#143. Past Present Future
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I forgot what we talked about on the podcast. Well, I mean, we started the podcast just talking about the pace of change and trying to relate different eras. Reflecting on the past year. How great our bodies feel, how optimistic we are, and how we've never felt so youthful ever. Yeah, pretty much the exact opposite of all of that. Yeah, we talked about habit building.

You know what? I'll just make, I'll say one thing. No matter how dark things get, there has to be a refuge. Everyone has this tendency to have negative thoughts, right? And then you just have to have a button that you press to get out of it. And for me, it's exercise.

I go for a run and I reset myself. And so like, no matter what is going on in your life with work, family, whatever it is, you got to have a reset button when you need it.

No matter how bad things get, you can control your body. That should be the bottom line. You should never cross that threshold. It's like you don't ever go out on the street with your pants down. There's the bottom line. Wow. I think I saw you last week with your pants down. That was after midnight. Well, this was a New Year's episode, wasn't it? A New Year's, but we also look back on last year.

Yeah. On the negatives and positives we took away from some self-reflection, I guess, each of us. Yeah. So, without further ado, here we go. Eric, come on. Join in. Here we go. Let's try again. Without further ado, here we go. Yeah, do you remember back in the day when... I mean, I don't know if you were like this, but...

When Dave Chappelle's show first came out, when the Chappelle's show first came out, I looked forward to it coming out. Because it was once a week, right? And you would literally block out that time. We made it a thing. Yeah. You get your friends together. We'd sit in front of the TV. Yeah.

Watch it, you know, just like how people watch like big shows like Game of Thrones was at its peak. People made like events, like they had parties over it, right? Isn't that? Watch parties. Don't you feel sad that that's not a thing anymore? I mean, I'm sure people still do that. Do people do that though? Yeah, we just don't do that.

I don't know. Because things aren't... Shows now are basically... It's like a buffet. You eat all you can. You know what I mean? Whenever you want. It's not like a new episode comes out at Tuesday 8 p.m. Watch out for it. Again, when Game of Thrones was on, people were doing that. They were getting together for every episode. It was like a big thing. Yeah, I heard this term or read this term recently, like linear TV.

And there's just less and less linear TV, which is broadcast TV. But still, like Ted Lasso, that was released weekly. So I think the really big shows are still released weekly. But I think just based on how busy everyone is these days, people just watch it on their own cadence. Exactly. It's not as popular because everything's streaming. Yeah. Our lifestyles are not sort of built...

it used to be built around primetime TV. Like the whole thing, right? Yeah, like the news, like all this stuff when we were growing up, everything was built around that. But now the world is just moving at like light speed, right? The whole world has changed. We're working 24 hour, like, you know, across different time zones. And so now it's more like way more on demand than linear. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that's a good thing? No. 24 hour news cycle. I mean, we talked about this. No. I just thought about something. Have you guys heard of the term generation alpha? Yeah.

Mm-mm.

It's the current young generation. That's like our babies to 13-year-olds or 12-year-olds. Oh, so they've basically gone back to A? Yeah. They got to Z and then they're back to A. So our babies are… Generation Alpha. That's what they call them? I believe so, yeah. Generation Alpha. Really? I haven't read too much about it, but I remember seeing something about it. And one of the things that was interesting about Generation Alpha is that this is the first generation of all generations…

That only know about like the iPad, iPhone era. You know? They only know internet, iPhone. Wait, the last generation was also like that? The generation after us? No. No, no, no. No. How is that possible? See, here's my concept of generations is kind of

kind of blurry now because are we talking about generation instead of like where do you want generation our kids are the next generation right no no no no like um millennials yeah so we're talking different decades yeah people are born in yeah yeah yeah well it's not decorate i don't think it's by decades it's i don't know what the the measurement is uh i don't know if you know eric but so people who were born 2000 and after that's all they knew too mm-hmm

No. What do you mean? Smartphones, tablets, internet, all that stuff was around back then. No, because the smartphone didn't come out until like what, 2008? 6? When was the first iPhone come out? 2008 or something like that. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this is the first generation that only knows this. And will only know this. Yeah. So I don't know. It's just interesting because...

How is that going to affect them when they grow up? I mean, we already see the effects. We've talked about the effects of this technological world we live in now. But if you grow up from zero, from our kids living in this life, growing up to this life, not knowing anything else but this, I don't know.

I wonder if people were having this same conversation when like… 2007. When like the refrigerator was still like… 2007. When like the refrigerator was still first invented. People were like, you know, they will only know a life of refrigerated goods. Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. Right? If you can refrigerate your food. You can elongate the food. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge deal, right? I wonder if people were having that conversation then. Like, oh my God. Sitting around the table. How is this going to affect super…

next generations and how they think and act. - They're not going to appreciate fresh food. - But it's true, but we don't, right? Like waste is so common. Like people like just throw shit out, right?

You don't have to work as hard for your food. It's so easily available at the grocery stores in abundance. You don't have to like slaughter animals and like carve out meat and like figure out how to store it. All that work. You don't have to do it anymore. And that's completely changed the way we… I think we think about the idea of waste and consumption. Because life as we know it, us three sitting here at this table…

As we get older, it's just going to be even more of a relic, the way we used to live when we were younger. It's already a relic, right? But let's define what we used to. What is that? What is how we used to live? What is that? So without internet, is that what we're talking about? Sure. Like a slower lifestyle where you couldn't... Information wasn't just at your fingertips? Yeah. Everything had to be planned. The word...

was very important. Like you kept your word, whatever. We talked about this in the challenge episode. Yeah, we did. Like if you were to like meet someone at the mall at like 9 p.m. Yeah, you have to be there. Like you leave the house with no assurances that you're going to be able to meet that person at 9 p.m. if something happens, right? But everything was just on faith in your word and just this confidence that it will happen once you leave the house with no way of communicating with each other. So what do you think the impact of like going from no refrigeration to refrigeration was? Yeah.

And how would that rank for people who lived during that time among all of the major technological advances? What other technological advances do we think were around? When was the refrigerator invented? Like, I don't even know. Let's see. When was the refrigerator invented? Let's first guess. I would say the refrigeration came in the 1940s. Like modern refrigeration as we know it, right? Yeah, home refrigeration. Yeah.

40s? 30s. 50s? I'll say... 40, maybe 40s, because I think 50s when it started getting adopted into households, right? I'll say... 40s. Okay. Refrigerator. Don't go battling. Wikipedia. I just donated money to Wikipedia. Oh, did you? Yeah. Like, they keep badgering me, and so it's annoying me. Holy shit. So the first cooling... Okay, so...

Let's go even further back, okay? And then we'll answer the question of like the commercialization because like when did it hit the masses is the question we're asking. The first cooling systems for food involved ice. So artificial refrigeration began in the mid-1750s and developed in the early 1800s.

Now, the first working, what they call vapor compression refrigeration, right? Because, you know, the compressor is the thing that breaks in the fridge. Like electrified refrigeration, right? I don't know if this was, but like maybe it wasn't electrified at the time, but, you know, now they have compressors, right, that are electrified. But I think this was before then. 1834, the first working vapor compression refrigeration using the same technologies as we have in air conditioners was...

was 1834, okay? First commercial ice making machine, 1854. And then in 1913, refrigerators for home use were invented.

Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained unit. Freon was introduced in 1920s, etc. So 1920s. When was the spike in mass adoption? Because that's what we're looking for when we're talking about societal change, right? Yeah, let me see. 1918, it says Frigidaire was... The company Frigidaire started to mass produce refrigerators. Okay.

Wow, way earlier. I love how we throw around dates like this and we don't have that real, I guess, it doesn't really affect how

how we feel because it's just dates. Like 1918, 1700s, 1800s, right? But there are like hundreds of years. Decades. Yeah. Decades to centuries. It'd be like someone comparing like the 1960s to the 1990s being like, oh, it's all around the same thing. Meanwhile, we're talking about internet in the late 90s coming, right? And that's only like 20, 30 years ago. Yeah. Right? Cell phones and stuff like that 20 years ago, you know? And each time, and this is, these are huge changes. But it's more exaggerated. Yeah.

the closer we get to today because the pace of change has really increased. - It's the exponential curve. The rate of change year by year that we are going through, put it this way, it is the greatest time to live right now. Great not meaning awesome like fun, but great meaning amazing in terms of change, technological advancement. We are living in the greatest time, period, in terms of change.

And it's hard to fathom because we are living through it. But then you hear these dates and you hear these times. It just feels weird. If you really think about it. There's this quote, not quote, but there is something I heard that I thought it was food for thought. And I think Justin would like this. Eric will hate me for bringing this up, I think. There was a conversation with, I believe it was Elon Musk and a couple other people, Peter Diamantis.

Who's that? He's like an entrepreneur. And they were discussing, they were saying that we're living in a very great time. It's the best time to be alive. That's what I believe Elon was saying.

And the point was, could it be a simulation that we're living in? Because it's almost like historically speaking, it doesn't make sense. Why are we all alive right now when literally now is just almost unfathomable what we're going through? What doesn't make sense about it? In terms of why are we living now in the moment, going through what we're going through, about to go through maybe the greatest human achievement ever, right? With in terms of...

AI and all that stuff. So is that argument saying like it's too coincidental? Yes. So they're saying that, so why is it that we're, like, why are we alive right now? Why are we conscious right now in this perfect storm of a time? Right? Because if you think about the conversation about the simulation theory, we've touched upon it. We didn't really go into it. I don't think we should go into it, but I just want to really quickly say this.

There are people that think that we live in a simulation. So it kind of goes into the theory that, yeah, we're living through a time right now that is so spectacular that it only makes sense that we are in a simulation. And what does that mean? What is a simulation? Who's controlling the simulation? I mean, these are open-ended questions, but...

Why do we think that we're so special in this time? Do we know for a fact that if you were to ask people 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, what was their sentiment? Exactly. Or what region of the world are you living in? Because, okay, we have it good. Talk to people in Ukraine or Gaza or anywhere else. They're not having a great time. But I think you have to think about who is saying this.

So you have someone like Elon Musk saying this. And he's saying this from his perspective of being conscious and only understanding of his own consciousness.

Hence, putting this almost high ego into this idea that everything's a simulation. Yeah, he's the one that's running this marketing simulator. Exactly. If you think about it metaphorically, he's the one that's basically trying to create a simulator in terms of the message. And then he's the one pulling the strings and saying that, okay, now we're in an unprecedented time. Now, it is unprecedented that he can do that because I would argue then that a thousand years ago, you could not have had an Elon Musk.

And even like a figure, and if we want to take this even more to the extreme, like a figure like Jesus Christ or something like that, that figure evolved over how long? Whereas Musk, and I'm not again equating the two, but in terms of their ability to impact,

was able to do that in 50 years or less. Well, like if we... And I don't want to get into this whole simulation conversation right now. I mean, that's not like... That's so not what we plan to do today. But if we were in a simulation...

The simulation would create figures like that to justify things happening within the simulation. Oh, Elon Musk, he invented this, he invented that. It gives you a justification and a reason to believe these things are normal.

Because if things just happened, then people would be asking questions like, how did this happen? The simulation would exactly want to create these figures. It's so esoteric. And let's start pulling this back. But I do want to ask this question, which is, how could we quantify the rate of change over time in an objective way? So for instance...

Let's say that you came up with some metric that said, how long does it take for an idea to propagate from the source to 100 people, 1,000 people, a million people, a billion people? Mm-hmm. Right?

So like if you were to like measure that in today's terms, a message could probably be propagated to billions of people in maybe a couple of days or whatever, right? Like some big news, like take the Gaza thing and the attack on Israel, right? Well, I would probably say there's at least a billion people that know about that.

And that attack was October 7th. At what point did people all know about it? Now, if you go back to, let's say, China during the Qing Dynasty, I think there were times when the war ended and people didn't know that the war had ended for 20 years in the hinterlands of China.

So like you could create some type of metric that could sort of measure the speed of how information spreads. So are there like objective measures that you could create this, like to kind of track the pace of change and then graph that against time? Because our intuition tells us, as you were alluding to earlier, you're saying earlier, Howie, that we've, we've,

entered an unprecedented era of change. Like things are just happening so quickly, right? We went from like not having internet to like fucking almost AGI,

in like how long? Less than 50 years or whatever. - 20 years. - Well, I mean, the internet was like, I think, you know, - The 70s. - Yeah, the 70s, so like 50, I mean, you want to really go end to end, like 50 years and then the worldwide web, 80s or 90s or whatever, right? So it's very interesting that you can probably come up with a metric. Now I'll give you like, so just indulge me for a moment on something that seems very unrelated, but it kind of illustrates this point of being able to quantify things.

So they, the economist came up with this pretty cool model to look at if Western media is becoming more conservative or more liberal. And the way they did that was, is something like this. I might not be getting all the details right. So you can go to the article itself, but they went to, I think it was Congress and they looked at the Democrats and they looked at the Republicans and

And then they, over a period of time, analyzed all their speeches and writings. And they were able to identify hundreds or X number of words that was almost exclusively used by Democrats. Example would be with things like abortion or the border crossing, the way that the Republicans and Democrats talk about the things are totally different.

So they came up with two different lexicons. One was Republican, one was Democratic that were pretty much exclusively used by each. Then they did the data mining on media like by New York Times, Fox News, blah, blah, blah. And what they found objectively through this particular model was that in the last five years or however many years, media has become way more liberal.

Just by looking at the sheer frequency of the Democratic lexicon versus the Republican lexicon. So that seems like a pretty smart way of measuring over time how things have changed. Like the goalposts. Yes, exactly. It's not perfect, but it just seems like a good heuristic. It makes sense that the media would be using terminology, and these were pretty much exclusively used by one or the other, as an approximation for the leaning, right?

So now, thank you for bearing with me for that explanation. But then imagine taking that sort of model and building a model for the pace of change over time to really quantify, like, are we in an era where things are changing that rapidly? Right? Because your intuition would tell you like a million years ago, right?

Even in a thousand years in that million years, nothing really changed. Maybe you could look at like air quality or something like that, or, you know, like during the industrial revolution, the air quality probably changed exponentially during that time. Whereas maybe for like millions of years before that, like nothing changed. So,

I'm wondering if there are still artifacts or things that we can extract data from that we could see like how things… I'm sure you could. - Yeah. Like maybe one… Just one cursor of that.

Could just be new innovations, new patents that have been registered within how short of a period of time. That could be one kind of indirect marker of the pace of change happening at any given time. Or number of books. I mean, in your case, we would only be able to measure recently, right? Because they didn't have patents a long time ago. But if you take that idea to books...

How many books were there 5,000 years ago? How many pages of material, of written material, were there 5,000 years ago versus now? But then you'd have to, if you wanted to go further back to see pace of change, then you might have to look at other relics. Like how many acres of land were actually farmed? I don't know.

kind of interesting right but I'm sure there's like I think Steven Pinker has some books around just like how society has changed I just I want to go back and read I think it's called the better angels of I have to look at the name but enlightenment now and then there's another book but it basically tells like the story of change over time through graphs yeah and also like I think change is one thing but I think the target I think we're after is its effect psychologically and

on actual people, right? On the way we live, the way we view life in the world, our behaviors, all those things. That could be, that might be harder to quantify, right? Yeah, like, well, and an example of that is,

social media and self-esteem. Because I think I've seen at a high level studies where they look at teenagers and then they look at different pieces of data.

as social media as tiktok as these things have started to become widely adopted and then you see like you know mental health right exactly let me let me just go back for a second i just thought of something that answers your question so recently um it answers my question that answers your question but i guess it follows up on your question the metrics right the metrics metrics of change the i was doing for a project i was doing some research about the victorian era

which is basically the 1800s, right? And I was looking at fashion. I was looking at what the fashion sense was and how people, the etiquettes, what do people do socially during this period of time, which is about- Mainly in England? Or was it- I was focused on England. But yes, it spread around Europe though. I think it was like the period of time. I forgot what the actual duration was, but it was like 50, 60 years or something like that. Whatever it was. Yeah.

Half a century, let's call it that. Basically, the fashion sense was one type of style, right? What people did was one type of thing. There was not much change. There was not like the nuance of us thinking about the 90s. What did people do in the 90s? What did people do in the 2000s? What did people do in the 2010s? Where all of a sudden, you see these different type of fads, different type of looks. You know what I'm saying? So there is these...

Minuscule changes that we in modern society will see through the decades that maybe hits a little closer to home. But then when I was doing research on something that was two centuries ago, it was literally blocks of time based off of centuries. Well, that's also how history is written now. Because you don't... I mean, as much as we think we know about history, and we know a decent amount...

It's still extremely blurry. Yeah. The resolution, especially when you're going back hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years, but like hundreds of years, the resolution still is pretty blurry. Like you're relying on just a lot of text and it doesn't tell you everything. Right. But I do wonder, like when you were talking about your thing, I was, I was thinking about like, I wonder if people in the 1670s or

We're thinking like, oh, that's so 1640s. You know what I mean? I'm guessing. I'm assuming that that wouldn't be the case. Or people in the 2200s look back to like the 1900s. They'd be like, the 1900s, how do they dress? But obviously, there were so many changes through the decades. Yeah. Anyway.

I don't know how that happened. Sorry, guys. I've had the, but by the way, that's cool that you guys both had these thoughts because I've had the same, like literally I was blown away. I've had the same exact thoughts like in the past. And even as you were talking, Justin, the word resolution was coming to mind because like imagine you had a telescope or imagine you're just looking out with your naked eye.

And so like the resolution of what you would see in this bottle that I have in front of me versus like looking at a planet, it's just, it's like not at the same level. Right. And so history naturally is really blurry. And I always wondered that question. Did they, the people hundreds of years ago also view things in the same kind of timeframes? Cause like you imagine that like the way they thought about yesterday was similar to how we think about yesterday, but then like,

as you look at like fashion trends, did things even change that often? Or did they even think about things in terms of trends? Maybe they didn't, maybe they weren't even aware. There was no such thing as trends maybe. Right, exactly. Because we have media and we have visibility. Like maybe like how you dressed in your village was just how you dressed. So I think like we also have to then step further back and say, are there certain paradigms that we think in that didn't even exist back then? That's a great point, Eric. I'm sure there's so many. That's so good. Yeah.

Because you just actually said one thing right there. It's like the advent of media. The idea of media as we know it is very different than what media meant in the 1800s or even further back. So because I think the focuses of media maybe back in the day, and of course, I'm just...

I'm just guessing. Tell us what it was like in the 1800s. It wouldn't be about fashion trends. Wait, Eric, you can tell us. Weren't you born around then? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know. But one thing, it is very interesting, though, that your work sort of takes you to doing projects like that. Why were you researching the Victorian era? I'm also curious. Just because it was a theme of the creative and...

I was building the world around that and like being very authentic with the fashion and the props. It reminds me of like Mad Men. So purportedly Mad Men is like, I mean, literally down to the details of the products in the office and all that stuff. But I just, again, can't help but think that we're still applying a modern, you know, sentiment to it. So that like if...

We think that it's like you look at a picture and two people can see two totally different things. And so we're looking at it from a 2000 whatever angle. Whereas the true test would be you showed Mad Men to people in the 60s and they'd be like, what the fuck is this? They're like, this isn't our world. This is some weird, bizarro world. It would be like a caricature of what they were. Totally.

And I think that's often the case. Like, I honestly wonder more often than I think is normal. How much of like history do we really have wrong?

And I'm sure we have a lot of history wrong. Not only because of the resolution aspect, which we touched upon, but also... The framing aspect. The framing aspect. Because like, right? The famous term, the famous words, history is written by the victors. And so it's going to be from their point of view. The conquerors. Not the conquered. Yeah. And so a lot of things we know about history, and only their texts are going to survive. You know? Yeah.

So I wonder how much of that lens is really distorted on how things actually were. And I have to believe that a big chunk of history for a long time

The way we understand it is totally distorted/biased/inaccurate. Like, you know, whatever. I just think it's totally, like, maybe misleading. - Yeah. I mean, most historical articles are gone anyway. - It's like, what can you— And it's not even like, how much of history do we have wrong? It's like flipping that question. Like, what do we actually know to really be true? Like, what did we get right?

And I almost think that like you mentioned the word text earlier, because we do have in some ways very high local resolution in the sense that like we do have texts by people written thousands of years ago. So we do have resolution, but sometimes we don't have resolution across like a very broad comprehensive picture. We just have like very localized, right? And it's interesting that one thing that probably we can get perspective on is psychology and

like how people thought and felt. And I think that is somewhat consistent. Like if you read the ancient Egyptians, like they were talking about the same shit. They had the same fucking problems we did basically. You know what I'm saying? Like biologically, like things like stress and love and all this stuff, they all existed. So when you read about like their learnings,

It sounds remarkable. It's like we're just reinventing shit. Like Mark Manson, fucking James Clear, they're just rewriting what was written thousands of years ago. I mean, we've talked about this before, right? It's like a couple of centuries or thousands of years later, the only living book left from our modern world is the biography of Donald Trump. And they're like using it as the Bible. So, okay. And then I know you're going to say something. Let me just throw one thing out there before that, which is like, what was the honest drink?

before the honest drink. Like 5,000 years ago, what was the honest drink? We're not, we didn't invent this idea. But that brings me to this thought of, you know, we think about publishing content

writing texts, writing a blog or a book, creating a video. It's so anyone can do it now, right? But back then, that wasn't the case. And if we're talking about ancient history, the people who had access to writing or even knew how to write were literate and had access to actually writing books, texts, and were able to get them published and stored and cataloged and all those things were

I mean, that had to have been the elite of the society that had that kind of access and education and, you know, whatever. The victors get to write the story. But not just the victors, but even the elites among that society of victors. Right, and I'm equating, yes, the general notion of victors. Yeah, so, yeah, exactly. The successful, right? So how that distorts the perspective even more because take it like today. Imagine thousands of years from now

The only text people had to get any sort of information of what the world was like today was from like the writings of like Tucker Carlson or something. Like let's say that somehow survived. One of the few literatures or texts or videos that survived. And we inferred everything we knew about society from –

Tucker Carlson. That wouldn't be an accurate representation of how everyone felt. What I'm saying is those people were like the media stars of then. And so we're just listening. And then it's just one author, right? So it's one person writing in their home or in their office or whatever. And plus, don't forget, a lot of things get watered down as well because they get rewritten. Yeah.

retranslated. And because a lot of stuff is gone. A lot of the archives are gone from the fire. They don't even have the original person. It's like in the scary thing, and again, going back to this time framing thing, the original person lived in 2000 BC. And then 500 years ago, someone was like, oh, that guy was a badass.

And so then they just started to like capture their teachings. And then another 300 years pass and then someone captures that person's teachings. It's watered down. Yeah, it's like, it's so watered down. And it's like, it's crazy how watered down it is. Like if tomorrow we come back and think about what we talked about today, it's already like diluted. We won't remember a lot of the stuff, right? But you're talking about over the course of hundreds of years, like how would you, like I can't even fathom like what would get, it's like, how would they even have any, how would they even know

What to reference? You're playing a game of telephone over a span of thousands of years. Think about that. So good. But I will say though, and of course we're being armchair sort of like armchair, like ignoramuses here, right? We're just kind of

asking questions more than anything else, but written text is not the only form of what was left behind. Then I think there's gotta be some methodology and just scientific method to archeology and anthropology and all that stuff. Like, so it would be interesting to get someone that would be able to apply some science to all of this. Like what level of fidelity and accuracy and confidence can we have of really understanding the past and

If we really look at things scientifically, you know, it might actually shock you. Maybe we could know more than we thought based on the latest scientific methods, right? Because you can then also apply science and carbon dating and all kinds of, it always blows me away what they can find out. And how do they actually know for sure is something that I'm sure they could explain. But yeah, if we just go back last year, you know, what happened, right? If we reflect on 2023, right?

Yeah. Even that is kind of distorted for me. I was just saying before we started recording, it's blurry. What happened in 2023… I think especially for us because it was like a whirlwind of things. I mean, it's helpful to reflect, right? Was it you, Eric, that shared… That quote was from Tim Ferriss or something, that exercises like… A lot of people over the New Year's, right? Like Yuan Dan. They always make up new goals for the New Year.

But maybe a more helpful exercise is to just reflect on the lessons from last year. Yeah. What do you want to change? What do you want to do different? What do you want to improve upon? So he has this idea of the past year review. And this came up through a conversation through some colleagues recently.

where a shout out to Celeste, my colleague, but she had this inspiration to get some smart people together and say, hey, like, what are your reflection practices? Like, how do you approach it? So it wasn't like a reflection exercise itself. It was like, as we shift into a new year, what are some of the things, how do you like review your year? How do you look forward? Like, what's your mindset? You know, what kind of things have you done in the past? And so people just shared.

both like things that they've done, which is fascinating, like to see, um,

like how much time and energy and thoughtfulness people put into like reflecting and setting up goals, but also just the resources that are out there. And one of them that came up was this Tim Ferriss thing called the past year review. And maybe our listeners are interested. I could just quickly go through it, right? Which is, and it's very thorough. So, you know, again, it's, you probably can adapt it because a lot of people aren't as sort of like

You don't want to spend hours and hours and hours doing something. It's quite laborious. But essentially, it just says, okay, go through your calendar. These days, people just sometimes you have online calendars on Google or in your phone or whatever. Typically, we put appointments into our calendar. And then you create two columns on a notepad and you say, okay, positive and negative. And so you just look through your calendar for the whole year.

and all the major events, like wherever you keep those tracked, right? And then you put positive or negative based on a couple of things. One is like, look at your calendar, the people that you met, the activities that you had, or whatever the commitment or the deliverable that you had. And you bucket them very generally, like this was a positive thing or a negative thing. So in an example, I'll put our appointments, our appointments,

you know, on a string podcast, like into my calendar. So like we were talking earlier with a potential guest and so I already put it in my calendar, right? So like I have a bird's eye view of my whole calendar. And then, so you'll have a list, right? And I think it's the goal isn't to be like super duper thorough. It's basically to go through your whole year and the major events and find those nuggets, categorize them as positive and negative. And then you ask yourself, what 20% of the positive column created like the most positive

what's the most impactful in a positive way. And then what 20% of the negative column like really caused you a lot of stress and anxiety or whatever it is, you know, those peaks and valleys. And then, you know, you can basically create a list of things to do and not do.

Because from the positive list, you can see like, oh, like every time I met with, you know, Howie and Justin, it was a great experience. So then I'm going to do more of that. But then every time I did, you know, this, it was actually a drain on my energy. So his is quite precise. So if you just Google like past year review, like you, and I think you can do the whole exercise in like an hour or less. You just have to like sit down and kind of focus on it. Yeah.

if that makes sense I don't know if I described it that well yeah I mean what do you guys think were your biggest takeaways from last year for your you know individual lives yeah if you were to do the mental column now yeah like if you were to if you were to categorize one thing in each column in terms of positive and negative one negative thing one positive thing what would you say do you have anything in mind have you thought about it or

I'll, I'll share real quickly. I've been talking a lot, so I want to hear from you guys, but it was funny. I, I had this conversation with another colleague and then he was like, yeah, like you got married last year. And I was like, oh, that's right. I had my wedding. I totally forgotten. Right. And I was just like, man, I need to just be more mindful and present. Like, and you know, but yeah, like being able to, um, to,

to do that like officially after all those years of COVID right and then being able to go home and see my family multiple times like my parents my brother those were like transformational moments right that would be in the positive column so then when I'm thinking about this year it's like I really need to go and look at when can I take time off from work potentially to go do that again and not wait till the last minute yeah

So for me, I recently, a few days ago, went through my photos and sort of like a recap of last year. And just, I saw your wedding to start off the year, you know, and then going through, flipping through. I realized that 90% of my photos were my kids. And so it was like, that was all it was. But that can't be a shocker. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, but the thing that, what I was alluding to before we started recording was,

was when I was looking at some of the photos, it felt alien to me. I lived through it and it just didn't feel right. Like it didn't feel like I did it. It felt like it was like a dream, as weird as that sounds. And it made me almost want to cry because I was like, I thought I remembered everything. I thought I was present. But the fact that it became a blur when I'm recapping it

It made me feel sad that I didn't shoot more video to relive these moments even more. A lot of them are just photos. I have some videos here and there, but not enough. And so that was one of the big takeaways for me was for this year, I'm shooting more videos.

And because I feel like when I watch the videos, I'm a lot more engaged in that moment. And I can kind of put myself back in that moment. If I'm looking at a photo, it's like, yeah, it's cute or whatever, but it's just different.

That was my big, I don't know if that resonates with you, Justin. I feel like. No, I never really thought about the video versus photo aspect. Oh, really? Yeah, I never really. But what I did notice with you, what you just said is, you cry a lot lately, don't you? Yeah. No, because I'm actually, I'm listening to some of the last episodes we recorded. We haven't published yet, though. Uh-huh.

And you also mention like… You also say the exact same thing. You're like, oh I cried. Or I almost cried. Yeah. Almost. Almost. Almost. Yeah. No but didn't you say the same thing on one show? Yeah. One time. One time. No. But he's been talking about it. No. You were saying you're getting more emotional in your old years too. Yes. Yes. Yes. But…

Howie has also been there. I don't think that's how the one thing you pick out where he's being all vulnerable and stuff and he's like, dude, you're a fucking crybaby dog. No, I'm not knocking for it. I feel the same way. I'm just saying that's funny because I can relate to that. What I was going to say, Eric, was there's no reason for me to be defensive about it, actually. Because to me, this is just an evolution that I'm going through. And I realize that my hormones have changed.

and yeah ever since you you have kids yeah 100% yeah you cry a lot easier don't you I don't physically cry but I definitely feel that choked feeling like that choked up feeling you tear up yeah

choked up feeling. So yeah, basically it's the idea that... He's getting to be more human and you're getting to be less human. What do you mean? Why? I'm not... Pointing that out doesn't mean I don't feel the same thing. This is that like... Oh no, I choke up all the time now. Easy. Easy. Oh, easy. Okay, let me ask a question. Okay, because I can't... Sorry, I just jump in real quick. Okay. Because...

I can relate to the fact that when you're watching video, it's just so much more immersive because there's sound. You're seeing things, the laps and the changes of facial expression, all that stuff. And then, of course, eventually we'll have even more immersive technologies. There's all kinds of stuff. I can't wait for that. Yeah, like that kind of stuff, right? Yeah.

But then, like, I wonder, and I want to hear your perspective on this. It's like, if we spend all of our time taking photos and videos, but not, like, actually experiencing it, like, what's the trade-off? Well, okay, I'm going to answer this immediately because I've thought about this. In terms of recording...

Now, when I record it, I'm also living through it, right? I'm not just mindlessly recording, looking at the video and photo. No, I'm just throwing up there because my new technique now is just let it roll.

I'm not trying to find like cinematic shots. I'm just letting it roll and just, I'm not even looking at the camera. I'm just making sure that it's wide angle lens. I'm capturing the environment. It's basically a snapshot of the time. And I let it go for minutes, not just like, oh, 15 seconds. Even nothing's happening. I have a bunch of these now that I'm just collecting. It's just because I realized, I saw a couple of videos from years ago that were just nothing. They were just like three minutes of nothing.

but they were so interesting because they were nothing.

Does that make sense? Because all of a sudden, I got back in that moment. And it's not like you have to record a specific cool thing that happened or amazing moment that happened. It doesn't have to be that way sometimes. It was like the people that you were with. Yeah. Like the people and the place and the vibe. It could be the most mundane conversation. Because you're recording for yourself. You're not recording to post on, you know, Xiaohongsu or Instagram, you know, to get clicks and likes. It's for nobody. It's for me. Yeah.

And I realized how important that is for me. So now that's what I was saying to answer your question. Now, to go back, one is yes, I will definitely record the video because to me that is living the moment and being able to relive that moment, even if the moment is mundane, right? That's number one. Because to me, that mundane is beautiful.

Number two is, what was the thing about you were asking? Like, does it detract, right? Like, how do you stay in the moment and yet be able to have something you can refer back to? So, because I used to feel the same way. I used to get so pissed for when I

when I was at a concert or something and people recording the concert yeah they're looking at the concert through the fucking phone and I want to be like are you really gonna watch that fucking video again yeah I never did that because you're missing the live moment yeah without the camera in your face yeah you know yeah so for me I mean maybe some people some people would respond and be like no that's just like how you said the

about the mundane moment. That's how I feel about them. Like that memory lives forever now because they recorded it. Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I don't have that emotional connection when I relive my old videos of a concert that I had. Pshh.

It means nothing to me. I think there's a balance, right? And like one is you want to have enough snapshots. It's somewhat representative because like if you only have like one photo per 10 years, then like you're really not getting like a good picture of things. But you don't obviously need 1,000 photos per day. Exactly. Right? So there's like a balance, right? To finish off what I was saying about living the moment.

What I wanted to just add in about just living the moment. Because I used to be the proponent of that as well. Like, why? Just experience. That experience, that emotional resolution that you get from that moment. That's the most important thing. And then remember that feeling, right? My problem is the older I get, the less I trust my memory. And I don't want to just leave it to memory. When I have a real amazing moment, yes. Yes.

I'm going to cherish it, especially the big moments. But if I have something else to kind of substantiate that moment, so later on in life, where I can kind of go back and help my memory, kick it back into gear a little bit, I'm going to want that. And that's the way I view it. Honestly, on this conversation, on this topic, I think I'm the clearest example. Because out of the three of us, I think historically speaking, I've always taken the least amount of photos and videos.

I used to never take it. And to you saying like you were always the biggest proponent of just like being in the moment, living real life, living life firsthand, right? We used to talk about. Yeah, absolutely. I was 100% that way. I was never the guy in a concert that would take out my phone and film it. I'd just be like, you know, just remember it's more romantic experience.

Not in like a romantic love kind of way, but I feel like the moments are just more romantic, more emotional when you're not dealing with a digital device to try to capture something. You're just really being present. But like you now, I probably take just as many photos and videos as you guys. Obviously, the kid has something to do with that. But also like you, I really don't trust my memory. And I have really good reason not to trust my memory. Like my memory is so bad right now.

I definitely want to start cataloging things. So I've done like a huge 180 in terms of my attitude towards like filming and capturing things. To bring this back to a lighter note than in those, some of those reflection conversations we had. So one colleague had this pretty interesting idea. And at a high level, it was, they just let the kids have the camera and they just let the kids take like whatever the hell they want. And like,

When they're done with the vacation, they go back and look at them. And just to see like, how did their children interpret the world and what they saw? And not only that, but then over time, they can see how that child themselves, the way they look at the world has changed. Yeah, I love that. Oh, that's a great idea. I love that. I think like it's important that there is an element of focus and simplicity to the way you capture things. Otherwise, you can just go down that rabbit hole. And there's no end to that. Yeah. So I think-

For me, it really depends on what the subject matter is. For me, the reason why I'm so adamant about capturing my children is because it's my children, because they grow and they have changes. And the idea of missing out on the changes or forgetting about the changes or forgetting how it used to be

It's a non-negotiable. I cannot allow myself to be like that. I want to have things to help me remember when I get older. Now, experiences that are vacations or just moments with friends or whatever that I also cherish, right?

They're not at that caliber. They are still things that I want to remember. I'm going to digress for one second. Out of all our friends, don't we have one friend that's always constantly pulling out photos from our hangouts that we're like, whoa, I don't remember that. That's Eric. No. What do you mean? Bruce.

Oh, but Eric does that too. Eric has a lot of gems. Yeah, Eric does that. Yes, you're right. Eric does that too. But whenever Eric or Bruce do that, it's always like, oh my God, that was awesome. I can't... You know, you kind of remember that moment, but you don't... And I feel bad that I don't have that photo in my head. Exactly. Exactly. But okay. So like as everything has like...

sort of the other side to it and there's a spectrum and so like I don't disagree with any of this right in fact I'm on the same train of thoughts but at the same time it's like if you did lose everything it wouldn't be the end of the it's almost like how hard you decide to hold on to this is what it means so like I'll give you an example right like and I hope Ann doesn't mind me saying this but a few years ago

It wasn't that long ago, but a few years ago, we had a big argument. And then like, we thought we were going to break up. Like this is when she was abroad and like we had a miscommunication. And I just thought like, oh yeah, I'm about to propose. I got the ring. And then like, you know, but anyways, it all went south. Toilet paper saved you. Yeah. The toilet paper. Yeah, exactly. And she deleted like all my photos. What? Like she deleted every single photo. Really? And then it's like, to this day, she still doesn't have any of those photos. Yeah.

So are they just lost forever? Yeah. No, like I have my photos, but the, any, and she always took less photos, but, but it's just like, yeah, she deleted them all. And then I always, I kind of joke with her from time to time. I'm like, dude, you deleted all the photos. That's why you don't have anything pre 2020 or whatever. Right. And it is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is. So, and, and the thing is, it's like, yes, you want to remember your kids and all that stuff. Right. But when your kids are 20,

Don't you just want to appreciate like doing the things when they're 20 rather than like spending all your, because it can really be a wormhole because then you just start obsessing over like I want every single moment. And what you're doing is you're actually fighting this fear of loss rather than pursuing change, embracing things moving forward. Like loss is just a part of life.

Right? So there's a fear element to it as well that I can relate to. But if you really let go in the moment and you just said, let's be present, you don't need any of this. Yeah, like what's the worst case scenario, right? Even if you did lose it. Yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, you would feel definitely a great sense of loss because even... But you choose to feel that sense of loss, right? So if the person is still there...

then they're there and then you should spend your time appreciating the person that they're there, not what they were. And, you know, if God forbid the person isn't there anymore, you have to go through your grieving process as well. Right. And you can't just live in the past. Yeah. Because like whenever it's like, whether it's you or Bruce or any other friend, they pull out like old, these like old photos that I don't even remember having been taken. And there are these like, you know, fun, cool moments that we share together and,

I'm always thinking, what else don't I remember? Because if I don't remember this, and I only remember it vaguely now that you're pulling this up, man, there must be so much I don't remember. And that's… That's a scarcity mindset though. It is a scarcity mindset. But it's also real. It's like…

Man, I wish I remembered more about my life. Because when you don't remember all the good times and memories, I mean, that's just sad. There's no other way to cut it. I mean, that's just sad. Yeah, you can move forward. Well, what is life then? Honestly, if you have no ability to recollect, to have memory, then what is pain? What is love? Like memento or something, right? Like what is that?

Right? If you're not able to reflect, that's what gives life to pain. That's what gives life to love. Right? Totally. If you don't have memory. No, but Howie, what you were saying before about you have like a different threshold for like capturing moments and pictures with your kids versus like let's say with your friends when you're out. I'm different. And I learned this recently in kind of this like new renaissance I'm going through personally with like rediscovering photography again, right? Yeah.

I'm different. I'm actually, I feel like if you can be really mindful about taking pictures and not just spamming pictures all the time, like a lot of people do, and be more selective of when you take pictures and how you take pictures and how many pictures you take. For me, it's helped me be more intentional and mindful about life in general, even when I'm not taking pictures. So a perfect example of this was recently when I was on vacation. Time to reflect.

You know, I was with my friend Jay and Bruce was there and we're at this like little hole in the wall bar. It was just us. It was really super intimate. And we were just having this great conversation, sharing some great drinks. I was in it. I was present.

But the fact that I am also now aware that I do want to take more pictures and catalog things more, I remembered feeling like being more intentional about being more aware of how I'm feeling from moment to moment. And so at that particular time, I was thinking, this is beautiful. I want to make sure I capture this. So I take out my phone. It's a nice new phone, by the way. It's a great phone.

I snap a few pictures. I don't spam it. I take like maybe like three pictures and I put it right back in my pocket and continue living the moment. And what that does, because usually things are so automatic and we take moments in our lives so much for granted now.

That actually the idea of taking a moment to take out the phone and take the picture helped me also appreciate and remember to appreciate and be more aware of the moment happening in the first place. Because you know you want to capture it. So if you're not aware that it's a beautiful moment, you won't even think to take the picture of it in the first place. So the two helped me like go hand in hand in terms of helping me just be more aware of these great moments happening.

are beautiful moments in my life that I do want to capture. - So like, what was like a top moment for you from last year? Like now that we've said all that, right? - Yeah, how did we get into photographs in the first place? - I was, I was mentioning, I was recapping my year. - Oh. - Yeah, like, and again, it was like his sense of sort of like, oh, I wasn't really there, but okay. So let's think positive. Like what's a top moment? - When I think about reflecting on last year, to me, what stands out the most right now is what,

what is most front of mind for me is health, physical health. Because right now is probably the worst I've ever felt physically in my life. It's the oldest I've ever felt physically in my life. You are the oldest you've ever been. Yeah, but I've never felt that way.

Like all the way up until my 40s, I felt I was still like 20-something years old physically. I didn't notice a big difference. I could still do, in my mind, all the same physical activities, sports, sports.

It didn't feel like I dropped off at all. It wasn't until this year, really this last year, that all of a sudden it felt like a cliff. And not that I dropped off all that much, but it's very, very obvious to me now that I feel my age now. Whereas two years ago, I didn't feel that way at all. Now I'm feeling my age. I'm having...

I'm getting injured more easily. So to me… And also I've gained a lot of weight.

I think the physical health component is the biggest change I want to make this year. And it's probably the biggest negative that stands out to me reflecting back on last year. Is that deterioration. That kind of going, you know, really going down in my health and my age and my weight, all that. Which is all connected. Because as you get older, it's just going to get worse. It's not like I'm never going to feel like I'm 20 years old again. I'm never going to feel that way. So it's just going to get harder.

So I better get a jump on it now before it really gets out of hand. And that's been the most obvious. I've been fighting that for quite a while because I've always told myself, like, I feel fine. And I did. And now it's super obvious. I'm 100% with you on that as well, personally. But then I'm just like thinking like, God damn, we just sound like these freaking old decrepit men right now. This is like, sounds so bad.

Like, if you thought that we had the mini midlife crisis when we started the show in 2019, like, you are full blown into your midlife crisis. No, no, no. Okay, so what separates that for me is I characterize one of the staple traits and hallmarks of a midlife crisis is denial. So you go out and you buy, like, the nice Porsche. You do all these kind of behaviors that are not characteristic of your age, right? Yeah.

And that is part of this denial and this urge to kind of resist your age. To me, and even going to Howie, your kind of remark is, I think, historically speaking, if you go back in time and look at all the men that's lived before us and how they've aged, I think we're a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of at least the awareness and discussion around it. Mm-hmm.

Whereas- Like our fathers? Yeah. The generations before us, they wouldn't be talking about this. And they just get old. And that's it.

And they wouldn't... Like a lot of them, you know, probably have a lot of things maybe they could have prevented had they been a little more aware and intentional earlier on. Like let's say exactly when they turned 40 or in their early 40s. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I'm just saying that if I were to compound on with my own story after what you're saying, it would just be like this old man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. That's what I was saying, actually. That's what I meant. The whinings of old men. Yes, I'm not going to go into...

My shit. No, but we're talking about reflecting on last year, right? Like the reflections. And that would be my reflection. Anything positive from the year? No, not so much. That's good. There's clarity there. There's clarity. So do you want to talk about, I guess, what habits that you're trying to build? What your strategy is? Because I feel like it's crystal clear. Yeah.

The last year or two, you've danced around this. You've talked about the pandemic. You've said like, and I think, you know, fairly, right? Like you've said that like, you know, that really made it more difficult and you're catching up on like life and, you know, being a new father. So there's a lot of reasons why it was harder for you to like prioritize that. But it sounds like you're crystal clear because the pain that you're suffering from this, right, is, uh,

right in front of you and you know I think you're in a better place in terms of being a father and all that stuff right so what's the plan like you know what are you gonna do it's pretty simple it's boring it's super simple eat healthier exercise more and we've talked about this before like there's no magic formula that's that's it that is the formula

What does that look like? What's the difference this year compared to the other years that this has been said? I feel a bigger sense of urgency because I feel it so much.

obviously now this age the last two years I've had more injuries than I've had in my whole life combined so that to me says a lot right and random injuries yeah like I've been I've been very fortunate in my life and I've done a lot of crazy things like physical things you know skateboarding snowboarding croquet yeah

But like, I've had more injuries in the last year or two than I've ever had in my own life. And to me, that is a sign of the aging process. It's also a sign of the weight I put on. Those two are combined. And those two don't help each other. So...

To answer your question, what's motivating? It's just that I feel it so immediately now. It's so clear to me. Whereas two years ago, I didn't feel that. Hold on. So before, whenever you talk like this, it was just lip service? No. Before, whenever I talk like this, it was more about cosmetically. Oh, I want to look better. Right? Like when you're overweight, you want to look better. Now, it's not just about the looks. Of course, I want to look better.

But before it was never about like… The stakes are higher now. Yeah. Before it was never actually about my health. It's because you just want to… It was just about my looks. I want to look fit. Now… It's like actually about my health because it's the first time I'm actually feeling my health decline. It's a whole different ballgame. So what does this look like in concrete actions? Again…

- Eat healthier? - No, I mean, like that's so vague. Like, I mean, it doesn't pass the litmus test of like building good habits, right? 'Cause there's a science behind building good habits. What is it that you can hold yourself accountable for that's simple enough for you to do? Like today, for instance, like what did you do today

to contribute to this goal of yours by the end of the year, like you're feeling better. Your body feels better. Like I will order healthier food to eat for dinner. Like I don't know how else to break it down. What kind of restaurants? Because I'm also interested, but like what are some places that you can order from here? There's a bunch of places, but I think it's not so much about where you order from, but what you order from that place, right? Where are you ordering from tonight? I don't know. I haven't decided. Where did you order from last night? Last night we had Chinese food.

That's not very healthy. No, it was actually very healthy. We had fish, steamed fish. Okay.

with some rice. Like I'm all like busting his balls and stuff. But no. No, but you want me to break it down further than that? I don't know how to get simpler than that. No, I think that's good. Like I'm just curious because like one is I just want to like hear it, right? But then two is like you're learning. I'll give you an example. So I have a colleague who like he's not like unfit, but then I wouldn't consider himself like super fit either. Like one of the three things that he's prioritizing this year is his fitness because he sees like,

And he's the kind of person that sees around corners a little bit. He takes action proactively. Like he's good at that kind of stuff, right? So fitness is an area of his life where he feels like there's a low hanging fruit. So I said, well, what are you going to do differently, right? And it really made sense to me. He said, one, he said, I'm going to go to bed earlier because what I realized was that when I go to bed late, then I get caught up in work. And then the exercise, like I always can make an excuse. So I'm going to go to bed earlier.

And like his wife goes to bed late, he says sometimes. So he's like, I'm just going to go to bed when I'm going to go to bed and not worry about that. Like set the example. And he said, number two is he would always do everything at work before he worked out. He would make that his last priority. So it's kind of like, if I have time, I'll go do this. Inevitably, he didn't have time. So-

he's like, it's going to be the first thing he does or closer to the first thing that he does. And then the third thing he said was he used to think if he wanted to do a workout, you needed to go in for an hour and do a heavy workout. And he's like, if I only do 20 minutes, I'm going to do 20 minutes. So it's extremely actionable. And it's really like,

kind of rooted in very simple, very obvious, like kinds of things that can be like implemented. And like for me being someone who's found it very difficult through his life, like I thought most of my life that I was just like,

a person that was unable to have like good habits, like I could totally relate to the fact that like if you, there are things that if you don't do it in a certain way, you'll just never get done. Like I tried to implement good habits when I was a kid. Like I had the mindset to do it. I failed like every single time. And it was because like I broke all of those. So what's changed for you? How did you get over that? I don't know. It's like, I think it was just like once I realized that it wasn't as complicated as I thought.

And it was just like breaking it down into small pieces and building momentum. And then like kind of naturally through trial and error, figuring out what those key principles were. Right. So like there are different versions of this, of course, but they're all, they kind of come back to the same conclusions, but,

But like if you look at what, you know, Atomic Habits, which is like very, very, I think it's really been practically helpful for a lot of people. It's like the one book where people like found the way that it was written and the way that it shared advice was like actually actionable. You know, the four key things are just like, you know, make it obvious, make it easy, make it attractive, right?

And then, you know, make it satisfying. And like, of course, there's much more detail in that. But like making it attractive is like, okay, well, I'm going to go work out with my friend. And I'm going to do like a fitness plus workout on my, you know, I'm going to make it really, really easy and attractive. And I'm going to have fun doing it. And there's ways you can set things up. Some people watch Netflix when they're working out. Yeah, the momentum building is huge. That's been something, you know, if we're going to talk about habit building, like,

That's been big for me for a few years now. And I saw it help me in a couple of things I did when I used to box, even in my personal workouts and even in other facets of life is the idea of just being like very incrementally better each day without trying to set like these huge lofty goals.

Which inevitably fail. And just being like that idea of 1% better each day has helped me a lot. It's such a game changer that it leads to momentum that you would be building that you wouldn't be building otherwise without that mindset.

And it makes it, like you were saying, so much more actionable and reachable. And it accumulates and you look back and you're like, wow, okay, yeah, I've achieved a lot just by having that mindset. Yeah, if you don't put the burden of that achievement on...

So if you take the burden of achievement over time and then you put it on today's action, it's going to be like this mountain that you're carrying. Look at the podcast and the evolution of the podcast. And without beating our chests and saying we've accomplished all this stuff because we never viewed it that way. But if you were to say...

Like, where are we today versus where we were four or five years ago? And then you put those expectations from the very beginning, it would have never gotten off the ground. No. Or you count up all the episodes, all the hours put into... And it'd be overwhelming. Yeah, you'd be like, oh my God, just to get that? Yeah, or if day one we were like, we need to have 100,000 subscribers. Like, we would never get there. And yeah, the same thing is like, even with the idea of like, for me, losing weight and eating healthier...

If I'm like setting now, like, oh, I need to lose 30 pounds, 50 pounds, whatever, right now, like you said, it feels like this huge goal. And then you get so deflated when you have any sort of hurdle in your way of achieving that. Instead, what I tell myself now is I just compare myself to yesterday, right? Which is what the book talks about as well. And it's like, some really simple thing is,

Did I eat healthier than I did yesterday? Just that. And if the answer is yes, and it can just be by like the smallest margin,

But if the answer is yes, I know I'm making progress until I can get to a point where am I eating as healthy as I did yesterday? Yeah. Right? And then just maintaining that and just that simple day. And I might screw up one day and have a cheap meal or do whatever or eat something I shouldn't. It's okay. The next day after that, did I eat better than that day? And keep going, keep going. And it just makes each step more attractive and

And just more encouraging. Just more realistic. You know, to add on to that, you know what I'm doing? So what I used to do is I have subconscious goals. I would measure my weight. I would take before and after photos and this kind of stuff. And I've had progress. You guys have seen me lose weight and get back into shape and stuff like that. But...

it's hard to keep it right keep it that way and so one thing that eric's always been the advocate of is building these habits so one thing i'm trying this year that i've just started as well is i i'm not weighing myself anymore i don't have any goals in terms of the weight i want to hit i'm not even looking at myself i don't i don't even care but i'm consciously deciding

to eat less of something, cutting out other things, starting exercise again, making sure I do it. That's it. Because I know that the results will come. And whatever the results come or whatever the end look I have, there is no end look. It'll just be me, right? It'll just be, it is what it is. And so it gets rid of the whole idea of that daunting task, that daunting goal that is unapproachable.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, and this whole idea of like stepping on the scale every day and being so fixated on the number that pops out is really focusing, I think, on the wrong thing. Wrong thing. And it makes it unenjoyable because you just dread that moment where you have to step on the scale every day. Instead, work on the little things like exactly what you're saying. I'm just repeating what you're saying. Is the actual, like the actionable things every day, the little things, and which will inevitably lead to good results. Yeah.

I mean, even the idea that I don't really drink anymore, which I don't think I've ever even shared this on air yet, but I pretty much haven't had alcohol in many months. And I'm going to keep it that way for who knows how long. And I'm not thinking about when I started. I'm not thinking about...

Like, if I were to have a sip of alcohol, fine, I'll have a sip of alcohol. But I'm not planning on getting, you know, drunk or anything like that. Cut to. I know. I know. But this is the same thing for you. Yeah, cut to, Bruce. Yeah, but the same thing for you. Bruce is like, yeah. He's waiting, I know. But it's the same reason, as you said, is because of health this past year. Same thing. I did my first checkup in years and saw my numbers be a little bit kind of wacky. Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, I can't fuck around anymore. So yeah, I think that part of it, part of the reason is because of the amounts of alcohol I used to drink. I firmly believe that's the reason why I'm in my position now. And I'm just living the aftermath of it.

So I'm just trying to adjust my lifestyle now. I even told like this, this one of my coworkers who we, we always make a habit of meeting up, you know, once every few months and finish a bottle of whiskey and just talk shit. I said to him, he's like, he's like, yo, are you in town? He's like the DP I work with. And he's like, you in town, we got to drink, you know, we got to do it. I'm like, I'm not drinking. He's like, what? Don't you have a podcast called the honest drink and you guys drink alcohol?

I'm like, yeah, but, you know, I could drink tea and drink some other stuff, but I'm not drinking alcohol. And he's like, oh, my God. He just couldn't believe it. He probably thinks you're just lying to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, yeah, we'll see. We'll see when we hang out. Well, we were smart about naming the show, too, right? Because we had said, like, the honest cocktail would be, like, fucked. We said drink.

Drink, water. But what's the trade-off though? And I'm asking this a little bit as a half joke, but what's the trade-off in terms of

that scenario, you know, in terms of keeping your health and maintaining good relationships, right? I mean, relationships are important too. Yeah. So the one, I guess, silent agreement that I've made with myself is that I will not feel guilty. I will not put guilt on myself if I were to have a drink because that guilt is probably worse than the drink itself. I need to remove the guilt because that's one thing that I always hung over my head is the guilt.

So I made a silent agreement. If I were to drink, I'm not going to feel guilty, but I'm making an effort not to drink. It's as simple as that. It's like, why? Why do I have to limit myself? I'll never sip on alcohol for the rest of my life ever again. I'm not that kind of person either. And I don't believe in that.

But I do believe in living a healthier lifestyle. And if that means cutting out as many moments as possible and knowing that I sometimes give in to temptation kind of easily, especially around certain friends. But trying to keep that... The fact that I was able to control myself around these quote-unquote certain friends recently...

It shows that I'm able to do it. And that's like a check off my book. You know what I mean? Like that I'm keeping the silent tab. I don't talk about this because it's a silent tab. It's a silent agreement. Yeah. You've talked about it before. Not really. On the Dumb and Dumber episode, you talked about it. Did I? Yeah. So you actually talked about it quite a lot. Yeah. You won't stop talking about it. I've never talked about the silent agreement. It's not so silent.

Wait, did we get through everyone's reflections? Eric, did you? Waiting for Eric's. Oh, yeah. Drop the mic here. Well, I said like the wedding. I think that was a nice milestone to start off the... So you want to have more weddings for 2024? Is that what that means? Yeah. Like I want to... A wedding, a new wedding each year. Based off of the Tim Ferriss... No, I want to plan them. I want to plan them. What should you do more of that you... No, that...

More weddings. Okay, we got it. That's funny. Yeah, I think my general...

The focus this year is also on building and continuing to build up habits. It's an ongoing thing. And then to embrace it and to have fun and not treat it as a burden and continue to build on the habits. And then the area of focus for the habits this year is really focusing on how do I improve my environment to enable me to more easily

carry out my habits. And so... Who would be an example of that? Friends? Yeah, like for instance, you know, for your environment, right? Like, well, you know, I have a nice gym at work. It's just making sure that I have access to like the right facilities and then making sure that I'm very like consistent about going. And if you didn't have those facilities, what would you do? Then like that's the whole thing, right? It's like always making sure that I have the right environment. So like for instance...

I have the right environment most of the time, but sometimes I'm traveling. Sometimes I'm in other places where I don't have access to, I don't have the same home court advantage, right? I'm borrowing this terminology from Daria Rose, right? She's like, you know, try to optimize your home court habits, right? When I do have home court advantage, meaning I'm going to the office, whatever, then maximize that. Then if I'm traveling, I'm at another place, then figure out how do I set up my environment

to be able to you know to account for that a home court advantage to become a home court advantage right because like when i travel home and say see my parents obviously i'm prioritizing that because like i want to spend more time with my family but you know like traveling 10 15 hours across the world and the jet lag like it really kills me so like when i went home this time i went home a couple of times i mean like the jet lag just killed me for the first week

So, like, what I realized is I need to do a better job on my own environment and, like, set myself up for more, you know, for success. It's like to know that these things are going to happen and then to make sure that, like, the first couple of days I get there that I get on my exercise routine and I build up. Because essentially I have to build a new habit, right?

Because if you say, okay, you're in Shanghai, you go to work every day, you work out of the gym, I already have that habit. But like going back to Texas, staying at my parents' place, totally being jet lagged, being in an environment with older people who aren't that active, I'm the same as you guys. Like, you know, I have to rebuild that habit.

and i really struggled and so it would be like each day like the sun would you know it'd be like one more hour of daylight and i'm like i haven't like done today and i just you know in order to be the best version of myself for my parents etc etc i'm only back for a couple of weeks i need to be active and i was just in what i call zombie mode a lot of the time luckily my

sense of guilt would then kick in, which isn't the best thing. Right before the sun would set, I'd go out for a run. But I was miserable all day. So I realized that when I go back next time, I have to have a better strategy. I have to set up my environment better. But those are just some examples, right? Where it's like, your environment is something you can choose beforehand to set yourself up. If I go...

you know, to a place that has bags of chips everywhere, that's like a bad decision that I could have decided beforehand. So it's like what you're saying. It's like choose the right restaurants, choose the right things before you put yourself in a position where you have no choice. Let's try something a little bit spontaneous. Something just came to me and let's see what happens. So let's pretend that it's December 31st, 2024 right now.

What happened? Okay, so we're going forward in time. So let's think the opposite. We were just reflecting about what passed. The past. Let's reflect about... So next New Year's Eve. Yeah, let's reflect or guess. What did we go through? What are some of the milestones that we hit that we anticipate or foresee? I don't know. I mean, hopefully we're accountable to what we've talked about today. I mean, for me, it's a little more just...

cut and dry, straightforward. If I'm in better shape, healthier. So I'm envisioning, like, we're recording and we look magnificent. Like, we look so good. We look magnificent. Like, six packs all around. And that has upped our video game. So we're shooting out a lot more video. Because people actually want to see us on camera because we're so beautiful. We're pushing video, like, all the time. Millions, millions of subscribers.

But in a way, isn't that like what you're trying to pivot away from? Yeah, because that's setting the lofty goal, right? Like you were just saying, like, just have like good habits. Like in the moment, don't set those big goals, right? Yeah, I guess. Because we know what it's like. Because December 31st comes around and it's fucking like doom and gloom. Like even for me, I'll be like, how many fucking workouts did I do this year? Oh, I fucking, you know...

Didn't do that many workouts. Oh, like... But visualization can be a powerful tool though. But not so far out that that future self, and if you study like this notion of your future self, if you go too far out, that future self is so distant from you that you don't feel a connection.

when you think about your future self, you should be thinking about like- - Next month. - Yeah, or next week. And what are the things you can do today? So here's another technique, 'cause we're talking techniques, right? And different techniques will work differently.

The techniques that work for me won't necessarily work for you, but it's good to understand all the techniques out there and then you choose the ones that work for you. So like the way you select your dinner, making sure I eat better today than I did yesterday, but not beating myself up. Those are all like, I mean, consistent with the literature that I've read. Another technique is called the future self.

'Cause essentially it's like we're disconnected to our future self. So we just eat, we party, we drink, especially when we're younger. And then you fuck your future self. And you're like, oh, that like, we always overestimate the ability of our future self. And I can totally relate to this. I'm like, I always think my future self is gonna be harder working, more diligent and more focused than me. I'm like, oh, just let it, I'll do it tomorrow.

And then when the tomorrow Eric comes around, I'm like not in any shape to do what I was supposed to do. So this future self, like you choose, you know, maybe your future self in a week and you're just saying like, well, what are all the things that I can do now that are going to make future self's life a little bit easier? And I think it kind of works, right? Like, I mean, so something as easy as doing the dishes, like sometimes I'm just not motivated, right? And I'm like, I'll just do it, whatever, right?

Wait for the IE to come. I don't know. But then I'm like, you know what? Tomorrow morning, my future self is going to walk into the kitchen and they're going to see the dishes. It's only going to take like five minutes. And it's just that slight motivation. Like, because I find it sometimes my motivation is like very fickle. And one moment I'm super motivated and the next moment I could fuck all. That's how it goes, right? Is it your future self that you're bettering or you're fearing the future wife? No, it's more the future wife.

Seeing the dishes piled up. I'm the one in the family that like, no, Ann's not the... Wow. Ann cooks. Ann cooks. No, it has nothing to do with Ann, right? It's a little slip there, a little leak. No, it's just, it's kind of silly. But no, no, it's not like that at all. Because, you know, in every relationship people are in, I'm like quite...

Like things have to be a certain way kind of thing. Right. And so that things like that bother, bother me. Well, I think it's also fighting the, uh, the kind of like the notion of out of sight, out of mind. We kind of, we, we procrastinate and we put things off because that's like, Oh, that's not here. That's like out of sight, out of mind kind of deal. Um,

And when you can reframe and think about the future self, that puts the out of sight in sight. And then all of a sudden, okay, you're like, okay, well, maybe I should do this. Yeah. Sometimes we just need it. Like, honestly, we just need a little nudge. So when you read it, when you think, you know, read about nudge theory and all that stuff, it's like the difference between, you know, down the road, a very fit, healthy Justin versus one that you're not so happy with is really just like little nudges in the moment over time that accumulate. Yeah.

So when you start connecting things like nudge theory, atomic habits, like how you motivate, and then you pick and choose different techniques, then you start building up your mindset. But it's like you can't just read this thing and then just expect yourself to change. It's like you actually have to go in and do the work every single day to program this into yourself.

Well, that's the biggest thing with habit building is the divide and the gulf that exists between knowledge and action, right? Yeah. And it's like, again, like the Claire's example is like the kind of working out, eating healthy. Like, it's not like no one knew this. It's not like I didn't know this.

But to actually implement it and do it is a whole different ballgame. And I think that's often where many of us get stuck is that distance between knowing and doing. And that's where the habit building helps because habit building is bridging that gap or building a bridge over that gap so you can cross it. Yeah.

No one would expect to like go to the gym without ever having been there. And then like looking at like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like the next day and like habits in general, the same thing. They're like, they're muscles that you have to build up over time. And like it requires self-study. And then eventually you start incorporating, you just take one suggestion and you start working on it. And just because you're good in habits in one area of your life doesn't mean you're

It has nothing to do with any other habit. Every area of your life that you want to build up good habits, you got to start from somewhere. I'm sorry. I couldn't hold it any longer. No. When you mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger, to me...

I was just thinking like that so gives away our age that we use him as like the icon of like fitness because young people, they would have no idea what we're talking about. They would only know the current day like the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. No, they know Terminator, don't they? But they wouldn't know like his like fitness, like Gold's Gym fitness days where he was like competing as a bodybuilder.

To them, they might just think like this old man. And so I'm just thinking from their point of view, when you mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger, they'd be like, what? Why would you want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, I would say that, and the reason I use, but I don't know. It's questionable. We could ask other people. The reason I chose Arnold Schwarzenegger was not in the context of fitness, right?

If I wanted to talk about fitness, I might have said LeBron or something like that, right? The reason I talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger was specifically in the context of building muscles. There's no back jerk. If that makes sense, right? I don't. Well, what have I gotten myself into? Stop it. Yeah. No, no, no. It's a joke. But still, like, yeah. But if you were to think about someone that had big muscles, who would it be these days?

Like The Rock? Yeah, maybe The Rock. Yeah, I think The Rock. But The Rock is like 50-something. Yeah, even he's old. Even he's outdated. Even the young examples are old. And that's like the most modern one I can think of.

Yeah, like who's jacked? Yeah, who is like the iconic, who's like the youngest, most iconic, like muscle-bound person we can think of, like celebrity? Yeah, maybe The Rock or Chris Hemsworth or something, right? But I just feel like the way the world is made up now is that everything is just pockets of influencers, pockets of...

media personalities that people follow. There is no... I'm sure there's some huge fitness influencer that we probably don't know that a lot of young kids know. They all know this. Yeah. You have so many of these influencers that have millions of followers. Yeah.

it's just the way the world is made up now it's not from Hollywood the two influencers these aren't like aren't the because it used to be the I mean think about like social media now like we keep going back I think that's another like telltale sign we keep talking we were talking about like Egyptians like you know in the golden era of Hollywood like so all of the icons back in the day like Humphrey Bogart right like and then Jesus you're just going back and back yeah

And then you're absolutely right. It's like nowadays, Hollywood isn't your main source for entertainment anymore. No, no. It's all on your phones and social media now, man. Yeah. But yeah, like, I mean, going back to like your original question, so December 31st, 2024, hopefully, you know, I'll ask ChatGPT and then Justin, Justin Yang, Howie Lam are going to show up. When we record an episode next New Year's Eve, we should reference this episode again. Oh, totally. Yeah, like a little time capsule. Totally. Totally.

We've said that before in the past. I just want to say something. I don't know if this will make it into the interview. Get it off your chest. No, but I just feel like sometimes, you know, I'm a victim of this 100% and I'm talking a lot of it because of frustration with myself. I'll say things that I want to do, habits I want to build, my goals that I want to set or not set anymore.

But then time goes by and you get back into your comfort zone and the routines and then the failures build up again and the guilt comes back in and then you start to forget. And then all of a sudden it's a new idea comes in and this and that. Now, I'm speaking with my own frustrations, right? I, for myself, know that, yes, once you get into a groove, as Justin says, you get into a momentum. Right.

It makes things much easier to keep these habits. For me, it's like a two-week. That's like my magic number. If I keep a habit for two weeks, whether it's working out, changing my diet, whatever, it tends to get much easier. And I'm able to keep it. But my problem is that I just drop off just as easy as those two weeks. And it takes about a week to drop off.

Now, for me, that week means...

And for me, usually it's about work. I suddenly get booked on this job that's really difficult or multiple jobs that are really difficult. And then I have to break the habit because all of a sudden, because I'm not sleeping and because I'm working so hard, my focuses have changed that I'll slip this meal or slip that workout. And then they will build into a second time of slipping, a second time. And the next thing you know- And the dominoes, dominoes come apart. And literally each day that I've slipped-

is about a factor of two to three times more difficult to get back into that rhythm again. And once you're in a factor of two, three, two, three, two, three, three or four times, game over and I'm out. And once I'm out, I think about that two-week momentum build again. And I always say this to my family members and my wife, which they always say, you know, how are you always talking about getting, needing to feel it to get back into the momentum, needing to feel it to make that decision to change your life.

The reason why I have to feel is because I know the drudgery that I need to get through to build that habit, to build that momentum. And I just know that I need to be in the right mindset. And what's that right mindset is that my back's against the wall. I have no other options. Desperation. Desperation. I have to do this. And then I will build that momentum, go through it all again, and hope for the best. So my question is,

How do we make this even more actionable?

Is there a way? Because my biggest, my problem is not building that momentum. I can do that. I've done it so many times. It's keeping that momentum. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. It's so, it's easy actually to build that first wave of momentum to do something because it's fresh, you're optimistic, you're pumped, right? It's always easy. But inevitably, everyone falls off the horse. So fucking frustrating. Along the way, everyone falls off the horse.

And it's getting back on. That's the toughest part. And not just getting back on for the first time, getting back on the second time, the third time, because you're going to have repeated times where you're going to fall off the horse and fail. And it's getting back each time. That's the real heavy lifting. Like, how do you do that? And it reminds me, like, I'm sure, Eric, you probably have more to touch on this, but it reminds me of, you know, people have said that you can't rely on motivation, right?

Because motivation is very fleeting. It's like an emotion, right? It's like adrenaline. It comes and it goes and it doesn't stay forever. So if you base your actions and your habits off of motivation, inevitably that's going to let you down. It's more about changing your lifestyle. It's like your lifestyle has to be different. It has nothing to do with motivation.

It's more about just change the way you live. Every day is like you have a new perspective on how you live. And that's like the biggest change. Well, that's part of the reason why I said earlier that I got rid of the scale. I used to do like calorie counting. Do you remember that? I used an app and I'm not... Fuck that shit. You want to hear my pep talk? Go for it. Okay. No, I... Pep us up. Okay.

I mean, my motivation in this is that I completely empathize with you, right? Like, I think we all do. Like, I think you're describing... What everyone goes through. What everyone goes through. And then, like, you mentioned, like, some of the things that you've shifted that you're not doing anymore. Yeah.

And I think that's already like very powerful first steps is like removing certain obstacles. Like what doesn't work? You might not immediately know what does work, but the first part of building great habits is understanding what doesn't work and then removing those from life.

the solution so that you can then start honing in on what will work for you. And I very much agree that setting big goals does not work. And in fact, that's the reason why most people fail. Like if a really great book is by John Acuff called Finish. And it's a book just around like, why do people start all these things and never finish? It's really this tendency for perfectionism.

And perfectionism is lead to these big goals. Like, and then once you fall off the wagon, like, so everything you're talking about, it's like people have gone through. And the good news is people have gone through it. And then they've people smarter than us have been able to articulate it in a way where you can take action on it. Right. So I think removing certain things and incorrect ways of doing things is powerful. It's based on science.

And then I think you have a problem with your environment right now. So choices that you've made. So I think you then now have to think about the strategy because you're only thinking at the tactical level. You actually have to think strategically and say, okay, how do I set up my work environment so that I can do this? Because if I were you and in your work environment, my habits would probably be worse than yours.

No one could probably succeed in that type of environment. So you've got to make some even more strategic choices about your life and say, how am I going to make my money? Because if making money is going to be at the cost of setting up your environment in a way where you can't be successful, you've actually got to make that tough decision and say, what are you going to do with your life? And that's a big one, right? I just...

Yeah, because to jump on what you're saying, there's one of those things that when I was going through previous, I guess, health phases, I had a couple of other people in my field that we were all complaining together of how unhealthy the work environment is for my field in terms of on-call 24 hours and the amount of hours you put in to do a project and the client expectations. Right?

Right? To always just, you know, you jump whenever they call for it. My mom would call that 卖命. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the whole team is on board because it's an industry standard. Everybody is on board. But we were like, okay, well, if everyone just started just saying like, fuck that shit. I kind of, actually, I still kind of do that. I just, I stopped replying after 11 o'clock. Right?

And 11 o'clock, that's like so crazy. Yeah, that's my cutoff time. Like 11 p.m., that's like crazy. That's not the Chinese way. No, but 11 p.m. is already like... I know, it's already crazy. I've had people literally say, But in China, you gotta be 20, 21 o'clock. And I'd be like, And that's me making the excuse that I'm a morning person. Yeah.

Well, because everyone else is burning the midnight oil, right? Oh, yeah. They're fucking three o'clock in the morning. All night. All night. But like, I would zoom out too. So that's a really helpful perspective. But it's like...

you know there are lots of people in banking for instance right like just use banking as an example and they say it and they're out and those guys are making like millions so i would say like first you have to really like look in the mirror and be like first of all are you making millions

And if you are, then you're like, okay, am I willing to fucking sacrifice my family, all these things for these millions? And then if you're not making millions, then you've got to take a hard look and be like, okay, what kind of choices am I making? And then you might have to make a pivot and

The thing is, there's so many successful people in history that have made hard, hard fucking pivots. They were way worse situation than we were, and then they pivoted to something else. But everything about your field tells me that most people could not survive and accomplish the goals that they want in that field no matter what. So it's not even a question of habit building. That's like a life strategy thing, right? Eric, I think, touched on something recently.

really important with this whole thing because it makes me reflect and realize that pretty much every reason I can remember of how we giving us of why he's failed at something has always been work has always been your projects

And I'll share something. I don't want to be dark here and I don't want to, you know, sort of, I'm not trying to, don't read into it. Right. But like, let's take this to the extreme. So Poor Economics was a book that came out a couple of years ago. And they did a lot of pioneering research in terms of like people in really poor economies. And there's this thing called the poverty trap. And essentially,

like it's a metaphor for what you're experiencing is that so like these people that are like you know kind of uh itinerant workers right and like developing countries they're so poor that they have to travel like all this distance just to get a job and the job is so harsh and brutal that they actually can't make enough money to eat well and then they get sick and then they can't work

And so they're in this vicious cycle where basically death is like the only destination for them because they can never even to be able to find a better job to work and not get sick. And so there's this curve where they're like, okay, well, billions of people, not maybe not billions, but hundreds of millions of people that are caught in this poverty trap where they can never get out. And all of us metaphorically are in a poverty trap in some aspect of our life.

And so like if you're in this poverty trap, no strategy is going to get you out of that. No tactic is going to get you out of this until you actually change the game. So like for you, it's not a habit thing. It's not a habit question. It's a strategy question. And then the only other like kind of observation I would make is that you don't work in like the mines, like coal mines. Like you're still in a white-collar job.

So I would say that finding a way to break down your goal and lower the expectation even further and say, I'm just going to work out for five minutes a day. There's no excuse not to be able to do that. Like you could choose a goal small enough where like you could build a habit and say, I'm going to work out for five seconds per day. Five seconds. Yeah. Find that minimum threshold where you can do it every single day. What is it? Yeah. And then so like if you don't change strategies…

And you're just working at the tactical level. I think that's a concern. But even then, you just break down your goal so that at least you're doing something. Yeah. Look, it's not like once I'm in a project, every single minute of each day, it's just like, ah, no, it's not like that, right? It's about my mental capacity or I would say my priorities. My priorities, okay, yeah.

I think I know what it is because it's a recent revelation I had, which is guilt.

I throw a lot of guilt on myself when I don't do something or when I do something that I don't want to do or when I want to do. So I'm being vague here because it's not important. The most important thing is the guilt. Now, this guilt means that when I'm in a project, I'm supposed to put my 100% heart into it in order to do a good job. If I were to do anything else that is less prioritized, then I feel guilty.

What does that mean? Exercise. Eating right, even.

That becomes guilt because, oh, I deserve to eat happy. I deserve to eat something that makes me happy because I'm so stressed. So I feel guilty by depriving myself, by making myself feel even worse by eating healthy. For example, exercise. Oh, I feel guilty because that's taking time away from thinking about the project or from working on the project that I know that if I spent that extra 10 minutes or 30 minutes on…

I could probably break through and get solutions or make it even better. Self-compassion and self-forgiveness are two scientifically proven strategies. Like everything you're talking about, like you shouldn't feel like you're alone. It's like, again, it's all rooted in how humans are wired. Like what you're going through

is a consequence of you not having a lot of self-compassion and self-forgiveness. And the only way that I know about how to like learn these things is to actually, for me, it was to read about them. I could not have figured them out on my own because I just didn't have the knowledge. But then once I read about them and I saw myself and I had the awareness, then only then I could start working on it. And I'm gonna admit that I'm not like any further ahead.

like in terms of where I am and making progress, but I have started to see what the potential solution is rather than just being like ignorant about it. Because like everything you're saying resonates with me and there is science behind that. But if you're not able to give it the time to study it, then your progress is going to be super slow because then you're just going to learn by trial and error. But self-forgiveness is,

So first of all, all these things are emotional regulation problems. It's the way we deal with emotions that causes all these negative emotions. And then these negative emotions create vicious cycles. So self-forgiveness, self-compassion are two really key things that we have to learn to practice. And the other piece is just breaking it down into a smaller goal and not feeling guilty about it. And Finish is the perfect book that will basically help you scientifically understand why people fail and don't execute on their goals.

The second day after New Year. Because the first day, they set all these lofty goals. The first day they meet them. The second day they don't do it, then they get on the negative train. This is fascinating. Peering into both of your situations and the way you guys are talking about it. Because I feel like I'm the opposite. I feel my problem is I have too much self-forgiveness.

So then I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. So it never really motivates me enough. You know what I'm saying? That's so awesome. Like when you guys talk about like the guilt, I don't really relate to that as much. Like I understand it, but I don't really relate to it as much. So Justin though. Because I don't feel that level of guilt. And I think that's exactly my problem. Like it's not a good thing. My problem is I'm all the way on the other side of the spectrum than you guys where I don't have enough guilt that motivates me to do it.

in the first place, you know, or to stick with it. So I give myself too many outs and I don't feel that bad about it. And that's the vicious cycle I'm in.

So it's like very opposite from you guys. No, I love this because it's three very different perspectives that I think the listeners are going to have fun with because there's a lot of different type of situations, a lot of different type of people out there. Yeah. Right? And just like you just said, how you don't feel guilt, I don't question it. I get it. You know, I can see you just be like, oh, fuck it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I forget myself. Yeah. It's not so hard for me to do that. And I can see where you are on the journey is because as you're speaking,

as you said, your body was starting to break down a little bit, then you started getting worried and then you start getting that sense of urgency. - Because I've forgiven myself way too many times, way too easily, and now my body's feeling told. - So for you, I think, and I don't like, again, I don't want to like just put a hat on everyone 'cause I'm just trying to share ideas and see how you react to them. For you, it seems like more like atomic habits of like just actually conventional habit building.

making it easy, making it obvious, making it satisfying. I think that seems like it would work for you because it's more of the positive angle of self-reinforcement. For you, because I can also relate to you even more so, it's like, for instance, in Finnish, they say, whatever goal you have, just cut it in half. So like, for instance, like this unconventional piece of advice is like, just cut your goal in half. And that's like huge. And once I was able to cut some of my goals in half, my actual completion rate

Like skyrocketed. So for you, I think it's like, you have to look at some of the things that are holding you back, which is perfectionism, guilt, and then setting like goals that are too high and not breaking things down because I have the same exact issue.

And then for you, it's more like the positive elements, like habit stacking, like taking a habit that you already do and just stacking with it. Cause there's not things holding you back. It's more like implementing something new. No, but I would, I would just encourage like both of you to try these things, go through the experience and really do them and be a scientist experiment. Like what Adam Grant says, like experiment, tweak, experiment,

And then, cause you, it sounds like you really want these things to happen and you need them to happen. Like I do too. Like I was looking at my medical results and they weren't that much better than yours, Howie. Remember some of my numbers, cause genetically I've got a, even a higher mountain to scale. So this year I probably need to attach some more sense of urgency into my diet. You know what I'm saying? Just like exercising every day is not going to cut it for me, which is fucking scary.

Anyways. All right. Well, here's to a good 2024. We're looking up at that mountain we have to climb ahead of us, right? I wonder what it is because I feel like I remember a few years ago whenever we would do a podcast.

New Year's show. We've had this exact conversation before. Recently, but I feel like years ago, it was a lot more of like, yeah! I don't know. I feel like it was a lot more optimistic. Right now, we're just sort of... More hopeful. Yeah. We're so defeated. Yeah.

No, okay. I get you. But I might eat my words later when we're at the end of the year. But I'm very optimistic about this year in terms of my personal growth in the health aspect.

Because I feel like- Because everything else you'll forgive yourself. Yeah, I forgive myself for everything else. Exactly. But no, because this is like the first time I feel like I have some real urgency and clarity on it. So hopefully that makes a difference. We'll see. Well, I'll say two things. In light of everything that we said, don't forget all the great things in our lives. I mean, overall, we're living like first world, like these are all first world issues.

Okay? And so, like, never lose sight of that. And then I just think, like, but the future self piece is like my mom says, you got nothing. You got shit. So, you know what you need to do. All right. Well, we'll leave it there for today. This was a long one. All right. I'm Justin. I'm Harry. I'm Eric. All right. Be good. Be well. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace.