Episode 397: Micheal Easter on The Comfort Crisis: Is Optimizing Life Making Us Weaker?
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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it!

Okay, so this is the book. This has been out for a year, The Scarcity Brain, yeah? Yeah, a year tomorrow, actually. Wow, happy anniversary. And this one is The Comfort Crisis, which is, I really enjoyed this one, too. Oh, thank you. This is your first one. Yep. I'm going to ask you a couple questions from that, too, because I really, I noticed something which I found to be very interesting in it. You talk about, in that book, I just did a TED Talk. Let me just get back up.

Three days ago. Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Part of that TED Talk was me talking about this whole concept of like how boredom has been a lost feature in our world. And because of that, I think mine was much more about kids and how building mental health

strength and toughness has been, it's becoming a problem in a very soft world. And I think a big part of it is because of boredom. We've lost that ability. And then you talked about that a little bit, which is an interesting, I didn't realize, I didn't realize, like, I was like, oh my God, I really like this guy now. Like you kind of make, you kind of make mention of it also, like what the benefits of boredom are and like how the world has evolved to not having it anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to talk about that. I know. Let's talk about it. Go ahead. We're starting. All right. We're starting. That's how we start here. We go right into it. I like it. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. This is Michael Easter. He's a two-time New York Times bestseller. Did the Scarcity Brain become a New York Times bestseller? Yeah. So Scarcity Brain...

was New York Times bestseller. Comfort Crisis wasn't because Comfort Crisis had this like... What? So Comfort Crisis was interesting because it was one of those books that it came out, you know, had a decent opening week and then it kind of sat and it just needed to like, it was kind of like the virus where, you know, two people to four to eight

to 16 word of mouth. And so now, I mean, at this point, three years later, we're selling a lot more per week than we were like even in week three of the release. So it just kind of word of mouth took over. That happens. That actually happened with like a couple of things, family man that happened with and like breaking bad, like certain things like don't really have like a strong, very rarely, maybe a strong out of the gate, but then through word of mouth and more,

picks up momentum and it becomes like a cult hit, a cult following. I thought your book, I thought it was great. I thought The Comfort Crisis was really, really good. I thought this was a New York Times bestseller. No, but we've, you know, we got there. We got where we needed to get. So. I love it. Yeah. So let's talk about the scarcity loop and then we can go into The Comfort Crisis. Is that cool? Yeah, it's good with me. Okay, good. So because,

because that is like the more topical for now, but can we talk about number one, the scarcity brain? And you talk a lot about something called the scarcity loop. Can you just start by talking and defining and explaining what the scarcity loop is? Yeah, so the easiest way to think of the scarcity loop, it is, I argue in the book, the most powerful habit loop in the sense that it pushes people into repeat behaviors that they later regret. So the easiest way to understand

understand how it works is to picture a slot machine and why people get hooked on slot machines. So the scarcity loop, it has three parts. It's got opportunity. Part two is unpredictable rewards. And then part three is quick repeatability. So when you play a slot machine, you have an opportunity to win money, right? But two unpredictable rewards, you don't know when you're going to win

win money or if you're going to win money, right? Any random game you play on a slot machine, you could lose, you could win like a dollar or you could win thousands of dollars, right? There's this insane range of possibilities that can happen from this one behavior. And then three, quick repeatability. Once you finish a game, you can play

over, right? And so people play over and over and over. So I live in Las Vegas, which was really kind of the impetus for me to start thinking about this loop, just watching people play slot machines all day long. Because when you look at that behavior, you're like, that doesn't make any damn sense, right? It's like, everyone knows the house always wins in the long run, yet people keep repeating and repeating the behavior. And it's simply because

That three-part system is incredibly powerful at grabbing people's attention and incentivizing this repeat behavior that is fun in the short term, but it's detrimental in the long run. Now, the reason that it's important is, you know, people are probably listening to this going like, I don't play slot machines. Why do I care? The reason this is important is that

This three-part system, it really got sort of revived and put at scale in slot machines in Las Vegas in the 1980s. And then a lot of other industries saw that people would play these machines and lose money. And they were making... The casino industry is making billions of dollars off this thing. And they go...

okay, well, how do we do that? What is that? How do we do that? And so now you see this three-part scarcity loop being put in a lot of mobile technology. So I would argue that if the average listener wants to pull out their phone and look at their most used apps, I guarantee most of them are going to

be using this loop. So think of social media. It's like you have an opportunity to get a like, a comment, to see something entertaining, but you don't know how many likes you're going to get if you post, right? It could be one or two and you're like, oh, that sucks. That's a loss. Or you could go viral. It's like, oh my God, my life changed. And then you check and recheck, right? It's in dating apps. It's the sort of swipe, swipe, swipe. Am I going to get a hit? But

but it's also in the rise of sports betting on cell phones. It's in, I mean, it's just been placed in so many different areas in our life that we almost,

often lose our time, resources, and attention to. It's even put in shopping. So like online shopping is really leveraging the loop to get people to buy more stuff they don't need. So is it that companies really understand the schedule? Like how is it that they're, is it like, so if they understand that loop, then they have technology that's based around creating like

Basically working on the human psychology of at what point do people get anxious if they don't look at something or do something? Is it like, is there a particular speed? Is there a particular, what is that? Like, what is the actual precision that.

Is it the same with the algorithm and it is with slot machines? Because what I found interesting, and you talk about this, is like the slot machine, when it was a handle versus when it was a digital form, when it became digital, you just press a button, the amount of usage for slot machines like skyrocketed.

Yeah, it went. So the average slot player went from playing 400 games an hour on the handled machines because it's slower, right? You got to pull this clunky handle to playing about 900 games an hour when you could just hit this button repeatedly. So basically double. So yeah, the three things that it needs is

the person has to get something that's of value to them. First of all, it has to be unpredictable, right? If something is predictable, like I'll give you an example of a slot machine. That's kind of a ridiculous example, but it'll help you understand it is if you were to put a dollar in a slot machine and every time you hit the button, you got two

got $2, it's like, okay, that would be nice, but it wouldn't be that fun. I mean, that's basically what a job is, right? It's like a basic labor job. Like I pull this hand, it's like working in a factory. I pull this handle and I get a predictable amount of money for the act. That is a job. So you need to have that unpredictability. And then third, to your point, the faster you can deliver and repeat the behavior, the more likely someone is to get hooked on it.

So for example, like buying a house that has a certain amount of unpredictability too, right? If you're looking at it as an investment, but no one gets hooked on buying houses because they're

you're going to own the house for like 10 years. So you need the speed. The faster, basically as a general rule, the faster you can repeat behavior that you get something good from, the more likely you are to repeat it. I guess that's a dope. Isn't that like a dopamine hit though? Yeah, it's like, so dopamine sort of drives is the wanting element of it. It makes you want to do the behavior. And then there's a different system that delivers the reward. That's called the liking system. Yeah.

And so, like, it's crazy. Like, even, like, do you know... Have you heard of a company called Rakuten? I have heard of them, but I don't know a ton about them. Tell me. Okay, well, it's, like, these companies that now are, like, these... Like, if you're online shopping and you can save money for every dollar you buy, right? They also call it... Like, there's been a ton of, like, funny, like, memes on, like, it's called, like, girl math, right? Like, oh, you know, like, I just...

got $7 because I spent $700. So I made $7, you know, because they say, whatever you buy today, lucky day, you're going to get 10% back of whatever you buy. So people that end up buying so much thinking that they're actually making money, you're actually not making any money. You're losing money because you're spending all this money. You know what I mean? And it's like this like crazy Jedi mind trick that

they do on you. And it's kind of similar with slot machines, right? Because you put a dollar in, you eventually get a quarter back and you think, oh my God, I'm making money now, right? Even though you've lost like 20 bucks, you know? Exactly. It's still exciting. I'll say two things about that. One is there's another website and app called Taimu. It's this like direct buy from China website.

that site is like the crystal meth of shopping. It's like you go on the site and you get literally this wheel like you would see in a casino where you spin it and that determines your discount. Sometimes they'll even pop up with a slot machine where you play it and then it tells you, oh, you're going to get this discount. And it's also on a timer. So that incentivizes speed. They're like, you're going to get this free gift, but you got to buy something within five minutes. So now it's like the speed is on. It is just like,

It's out of control. It's completely ridiculous, but it works. Like this company went from nothing to like being this giant online retailer. Oh my God. That it's so brilliant though, because I,

And by the way, I'm a victim of it too, even though I know better and I know that like it's all playing on a certain like psychosis or psychological human behavior. I still do it. It's also they used to have like scratch and save days, you know, when you go to a store and like whatever you scratch like today, 10% and like, oh, wow. So they end up buying the whole store thinking or Costco. Think about Costco. Oh, yeah.

Costco is good with this. Costco is amazing with it. And so I guess my question to you is like, if we know better, right? Like this becomes a whole big existential thing. Like, you know, why do we do behaviors that we know otherwise, like we know we're doing things that we know are otherwise not good for us or not necessary, but we still pursue it. Why is this? Yeah. Okay. So

I don't think people do anything that is completely irrational. There's always some benefit we get from these behaviors. So take buying stuff. That's fun as hell in the short term. You're like, oh, this is great. I just scratched off 20%. I'm going around the store. I'm throwing stuff in my shopping cart. I'm like, I'm going to look amazing in this. Everyone's going to love me. You buy it. You're like, oh, God, that was so much fun. And then you get home, though, and you're like, why did I do that? So the

the point I'm trying to make is that we often, when we get ourselves in trouble is that we choose these sort of short-term rewards at the expense of long-term growth, long-term good decision-making. Like we're very much wired to look to the short-term for satisfaction. And, uh,

you know, part of what I argue, a lot of my work looks into sort of the bigger why we do that. And I think a lot of these sort of quirks that we have today, I think they go back to evolution and how in the past, you know, to survive, you just had to do the next thing that was going to get you a benefit, right? We like, didn't make sense to think long-term impact

in the past. Like you were just trying to survive. You're trying to get food. You're trying to keep your kids alive. You're trying to procreate. Like you just needed to do the next thing that was going to give you a reward. And in today's age, with all the opportunities we have to have fun in the short term, I think that's not always the thing that leads us into long-term places we want to be. Now,

No, no, absolutely. I find it. But I guess the question is, how do we stop ourselves really from wanting more? If even if when we know better, like how do how do we do that? Yeah, well, I can tell you ways to stop that sort of

short-term bad decision-making and then I'll give you kind of a larger, more existential answer. So in the short term, I think because we know that speed is such a driver of these decisions we later regret, I think if you can figure out a way to slow down a behavior, that can be a really great way to basically stop it. So if you think about online shopping, even something as simple as like

okay, I got a rule for myself. I'm going to put this thing in my cart and then I got to wait 48 hours, 72 hours. And then I'm going to come back to it in 48 hours or 72 hours and say, okay, do I really want this thing? Now I found personally, literally probably 80, 90% of the time, I'm like, I don't actually need those shoes. I don't actually need that new workout gizmo. Like you just, you don't actually need it. Right. And so I think that can cut it down, but you can apply this to all

All sorts of things. I mean, even like even food and eating junk food, like

getting junk food in a place where there's a long barrier to entry to getting it, that'll slow down how much junk food you eat. If you just don't have it in the house, that's a lot easier to not eat it, right? Financial decisions too. I mean, you can apply this to a lot of different ways and even cell phones. So there's this app I love called ClearSpace. And what it does is you choose the apps that you want to put a limit on. Okay. So let's say I select, all right, I want to

put a limit on Instagram. Once I click Instagram, it's going to pop up and it's going to say, do you actually want to use Instagram? Because most of the time it's just like this reflexive thing, right? We just pull out and

pick the app that we use too much. And then if you say yes, it puts you through like a 10, 15 second like pause where you breathe in, you breathe out. It shows you this nice, inspiring quote. And then you go, okay. And then you pick how long you actually want to spend on Instagram. It might be five minutes, you know, to say five, 10, 15 minutes, whatever you pick that. And only then can you go into the app. So simply by having that

that friction to get in there, it will reduce your use of the apps that you don't want to be in significantly. Like, significantly. Well, what's interesting is that it took an app to stop you from using apps. Like, that's not really lost on me. You know what I mean? Or anybody. Oh, totally.

Right? Totally. So the way I heard about this is I had written a thing about how there's a lot of research that says if you just change your phone screen to grayscale, that reduces how much you use your phone because your phone suddenly becomes a lot less rewarding. Like it's just not as interesting. What do you mean grayscale? What does that mean? So there's this setting that you can use in your phone. You can, I think if you just type in grayscale on the search and it basically means so you're...

I'm going to do it right now. Yeah. Type in. Let me see. Is it gray? Let's see. Gray scale. It's in there's something in the settings. I haven't done it in a while, but long story short, what it does is it makes your screen black and white, basically. And when your screen is black and white, all of a sudden your phone is like the life gets taken out of it. It's so boring and it's so like it just sucks to use it. So because it sucks to use, you stop using it so much.

So long story short, and there's a study out there that found it reduced phone use by about 40%. So I write about this study and the founder of that ClearSpace app, he sent me a DM and was like, Hey, I really liked this. We have this app. It reduces screen time. And I wrote him back and I'm like, so you're telling me you want me to use an app so I can use another app less? He goes, yeah, I know. Just try it though. So I'm like, all right, I'll try it. I

I tried it. It worked. Wow. Is there like an override button though? Like, so for an example, if I put, I only want to be on Instagram for 10 minutes a day, can I override that? Yeah.

Yeah, you can go into the app and you can say, I don't want any limits today. Like if you're just like, you know what, today's a day that I just want to go off the rails on Instagram. I want to binge. I want to go crazy. It allows you to do that. That defeats the whole purpose though. Yeah, but you still got to go through the whole breathing exercise and everything. And so I found that I'll occasionally do that. Like if I have a work reason to be on Instagram more in a day, but

It's really reduced my use of Instagram. Twitter is a bad one because Twitter just seems to be where mental health goes to die. So, yeah. By the way, I want to make two comments. Number one, 100%, I think social media is where mental health goes to die for so many reasons, right? Because there's a lot of problems on all of it.

But more than anything, the biggest problem is people are just like, it's just increasing and impacting mental health and loneliness. I mean, people now don't even know how to socialize or they don't want to socialize because they have faux friends that they think are their friends if they're on Instagram or looking at Twitter and they have these fights. So I think overall, it's crazy. But I think that the other thing that you said was really true and interesting is a lot of things in life, if you just like take a second and

and slow down or like have like some kind of barrier where you have to, you know, think again before you act. Typically, a lot of times that's enough to not do that act, right? Yeah, totally. And that's what that could be with like food eating. It could be with, you know, consuming anything, right? Like any kind of addiction. Yeah. Right?

Absolutely. Even, I mean, literally even drug addiction, if you can slow down the delivery, that leads people, like addiction rates go down. I think that grayscale thing is a really interesting, like, thing.

that I'd never really heard of before. Yeah, I'll send you a link. So I wrote about it on my newsletter. I'll send you a link to the post. It's called 2%. And so, yeah, I'll send you a link to that. That'll give you all the details. Yeah, that's your newsletter, right? I know. I was actually, I meant to sign up for it and I haven't yet. Can you give me some other things like that? That's a really good one. The great turning your phone to grayscale. Do you have anything else that you want to like

or you can share that are things that maybe the people haven't heard of that can help them with all that stuff, like helping them with like...

reducing social media or helping them like get into the moment where they can rethink or anything like that's a really good one. I love that. Yeah. Well, I think, I think a lot of it goes back to finding pauses. I gave you the one about food. I gave you the one about shopping. Give you the one about cell phones. What's that app called that you said? Clear space, clear space. Yep. It's great.

It's great. We actually did through my newsletter, we did a clear space challenge. I think it was in April where we got everyone went on the app and there was like a competition of who could use the apps they had banned the least. And it was awesome. So many people are like, I downloaded this just because I wanted to win the prize. And it has totally changed my relationship with my phone. It's been awesome. So that's that is amazing because I think the phone has been like the bane of everybody's existence. Totally. I'd

I mean, it's, it is unbelievable. In fact, the other scale, I wanted you to talk about that. Well, I want to talk about predictability for a second, right? To go back to what you're saying, like, can you talk first of all, about something that you talk about called in the pigeon story, and then I'll tell you why I want to talk about predictability.

The gambling pigeons? The gambling pigeons. The degenerate gambler pigeons. Yes. So for this book, I talked to this guy whose name is Thomas Zenthal, and he's one of the best, most legendary psychologists in the world. So this guy started doing his research back in the 60s. And in one of his studies, what he did is he would set up this

for pigeons to play. They could choose from two games. So he would take these pigeons out of their cages, he would put them in this big cage, and they could play from two different games. So the first game, they would peck a light, and every other peck, they would get a predictable amount of food. So they might get, say, 10 pallets of food, or whatever, every other peck. Now the second game, they would peck

pack the light, but it was unpredictable about when they would get the food. So it was like a slot machine, right? It's totally random. They pack, they pack, they pack, no food, no food, no food. And then bam, they would get food, but it would be 15 pellets of food. So it'd be about every fifth pack randomly that they would get this 15 pellets.

Now, if you do the math on this, it makes way more sense to play the first game. Like you end up with way more food in the long haul. And there's all the there's this theory called optimal foraging theory that basically says that all creatures will do whatever they can to get the most amount of resources. Like you'll just choose the choose the option that gets you the most food, the most whatever. But 98% of these pigeons chose the gambling game, even though it didn't make any sense.

literally these pigeons would play the one game, play the second. They'd be like, oh, this second game, that's what I want to play. And they would just

play that even though it's getting them less food. So is that, that's what I find interesting. Like, so I actually think that like, is it that we humans and animals and pigeons alike, it says to me that we like unpredictability, right? Like some people are creatures of habit, right? Like they'd like to know what's coming, but the truth of the matter is, are we mostly programmed to not like predictability because it's boring? Like what, what is the

What does that tell? What does that say? Predictability becomes boring. Yes. And unpredictability is not boring, right? It grabs our attention. And the guy, Thomas Zintal, who I just mentioned, his idea, and this is backed by a lot of other people, is that the reason we're so interested in unpredictability or the reason that really grabs our attention is because when you think about how humans evolved to find food...

It was kind of like that pigeon game, right? It's like we would have to walk to one area looking for food. We wouldn't find it. So then we'd walk to another area. No food there either. Then we walk to another area. Oh, no food. Finally, we go to another area and it's like, bing, bing, bing, jackpot. You find all this food, right? But it's totally unpredictable. You never know when you're going to find it. And so it's almost like the brain had to almost incentivize falling into this unpredictable scarcity loop reward schedule altogether.

to grab our attention so we would continue looking for food because if you're the type of person who goes well we didn't find it in two places I guess I'll quit you're going to die right so you really have to like keep looking and then when you finally find that food even though you didn't know it was going to be there it's got to be really exciting it's like oh my god yes we

We live. We live to see tomorrow. And then you have to go do the thing over and over again. That's why we will repeat these behaviors ad nauseum. See, I guess my curiosity is about how I think that we've become a soft culture society, right? Because the

the world has now evolved where we get everything at our disposal. Not everything's easy. We got like people are now conditioned to do the easy things, right? Like we can find food everywhere, even exercise, right? We don't need to exercise. We're going to create these, these situations. We kind of create treadmills and weighted vests and all sorts of concoctions and gimmicks to make people want gamify the idea of moving, right? Like everything has become easy. So like, I feel like as a,

I mean, you may not even have the answer. Is it that we now crave unpredictability or some type of like excitement dopamine because we've now, we've become so, we've evolution to a place that everything is so easy. That's where we kind of gain our excitement as a nation or as a society. Yeah, I

I think you nailed it. And I'll give you another, a follow-up example with the pigeons. Yes. So the pigeons, they live in these like small cages, right? It's like they got enough room, but not a ton. Their life is rather boring. So then when he puts them in this box where they can choose from two games, they all play the gambling game. Now what happens though is that

They will take the pigeons and they'll put them in this like giant cage that is meant to mimic like the wild, like a real world that a pigeon would live in the wild where they have to like, they got to go out and forge for their food. They build roost. They interact with other pigeons. Like they're living like a wild life that a pigeon was evolved for. Right. So they'll let them hang out in there for a while. They'll live there for a while. And then they put them back in the box where they can choose between the two games. And they,

all the pigeons choose the predictable game, the one that makes sense. And so why is that? It's quite the conundrum, right? It's because they have lived a life where they found plenty of stimulation elsewhere, right? They were living as a pigeon evolved to live. And so I

I think when you think of humans today, it's like our lifestyles are way different than how humans live for two and a half million years, right? We don't have to physically go find food. We don't have to physically work to survive. We don't, we're not outside as much. Our social lives have changed. Like all these different things have changed that have taken away just tons of stimulation from us. And so without that, we,

We go looking for it elsewhere. We play slot machines. We spend a million hours on Instagram. We go on to Rakuten. Is that what you called it? Yeah, I don't know Rakuten. Well, you'll go on to Rakuten. But like what happens is you download this thing and it shows up.

Like, let's say if I'm on the Bloomingdale's, I'm just making like, if I'm on Bloomingdale's site, right. And it comes up like today, Rakuten, you know, Rakuten is 10%. It's already, it's already embedded into your computer. You need to go out, download it. It says today, if you at Bloomingdale's, you get 10% back. And so then you're like, oh, I'm for sure going to shop at Bloomingdale's now. Like even if you weren't intending to do it. Right. Yeah.

So instead of like the stimulation that you would get normally hunting and gathering and living outside 2 million years ago, it's like Rakuten has become that like, oh, here's this new thing, you know? Yeah.

Yes, exactly. It makes it exciting. But like I find like, and you said this actually where it was in the book or I like, I was like, I did, I read both books and I like saw all the stuff that you did. So I don't remember exactly where I saw what, but I was like researching you before you came on the show. But it's like you're, it was also the fact that like you were saying, like, even when you don't,

Yeah. Yeah.

So this is a... I wrote about this in the Comfort Crisis. There's this... Oh, there's the Comfort Crisis? I'm telling you, I found a lot of stuff in that Comfort Crisis. I love... So it's called... The researchers call it Prevalence-Induced Concept Change. And what...

what you can really think about it as is problem creep. And it basically explains that as humans experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. So we end up with the exact same number of problems. But over time, as the world has improved, our problems get

more hollow, more silly over time. And so it's kind of like the science of first world problems. And they demonstrated this in a couple, the researchers were from Harvard and they did a couple studies that were really clever and kind of hilarious to find this. But yeah, long story short is that people will find problems no matter how good they have it.

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So what does this tell you about where we're heading? You do all this traveling. What's the purpose of your traveling? Are you doing it just because you're, are you trying to like get, are you trying to, is it based on a hypothesis that you have in your head and then you reverse engineer to prove it? Like why, or is it because you love to travel? You're, you're like an adrenaline junkie. You've done like, what's it called?

Iraq in the most crazy times. Like, what is the purpose? Are you trying to figure out like where we're going in like in as a society? Because I could tell you, but what is the goal in

Yeah, you know, I think that I have learned, you know, my background is a journalist and it's very easy to try and learn from a screen. You know, like I could read a bunch of studies and anecdotes and whatever, but I've always found that I get the most interesting stuff, the most true stuff, and also stuff that like you wouldn't expect. Like I've had...

things that I totally believed to be true, totally reversed because I went to the actual source looking for the information. And so that's ultimately why I travel is because like, I just know that I'm going to find the best stuff if I actually go there and talk to people on the ground and put my, and also put myself in experiences where I can actually experience what I'm writing about. That just, I feel like leads me to write something that's maybe a little more true. And at least for me. Yeah.

I also saw, like, you were also, you're sober, right? Like, you were, were you an alcoholic? Yeah. When did you get sober? I got sober almost 10 years ago. Oh, so that's not that long ago. No, not super long ago. Yeah, I was 28, 37 now. So, yeah, I got sober when I was 28. And, you know, I think this actually kind of goes...

into the whole back to the pigeons in the cages thing is like at the time I had this job that was you know it's kind of like yeah whatever it wasn't that fulfilling to me and I've always been someone you kind of alluded to this but I've always kind of been someone who likes to go out learn things kind of explore the edges I'm drawn to like intense experiences and because I just wasn't getting those in my life I could get them pretty easily through drinking

right? Like on Friday night, I can guarantee that if I were to start drinking, it would be more unpredictable, probably crazier night than if I had decided just to sit home and watch Netflix, right? So I was able to get that through drinking. Unfortunately though, that eventually backfires, right? That works until it doesn't. And when it stops working, it's like really bad. So part

Part of me getting sober was one, having to unpack, okay, well, why did you drink like that in the first place? And then two, once you have that answer, you can start to say, okay, well, where else can you get what you were looking for? Like that underlying thing you were looking for? How can you get that in a way that...

enhances your life and other people's lives rather than messing up your life and other people's lives. Wow. So I think that both of your books, like they dovetail nicely. Like there's like a lot of synergies between them. What's your thing you're going to do next to kind of, is there like a, is there like a volume three of what you're going to do or? Yeah. I mean, so

Today I do. I spent a lot of time on my newsletter because I've found that it kind of a lot, you know, books are interesting because you basically sit alone in a room for a year, a year and a half and don't talk to anyone and you're alone with your thoughts and you get no feedback and then you kind of just release it and go.

Here you go. Right, right, right. Exactly. Whereas the newsletter, I can talk to people in real time, work on things that maybe don't perfectly fit into the narrative of a book. So it gives me a lot more bandwidth and real time stuff. But I will, I probably will do a third book. And I think I want to really dive into...

in the third book. So Comfort Crisis had a lot to do with, you know, physical health. But I kind of want to look at how this idea of the Comfort Crisis is impacting mindset and resilience and stress tolerance and things like that. So that'll probably be the third book. So let's talk about Comfort Crisis for a second because that's, you know, I

I loved it. But one more question on scarcity for a second, because I heard another great thing that you were mentioning about how you were working with another psychologist and about some guy about a Lego program or thing. And yeah, I find that, you

You know, it's one of these things, what I like about your work, you know, is that when I was reading it, it's like sometimes common sense isn't so common, right? We try to like find these complicated reasonings for all these, for like sometimes the simplest thing, right? Like you're talking about like people are constantly adding and adding, but really like if you really look at it, it's the things that have the most, the best solutions is when you actually subtract and take away. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's so true. Yeah. I'm going to tell you the whole story because I think it's an amazing story. Yeah. So it starts with this researcher whose name is Lighty Klotz. And he's like this top of the world engineering researcher, basically. One of the best in the field. And he's playing Legos with his son. And his son is three years old. The kid's name is Ezra. And they're building this Lego bridge. So they build these two pillars and then they build the span. And they connect the two pillars to the span. And

and they realize they have screwed this thing up. So that one pillar is taller than the other. So the span is like Skawampus. It's at an angle, right? So our Mr. PhD smarty pants engineer, he's like, oh, I got the fix for this. So he turns around, he rifles through the bin of Legos, and then he turns back around with the Legos, and he realizes his son has solved the problem. So his three-year-old son simply removed Legos from the taller pillar. So...

So he fixed the problem, but he did it in a better way because it was more efficient. It used fewer resources. And so now they have more Legos that they can build this entire Lego city around the bridge. Right. And he realizes, oh, my God, like removing these Legos, it didn't even cross my mind to fix the problem. So what he does is...

Yeah.

And long story short, he ends up setting up 12 different experiments where people have to either make an improvement or solve a problem. And in every single experiment, the best, most efficient way to make the improvement or solve the problem is to subtract resources. So you can solve it or make the improvement by adding. You can, but it's always more efficient to subtract. And what he finds is that every single and every single experiment, people add resources.

to fix the problem, to make the improvement. So this basically tells us that humans are wired to add even when it doesn't make sense. We just preferentially overlook subtraction. So it's not that like one is any better than the other, but it just tells us that we don't even think of subtraction. And by not thinking about that, we're leaving like half the options off the table and those options are often more efficient. They're often a better use of time, of energy, of resources. And so kind of the takeaway is,

if you're trying to improve something, if you are trying to solve a problem, you should probably write down, okay, how would I solve this or improve this if I were to subtract? Because your brain is automatically going to go add, add, add. Can I throw money at this? Can I do X, Y, Z? Can I buy this thing? But often the answer is just to subtract. You know,

You know, I find that just like to be like a metaphor for life, right? That's why I really kind of responded or resonated with me, right? Because it's so true. Again, like so many of these other things. Like, I feel like the easier life has gotten for us, the harder it actually became, right? Like, you know, even, you know, all these...

like sleeping tools, you know, like the, all the rings and the, all the things, right? Like I always try all the, I try everything. I have everything. And I eventually like throw them to the wall and like throw them away because all it does is create more angst, more anxiety, worse sleep, worse this, because now you have just yet another thing to be concerned about, another tool to be concerned about, another this. When like, like,

We don't need all that. Like we just have, we're just like, we just are like just amassing stuff, stuff, stuff. Like even all these apps and technologies to make your life easier actually just makes it harder. Totally. Yeah. And a lot of times, I mean, and unfortunately a lot of times they're totally wrong. Like I did this whole series on the newsletter about accuracy of wearables and you look at the numbers and you're just like, wow, these things are, these things are not good at their job.

Not at all. So how did you figure it out? And how wrong was it? Like, how inaccurate was it? Yeah, so you can do... If you look at step counts, step counts are anywhere from 200% off to... Some are, like, within 10%, but the vast majority are within 20% to 30% off. And they're always... They always overestimate. So if you took, you know... It'll tell you you took 10,000 steps when you only took eight. But I think...

Where it starts to get really wacky is when you get wearables that score something like sleep or give you like a strain count or something like that for your workouts. Those are, I mean, they're basically just making stuff up. Like it's not, it's not good data. How do you prove that? Like, how did you prove it with another app? Yeah.

Well, you can, if you basically look at how they track heart rate through the wrist, like they're, they're, they're making generalizations based on your size, based on wrist base, heart rate tracking for a lot of the workout stuff. And that's been proven to be incorrect a lot of the time because there's just so much noise coming through the wrist, the sleep ones, they,

the algorithms make a ton of assumptions that aren't necessarily true. And the other thing is like, how do you score sleep? I'd like to know. I mean, I've seen, I've had a million sleep experts on here and I've had a million people talk about every single wearable possible. And all I've seen, all I know is that

if I wake up feeling rested, I said, well, if I didn't, I didn't like, it's pretty basic. Exactly. So like you can't, you know, and if you're wearable tells you, Oh, you actually, you know what? You only got a 39 out of a hundred. Like, what are you going to do? Like, Oh, I guess you're right. Wearable. Even though I feel great. Like I'm going to feel like shit now. Like, come on, you know, it's,

it's like the technology just really isn't there. And frankly, I don't know if it'll ever be there because there's so many individual variations. I mean, like some people can sleep totally fine if they just get six hours a night. Some people, they need consistent eight hours. Some people sleep better in absolute darkness while other people's act,

People actually need a little bit of light, a little bit of noise in the background. Like it's just so individual. And so by trying to like put this all in a single number for everyone, it just, it doesn't make any damn sense. Like it's better just to do some self-examination, be a little bit self-reliant, figure out what works for you, experiment, come to, you know, find your own Buddha out in the sleep universe and then, you know, do that thing.

I agree. I mean, I find there's way too many variables to really be accurate. So does that mean you don't wear any of these things now? You're not where are you not tracking anything? I'll track steps. Actually, the most accurate step counter you can buy is like a $20 pedometer off of Amazon. Yeah, you wear on your hip like your grandma probably wears when she when she mall walks. That's about the most accurate you can get. I'm at the point now where I kind of know

Did I get enough steps for the day? And that's good. I know if I worked out, like, you know, there's a lot simpler ways to track this sort of thing that all come down to pen and paper like we were doing before we got all these crazy tech devices.

No, I know. Also, I, you know how I wear this weighted vest. I think you do too. I heard you talk about them too. By the way, this is not like, it's become like super trendy now. Like, I mean, everyone's like now rucking, but guess what? This has been around for many, many, many years. And now things kind of hit a trend or an uptick. And all of a sudden it's the latest and greatest thing. I mean, I just find it very interesting that like it's

People need to like that. That's I guess this is the issue, right? Like we have to kind of like create like these these environments or these things where people are like tempted or interested in like moving their bodies versus because we've allowed people to become lazy. Really, that's basically what's happened. Yeah, we've I mean, we've engineered and

exercise out of our life, really. And I mean, that's progress, right? But progress also has a price. Yeah. And we're paying it with our health, for sure. What are your habits? Like, what do you do daily? I mean, you've seen it all, you do it all, you talk about it. Tell me the things that work best for you that you've seen. The pedometer on your hip, like your granny, yeah? Yep. That's a good way to track your steps. I mean, I've found, kind of going back to that subtraction idea that, uh,

less is probably more when it comes to what you're trying to accomplish. So, I mean, for me personally, it's like, I have to get honest with myself and be like, what, you know, what is your goal? And my goal is to write words that, um, help people live better. And that comes through writing. So I'm

First thing in the morning, I usually wake up pretty early. I don't use an alarm or anything, but I'm usually up really early and I just start writing. I write for, you know, maybe three or four hours a day. Then I usually take my dogs for a walk. I will... Hold on, you write for four hours a day? Just like...

on something or like, do you have like a topic or that you just start writing and it just flows that easy? Yeah, it's either, it's either for the newsletter or it's books or some other project I'm working on. So I was right every day. I mean, that's my job, right? People are like, Oh, you, you write four hours a day. It's like, yeah. But if I was like, you know, at a auto factory, I'd be making auto parts for eight hours a day. So it's, you know, true.

But normally you have to be writing about something like, for example, like so for your newsletter, right? Like where do you find the topics? Do you like look for certain things? Do you like just how does it, what's the process?

Yeah, it's, uh, ideas come through a lot of different ways. A lot of it is, um, just kind of noticing what's happening in the field and writing about current things happening. A lot of times it's readers will have questions, you know, or, or I'll write one, one piece and people will be like, Hey, well, what about this thing? It's like, all right, well, that sounds like a topic for the next one. Right. And luckily, I

I mean, and anytime I have an idea, I always write it down because ideas are like one of those things that they last for five seconds. And if you don't write them down, they're gone. Totally true. So I always have an idea log. So yeah, I write and I usually walk my dogs. I'll toss on a ruck when I walk the dogs. And then once I'm done writing, I kind of reserve the rest of the afternoon for the stuff that's less intellectual lift, you know, responding to emails, doing that sort of stuff. I'll usually work out at some point. Yeah.

before dinner and then usually at night I'll like read, watch some series with my wife, whatever. We have this, we have this, I don't like to talk about this publicly, but I'm going to. We love the, we love the Real Housewives series. I don't blame you for not wanting to talk about it. I'm joking. Which one do you watch? Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. That is my jam. So I grew up, I grew up north of Salt Lake City and so I've never watched this crap.

And then they did a Salt Lake City one. I'm like, I'll watch the first episode. And I got, I just got straight up hooked on that. Oh my God. Yeah. Michael, I'm so surprised to hear you say that. You don't seem like the type. Yeah. I didn't think I was the type either, but here I am. Yeah.

I love, so it's basically like your, like, it's just like your like guilty pleasure, basically. Yeah, that's my mental sludge. I do think it's, I do think it's probably good for people if you do a lot of

intellectual heady work to offset that with something where you just don't have to think. So a lot of people will do like intellectual work all day and then they'll be like, you know what? I'm going to relax with like a really, really dense book. And it's like, that can sometimes backfire, you know, at least for me, I would try to read this like heavy stuff at night. And I realized, oh, I should probably put that in like the afternoon. Well, you know,

I totally agree. You know, it's interesting, even when we were talking about sleep a little bit, is that, like, they have all these rules and regulations of, like, how to fall asleep, how to have the best sleep, no blue light, no screens, no this. But truthfully, like, I like to, I love, like, comedy, and I love stand-up comedy. Like,

I fall asleep to stand-up comedy and it makes me like, it puts me in a happy, good mood and I go to bed like that. Totally. Right? So like, all these rules and regulations and what you should do, what you shouldn't do, like, I believe like, there's so many variables and everyone's so different. Like, what works for you, Michael, I mean, is not going to work for me. Like, you like Real Housewives. I like, you know, I like watching Chris, you know,

whatever. I like, I like watching whoever, like Chris Rock, whoever, you know what I mean? So the thing with sleep too, it's like people say, oh, you need to sleep in absolute darkness. It needs to be absolutely silent. I can tell you that our species would have died off if that's what we required to sleep. Like people used to just sleep around the fire, which by the way is bright. There would be people snoring all the time. There's like the wilderness noises the whole time. Like if we couldn't sleep when it was kind of bright and kind of loud, we'd

like we just wouldn't be here. Like people are fine. You'll figure it out. You know, people are fine. So this is the thing, right? So this is why I really love this comfort crisis, whatever. And also the scarcity brain. Like I find like we,

we've made our cult, we've made our society so soft where we have like to sleep. Now you're going to do it in this position and in this darkness and at the temperature of 65 or else you're not like we're making people so fragile, like actually doing hard things or putting yourself like in a situation where you're going to be uncomfortable, actually like build a lot of staff, like mental stamina and

And like, does it make you such like, like such a snowflake? Yeah, totally. I like the word fragile you used. I mean, generally, in general, I think the more you need in order to do something, the more fragile you are. You know, it's like you should be able to just do a thing without many resources. Like that's exactly what you're after. And a lot of this stuff borders on superstition. Like to me, you know, you see all these crazy morning routines people have. They're like, I got to go through a

11 steps before I can sit down and work. It's like, that to me is no different than a baseball player who stands on the mound and has to like tug their cap three times and then do some weird thing before they'll throw a pitch. Like it was no different. You know what? It's like, it's being, it's being able to be malleable and flexible. Yeah. We've in the world of wellness and health in the, in the guise of wellness and health, we've, we've lost the ability to be healthy. Well, right. Like,

It's 100% what's happened. I mean, this podcast is called Habits and Hustle, right? So you can imagine, I have everybody on here talking about their habits and their hustle. Some of these morning routines, by the way, also night routines, are so laborious. I don't even know how you have a job or a family because you're doing your morning routine until like three o'clock in the afternoon. Like, I think it's...

it's also breeding a lot of like narcissism, right? Like I have to do, I got to put myself in these situations to be, I got to do my sauna, my cold plunge. I got to meditate. I got to journal. I got to do my gratitude. I got to eat a piece of protein. Then I got to go work out and then I got to rock. And I'm like, do you work? Do you have like any responsibilities or you're just routining all day? Totally. Yeah. I think it's like...

I think people need to, I think it's worth analyzing what actually is helping being kind of ruthless in that examination. So, you know, the person with the 11 step routine, if they got ruthless, they might find, you know, maybe like two or three of these things are good, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that's actually just adding to this burden of like things I have to do. And if I don't,

And if I don't do them, I feel guilty. I feel like I've lost the magic potion that's going to allow me to do X, Y, Z. So that's that's basically how I view it anyway. I agree with you. That's why I was like actually asking you, like, I think there's a book there right there. But don't I mean, I think there's a book and how like we've we've we've made ourselves like mentally unwell by all the well things where all the mentally of all the wellness things we're doing, you know? Yeah.

Totally. So don't steal my idea. No, I'm joking. I think you should write it. But I know you're not feeling well. I know you have COVID, poor boy, and you still came on this podcast. And I really appreciate it. And maybe when you're in LA next, we can do it in person. I don't love doing these things online like this. It's kind of wonky for me. Yeah, we'll do it. That'd be awesome. I'd love that.

I would love to meet you in person. We can like dive deeper in both. But thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I hope you feel better. Yeah, well, I'll be fine. This is like a tax that my job takes with all the travel. So it is what it is. My gosh. Well, God bless you. I love what you're doing. I think you've nailed it.

And so I can't wait to see more of your stuff. And I'm also going to subscribe to your newsletter, which I meant to do. Awesome. Well, I'll send you that grayscale one. Don't forget. Do you have my email? No. Okay. I will get it off this. I will get it. And I definitely want you to send that to me. Yeah, I will do. Sounds good. Thank you, Michael. I hope you feel better. I'll talk to you later. Yeah. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. Yeah. Thank you. Bye. Bye.