How to Fear Less, Spark More Creativity, and Choose Better Problems in Life

- I made a discovery this morning, Drew. - Okay. - And maybe there's actually a lesson for the audience here, and this is just me talking about myself, as usual. (laughing) - I am not a morning workout person, I can't do it. And I've tried on and off for years, and in the last year and a half of the business where I've been shooting a lot more videos and doing the podcast and everything. They're days where I'm at the studio all day, and I come home, and I usually work out, I used to work out like four or five PM after work, and now I get home, and I'm just exhausted. I don't wanna do anything, I just wanna melt into the couch. And so my wife and a friend of mine, they're like, you know, you should really pick up the morning workout thing. Like it energizes you for the day and all this stuff. So that's been one of my 20, 25 things, is like, I'm gonna become a morning workout person. And now working, huh? - No man, I was in the gym at like 6.45 this morning, I got one rep into my second set of dead lips, and I was like, fuck this shit, I'm going home. And I left. - I feel the same way, I don't know what it like, I get up, I wanna get up in the morning, and I wanna like start working on shit. I'm the same to my brain. - I don't feel energized by it, I don't. - My brain is super alive in the morning, and my body is super lazy and tired. - Yeah, yeah. And it's like, I'm most intellectually productive, like say, it's between six and nine. So if I'm spending half that time in a gym, it feels like I'm wasting that, and meanwhile, I'm like physically making myself miserable. - So yeah, I just felt like a very bad trade off. - Yeah. - So as of today, I have abandoned my morning workout. - Hey, what's the saying, you set your goals in January, abandon them in February. Here we are, consider it abandoned, consider it abandoned. But I did learn something about myself, which is actually what's most important. - I think that is really important for people to understand the two, to kind of work with your own personality around those kind of things. Like there's no right or wrong way to do it, as long as you're just doing it right. - Right, and I believe we're gonna talk later today about like, what can you actually change about yourself and what can't you? And I think this is, yeah, this is a huge thing, which is like recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all advice, everybody's body is slightly different. Everybody's brain chemistry is slightly different. Everybody's lived experiences different. So, if someone's not working for you, let it go. - Yeah, stop trying. - Let it go. - Stop trying. - Let it go, do you wanna sing Frozen? - Let it go. - Let it go. - I never really haven't seen Frozen, actually. I'm like, we should, you know, we've talked a little bit about doing a live podcast. We should do a live podcast musical. - Oh, yeah, hey, I'm for it. You could play some guitar, all the same. - Give the people what they want. - Yeah. - Let's give the people what they want. - Okay. - It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast. - With your host, Mark Manson. - All right, well, what are we talking about? - What are we talking about? - Something completely different. - What are we doing here? - That's not that different. No, Mark, the fuck of the week this week. - Yes. - Failure, specifically the fear of failure. - Okay. - You get a lot of questions around. - What's that like? - Yeah. - No, bullshit, Mark. We all fear failure in some way. And we're gonna get it in the nitty gritty of it here. You do get a lot of questions around this though. And it is probably one of the most common fears. You got a height spider's failure. Like they're all up there. - Sure. - Death, yeah. - Sure. - What I did was I kind of went out and gathered. You've never really specifically addressed this. I mean, you have and maybe a paragraph here and there and you're writing or you've had some questions. - I don't know what it is. - We've never really specifically addressed this. But you have written a lot around fear. You've written a lot around failure and how to deal with it. And so now we're gonna marry the two fear and failure. - My initial take here, and this is probably why I haven't written a lot about it explicitly, is because it's not really the fear of failure. It's a fear of what the failure means, right? So to some people, what the failure means is that they're gonna be laughed at by others. For some people, what the failure means is that they're a loser and they're not worthy. Like they suck and they're never gonna have a good opportunity in life. For some people, the failure means that they shouldn't have even tried, that there's no point to anything, right? So think of it this way. If you tried to do something very difficult in the privacy of your own home in your bedroom, nobody's watching, there's no stakes involved, there's no judgment involved. You're just like trying a thing. Chances are you're not very afraid of failing at it. Like you're not really worried that you're gonna screw it up. It's as soon as other people get involved, that the fear starts to emerge. And then, and that other people, it's both concretely, it's like if people are watching, but also it's abstractly, right? It's like if you're trying to do something that is you know can be socially compared to others, right? It's like, okay, all your friends are really good at this thing. And you're now you're afraid to try it because if you're not good at it, you're gonna feel worse than all of your friends, right? It's the social comparison and it's the status comparison that like is actually driving the fear. It's not the failing at the thing itself. - Right, and that's a point you've made in several different spots, you know? Why we feel the failure, what you kind of alluded to there was one is the spotlight effect. We think people are paying more attention to us than they probably are. - So that's a factor in this is that we tend to overestimate how much people are actually care if we're doing something or not, right? It's a, you know, if all of our friends are experts at Acro Yoga and we try Acro Yoga and are terrible, we tend to overestimate how much they care and are paying attention and might judge us. The interesting effect though is that generally people who are, the better people are at something the less they're gonna judge you for trying. That's a little side note. - What do you mean by that? - Like let's say you wanna start your own business, right? Who are the people that are gonna criticize you? It's the people who haven't done a fucking thing. The people who've actually started a business are gonna be the ones who are like, yeah, you should totally start a business. It's really hard, but it's amazing here. Let me give you some tips. Let me help you. It's like the body builder at the gym is never the guy like insulting people 'cause they can't pick up heavy weight. It's other people who can't pick up heavy weight who are insulting you. - Because that body builder has been there. He's been there before. - Totally. He's like, oh, I know the struggle he's going through. - Exactly. - Yeah, exactly. - And so they're not gonna sit there and shit on you? - Exactly. - Yeah, you had a, this is where jumping ahead, my little plans that I have, ruining your plans. - It never works anyway. I don't know why I make outlines for these, but you have this great quote that you posted recently is like, if you wouldn't take their advice, then fuck their criticism. - Yes. - This is kind of what you're getting at as well. - Well, and it's, I think, okay, so this is, I guess this might get into one of the strategies to kind of alleviate the fear of failure. Is like, look, what is the social comparison driving that fear of failure? Like, look at the thing you're afraid to do. What is the social meaning behind that thing driving the fear? And then ask yourself, do you actually respect those people that you're afraid to fail in front of? Because in a lot of cases, people are not. Actually, it's the people you respect the least that you're afraid of embarrassing yourself in front of. And like, that makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Why would you be afraid to embarrass yourself in front of somebody that you don't respect their opinion in the first place? That's just, that's completely illogical. So that's like one kind of mental reframe that people can use to get a little bit more clarity around this. - Yeah, and if you want a less vulgar quote that you could attach to this too. I came across this and digging some of this up. There was this famous, it used to be a famous evangelist. I don't know how famous he was, I guess, but an evangelist. So going kind of the other way here, Mark. His name was Dwight L Moody. And a woman came up to him one time and she said, "Well, I don't really like the way you preach." And he said, "Well, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it." (laughing) It's like, that's okay, that same sentiment. - But you're communicating with that. But yeah, it is always the people on the sideline who are the hecklers, right? Like what's the famous Teddy Roosevelt quote about the man in the arena, right? It's like, it's never the other guy in the arena who's gonna talk shit unless I mean, it's a competition. But like, it's always people on the sidelines who are afraid to do it themselves. And the reason they are talking shit is because they're afraid to do it themselves, right? So it's like, the reason you're afraid of failing at it is because they're gonna judge you because they're also afraid of failing at it. And so you get this weird, like, game theory thing where it's like, if just one person wasn't afraid to do it, then maybe nobody would be afraid to do it. - Right, yeah, but I mean, it does go back. So it's not the failure itself that you're afraid of. Like, you just outline, it's the judgment. It's the rejection, it's the embarrassment. - Yeah. - And so those are the things we need to focus on. So another way to put it to, and I think you've said this more in some way or in other somewhere, is failure. The fear isn't the problem. It's the avoidance that's the problem, right? Avoiding even taking action in the first place is the actual problem there. So we've already jumped into this, but there is like a, you can do all these different, you can try to reframe failure in a lot of different ways. And one of those, first of all, is the criticism part that you're talking about, where you can reframe that as, oh, these people, it doesn't matter. A number of other reframes that you've brought up over the years or two, one of them being failures necessary for growth. - Yes. - Another way to put that to another way I've been thinking about this lately is you can't get good at something unless you suck at it first. - Totally. - Like you have to suck at it first. You have to. - Yes. - And like, once that sinks in, it's like it's so obvious, but yeah, you have to suck at it. - Like this guy. and I have to suck at it. - There's no NBA player that just woke up and started hitting every shot. - Right, right. - Like it just doesn't exist. - Right, right. The prodigies are the very rare exceptions to the rule. And even they, you know, at some point, they need to start working and failing and screwing up. So yeah, it's, it's failure is a fundamental part of the process. And I think, and it's funny because again, in areas of people's lives where there is no social judgment, they seem very comfortable with that. Like if you think about picking up a new hobby at home, by yourself, again, there's no, like, sort of judgment or pressure to perform or anything, you just, you know and accept it. So I'll give you an example. Like a really good friend of mine, a guy I grew up with started renovating his own house. You'll appreciate this. And like, he's always been handy, but he didn't know shit about home construction, right? And so he just started pulling up YouTube videos and going on online forums and asking questions and like, buying the stuff. And he screwed a lot of stuff up, but it's, it's three years later and his home looks incredible, right? And it's just that long process of like, screwing things up, buying the wrong material, installing it the wrong way, uninstalling it, installing it again, watching the YouTube videos, trying again. And it's, in the absence of that social judgment, it's, there's no pressure to perform. There's no like fear of the fallout of like, oh, I installed my new water heater incorrectly. Like it's just, you just take it down and you install it again. Again, we accept that in most areas of our lives, where we don't have this status game going on in the background. It's as soon as that status game enters into our head that we start obsessing and becoming very neurotic about like, well, if I don't do it right, then, you know, I'm a loser and God, I fuck everything up and nobody's ever gonna wanna hang out with me again. You know, it's like all, those narratives start growing and taking place. So it's, I guess I've never thought about it this way before, but like, I think it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that like, fear of failure or fear of action is an extension of relationship issues, essentially, like the way you relate to people in your life, right, like if you have a very unhealthy relationship with the people in your life or with what you believe is gonna get you approval from the people in your life, that's gonna drive the fear of trying and doing things. If you feel like you're supported and people care about you unconditionally, then that removes the downside costs of upscrewing something up, right? Then you're not afraid to like install the water here incorrectly, like there's no consequence, you know? - Yeah, just that totally checks out with me too. I was like, all my friends think, oh yeah, Drew can come and fix this and I always fuck something up on it. - Yeah, always. But then the thing is that you like, you have the confidence enough to go fix it. - Yes. - Like that's the, that's the, like I don't, I might doubt that I'll be able to do something, but I have the confidence that I'll be able to fix it if I do fuck it up. - I mean, another way to put it is that like, fear tends to occur in proportion to like the perceived stakes of something, right? So it's like, if you perceive the state, and this is where the spotlight effect comes into, 'cause there are some people who do have supportive people around them, but they're just incredibly insecure and neurotic and think that like everybody's gonna hate them all the time. And so if that's the case, then yeah, you're gonna have a really intense fear of failure, pretty much perpetually because you have this irrational sense that you're gonna be judged for a ton of things that you're not gonna be judged for. - You also say though, you have this kind of related to that, what you call the paradox of cringe. Do you want to explain that one a little bit? Do you remember that one? - Remind me. - Yeah, so I like it though. - The cringe where the movements of our lives are often hold the seeds of our growth, basically, you know. You call this the freedom to be misunderstood too. - Yeah. - So, and this really hits home for me too with the podcast over this last year and kind of seeing like we go back and I look at those early episodes and Jesus, like I cringe hard at that. And that, but now I really do recognize, even after all these years of working with you and hearing these things is that that's the process. That we were willing to suck at it and put it out there. And there were a lot of people who were like, what the fuck is this guys, you know. And I was like, oh, that's hard of me. - Yeah, I remember this. - If you cringe at your past self or you said this before, that's a good sign. - That's, yeah, exactly. Like you should be cringing at your past self consistently because that is a signal that you've grown or gotten better at something. And it's interesting hearing you say that too because it's like you've been in the business for a long time and I think you've seen that externally. You've seen me go through it. - Oh, and intellectualized all of this. - Yeah, totally. But it's now you're living it. - Yeah. - And it is a very different experience when you live it, right? It's like, 'cause yeah, you go, like I've not watched our old podcast episodes, but I'm sure if I did, I would totally cringe and be like, oh my God. It's like, what was I thinking? Oh, Jesus, that lighting, what the fuck? But that, I mean, at this point in my career, that's just been a constant of everything. So yeah, it is weird that you want a certain amount of cringe in your life. Yeah, you said something you effect to at one point that the world rewards people who are willing to be bad at something long enough to get good at it. That I think too, that's a really good way to sum this all up, I think in those terms where if you're just willing to, you have to sit through the sock, you have to sit through the criticism and the cringe and all of that. Some of the ways, though, that we can get into a little bit more of the prescriptive stuff here, too. You wrote this article, it's called, how to conquer your biggest fear and you have these kind of five things and we can go through as many of them as we want. These five kind of tactics you can use. One of them is exposure therapy and I think this probably comes from CBT instead of that, right? Where you gradually face what you fear in manageable doses. Right, what's the advantage of that? So if you, let's say you have experienced a lot of social anxiety, so what you do is you look for a sweet spot that feels challenging but not overwhelming, right? So if you experienced a lot of social anxiety, actually we did a video with a woman who had social anxiety and that video is basically just the exposure therapy over the course of 30 minutes or edited into a 30 minute video. So she had extreme social anxiety. So the first thing was, we took her to a mall and just had her talk to a few small talk with strangers and kind of ask a couple awkward questions. And at the time, that felt absolutely terrifying and difficult but it was also manageable. It wasn't, it didn't seem outside the realm of possibility. You know, and then as the video goes on, we like put her in more intimidating situations slowly but surely. And then by the end of the video, she had to give an impromptu speech in front of 50 people. And something that like was completely unimaginable to her when we had started shooting. And exposure therapy is basically just stair stepping your fear. So if there's something that feels terrifying and overwhelming, just break it down in the smaller parts and look for the smallest action that does feel challenging but not overwhelming. And it feels within you, within the realm of possibility of your current ability. - Yeah, okay. There's another one too. It's kind of related as orthogonal exposure. - Yeah. - You call it, which is tackling related but different activities that shift your perspective. - Yeah, so I mean, this one, this one's a Mark Manson hair brain theory. I'm not aware of any research behind this but it's just something I've noticed in my own life and with other people is like, if you can find something that is related to your big fear. So like, let's say your big fear is large social gatherings. - Right. - Like being in a party or standing up and talking, giving a presentation or something. There are smaller adjacent things that you can do that can perhaps build a comfort that will then relate to that, right? So let's say you're really afraid of giving presentations at work and you freak out. Maybe you start looking up jokes to tell to a group of friends. Like that's a way to like, it's not the same thing but is orthogonal to the thing that you're afraid of. And so it builds some reps that are like related to it. - Okay, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And that can be applied like if you're afraid to start a business, like don't quit your job and then like start a little side hustle. - Yeah. - Like sell something, right? - Anything, like yeah. - Yeah. - So it's related to the exposure therapy but it's like it doesn't have to necessarily be the exact same thing. It can be like a separately kind of related thing. - Okay, all right. - Next one, altitude training. Push yourself slightly beyond your comfort zone to make the original challenge feel easier by comparison. So there's like a, and you talk about the gold box zone of doing that too. So we have another YouTube video where I do this with a guy who his issue was he just was uptight and you know, really, really like perfectionist about everything in his life. And I just, I put him through the most extreme absurd circumstances repeatedly. So we finished that video. I think I made him put on a chicken suit and invite stranger skydiving. And it's basically, it's like turning up a volume knob to 12 and then realize, and then once it gets turned back to the three or four that was bothering you before, it feels so quiet and simple and easy that it's just like by comparison, you kind of ask yourself, you're like, well, why did I worry about this stuff before? There are strategic places to do that, right? Like if I would say if it's an anxiety related issue, you probably don't want to do that. But if it's more of a difficulty like letting things go or it's like a control issue, or if it's just like, You there's like kind of a low level intimidation or procrastination of something, like that can be effective. Like you just dial it up to 11 and then bring it back to where you actually want it. And then when you bring it back, you're like, oh, this is actually easy. So a simple example for my own life. Back when I was dating and I was, you know, like a lot of young men, I was intimidated by dating or found it frustrating or often found myself in front of attractive girls who like, I didn't know what to say. I went and lived abroad and I like tried to date girls who didn't speak English and I didn't speak their language. And it was so fucking impossible that when I came back to the US, like a date with an American girl was so easy. I was like, this is fucking gravy. I'm like, this is nothing. So, so that's one example. Okay. Okay. Yes. Well, actually, okay. So the next tactic is making it fun, like gamifying it, bring friends in. I think that's a big one, I think it's funny in some way. It takes small, small failures as a badge of honor like you did with a rejection case or something like that. I think that's a really good way to go about it. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of funny to suck at something. Yeah. Right? Like, when you, if you don't take it so seriously, you think you're absolutely right. Like, oh, god, look at how bad I suck at this. This is hilarious. Right? Like, I'm, I'm thinking about, I, uh, so I'm just thinking of like handyman stuff. Um, uh, I guess from the previous example, I remember the, like a number of years ago, um, my mom was moving and she asked me to, like, hang up a towel rack and, uh, uh, and so I went and I did it for, I did such an awful job. Like, I, I, she's never asked you again. I didn't mismeasured everything. Like, the thing was crooked. It was so bad that I actually brought her in and we started laughing at it. I was like, yeah. I'm like, you, you really should just hire somebody. Yeah. I'm useless. I'm absolutely useless. Okay. The last one, which might be a little more serious would be to focus on a identity formation, uh, where you challenge beliefs like, you know, I'm not good at X, which is like an identity thing. Like, I'm just not good at this or not, not someone who does this. Some of this is like growth mindset, fixed mindset, right? Like, I think a lot of people who struggle fear failure, it's because they, they see it as something that can't really be changed, right? Like you mentioned earlier, the, the process of like, like failure is part of the process of growth. Well, you have to believe in the potential of growth to even like, accept that. So if you, if you think that you're just never going to be good at something, then it makes sense that there's no upside to fail. Right. You might as well just avoid it. So I do think, uh, a lot of that is growth mindset related, um, I also, I mean, just something that I developed in my early adult life, kind of being into all this stuff is like, I started to notice by, I don't know, by my late 20s, I started to develop an identity as, I am a person who does hard things. I am a person who is willing to fail and embarrass. Like, I actually kind of wear as a bad, badge of honor, uh, like, how difficult it is to offend or embarrass me. I hit that point somewhere maybe 10, 15 years ago. And, and once I hit that point, I started to become very proud of it. Like almost consciously because it's like, okay, that's a, that's a trade I want to keep. That's like a very valuable trade to have in life. And so let me like build some pride around that and put some of my identity into that, uh, because that's going to pay off later, right? Like, if there's something else that I'm afraid of or intimidated of down the road, um, I'm not going to be as scared to do it like anything else, you know, like, just the same way, uh, feeling like nothing you do is ever going to succeed can become a piece of your identity. That's a terrible thing to build an identity around. You can also build an identity around, uh, you know, I'm, I'm the type of person that will persevere through, through anything and figure it out and I will grow and eventually succeed at it. And then, then of course, the next question people have is like, okay, well, how do I build that identity? Well, the only way to build an identity is to do things, actually go do the things, right? So your brain is like anything else, which is it only believes something that it is perceived repeatedly. And if you haven't actually proven that you are willing to do difficult things and fail multiple times in whether rejection and embarrassment, uh, your, your brain's not going to believe that that's who you are. Right. So you, you have to like, earn it to a certain extent. So in many ways, like, that's kind of like the last stage, I would say of like, kind of figuring this out. It is funny. I joke that the, at the top of the show of like, Oh, what does that feel like? Like, I honestly, you're, you're not normal in this regard. No, like, it's been a long time since I've really, because it's like, even this, this show, right? Like, let's say the show bombs. Yeah. I'll feel bad for like 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'll immediately be like, okay, pull up the data. Like what, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? Like, give me a report on like what we could have done better, right? Like, that's just how I approach everything at this point. And that's the biggest thing I've taken away from all of this too. This, this learning experience from that too is like, yeah, you're going to feel shitty about it. That's okay. On to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, that's part of it. Yeah. And I think that's kind of like the, the, the key takeaway here is that the focus on the process over the outcome is really what you need to kind of reframe. Again, it goes back to that quote. You said life rewards, those willing to be bad at something for long enough to get good at it. Yes. That's the whole process. Yeah. It's not the outcome that matters. Yes. It's, it's in any time, you know, because your mind, you know, your monkey brain will try to trick you and make you focus on any particular outcome. And like, again, another mental reframe, a tool that people can use is like, any time you find yourself kind of obsessing over one outcome, try to zoom out and see it as a larger process. I find that helps me all the time. You know, it's like whether it's a, you know, a video that bombs or a newsletter that I get a bunch of angry replies from or, you know, a speaking gig that the audience is just not into it. You know, it's, it's easy to get caught up in like, oh my god, I fucked up. This is terrible. But then if you kind of zoom out and say, okay, but I'm going to learn a bunch of things from this and that's going to make me better in the future. And actually in the long run, I'm going to benefit from this having happened. You know, if you can consistently find that perspective, then yeah, you're golden. Yeah. So I ended up with this. And I kind of already said this, but fear is not the enemy. Mm-hmm. It's the avoidance that's the enemy. Yes. What's the, what's the, the only thing we have the fear is fear itself? Was that Franklin Roosevelt? Yeah. That was Roosevelt. We've got both Roosevelt's in this episode. Yeah. Fucking killing it. All right. American dynasty. America. America. All right. We'll be right back. All right. We're back and we are going to talk about some bullshit. What are we, what are we talking about? Oh, the, the burlion or bullshit this week. Mark, is boredom the key to creativity? Is boredom make you more creative? Okay. I was just going to say the key or a key. Yeah. Can boredom make you more creative? We've kind of, we've danced around this a little bit. I'm, so I'm going to pre-empt all this by saying this is an area I'm not familiar with the research. So I'm going into this purely blind and based on my personal experience. Yeah. I think boredom probably is helpful for creativity, but it's not necessary. Oh, okay. That would be my, that's my, that's my initial taste. Okay. I'm curious to see where I end up at the end of the segment. Okay. Yeah. Let's, I'll tell you a little bit of what I found on this. Okay. And then we can reassess that. Okay. Let's see what that is. So it does turn out that there are some studies that show inducing boredom in people can make them more creative in certain ways. Now, they've measured this in a couple of different ways. One of them is by measuring what they call divergent thinking. Okay. Okay. Being able to come up with a lot of different examples or solutions to a problem or something like that. Sure. Many different. So for example, anyway, there's this one study where they found that if you assigned a group to a very boring task, like copying down phone numbers from a phone book, they could come up, and then later you give them, okay, come up with as many uses for a plastic cup as you can. Those people who had a boring task rather than watching like an entertaining movie or something like that, they they came up with more, more ideas and more like varied ideas as well as two. Okay. So that's like divergent thinking. Okay. And then they did a follow-up study with that too, and they're like, okay, let's make them even more bored. I mean, this is part poor college kids, but you came up with this right there like as if copying down phone numbers from a phone book wasn't like, don't even copy them down, just read the phone book. Oh my god. Like reading the phone book, right? Okay. And that was even bet they came up with even more ideas and better ideas from the two. Okay. And there's also what they call convergent thinking, which is if you have all these disparate ideas and you can come up with a one solution for them. So a common, a common research paradigm for this is like, I'm going to give you three words and you have to come up with one word that ties them all together. So for instance, string, cottage and goat, what word would you come up to, unify all these? Cottage cheese? Or cheese would be. Cheese. Yeah. So that's called convergent thinking. Okay. How, how, how, how quickly and how well can you come up with those types of solutions? One type of thing. If you make people more bored, they're better. They're better at that. Okay. Now, but the thing is, I'm very bored right now. So that's why I nailed that. That's why I nailed that question. Okay. Well, spice it up to actually that's really a really good little transition here to what another thing that they found in studying creativity and boredom is that there's state boredom and there's trait boredom. So the state boredom is like a temporary, we're going to induce temporary boredom and you don't have anything else to do and we're going to or just your books. Yeah. Yeah. Then there's trait boredom though too. Okay. And so there's people who are just more prone to boredom. They just get bored super super easily. Yeah. I'm going to raise my hand. Let me I was just going to say let me see if this this sounds familiar to you to anybody here. Yeah. Trait boredom is you're just you're more likely to get bored in situations. You you find things that are unstimulating you just things are just boring to you. Basically that's that's trait boredom. And what they found is mainly the people who have this trait they're higher in boredom, boredom, proneness. I guess. Okay. That's what they call it. They're higher in that regard. They're not as creative. Okay. Which seemed to I thought I was going through this list of like trait boredom. Oh, this is Mark. You get bored so easily. Yeah. You do. And I'm like, that's weird though. He also comes up with a lot of like creative ideas. I always thought my creativity was like the solution to my constant boredom. That okay. That's actually kind of what they found too. Okay. Was that more recent studies with just within the last like year or two more recent studies came out. And if you have you can protect against that if you have a high learning goal orientation. So you are very goal oriented person. A high need for cognition, which is like you'd like to think about things and yes, wrestle with complex ideas in your mind. High openness to experience that's definitely you and a high internal locus of control. So you think you have usually have all those things. Well, those four things can contribute to action. So those are like moderators. They kind of they'll moderate that relationship. I think you're high on all four of those. For sure. What they do find too is that if if you do get bored during a creative activity, that can be destructive to your creative pursuits as well. See, I've always experienced that as I get desensitized this stuff quickly. Yeah. Like I actually am interested in tons of stuff. But then I get desensitized very very. So this is I think this is where the fork in the road happens is you're you you you you need that extra stimulation. Yeah. And so for some people if they're just bored by things, then they're just impulsive. They go to they chase whatever novelty is right in front of them rather than be able to focus on that. Yeah. You do have those tendencies as well. I'm sure you have definitely seen that. Sure. But you've also been able to find like a creative channel for that. Yes. Create a part of creativity is kind of that renewal and that yeah, that pursuit of now. Well, it is interesting. I mean, again, this is just subjectively speaking. If you hang out with a bunch of creatives. Yeah. If you like, I don't know, go to a party with a bunch of musicians. I mean, there's a lot of novelty seeking going on. Oh, yeah. All the time, right? And it's there's all sorts of stereotypes of artists, you know, being alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts, you know, completely impulsive and self-destructive and all the sorts of stuff. And so it is it does strike me as logical that a lot of creativity is driven by this just constant need for stimulation, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a novelty seeking about it too, but that in order to be creative, it has to be novel, both novel and useful. And I think that's the that's kind of another one of those little forks in the road where yeah, can you make it useful as well as not just am I just seeking novelty? Let's say somebody's bored listening to this right now. Okay. Okay. Okay. What can they do to be creative? Yeah. Okay. Let's let's bring this home. Let's okay. All our bored listeners. How can they how can they be more creative? There are actually some some there are some tips you can take away from the research on this. If you are bored there, it does create a motivation to seek stimulation. Yes. Just like you're talking about. And so you should embrace that be like, okay, I'm bored right now. What's in my environment that I can interact with as long as it's not like a digital distraction. So I was just going to say I wanted to talk about this. Yeah. So this is to me, this is where this is where it starts to get interesting. I'm sorry. I keep for I get on you. It's just ironic that this segment is about boredom. Because I'm I'm totally bored with it. Okay. No, but this is interesting because it makes me wonder and I so there are there's a lot of criticism. If you look at like say people in the music industry or people in the film industry like there's a it's a very common criticism and I think there's a lot a lot of legs to it that art has become less interesting over say the last 15 20 years. Okay. The movies are not as good as they're not as many novel or interesting movies as there used to be. There's there's more quantity of music but the in there it is less innovative. Yeah. And it's more repetitive and and cookie cutter than it used to be. You're seeing this criticism happen in most of the artistic fields. I think there's probably two aspects of this. You know, one is just that everybody has access to so much stimulation that as soon as somebody finds something that is able to cut through all the distractions and really engage a large number of people, everybody else quickly copies it. And so you get this effect of just like everybody's copying each other. Everything sounds the same. Everything looks the same. All the stories seem the same. But I also wonder if there's a factor of this is just that like a lot of creative people aren't as bored as they used to be. Like if you're a screenwriter, you're probably stimulated all the time and are exposed to stuff all the time. And I've noticed this a little bit myself as well. Like I definitely I mean there's an age component of this but like I definitely don't find myself having as many novel ideas today as I did say five, 10 years ago. And some of that's age, some of that's experience. It's like the more novel ideas you've had, the harder it is to have the next novel idea. But part of me wonders is if I'm just like stimulated all the time. Well, you mentioned in the podcast with Arthur Brooks that you have a lot of good ideas in the shower. So I think that is probably part of it. Yeah. That's the cliche is like, oh, I have all my best ideas in the shower. Well, yeah, it's because you have nothing else to do. Yeah. But think in the shower, right? It's true. I get this too though. I feel like, oh, if I'm not in sitting in front of a computer, I'm not working. Yeah. I'm not doing something. But then I'll just be like on a walk or something lately to the last few weeks. If I've been like in my workshop or something, I haven't been wearing headphones. I haven't been listening to podcasts while I'm in there. Yeah. Because another thing that Arthur Brooks said during that podcast was what you're doing is you're pushing all of those ideas out of your head while you're, you know, why if you're listening to a podcast, you're watching a video or whatever it is, you're not allowing your your brain to just think. Yeah. And so I think there is something to that definitely. It's interesting because podcasts have definitely kind of infiltrated every every nook and cranny, right? Yeah. Exactly. It's like if I'm just walking to the corner store, I like put on a podcast. But why not? Yeah. I've been trying not to do that as much. Yeah. I love podcasts. I do too. I wonder maybe I do an experiment. Maybe we do like a month of just of like a little bit of a content detox or something. Maybe I do that like a stimulation detox. Maybe I should experiment because I've experimented with that in the past, you know, like three, four years ago. And sure it was nice. Like there were some nice like little marginal benefits, but it wasn't sign when I've messed around with stuff like that in the past, it was never a significant enough benefit that I was like, Oh my God, this is life changing. It was just kind of like, Oh, that was interesting. I wonder if I tried it now because I just feel like the every year of the volume knob on the quantity of content and the the stickiness and engagement of content goes up. And I have definitely found in my own life that it's just like I am being stimulated from the moment I open my eyes in the morning to the moment I close them at night. Yeah. Same. And yeah, I wonder what it's like to not do that for a while. I mean, I think this is maybe a cop out a little bit, but I think there is a balance you can strike there. Like I think you need the inputs coming in. You also need to consciously take time to just not have any of it go for a walk without headphones or your phone or anything like that. Or I sometimes if I'm just driving down to the store or whatever, I'll just I won't have any music on my car or anything like that. And just you know, it's funny is like I used to give the advice to cut out distractions. Like it was a similar version of this advice, which was just like we tend to get sucked up in bullshit. We tend to get like doom scrolling and all this stuff. So like really get conscious about who do you follow online? What do you listen to? What do you read? And be like very selective about those things and just like cut out all the other stuff, which I have been and I still am a big proponent of that. What is new and recent is that I'd say in the last year, year and a half, I do feel good about all of the my information diet. Like I feel like all of the stuff that I follow and consume is good stuff. It is interesting. And it is smart people that I trust. But I've hit that saturation point where like I literally don't have more minutes that's in the day, right? - Right. That's a first, right? Like it's no longer, I'm no longer doom scrolling, TikTok in my free time. Like I never really did that a whole lot. Now it's just like, I don't have enough time to listen to all the podcasts I want to listen to. I don't have enough time to watch all the YouTube videos or watch the shows of my wife and I want to watch. Like it's just, I don't have time for everything anymore. And yeah, maybe I, maybe we go the other way and just like cut stuff out even further and see what happens. I know you, I've heard extreme examples before of like writers, somebody's kind of, they're planning to work on a book. They're gonna write a book. They'll take like two weeks and do nothing, but just like sleep. Yeah, just not, they won't do anything. They won't write, they won't read. They won't do anything and they just like are, just a med, they bedrock basically for two weeks. And then they go and they're just like boom, they go. So I've heard that, that's probably an extreme end. I don't think you have to go to those kind of lengths. But you know, from the research there are tips like engaging in mundane tasks before you do creative work. If you, you need to sit down for a while, like you need to bang out two hours of real hardcore creative work, like take 30 minutes and go clean the house or just do something really fucking boring, you know? Or allowing for those unstructured periods in your schedule, where it's just, you're just thinking. Now, I'd like I do some time boxing and stuff like that, which is a period of the way you do things as we've established. And I'll put, I'll put, I'll put a time box in the 30 minutes of just, it's just called flex. And I'll just like kind of sit there and do that, you know? - You know, I remember, I remember seeing that Bill Gates had a thing called Think Week, which is he'd go to a cabin with a stack of books and no phone and he'd do it once a year. He'd spend like five days just reading and writing and sitting staring out the window. - Didn't you try to do that recently? And it didn't really, it was a fucking failure. It was a massive, massive failure. Well, there were other reasons for that. - But there were other reasons for that. I don't know, maybe start with a day or an afternoon or something. I think afternoon or I think day, cool. All right, good talk, that was stimulating. Thank you. My brain is sad, it's, my dopamine is churning. So thank you. - You're welcome. - You're very welcome, Mark. - We'll be right back. All right, we're back. We have a reader question, reader question. No, listen to a question. - Yes, what is the listener question? - This one comes from Justin and he asks, if life is all about a never ending trading of problems, what are some of the best problems we can have and what are some of the worst? You've talked about this a lot. What are the good problems and the bad problems that have in life? I think maybe we can give some examples and some general principles that we can derive from them. - That's a great question. - It really is. - I would say the thing that's coming to mind is that the higher quality problems that your trade-offs are happening further up the ladder of like, if you think of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, okay, right, like a bad problem is you're having to make trade-offs between like, do I eat tonight or do I buy myself a jacket so I don't freeze the death? Like that's a terrible life problem now because that is relatively low on the hierarchy of needs. The good problems generally happen like very high up on the hierarchy of needs, right? So it's, I would say the best problems are fundamentally like problems of trading your time for something, right? So it's like, do I want to trade my time for to write another book or do I want to trade my time to launch a podcast? Like both are gonna be lucrative, both are gonna have impact on a lot of people, both are gonna be creatively engaging. Like that's a really fucking great problem and that's something I stressed about last year and it's like, you know, it's a really good place to be. If you're stressed, if that's the biggest stress in your life, like, it's a really great problem to have. So yeah, I would say that the more your trade-offs involve like your identity, time, and aren't affecting any of your like lower wrong needs, your physical, physiological, financial, and family are like all secure, you're doing pretty well. - Right, yeah. So like, for instance, you could have money problems. - Yes. - Again, like, you know, how do I pay rent? Warren Buffett has money problems too. - Yeah. - Where do I put these billions? - Exactly. - And that's one of those is clearly better than the other. - Yes. - Another one too. Like if you're just a capable, competent person and you can help others, figuring out where to put your time to help people or your time money, resources, whatever. - Yes. - That's a good problem. - Totally. - Those sorts of things where it's like, "Hey, I'm in a position where I have options." That's usually a better problem to have than not having options. - A quantity of options is generally gonna be a better problem. - There's always gonna be a trade-off. - Yep. - But you get to choose the trade-off. That's a good problem to have. - I would say problems of leverage versus, say, linear problems, right? So it's like, a leverage problem is, I've got all this money I can either invest this in a retirement account or I can invest this in my friend's startup. Like what is the best use of that investment? Like that's a very high-quality problem. - A trip to Mexico and now cocaine and hookers and all that. - Exactly. - Right. Whereas when you're kind of like, again, on the lower rungs of the needs ladder, like you're tending to look at everything very linearly. Like it's like, okay, I either have enough money to put gas in my car or I have enough money to buy a dinner for my family next week. And that's a trade-offs like that are, it's hard to compound when you're looking at things very in like a one-to-one basis like that. So yeah, I would say looking at things that, like making trade-offs that compound is generally a very great place to be. Why is life just a never-ending series of problems? Because the question, it just assumes that as we have here, that life is just a never-ending series of problems. One, a lot of us don't treat it like that. We think we're looking for the end goal where there are no problems anymore. And you've talked about that a lot. But why is that impossible to achieve? - I just think that the human brain is, like if you imagine our software, it is hard-coded in our software, our brain software, to pretty much be mildly dissatisfied in almost every circumstance. Like that's actually evolutionarily speaking, like that's a good thing, right? Like if you ever got complacent for too long, you wouldn't do anything, right? Like it's the creature that is not complacent that's gonna go do things that help it survive and procreate and provide for its family and its tribe. So it is like we've evolved like a constant mild dissatisfaction with everything. And also like, so I think it's a combination of two things, is like A, everything's a trade-off 'cause resources, whether it's, you know, just food, money, attention, time, expertise, like all those things are finite. So because all resources are finite, there's a trade-off between everything. And then you combine that with the human propensity to, the grass is always greener on the other side of like over-valuing things that we don't have and under-valuing the things that we do. It's like the combination of those two traits or realities is you just end up with this like constant need to find a better trade-off. Like just, it propels everybody forward in a way that they are never completely satisfied with the progress they've made. - Right, right, and I think a slightly different way of looking at this too is that you always do, there are always options. - Yes. - They might be shitty options that are presented to you. But the goal is to find the less shitty one and then keep trading up the chain. That's kind of what you're saying. - It reminds me of, you remember the red paperclip thing from years ago, like 20 years ago? It was like an early internet thing. - The red paperclip. I don't know. - You never heard about this? It's an incredible story. So it started, I think it started in the early 2000s. So a guy posted on, I think it was on UseNet, like the old, old internet forums. - Oh, I do remember this, yeah. - And he said, I have a red paperclip and I'm willing to trade it to somebody for something else. And basically, I want to see what I can eventually trade it into over a long enough period of time. 'Cause the idea back then was like, it was still very novel the fact that you could post something in a document with thousands of millions of people you never met, you can potentially read it. So he like leveraged that sale. I have this red paperclip. I'm willing to trade it for something. And I think he traded that for like a pen. It was like a goofy, like children's pen. And then he traded that for something. And I think it was like a doorknob or something. And then, and it was like their months between all of these trades. So he would like post the thing. He would get, you know, hundreds and hundreds of offers. And then he would like look for the thing that he thought had the best long term potential to trade for something else. Anyway, long story short, over the course of multiple years, this guy eventually traded up to a house and started a red paperclip ended with a house. And I just feel like that is, that's life essentially, right? It's like every day, every moment, you're making some sort of trade off. And that trade off is either gonna pay off for you in the long run or it's not. That trade off is either gonna compound for you that it's like a leverage, like there's some leverage behind it or there's not. And your job or essentially like what personal growth is or self-improvement is is like finding the good trade-offs throughout life and trying to end up, trying to get from your red paper clip to a house. Like that is the game, except instead of trading an object, you're trading, you're time, you're knowledge, you're energy. - And you're starting where you are, too. - Yes. - That's the important part, too, I think. - Yes. - Start where you are. - Yes. - I remember this, I was in my 20s and I was terrible at saving money. I couldn't save it. I mean, I wasn't making any money for one. So it's impossible to, you know, so I remember what I did was I would go in and I would go on a log on my bank account every single day, I would take one dollar and I would move it to my savings account. And every single day for like a few months at a time, I'm like, this isn't gonna make me rich. I know it's not, but I'm developing that habit, you know. And I started where I was and it's kind of like, I got a paper clip, this is where I'm starting. - Yep. - So yeah. - Yeah, and I mean, the beautiful thing about life is that that ladder of trades, it extends infinitely in both directions, right? So it's like, literally if you are on the brink of starvation, there's some sort of trade off you can do somewhere to like find the next meal or whatever. And then if you're if you're Warren Buffett, I mean Warren Buffett is still actively trading in the markets, right? Trying to find the next big trade for himself. - And it's 90s, my God. - Yeah, so it's, yeah, it never ends. That is essentially life. It's just, it's the game of trade-offs. - Yeah. - What's the wisdom for the week? - Okay, Mark, wisdom of the week. This one's a little different, okay? - Okay. - I heard a joke over the weekend. - Okay. - And it's probably my new favorite joke. - Oh wow, all right. - Okay. If you have kids, turn it off now. (laughing) Kids, you're listening. - You've been warned, okay. - What's the last thing you wanna hear when you're given Willie Nelson a blowjob? (laughing) - My God, what? - I'm not Willie Nelson. (laughing) - That is so funny. - Yes. - That is so funny. That is a funny joke. - Yes. - God, that's my new favorite joke. - God damn, that's wise. (laughing) That's wise. That's all. We'll be back next week folks. You're welcome. The Subtle Art of Mackin from The Fat Podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.