← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
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- [00:00]
A
Hearing a voice can change everything. So AT&T wants everyone to gift their voice to loved ones this holiday season because that conversation is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. AT&T connecting changes everything. This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing? One of the primary bugs in the human operating system, one of our most annoying design flaws, is that we are insatiable. As the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein likes to ask people, how many great meals have you had? How many promotions have you earned? How many vacations have you taken, and are you done yet? Of course not. And in this way, the pursuit of happiness enshrined in America's founding documents can become the source of your unhappiness. How did we get this way and what can we do about it? That's what we're talking about today with the journalist Michael Easter. He's a journalist and also an author. He wrote a book called Scarcity Brain. In this conversation, we talk about the evolutionary roots of overconsumption, the challenges of having ancient brains in a modern world, the scarcity mindset versus the abundance mindset understanding what Michael calls the Scarcity loop and how to apply it in your daily life tactical ways to work with habits and cravings Understanding the scarcity loop, how it hooks you and then how you can unhook using that same loop and how Michael's life changed after researching this book. Plus, toward the end of the conversation, we also talk about one of Michael's previous books, which is called the Comfort Crisis and Some Practical Steps for Embracing Discomfort in your life. A few things to say before we dive in as always, there's a guided meditation that comes with this episode. It was designed by our Teacher of the Month, Christiana Wolf. It's all about how to decrease your resistance to what's happening in your life. She has a very clever way of teaching this, a kind of Jiu Jitsu move. These meditations, as you may know, are for paying subscribers over@danharris.com so you should sign up. If you do, you will get access as well to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. You can meditate with hundreds and hundreds of us live. The next one is coming up on Tuesday, December 2nd at 4pm Eastern. That'll be with me and our December Teacher of the Month, Jeff Warren, my great friend. Last thing to say before we dive in this conversation with Michael Easter first aired back in July of 2024, but we pulled it out of the vast archives because it performed so well you guys really liked it, so we're reposting it. Michael Easter coming right up. We're making Thanksgiving plans right now and we've got a bunch of things we're going to do over the holiday. But one of the things we're going to do is go out to the beach in eastern Long island, the town of Montauk, which we love. It's obviously not going to be beach weather, but it's a great time to hang out in one of our favorite places. When it's a little less touristy, we're going to stay in a house with family members. It's a great way, especially when it's family you haven't seen in a while or family that you don't get to see all the time to really hang out, you're in a house together, especially if it's a big enough house. You've got your own space, but then shared spaces where you can hang out and really get to know each other in unscripted, casual moments. It's a great way to have more space to be able to cook for yourself and most importantly for me, to be able to bond with people that I don't get to see all the time. And here's the cool thing. I love staying and welcoming home homes that I book on Airbnb, but it's got me thinking that my home could do the same for somebody else. My wife and I have put so much love into all the details of our home. Why not help somebody feel comfortable and taken care of while they're traveling? Think about it. If you host your home on Airbnb while you're traveling, it's a great way to offset some of the costs of your trip. The extra income that you make can be put towards an upcoming trip, a splurge. You've been eyeing home improvements. And if you've got a lot of trips ahead of you, hosting is a pretty cool and unique way to make some money back. Whenever I travel, my place is just empty. So while I'm away, it really does make sense to host it on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host. You know at. And T believes hearing a voice can change everything. And if you love podcasts, you get that the power of hearing somebody speak is unmatched. It's why we save those voicemails from our loved ones. They mean something for me. When I need a one on one holiday boost, I know who to call. My friend Joseph Goldstein, my meditation Teacher. This is a guy who is just. Every time I got a problem, I can call him up and he talks me off the ledge and gives me practical and profound advice. AT&T knows the holidays are the perfect time to do just that. Share your voice. If it's been a while since you've called somebody who matters, now is the time. Because it's more than just a conversation. It's a chance to say something they will hear forever. So spread a little love with a call this season. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Michael Easter, welcome to the show.
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B
Thanks for having me.
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A
So the new book is called Scarcity Brain. What do you mean by that?
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B
So the underlying question of this book is everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation, and yet we all suck at it. And so why is that? It looks at that question. Because when you look at humans, you know, we sort of evolved in these environments where everything that we needed to survive was scarce and hard to find. And so we kind of evolved to overdo things. Everything from food to stuff to information to status. And we still have those ancient genes pushing us into more in a world where, you know, we have an abundance of all those things.
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A
So on the savannah and the evolutionary times, it made sense to go hog wild when you came across a tree groaning with fruit or you found a willing mate, et cetera, et cetera. But in an era where this stuff, at least on the fruit side, is much more easily available, you need to have moderation enter the picture in a way it didn't need to be back in the day.
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B
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, when you look at what people tend to over consume, it is food, it is possessions. Status. We love status. We love information. And I'll give you some examples with stuff. The average home now contains 10,000 to 40,000 items. With food, we throw out about a third of the food we produce. And, you know, we have a obesity crisis in the United States. With information. The average person today sees more information in one day than a person in the 15th century would have seen in their entire life. And so, I mean, I think there's a pretty strong argument that we do have all these things that would have given us a survival advantage in the past. And it's hard for us to find a governor and rails on that.
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A
It's interesting, this mismatch between ancient brains and modern life. This is not my observation, but the idea that natural selection wired us for insatiability, because if we were totally satisfied after one meal or totally satisfied after one procreation session, then we were unlikely to get our DNA into the next generation. And so that made sense in one setting, but it does not serve us well now.
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B
Yeah, exactly. When you still have genes that tell you to overeat, when you have the ability to. That tell you to sort of hoard information in the age of X, that tell you to buy more stuff in the age of Amazon Prime. It's a mismatch is the word that anthropologists use. Yeah.
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A
And I don't know if they're related, but sometimes people talk now about a scarcity mindset, meaning perhaps the opposite, that some. Like I've actually been. I don't want to say accused, but it has been observed that I can bring a scarcity mindset to certain discussions where I'm not looking at the world through a view of abundance, I'm looking at it through the view of scarcity. Is that in any way related to what you're talking about?
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B
Yeah, I've heard that term get thrown around a lot. I mean, I see the scarcity mindset as really being the view that you don't have enough of something. Right. And so I guess there's some interrelated stuff I've heard. You know, I've heard scarcity mindset, abundance mindset. I tend to look at most of my work kind of through an evolutionary lens. So when I talk about the idea of a scarcity brain, it is, you know, what drives this big question that I'm asking is what drives this feeling we all have that we never have enough of something or other and it's often different things for different people. Right. And I do think that it ties back to how humans evolved on savannas and what would have helped us survive in the past, mismatching with today. I don't know if that answers your question. We might have kind of recovered some ground, but hopefully that helps.
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A
Yeah, I'm trying to. I didn't get a ton of. There was a scarcity of sleep on my end last night. So my brain is not operating at its. At its peak right now. But you're talking about in this book is the fact that there's a mismatch between our ancient wiring and the modern era where overindulgence becomes much more of a problem. What has been pointed out on my end is that sometimes I'm navigating the world from a standpoint of anxiety or a sense that I don't have enough. Whereas if I looked at the world through a lens of abundance, I might relax and make different choices and maybe not add so many things onto my plate out of a position of fear and scarcity, to use that word again.
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B
The idea that a person has anxiety, that they may not have enough, that they're focusing on this thing they don't have, rather than what they do have, that is a very human thing. I mean, that is wired into us because if you think about a million years ago when everything we needed to survive was hard to find and we didn't have enough, if you were constantly hyper focused on the next thing that you might need, you would survive. Right. And we still have those ancient brains, but it just gets applied to a world where for many people things are pretty good, but we're still looking for that thing we don't have. Yeah, it's like, oh, well, I got a problem with this, I got a problem with that. Right? So there's another concept I talk about in my other book called the Comfort Crisis, and it's called prevalence induced concept change. Now that is a really scientific way of stating a really basic concept, which is that as humans experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied. We basically just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. And so we end up with the same exact number of troubles. Right? But our problems become more hollow over time as the world has improved over time. And so you can debate, is the world better this year than it was last year? And like, okay, we can go back and forth on that. Let's legitimate, but let's look at it in the grand scheme of time and space. And I think we can all agree that today, by most measurements, the world is way better than it was 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, 200 years ago. But we don't often stop and appreciate that. So I mean, you think of, hunger has gone way down around the globe, literacy is up, wars are down overall, I mean, all these different measurements. But when you ask the average American, is the world improving? Only 6% of people say that the world is improving. And that's because we constantly are searching for problems, looking for the next issue. So when we get that question, our brain just kind of goes, well, things in Washington right now, now the world's going, it's terrible, right? Because we just can't think in these big time scales. And so I think ultimately like the big picture, it's like, well, why, why would I tell you that? Right? The big picture is that I think that kind of clouds our judgment in ways and also makes us not as appreciative about how incredible it is to be alive right now. Like, it is by far the best time to be alive. No question at all. I mean, think about it. We have hot running water, most houses in the United States. We have an abundance of food. Life used to literally just be walking around the Earth looking for food and being really, really hungry all day. That's what people did. Right? It was like, have kids, find some food, don't die. Those were your three jobs. And now we can do all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, you and I are having a podcast right now, and you're in, I think, New York City. I'm in Las Vegas. Right. My house is temperature controlled, despite the fact that Las Vegas is generally the temperature of a furnace outside. And so, yeah, that was kind of a long rant, but I think you get where I'm going with that.
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A
The first book you wrote is called the Comfort Crisis, and we're going to dive into that in a pretty deep way after we talk about the Scarcity Brain. But the. The interesting thing about where we are in the world today, and I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is this, I think, sense of despair that seems disproportionate. But having said that, just to say a word for Team Despair, yes, things are better. We are safer, more educated, healthier, richer than we've ever been as a species. And we are existing in this interesting sliver of time where the human species will make this decision about whether it wants to destroy itself.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I definitely. I. I'm definitely not saying the world is free of problems at all. I think one of the differences, though, is that we have more resources to help with problems. And I do. I do hear you on the fact that a lot of our. A lot of our progress has also led to some interesting questions about what the future might look like. And we're definitely not. It's not all roses and clovers, but there's a few more roses and clovers, I think, than there was, say, you know, 300 years ago, 800 years ago, whatever it might be, which, by the way, is like, you know, not that long ago in the grand scheme of time and space.
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A
Yeah. Two things can be true that this is a classic case of that we've had an extraordinary progress, and we have pretty. We have actually, I think, genuinely extraordinary problems. Well, let's get back to Scarcity Brain. You have this concept called the scarcity loop. What is that about?
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B
Yeah, so it helps to know, I guess, how I found it or stumbled onto it. So the Scarcity Brain in the book is why are humans bad at moderation? And so I live in Las Vegas, and this is a town that is basically engineered to get people to be really, really bad at moderation. That's its whole purpose in Las Vegas. The strangest thing that I tend to see living here, and you do see a lot of strange things, but it's slot machines. It's because slot machines are all over town. For one, they're in the gas stations, the grocery stores, the airport, everywhere. And then two is that people play these things around the clock. I mean, I'll go to the grocery store at 6am and there'll be like the mini grocery store casino, and it's filled with people and they're playing slot machines. And so I see that and I'm like, why would a person do that? It doesn't make any sense, right? Because everyone knows that the house is always going to win. And when I see something that doesn't make sense, my job is to not just sort of walk away. I'm a journalist, so I'm like, okay, well, let's figure this out. So I decided, all right, I got to figure out how a slot machine works. So, long story short, through getting sort of bumped from, you know, person A to person B to person C, I end up at this place that is this brand new casino on the edge of town. And it's fully working, cutting edge, whatever, but the catch is that it's not totally open to the public. It's effectively a casino laboratory. So it's this sort of living, breathing human behavior lab. A guy who also has a podcast named Rich Roll was like, oh, it sounds like a Skinner box. Like a live Skinner box. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what it is. So I go into this casino laboratory and it's funded by the gaming industry and also a bunch of big tech companies. And I learn all these different things about gambling. And I meet a guy there who's a slot machine designer and he tells me how a slot machine works. And it works on this three part system that you asked about called the Scarcity Loop. So if you want to get a human or really animal hooked on a behavior, get them to repeat the behavior over and over and over, it's got to have these three parts that fall into this loop. It's got to have opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. So with opportunity, it's like you have an opportunity to get something of value that'll enhance your life. In the case of slot machine, it's money Right. Unpredictable rewards. You know, you'll get the thing of value at some point, but you're not entirely sure when, and you don't necessarily know how valuable it's going to be. So with a slot game, you could lose your money, you could win a couple bucks, you could win some crazy amount of money, like a hundred thousand dollars, right? You got this crazy range of outcomes every game. And then three quick, quick repeatability. You can repeat the behavior immediately. So with slot machines, people play about 900 games an hour. So I learned about this loop thing and I'm leaving the place basically, and the guy tells me, he's like, you realize that that loop is like in a lot of other things, right? We go, oh, is it? And then I start thinking about it. And once you really look at it, you see it everywhere. So it's embedded in. It's what makes social media work. It's being put in a lot of online shopping platforms. It explains the rise of sports betting. It's what makes dating apps work. Right? It's those three parts are being really engineered into so many of the technologies and even experiences, I think, that really drive the course of how we spend our time and attention.
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A
You also talk about time scarcity. How does that relate?
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B
Yeah, Well, I think it's the feeling of. And it's funny because I didn't originally have that in the book. And I would. People would ask me, friends would ask me, hey, what's your new book about? And I would start to tell them. And more than a non zero number of them said, oh, man, I always feel like I got a times, like I got time scarcity, scarcity of time. And so I kind of looked into it and it's this idea that you just don't ever have enough time to do everything that you want to do. Which I was like, yeah, I could definitely see that. But one of the arguments I make in the book is it's also funny because I mentioned how we're sort of wired to do more, to add more. We pack our schedule so full today, it's like, if you really look at it, we have more time than ever before because we're not. We're not having to be forced into the field to farm for our food, right. A lot of people do remote work now. Generally, hours worked have sort of gone down compared to the grand scheme of time and space. And yet we just fill our schedules with so much stuff to do, right? It's like, I got to do this, I got to do that, we got to have Another meeting, we got to have this blah, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden you think, man, I don't have enough time. Makes you feel frantic.
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A
For me, this is one of the major sources of my predilection for being frantic. Does the loop apply to this or is this just another zone of scarcity?
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B
I think in some ways it does. I mean, a lot of what we fill our schedule with is something that is going to enhance our life, right? Like, so we've got an opportunity to get something from a meeting or some new opportunity or whatever it might be, and we don't necessarily know what good is going to come of it. Right. And we're kind of just constantly filling our schedules. I mean, I don't think it's as strong of a one to one as like you might see on, say, social media or a dating app or some of the finance apps that are using that scarcity loop or even the food system is pulling elements of it. But I do think that there is definitely something to that.
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A
Do you think it would be possible to use the Scarcity loop for good, you know, to design a product that taps into this vulnerability in the human brain and mind to get people to do something good for them?
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B
Totally. And I'm going to give you a wonderful example. And it is an example that I used to criticize when it first came out. And I have totally come around on this thing. So I'm friends with a guy whose name is John Hanke, and John's this game designer. So he started his career, he was at Google. I think he led the map project. He left Google and started this mobile gaming company. And being a guy who, he grew up in West Texas, he was always really into computers and video games and programming them, but he also spent a ton of time outside with other people. And that he realized really helped his mental health. And it also made him more creative in his gaming stuff. So he has a kid who is younger. I think maybe the kid was 10 at the time. And the kid loved video games just like his dad, right? Loves video games. But he didn't love going outside and playing with other kids quite as much. And so John's telling him, oh, go outside, go play with kids. And the kids like, I don't want to do that. So John's like, I wonder if I could come up with a game that would get this kid outside moving around with other kids. So what he does is he comes up with this game, Pokemon Go, which when it first came out, it's like, you all know it because everyone was playing it. You had all these people walking around, you know, with their face in their screen, kind of looking around. You're like, what is going on? And the game is. I mean, to say the game is popular is like the understatement of the year. It's been downloaded more than a billion times. But what's so fascinating about the game is that it thrives on this scarcity loop. But it does so in a way that gets people out into the world doing things that are good for them. So if you think about this game of Pokemon Go, where you're walking out in the real world, so it overlays a sort of virtual map where you have to find Pokemon onto the real world. So you got your phone, you're looking and you're like, okay, there's a Pokemon way over there. I don't know what it's going to be. I got to walk to get it. And I'm going to get some, you know, video game points for doing that. So you're playing a video game that ultimately thrives off this loop of, like, might get a Pokemon, don't know how good it's going to be. Unpredictable rewards and then quick repeatability right after I find it and go find another one. But as you're playing this game, what are you doing? You're outside, right? You're getting sunshine, you are walking. So you're putting in physical activity. And a lot of times in the game, one of the things that John did to make sure that people would spend time together is that for especially valuable virtual Pokemon, you have to be with other people in order to capture it. So you're like, oh, if we want this really good one, we gotta get like five of us and all hang out and all go get it together. And so I think that's just. I mean, that's just one what I consider a really great example. And like I said at first, I mean, I was, when I first saw them, like these people looking at their phones, walking around, looking at their phone, like, what the hell is going on? This is so dorky. And then once I understood what was going on, I mean, it's amazing. Like, people have walked some crazy amount of times from Earth to Pluto and back total in steps playing Pokemon Go.
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A
So it just gets me wondering, like, are there ways to gamify mental health? That's what Pokemon Go really is. But I guess I'm specifically thinking about, like, meditation to make it work in this regard. Not asking you to solve that problem now, but that's just where my head goes.
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B
Yeah, that's a good one. I think the question with meditation is how do you insert, how do you, as a meditation app designer, insert unpredictable rewards? There's probably ways to do that with like, once people hit a certain goal that is unpredictable, something happens that is valuable to them. But I also think, I mean, my own experience with meditation, it is a much slower time scale than a slot machine, let me tell you. I'll have times if I'm meditating, and this is 99.9% of the time where I'm just thinking about nonsense. And then I'm, you know, I get, I get my breath for a couple minutes. Not even a couple minutes, a couple seconds. But then you have moments of this just complete bliss. And it's totally unpredictable. And that, for me, I think is kind of what gets me coming back, because it makes me realize there's some there, there, and I can't, I can't predict it. Right. It's like a slot machine that just never, never pays and never, never pays ever. But then sometimes it's just like, here's a million dollars.
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A
Yes.
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B
It's just like, oh my God, yes.
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A
No, that's exactly right. And as I often say, the twist here is that if you're looking for any reward in meditation, if you're looking for anything, you won't get it. I mean, desire is the first hindrance. The Buddha and his followers have been talking about this for 2600 years, so that makes it even twistier.
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B
Right? People sit down at a slot machine hoping to maybe win something, and they can. With meditation, it's almost like, doesn't work like that.
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A
Nope. Just gotta be cool with whatever comes up.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Coming up, Michael Easter talks about some very practical ways to work with your habits and cravings. How to understand the scarcity loop, how it hooks you, and then how you can unhook actually using the same loop. How Michael's life changed after researching this book. And then we talk about expanding your so called pigeon cage. You know, AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why we love a good podcast. Or we save voicemails from loved ones because we appreciate the sound of a familiar voice. When I need a pick me up, I call my friend Willie. Willie and I have known each other for nearly 25 years. He's just an incredibly close friend. And I laugh my you know what off every time we talk. That's my guy. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail. Call someone because that conversation is a chance to say something they will hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything. This time of year. It's sensory overload everywhere but one feeling that we're all chasing Cozy and Bombas has the socks, slippers, tees, and basically everything you need to get there. There are lots of ways to get 10% happier. I would say comfortable socks have to fall into that category. I got some Bombas socks recently and I love them. In fact, my wife and I have been competing to see who can wear them. So maybe that is reducing my happiness just a little bit because it's leading to marital stress. Anyway, the socks are great. Super comfortable, super cozy and the sock scientists at BOMBAS have found a way to channel that energy into everything from slippers with the sink in cushioning to satisfyingly weighty tees. And that feeling, it does not stop after one wear. It keeps going. I can attest to that. Also worth noting, bombas makes gifting easy. They've got answers for all of your gifting questions like what do I get my son's new marathon training girlfriend? Bomba's running socks have sweat wicking and impact cushioning. What about your neighbor's fussy newborn baby? Bombas fit like a hug, and they're designed to feel soft and stay snug on even the wiggliest toes. One of the best things about Bambam Bombas is that they're mission oriented. For every pair of Bombas you purchase, BOMBAS donates one to somebody facing homelessness on your behalf. So anytime you get something cozy, somebody else does too. Head over to bombas.com happier and use the code happier for 20 off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com happier code happier at checkout. Well so the the subtitle of the book is Fix youx Craving Mindset and rewire your habits to thrive with enough. What do you recommend to help us deal with this aspect of, you know, the our of our brains and mind?
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B
Well, I think that when you look at what tends to make humans healthy and happy, it tends to not be these sort of new things that we've engineered into our lives that fall into the scarcity loop. So I'll give you a really what I think is a powerful anecdote that stuck with me from the book. So I learned about this loop and how it's in all these different technologies and systems that sort of, you know, don't exactly enhance our life. And I want to know why it works. Like, why do we get hooked on it? I won't get too deep into why or else the story will get too long. But long story short is I meet this guy who's a psychologist at the university of Kentucky. His name is Thomas Zental. And this guy is in his 80s. He's still in the lab, like, 40 hours a week. He came up through B.F. skinner. He's just a brilliant, brilliant guy. And he does these experiments on pigeons where he has these pigeons that they keep in, you know, the standard pigeon cages in labs. And they will put them in a, you know, a box for an experiment. And the pigeons can choose between two games. So the first game, they get a predictable amount of food by pecking a light. So every other time they peck the light, they get, say, 20 units of food or whatever, or 15 units of food. The other game is more like a slot machine. So about every fifth pack of the light, but at totally random intervals, they get food. It's a little bit more food than they would get from the predictable game where it's every other pack. Now, if you do the math, playing the predictable game gets these pigeons way more food. Okay? Like, this is the game to play. And there's all these theories that basically state, like, animals are going to do whatever it takes to get the most amount of food for the least amount of efforts. So that logic and just common sense follows that all the pigeons should be playing the game that gets them the food, every other pack. And what he finds is that 97% of the pigeons play the gambling game. This guy, like, literally turns pigeons into degenerate gamblers. And so, you know, he's going, they play the gambling game. Like, what the hell's up with that? So set that up to tell you this. Told you how the pigeons live in these sort of smaller standard laboratory cages. Well, when he puts pigeons into this really giant cage that is designed to be a lot like their life in the wild, they interact with other pigeons. They have roosts they can go into. They can go up into cliffs. You know, they've got some plants in there. Like, it's very much like a wild pigeon life that they evolved to live. They hang out in there for a while, and then he puts them back in the game. He goes, okay, choose between the two games. Every single pigeon picks the game that makes sense, the game where they get a predictable amount of food. So I go, okay, well, why the hell's that? And he said, there's this idea called the optimal stimulation theory. And it basically states that all animals, including humans, need a certain amount of stimulation in their life in order to thrive. And if we don't get that stimulation, we go searching for it elsewhere. So he's like, so my pigeons, they're in these sort of sterile cages. Their life is very boring. When I put them in the box, they don't care about the food, they just need stimulation, right? And they get it by playing this gambling game. He's like. And then he goes to, you know, the next jump is. And when you think of humans today, I think we live very different lives than we evolved to live. Right. We're not living in these natural environments that we lived in that had elements of hardship, where we were outside, where we were active all the time, where we were in tight groups of people that we had to rely on and interact with all the time. So our lives have just changed so much across the board. And that's removed a lot of the stimulation that we evolved to crave and need. And so he argues, you know, I think this is why you see people searching for stimulation in ways that aren't always productive in the long run, like overdoing social media, like drinking, drugs, whatever it might be. Insert any bad behavior a person can fall into in the year 2024.
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A
So is the answer that if we want to learn to moderation, we don't want to go right at the issue. What we want to do is essentially rewire our whole lives so that we are getting more meaning and stimulation, positive kind of stimulation, so that we're not reaching for the addictive, harmful stimulation.
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B
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I can tell you when a person starts to do a behavior that is more meaningful to them and life giving, a lot of times bad habits just fall off.
- [34:22]
A
I think this relates this anecdote. For many years I've worked with this. I guess she trained as a dietitian, but she came up with, her name is Evelyn tribally and she came up with something called intuitive eating. And it's kind of like an anti diet and you're nodding your head, you've heard of it. And I imagine people listening to this, some of them might have heard of it. Especially if you've listened to the show with any regularity because I've droned on about Evelyn and her magical powers many times. But it's basically about getting you to listen to your body so that you're not following somebody else's food rules. You're listening to your body so that you eat when you're hungry. And stop eating when you're full. That's an oversimplification, but it's directionally correct. And I. I would come back to her. I still see her. I've been working with her for four years, and I still talk to her every month or two. Early on, I would come back a lot and I still do this and complain about, oh, X or Y evening, I completely overdid it on cookies or something like that. And she would sometimes come back with this what struck me as counterintuitive, maybe even irrelevant line of questioning around what my hobbies were and whether I was engaging with them with any regularity. And a lot of this was during the deaths of the pandemic. So I didn't. I couldn't do a lot of the things I normally did, but she was really pushing me to. She would send me pictures of her with her ping pong coach or video of her surfing and stuff like that. And, you know, eventually, to make a long story even longer, I. My son and I ended up getting a drum set I've played since I was 10. And he just started taking lessons. He's. He's nine now. And that really made a big difference for me because I wasn't looking at meals as the only quote, unquote, fun time of the day. I had other shit to do. That was also fun.
- [36:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that tracks. And when you look at. I'm sure she has better stats than me, but one stat that has stuck with me is from a. This one's in the comfort crisis, I believe is that 80% of eating is driven by reasons other than real physiological hunger. So a lot of it is because it's a certain time on the clock or someone just brought food into the office and like, yeah, you just eat the food because it's there. And a lot of it is boredom, too. And I think that that's kind of what we're talking about here, where it's like, you don't have anything to do. Food is delicious. Like, food will always be rewarding.
- [36:47]
A
Right.
- [36:48]
B
Food is always better than no food. And so I think that that tracks not only for eating, but for, I think, a lot of other different behaviors. And I can tell your example is funny because I had to. I still do a little bit of magazine work from time to time, and I had to write this profile yesterday. And I mean, my favorite part of my job is being able to write. And I get really into it. It's most fun I could ever have. And yesterday I sat down and it was just like one of the most fun stories I'd written in a long time. And I started at maybe nine, maybe eight or something. And I looked up and it was like five. And I was like, I don't think I've eaten. I don't even know if I've had any water. Like, what just happened. Right. And so I think there is something to that.
- [37:40]
A
Okay. So I could imagine people listening to this, thinking, all right, well, I have trouble with moderation in various aspects of my life, various areas of my life, but it doesn't seem so easy to get a new pigeon cage. I mean, that's a big move. I'm rethinking everything about my life. Is there something a little bit more tactical and easier to plug in that. That. That might be maybe, maybe less holistic but somewhat effective approach?
- [38:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think if you identify a behavior that is holding you back, and I do think that a lot of times nixing your worst habits is a lot more powerful than adding good new habits. Right. Bad habits are like a foot on the brake. And so it doesn't matter how much gas you're given the good new ones, you're still not going to go anywhere. I think if you can identify what your bad habits are, when I think about it in the lens of the scarcity loop, and I do think a lot of bad behaviors fall into that. Now, if you can see, okay, do these fall into the loop that I mentioned with the three parts? And then you can start to change. Any of the three parts of the loop will usually reduce the frequency of the behavior in question. So if you can change the opportunity to do the behavior, that'll. That'll usually reduce its frequency. So, for example, like with food, it's like if you got an Oreo eating problem, guess what probably shouldn't be in your house? Oreos. Right. You're just taking away the opportunity. Also, I think one of the most powerful ones is reducing the speed at which you can do a behavior. So I'll give you a good example for slot machines and then apply it over to phones. So with slot machines, they used to have those big clunky handles, right. When casinos moved over to buttons that said spin, it increased how fast people could play games. And people went from playing 400 games an hour to 900 games an hour. So the faster you can repeat a behavior, the more likely you are to repeat it. This is why social media has infinite scroll. And so if you can put pause in there, I think that helps a lot. There's some apps that help people do this. There's one I like called Clear Space. And it basically just when you go to open the app that you mindlessly open all the time, whatever it is, right? And then it shows you a nice motivating quote and then it asks you, how long do you want to spend in this thing? And you can pick 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is. But then you have to get intentional, right? And just that simple act of the pause usually will just. You realize, I don't even know why I opened this thing in the first place. And you can apply that to all sorts of different behaviors like that. Like shopping, for example, is a big one. People buying stuff online because it's so much easier to buy stuff now that you can do it with one click. Putting up rules like, you know what? I'm only going to buy things in person. And if I can't get the item in person, I'm going to put it in my online cart and I'm going to wait 72 hours. And usually after 72 hours, you either forgot it was in your cart or you decided you didn't want it. And if you did want it, great, because now you're at least it's not this like compulsive, quick ability to run through the system and buy the item. There's all sorts, I mean, all these different behaviors. You can just play with those three parts. And I have a lot on. I have a website called 2%, which is@TW pct.com that has kind of a guide that gives people a bunch of examples. And the book has a bunch of examples too.
- [41:12]
A
So the basic formula is understand the scarcity loop, how it hooks us, and then understand how you can unhook using that same loop.
- [41:21]
B
Correct? Yep.
- [41:23]
A
Is there an area of your life that has changed in this regard since writing the book?
- [41:29]
B
There's a lot of stuff I used to do more of that I'm more conscious of doing it, I think. I think one of the big things for me is once I understood this scarcity loop, you start to go, oh, that's it. So the, the big picture of, like I mentioned before, that psychologist and how I asked him, why do people fall into it in the first place? It evolved to help us find food. So if you think of hunter gatherers in the past, you know it's a million years ago and you need to find food or else you're going to starve. Right. I mentioned we had three jobs and one of them was to find food. You would go to one place looking for food, maybe you didn't find it, right? You go to the next place, you didn't find it, nothing. So you go to the next place. Ding, ding, ding, jackpot. You just found the food. Yay, you survive, right? That's the exact same architecture of a slot machine. In the scarcity loop, you got an opportunity to find food. You don't know where it is, so you're going to have to repeat the searching behavior over and over and over and over. So it's almost like if our brains weren't naturally compelled to fall into this behavior loop, we wouldn't have survived, we wouldn't have been persistent in searching for food and lived on. And now it just gets applied in a lot of different strange ways. So in, in my life, just knowing that, that's why I do a lot of the dumb stuff I do, like scrolling Twitter way too much at night, or scrolling Instagram or news apps, you know, buying dumb stuff I don't need. It's helped me put up some basic rails that make me more able to use my time better and my attention better and just make better decisions overall.
- [43:15]
A
So the way I'm thinking about this, and this is just me computing what you're talking about here, I'm thinking about like sort of tactical changes we can make in our life that are us wisely and strategically deploying the scarcity loop to our own benefit. And then there's the, what I'm thinking of as the bigger pigeon cage part of it, which is really rethinking your whole life so that moderation just becomes easier because you're getting stimulation and meaning in other areas. I'm curious on that latter part. The pigeon cage. Once you learned about that study, have you, you know, done some re engineering of your life writ large?
- [44:02]
B
More time outside, more face to face in person time with people that I care about, making sure I get enough physical activity. I think that, you know, humans evolved to get a certain amount of physical activity and it's a pretty high level compared to what we get today. And I do think that that just tends to make me feel better, more calm, more at ease. I don't feel as wired to like, you know, I'm just not as wired and crazy. Despite your, despite the observations, you're probably moving right now.
- [44:35]
A
Not true.
- [44:36]
B
And so I do think it is. Like, how can I mimic a lot of the things that have always made humans happy and healthy, right? Eat natural food, probably go for a walk every day if it's outside it's even better. Maybe go on a trail sometime, right? Oh, and by the way, if you bring people that you love and you love to spend time with, man, that's even better, right? I mean, it's. It's rather basic stuff that keeps people happy and healthy, but we've sort of engineered our world in a way that. That becomes challenging unless you actively seek that out.
- [45:11]
A
That makes a ton of sense and actually is. I. I find it quite helpful because it doesn't. It's not the way you describe it. It's not super intimidating. In your book, you also spend some time taking a look at St. Benedict. Can you talk about who that historical figure is and why it's so important in terms of this discussion we're having?
- [45:32]
B
Yeah. So like I said, it's like the bigger picture of the book. It's set up in a way where I kind of introduce this scarcity loop by going into the Las Vegas lab, and then I look at, you know, what are these things that humans are built to crave and how does this impact us now? You know, what was it like in the past? Why. Why we crave it, and then what's it like now where we have an abundance of it, and how has that affected us now? One of the things that I think we all want as well, this is the last chapter of the book where I kind of try and land the plane on the whole thing, is happiness. So there's a lot of thinkers who argue everything that we do is just a pursuit of happiness, really. And today we kind of live in a world where there's a lot of different advice and all these things that we should be doing to be happy, to increase our happiness. And I came upon this really interesting research about Benedictine monks. So they're from the lineage of St. Benedict, who was. He was a kid in Rome, basically, and he decided he didn't like how the Romans were living. And so he goes out into a. You know, he's much like a Buddhist monk. He goes out into the cave for three years or something like that and sort of comes to enlightenment about what makes people happy. And he starts founding all these monasteries where monks could live together and work together and pray together and blah, blah, blah, all these things, right? And I had come upon this research that found Benedictine monks are significantly happier than the general public. Now, to understand why that's surprising, you're like, oh, yeah, they're monks. All monks are happy. It's like, look, these monks, they don't exactly live the high life. So Benedictine Monks, they have to work at least four hours of manual labor a day. They live mostly in silence with only brief periods where they can talk. They're told to not eat that much. They can't get married. They don't see that much of the outside world because they can't necessarily talk to each other. They're not super social. So they're doing all these things. Long way of saying. And by the way, they can't buy all the stuff that we do, right? They can't eat all the food, all these different things. They're doing all these things that we would look at and go, wow, that sounds like the most depressing life ever. And yet here they are with higher than average happiness scores. And so I went and I actually lived at a Benedictine monastery for about a week. And I think my takeaway was that happiness is a very murky construction. And what ultimately I think helps people's happiness is doing things that are challenging, that have a bigger reward in the long run. I think getting out of ourselves and, you know, it's not a perfectly cut and dry path to the basket. And what makes one person happy may not make another person happy, and that's okay.
- [48:28]
A
So your pigeon cage has to expand in ways that are meaningful to you, specifically based on your conditioning and your wiring.
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that you see some. Some very general themes. For example, let's take as an example, physical activity, like, just has to be something that kind of makes you sweat, that moves your body, so you burn off steam, so all your. So your health stays in order. But, you know, for these monks, it's where, you know, they do a lot of farming. So for them, it's farming, but for, you know, a listener, it could be rock climbing with friends, or it could be mountain biking, or it could be walking the streets of New York City, whatever it might be. But it's just that sort of overarching umbrella is just, you know, do something physical, spend time with other people, et cetera, et cetera.
- [49:20]
A
Coming up, we're going to switch gears a little bit. Michael's going to talk about his first book, which was called the Comfort Crisis. We're going to talk about how to lean into boredom and discomfort and the importance of really getting comfortable with the shit we don't like. We all know that building new habits requires a strong foundation that starts from the brain and goes all the way down to your toes. That's why I love ultra running, because they actually have reliable, intentionally designed shoes that make every step feel supported. It's not just for hiking or crazy long distance runs, even though they work great for that too. The Ultra Fit is designed to let your toes spread out naturally, which provides comfort, balance and strength wherever you are. When you're not bothered by cramped feet, you can get back to what matters, like building new healthy routines. Free your mind and your feet with Ultra Running and the Ultra Fit Experience. Check them out now by visiting ultrarunning.com I wear them very comfortable and I work out a lot and they really hold up. I love the fact that there's more room for my toes, so go check them out. That's a l t r-running.com ultrarunning.com and remember, stay out there. Cold mornings Holiday Plans this is when I just want my wardrobe to be simple. Stuff that looks shiny, sharp, feels good, and stuff I'll actually wear. For me, that is Quint's. Quint's pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple but smart and Easy with Quint's $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury. I've got, I think four of those sweaters, by the way. Also wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable denim nails the fit and everyday comfort all at a fraction of of what you'd expect to pay. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quint's cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can give luxury quality pieces as gifts without the luxury price tag. Just to say, Quint's has offerings that extend well beyond clothing. They also have home goods, stuff for your bathroom and kitchen, stuff for travel. It's an expanding and exciting brand. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with quint. Go to quint.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That is Quincom happier free shipping and 365 day returns quints.com happier.
- [52:02]
B
Foreign.
- [52:07]
A
Let's talk about your first book, and I think the common thread really is you're going back and looking at how we evolved and how modern life is leading us astray in some key ways. And so the first book is called the Comfort Crisis. Can you describe the basic thesis?
- [52:26]
B
So the basic thesis of the Comfort Crisis is that as the world has gotten more and more comfortable over time, we have lost a lot of these sort of fundamental evolutionary discomforts that keep us happy and keep us healthy. So for example, the average person at least in developed countries, we sort of live at the same temperature every day. We rarely experience hunger. We are far less physically active than we were in the past. We spend 95% of our time indoors. We don't necessarily encounter the life cycle. There's all these different things that humans in the past used to encounter and that we are sort of woven into our DNA that are not necessarily comfortable, but that kept us well. And as our world gets comfortable, we lose those. And that's not always a good thing.
- [53:26]
A
I've heard it argued right here on this show by experts in anxiety that an intolerance for discomfort is one of, if not the major contributors to our unprecedented anxiety epidemic right now. Would you agree with that?
- [53:46]
B
Yes, I would agree with that. I would also say it's a contributor to many problems that are at epidemic proportions right now. For example, if you just think of mental health and anxiety, I mean, I also think the fact that we don't spend hardly any time in nature anymore, so 95% of our time is indoors. And we know, I mean, there's this massive body of literature that basically shows time in nature is good for mental health, really good. And even just a dose as short as a 10 minute walk can be great for reducing stress and all these different things. And we don't necessarily get it because the outdoors is, it's cold, it's not always perfect weather. We can't know what to expect. Right. Look, all the problems that I talk about in my book, let me just kind of back up. They're all good problems to have in the grand scheme of time and space. I would rather have a problem with eating too much than not knowing where my food was coming from. But that doesn't mean it's still not a problem. And so when you think of the percent of Americans who are obese, that is one of the main drivers of our very high rates of heart disease and certain cancers and diabetes. I mean, heart disease and diabetes, they weren't really a problem. They didn't even show up in medical textbooks until about 1900. And it's simply because we've engineered so much food into our lives and we are driven to eat for reasons I talked about earlier. If you even think about our tolerance for boredom, when we get bored now, we have an easy, effortless escape from that. And that's in the form of our cell phones or our televisions or our radios, our iPads, our video games, our insert, all these other different things. So the average person now spends 12 to 13 hours a day engaged with Digital media, all that is brand new boredom is this discomfort that basically says, hey, go do something else. Because the return on your time invested with what you're doing now, it's wearing thin. Go do something else. And you used, you would sit with it and you used to go, what am I going to do? And you come up with something. It could be anything. And now it's just kind of this immediate, like pulling out the phone. And you know, I wish it was people would pull out the phone and read classics on the Kindle app or whatever it might be, or write the next great American novel in the Notes app. But unfortunately a lot of it is wasted and frankly, kind of dumb stuff. I mean, I could go on. I mean, I just think there's so many ways that the avoidance of discomfort has changed us deeply in a world where things are much more comfortable compared to the past.
- [56:32]
A
I remember getting my first iPhone. I think about probably 2008. I think could be wrong about that. But that's my memory and using it at an airport, I was just waiting for a flight and I remember thinking, I will never be bored again. And at the moment I thought it was a good thing. And over time I've changed my mind. I mean, I still love my iPhone, but I think it's very possible and very common to misuse it. Okay, so this leads to the natural question. If we agree with your thesis that we have a comfort crisis, that we have engineered a world for ourselves where things are too easy in some counter evolutionary ways, what do we do about it?
- [57:18]
B
That's a good problem to have, right? But we have the opportunity if we decide that we are going to be okay with doing hard things. People can do hard things and in fact by doing hard things, your life actually gets better. So I think today that the world is generally set up that we can choose short term comfort, but that is at the expense of long term growth, of health, of happiness. And so the solution to that is to simply embrace short term discomfort and get a long term benefit. I'm going to give you one of my favorite stats to help people understand this. So 2%. That is the percentage of people who take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. So this tells me a couple things. The first is that it really shows that humans are wired to do the next most comfortable, easiest thing, even when it's against our long term interest. Because the second point is that 100% of people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for their health in the long term. But only 2% of people do it. Right. Because we have that wiring that just automatically chooses the easy path. And so I think if you can take that mentality of thinking, okay, I'm going to be a 2 percenter, a person who takes the stairs. And where else in my life can I apply that to to get an easy win? Because that is not throwing your day off the rails. Right. I'm not telling anyone to go run an ultramarathon or go on some crazy diet or xyz. I'm literally saying, hey, the escalator's on the right, stairs are right there on the left. Why don't you try going up those stairs? Right. You're going to get there in the same amount of time. Yeah, it'll be a little bit more uncomfortable. But if you repeat that over time, like, the benefits just add up. And where else in my life can I apply it to? Right? Can I apply it to how I eat? Can I apply it to how much time I spend outdoors? Can I apply it to even conversations I have with loved ones? Because a lot of times people will just let things sit and boil for years because I don't want to have a little bit of a tough conversation. Right. And I think that the benefits really can stack up over time.
- [59:33]
A
How have you seen this play out in your own life?
- [59:35]
B
I will never take an escalator in my life, Dan. No, you know, it's funny because my background is for years I worked at Men's Health magazine. And so it really was about like these grand, you know, the magazine's front. Everyone knows it's like, you know, six pack abs in 60 days and here's some crazy workout. And I think when you really look at what benefits humans most, it's like, how can we insert these little hardships throughout the day that amount to some grand changes? So a good example is a study from the Mayo Clinic that found that people who simply move more throughout the day, not exercise, just like move more throughout the day. They're like, oh, I'm going to park in the farthest spot away. I'm going to take the stairs. Oh, I got a phone call for work. You know what? I'm going to take this call. While pacing and not sitting, they burn an extra 800 calories across the day. I mean, that's an eight mile run. And I think that lesson sort of applies to so many different areas of life. And so I really try and I try and do all those things. I take the stairs. If I have a general work Call. I'll try and do it while on a walk. Yeah. I try and resist the pull of my device and lean into boredom. I try and spend as much time as I can outside, try and get outside every day.
- [60:52]
A
So what does leaning into boredom look like for you?
- [60:55]
B
Yeah, for me that is being able to. When the feeling of boredom comes on, which everyone knows it. Right. It's like your brain kind of starts to. You just feel like. And you're looking for something to escape. It's kind of sitting with that. Not automatically choosing the easy thing which is the phone, which that's going to be the hyper stimulating thing. But if I can use it as a time for ideas to just let my mind kind of wander as much as much as on this podcast. Mind wandering all the time is sometimes frowned upon. I will say it's good for ideas.
- [61:32]
A
Yeah.
- [61:33]
B
So using it for that and even I mean something as simple as taking a walk without your electronic devices I think can be a great way to sort of just let your mind go places. There's some really interesting research too about how our brains sort of work slightly differently, especially when it comes to creativity, when you're outside and moving across the landscape instead of sitting indoors.
- [61:56]
A
Just to be clear, I'm. I have nothing against mind wandering. I think in meditation it's gotten a bad rap because you are in meditation trying to focus on something. Generally speaking, focus on whatever's happening right now and then mind wandering is going to happen. I mean for the vast majority of us it's going to happen and to vilify it, to make it bad actually just going to make it worse. It's about seeing it, being cool with it, blowing it a kiss and then gently escorting your attention back to whatever, whatever you're trying to focus on. So I just don't want anybody listening to feel like I'm anti mind wandering because that would be basically being against the human condition. Yeah. Anyway, having said that, I, I get it that you take the stairs now and that's a metaphor by, you know, just trying to find little ways throughout the day to, to embrace some discomfort, including boredom. Are there bigger moves you've made in terms of the structure of your life or your willingness to have hard conversations etc, etc that that you now are more, you know, embracing of.
- [63:03]
B
Yeah, I think being willing to have hard conversations is one and self introspection as much as, you know, people aren't as good at that as they. They probably think. At least I'm not. I think it is a worthy effort. I also I try and spend at least some stint outdoors every year. At least three days. There's this interesting concept I write about in the comfort crisis called the three day effect. And it basically finds that after a person spends at least three days in sort of back country nature, just kind of totally off the grid without a cell phone, they really calm down. They almost get into a sort of meditative state as described by researchers at the University of Utah. And so this three day effect, it's almost like you need to be out in the wild for at least three days for this to happen. So day one, you're usually worried about what you left behind at home. Day two, you're still kind of worried about bears. And then by day three, you're kind of this, like, I feel much better. Your thoughts are very different. You're much calmer, more collected. And as part of the comfort crisis, so people have context. I spent more than a month in the Arctic on this expedition, so I had a lot of time outside. And I can tell you that what was fascinating is we're in a pretty dangerous part of the world, right? Like you have to get flown out in this tiny plane that's like the size of a pack of gum and dropped off in the middle of nowhere. And there's grizzly bears and crazy weather and all this stuff. And despite all those stressors, I mean, it was the most calm and collected I've ever felt in my life. After, you know, four or five, just my thoughts were like so much more clear and centered on what was important to me. And even creatively, I look back at some of those notebooks and I'm like, man, you need to spend more time deep in the wilderness for stints because like, this is just more interesting. It's different and more interesting than you usually come up with at home. So I think trying to mimic that has been useful for me as well, with at least, you know, at least three days, usually longer every year.
- [65:14]
A
I've mentioned this before, but every year I do at least one sometimes more long meditation retreat. I've got one coming up. It's 10 days and a ton of that time is spent outdoors. You know, I'm living in a cabin, so I'm not outdoors the whole time, but I'm in a rural place and I'm out a ton during the day. You're doing walking meditation. And I think the combination of that dosage of nature plus of course the dosage of meditation, I am overwhelmed with ideas. Now sometimes I come back and I look at my notebooks and it's like the Unabomber scrawlings, but a lot of it. A lot of the best. Many of the best ideas I've ever had come on retreat. And you're not supposed to be, like, working and writing or anything like that. But, you know, I just. I try to, at a couple points in the day, just write a bunch of stuff down and get it out of my head. And those ideas are often the highest quality ideas I ever generate.
- [66:16]
B
Yeah, I'm not surprised at all. I mean, there is. There's research supporting the fact that people come up with better ideas after periods where they're bored, after periods where they're disconnected. And I think you see a ton of anecdotes about it throughout history. So a lot of great thinkers would, you know, spend time alone, spend time removed in order to come up with ideas. I mean, even silence. The crazy thing about my time in the Arctic is, you know, before you do a book, you got to do a proposal. There's a lot of things that I can expect I'm going to face while I'm up in the Arctic for a month. A lot of these discomforts I'm covering. Right. I know I'm going to be more physically active. I assume I'm going to be more hungry because you can only pack in so much food for a month, and so your calories are limited. You're moving around, around. I know it's going to be cold, et cetera. But what wasn't in the proposal and what I didn't expect is just how silent it was up there. So, I mean, at first it totally creeped me out. It's totally uncomfortable. But then you kind of get used to it. And I especially remember this one morning I go out and, like, the sun is coming up, and it's just so silent that I'm standing there, and I can hear my heartbeat, like, loud, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Can even hear, like, a whooshing, like a sh. Sh. Which is blood running into your brain. I mean, that is how quiet it is up there. And then at some point, I just hear this. And I'm like, thinking, there's some military testing exercise going on, and we got an Apache helicopter, you know, and I'm spinning around, and it's a raven. And it's just that it's so quiet. And it was the raven's wings just moving the wind. And it was just. It was unbelievable. And that sent me down this rabbit hole of going, okay, like, why was it so quiet up There. And I think that most of the world was quiet like that for most of time. So humans have increased the world's loudness, I think by fourfold. And there's a significant number of people today that live at, I think it's 75 decibels, which is basically like standing next to a working washing machine. Like it's so loud in the modern world that we live in and we don't really realize that it, that it kind of drags us down. So after spending time in silence, people generally report being much less stressed. They have better focus. There's some interesting studies in office settings where they put people in the group work, the open office concept, and then like a silent office, and the workers in the silent office always create more and better work. And then they ask both of them after, like, how do you think your work was? And they're both like, oh, it was great. So it's like we don't even realize, like this group that thought their work was great, it actually wasn't. We don't even realize how loudness that we live in affects us. It even affects health to a certain extent. Like living in too much noise can affect cardiovascular health too, just simply because it's a constant stressor.
- [69:23]
A
I think what we're both saying here, but correct me if I'm wrong, is that getting more comfortable with discomfort is important. And you don't have to spend a month in the Arctic. You don't have to go on a 10 day silent meditation retreat. It's a back to your 2% model. Become the type of person who's willing in small ways throughout the day that scale up to potentially big changes to embrace a certain amount of discomfort because it will improve your health and also gird you, protect you against anxiety.
- [69:57]
B
Yeah. Protect people against anxiety and protect you against all sorts of different health problems. Heart disease, certain cancers, on and on and on. Yeah. And I do think too, you know what happens when you kind of get next to an edge of something that feels uncomfortable? The edge usually starts to expand. Right. So it's like you got your comfort zone and let's say it's the size of a quarter. Well, you walk out to the edge of that quarter, it doesn't just stay that big, it starts to kind of get away from you. Right. It's like chasing a magnet with another magnet, just keeps moving. And so I think that you start to find that as you take that mindset, things become easier. So you try something else, it's a little more, more uncomfortable. Right. And then you get better at that and then that's easier. And then over time, you find yourself you've made these giant changes without it feeling like a stint in the Arctic for a month or a 10 day.
- [70:53]
A
Meditation retreat, although both of those can be great. Are there people out there purveying this message of embracing discomfort in ways that of which you approve? Like, I'm thinking about popular YouTubers like yes, theory or Challenge Accepted or the podcast, we can do hard things. Are there people in the culture who are spreading this message in ways that you like?
- [71:20]
B
I don't know any of those YouTube channels, unfortunately, but if you give them your seal of approval, I assume I probably would too. We seem to think alike. I do. Like, there's a guy, his name is John Deloney, who has a podcast who I think that he takes a good message around mental health and anxiety. He's a, he's a buddy of mine and he's fun because he kind of, you know, he talks about mental health, but when you look at him, you're like, you look like you just, you like you're a roadie for Metallica or something, you know, which I just love, love that about him. Rich Roll came up. I mean, I think that's a lot of his message too, in a way, with the guests that he has on. He's doing a great job. And yeah, the, the We Can Do Hard Things podcast I've heard great things about. I do get a little bit afraid when I hear the, you know, the people who are shouting at others to do hard things and, you know, go to this Navy SEAL camp they created and I'm going to yell at you as you roll in. The surf type thing, I don't, I don't know if that's super sustainable or exactly what we're after. The sort of nuanced view of why are we doing this in the first place. I think you need to explain, you know, it's okay that you don't want to do the hard thing, because that never made sense for humans for all of time. Doing the next easy thing and avoiding discomfort kept us alive. And now it just doesn't necessarily work like that now that the world is easier. So I think kind of the softer 2% approach tends to work for more people more of the time.
- [72:50]
A
Yeah. So it sounds like you want to avoid shame, shaming people for not wanting to do the hard thing because that is how we're wired. You should not feel shame about it. And I suspect you also want to avoid overwhelming people. It's about marginal increases in your comfort zone over time. Carefully titrating that.
- [73:08]
B
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that it's taking the 2% mindset day in and day out, and then, you know, I don't think it's bad to occasionally really try something big that might change you. Like, for me, it was my arctic. For you, it was your, you know, it's your meditation retreats. I think, you know, once a year, some big epic challenge can really be great for psychic change. You kind of see that embedded in a lot of the ideas and rites of passage, right when we wanted to get a person from point A to point B to improve kind of what they realized they were capable of, we would usually kind of send them out into nature to do something really challenging for a little bit. And they would have, they would struggle, it'd be really hard, and they would think they couldn't do it and they would think they had to quit, but they would do it and they would get through it. And that realization that, oh, I went in here thinking one thing about myself and I had to do this other thing that was beyond my capability and I didn't think I could do it, but I did it. That changes people's psyche in a way, and you walk out with a different version of who you are and it changes your behavior forever after. I mean, that's in like all our ancient myths, it's in. That's a very human story.
- [74:24]
A
It's a great place to leave it. Let me ask you two questions I ask at the end of pretty much every show, which is, was there something you're hoping to talk about that we didn't get to.
- [74:35]
B
I don't think so. I think we covered a nice amount of ground. I babbled on about slot machines, which is always something I Enjoy. Talked about 2% idea, the benefits of discomfort. And actually, one thing I just want to say is that from all my work and looking at a range of research and speaking to experts and talking with a lot of real people is that I think that people are just way more capable than we often think. I think humans evolved to be under confident, yet over capable. And we only realize that we are capable if we're willing to take that hard step and just put our foot forward and realize that, like the ground's going to appear under you, you're going to figure it out, but you got it, you got to take the step. And I just, I mean, a lot of people have similar messages, but I've just seen, I've just received incredible emails from people where you're just like, oh my God. Like, it's people can. People can do a ton. It's amazing.
- [75:36]
A
Agreed. Last question. Can you just remind everybody of the names of your books and your website just so that people who want more from you can get it? Yeah.
- [75:46]
B
So my two books are Scarcity Brain and the Comfort Crisis. And my website is EasterMichael.com I send out a newsletter three times a week that covers all sorts of different themes and health and wellness. It's actually called the 2% newsletter. 2% with Michael Easter. So you can kind of get a sense of what we cover there. It's got, yeah, mental health. Occasionally we even touch on meditation, nutrition, fitness, just lots of wellness stuff.
- [76:13]
A
Amazing. Michael, thank you very much.
- [76:16]
B
Yeah, thanks a lot. That was super fun. I appreciate you having me on.
- [76:19]
A
It's a pleasure. Thanks again to Michael Easter. Awesome to talk to him. Don't forget today's episode. Like all of our Monday Wednesday episodes, it comes with a custom guided meditation. This one's from our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf. It's all about how to stop resisting what's happening right now. It's a great meditation. You should go check it out over on danharris.com also, if you sign up@danharris.com you can come to our weekly meditation and Q and A sessions. We do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is Tuesday, December 2nd. It will be with me and with our December Teacher of the month, Jeff Warren, fan favorite. Looking forward to that. Finally. Thanks so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [77:25]
B
Sam.