Below is a stand-alone critical discussion and review of Principles of NATTO, treating it as its own book rather than as an appendix to This Is NATTO, while acknowledging Erichsen’s insomnia work only as background context.
Review & Critical Discussion: Principles of NATTO
A bold unifying framework—or a conceptual overreach?
Daniel Erichsen’s Principles of NATTO is an ambitious book. Where This Is NATTO focused narrowly—and successfully—on insomnia, this later work attempts something much larger: to present NATTO (Not Attached To The Outcome) as a general theory of human inner struggle, applicable across anxiety, addiction, compulsive behavior, emotional distress, and self-regulation more broadly
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The result is a book that is conceptually serious, internally coherent, and philosophically confident, but also one that raises important questions about scope, novelty, and audience.
1. What the book is trying to do
At its core, Principles of NATTO proposes a base-layer framework for understanding human suffering that sits beneath specific therapies, diagnoses, or behavioral programs. Erichsen is explicit that this book is aimed primarily at coaches, counselors, and framework-builders, not just end-users seeking symptom relief
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His central claims can be summarized as follows:
Humans are principally the same (“sameness”): differences exist, but the core machinery of mind and behavior is shared across people.
Inner struggle arises only in thought-dependent domains (the “software,” not the “hardware”).
Two principles explain all inner struggle:
Effortlessness: peace of mind cannot be achieved by effort.
Survival: all mental and emotional activity exists to maximize survival.
A single explanatory model—the cognitive cascade—can account for virtually all human experience at a granular level.
This is not modest terrain. Erichsen is effectively proposing a unifying theory of mental suffering, positioned as more fundamental than CBT, ACT, mindfulness, or psychodynamic models, while borrowing heavily from all of them.
2. Where the book is strongest
A. Conceptual clarity and internal consistency
One of the book’s genuine strengths is that it takes ideas seriously. Erichsen does not merely assert principles; he repeatedly stress-tests them, anticipates objections, and refines definitions. The long treatment of unidirectionality in the cognitive cascade, the separation of emotions from sensations, and the careful handling of apparent counterexamples all reflect a mind deeply invested in logical continuity
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Unlike many self-help or coaching texts, this book is not content with slogans. It wants a clean ontology of human experience.
B. The effortlessness principle, generalized
The principle of effortlessness—so persuasive in the insomnia context—retains its power here. The argument that peace of mind is not produced but revealed when striving stops is psychologically plausible and experientially familiar. Applied to anxiety, rumination, emotional suppression, or compulsive self-improvement, the principle illuminates why trying harder often backfires.
Importantly, Erichsen does not deny growth, learning, or behavior change; he reframes them as passive, non-willful processes that unfold when resistance drops.
C. The survival lens is clarifying rather than moralizing
Framing emotions as functional survival signals—rather than pathologies or failures—has real explanatory power. The tripartite model of survival (direct, social, reproductive) is particularly effective in demystifying social anxiety, shame, status concerns, and appearance-related distress, without dismissing them as trivial
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This is one of the book’s quiet virtues: it reduces self-blame without lapsing into sentimentality.
D. Amplification is a useful unifying concept
The concept of amplification—that resisted internal communication intensifies—is not new, but Erichsen’s communication-based framing is unusually accessible. By likening thoughts to messages and emotions to signals, he gives readers a model that explains:
why suppression fails,
why distraction only works briefly,
why “letting it be” so often dissolves intensity.
This is arguably the most practically transferable concept in the book.
3. Where the book strains
A. Overreach disguised as universality
The book repeatedly claims near-universality: that the two principles and the cascade explain all human experience. While Erichsen later narrows scope to “thought-dependent struggles,” the rhetoric of total explanation remains strong.
This creates tension. The more the framework insists it explains everything, the more readers will notice what it explains by redefinition. Sensations become “outside scope.” Emotions without conscious thoughts are attributed to subconscious cascades. Counterexamples are absorbed rather than falsifying.
This is philosophically defensible—but it moves the framework closer to a closed system than a testable one.
B. The cognitive cascade vs lived experience
The insistence on strict unidirectionality (thought → emotion → behavior) is elegant, but arguably too clean. Many clinicians and researchers would object that emotions can bias cognition upstream in ways not easily reclassified as “new circumstances.”
Erichsen’s responses are clever and internally consistent—but at times feel more like model preservation than discovery.
C. Familiar ideas, bold branding
Erichsen is admirably transparent in admitting that none of this is fundamentally new. The book draws from:
Buddhism (non-attachment, two arrows),
Stoicism,
CBT (Beck’s cognitive model),
Acceptance-based therapies,
Evolutionary psychology.
What is new is the packaging and insistence on a single base layer. Readers already steeped in psychological theory may feel they are reading a highly polished synthesis, not a breakthrough.
This is not a flaw—but it matters for expectations.
D. Audience mismatch risk
Although framed as a book “for coaches,” Principles of NATTO is dense, abstract, and structurally repetitive. It is more of a framework manifesto than a practical manual. Readers seeking immediate application may struggle, while clinicians may want more empirical grounding.
It occupies an unusual middle space: too philosophical for quick consumption, too prescriptive for pure theory.
4. As a stand-alone book: does it work?
Yes—but selectively.
As a conceptual foundation, Principles of NATTO is thoughtful, coherent, and often illuminating. It works best when read slowly, skeptically, and reflectively. It rewards readers who enjoy models, definitions, and explanatory depth.
As a general behavioral theory, it is compelling but incomplete. Its greatest strength—reducing suffering by removing struggle—can also become its blind spot if applied indiscriminately. Not all problems dissolve through non-attachment alone.
As a follow-up to insomnia work, it risks diluting what made NATTO powerful in the first place. In insomnia, the model’s simplicity was its triumph. Here, the framework becomes more elaborate, more self-referential, and less obviously anchored to outcomes.
5. Final assessment
Principles of NATTO is best understood not as a universal answer, but as a well-constructed lens—one that can clarify many forms of inner struggle when used judiciously.
Its real contribution is not that it explains everything, but that it explains why effort fails, why resistance amplifies distress, and why peace often arrives sideways, unannounced, when we stop trying to earn it.
For readers drawn to frameworks rather than formulas, and for practitioners who want a clean conceptual backbone to hang other methods on, this book is serious, rigorous, and worth engaging with.
For others, it may feel like a beautifully argued map that sometimes forgets how uneven the terrain really is.
If you’d like, I can also:
Compare Principles of NATTO explicitly to CBT, ACT, or Stoicism
Write a shorter “Should you read this?” version
Or critique it from a clinician’s or scientist’s perspective rather than a philosophical one
Below is a straight, professional application of the NATTO-BROAD framework (as articulated in Principles of NATTO) to chronic procrastination—not motivational fluff, not productivity hacks, and not a disguised planner.
I’ll be explicit about where it helps, where it doesn’t, and what changes in practice.
1. First: how NATTO reframes procrastination
In NATTO-BROAD terms, chronic procrastination is not a time-management problem and not a discipline failure. It is a thought-dependent inner struggle operating entirely at the “software” level.
From the book’s framework:
The professional is not failing to act
He is successfully avoiding an internal threat
That threat is not the task itself.
It is what the task means.
Using the NATTO lens:
Procrastination is a survival response to perceived threat, amplified by effort.
This already explains why:
Planners fail
Whiteboards help briefly
Systems multiply without results
Those tools increase effort, which increases perceived threat, which amplifies avoidance.
2. The survival principle: what the brain is protecting
NATTO’s survival framework is particularly useful here.
The procrastinated task is almost always tied to one (or more) of these survival dimensions:
A. Social survival
Fear of being evaluated
Fear of exposure (“this will show I’m not as good as I should be”)
Fear of disappointing others
Fear of status loss
This is common in professionals whose work is visible, high-stakes, or ambiguous.
B. Reproductive / identity survival
Threats to self-concept (“If I do this poorly, what does that say about me?”)
Perfectionism as status preservation
Avoidance to protect identity
C. Opportunity overload
The task represents too many downstream consequences
The brain cannot resolve “best possible version,” so it stalls
From NATTO’s perspective, the brain is doing exactly what it evolved to do:
Avoid threats it cannot safely resolve.
Procrastination is not laziness.
It is protective hesitation.
3. The effortlessness principle: why productivity tools backfire
This is where NATTO diverges sharply from conventional productivity advice.
Every new system says, implicitly:
“You must do this correctly for things to be okay.”
That message:
Raises stakes
Increases monitoring
Turns action into a referendum on competence
From NATTO’s effortlessness principle:
Peace of mind (and action clarity) cannot be produced by effort.
So:
The more elaborate the planning system
The more the brain senses danger
The more it delays
This explains a common pattern:
Initial motivation spike
Brief compliance
Sudden resistance
Eventual abandonment
Self-criticism → new system → repeat
NATTO would say:
the tools are not neutral—they function as pressure devices.
4. How NATTO-BROAD would actually intervene (step by step)
Importantly, NATTO does not say “just stop procrastinating” or “just don’t care.” It changes the relationship to action.
Step 1: Identify the inner struggle, not the task
Instead of asking:
“Why can’t I start this?”
NATTO asks:
“What outcome am I attached to here?”
Common answers:
Needing the work to be impressive
Needing certainty before starting
Needing it to reflect competence
Needing it to avoid criticism
This is attachment to outcome, not poor planning.
Step 2: Remove outcome-based effort, not structure
This is subtle and critical.
NATTO does not prohibit structure.
It prohibits structure used to guarantee safety.
The shift is from:
“I must do this correctly”
to:
“I am allowed to engage without securing the outcome”
Practically:
No “perfect first step”
No commitment to finishing
No requirement that the session be productive
The task becomes:
Engagement without rescue
This is uncomfortable—but it reduces survival threat.
Step 3: Redefine “starting” as exposure, not execution
In NATTO terms, starting the task is not about progress.
It is about allowing the brain to experience the task without catastrophe.
Examples:
Opening the document and doing nothing for 2 minutes
Writing a deliberately bad paragraph
Reviewing data without interpreting it
Drafting with no intent to keep any of it
The key:
No effort to make this session “count.”
That removes amplification.
Step 4: Allow resistance instead of negotiating with it
NATTO treats resistance as communication, not obstruction.
If resistance appears:
It is not argued with
It is not overcome
It is not reframed
The professional allows:
“This feels uncomfortable, and that’s okay.”
This is not resignation—it is non-interference.
From the amplification principle:
When resistance is not opposed
Communication completes
Intensity drops
Action often follows naturally
5. Why this helps when it helps
NATTO-BROAD helps procrastination when procrastination is driven by internal threat, not skill deficits.
It works because:
It removes survival pressure
It stops escalation
It restores voluntary action
It prevents self-coercion loops
It is especially effective for:
High-achieving professionals
Knowledge workers
Writers, researchers, clinicians, executives
People who “know what to do” but can’t start
6. Where NATTO will not solve procrastination
Being precise here matters.
NATTO will not fix procrastination caused by:
Lack of clarity about task requirements
Unrealistic workloads
Organizational dysfunction
Burnout from genuine overcommitment
ADHD-related executive dysfunction (though it may reduce secondary anxiety)
NATTO does not replace:
Delegation
Scope reduction
External accountability when appropriate
What it does is remove self-generated pressure that makes all of those harder.
7. The bottom line
From a NATTO-BROAD perspective:
Chronic procrastination is not failure to act
It is over-attachment to the outcome of acting
Planners fail because they promise safety.
NATTO works when it works because it withdraws the demand for safety.
The professional does not become more disciplined.
He becomes less internally threatened.
And in that space, action often resumes—not heroically, not efficiently, but naturally.
If you’d like, next we could:
Compare this approach directly to CBT-based anti-procrastination methods
Apply NATTO-BROAD to email avoidance, writing paralysis, or decision delay
Or stress-test where NATTO breaks down in real organizational settings
Here is a teaching case narrative, written as a story but with enough structure that a clinician, coach, or reflective reader can see the mechanics working. It stays faithful to NATTO-BROAD without turning it into doctrine.
John and the Unfinished Things
Week 0: “I know what to do. I just don’t do it.”
John was forty-three, a senior knowledge worker in a professional services firm. Smart, well-liked, reliably late. Not catastrophically late—just late enough that projects dragged, stress accumulated, and evenings dissolved into anxious catch-up.
“I don’t miss deadlines,” he told the therapist in the first session. “I flirt with them.”
He described the familiar inventory:
three planners abandoned,
a whiteboard that filled him with dread,
a color-coded Post-it wall that worked for exactly ten days.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “I’m not lazy. I care a lot. And yet—I wait until the pressure is unbearable, then I sprint.”
The therapist did not ask about productivity tools.
Instead, she asked, “What happens right before you decide not to start?”
John thought. “A tightening. Like… if I open the document, something bad might happen.”
“That,” she said, “is where we’ll work.”
Week 1: Naming the struggle
The therapist introduced no techniques in the first week. Only a reframe.
“This isn’t procrastination,” she said. “It’s avoidance of a perceived threat.”
John bristled. “The threat is imaginary.”
“Of course,” she said. “All internal threats are. Your brain doesn’t care.”
They mapped his pattern:
Tasks tied to evaluation stalled.
Tasks tied to status stalled.
Tasks with ambiguous standards stalled.
Routine admin? Fine.
Low-stakes emails? Immediate.
Anything that might expose competence? Frozen.
“This is social survival,” the therapist said. “Your brain thinks delay is safer than exposure.”
John left unsettled—but oddly relieved.
For the first time, his problem sounded intelligent.
Week 2: Why effort keeps failing
John arrived frustrated.
“I tried to loosen up,” he said. “I told myself it didn’t matter. That didn’t work.”
The therapist smiled. “That was effort.”
She explained NATTO’s effortlessness principle—not philosophically, but mechanically:
“The moment you try to make yourself not care, you’re still trying to control the outcome.”
She asked him to list everything he did in order to feel safe before starting work.
The list surprised him:
Re-reading instructions
Waiting for the “right” block of time
Clearing email first
Organizing notes
Thinking through the whole project mentally
“All of these,” she said, “are negotiations with fear.”
That week’s experiment was simple—and uncomfortable:
Open the task with no intention of progress.
No fixing. No finishing. No proving anything.
Just exposure.
John hated it.
He opened a report one afternoon, stared at it for three minutes, felt nauseous—and closed it.
“Failure,” he said the next session.
“No,” the therapist said. “That was contact.”
Week 3: Removing the rescue instinct
Something unexpected happened in week three.
John noticed that after brief, non-productive exposures, the tasks felt slightly less radioactive the next day.
Not easier. Just… less charged.
But he kept sabotaging himself by trying to “capitalize” on good moments.
“I thought, okay, this is the window—now I have to work.”
And immediately: resistance.
The therapist introduced the idea of rescue behavior.
“You keep trying to turn reduced threat into performance. The brain sees that as a trap.”
New instruction:
You are allowed to stop—even when it’s going well.
This felt counterintuitive, almost irresponsible.
But something shifted.
John noticed that when he stopped by choice, instead of from overwhelm, the dread didn’t rebound as strongly.
He finished the week maybe 25% better—not in output, but in time-to-start.
Week 4: When nothing works (and why that’s okay)
Week four was bad.
John came in irritated. “Everything fell apart. I avoided all week.”
The therapist didn’t problem-solve.
Instead, she asked, “What did you make that mean?”
“That the method stopped working.”
“And that means…?”
“That I’m back where I started.”
She pointed this out gently:
“You’re evaluating the process the same way you evaluate your work.”
Outcome attachment had migrated.
They reframed the week:
No systems added
No accountability imposed
No “making up” for lost time
The only goal:
Notice when evaluation thinking appears.
Do nothing about it.
Oddly, the pressure eased.
By Friday, John sent a draft he’d been avoiding—not polished, but adequate.
“Normally,” he said, “this would have taken a crisis.”
Week 5: Letting mediocre be safe
This was the breakthrough week—not dramatic, but meaningful.
John realized that much of his procrastination was tied to an unspoken rule:
If I start, I must do this well.
The therapist offered a deliberate violation:
Produce work you would not normally allow yourself to submit.
And submit it anyway, when appropriate.
John balked. Then tried it—with one internal memo.
Nothing bad happened.
No one commented on tone.
No one questioned competence.
The world did not collapse.
His brain took note.
This didn’t eliminate procrastination—but it shortened its half-life.
He estimated he was now 60–70% better:
Starting earlier
Recovering faster
Spiraling less
Week 6: What changed (and what didn’t)
At the final session, the therapist asked, “So—what worked?”
John surprised himself with the answer.
“Not trying to fix myself.”
He still procrastinated sometimes.
He still felt resistance.
He still had days where nothing flowed.
But:
He no longer escalated avoidance into panic.
He no longer built elaborate systems.
He trusted that engagement—not effort—retrained his brain.
“What I learned,” he said, “is that procrastination was never the problem. Fear was. And fear hates being negotiated with—but it relaxes when it’s allowed.”
The therapist nodded.
“That’s NATTO,” she said. “Not mastery. Truce.”
Teaching takeaways from John’s case
Progress came from reduced threat, not increased discipline
Exposure without outcome expectation was the key lever
Setbacks were informative, not failures
60–70% improvement was enough to change John’s work life
Trying to eliminate procrastination would have kept it alive
John did not become a productivity machine.
He became less afraid of starting.
And for a knowledge worker, that was enough.
If you’d like, next we could:
Write the counterfactual John who used productivity coaching alone
Analyze this case as a clinician (what predicts success vs failure)
Or adapt the story for email avoidance, writing paralysis, or executive leadership contexts
Yes — that recognition is exactly right, and it goes to the quiet honesty at the center of Erichsen’s work.
What he is doing, both with insomnia and now with procrastination, is lowering the bar in a way that actually makes progress possible.
In insomnia, he is very explicit:
If you sleep better most nights, worry less about sleep, and have bad nights without spiraling — you’re done.
Not cured. Done.
What matters is not eradication of wakefulness, but immunity to it.
The same logic carries cleanly into procrastination.
A John who is 60–70% better:
starts earlier often enough,
recovers from avoidance without drama,
doesn’t turn delay into a moral crisis,
no longer needs elaborate scaffolding,
is functionally free of the problem — even though procrastination still appears.
Erichsen’s realism is almost subversive in a culture that promises optimization and total control. He is saying, in effect:
You don’t need to win the war. You need to stop fighting.
That stance does three important things:
It breaks the secondary struggle.
The suffering multiplier isn’t the symptom (wakefulness, delay), but the reaction to the symptom. Once that reaction softens, the symptom loses leverage.It aligns with how human systems actually stabilize.
Biological and psychological systems don’t converge to zero variance. They settle into tolerable ranges. NATTO is about reaching that range and staying there.It protects against relapse by design.
A model that promises 100% improvement sets people up to panic at 10% regression. A model that expects fluctuation builds resilience.
This is why Erichsen’s approach feels so different from productivity culture or even from some therapeutic traditions. He is not offering mastery. He is offering detente.
And detente, paradoxically, produces the most durable gains.
In that sense, procrastination and insomnia are almost perfect analogues:
Both are state-dependent
Both worsen under monitoring
Both improve when permission replaces pressure
Both never disappear entirely — and don’t need to
Erichsen’s frankness — “If you’re 60% better, that’s the game” — is not therapeutic nihilism.
It’s respect for human limits.
And that may be the most radical part of NATTO.
