Name: “It Will Pay Off Later” - Dr Mike Israetel
Uploaded: 2026-02-24T10:47:23.000Z
Duration: 8 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There's two things you can be doing with your time.

Stuff that you want to be doing right now, things you feel like doing, and

This sounds like elementary education, kindergarten type of shit, but

I got to tell you, Chris, there is a lot of stuff that us Internet guru people end up saying that sounds remarkably kindergarten.

Like, because many of us, ourselves included me, you, all the other talking heads are coming to realize pretty regularly that focusing on very basic rudimentary understandings and eliminating mistakes from those understandings can build a foundation for real deep insight that in retrospect seems obvious as fuck, but

And so I love doing things like splitting up every decision you could choose to make into just two things, and

also, you, like, think through it a little bit more and we'll talk through it a little bit more, and

Well, that actually simplifies things considerably because one thing I really love and hate is when especially experts say things like, well, it's complicated.

Oh, I understand that, but you got a PhD in the shit, right?

So why don't you tell me how it's complicated and nuanced?

some of the times it's a deflection tactic to see everything's so.

And the first simplification we can make today is of all of the things you could be doing in this next very moment.

They fall into basically only two categories, shit that you feel like doing and shit you don't feel like doing.

And then those categories can further be subdivided into just a few other categories to really simplify it.

So if the shit you feel like doing, you can ask the question of, is it a good idea to do it?

We just have, like, a few points of a checklist to fill out to see if it's yes or no.

One thing is like, do I have anything pressing that I need to be doing right now?

Does this thing that I want to do hurt me and my future self in any way?

So if it some, I don't mean to be Doing anything else.

The thing I'm going to be doing doesn't hurt me in any way in the future, and

Then if you look at the universe of things that you have to be doing, that, okay, I don't want to do this.

The real question is, okay, is there a compelling reason that doing this thing you don't want to do improves future outcomes for future you?

Like, gangsters ride up and they're like, hey, get in with us.

We're going to go do a shooting or whatever.

Gangsters say like, well, gee whiz, that sounds dangerous and socially responsible.

So you just say, no thanks, fellas, but hey, best of aim to you.

Because it's, you know, future you doesn't want to live in jail or shot to death.

But if the thing you don't want to do is a thing that substantially enhances your future outcomes, you might want to consider doing that thing even though you don't want to do that thing.

Now, the ultimate situation here in this whole construct of motivation, inspiration, all that is setting up a better world for yourself in the future.

Because, like, I live, I'm living pretty goddamn good right now, if I say so myself.

And almost none of it has to do with shit I'm doing right now.

I'll be sitting on Sunday and I'm high on edible marijuana, and

I'm just scrolling through the tv and I Jew brain is like, you're a piece of shit.

You don't deserve any of these things that you have, like a house and a TV and time to scroll and even edible marijuana, which you paid for with your own money, I might add, you degenerate drug addict.

And then I'm like, how the hell do I have all this stuff is because I did shit earlier that didn't pay off at the time, it paid off later.

So with that whole decision tree I just described, you can really easily choose if you're gonna just do shit you like right now or if you're gonna do some shit now that you're not a big fan of right now.

But future you is gonna be like, bro, he's gonna open up the fucking time portal.

He's gonna push a fist through that shit, and he's gonna be like, blast that shit, big homie.

And you're gonna do this because you Hooked up.

Future you, future you is your biggest ally, period.

By the way, future you is going to exist soon and you're going to want to be a future you that you look back at as many points as possible in future you world to be like, damn, dude, old me set the shit up good.

Gwinda Bogle says your future self is watching you through your memories.

Whether it's with pride or regret depends on what you do now.

Or in my case, with like a physical skeeved out like, ooh, I'm still with this guy.

It's a beautiful day to remember that the second order effect of what you are doing now will arrive much later.

you can probably agree to this, Chris, because you and I are in our later years now.

Shit feels like it arrives really goddamn soon, huh?

And this is something that if you deeply understand it, even believe on a surface level, can really help you as a revelation.

The younger you can accept that reality, the better.

Like tomorrow you someone you really want to have like their back, short of like you're 95, you have a terminal prostate cancer diagnosis.

At that point, if it's not hookers or alcohol coming into my room, there's a do not enter sign.

But up until that point, I kind of want to reserve at least some fertile ground for the future.

And when you're younger and when you're in your middle age and you're really building something, you might even consider that if I do a lot of stuff that I don't particularly want to do right now, all the time, and

I do that now and I plow away for a while, I might end up in a world later where future me has just got it God damn easy and the living is good.

And then future you is going to be like, dude, past me fucked shit up.

And then if you're like me, you're like, oh, there's still another future me in the future.

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“It Will Pay Off Later” - Dr Mike Israetel

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