Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is me.
To celebrate 800 episodes of Modern Wisdom, as is tradition, I broke down some of my favorite lessons, insights, and quotes from the last 100 episodes. Expect to learn why starting the day with an imagined productivity debt is making you miserable, why being competent can be more of a curse than a blessing, how to easily assess how good an idea is, why obesity is a bigger problem than starvation, what I learned from Winston Churchill's father, how to predict consequences
culture war news stories, why it's so important to communicate directly, and much more. Obviously, a big one. 800 episodes is so many. It's wild to think that I've done 800 episodes.
these sat in front of a microphone, whether in Newcastle or Vegas or Miami or Austin, Texas or Canada or wherever I've been. I really appreciate all of you. The support is wild. It's been a rough few months dealing with some internal stuff, dealing with some personal stuff, and all the way throughout my passion for the show hasn't slowed down, which I guess is a good sign. Nuclear war goes off and I'm still going to be trying to do podcasts, which is
which is good. But I really do appreciate all of you people that share and comment and send emails and support me even when I can't hear it. I really do appreciate it and it means an awful lot. So thank you. This episode is brought to you by...
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It is the 800th episode of Modern Wisdom. And as is tradition, I'm going to go through some of the best lessons that I've learned over the last 100 episodes. Some of it is stuff from my newsletter. Some of it's things that I've learned from guests on the show. And other bits are just random insights I've encountered in life. So yeah, let's get into it. The first one, productivity debt. I adore
adore this idea. So when Matthew Hussey came on the show, he has this quote from his book Love Life where he's talking about how he is a internal tyrant. He says,
Perhaps some people apply this earn-your-cookie mindset in ways that lead to healthy achievements. Not me. Mine is a mutation whereby joy and self-compassion are regularly outlawed by an internal tyrant who decides when I've been flogged enough for one day. Just when I'm about to collapse, a voice inside says, okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows we'll start again bright and early in the morning. And this insight...
Hurts my soul, largely because I see it in myself. And Oliver Berkman, who wrote 4,000 Weeks, has a name for this bottomless pit of self-imposed expected efficiency productivity debt.
He says that many people, by which he meant him, seem to feel as if they start each day off in the morning with a kind of productivity debt, which they must struggle to pay off throughout the day in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time the evening comes around. He said that few things felt more
basic to his experience of adulthood than this vague sense that he's falling behind and need to claw his way back up to some minimum standard of output. It's as if he needs to justify his existence by staying on top of things in order to stave off some ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon his head,
which is why he is such an enthusiastic proponent of keeping a done list, which starts empty first thing in the morning, and then you gradually fill it with whatever you accomplish throughout the day. And his argument is that each entry is a cheering reminder that you could have,
after all, spent the day doing nothing constructive, yet look at what you did instead. And if you're in a serious psychological rut, he says you can just lower the bar for what gets to count as an accomplishment. Nobody ever needed to know that you added brushed teeth or made coffee to your done list. But a done list isn't just a way to feel better about yourself.
you need to give up the impossible quest to pay off your productivity debt and instead start thinking about each day as an opportunity to move a small but meaningful set of items over to your done list. You'll find that you make better choices about what to focus on and because you'll actually make more progress on them by wasting less time and energy being distracted by the stress about all of the other stuff that you're unavoidably neglecting. So
paying off this imaginary productivity debt completely, in other words, working so hard and so efficiently that you no longer feel like you're falling behind, is literally impossible. It's not just grueling and unpleasant. And in the modern world of work, there is no limit to the number of emails that you might receive and the demands that your boss might make and the ambitions that you might have for your career, etc.
So there's no reason to believe that you'll ever get to the end of them. Meanwhile, modern media, especially social media, is a giant machine for exposing you to a bottomless news feed of far more suffering than St. Francis of Assisi himself was ever asked to care about. So whenever Oliver manages to remember that this is just the way things are,
that the cosmic debt that he seems to imagine that he has to pay off is in fact inherently impossible to pay off, he finds that he is far better able to relax in the midst of having too much to do as opposed to making relaxation dependent on first getting on top of it all, which he never will. And...
Crucially, he thinks he's better placed to actually do things, the productive and good citizen things that were the focus of all of this angst in the first place. Look, there they are on the done list. Not many of them, perhaps, at least by comparison to the immeasurable galaxy of things that need doing.
Still, there are generally quite a few more than zero items there by the time that 6 p.m. rolls around. And then I think he said at 6 p.m. he usually mixes a gin and tonic, but that tends to not get added to the list. Generally, this idea of productivity debt, I think, puts a name on a sensation that lots of us feel. This odd...
requirement to sort of whip ourselves into submission, this odd sense that we are falling behind. He has this great term, what is it he says earlier on? He talks about this vague sense that you are falling behind and it's just this sort of ambient thing. He needs to justify his existence by staying on top of things, this vague sense he's falling behind and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output.
And, you know, this is kind of, I guess, the dark side of being interested in productivity and deficiency that you set yourself this unbelievable bar and you're probably excited by lots of different things. You're probably good at lots of different things. So the options that you have in front of you are high and you hold yourself to high standards and you want to make an impact on the world and you want to maximize your brief sliver of time whilst you're existing in this world.
two eternities of darkness here you are this is your time i'm going to get the most out of it and what that ends up doing is this sort of permanent imbalance between the things you want to do and the things that you end up doing which actually means that even the things you do do have this odd sort of tarnished sense to them i certainly know this like unbelievably well myself but
doing a live show. And it's the third show that I've ever done. And it's London and it's sold out on a Saturday night at Leicester Square Theatre or wherever we were last year. And everything goes well. And it's still early on in my career. And yet, when I finish up, I'll look back and focus on those two little sections that I didn't quite get right and forget the
one hour and 58 minutes of pretty much perfect, exactly what I wanted and expected and hoped to get out of it, but I'll just focus on those other two things. And this sort of negativity bias that we have, plus this sense that we should always be doing more, always be working harder. You know, if you've ever gone through a period of really intense work,
And all that you think about is, God, I just wish I could have one weekend at home. I just don't want to be traveling again or I don't want to be working again. I don't have to get up on time. I just wish I could have one lie-in. And then after two lie-ins, you now think, I really need to get back on that grind. I'm feeling a little bit lazy. And you're like, hang on a second. You just said...
only 48 hours ago that you couldn't wait to get a little bit of a break. Uh, yeah, for the sort of type a go get to people. I think this is a, like just an ambient demon that sits on everybody's shoulder and Matthew's idea of this internal tyrant that's constantly whipping him, I think is, is pretty illuminating. So yeah, that's one of my favorites. Productivity debt is just so fundamental to how lots of people see the world.
All right, next one. The curse of competence. This is something I've been thinking about for a little while. You probably are pretty competent if you're listening to this podcast. You can do things and you're prepared to try new stuff. And when you try new stuff, you don't suck that much and you seem to probably make progress more quickly than most people. And this is the curse of competence because your options for
for life direction are less constrained by your abilities and more constrained by your choices. And this sounds like a blessing. Indeed,
Indeed, it probably is better than the alternative, but it's a unique category of problem which occurs while people tell you how fortunate you are to deal with it. So Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice talks about the process of buying jeans 60 years ago, and you go to the jeans store and there is one type.
One color, one cut. You find your waist size, you pay, and you walk out. Now, you may have wanted a slightly different style of jeans or length or color or whatever, but you had no choice other than what was given to you. So your total utility from the jeans may not be maximized, but your satisfaction with the decision is pretty high knowing that you got the best that you could given the circumstances.
And if you compare that to today and you go to the jean store and look around, do you want skinny or bootcut? Straight leg, cropped? Do you want ripped, blue, grey, acid wash with contrast stitching or without? The options are endless. And hooray, this means that you can finally select the exact pair of jeans that you were looking for.
But it also means that any suboptimal decision is entirely your fault. If you were unhappy with your genes in 1960, it's the fault of the crappy gene store. If you're unhappy with your genes in 2024, it's the fault of your research. Previously,
your experience was largely out of your hands and limited by the world. Today, it's only limited by your choices. And this is how a constraint of options makes the decision-making process easier. And the curse of competence plays into this as well. So if you're only good at one category of things, you sure might be unhappy that you can't do something else. And that indeed is a rubbish situation.
the constraint helps to narrow your choices down. On the other hand, if you're good at lots of things, there are many paths open to you, which is liberating, but can also cause you to be scared and confused and frozen in place. And we could call this a titanic problem, which is an issue everyone says you're in such a privileged position to deal with.
Adam Masriani says this is an extra special type of tragedy, a tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers, like being on the Titanic after the iceberg hits, water up to your chin, with everybody telling you that you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree, but you're also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment, and you're not sure why. Having lots of competencies.
that you could follow in your life is exciting, but it's also terrifying and paralyzing too. Plus you have the added challenge of feeling guilty for your seeming ungratefulness, even though the world is at your feet. So it's this very odd sort of concatenation of paralysis of analysis, lots of life choices, lots of different directions that you could go in with things. This sort of
shame and guilt around who am I to complain when there's ostensibly nothing wrong. I have all of these different options. Should I not feel grateful for this? And yet I can't help but feel like, I don't know, the decision-making, having to choose what it is that I'm going to do just feels exhausting to me and tiring. And I think that this is a challenge that people who are competent face. And it's
With the Titanic problem thing, it is exactly the sort of problem no one is ever going to give you sympathy for. Oh, poor talented person. Look at how many different directions you could go in life. You could go into sales or you could go into marketing or you could go into the family business or you could do whatever. Maybe you want to be a mom or a dad. Maybe you want to be a teacher. You'd be great. All of these different options in front of you. No one is going to ever give sympathy to the person who has too many choices. And yet the felt experience of that person is always going to be
Painful, a lot of the time. So constraining down your choices, picking the thing that you're going to do, periodizing it is a good solution. Instead of saying, I have all of these roads open in front of me and this one that I choose has to be the right one.
If you set yourself a maximizing decision criteria as opposed to a satisfying one, good enough or perfect, if you get to good enough and say, well, I'm going to do this, but it's probably a reversible decision. Maybe I can try X project for 90 days or a year or something like that. And if I don't like it, then I can pivot into something else. And here's the brilliant thing. If you are competent, there are other things that you can pivot out of. So I think changing from a...
maximizing lifelong commitment to a satisfying experimental commitment is probably a good reframe. Look, just give it a crack. Give the thing that you're thinking about a try and if it doesn't work, you can pivot out of it. But yeah, the curse of competence, something pretty important, I think. I learned this word as well, actually.
William Costello mentioned it to me when I sent him the Oliver Berkman episode a couple of weeks ago. And he said how sanguine he found Oliver. And I'd seen this word written down. I can pronounce it, but I had no idea what it meant. So sanguine means optimistic or positive, especially in apparently bad or difficult situations. He is sanguine about prospects for the global economy. The committee takes a more sanguine view.
in medieval science and medicine of or having the constitution associated with the predominance of blood among the bodily humors supposedly marked a ruddy complexion and an optimistic disposition. So like everybody that's florid or ruddy in the UK that gets accused of being gammon is actually just having an optimistic disposition. But yeah, sanguine, I really love that as a word and what it describes, I think,
is Oliver Berkman and Alain de Botton's approach. This sort of very self-effacing, things are difficult and I am flawed and life is hard and I probably suck quite a lot, but here is a hopeful view of how I can get past it, taking into account all of my flaws. And being sanguine, just that kind of
Joviality in the face of life's challenges is cool. And I'm finding myself gravitating more toward people who create content like that. I think it really sees the human condition in an interesting way. So just a little dictionary moment for you there.
All right, next one. This is The Power of Low Self-Esteem. In September 1893, Churchill was admitted on his third attempt to the Sandhurst Military College. He wrote to his father, I was so glad to be able to send you the good news on Thursday. His father, a former chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, wrote back a
a week later. You should be ashamed of your slovenly, happy-go-lucky, harum-scarum style of work. Never have I received really any good report from your conduct from any headmaster or tutor. Always behind, incessant complaints and a total want of application to your work. You have failed to get into the 60th Rifles, the finest regiment in the army. You have imposed on me some extra charge of £200 a year. Do not think that I'm going to take the trouble of writing you long letters and
After every failure you commit and undergo, I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days, you will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy, and futile existence. You will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes. Your mother sends her love.
Churchill was 19 when he sent that. And that story hurts to read. It hurts me to read because I don't know the inner texture of Churchill's mind, but I would bet that even after defeating Nazi Germany and winning World War II, he probably still didn't feel good enough. You know, V-Day, whenever it was, June 30th, 1945 or something, uh,
How long did that sense of validation and enoughness linger with Churchill having the greatest threat that had been faced for a very long time was just defeated? Two days?
less than a day maybe. How quickly did his mind get back to castigating himself with that voice, that internal tyrant that was his father? It sort of begs the question, what is the point of success if there is no satisfaction in the succeeding? Which is why you should be very aware of
of envying successful humans because the price that you would need to pay to be the people that you admire is often one that you wouldn't foot the bill for. And I spoke about this idea to Neil Strauss, the guy that wrote The Game, and he wrote Rick Rubin's book, and then he wrote The Truth. He's got like seven New York Times bestsellers, I think, and he's writing a new book. And he told me the title of this new book and said,
I came up with a rule off the back of his title, which is you can tell how good an idea is by how envious you are of not coming up with it yourself when you hear about it. And he told me the title of this book. And I was like, fuck, that's so good. Why didn't I think of that? And the title of his new book is The Power of Low Self-Esteem. And it's this same idea that I've been obsessed with for a long time, which is look at the very...
successful, very impressive people that you admire, that lots of people look up to, that we all hold in high esteem, and look at what the internal texture of their mind's like. Look at what the day-to-day existence for them feels like, and what does it mean? How driven to do amazing, great, fantastical things are they? And yet,
in reality, do you want to be that person? Like, do you want to pay the price that you need to, to be the people that you admire and the power of low self-esteem? Just what a
awesome title and you can tell how good an idea is by how envious you are of not having come up with it yourself. So yeah next one this is kind of cool I mean terrifying but also kind of cool. Obesity is now a greater threat to global health than hunger. A new Lancet study has found that more than one in eight people in the world are clinically obese. The number passed one billion for the first time
And it is now the leading form of malnutrition with the number of people considered underweight falling below 550 million. Being obese or underweight are both forms of malnutrition because in both cases, people are not getting the right nutrients and vitamins and the types of calories that they need.
in order to be healthy. And experts basically warned that children were paying the price for inaction on obesity by global leaders, with under-18s accounting for 159 million of those
who are obese so nearly twice as many people who are obese than are underweight and it is the leading form of malnutrition in the world and then i saw a study that showed people spend eight hours a day on screens on average and six and a half hours a day asleep on average so we are now more
More people are dealing with malnutrition due to obesity than due to being underweight. And people spend more time per day on their screens than they do asleep. And that is a terrifying insight about the state of modern health. All right, next one. This is cool. I like this one. So
Stop trading things that matter for ones that don't. This is from James Clear. If you already live a comfortable life, then choosing to make more money but live a worse daily life is a bad trade. And yet we talk ourselves into it all the time. We take promotions that pay more but swallow our free time. We already have a successful business but break ourselves trying to make it even more successful. Too much focus on wealth is not a good thing.
not enough focus on lifestyle. And this is kind of goes back to the hidden and observable metrics thing that me and George Mack talk about, whereby the more observable and quantifiable and socially rewarded a particular metric is, the more acclaim that it gives you, the more status that it affords, the more that you're going to lean into that. And, you know, quality of lifestyle, you know, like real life,
What is the day-to-day existence of you like? How happy are you? How much spare time do you have to do the things that you care about? That is very hard to flex and it's very hard to measure as well. But your bank account, it's pretty easy to measure or the value of your house or the number of bedrooms that it's got or
the growth of your company or your job title, all of these things, super easy games and too much focus on wealth, not enough focus on lifestyle is just a nice reframe. It reminds us what are you trying to accumulate this wealth for? Presumably to afford yourself the kind of lifestyle that you enjoy. If you've already achieved a kind of lifestyle where you are happy and you then worsen that in an attempt to make more money,
The bar stool is upside down. You're sacrificing the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get it. And then Oliver Berkman again says, just because you're at the top does not mean that you're enjoying life. The upper ranks of corporate life are dominated by insecure overachievers, people who are driven by a deep sense of inadequacy and are not having any fun, even though they've supposedly won this very competitive race. So again,
The people that you admire, the people at the top of the totem pole, do you really want that life? Are they having fun or are they dominated by insecure overachievers? These inadequate, the productivity debt riddled people, is that really who you want? And then I kind of tied this to, I molested a quote from...
Nassim Taleb, where he says there's two types of people in the world, those who don't know how to make money and those who don't know when to stop. And I changed this to the Matthew principle of self-improvement, which is there are two types of people in the world, those who don't know how to improve their lives and those who don't know when to stop. And people who can improve their lives will always struggle to be around people who can't.
Personal growth and self-improvement is liberating and it's fulfilling and it's exciting, but it is also a trap, I think, that...
convinces you that you're an unfinished article who doesn't need to start enjoying life yet. And you can defer happiness until you've reached a certain level of development. You say to yourself, I'll really start living when I finally mastered this new meditation technique or got to single digit body fat or hit six figures a year income or bought that new house or read a hundred books or grown my channel to a million subscribers or
whatever. And personal growthers like you have probably learned that a sacrifice-reward dynamic is useful. And it is useful in the micro.
but it's malignant in the macro. We teach ourselves that we need to do the tough things first so that we can enjoy the fun things later. And if that's go to the gym before watch some YouTube, I think that's fine. But if it's complete and arbitrary amount of life improving before actually feel like we can let ourselves enjoy life, it's not fine. And the
perennially difficult balance of the personal growth is between being and becoming. It's between feeling enough and wanting to be better, between a desire for more and a satisfaction for what you already have. You want to leave it all out on the field of play, but you realize if you're constantly driven by desiring more, it's difficult to take time to enjoy the process of playing the game. And it's tough. I think
To be honest, this is the personal growth problem. It's the most common question that was asked at the live shows that I did last year and the Q&As.
how do I know if I'm working hard enough? I feel like I'm sacrificing the thing I want, which is happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it, which is success. I'm in this sort of lonely chapter thing and I'm grinding away and I have faith that this is going to be good for me in the long term. But I also don't want to look back in 20 years and realize that I basically just sacrificed my youth and my virility and all of the time that I had. And it's anxiety inducing. People don't like it. And it's tough. It is very, very tough to...
basically let go of that desire for more, for maximizing. But one solution that I quite like that I got from Sam Harris last year was to basically try and string together some moments of peace and gratitude wherever you can. So just 30 seconds, five times a day, really putting your mind where your feet are. So taking a deep breath in,
and allowing your mind to focus on the peripherals of your vision. And think about something that makes you happy. Think about how the things that you have now are only once things that you dreamed of having. Think about how insane it would be if you from five years ago could see this newly improved texture of your mind or quality of your life and clarity of your thoughts
And realize that all of the striving and pushing and grinding is indeed satisfying. But if you can't have fun now, you're never going to have fun. You have to start having fun now. You must begin enjoying life now.
right now because it is only ever going to be right now you cannot continue to push this thing down the road and the reason that i like that idea from sam i think originally called it a realistic path to enlightenment which are these moments of peace like mops um and the best way that i found to do that i'm so bad at this by the way which is why it's you know it's why i think about it a lot um
I have post-it notes around the house. So there's some next to the back door, there's some on the window in front of where my sort of computer sits.
And it just asks me little questions like, are you as present as you could be right now? What went well today? And each time that I see one of those post-it notes, I try to take between sort of 15 and 30 seconds to have, okay, mind is resting where feet are. And what I mean by that is I'm not distracted. I'm not ruminating about yesterday. I'm not thinking about tomorrow. I'm not concerned about what's going to come. I'm not...
fretting about what's happened. And I just think, okay, like, can I do just 15 seconds or 30 seconds? And when I look back on the day, those moments are
often appear in the top five things that's happened. Like really just taking a moment. So that's weird. That's like gratitude at the end of the day for being grateful during the day, which is very nice because that's a sort of self-reinforcing cycle. The more gratitude you do, the more easy it is to find and the more grateful you are for your gratitude. So yeah, maybe the post-it note or maybe you want to use reminders on your phone to sort of trigger you every few hours or something throughout the day. But
That seems to work for me. And this balance, the other thing as well to say is that this is a very hard thing to strike a balance of. So if you are someone that is trying to improve yourself, that has big dreams and big goals and all the rest of it,
accepting this is the cost of doing business. This isn't some personal curse that's been bestowed on you that you, I'm having to suffer with this thing. God, how feeble and malignant and broken am I? How uniquely cursed is my particular setup? No, this is how everybody feels. This is every single person that wants to do a lot, that wants to know that they should enjoy life, but also wants to leave it all out there on the field of play. This is just par for the course.
Hopefully that makes it seem a little bit easier to deal with. I'll tell you if I find out a proper solution. All right, next one. This is cool. And this one got retweeted by Elon. So it's got his seal of approval, whatever that means. The culture wars shiny object cycle. Number one, some woke news story hits the press like cats suffer from racial discrimination or screwing in light bulbs need to be recognized as a valid sexual kink or something. Number two,
the right-wing antibody response activates. Look at how insane these people are. Matt Walsh quote tweets the article and calls it obnoxious. This is the problem with our convenient, decadent TikTok society. Number three, this reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe scenario into a much bigger event. Number four,
The left-wing counter-response activates. Right-wingers lose their mind over one woman with a particularly dark cat. The Daily Wire has a meltdown over an insignificant troll article. In times when the original story is actually less insane, this can include a defense of the original article too. Cats actually can experience trauma. Minimizing this is the real problem.
Number five: the right-wing re-reaction kicks into gear. Apparently I'm insane for pushing back against cat trauma. See, this is the problem. If we don't stand our ground, these blue-haired idiots will take over the country. Number six: finally the touch-grass meta-reactionaries steam in. The real issue is people talking about this issue. Look at how silly this whole thing is. It's time to check out of the culture war. We should reconnect with what really matters. You should move on to the ranch next Ryan Holiday and hammer fence posts into the ground for the rest of time.
And this is something I noticed over and over and over again. This culture was shiny object cycle, this sort of six stage process. And it can go begin with the left signal boosting something from the right, and then it can happen in reverse. But the cycle is banal and it's excruciatingly repetitive. So I...
wondered why it sustains our attention if basically the discussion follows the same format every single time. And the reason I realized that my idea is that it's because each story is sprinkled with just enough novelty to give it the illusion that this is a new, different event, which legitimates the pushback. So you see this perfect example with the trans flag. So each year,
some new group gets added to the trans flag. And then that, even though it's basically the same, exactly the same culture wash on your object cycle, it's still going through the same six steps, but people will justify the criticism of it by saying, see, we haven't seen this trans flag with people who suffer from a gluten intolerance included in it before, or someone with a club foot or, you know, a person who's afraid of flying. And it's like,
the 20th season of Lost when they're back on the island for the seventh time and they need to escape. But this time it's winter and it just sprinkles sufficient novelty so that people are always, oh, well, you know, this does seem to be legitimate. I haven't quite seen this one before. And the shiny object cycle does my head in. It does my head in
largely because I get captured by it. And I see a bank rewriting a classic fairy tale into a boss bitch remake and calling it fairer tales, princesses doing it for themselves. And I think, this is fucking dumb. Where's Douglas Murray? I need him to decimate this idea with me. And it's cathartic. It makes you feel good to tear this sort of stupid idea down. Calling out insane insights written by idiots is so compelling and fun and easy to do that it's like,
being a cocaine addict with Pablo Escobar as a next door neighbor. There is an unlimited supply and the memes of production are just whirring at maximum RPM and we're all caught in the vortex. And it was Douglas actually who reminded me why I'm getting so exasperated with the cycle because it's a distraction.
It's a distraction from our attention being focused on things which are actually meaningful. And not just meaningful in a, you will remember this when you're dead way, but in a, there's other issues to talk about that are more important way. Like there's entire American cities with fentanyl epidemics and 80% of suicides of people aged 18 to 24 are men. Like I'm
I want to hear Jordan Peterson talk about dealing with finding meaning in a world stripped of all of its guardrails. And I want Nassim Taleb to be writing about applying complex maths to simple life problems. Many of the smartest people on the planet have had their attention captured arguing about whether men are men and women are women or not over the last few years, and even more of the less smart ones as well. And
All of our minds are held hostage by an endless cycle of shiny objects that aggravates both sides and it makes them feel righteous for standing their ground. And I think this is a bottomless pit. I don't think that it's going to stop. I will almost certainly bring up stories like this in the future, but I'm really going to try hard to focus more on stuff that matters in 50 years, not just in 50 minutes. And I think probably...
So should you. It's so funny because in the moment, all that you're doing is tearing down the stupid idea and it's hilarious and it's worthy of communication and it's easy for people to understand and it's got hypocrisy and it's got all the rest of it. And yet when you think about in retrospect, how does it make you feel? How did talking about this thing and
embroiling yourself, getting agitated, even just the mind share, what else could you have been thinking about? And it doesn't need to be stuff that you're going to recall at the end of your life because the bar is set so low. I can promise you that the particularly dark cat or the light bulb screwing in sexual kink is not going to appear there and it's not going to matter either. So
It's neither entertaining, nor reassuring, nor meaningful. It's like none of the things that you should care about. So yeah, that's Culture Wars shiny object cycle. Here's one thing though, that's kind of, I guess, interesting about it. When you see a format, a structure that things tend to move through, if you can call it out in advance, it makes sense.
whenever it happens again, it makes it seem so much more ridiculous because as you start to see this thing unfold, you realize, oh, this isn't novel. This is just the same playbook going through again and again. And I quite like, Rob Henderson had something called the Hendersonian news cycle, which every single time the same thing happens. And when you see it, you go, oh, like I'm
It's like seeing code instead of seeing matrix. You observe what's going on and it just falls into the existing format. So hopefully I've disabused you of at least some shiny objects. All right, next one. This is from Mark Manson and it's why he hates being around negative people.
Being an asshole is a weak person's idea of strength. Complaining is their connection. Never let yourself be held back by other people's fears. People criticize what they're afraid to do themselves because bold action reminds them of their own inaction. If you're afraid to be criticized, why do you care about the opinions of those who are too timid to do it themselves? If you are the criticizer, does tearing someone who has the courage you lack make you feel better?
And I love that. Like, you know, I've been railing against cynicism as hard as I can. One of the reasons that I really enjoy being out here in the US, the enthusiasm and the excitability probably can get tiring to some people, but as of yet, it hasn't got tiring to me. And I just like it. I prefer it to the UK. There was this article George sent me
who is it by not by the founder of spotify by the founder of monzo the bank it's like a internet bank thing but it's it's huge it's massive and the founder basically said that the british culture is antithetical to the american dream and i think it's so true i think that it is so cutting and skeptical and unsupportive of big dreams and people doing something different and it's you know this
2000 year old ossified very hierarchical in terms of social class like just stagnant culture and the other side of it is it's the sixth biggest economy in the world the UK is the sixth biggest economy in the world but it's not the UK.
It's London. London is the sixth biggest economy in the world. And what we have in the UK is a very poor country attached to a very rich city. And yeah, if you're in city of London or the right boroughs of London, maybe the quality of life and everything is great.
As soon as you get outside of that, there's this YouTube channel called Bold and Bankrupt that George sent, and it's so good. This dude has done everything. British guy, he's been smuggled across the border from Mexico into the US. He's paid the, what are they called, jackals or something, coyotes, the smuggler people, smugglers. He's paid them. He's been in war zones. He's been...
In Russia, he got taken into jail. And now his final boss of the scariest place in the world is to go and visit random northern British seaside towns. And it's just so sad. You know, you see these high streets that are full of boarded up windows and they're in disrepair. And fucking everything is Eclair's accessories. Everything. Every store has been turned into Eclair's accessories or a Subway or a Taco Bell or something. And...
that's if it's not burned down or boarded up. And it just shows, it really does show that you have rich city with a poor country attached to it. The wealth really of the UK is not distributed evenly. And I think that that is reflected and contributes to the way that people see the country. So anyway, enough sort of UK bashing. Not that it is, like I want, I would love for the UK to improve, but you know, I don't know.
tried to mine my way out from the inside and make changes and that was a failure. Anyway, next one. Don't wait. Life is happening right now and I've become...
pretty obsessed with the belief that life's duties will one day be out of the way, that you can then finally start doing the thing that you want and live your life fully. It's similar to that idea that when you've reached a particular level of personal development, you'll be able to. But this is even more ground floor than that. This is more applicable to more people because even if you're not doing personal growth, there is this sense that you're just going to delay gratification. And I think that the idea of
that one day life's duties will be out of the way and that you can finally start doing the thing you want and living your life fully is a myth. I think it's a lie. And Marie Louise von Franz talks about the provisional life. She says, "There is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being, one is doing this or that, but there is always the fantasy that sometime in future, the real thing
will come about. And it's similar to another idea from Gwendo Bogle called Deferred Happiness Syndrome. The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death. And it's strange because I regularly have this sort of sense of foreboding, kind of in guilt about time slipping away, that I'm not...
making enough of my days and especially when I look back on a week and I know I've done things and dedicated myself to pursuits and working hard, but I can't really fully recall how I actually spent my time. So I worry that this is just a one week microcosm of how I look back on my entire life. And as time goes
having passed, but me not really noticing it of existence occurring, but living, not actually having got going. And then I think, what's the answer? Like just go full hedonic Dan Bilzerian hyper playboy mode or, or cast off all worldly obligations and become a nomad traveling the world or commit fully to the hardest, most worthwhile pursuits that I can. And I don't know, frankly, but
I'm pretty sure that these right now are the golden years. I think that it's quite likely when you look back that these times right now will be the ones that you cherish. So you should approach them with joy and care and presence, the requisite joy and care and presence. And I think most importantly, ignoring the cynics and the buzzkills.
There's this idea from Paki McCormick and he says, "The greatest trick the devil ever played was making you believe that the pessimists are the good guys." Basically, just don't like, don't wait. Life is happening.
Right now, it is there for you to enjoy. It is there for you to take. Delayed gratification in the extreme just results in no gratification. The sacrifice reward dynamic that you are used to is great in the micro and awful in the macro. It's not about waiting for personal growth to be over. It's not about waiting for something. Life is not happening in future. It is happening right now. And this is something that I need to permanently remind myself of on a minute by minute basis.
Next one, shadow sentences. So imagine that you've been dating someone and they haven't seen you for a week and you ask what they're doing tonight and they tell you that they're hanging out with some of their friends. What you want to say is, I really would like to see you soon and it makes me worried when you spend time with your friends but not with me and that it's because you don't actually want to be with me.
But what you say instead is, oh, must be a very important night to see your friends again this week, is it? Glad that you've got so much spare time to catch up with them. Or you're out for dinner and your partner is on their phone a lot. And what you want to say is, hey, I'd love to speak and I know that you're busy, but it makes me feel really good when you focus on me during dinner. Can your phone stuff wait until later?
But what you actually say is that's a very important message to be taking at this time. It's going to be really urgent for you to be answering it over dinner. Or another way to think about this is in terms of literal language or implied language. So people speaking directly are literal speakers. People using shadow sentences are implied speakers. So let's say that a friend comes around to your house to catch up. They would like something to eat.
An implied speaker, using shadow sentences, would say, man, I should have eaten more today, hoping that you pick up on the queue and offer food. A literal speaker would say, hey man, sorry to ask, but...
I didn't have time to eat before I arrived. Have you got something that I can snack on and I'll get you next time. So shadow sentences are not stating what you want or need, but instead saying a thing that you hope will cause the other person to realize what you want or need and then getting upset if they don't. So you kind of gesture in the direction of the thing that you want without asking for it directly. And I think
It prevents you from having to be open and vulnerable when it feels like someone else has done something slightly wrong. It protects you from rejection by not actually asking for anything. It's the ultimate expression of, if you loved me, you'd know what was wrong. So...
Shadow sentences are essentially speaking in code hoping to be understood, and they cause un-vocalized, unmet expectations, which drive unnecessary tension and resentment in relationships. And there's that Neil Strauss quote of unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. And
The reason that shadow sentences are so toxic are because they reduce both parties' desire to communicate openly and honestly with vulnerability and feedback, which becomes a vicious cycle. Because if one person says something passive aggressive, it's so hard to be the person on the other side that decides to be vulnerable and open. It's why
I actually think the number one turnoff that anybody can do is being patronizing. If you're being patronizing, that is the biggest erection killer in history. It's just so, it hits, this may just be me, but it hits on all of the different negative, snide, indirect, exclusionary associations that nobody wants to be a part of. So yeah, I think that thankfully this sort of
Shadow sentence dynamic is actually quite easy to break by
one person just starting to speak openly and carefully because when that person does it, it gives the other person license to do the same thing. But the reverse is true too. If one person is speaking indirectly, passive-aggressively, that creates a dynamic where the other person starts to mirror the way that they behave. So if you're in a relationship that has a lot of shadow sentences in it or it has a lot of indirect communication, then
You need to take it upon yourself to break that cycle. It's like a generational trauma being passed down, but it's not. It's just sort of...
that durational trauma, temporal trauma that's being passed along historically from the back end of your relationship. But it is quite easy to change. And maybe you can even call it out. You could say, look, I've noticed that we're not really speaking that directly anymore. And sometimes I feel really bad because I say things passive aggressively and I hate when I'm like that. And I'm sure that
you know, it's not the best version of me and I want to be that person for you. And this can be a friend or a partner or a parent or fucking whoever. I really want to be more direct. And I think that if we both do that with care and attention, we need to be gentle and it's going to be tough. But if we did that, maybe our communication would be better. Maybe things would seem easier. And the goal really should just be to come out of the shadows. Say what you mean, mean what you say,
And I think that that would improve an awful lot of communication. This is basically every relationship I had, every couple relationship that I was in from like 18 until 30. It was this. It was just shadow sentences. It was indirect communication. It was a fear of being open and honest in case I was rejected or they did exactly the same thing. It was this sort of self-perpetuating, ever-increasing, escalating problem. And yeah, glad.
Glad that I'm at least slightly out the other side of that. Another thing that I realized, I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago in Miami with a friend about emotions and specifically jealousy, frustration, and anger. And
It's strange because those emotions hijack even the most cerebral, cognitively sophisticated person. It's highly annoying. You spend all of this time trying to be a rational, agentic beast, and then a thing happens that disrupts your emotional state and you turn into a petulant toddler. And my friend
explained that when he finds himself getting carried away by jealousy or frustration or anger, he asks a few questions. So the first one that he asks is, out of all of the emotions you could have chosen, why did you choose that one? You have this huge library of emotions to tap into. Why did that one get activated?
What is it about you, your desires, your assumptions about the world and your patterns that caused that emotion to rise to the surface so quickly? And it's not strictly true that you chose it. Your mind and body just delivered it to you and you reacted. But I love this language and framing for retaking agency over our emotions. Out of all of the emotions you could have chosen, why did you choose that one?
And second question he asks is, and how's that working out for you? What has been the outcome of that emotion arising? Has it made your life, relationships, quality of mind better or worse? And I love this language again.
because it creates distance between you and your feelings. Plus, it assumes that you chose it, giving you a sense of power. And then the third question that he asks himself is, do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?
Often when we feel emotions like jealousy or frustration and anger, it's because we feel like a boundary has been crossed. That's actually the reason that anger exists evolutionarily at all. Before you have laws, you need a sense of right and wrong internally so that if somebody crosses that, you can let them know with a sufficiently unhappy response to their transgression. And this is...
This crossing of boundary is exactly why these emotions arise. We feel like someone should have known that we would have felt this way if they did that thing and they didn't. So we need to get them to realize their transgression. And in our less gracious moments, we hope to achieve this through mistreatment or passive aggression or mean comments or distancing. And in our more gracious moments, it's done through a
calm and honest and open explanation of why something made us feel the way that it did without accusing the other person of doing it on purpose. I think it's best to assume the best of others. We
we assume that our friend or partner didn't mean to make us upset, that the impact that their actions had on our psyche was done through ignorance, not negligence or malice. And maybe their behavior does warrant the silent treatment. And maybe we are righteous in our indignation. Maybe they should have known better. You may even be in the right for reacting this way, but do you want to be right? Or do you want to be loved? Because
Your petulance in response to a situation you wish hadn't happened is unlikely to create more love. And if your partner or friend is incapable of hearing you gently and frankly explaining why you feel bad, then you have a good indicator that your interlocutor is a bigger problem than just their behavior. Increasingly, I'm starting to see kind of
Not shit tests, because shit tests make it seem like you are purposefully being awkward or doing something to test someone else's commitment to you in one form or another. Not that, but just that if it is a natural outgrowth of you, if it is you calmly, honestly, and openly telling something that you feel is the truth, saying it to a friend or a partner or a fucking Uber driver or whatever it is,
and that person has a problem with it, the problem isn't you. The problem is them. The only reason that the problem is you is if you say something which wasn't true. What someone is basically getting angry at if you say the truth in a sufficiently calm manner at the right time is your discomfort is making me uncomfortable. It's like, well, but my discomfort is the first mover here. Can we not treat that as opposed to you simply telling me how you feel because I'm upset?
And yeah, I think if we were all a bit more direct with our communication, we would end up with much better friendships, I think. I think that that would be a good...
a good way to move forward. And this is kind of similar to something else that was asked at that Miami weekend, which was, who is your best friend? So this guy was asked who his best friend was, and he said, I'm not sure. That's a bit of a strange question after age 12. So the question was asked differently, which was, who do you have the least amount of filter with when you're around them? And I think that is such a good reframe.
Who do you have the least amount of filter with when you're around them? And another good question is, who can you sit in silence with and not have to fill it? Even if there isn't a single person
that wins, these are the people that you should prioritize spending your time with because we all feel the compulsion to change ourselves to fit in. We adjust our behaviors and our words and our nature and everything in an attempt to be liked and validated and accepted. And the more people who make it feel safe for you to truly be yourself around them, the more confidence that you have to be that person every day. It's...
you become acclimatized to the conditions that you're in. The reason that you go to the gym and do progressive overload is to make what used to be heavy feel light. And this is kind of the same. If you want you to be you, you need to be around people that allow that you to come out. If you want you to be somebody else, if you want you to not
you. And this can be both positive and negative. You know, I'm saying that, you know, we compromise ourselves in order to fit in, but that can be done in a positive skew. Also, you know, if you're around a bunch of people that smoke and you don't want to smoke, you're going to be more likely to smoke. But from a more, you know, like existential social standpoint, which is what this is talking about, like who can you sit in silence with and not feel like you need to fill it? Who do you have the least amount of filter around when you're with them? Those questions just
superbly encourage this sort of frictionless version of you to flow out. And yeah, I think that that's a finding people that you can sit in silence with and you don't have filter around is just what a great heuristic for people that you should spend your time with. And this is a bit similar to a quote that Clay, my friend showed me from Timothy Leary. So I wasn't
I knew who Timothy Leary was, but I've never read any of his stuff, to be honest. But he sent me this, which is fucking fantastic. This is Find the Others. Admit it, you aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in,
the more you feel like an outsider, watching the normal people as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like have a nice day and weather's awful today, eh?
You yearn inside to say forbidden things like, "Tell me something that makes you cry" or "What do you think deja vu is for?" Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on a conversation with a stranger?
Everybody carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts, do the unexpected, find the others. I love that. I think that's so cool. And I think it really explains this odd asymmetry that we have between
our insight about our own mind and what we see of everybody else's minds in the words and the actions that they take. So you have a million to one, maybe a billion to one
level of resolution insight about you versus even the twin that you've lived with your entire life. Even your partner that you met when you were 16 is your best friend and you're going to be together until you die. There is no one that you can even begin to glimpse as deeply as you can glimpse yourself. And this causes us to believe that our own internal state is unique. It is so
idiosyncratic and odd and different that nobody else would be able to understand and that the things that we want to do are such huge outliers that we're going to be mocked or ostracized or it's going to be strange or it's going to shock people or it's going to be abusive and maybe we'll go to jail.
No, no. I think so many people, especially when it comes to finding the others, the people that want to have interesting conversations, that want to connect over deep things, that don't just want to do the small talk, that want to go on an adventure, you know, they want to say yes to new things. I think that so many more people want that than realize it. So many more people want that than you realize. They know it, but you don't. And the difference is
Most people want that kind of an experience, but few people are prepared to be the first mover. So just be the first mover. Be the person that pushes it across the line. And the world's not going to come crashing down on you if you say it to the wrong person. But for the most part, you can kind of tell, I think, like who the others are. You can usually tell. At least my strike rate with it is improving. What have we got left? Let's do...
Let's do one more, but this is four in one. This is something that I came up with ages ago about problems and stress in life. And one of the most embarrassing things about building up a body of work or spending any time really doing learning and personal development is encountering a problem
and realizing that you already found a solution to that problem and implemented it in your life previously, and that you've relapsed out the other side like a secret drug addict that's tumbled out of AA and back into using. You've found the solution for not using your phone at an evening time, and then you move house, and the charge is in a different place, and you forgot to do it this way. And before you know it, the same thing that you thought you'd defeated
six years ago has come back around and yeah, realizing that
you have already learned the answer to a problem that you're dealing with right now is a special, really special kind of embarrassment. But this is kind of a list of four things that I feel like I should have tattooed on the inside of my fucking eyelids. All right, here are some of the most important things I've realized about problems and stress. Number one, problems are a feature of life, not a bug. There will never come a time when
when you have no problems. What? Did you think that you would just wake up one day and you're going to cease having problems? Like completing a video game and leveling up to a map where there's nothing there. That is never going to happen. Your problems will change, sure. But having problems is going nowhere. Dealing with problems is the cost of doing business as a human. It's not a personal curse on you.
Number two, whatever negativity is consuming your thoughts probably won't matter in three months' time. In three months' time, you won't remember the corrosive texture of your mind or the boring, repetitive things that you thought or maybe even what you were worried about. But
all of that time that you spent worrying will have still passed. So you are sacrificing your joy and presence in the moment for a problem which you won't even be able to recall in the future. So immortality is literally the only life where such flippancy with the days that you're alive for is acceptable. Number three, learning comes from the edges.
Change is uncomfortable and it rarely happens without a lot of stress and many of the periods of radical and important change in your life happen because of the severe challenges that you faced. Would you pay the price back then for the insights and developments that you have now? If so, have faith that whatever stresses that you're facing right now will lead to a greater version of you in the future.
The challenge that you're facing is a gift. And leaning into the discomfort as if you invited it through the door, saying thank you for the opportunity to learn and reflect because it's making you better. Anti-fragility is alive and well every single time that we overcome these obstacles. Number four.
Stop taking things so seriously. No one is getting out of this game alive, literally. In three generations, no one will even remember your name. And if that doesn't give you liberation to just drop your fucking problems and find some joy, I don't know what will. Life is inherently ridiculous and guaranteed to end sooner or later.
So you might as well enjoy the ride. And I think that that series of insights, problems are a feature of life, not a bug. Whatever negativity is consuming your thoughts probably won't matter in three months time. Learning comes from the edges and stop taking things so seriously to me is reassuring. It makes me feel less pressure for getting things perfectly right. If
People aren't going to really remember any of the things that I do, and I'm not probably going to remember them either. What does it matter if it's perfect? What does it matter if I should just enjoy it? I should just have fun. The learning comes from the edges is so great because you think, well,
I want things to be smooth. I don't want to face these challenges. I don't want to be in this difficulty. I wish that I didn't have this problem. I wish that this stress wasn't here. You go, okay, looking back, did any of the development that you care about come from a period where you didn't have problems exactly the same as this, completely akin to whatever it is that you're going through? You go, well, you know, it was the most rapid change I actually had in my life. And in retrospect, I'm really, really glad for the way that I alchemized this problem into something that was beautiful. You go, okay,
So is there any of that energy that you can take from the past and bring to the present and say, I know that I'm going through it. I know that it sucks. And I know that trying to be pithy and reframing the present moment that is total ass into, oh, well, you know, in the future, I'll be great. Like, yes, that sucks. But just that tiny little bit of insight that this challenge that you're going through is a gift to your future self. It is something that in future you will look back on with so much pride and, and, and,
glory, this odd sort of very normal version of glory. You didn't win a battle. You didn't complete a war. You didn't conquer some new land, but you conquered a part of yourself. You conquered a challenge that may have ended you in one form or another. It may have buried you or buried somebody else, buried a past version of you that wouldn't have been able to deal with it.
And if your negativity that you're thinking about now doesn't matter in three months time, you can't recall it, why waste the moments that you've got this sort of precious life, this brief sliver of existence in between two eternities of nothing? And problems are a feature of life, not a bug. They are just going to continue coming. You're not going to have a purpose, perfectly smooth ocean where nothing gets in your way. And it would be boring if you did. And
despite the fact that you have these things in front of you and that the challenges may even increase in size, your capacity to deal with them is going to increase in kind and anti-fragility is alive and well. So yeah, I hope that that helps you if you're dealing with some stresses and problems. Anyway, that is an hour and...
15 minutes of some lessons that have been meaningful to me. And, uh, thank you. 800 episodes, six and a half years. Uh, it's crazy, uh, going through a lot of changes at the moment. Um, it's an interesting time, I guess, to be at the forefront of what's going on. Uh, definitely feeling the pressure, the increased scrutiny, all of that stuff. Um, but it's good. I'm
I think this is going to be, given that I've just spoken about problems and stresses and stuff like that, I think this is going to be one of those times that I look back on and go, I'm really, really glad that I got through that. That wasn't particularly easy, but well done for making it work. And I'm really looking forward to sort of the next evolution with all of these new learnings. But for now, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for tuning in, sharing, supporting the episodes. It really does mean so much. It's
incredibly flattering and charming and reassuring and it makes me it makes me happy so thank you for being here I'll see you next time