Deep Questions with Cal Newport - IN-DEPTH: The Comfort Crisis (w/ Michael Easter)

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal welcomes the bestselling author Michael Easter to talk about the importance of embracing discomfort in the quest to cultivate a deep life. Drawing from Michael’s two books, THE COMFORT CRISIS and SCARCITY BRAIN, as well as Michael’s personal journey from an unhappy office worker with an alcohol problem to a full-time writer who enjoys daily hikes in the desert, Cal and Michael get into the weeds of our human wiring and what it feels like to build an intentional life.Video from today’s episode: https://www.youtube.com/calnewportmediaINTERVIEW: Bestselling author Michael Easter [5:56]Links:https://www.landroverusa.comhttps://www.calnewport.com/slowThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for the theme music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is In-depth, a semi-regular series where I interview interesting people about their quest to cultivate a deep life. Today's episode is presented by Defender, a vehicle designed for those seeking adventure in a distracted world. Now, I've been looking forward to this episode for a while, as it's a chance to talk to a writer who I've long followed and long have wanted to meet. His name is Michael Easter. He's a health and science journalist. He used to be the fitness director at Men's Health Magazine. He also used to be a journalism professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. But he is most known now for his two bestselling books, the comfort crisis and scarcity brain, both of which I've read and highly recommend.

He's now a full-time writer who runs the very popular 2% substack newsletter and podcast. and podcast, I subscribe to it and I recommend it. If you're wondering, 2% refers to the fact that only 2% of people take the stairs instead of the escalator when both options are offered, even though research shows that taking the stairs would significantly improve your longevity. This concept encapsulates a lot of Easter's writing, where he looks at the sort of common sense, but no-nonsense, evidence-based advice for how human beings,

Beans can get the most out of their body, live healthy, live fit, get the most longevity out of their time here on earth. Now, in this interview, I have two purposes. One, I just want to learn his advice, the type of stuff he writes about his newsletter and his books. Stick around for the end of the interview where I actually just ask him point blank. I said, okay, imagine, you know, you're one of my listeners and you haven't been thinking about your health and fitness, and you want to start making changes like,

what's the first thing you do? What's the entry ramp? And actually, you're sort of a surprising answer that overlaps with things we've been talking about on my show. So stay tuned for that. But here's my secret secondary goal for this interview was to hear Michael's story, right? Michael was a busy journalist. And then he switched from writing for Men's Health magazine. He had a relatively busy writing life because he was writing freelance, working on books, and teaching a pretty full. I think it was a two, two, or perhaps even a three, three. course load at UNLV on journalism, and he dropped all of that. And he now, you know, pays his expenses with his newsletter and can just write full time. And he lives in sort of like, I don't

know if you call it the countryside, but the desert makes more sense. The desert outside of Las Vegas. And he goes on these epic rucks and runs with his dog through these scenic canyons. His time is his own. He can write what he wants to write in his books because his newsletter covers things. I mean, what he's cultivated a deep life. And I am interested in his story, and I take him through a story, how he got from working for

men's health out of college to where he is today, including, by the way, a very meaningful first stop with substance abuse. And it was in him kicking substance abuse, in him learning about himself on how to do that, that this more crystallized

version of the deep life that he lives now is formed. So I think his tale is fascinating. You're going to hear his story and you're going to hear his advice. Now, here's a side note, a little insider knowledge. When I interviewed Michael, the interview you're about to hear, this was two days before me having to go in for a surgery. Actually, the first surgery that I had ever gotten. Spoiler alert, I survived because I'm recording this intro after the surgery has already happened. But I was in a mindset when I was talking to Michael where I was thinking about and taking seriously my health and fitness in a way that I probably hadn't been before. You might pick this up

in the tone or the approach to my questions, but I was eager to learn. And I have come on the other side of that surgery with a lot of big plans in motion to reprioritize the type of things that Isser talks about. As I'm now in middle age, this stuff matters. It's going to give me a massive return potentially for the decades that follows. So I'm coming to. I'm coming to. into this interview in a vulnerable state and an well-timed state to receive this type of wisdom. All right. So this interview extra matter to me. Anyways, I think you'll like it.

Before we get to it, I want to say a word about today's presenting sponsor, which is Defender, or Presenting Sponsor is what allows us to present the interview that follows with zero commercial interruption. The iconic Defender line of vehicles has been reimagined for a new generation of explorers. the Defender 90, 110, and 130, which can seat up to eight passengers, all maintained a legendary off-road capability for which Defender is known, but now combined that with legendary new on-road capabilities and comfort as well. Talk a little bit about the construction of these cars. Aesthetically, you've seen these things.

They feature really compelling proportions and precise detailing. I mean, I just love the look of this line of vehicles I always have. if you learn from the engineers about what's going on sort of underneath these nice aesthetics, you figure out that they're built with a tough, rigid body design that helps add to their famous durability. It's a very sturdily made car, but also is beautiful to look at. So in other words, we think of it as a good-looking car that performs, perfect for finding adventure as you cultivate your own vision of the deep life.

So visit land rover, USA.com, to learn more. about the defender. And now, here's my conversation with Michael Easter. All right, so I am thrilled to be here with Michael Easter. Michael, one of the ways I explained, by the way, starting to do these semi-regular interview episodes, the people who ask, like, why are you adding something else? 80% of the reason is an excuse to talk to people

that I want to talk to anyways. And you are an embodiment of that. This is my evil plan coming to fruition. I've read your books and wanted to talk with you, and I had an excuse to get you on the microphone. Well, I will say that works both ways, right? Like when you email me, I was like, oh my God, this is awesome. I've always wanted to talk to this guy.

So here we are. The world works in mysterious ways and works in good ways a lot of times. Everyone else can just sit back and enjoy you and I enjoying this. So I'll start by explaining the goal of the conversation for you and for the audience. So I think a lot and talk a lot about, mismatches between the modern digital environment and the way our Paleolithic bodies and Neolithic culture operate. I think in these mismatches are a lot of disorders of the modern world that we need to address. One of the most consequential such mismatches, in my opinion, is what has happened when we've made our lives professionally, personally, like all aspects of our lives, more abstract and more taking place on screens.

So this disembodiment of our life, it's where we're disembodied. from our bodies on any particular location. More and more what we do is just mediated back and forth through a screen. There's a lot of economic advantages to that to other players, but it has been difficult for us, the actual people. Now, I see you, Michael, as being at the forefront of thinking about what goes wrong when we switch to this Cartesian brain in a VAT model and how we can reclaim some of what our Paleolithic bodies are actually expecting how to sort of fight back against this abstraction.

So that's really what I want to get into with you today. But I want to get there via your story, which I think is fascinating. I think it highlights a lot of the issues you talk about and will sort of bring us to the sort of more concrete principles we want to discuss. So if you're willing, I want to go all the way back. You know, you got started off magazine journalist, Men's Health magazine. For a lot of people, this itself would be the end goal. Man, if I could just live in the city and write for a well-known magazine, go cool, like article. everything would be cool. So I want to start with just, how did you even get that job? Coming out of

college, what did you have to do to even get that job? Oh, man. Yeah. So I grew up in Utah and I was raised by a single mom. I'm only child. And my mom, I mean, she's like kind of a giant. So the odds are really stacked against single moms. Like you look at the stats and I think more than half live in extreme poverty. but my mom, I mean, she's just like driven, super driven, super smart. She usually reads like at least 50 books a year. And so we always had books lying around at home. And I remember when I was, I think I was 13, I read this book into thin air by John Crackauer. And it was just like, whoa, this dude went and climbed Everest and wrote an account of it.

But the way it was written was really fascinating because he was kind of weaving in and out of topics. I read a lot of Hunter Thompson when I was in high school. And that was like another, oh my God, I didn't know someone could do this with language. Now, when I went to college, I'd always been this book in magazine junkie, but it just, in my mind, I'm like, no one is actually a writer. Like, no one actually does that job. And if they do, they probably live in their mother's basement. And so I, my plan was to do like a business law degree, maybe work in natural resources because I've always been kind of outdoorsy. But I ended up taking this. It was a nature writing class and it was just like,

oh my God, this is what I want to do with my life. So I ended up going to grad school because I also happened to graduate the year that the economy totally tanked. And so from my class, my graduating class, it was like you're either going back to your parents' house and you're going to work some random job you don't want to work as you look for your real job or you can go to grad school. So I went to grad school and I ended up going in New York City just because that's where all the magazines are based. And the program that I was in grad school and it was a science, health and environmental reporting program. So really, really focused on writing about different topics in science. And even in that class, though, I was kind of, I was a little bit different in that like, you know, most people took their internship at Scientific America.

But I took mine at Esquire just because the writing in that mag, that was like during the, to kind of get a little bit down the rabbit hole, that was during the David Granger years, he was the editor-in-chief. And the writing in that magazine was just so good, like so good. These features that just blow your mind. So I interned there for a while. Then when I graduated, I took these kind of two part-time jobs at Scientific American and GQ. So when you looked at my resume I had on one hand, I had these dude magazines.

And on the other hand, I had this science magazine and a job opened up at men's health. And they were like, well, we pretty much write about science for dudes. So you seem like a good fit. And yeah, I took that job. And what was nice about that job, too, kind of getting back to this theme of mismatches, is that I had been living in New York City, which. that was fun for about a month until you realize the place just drives you crazy. And humans aren't necessarily designed for 24-7 noise, light, never-ending energy.

And men's health was actually their headquarters was in this little town in Pennsylvania that was like an hour and a half away from New York City. So I was able to live there. And I would occasionally go into the city. We had an office there, but it was like once every two weeks. So that was also another big upside of that job. And yeah, I worked that job for about seven years. And, yeah, it was pretty good. I learned a lot there.

I mean, that was the big thing. I learned a lot there. Where was the town in Pennsylvania? So the town that we were in is called Amas. And the closest town that people would know is Allentown. Okay. I didn't realize it was based out there. So were you living in like a house at that point?

I mean, there's not really a lot of apartments out there. I was living. So it's a lot of kind of like row houses. So when I moved out, I remember I had moved from a apartment in Hoboken, which was like one bedroom, it was like two grand a month. And I moved out to that area. And I had this place that had like two bedrooms. It had a backyard.

And it was $800 a month. And it was just like, oh, my God, why haven't, why did I live in New York at all? Yeah. What was I trying to do? Yes. Okay. So now you're at Mensels. What's that job like?

So when you're, I don't know what the word would be, but when you're new, you just, I don't know if it's junior reporter or whatever it was. But what is the day to day of magazine journalism in the first decade of the 2000s? Yeah. So when I started, the internet hadn't really taken off. Our website at the time was we would take what was in the magazine and we would put it on the internet. And that was that. Yeah. Like the website was this afterthought and it was all these kind of old school magazines. types who really just kind of saw the website as this kind of little annoyance and it was often

just kind of farmed out into to another team that was sort of like looked down upon by the old school magazine editors. But I was mostly on the magazine side. That eventually transitioned and the job was really developing ideas and then just reporting them out. And also, of course, because it's a magazine, like your presentation is so much different than it would be online or in a newspaper. So it's nice because I could get creative, come up with weird ideas. And I will say, I mean, the first three years, probably four years in my career was me basically just realizing that I sucked. Yeah. Like I went into that job. I had my fancy graduate school degree and I thought, oh, it was going to be great. And I remember I had to do this section.

that was called bulletins back in the magazine where you would summarize studies. And it would be about 100 words to summarize a study. You'd have five studies on a page. So I sent my editor like 500 words of, you know, these five different summarizations of studies. And this dude sent me back probably a thousand words in edit. It was just like, I got that, opened the document. And it was just like, oh my God. And he was right.

Of course he was right. course. And yeah, it was just, I mean, that first four years was just really figuring out, like, how, how do you write? How do you write in a way where you're presenting information that is pretty complex in a way that the average person can immediately understand, but also use, right? Because men's health is a service magazine, meaning that when you read something in that magazine, there's an implicit takeaway about how do I use this in my life? Yeah. Now, did you have an implicit idea going into that that pretty soon you would be like 1990s Susan Casey outside magazine

going on like long adventures that you would report back on like what was your what were you thinking like I've heard for example at Columbia Journalism School from my friends who went there years back everyone's goal is to write long form for the New Yorker like this is what I'm going to do out of it

but only three people end up doing that so what was the dreams versus reality when you started doing magazine journalism I thought that it was going to be that I thought that I was going to be eventually going out to report crazy stories. And I will say this, though, I was persistent. And I was always pitching ideas that would get me out of the office. And luckily, they said yes to quite a few of them.

It's like once I pulled off one that worked pretty well, I had, I did this, I pitched this story where I was going to go, basically join. a power lifting federation. Nice. But part of it was that I was lifting, I was training with this guy who was the first guy to ever bench press 1,000 pounds. And his gym was this, it was in the middle of the woods. It was this rundown old garage they converted.

This guy was the most giant human being you've ever seen. He had a Mohawk that was pink. There was about five pit bulls that were running around the gym. Every single dude in there was like a bouncer and a motorcycle gang. and I roll in, you know, six foot one, 170 pounds with my notebook like, hey guys. And the story just worked because it was just so funny that I was in there. And so after I did that, I would say the editors became a little more amenable to sending me out to report pieces. And I really, I mean, that's really what I lived for.

Like the day to day in the office, it was, you know, it was what it was. But if I could go out and meet people, get out into the world and just meet these weird subcultures, that was like, that was my jam. What was your interest, you know, coming out of college, coming out of grad school? For example, were you outdoorsy at this point or not? Were you in the fitness at this point or not? Where was your, like, why did you want to get out of the office? What was it that attracted you?

What type of activities attracted you? I would say big picture, what attracted me is I've always just been interested in people and subcultures and ideas. my own personal interest is that I've always been pretty outdoorsy. Yeah. You know, grew up in Utah, so you kind of have to ski or snowboard and spend a lot of time mountain biking. And fitness-wise, I'd always, I'd been mildly interested. Like, I always worked out, but it was kind of like it was what it was.

But I did actually become a lot more interested in health and fitness by taking that role just because you start to unpeel a lot of layers and you go, oh, this is actually, this is pretty interesting. So then in the comfort crisis, you talk about how this dream job began to unravel or how you began the struggle. So what happened there? Well, I think that I think that I'm a person, like I said, I like to get out. I like I'm happiest when I'm outdoors, arguably maybe doing something a little extreme when I'm in a weird place where there's kind of a level, there's a lot. of stimulation going on, right? Like, I'm just one of these people who I just kind of need stimulation.

And there could be long stretches of that magazine where I would just go into the office at nine. You stay till six. And eventually, you're kind of doing the same thing over and over. And eventually, when I send in those studies, those like study blurbs, I get no edits back because now I've perfected that. Like, now I get it. And so it starts to kind of become, All right. I'm standing behind this. Of course, we all had standing desk. I'm standing behind this screen for from 9 to 6 every single day. I can pretty much predict exactly what is going to happen. I'm indoors. My office for most of the time didn't have a window. It took a while for me to get a window. That was a big day. And it just kind of, it just starts to kind of be at odds with what I think fundamentally,

made me excited to get up and go to work every single day. You know, even though I would occasionally get those reporting stories, to your point about asking about what was what was magazines like when you first started, the funds for those kind of stories started to kind of go away as the internet rose. And there started to be more of the magazine became this sort of second thing to the internet. And on the internet, especially as I was probably the last year, of my time at men's health, we figured out, oh, if you run these crazy headlines, you can get clicks. And the place started running stories that literally had nothing to do with health.

And it was all just about getting people to click. And I'm just like, what the hell are we doing here? What do you do? Just a quick aside question. What do you do for six or nine hours at a death? What are you doing as a journalist? That seems like a lot of time. Are you writing that whole time? Like what happens in a nine hour day? I mean, the capsules take. take you an hour to write. Maybe you're writing up a story. As someone who writes and does a lot of other things and has to fit it in, I'm fascinated. Just as an aside, what was happening on your computer screen for nine hours in that windowless office? Oh, dude. I mean, you know that's more than anyone, that a person can't really crank out great writing for more than like four hours would be my

absolute max, and that's if we're on a run. For a few days, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And then beyond that, it's like maybe you're getting in two hours of solid writing a day. I mean, and the thing is that there was kind of this old school, almost like madman mentality coming out of the magazine industry where it's like you show up at nine and you leave at six. Doesn't matter. And so how do you fill that time? We would have these meetings where we would go sit on these couches in the main room and we would come up with headlines for stories. So we'd put all the stories, like print them out, put them on the wall, and we would come up with headlines for individual stories. And I am not kidding you, we could take one hour going back and forth about a headline that was going to be on a one-page story. And you're going, like, people just thrown out ideas.

And really it was just, it really was just dudes sitting around BSing because we needed to fill the time, pretending like it was productive. And it was just, you know, sometimes you'd have good conversations. It could be fun. Sometimes you're just going, what the hell are we doing here? Oh, man. So then how did you talk frankly in your comfort crisis about the alcohol dependency? Yeah. Does that arise in this time?

And is this in response to this, what's your disillusionment from work? Or is it helped create your issues at work? I mean, how did that begin to raise its head? Yeah, I don't think the boredom of the job helped. I'll say that. I think there's some, I think that's one of those topics that's like really complicated and you kind of start to unpeel the layers of why over time. But I think the fundamental reason that my drinking definitely kicked up while I was there. No, I will say that even the first time I drank, I was like, oh, wow, this makes life more interesting.

And if one is good, what would two? be like. And if two's like that, what's three like? So I always like to say that my my favorite drink was always the next one. Yeah. And when you drink like that, you can accumulate some problems. Yeah. And a good sign that you have a drinking problem is that all of your problems are caused by your drinking. And that was totally me. And I think that when I kind of peel back, and it's taken me a while to figure this out. When I peel back, I think that because my life, especially at that time, was really kind of predictable routine and wrote, and I'm a person who kind of needs stimulation, likes to explore the edges, it's like if I could go back on a weekend to my apartment in Allentown

or whatever, if I were to drink, I can guarantee that that night was going to be more interesting and more unpredictable than if I were to not drink. All right. If I didn't drink, I'd be like, all right, I'm probably going to watch Netflix. Maybe I'll go get dinner. I'll go to bed by 10. If I have one drink, I'd just go, roll in the dice. Who the hell knows what's going to happen here?

And so I think that was that like searching for stimulation and just something else to do that was more exciting, was really kind of pushed that and drove that. And like I said, it's like, you know, some people, they do that. and they're good with three. I was never that type of person. And that eventually just led to, yeah, a lot of problems in my life. And I kind of had to figure that out. So, okay, so you have all this going on.

And this brings us to the point that my listeners are often really interested in, which is both the practical and psychological reality of when people began doing intentional lifestyle crafting. Right. And so we're getting to the point now where, some relatively large changes happen in your life. And so I'm interested in kind of dive it into the psychology at this moment. What were the thoughts that began to crystallize that would eventually push you to do something different? How can we understand you beginning to think, okay, I want to change things about my life?

What was the thought process that was happening as you were there in Allentown and going to the windowless room and drinking too much? and what's inside the mind of Michael Easter that began to push you towards. Let's change some things. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could say that I had this planned out at the time. I didn't. But I think really when you look at addiction, it's basically choosing a short-term benefit at the expense of long-term growth.

That's really how I see it. And so for me, it's like I needed something to just like feel something. thing. And alcohol gave me that. Now, eventually, the downsides of alcohol, they begin to really outweigh any of the benefits I'm getting. And yet I don't really know how to get out of that, right? Because the thing is, is if I drink, like immediately, I can fix whatever this underlying problem is. It's this, like, really short-term, easy way to fix a problem. Eventually, that stops working. And eventually, I think, the downsides just start to really pile up. And I tried to quit drinking, I mean, a hundred times, you know.

And eventually just for whatever reason, one morning I woke up and it was kind of like the shift where I realized that if I was to continue this behavior, I was probably not to get too dramatic here, but this is what I thought, that I was probably going to die early. Like, I could just kind of see it. And I kind of realized that in all the times I had tried to quit drinking before, I'd always kind of looked for like the easy way out. You know, it's like, oh, well, maybe I could do this. And then I can just drink less. And I came up with all these schemes. And I just kind of accepted like, hey, this is going to be really hard. Like, this is definitely going to be hard.

And another thing I did is that my mom has actually been sober for about 40 years. She got sober right before she had me. And I'd never really talked to her about my drinking. and I called her and I told her. I'm like, hey, mom, she had no idea. I even drank, much less had a problem with it. And I told her, hey, I got a drinking problem. And so I think that sort of that admission and that reaching out and asking for help,

I think that shifted something in my mind where I just kind of went, okay, I can't figure this out on my own. I'm probably going to have to talk to people who've been there and who can help me. And so I talked to her. I found a handful of people that had been in a similar situation. is me. And one guy in particular was just extremely helpful. And so I do think it was just the problems piled up so much that something had to give. And when it gave that sort of pushed me to do something other than drinking. And then you find the problem, okay, now we got to

solve for what alcohol was solving for and we have to overhaul our life. And so I just had to add in new things that would sort of give me that stimulation. And once the alcohol was gone, though, it's like, okay, the job is only doing so much for me. And that's when I started looking for sort of other ways out. That's fascinating. Well, part of what's fascinating is we see that same effect with smartphone addiction. Much more attenuated. But, I mean, this comes out of my work is that people who succeed in drastically changing

their relationship to their phones do so because they aggressively invest in alternatives. and the people who white knuckle, like, all right, well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to use it less. And I'm not going to have my bedroom. They start putting rules around it, but don't have any replacement for what the phone was doing for them. They all go back.

So there's an interesting parallel. So did you try and trying to replace this with other, more other stimulating activities while you still had your job at men's health? What type of things were you trying at first before you made the decision? I need to actually change my job itself. This was outdoors activity, like getting back in the mouth. something biking. Like what did you, what were you, what were your first steps towards adding, like recasting your lifestyle? Yeah. If I can, if I can think about a few of them,

um, I started hanging out with other people that would kind of, you know, if like I was the type of person that like I would just kind of hang out either with my girlfriend or alone. And then on the weekends, I might have some friends come in for from college and, you know, our sort of thing we do together is just go out and get crazy. And so I had to start hanging out with other people who the relationships didn't involve around drinking. And I will say that my girlfriend at the time, she is now my wife. She's never been a big drinker. And she was exceedingly supportive and awesome. And so hanging out with a new group that had kind of been there was really useful. I also, I got a dog. And part of the reason that we're now, a lot of people,

would say like, and this was like a month after I'd been sober. A lot of people would be like, you got a dog after a month of being sober. You're insane. But here's the thing. That dog saved my life because all of a sudden I had to care about something else other than myself. And I'd spend like all my drinking years pretty much giving a shit about one person. And that was me. And now all of a sudden I have to, I have to care for this dog.

And so what that did, and I also got a German short hair pointer. which is a hunting dog that needs a whole hell of a lot of exercise. So I would have to get up early. I would have to take that dog. Every morning before work, I would take the dog to this park that was out in nature. It was right by a river. And we would just walk the park for about an hour as the sun was coming up. And that was like this new way of saying like, oh, there's like something here that had kind of been removed from my life in drinking,

but is kind of giving me this deeper thing I need that's making me happy. Yeah. Really. And so that was super useful. And then I started exercising more. I started like on the weekends. I would get up early and I'd go to, I'd go for a hike. I'd go for a long bike ride.

I'd go, I'd go do something. And that gave me a reason to go to bed on time and to like not drink. And if I ever really wanted to drink, which I was lucky that I will, say a lot of people have fits and starts. When I was done, I was done. It was like, we're like, we're going for this. You know what I mean? Like I didn't have like urges to go out and drink. And I will also say that over time, the times that I have thought I've missed alcohol, when I unpack that, it's really that I miss the context of the drinking. And that's that you're with friends, you're able to let loose. And I was like, oh, well, do you really need to

have two drinks to let loose? No, you can just like, you can just like let loose without having alcohol around. Yeah. You know, and so I think it's just like kind of this long process of self-discovery where you have to, but if nothing changes, nothing changes. Yeah. You got to start making these big, deeper changes. And I think you see that, like you said, is a theme from getting out of any behavior that you are overdoing that is hurting your life. Like you got to change something. So then how did your, what caused the evolutionary relationship with men's health? It's not that you stopped writing for them.

I mean, even your Guy Fieri article is not even that old. And I've looked through your bibliography. There's periods where you'll write six or seven articles freelance for them. So when it comes to that particular professional transition, you've now been exposed to other things just to use like the terminology of my audience knows. You've been exposed to these other lifestyle factors that are resonating. It's the time outside, the caring for someone else, the exercise, the deeper connections with community. And so suddenly you're gaining this insight in what resonates and what doesn't. What was the sequence of

changes you made to your actual professional situation? And how did that unfold? Yeah. So I was probably at the magazine for about maybe two years when I was sober. And so I think after, you know, I sort of go through the most acute period of, you know, white knuckling, as they call it, um, sobriety. Then once I was through with that, you realize, okay, well, I'm still in this office. It's still boring. Nothing is, nothing has changed in the magazine industry here. And so I just, I knew I love the writing aspect. Um, didn't love the standing at a desk in an office behind a screen all day, did like getting out in the world and reporting.

And so, and having interesting experiences meeting interesting people. And so for a while, I thought, well, maybe I just need to find a new career. I kind of looked around at some different things, applied for some jobs, kind of got deep into them, but they didn't work out.

And eventually it just, it occurred to me. We started talking to my, my now wife, and we decided, all right, let's try and move somewhere. Maybe I could, maybe I could,

freelance because then I would only be writing, but it would be more on my terms. And then it popped in my head, oh, well, I know I can only write well for about four hours a day max. So what could I do to earn income and have a safety net in those other hours of the day? And I'd always thought it would be awesome to work at a university in a, you know, in a teaching role. And it occurred to me like, well, if you teach journalism, like your research is continuing to do the work. If you're in the professional position, like a lot of journalism departments have. And my wife and I, and this is crazy how this worked out, my wife and I had identified either Phoenix or Las Vegas is somewhere we wanted to move.

Why? And that's... I don't mean that in like a dismissive way, but in like a very curious way because you're both East Coasters. And that's like a very specific decision. Totally. So I'll tell you why. It's because we wanted to move west. And she said no snow.

And I said no California. And so that kind of left us with, all right, we got like maybe certain parts of Texas, but definitely Arizona, definitely Las Vegas. And we had come out to Las Vegas for some reason or another. And we're like, oh, wow, this is actually a really great town. The strip is what it is. Some people love it. Some people hate it.

I personally love it for the people watching and the fact that it's just like this big human behavior laboratory. And so I. ended up sending an email to a guy who ran the magazine program at UNLV. And I was just like, hey, thinking about moving out, wondering if you have any adjunct courses. Here's my background, blah, blah, blah. And it just so happened that they were looking for a full-time professional instructor to teach health journalism.

Oh. Because they just opened a medical school. Like they hadn't even advertised the role. And he forwarded my email on to the head of the department. And literally a week later, I went in, I interviewed. And a week after that, this would have been December. They said, okay, we'd like to hire you. But can you start in January?

And so we were like, all right, fire sale, just like hack up the house. We're driving across the country to move to Las Vegas. And that was that. And what were you looking for? Like, what were the properties the job had that made you say, yeah, let's roll with this? I think that it was the ability to continue to write for magazines to do just the writing thing. And also, I think the uncertainty and the learning that would come with the teaching aspect of that job. Yeah.

So I was teaching three classes when I started. And then the other half of my job was continuing the writing so the university could have people who were actually doing the thing in the department. because there weren't many in the department when I started. I think I was the only one. So that's a reduced, they gave you, that's a reduced load because they wanted you to write. Correct. Yeah. So it would have otherwise been like a four-four or something like that or a five.

It would have been a four-four. Yeah, they had me do three classes and then the professional work filled in that fourth spot. And you had a nice thing about these jobs is it's the opposite of the standing desk 96. Whenever or wherever, however you get it done is up to you about these jobs. You need to be in the classroom when your class is being taught. You need to be in your office for the office hours. But otherwise, however you want to do it, that's kind of a nice thing about these positions. So that must have been a nice change of pace from what you were doing.

Oh, yeah, because I was coming from the magazine world where you have all these 60-year-old guys who were going, no, you come in at 9 and you leave at 6. That's just what you do. And so it gave me a lot more freedom than I think that that was good for me. I could, you know, go explore Las Vegas. I could work reporting trips around my teaching schedule. What was your, and I also... Yeah, what was a typical day like?

Like, how did you work out your schedule? Yeah, over time. I mean, when I first started, they were kind of just like, here's your schedule. And I was in four days a week. You were prepping a lot probably and all that. Preping a time when I first started. I mean, when I first started, I didn't do as much writing as I wanted because that first semester was really, we got to figure, how the hell do you do this?

I mean, it was hilarious, too, because I'd never taught. And I said, okay, like, what do I do? And they go, okay, well, your class, and they gave me the names of the three classes. And I said, okay, great. So, like, is there an instruction handbook on how to do that? And they go, no, those are the names of the three classes figure it out. I was like, okay. So that was a lot of time figuring it out.

But once I had figured it out, obviously a lot of that time freeze. up and I could then start to focus, start to focus more in the writing. But I did, I did love the teaching element, just interacting with young people. And I like that it forced me to have to think about why I did the things I did in my, in my writing work. Yeah. And reporting work, you know, so someone, you know, someone, well, why do you do that? And you're like, oh, that's a good question. Why do I do that? And then you have to unpack your thinking and you find some flaws. it, it strengthens ideas. Maybe you start to see how could I do this better?

And so, yeah, that was a lot of fun. And what year was this when you started Las Vegas? This would have been 2017. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. And then in, okay, so between your two books, there's like several really large-scale reporting trips

mentioned, right? You have investigating the rising drug trade in sort of post-war, Iraq, you have your time in Bhutan. Where do those larger reporting trips that you then use in your books? Where do those fall in this timeline? Was that while you were still in Allentown? Are these you found a way to do these longer form pieces once you're in Las Vegas?

Yeah, those are all when I was in Las Vegas. Now, I will say the Arctic trip, I was blessed to have a good head of the department. And he was like, okay, so you have to be in the Arctic from basic all of September. And we should explain this. this is the structuring story of the, if I think of the right story, of the comfort crisis, where you go on an El Cunting trip in Arctic Alaska that was not comfortable in a very, a very specific way. Okay.

And was that, but that trip, was that even for reporting at the time? Or was that just you wanted to do it? Yeah, that was for reporting. Okay. So I had done, what happened with, with that is I had done a magazine article for men's health. that was a profile of the guy, Donnie Vincent, who I was in the Arctic with. He's this sort of, for listeners, who's this backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker who's really, I think, changing the face of hunting, how it's perceived, how it's practiced, and just

a really deep thinker in the space. And so I had profiled him and done this short hunt with him, and I realized that piece could probably be blown out into a bar. I mean, there was just so much that I wanted to. to write in that story. And of course, it could only run it three, four thousand words or something. And so from that piece, I ended up pitching the book to publishers. And as part of that, it was, okay, the overarching narrative is going to be this 30-plus-day

journey I take into the Arctic on a hunting trip with him to sort of get into these fundamental discomforts that humans faced every day in the past. that we no longer face anymore that can be healthy for us. And so I pitched that and once the publisher bought it, you know, I had to go to my head of the department and be like, hey, I got to be gone in September. Can someone just fill this like one class I have? And I was able to like get the others online just for the month.

So I had two that I was able to put online for that month and then come back in person. And then I had one that was just a lecture every week that my department had, he had taught the class before. And so he was like, all right, I'll get it for you. And he was just, he's just a saint to do that. But then the other trips, I would just plan those during times I wasn't teaching. So, I mean, it's interesting to me that the type of reporting you wanted to do all along, you really started doing after you weren't a full-time employee of a magazine.

Is that, so how did that, I guess there was still, maybe like the pay wasn't great for the pieces, but people were still willing to take long form reporting like this. But if you were on salary, they're like, no, no, no, you have to, we need seven articles a week from you for the web. Like, how did that happen that you began doing the reporting that you really wanted to do after you left being a full-time journalist? Yeah, well, I mean, the answer is that if you're on salary as an editor, writer, they want you in the office a certain amount of time. And you can only leave the office so much because you've got a million different tax. The budgets are kind of constrained, and frankly, they would rather just give it out to a freelancer who has ample time to spend to doing these crazy reporting trips.

So I almost kind of took on, left the magazine and took on the role of what would be a freelancer. And what was able to fund those trips was the book advances, basically. Because economically, you can't really make a living doing those long-form freelance pieces. It just, it doesn't work out because you can only do what, two a year if they're really reported. And, you know, here's your like $6,000 or whatever for six months worth of effort that the economics don't work out. So that's fast. Okay. So then we get to your book.

So I love how this is unfolding. So we get to your book, the comfort crisis, your first book. And then the scarcity brain came second. So you pitch it. You've done the profile already of the main person, but you had not yet done the trip. So if I understand this right, when you did the actual hunting job, trip. This was after you already sold the book. And you had pitched, like, here's, I'm going to go back out. I'm going to go to the Arctic with this character I wrote about over here.

Were you imagining, and I love that we're going to get into this, now we can dive into the book, so it's perfect. Were you imagining, I think most writers myself included, my first instinct would be thinking of like coming to America. This is going to be John McPhee. It's going to be really just character driven. Whereas the book ended up being like one of the big idea books. you know, of the last however many years. I mean, it's a fantastic book. I mean, it really became much more of like a Gladwellian idea book with that as the spine, where you went off and met lots of other people to talk about or the help uncover these other types of principles.

So, you know, how did that evolve from this is going to be me and this character and what I'm learning from this exposure to like, that's going to be the spine of an idea book that's going to actually have a lot of ideas, a lot of science back stuff, a lot of actually like talking to other people and, uh, how did that unfold? Yeah, I think that it was really just noticing that the books that I liked to read usually had a narrative, um, a kind of a big overarching narrative, but, um, also realizing that I've also always been fascinated with research that can, um, hopefully improve the reader's life and, um, realizing that I, and I think most people, the story gets them into the big idea. So when I teach this, it's like, if I'm trying to read a book, like I have this, I'm sure you're the same way, I have this big idea I need to communicate, right?

But the big idea is often abstract. It's somewhat complex. And if I just go right into the big idea, I've lost you because you haven't bought in. Yeah. So the story, it almost acts as the vehicle, sort of the expressway into that bigger idea. Because if I can get someone in with a story, they buy into a character. They want to know, you know, the character is in this precarious position. It's like just basic storytelling. And they've got to figure things out. And they're learning things along the way. And as the character is learning things along the way, that is to say, me in these books, I can peel off into these. bigger ideas where the person will have have bought in and hopefully have more interest in the big idea because they've bought into this interesting story that's sort of getting there. Yeah. So then one of the energies I see in the book, and my audience news is like I've raved

about both your books, but about comfort crisis in particular, I really thought it was one of the better idea books the last half decade. And there's a symmetry I saw between it and my book Deep Work, which was, you know, when I was writing Deep Work, I was all. also very personally invested in this idea because I was a young professor and I was trying to figure out cognitive life and the incursions into it. And I think that there's an energy to come into it. And the comfort crisis has that as well. You can kind of sense there is a personal, this big personal investment you have in these ideas. There's an energy in them, which sells them as potentially transformative. So you're at the stage of your life when you're writing this book where you've just

started making like a lot of changes. You've grabbed the reins of autonomy. What happened in your own personal life in terms of like your habits or how you lived or et cetera? What changes began to come out of working on the book about discomfort? Like what was that feedback loop between the book and then how you're actually living your life? Yeah. Well, I think you're right and I have deep work right right here. I think you're right that like a lot of times writers are just kind of figuring out their own shit on the page, you know? And so that was definitely the comfort crisis like coming out of getting sober, figuring that out. And I think it was the, this recognition that all the work I did for men's health, we were talking about these sort of lifestyle changes that would lead to improvements.

every single lifestyle change that we talked about, it was usually uncomfortable. If it's exercise to improve your fitness, exercise is uncomfortable. If it's losing weight, you're probably going to have to eat less. You're going to be hungry. That's uncomfortable. Mental health, getting over your mental health stuff is usually uncomfortable. So seeing that sort of path that doing things that are uncomfortable leads is sort of a necessary buy into improvement to these greater goods.

And having that exact same story in my surprise. I mean, that's absolutely the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done. But once I went through that, my life improved so much. Like unbelievable changes. Like, everything got better. And so sort of seeing that and then through my time outdoors, realizing that the outdoors are uncomfortable, too hot, too cold, everything takes effort.

You have long stretches of boredom. like just on and on and on. And then you go back from the outdoors into everyday life. And it's like, oh my God, like everything is so comfortable in our world. And just realizing that shift where I kind of go, well, humans live for all of time walking around outdoors looking for food, basically, trying to keep their kids alive. Nothing was ever comfortable. And then we as a species suddenly get place we eat.

engineer our environments to be comfortable in so many different ways across the board. And then the big idea question is, okay, well, how has that changed us? And what can we do about it? Yeah. Well, and I think the digital, when it enters this conversation, brought us cognitive comfort. So there's a lot of things in the last 200 years, maybe even just 150 years that gave us physical comfort. It's the cars and HVAC and comfortable mattresses. But what's the story of the last 10 years is this cognitive comfort of no boredom, take out all of the friction and sociality and all the sort of uncertainty and just it's on here and I can just tap this thing. Get rid of the difficulty, putting yourself out there for leadership and community. I can be a leader by posting things on

Twitter that gets like comments. You can kind of play with these human drives and it takes away all cognitive discomfort. And that was one of the big threats to your book is, you know, it's not just physical but also cognitive discomfort, that there's something to it. How do you think about this theory? Here's a theory I've been pitching, which I don't have science for it, but it sounds reasonable, right? So one of the things I've been pitching on my show recently is this idea that we have fundamental human drives, you know, there's like for community and leadership and food, obviously, um, boredom is a big drive.

It feels really bad, right? So alleviation of boredom. And the goal of these drives is to, push us to do hard things, we'll be rewarding in the future. Because we have a very strong pull in fundamental human drives. They're hard to ignore. So eventually they make us get up and do stuff. And that is like a big difference from some other animals because like we're not just

energy conserving. We get up and do things. And that one of the issues with technology is it subverts the drives. It kind of simulates the reward like these drives need just enough that like you lose that motivation to get up. Like the video game makes you feel just complex. competent enough that, like, you don't get up in a way that if you didn't have the video game, like eventually that, like, drive towards competency is like, I got to get up and go learn how to

hunt or whatever, right? And so I have this theory that, like, when the technology, we have drives that push us to do the type of things that you talk about in your book, and technology can subvert them just enough to prevent action, but we get none of the rewards that the action gives us. Is this kind of track? Oh, yeah, I agree 100%. And I'll give you a good example. It's so when I was in the Arctic for a month, we're up there hunting.

Hunting is for those who've never hunted. It's actually not action-packed at all. It's like a lot of waiting. And so we sit on these hills waiting for caribou to come through because we're kind of timing our hunt to this migration. No caribou are coming through for like a couple weeks. And I didn't have my cell phone. I had my cell phone, but it didn't.

It was useless, right? I didn't have televisions and computers and iPads and all this stuff. And so when you're sitting out there, all the sudden, I find myself like really bored. And so when boredom kicks on, I kind of think about it as this uncomfortable cue that tells people, go do something else. So it's neither good nor bad. It's just this drive that says, hey, the return on your time invested with what you're doing right now. it is worn thin, go do something else. So when you think about it in the context of evolution, if it's a million years ago and you and I are sitting on this hill hunting and we need food to survive,

if no animals are coming through, boredom kicks on and it says go do something else. And in the past, that something else was often productive to your point. So you and I would go, hey, no animals, why don't we go, why don't we go search for berries? Why don't we go to hunt another speed? Like there's all these things we would do that we're often productive, pushing us towards survival. but now we have this easy, effortless escape from it that is just highly stimulating in the form of cell phones. Right? It's like you feel that and obviously everyone sees it. Everyone experiences it.

The moment you feel it, you immediately pull the phone out. Now in the Arctic, I didn't have that. So like I said, neither good nor bad. Some of the stuff we would do to alleviate our boredom, which is totally stupid. Like we would read the labels on our food. We would just tell these ridiculous stories that went nowhere. on the other hand, I also came up with more good ideas for my writing than I've ever come up with in my entire life. I wrote things that ended up in the book that are probably some of the best things I've ever written.

I came up with like Christmas shopping lists for all of my friends and family, like all these like weird, productive things that I just never would have gotten had I been bored at home because the default would have been, oh, go to the screen and work, oh, an alert just came in from your cell phone. And so I think that kind of to the bigger points, that's why kind of this removal, having these times where you remove yourself and yes, you will have to be uncomfortably bored for a little bit. But seeing where that takes you is going to be a lot more interesting and arguably productive than watching the next amazing dog video that comes upon your Instagram feed or whatever it might be. So was your book, your first book, was it a success right away or was it a slow? low burn. What was the experience like when that came out? It, so we got lucky the first week, got on some big podcasts, so we had a pretty big opening week.

But then it kind of just kind of slowed. And it, you know, it was like a steady, steady. But over time, it took about a year for it to really pick up in sales. So, yeah, it took about one year. And there was, you know, I think it was word of mouth. It was people who had platforms. eventually it getting to them and I'm saying just like you right now, right? The book, Comfort Crisis, came out more than three years ago and we're talking right now. That sort of spread. I think the idea is just spreading people, I don't know, people liked reading it. Not everyone liked reading it, but enough people liked reading it.

It's a good news and bad news about publishing, right? You can't, there's no formula to make your book sell a lot of copies. It just has to be, it's simple in the sense that it just has to be something that like people are really interested in and want to tell people. about the bad news is that's really hard to do. But that is the common experience of not everyone. Sometimes your book is to write book for the right time and everyone reads it immediately. This is like John Haidt and the Anxious Generation. Like if you've been working for a decade on a topic that everyone cares about and your book

comes out right at the right time, then it can just like immediately be a big success. But Deep Work had a similar experience. That's never, it was never on the New York Times bestseller list, never on a weekly national bestseller list. and is like 2 million copies in, you know. That's crazy. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Right. It's like you wrote a book that is really good that helps people that's actionable, that they can apply. And word just spreads, you know, that's fantastic. So then what was the plan? You have the first book come out. Did you have like a new plan? Like, okay, here is, here's my plan for my life.

Like, I'm going to write books on a certain frequency while my position at Las Vegas. I'm sure it changed your thought of like, okay, here's my rhythm between freelancing books and professorship. How did you revise your kind of life plan, if at all, in this sort of post-first book period? I wish I could tell you that I had a life plan going in. I mean, I wrote like, you know, my thought then was like you write a book to write the book, and then you realize that, oh, the book opens up all these other doors that I just had no idea were there. And so a lot of it was kind of figuring out, all right, now that this book seems to be

resonating with people. It's like, what the hell do you, what do you do with that? Right. And so it kind of, I think it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. And I actually, I signed the contract for scarcity brain right before the comfort crisis came out because I was like, all right, this will guarantee I have more work. Because I don't, I have no idea if this book's going to sell or not. So let's strike while the iron's hot. And so I immediately just started working on scarcity brain. Eventually, just through sending out some random newsletters here or there, my newsletter list had grown. And I started to get more regular with that. And then I eventually took that over to Substack and I publish on that three times a week because that allows me to kind of

right in real time. Right? I'm sure you've noticed that with a book, I love books because it kind of gets to the heart of things and you get real clear on ideas. At the same time, it's, you know, on a two, three-year cadence or whatever it might be. And so being able to talk about things in real life

or in real time, rather, I think it's been useful for substack. And then how did that start changing, let me more specifically. When did you, first of all, when did you go over to substack? What was, when you, when you fixed a regular cadence of three times a week? When was that?

That would have been May of, what year? No, 23. Yeah, so I've been doing that for about a year and a half now coming up on two years. And that really was just that I had this newsletter that was going out once a week. I enjoyed writing it. And one of the guys that Substack reached out and said, hey, we think you could do a successful substack. you want to try it? And I was like, no one's going to sign up for this and like pay for this.

You know, it's not going to happen. But I was just like, all right. Worse that happens is like it's not a success and then I just go back to once a week. You know, what the hell do I care? And so I tried it. And I had this like goal. I was like, hey, if I can have this many subscribers and this amount of time, that would be a success. And I kind of pushed that. I said, all right, if I can do that in like three years, then this is worth it. And I think I hit that goal in like three months. So it was Like, all right, looks like Substack is the thing. We'll be doing this. And it's been fun.

It's been awesome. I mean, I will say that it is a lot of work, but it has also trained me to get better at distilling my thoughts and writing them quickly. Whereas I was like in bookmind where I'm like, oh, I got two years for this project, man. We can just take this real nice and slow. And it has kind of trained me to get faster. So it took me about a year to not feel like I was constantly in sort of crazy spring. mode, but once I got it, I got it. And it's been a real fun project.

And do I understand right that now you write full time? Yeah, whole time. And was substack that success a big part of that decision just because that's more it's more immediate, it's more regular, from just like a financial perspective, it feels somehow more predictable than books, which, you know, it could be years until it comes out, you don't know how it's going to go. Was substacked the thing that changed, like made that an option in your mind? Or was it like the success of the books? I would say it was a little bit of both, but I would say that substack made me feel like I had something that was more predictable and regular, right? I mean, with books, I'm like, okay, things are going great now, but next week, who knows?

I'm sure you've probably seen the numbers on your books where it's like one week for whatever reason. You sell a lot. And then the next year, like, well, why did we sell less? Like, you just don't know. So substack was a little more predictable. and the other thing that kind of made me switch to writing full-time is that the university kind of altered how they were going to approach things and they wanted me to teach four classes and it was just like I can't do substack in books and teach four classes guys.

Sorry, this just like isn't going to work out. And luckily the books and the substack had put me in a position where I was totally fine with that. And also, God bless my wife who has a works for a big insurance company. and brings in the healthcare and all that sort of things. So. Yeah. So that worked out okay. What is now your writing, just a geek question, writing geek question.

So how do you structure your week in terms of when you work on the newsletter versus when you might be working on a book or freelance? Do you have a rhyme or reason to how you do it? I'm curious about how much time these different things take up and what your workday now looks like. Yeah. So I'll first say that I, even if I was a, a, a play. plumber or an auto mechanic or a lawyer, I would still be writing. So writing, I love it. I'm passionate about it. It's my hobby. Just so happens that I'm lucky that it's also the career.

So pretty much every day, I get up pretty early, usually in between 4 and 5 a.m. and I immediately just start writing. I once read this book called Deep Work, and it told me that like finding your most productive time and really guarding that is a good plan. Which I ironically stole from you this morning for this interview, which we're doing ironies about. Only I get to do the deep work. Come on. Yes.

You obviously get a pass because you've greatly improved my productivity. So, yeah, I usually will write until, I don't know, maybe nine. So just having that time where it's like we're really just focused on the writing has been really great. And it says, do you differentiate between newsletter and book writing? Is it like that morning is when I'm writing books and then I have other time for newsletter? Or it's just like whatever is next on whatever you want to work on next, you're doing it that more? You mix those two together.

Yeah, I would say those two get mixed. And then, you know, after that I'll do the kind of other things that don't take as much thought. And then a lot of times I can get some good time in in the afternoon. Like after breakfast, I usually eat at like 10. and then I can jam some more time in there depending on what's going on with meetings and things. That obviously kind of fluctuates based on what else is happening in my life. But yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just writing every day. I try and get outside every day.

You do these long walks. So like when do you normally do those long walks, those desert walks you talk about? That will sometimes be before breakfast. Sometimes it's after breakfast. Sunday is probably the one day where I eat into that writing time where when the sun's When the sun's coming up, my dog and I will usually go do a long run. And but by Sunday, I've usually kind of figured out the coming week of substack and all that stuff. What about exercise outside of walking?

Do you do it at home? When do you do it? How much time do you spend? At home, before dinner, usually. So just because at that time, it's like I try to, I try to get my most productive. time of thought and ideas and creativity. I try and do the writing then, you know, and I think kind of the takeaway,

as you've talked about, it's like, what's your goal? What's your big goal? What's the time that you were most productive to your big goal? All right, pair of those two things. Yeah. All right, it's like at one point I had tried exercising in the morning because then it's like, all right, I'll be done with this.

But it was cutting into my most important writing time. And I wasn't as good of a writer between three and five. And so it was like, all right, put exercise. at the end of that. And I think that I don't, you know, there's a lot of talk online about morning routines. And my morning routine is immediately start writing.

Because any time that I'm, you know, drinking magic mushroom coffee or meditating or writing at a gratitude journal, I'm not doing the writing that is like my main goal. So I try and just go right into it and then put the other stuff other times of the day, if that's useful. Oh, fascinating.

I love this schedule, jealous of this schedule. And are you, when it comes to the exercising in the afternoon, you know, I just met Peter Atia for the first time, and I know you know them. Are you like in the Atia school of like, it's very locked in exactly what I'm doing because it's part of, you know, I'm building my mitochondrial through six hours of Zone 2

on a 17th schedule. Are you more of a, let's, you know, carry a heavy thing and like run up a mountain or where do you fall on that space? of just moving rocks and, you know, doing your carefully calibrated zone too. Yeah, I'm definitely not as calibrated as Peter. I don't think many people are. He's the man. I love that guy.

He's so great. I try and strength train at least two or three times a week. Most of what I'm doing goes back to, am I physically capable outdoors and in the mountains? because I like to do a lot of backcountry hunting. I do like long stuff outdoors. I do think when you look at humans, I think there is a really good case to be made for taking exercise outside.

One, it gets you outside. That has plenty of mental benefits. But also when you think about the context of the outdoors, there's a lot more unpredictability. So I'll give you an example of running on a treadmill versus running on a trail. When you run on a treadmill, you can just totally zone out.

You're watching Mari Povich or whatever the hell it is. Each step is the exact same. You can perfectly dial up your, the up and down. The incline doesn't change. The ground below you doesn't change. You're just totally out there, right? Like you can just totally zone out. But if you're on a trail, all of a sudden that changes.

That all of a sudden becomes very cognitively demanding too. Because where you place your foot really matters. So you don't roll an ankle. Your hills are going to be up. and down so you have to learn to pace yourself. You're getting all this outdoor exposure. You're seeing all these interesting things along the way that are taking your attention and also, I think, kind of forcing a little more creativity, not to mention, things are just unpredictable in other ways. Like the other day I was out running and there's this like pack of coyotes just, you know,

coming up the trail, ran right past me. It was like, hey, what's up guys? We're like, huh, what are you doing out here? And we went our separate ways. And that's something that I'm always going remember, whereas if I'm indoors really kind of trying to dial in everything perfectly, I don't get that. Yeah. There may be a coyote attack in the Moripovich episode. You never know. All right.

So I know we're up against time. So my final question is going to be an advice-oriented question. I'm working on this new book called The Deep Life. And you don't know this yet, but I talk about you somewhat extensively in it. Because one of the big ideas of the book is we too often jump right into the big changes we want to make to make our life more intentional. And we skip the first part where we prepare to succeed with those changes. There's the get your act together. I talked about this a lot of my show. You kind of get your act together first before you make major changes to your production or the changes are

going to sort of fizzle out. And I talk about you and I talk about the comfort crisis in part because one of the things a lot of people have to get used to first is there's going to be a lot of discomfort and all these changes that are going to follow. So why don't you get comfortable with this comfort early on, that's part of your preparation. So to that end, if you're talking to, I'll give you a sample audience member you're talking to. Like, maybe it's someone in their 20s and, you know, they have a job that doing okay. They're not really that happy.

They're zoned out a lot on their phone, right? And maybe otherwise partying, playing a lot of video games or what have you. And we're saying, okay, we want to give you the six-month plan for just turning up your comfort with this comfort off a zero. So we don't want to overwhelm you. We don't want to send you in the Arctic, you know, to do the hunting of the caribou right away. What are the things you would suggest, whatever it is, the two or three things of someone who is overly comforted in that first six months that just break the seal on I can survive discomfort? What type, what have you found from your readers and experience to be like good ways into that?

Yeah. So here's what I'd say. It's big picture. I call this the 2% my mind. mindset. Okay. So there's this study that really sort of changed how I think about humans and human behavior. And it found that 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. Now, 100% of those people knew that if they were to take the stairs, they would get a better long-term return on their health, probably on their mindset. They'd get all these different benefits,

right? But 98% of people choose to do the thing that is easier in the short term that actually often causes them long-term harm, right? And so this tells me that humans are wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing, even when it doesn't serve us. And so I think if you can, the sort of bigger metaphor here is that it's not just about the stairs and the escalator. It's about if you have an opportunity to do this slightly harder thing, it's like you have to get to the second floor. You can take the stairs, you can take the escalator. You take the stairs, that's going to give you this longer return. And so sort of taking that mindset and thinking, okay, where else can I apply that into my day?

It's like if I come up on a set of stairs in the escalator, I'm taking the stairs. If I am going to, if I need to talk to someone, I can either send this like text where I have no real interaction with them or I can call them. Can you figure out what, like if I have a phone, a work phone call, you can take it sitting at your desk doing nothing or you can like pop in your earbuds and like, hey, go for a walk. I have a whole 2% manifesto on the substack that really gets into a bunch of different ideas. But I do think it is thinking of ways to just make what you're already going to do a little bit more challenging, a little bit more uncomfortable in a way that's going to give you a long-term return. And once you start doing that, it's like I like to explain that once you get out to edges, people don't fall off them. The edge expands. So you're kind of slowly like really just stretching this comfort zone.

and then eventually you look back and you've made these big changes and now you can do all these other things that you weren't able to do in the past and what you used to think was uncomfortable is just everyday routine things and along the way to that things have changed and you've become a better person. Oh, I love that. So it's not just, okay, I want to make a change tomorrow. It's 90 minutes a day of, you know, endurance runs in the mountains. It's maybe starting with all these mild ways throughout the days in which you can choose

slight discomfort over comfort in a way that's going to have value. That rewires your brain. That changes your thresholds. And then, as you say, that edge expands, you might find yourself six months later, now doing something that if you had tried day two would have fizzled out. Yeah. So I think there is a great message for my audience, especially when it comes to the preparation point of the deep life.

You'll even find, I would argue, for my audience, the struggles you're having with the digital will get easier by adding discomfort to the analog. and that we often separate these two. Like the digital is its own problem and I need to like stop using my phone so much. Oh, unrelated. I should like take the stairs more. I should exercise more. They're completely connected because it's uncomfortable not to use your phone

and the way you're using before. And if you're comfortable with this comfort, like yeah, of course it is. So are a lot of things. So is like the runs I do and this, you know, that's fine. You're much more likely to say that's fine. You know, it's not going to overwhelm me. So totally. And I'll also say that sometimes.

Sometimes when I'll talk about this, people will kind of go, yeah, right, just taking the stairs. It can't do that much. Well, one, it's a metaphor. Two, I'll give you a good data point. There's this study that found that people who took, I think it was just five flights of stairs a week, they had a 30% lower risk of all-cause mortality. Like, we've engineered so much discomfort out of our life that just adding a little bit back in, especially if you were like the most comfortable, it has huge outside.

returns. And it's not interrupt, to your point, it's not interrupting your life. You're not going from, well, I used to do nothing. And now I'm doing 90 minutes of Zone 2 and this heart rate, but it's like, no, you're just doing something that you're already going to do. You're just making the slightly more uncomfortable version that's going to give you these big benefits. It's not upending your life. Yeah. Well, I love this. Well, Michael, this has been fantastic. You know, for my listeners, the books are the comfort crisis and it's the scarcity mindset. I have that right. I actually read Scarcity brain. Scarcity brain. I've read both.

Scarcity Brain and the comfort crisis. The substack that Michael's been talking about is at 2% PCT, TWOPC.com. It's also in podcast form. So I subscribe, Michael, so I know about this. You can get, you can read it, but also you get the subscriber access to the podcast. And if you want to decide whether to be a paid subscriber or not, is it one out of three? What does the non-de-free subscribers get? One out of three articles a week?

Yep. So Monday is always free. And then Wednesday and Friday, I try and I try and give some useful information. So if you're a free subscriber, you still get Wednesday and Friday, you'll get a little bit of useful information. But paid subscribers kind of get the full boat on Wednesday and Friday that has like all the deeper stuff. Yeah, and I'll often find myself maybe seeing your email in my inbox like, oh, I'm interested in that article, but I'm in a hurry. And then later, if I'm doing a workout, there's the podcast version. It's like, great, I'll just listen to it, which I think is a nice touch.

All right, well, Michael, this has been fantastic. I loved having a chance to talk to you, and thanks for sharing your wisdom. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, man. This is great. All right, so there we go. That was my conversation with Michael Easter, presented by Defender. Visit Land Rover USA.com to learn more about Defender. All right, I really enjoyed that interview.

I love the mix of Michael's story plus his advice. I think just hearing Michael's story actually helps us learn a lot of the way he thinks about the things he writes about. We see where his advice comes from. One thing I wanted to underscore here at the end of the interview was that advice he gave at the end. Right. So it looks like you're suffering from the comfort crisis. You're a knowledge worker. You're on your screens all the time.

You're listening to a lot of Cal Newport, caring about not using social media and having your emails organized. How do you, what's the first step? I asked him. to trying to move towards this embracing discomfort, living more of the way that our Paleolithic bodies were evolved. What's the first step? Notice what he said. Start very small.

You don't have to come out of the gate saying, all right, guys, I'm rucking 10 miles a day in the woods. I'm going to walk 50,000 steps a day and lift rocks and carry rocks underwater and rivers. You don't have to come out of the gates like an endurance athlete. it's a mindset shift. He says, do something every day, a little bit of discomfort. And your mind begins to learn.

It's okay to not try to optimize comfort. It changes its story about yourself. And on top of that new story, you can then weave over time a life that much more aggressively engages with the health and fitness tips that he gives later on. This is very similar to the discipline ladder concept we talk about on our podcast, where I say, look, discipline is not a personality trait you're born with or not. It's also not something you turn on or off binary. It's a belief you have about yourself.

I am a disciplined person that you build through evidence. And the discipline ladder says start with something simple. That helps you begin to rewrite your stories. Like I talk about daily metrics. I have a few daily metrics that are tractable but non-trivial for the things that matter. Take you a couple minutes every day. But you do those for a month or so. your mind says, I'm someone who's willing to take extra effort on the things I care about.

I'm willing to put in extra effort on the things I care about, even if I don't have to. And even if it's a little hard. And then once your mind believes you're that type of person, you can ladder up to slightly harder things. And from there, to something slightly harder. That's exactly what I think Michael is talking about with health and fitness here. You start with a little discomfort. You teach yourself discomfort's okay. And then you start laddering.

and so it's the the walk before the 10 minute walk before the sun comes up becomes later the longer rock which later becomes the burn to ships workout that Michael talks about on his newsletter every Friday every Friday as they called burn the ships just like crazy workout all of his readers do so I love that so Michael and I are in sync and of course I love to hear stories of people who have a very similar life to mind their academics their writers their business who simplify things and spend time walking in the desert with a dog. Michael, you are convincing me. Don't be surprised if you find me six months from now as your new neighbor saying,

all right, when are we rocking? I just started a substack and this is what I'm doing now. Very appealing. It's cool interview. Read the comfort crisis, read scarcity brain. 2%.com. That's 2TW.P.C.com to learn more about his newsletter. And I hope you enjoyed today's in depth.

I don't know when the next one's coming, but I'm enjoying this now. I'm able to talk to people I like about. So in January, I want to do at least one, maybe two more. If you have suggestions, you can send those to Jesse at Calnewport.com. Otherwise, I'll see you back on Monday with the next normal episode of the podcast. Tell then, as always, stay deep. Hi, it's Cal here.

One more thing before you go. If you like the Deep Questions Podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which you can sign up for at CalNewport.com. Each week, I send out a new essay about the theme. or practice of living deeply. I've been writing this newsletter since 2007, and over 70,000 subscribers get it sent to their inboxes each week. So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction and shallowness that afflict our world,

you've got to sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.