you know, how do I, you asked, like, how I manage, like, if I'm disappointed, like, if things don't turn out the way that, like, I was hoping that they would turn out, but, like, I just have a slightly different mindset for my life and for, I don't expect things to turn out one way or the, the other. I hope things turn out great. If they don't turn out great and I'm unhappy, it's like, yeah, like, I expect a certain amount of unhappiness and I am okay with it. Like, I don't find it to be distressing to not get the things that I want, you know what I mean? Like, to be in a little bit of pain is like, yeah, I expect to

0:19:20 Eli: How are you

0:19:51 Tom: Be in pain. I am a human being, so, yeah.

0:19:51 Thomas: Yeah, we're getting that. I think.

0:19:54 Eli: Alive?

0:19:54 Tom: I don't find it emotionally distressing, personally. I

0:19:57 Eli: Yeah, in the few times that comes up for me where I think most people would be worried about choice paralysis, because I think a lot of it comes from the fear of being wrong, right? The fear of choosing incorrectly, right? And so for me, because I do have a situation like this in my life with, with teaching right now, which is I'm incorporating something new into my teaching that I'm super excited about, but there's a lot of versions of it.

And I won't bore everybody with the details, but like, it's basically, I'm teaching painting and I've got to decide watercolor or oil paints or, you know, airbrush or all the, all the different kinds of painting that I've been teaching. And so when I first sort of had the thought of, oh, I am going to introduce this, it was definitely choice paralysis, right?

I think the difference between me and someone who might experience that unpleasantly is that I just go, like, "Oh, okay, this is a major project. It goes into the major project bin of my brain, and doesn't bother me, because I'm only going to think about it when I have the four hours of research to do, or I'll give myself little breaks to dive back into it and go, well, I was wondering this thing, right? And then I'll get, like, a little bit of information, and then I'll go and put it back in the bin and come back again. So I think, think that's what sort of prevents the choice paralysis for me, is that when I get to that moment, I just go, like, "Oh, too big for the assigned brain power." You know how you can, um, oh my god, this is such a nerdy reference. You know, on Linux you can actually

0:20:48 Tom: Guess

0:20:55 Thomas: No.

0:21:18 Eli: Route certain amounts of fair Fair.

0:21:20 Tom: Right. I know, I was like, like, no, no.

0:21:22 Thomas: I'm just answering for Tom. Yeah.

0:21:22 Eli: Fair enough. Yeah, no, no, that's fair. That's fair. But basically, in Linux you can route certain amounts of computing power to certain functions if you want to, so you can say like, "Really focus, focus on my graphics card," or "really focus on memory." Really, really cool stuff that you can do, especially with certain mods of the existing systems. That's how my brain is, right? It's like, "Oh no, we don't have enough RAM for the, for this teaching task. We're going to put it on the back burner until it comes up."

0:21:31 Tom: Oh, yeah, of course. Right. Yeah.

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0:21:55 Tom: Classic choice paralysis oftentimes is a problem for people who have a difficult time making decisions of low consequence. If it's like what you're just describing, like it's a decision of very high consequence. I think we should have like that. That should be a moment where it's Like, oh, this is career based. You know, this isticking my career, picking my partner, picking where I'm going to live for the next 20 years. Like these are high consequence decisions.

And in those circumstances, I think like it's a very adaptive and like reasonable to have some level of like good anxiety around that. Right. That motivates you to do things like research and, you know, try to make rational and not like swift rash choices.

Choices, but it's like choice paralysis where it becomes, I think, like a real problem is like when these are like low-stakes choices, like choices that don't have like a lot of consequence to them, and they still have an outsized emotional resonance to them, like in the email, this is somebody who doesn't want to play a video game because they might decorate their house wrong in the game. The stakes literally could not be lower,

0:22:50 Eli: Right, right.

0:23:01 Tom: But emotionally their brain has told them that, that, like, this actually matters, that the hierarchy is all the same between, like, choosing your career path and, like, putting a virtual couch in your virtual living room.

0:23:15 Eli: I'll say this too. I think to bring it back to parenting, I think that comes very much from growing up in an environment where being wrong really, really mattered, right? And being wrong was a reflection of who you are as opposed to just, like, oh hey, you got that one wrong, but don't worry about it, like, now we fix it. Because I grew up with grown-ups who included me in conversations on a really regular basis that I would be bad at, right? They would be talking about classic literature that I hadn't read or had barely read. They'd be talking About politics in a way that was way above my head, but I was always welcomed into that conversation. Part of that was when I was wrong, it was a teaching opportunity as opposed to a shaming opportunity. What I would guess is, based on my non -existent psychiatry degree, what I would Guess is if you were brought up to fear being wrong, those decisions can seem much more high stakes.

0:24:09 Thomas: It's interesting. Yeah.

0:24:09 Tom: Yeah, I think there's something there. And I also think that like when we're kids, all of our choices are emotionally salient, like all of Our choices, we think about like a little kid, right? Right. Like little kids throw tantrums because a little choice that has no consequence. And that's because kids lack perspective. They lack context. And also like every experience they're having is this sort of like net new experience.

0:24:34 Eli: Right.

0:24:35 Tom: So they don't have any way to like say like, well, just, you know, I'll have a different lunch tomorrow. I'll Have a lot of lunches in my life. One lunch that I don't like doesn't it's that's literally nothing.

0:24:41 Eli: And another big thing too, is that kids get such infrequent choice, right? You got to remember how impossibly rare it is for a kid to get a choice. Most of them can't leave the room they're in, especially really, really young ones like toddler age. They don't get to like leave theroom they'rein as their choice and then come and go as they please. So there's just when you actually get that moment, it is incredibly important to you, right? It's also how you discover like the boundaries of what you're allowed, which is why those choices are so important. Funny moment we had the other day with Max about this is Anna found these new gummies that she's really enjoying. The peelers. Have you guys gotten on the peelers boat?

0:24:49 Tom: Mm hmm.

0:24:50 Thomas: Yeah, that's a good point.

0:25:23 Thomas: Hmm.

0:25:24 Tom: Now, what dispensary does she get those at? I was

0:25:26 Eli: Yeah. So they basically have one kind of gummy on the outside and then another kind, a softer kind of gummy on the inside. Yeah, exactly.

0:25:31 Thomas: Oh wow, not since Gushers has there been a, did I tell you when we tried to give the kid gushes and they're like, this fucking sucks and we hate it, and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking, I ate them, I felt sick afterward, but I ate, yeah, yeah. Oh.

0:25:35 Tom: Gonna say it sounds like Gushers. This is just Yeah, gushes gotta tap you on the shoulder first. I feel like Gushers are

0:25:46 Eli: I felt like Tom for the rest of the afternoon, but I fucking love those gushers. Let me tell you. So she's been loving these gummies and she was like, I'm going to offer them to him in the car on the way to speech or whatever. And she gets him in the car. She's like, hey, buddy, I've got some new gummies if you want to try them. And he goes, no, I want a new toy.

0:26:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:04 Eli: Because again, for him, so many rewards are a choice, right? So many new, exciting, positive things are a choice that he just naturally assumed because I'm getting gummies, I will not get a new tool. It wasn't like, hey, and as a prize, it was just like any good thing, he instantly assumed, oh no, I have to choose, and I've chosen poorly. Yeah.

0:26:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:27 Thomas: I'm trying to think for me, I think I relate it to, like, for one, I have a broad choice paralysis. Well, I don't know if you you'd call it that, but I have a hard time just in life because I have so many things I want to do and I like doing. That's why I have 100 podcasts. You know, it's like, I definitely have a feeling of like, man, there's so many, you know, I love doing theater.

I haven't gotten to do that in 10 fucking years or whatever. I like so many Things I want To Do and I constantly feel the stress of like have I made the right choice and the answer is absolutely not. And that I always always feel the stress of like, hey, somehow I'm like 40 in a few months. So I'm already old and dead. So, I feel that very, very keenly. I'm not that far away from being an old husk of caffeine like Tom over there.

And then the other way I'm feeling when you guys are kind of talking about is when it comes to like big projects, like stuff I do with like computers or anything like that, I have this feeling of, OK, if I'm going to harness my brain to do the big project, which is so hard with ADHD, where it's like, oh, I got to like, that's where I'm real all or nothing like Tom.

I'm like, all right, I either can't do this project or I have to sit and do it, you know, to take my fridge apart, you have to like disassemble the entire car or whatever.

Whatever, it's like that kind of feeling. And so I have the feeling that, like, all right, if I'm going to start off on a direction when it comes to that, you know, when it becomes to the obsessive doing a massive project kind of thing, there's a lot of stress in, like, if I go wrong there, if I start off in the wrong direction, then that means a whole, you know, weekend is gone, a focus time that that I never have. So like I do feel a lot of stress around that.

0:26:28 Tom: Rude.

0:27:08 Tom: Right, yes, me too.

0:28:12 Tom: Yeah, I will relate to. I feel a lot of less, like, choice paralysis, but I feel a lot of time stress for Sure. Like, like, if, if I've got things to do and, like, a window opens up and it's like, okay, well, I gotta pick the right thing to do during this window of time, and I hope I picked the right things, you know, because there's a lot of stuff for me to pick

0:28:13 Eli: Sure. What's

0:28:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:32 Eli: The relaxation that will make me the most relaxed.

0:28:32 Thomas: Yeah. I have that all the time. Yeah.

0:28:35 Tom: Yeah, yeah, or even if it's not like relaxation stuff, it's, all right, well, like, which of these chores is, like, most urgent? Like, which comes first? Like, which of these things needs to be prioritized? Especially when you have, like, you, Thomas, like, when you've got very little time, it becomes this really precious commodity that you, at least for me, I really think about spending my time much more carefully than I think about spending even, like, money that I have, because I know how to earn more money, and if I run out of money, I'll just have less things, and maybe, you know, I'll eat shit for that.

Okay, but like, if I, I run out of time, like, maybe somebody else pays the price for that, you know, or maybe, you know, so I get in trouble at work and that's a big deal, or maybe I let somebody down that, like, is relying on me. Like, those are all unacceptable outcomes. So the way I organize time, I can definitely feel regret around. I don't necessarily feel paralysis the same way, but I definitely will feel sometimes like stress around that, for sure. I think the choice paralysis stuff, when I was thinking about this, choice paralysis feels like a classic, classic anxiety issue, right?

Where your brain has wired in that this is a high stakes situation when in fact it's a low stakes situation. And I think that a lot of the same, like, cognitive behavioral tools that you would use to sort of, like, beat that down and, you know, get over that would probably work just fine, because the thinking is disordered, right? It is low stakes. Like, to go back to, like, the listener's email, or, like, what happens with kids a lot is, like, their whole lives we've been telling them, hey, that, that's really important, tell me about the choice you make. You brought this up once, Eli, like, we're constantly reinforcing for kids how important the choices they make

0:29:03 Thomas: For sure. Yeah.

0:30:21 Tom: Are And then all of a sudden, you know, they turn into adults and, like, nobody's reinforcing anymore that those are really important choices, but their brain is wired to tell them that all of their choices are really important because their whole lives somebody's been reinforcing that idea. You've got to, like, do the work of rewiring that. Like, you can do, like, classic CBT stuff, like, like, literally writing out what is the worst case scenario if I pick the wrong dress today. And, like, you just write it out, and then you read it out loud back to yourself, you know, until it seems ridiculous, until it's like, you're like, oh, that's, that's actually nothing. Like, what if I don't look through 47 pages of online, you know, uh, shoes, or, like, what, what if I buy the wrong set of speakers?

Like, oh, then I wouldn't like my speakers and the music wouldn't sound as good. And then, you know, I'll have to like set them to the side and I might lose some money on it. So you just write it all out and you're like, well, this actually is not a high stakes situation. Like the stakes are low. But yeah, I think you do have to do like the work of retraining your brain

0:30:22 Thomas: Have

0:31:18 Eli: 100

0:31:18 Tom: On that stuff. And I think we probably have to help our kids do that so they don't develop that choice paralysis.

0:31:31 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:31:32 Thomas: You ever tried to help your kids with anxiety? Like with that stuff? Because that's a Phoebe thing. We're like, hey, Phoebe, what's the worst thing that happens if you go to a softball game? And she, like, can't even answer. Or she'll be like, well, I don't know. You know? And then we go through it. It, and then it's like, oh, the part where that does anything doesn't happen. I don't know, they're probably doing it wrong, but they'd be like, oh, see, you talked through it, and the answer was like, it was all fine. And then you feel any better? No. And, you know, oh

0:31:59 Tom: Analysis I

0:32:00 Eli: Yeah, admittedly, Max doesn't have anxiety with a capital A, but he's a very anxious kid because of the neuro spice, and so that's, that's a big thing. Literally, we were just talking about working on it with him today, is that he needs to learn that the stakes are low for some things, and flexibility like that, that was part of it. And the big thing that he and I talk about a lot, and unfortunately we've only been talking about it in, like, situations where he's already worked up, which is the worst time to try and teach a kid a thing, is that, like, you can only control what you can control, right? You can only control your output, and so if a thing that you can't control is happening, focusing on that even a little is not useful to you. You can focus on what you are doing and what choices you are making.

And that's something that I think he is starting to learn. We had a really, really good moment the other morning. So I'm sure I've talked about this on the show. I'll try not to go on too long a side tangent, but he really likes to call me and to snuggle him in the morning. He knows that it has to be after 6 a .m., but then starting at 6 a., if he has woken up, he can call. He goes, Daddy, I want to rest with you.

And I come in and we have like this little tradition of things that he likes. He likes to come get my glasses and stuff with me so that I can read him a book. We read a couple of pages. The other morning, though, because of daylight savings time switching things on,

0:33:18 Eli: He slept in. And so I woke him up the way that I have for most of his life, except for when this tradition started. He was really, really upset. And I explained to him like, hey, buddy, you can't. This is where we got the jumping into the sky and pulling the sun down back tonight. And I was like, Hey, buddy. You can't control any of that. None of that's real, right? That's not where our focus is worthy of being, right. Right. Our focus right now is the choice you get to make of we can sit here and we can continue to ask questions about how we can change the situation we can't change. Or we can start our day and have fun and eat our Cheerios. And he was like, I start my day. And I was like. All right, let's start our day. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:18 Thomas: Wow I can't believe that worked.

0:33:55 Eli: I mean, it has not multiple times and it definitely, you know, it is failed over and over again. But it is good that it feels like sometimes those lessons are getting through.

0:34:04 Thomas: I also want to note the bigotry of the early morning person you're already building into your life, you're shaming, hey You slept in, he says, you slept, and he says to the kid who his clock changed mysteriously under him for no fault of his own. Yeah, you slept in, Max. That's what happened. Poor guy, fucking big-ass tyranny of the morning people. Oh

0:34:10 Eli: Yes. Yes. Exactly.

0:34:11 Tom: Feel that My boss is a morning person, like a 4:30 in the morning morning person, so like I will wake up, and he doesn't expect a reply, but like I wake up to, like, texts or emails or work, like, and I'm like, dude, fucking be asleep. What are you doing? That's the middle of the night. That's not even, there's never a time that's morning. There is never a time that morning. It's asshole behavior. But, like, I think you said something that I want to emphasize, because I think, Eli, that you can't do this when somebody is actively upset. None of those tools are for you to introduce and reinforce, I don't think, when somebody's actively upset. There are things to do separately in my opinion. Like, there are things to do separately in calmer times when you reflect back later on something that's sort of, like, had emotional resonance and that sort of has faded, but you still can sort of, you know, reflect back into it and be like, hey, you had a rough time during that, you know, outing we had when this happened. Let's talk about that for a minute.

0:34:29 Thomas: God Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:05 Eli: Yeah.

0:35:25 Eli: Yeah. One of the hardest things to learn about supporting anybody with mental illness, partner, friend, anything, is that the time to deal with the poor thinking of the mental illness is never when someone is in an episode. Ever. It never, ever works. It's never good. They never go, oh, you know what? Thank you, masked man. Right? It's just, it's never, never happened. And all you can do is hold space, keep yourself and the other person safe, and then address it later. It's all you could ever do. And it's funny because in that conversation with Max, one of the things I said to him, even though it's very, very high language, I want him to get it internalized already. It's like, I am happy to just sit here with you and feel sad about this if that's what you want.

0:36:12 Eli: We can also just sit here and feel sad if that is okay. But not to fix it right there in the moment.

0:35:48 Thomas: Hmm. Oh

0:36:17 Tom: No, it can't be done is, I think, even to, like, you know, I'm a grown-ass man and, like, if I'm very upset, like, sometimes I'll feel like my mind has gone completely blank. Like I can't even like form a fucking sentence that's coherent or that I want anyone to hear out loud. You know, I'll just, I'd just sit quietly angry because I'm just like, or sad or whatever it is, because I feel like it's funny. I have an intense internal dialogue. I have a little bit of aphasia, so I don't form a lot of mental pictures at all. So most of my internal life is all very words. It's very much words. There are very few times that I'm not constantly having this running internal dialogue, but when I'm emotionally overcharged, there's kind of just like a hollow canyon You know what I mean? It's just, it's quiet. It's quite, well,

0:36:26 Eli: Mm hmm.

0:37:00 Thomas: Wow, that's

0:37:02 Eli: Well, no, I relate to that because I am a person who uses my words with and for the people around me. And in the moments when that fails, it is very hard for me to figure out what the next steps are. Right. If I've said like, hey, this is a thing like if Anna and I are in a disagreement about something and I'll be like, oh, OK, here's my opinion. Right? And if I feel like we don't have a way to move forward in the conversation because she doesn't accept that, I run out really quickly. Right, and I try not to hold that against anybody. The bad habit of that is to be like, well, you didn't hear my words and my words are perfect. That's your fault.

0:37:35 Tom: But what if they are? Yeah.

0:37:36 Eli: And Tom, they always are, of course. But one of the things that I've had to learn is that actually just holding it there and going like, oh, I don't really have any further solutions for this. Right. And it happens with difficult people in my life all the time. Right. Which is that I'll sort of say like, hey, this is where I stand and another person will say where I stands. And honestly, one of the things I've started saying is I think you should run this past somebody whose opinion you respect. And that often makes a pretty big decision. Right? Right. And that's for like arguments and stuff. Right.

0:38:05 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:05 Eli: When you sort of like hit a wall with someone and it is obvious that the things you say have no effect on what they think. Right. You can just go like, oh, OK, I think I've sort of said what I need to say. I think running this past someone you respect would be useful to get a little outside. Right? And it's not an implication that like you don't respect me. It's just obvious that's what's happening.

0:38:27 Thomas: Interesting.

0:38:28 Tom: I think that's actually like, like in an argument, like not with kids or anything, like I would

0:38:32 Eli: Of course. Yeah. Why don't you run this past someone who you fucking respect, Phoebe?

0:38:32 Thomas: Yeah, hey, Arlo. Yeah, yeah.

0:38:34 Tom: I think that's a really fucking money-ass thing to say. I love that. I think, think that's a fucking riot, actually. That's really, really

0:38:39 Eli: See if you can get Bluey on the phone. All right, gentlemen. Before we go, my father left when I was a child to play the electric keyboard. I haven't seen him since.

0:38:42 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:38:59 Tom: Funny, it was.

0:39:06 Thomas: That's awesome.

0:39:51 Tom: Not a smart thing to do for years.

0:39:55 Eli: Because I imagine that also would have happened with, like, a particularly strong Cheez-It.

0:40:01 Thomas: Oh, sorry, I'm gonna sneeze, goddamn it. Ah, so I said I'm going to sneeze, so I know I'm not going to. Oh wait, no, I'm done for the rest of the show. Sorry, I mean, I'm, I'm stuck in

0:40:11 Tom: You're just stuck. You're sneezed stuck. You've got sneeze paralysis.

0:40:14 Eli: Halfway to sneeze, yep.

0:40:14 Thomas: Paralysis sneeze, yeah. I couldn't decide to sneeze. Okay, you feel any better? No.