SOLVED with Mark Manson - How to Get Out of a Rut, Pain and Boredom, and Knowing When to Quit

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Today, we’re diving deep into the subtle difference between a healthy routine and a rut. How can you tell if your daily grind is keeping you grounded… or just grinding you down? Next, we tackle the question of boredom: Why does it feel so unbearable, and could we actually be missing out on its hidden perks? Spoiler alert—boredom might just be the key to unlocking your most creative, inspired self. Finally, we confront one of life’s biggest dilemmas: When is it time to walk away, and when should you double down? Whether it’s a project that’s going nowhere or a relationship that feels like it’s on life support, we’ll give you insights on knowing when to quit and when to stick it out. Enjoy. Brilliant or Bullshit Paper: Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4330241/ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough 01:19 F*ck of the Week: Routines vs ruts 17:50 Brilliant or Bullsht: How painful is boredom? 31:06 Q&A: When to quit vs when to grit? https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Theme music: “Icarus Lives” by Periphery used with permission from Periphery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose. That is purpose. Dot app. Drew, I'm wondering if I'm becoming a boring person. Which is funny because I spent so many years of my life optimizing to be unboring, to just optimizing my life to be as interesting as possible.

But it's funny because lately I've really, found a lot of peace in liberation and in things that are generally considered boring life practices. And it's weird because like there's a still little piece of me, like the inner 20 year old who's like, dude, you're so lame. Like what do you get out of the house. Get out of the house. Go do something. But meanwhile, you know, I'm so happy. Like life is so calm. So I think that's the fuck of the week. We're going to talk about what is a routine, what is a rut, when are you avoiding life by sticking to your routines and when are you embracing and celebrating life when you follow your routines? And this one gets personal for me too because it's like causing

marriage problems. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, let's dig into that in a minute, in a minute. But yeah. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your whole. Mark Manson. Bring it, sum up, what are we talking about? Well, I'm very similar to you, too, where as I've gotten older, I've found my little routines that I really like. Yeah. And recently it occurred to me, it was something like I hit like a five-day streak where

I did the exact same thing, five days in a row. And it's all actually fairly healthy, and I enjoyed those five days. But it was like the same thing, five days. Not the exact same thing, you know, but like I worked out at the same time. I worked the same hours. I went to bed at the same time, got up at the same time. And it was nice in a way,

but then I thought, oh, God, is this? Is this all there is to life? Is this all there is to it? Is this a groundhog day, like a healthy groundhog day for me? Yeah. Yeah.

When does a routine become a rut? When do our healthy habits become actually kind of toxic habits? This is fucking with me because it is, I've long held to believe. that a modest amount of chaos is optimal for one's life. Like you want a certain amount of spontaneity and unexpectedness. Yeah, man, I really like just doing the same thing every day.

I know. That's me too. Yeah. It's super weird. Like I think that novelty is amazing and awesome and I want to seek it out. But then I also have, like I said, five days in a row, I'll just sit there to be the exact same thing. Yeah, it is. That's what it is.

It's a lot of effort. You have to expend a lot of energy. I, you know, there's so many angles like, could attack this. This is a very new thing for me. I have to admit, a big part of it is since I quit drinking. So when I quit, when I drank, I like something about the interaction between alcohol and like the dopamine circuits or whatever, I just kind of had this unending craving for novelty. And since I stopped drinking, I don't have that anymore. And I actually kind of have the opposite of that. Like now when it's, now when there's an opportunity to do something spontaneous or fun or

cool, my immediate thought is like, well, what's the point of this? Like, is this going to get me closer to my goals? Is this going to help me grow in some ways? Which is fucking lame. That's the official term. It's fucking lame. So I have mixed feelings about it. I would define the difference between a routine and a rut. Is a routine is something that you feel helpful. helps optimize your life and it invigorates your life. It adds meaning and purpose and efficiency to your life. A rut is when you are doing the same things over and over because you are afraid not to. So I think the defining element is fear and avoidance.

You know, like where I'm at in life, I don't fear doing different things. Like there are plenty of time, like I go on trips and do a bunch of stuff for work and still and still go on vacations and do a crazy thing here or there. And I enjoy it, but I don't know. I don't crave it the way I used to. Yeah. Yeah. What about, I remember when you wrote that big piece about Emmanuel Kant, right? And I didn't realize, I didn't know this, but Kant either never left the town he grew up in or only left it like once. And he basically did the same thing over and over and over again. And now he's one of the most famous philosophers of all time. Arguably, probably one of the, you know, 25 most influential humans on world history, one of the most important philosophers ever,

lived in the same town his entire life, had the exact same routine his entire adult life. His neighbors used to joke that they could set a clock to when he came and left his apartment. And despite living, I think he only lived like 25 kilometers away from the ocean, he never saw it. Yeah. His entire life. Yeah. He saw no reason to. That is insane.

Like, that to me sounds like, was it worth it? Right? Like, for us, it probably was. But for him, I'm not sure. I don't know. I do think there's a fundamental value of novel experience, especially when you're young and you don't have many experiences. I think, I think, you know, it's novelty is a diminishing returns curve.

Like, the older you get, the more experiences you have, the less impactful or insightful or useful each subsequent new experiences. But when you're young and you haven't had many new experiences at all, they're super important and you should definitely seek out a lot of novelty in your life. So some of this I just feel like it's just age. Yeah. People get fucking boring when they get old. But in my case, some of it is the alcohol thing. And some of it too is the health thing.

It's, it's, I realized at some point in the last couple of years that to like really maintain a healthy lifestyle, you have to be kind of rigid with your, your, your, your, your, you know. your daily routines and your daily practices, I guess I just brainwashed myself into thinking I love it. Right. Yeah. Something, I don't know. Because I guess the alternative wasn't amenable anymore. Right.

Yeah, but I mean, when the routine is healthy, like I was saying, I have a fairly healthy routine that I stick to more or less. Yeah. When it's healthy, when it's, parts of it are at least invigorating for me. But also, like that weekend, with that those like five day streak that I have that week ended and I'm like I don't remember that week very well like it's just kind of all a blur because it was all the same over and over right right so and they say that too about when you get older yes that's one of the reasons like time seems to go faster is because you end up doing the same thing over and over again I could see that yeah I mean on the one hand okay so I wrote this article years ago called the four stages of life and it's still it's one of my favorite things that I've ever written and the four stages the first one was mimesis or mimicry, second one was exploration, third one was commitment, and the fourth one was legacy.

So stage one is you just copy what other people do. It's how children learn. It's how we learn when we're young. It's like you watch other people do things. You see what they care about. You see what they're interested in. And you try to do what they do. You try to care about the things they care about.

It's basically the way that you learn everything for the first time. At a certain point, you have to branch out and do things that the people around you aren't necessarily doing. You have to explore your own personal identity. You need to find your own interests, find your own passions, find the things that you care about or that you're good at that other people aren't because that's what differentiates you. And so that's kind of like the first, that transition is kind of like the first big, meaningful project I think of most people's lives. And that leads you in the exploration. Exploration is about maximizing novelty. It's maximizing experience. It's figuring out what you like, what you dislike, who you want to spend time with, who you don't

want to spend time with, what sort of pursuits you're good at, on and on and on. And I think most people spend their early adulthood in the exploration phase. But then the next transition, the next big project is picking the few things to commit to, picking the few things that are like, okay, these are like the three or four most important people or things in my life. And so I'm going to build my entire life around those things. And that leads you in the stage three, which is the commitment stage. And so it's funny. It's like I totally recognize going by my own framework.

I've left the exploration phase, which is fun and exciting and sexy. And you get a bunch of really cool stories to the commitment phase, which is like groundhog day, as you put it, a healthy groundhog day. And so it feels from like an emotional point of view, it can easily feel. like a downgrade but at the same time when like I really do an inventory on what I'm spending my time on day and day out it's like man I fought tooth and nail for years to figure out what I fucking care about yeah and now I found it and I've managed again fought tooth and nail to build a life where I can optimize for those things that I care about and now I'm doing that and then of course being a fucking

human I'm sitting around being like well this is kind of boring is isn't it? Right. Right. Yeah. Just like always mildly dissatisfied, no matter what happens. You're, you're always a six or a seven out of ten. Yes. It's always something. You can be optimizing, always something you can be working on. Always more fun out there. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So how is this destroying your marriage, Mark? Okay. That's a bit of an exaggeration. But it's funny because so my wife, she really loves novelty. And it's not even novelty. Like, it's not even like, it's definitely not chaos. Like she loves exploring new things. So she loves food. She loves architecture. She loves design. So like for her going across town to a new restaurant

and trying a new dish or looking at a new museum, like these things are like very, uh, meaningful for her. And, uh, back when I wasn't boring, um, I was always down to go do it with her, you know, uh, but now that I'm in this new phase of life, I'm kind of like, I'm good. Like, I've been to a restaurant before.

I don't need to go again. Right. And so, yeah, basically she's just getting frustrated. She's like, what happened to you? Like, you aged like 20 years and two.

She keeps joking. She's like, I didn't sign up for this. I signed up for the fun, the fun party guy. And I'm like, yeah, that guy was drunk.

So I joke that it's ruining my marriage. But it's been, it's been a point of contention lately. Yeah. You know, she's like, she's been urging like, we need to get out. We need to do more things. And, and, and my point of view has been like, we spent like 12 years doing all of the things. So like, why don't we just like slow down a little bit? So, yeah, that's our current project.

Okay. Yeah. So, so, I mean, there's a whole thing about, you know, growing together. and your routines evolving with one another in there as well. But what would you say to somebody who is maybe stuck in a rut? Like, how do you inject chaos, good chaos into your life? Like, is there a, I mean, we've talked about travel a lot. That's a really good one, I think.

It also makes you appreciate your routines. I think when you leave. Like, you know, you've been traveling. I've been traveling a little bit this year too. And that really makes you appreciate your healthy routines and gives you some perspective on that. Is there, are there any other ways to just inject some. some good chaos in your life? It's hard because, I mean, chaos by definition

is kind of unexpected, but there's got to be. Like, I imagine. Do you even want to get prescriptive with this for people? I don't know. Because chaos is different. We define that very differently. We do define that very differently. You and I would define it differently, I think.

I do think there is value of intentionally breaking your routine periodically. Yeah. If anything, they'd just give you an appreciation for it. Yeah. And remind you of like, this is why I have this in my life. This is why this matters. But I imagine there are going to be some occasions where you're like, hmm, maybe I should change my routine.

Like I actually kind of like this, this new thing I tried or this new thing I did. You know, everybody, that's going to be different. You know, for some people, that's going to be changing out the coffee they have in the morning or, you know, waking up 30 minutes later. You know, you know, get really wild and crazy. Other people, you know, it's going to be like, I'm going to go spend six months a year in Mexico and see how that works. Right. So it's, mileage is going to vary quite a bit. but I do think it is important to consciously spice things up.

Yeah. And try different things. I'm also a big fan of like, it's funny. Like, have you been like a Brazilian steakhouse? Oh yeah, like the Fogoda Chau? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fucking love that shit.

All right. So Brazilian steakhouses, for people who don't know, Brazilian steakhouses, the way it works is you just, they give you a card, and there's one side is green and one side is red. and you just flip the side over to green and they just start bringing you random food and like every time they walk up to the table you just say yes or no.

And if you say yes, they put it on your plate and if you say no, they leave. And you could stay as long as you want, you can eat as much as you want. It's awesome. So my wife and I, we think of this as like flipping the card green in our lives of like, okay, you know,

we need a few months where we just say yes to everything and we create that rule. It's like any invitation, any opportunity, any like opening going on in a neighborhood or get together or neighborhood. So we're currently in a say yes to everything mode. Okay. I like that.

And it's funny because it's just like a lot of unexpected stuff shows up. So like I just got an invitation to join like my neighborhood organization or whatever and like start attending neighborhood meetings to like, I don't know, do whatever people in California do, complain about housing. So I'm going to sign up. And I'm going to go to the media, you know, like there's a lot of sexy things, but also a lot of like completely random and unsexy things. Right. I like that idea.

There's almost like a seasonality to it. Yes. I like that a lot better than like, oh, yeah, you should do this. You should, you know, like inject this type of chaos in your life or whatever. It's more of a seasonality type of thing. Cal Newport, who we had on. Yeah. He talks about the seasonalities of work.

Yes. You could have a seasonality too of just your routines. Because what inevitably happens is you say yes to too many things. And then you get overcommitted and then you start feeling burnt out and overwhelmed. And so that's when you flip the card back to red, which at a Brazilian steakhouse lets the waiters know, leave the table alone. Don't bring anything over. And then you can like eat what's on your plate. And then when you're hungry again, you flip the card back to back to green.

Yeah. That's another reason I think balance is a little bit of an illusion. Yeah. So you have to, there's times to be out of balance in times to seek balance. It's like a thermostat type thing. Yeah. Maybe that should be like the title of my next book. Life is a Brazilian steakhouse.

And he said the cover is you with a green, big old green, like paddle. With a giant like five pounds of steak on my plate. Yeah. Man, this is going to kill. Publisher's going to love this one. They're going to love it. Actually, you know what? The only time I've been to one, I was with you in Sao Paulo.

Oh, shit. That was the only time I've been to a photo show. That's right. That is right. And it was Thanksgiving. We were there on Thanksgiving. That's right. It was in Rio, actually.

I was in Rio. I was in Rio. Yeah. my weight in whatever meat they brought me. Oh yeah, that's how you do it. That's how you, like, fast for the day. Yeah. I didn't have breakfast.

Yeah, no breakfast, no nothing, you know, and then you show up, like, ready to, ready to fucking work. Yeah. And, yeah. And you put, you put the hours in. You put the pounds in. You got, you got to get, you got to get that, like, that $69.99 worth of, oh, yeah. A beef, like at least two pounds of it. So, uh, I was sweating and greasy when I left.

So. On that note. We're going to cut it to a message from our sponsors. We'll be right back with, is it brilliant or bullshit? All right, we're back from our meat hangovers. What's on the docket for brilliant or bullshit this week? Well, we found a study. This study's been out for a while, and some people might have heard of it.

But nobody's heard of it, Drew. Nobody reads this shit like you do. Yeah, I'm the only one nerd out like this. Well, it's a study about boredom, actually. Okay. So we were talking a little bit about boredom. but what they did basically is they took people and they just stuck them in a room and took all their phone away from them took everything away from them and said jump just sit there sounds

horrible right yeah so they give them six to 15 minutes uh-huh and it was a series of studies and the early studies people were just like this is torturous I don't want to do this anymore six to 15 minutes up to six minutes and people couldn't handle it yes yes and then they started giving them different tasks or options where they could do something if they wanted to um the most interesting finding, though, that they found is that there's a lot of people who will give themselves a shock rather than just sit there with their own thoughts. They would rather shock themselves. Electrical shock. Electrical shock, yeah. A mild electrical shock. They would rather give themselves a mild electrical shock. Unshockingly, two-thirds of men were shocked themselves.

Only about 25% of women shocked themselves. This is why women live longer. Yes. Yes. One of the many reasons. But it's really interesting because it just, it shows just how averse we are to being bored. This study is almost 10 years old. So it's probably gotten worse since then. I like this for two reasons. One is, and we'll talk about the boredom piece, but I also like it because it very much philosophically aligns with a lot of the Buddhist stuff that I've always talked about, which is the mind kind of craves pain. Even if you put people in a perfectly fine situation, the mind will start finding things wrong with it and find things to be upset about and get attached to certain sensations or thoughts or feelings that feel dissatisfying.

And it's like this, to me, this is just like the most fundamental expression of that facet of human nature, which is like, well, there's nothing else to do. So I might as well just hurt myself because that will give me something to focus on and think about and be upset about. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's like, it's almost poetic in a way.

I'm not surprised. I'm honestly, I'm honestly not surprised. I'm not either. I'm not either. It's just, it speaks to just how is it, are we afraid of our thoughts? Are we like, we don't want to stare at our own thoughts? Is that what, like, are we just so afraid of what's inside our heads that we just don't want to face it either to?

The instructions on some of these words to just sit there. Yeah. Just don't do anything. Notice any thoughts that come up or whatever and we'll ask about them later, but don't do anything. And people were just like, no, my mind wonders. I want to think about other things. I want to fidget. I want to, you know, if you don't have your phone with you, you probably think about,

I wish I had my phone with me. Sure. Like, we're just so, so averse to being bored. I mean, a lot of creative people will say boredom is like the, that's the playground of the creative, right? Yeah. We avoid a lot of that. Yeah, boredom is the mother of invention. Yeah, something like that, right?

It also makes me think, not having another thought related to the pain thing, which is they say this about people who commit suicide, that it's not, like if you think of like 9-11, like the people who jumped out of the towers, it's not that they weren't afraid of jumping out of the towers. It's that what was inside was so much more painful than the fear of falling.

Right. that that became appealing by comparison. On a much more micro scale, I wonder if this is sort of the same thing that like sitting alone with your own thoughts is so burdensome and painful that an electric shock feels appealing in comparison that it's like, well, that's less painful.

So what is it about our own thoughts that is like so burdensome? What is it, Mark? That's what I'm asking you. Do we really have, is there just a fear of like what's underneath all of that and that lizard brain? Or is it? I don't know. I just think boredom is painful.

Yeah. I do. And I think our tolerance for boredom is just probably all time low. I don't know, man. Like I, the, what this brings to mind is I remember I went on a number of meditation retreats in my early 20s when I lived in Boston. And I remember the first one, it was a. single day, it was like 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or whatever, I got about halfway through that day. Like, the back half of that day was so excruciating for me. I never, at the time, I never really

meditated for more than like 20 minutes, maybe. And how old were you at this time? 21. Okay. So maybe. Yeah. 20, 21. So this is early to mid 2000s. Yeah. And it's had a very modest experience of meditation and I signed up for this full day retreat and so it was basically like nine hours non-stop silent you basically walked in took your shoes off sat down started meditating and you you weren't done until like nine or ten hours later they give you no instruction or anything they just very very very basic very very basic um and and you paid for this I'm guessing like you just you paid to just go sit and meditate no it's like donation yeah okay yeah um but my memory of that is that that afternoon was was absolutely excruciating like I desperately wanted to get up

and leave so bad it actually reached a point where I I started like singing songs in my head because it was the only thing that could like kind of get me through it which I realize is literally the opposite of meditation is like finding entertaining things to do in your mind but yeah I don't know it's it's it's uh it's I do think this is, for me, this is where meditation, the value of meditation kicks in because meditation is the practice of learning to sit with stillness and nothingness and become comfortable with boredom. And I think that's got to be a valuable skill. No, for sure. I think a lot of us, too, we don't think of boredom as being painful. We just, we think of it as,

oh my God, I'm bored. I'm uncomfortable. We don't think of it as painful. But if you really stop and pay attention to the boredom. It's pain. It is painful. Yeah. It is painful. Or a certain level of it, I think, is actually pain. Like it's, and it's not pain specifically.

I think it's more discomfort. It's just like, yeah, when I really think back to that retreat, like, it just felt like, you know how like when you're stuck in a shitty airplane economy seat and like no matter how you shift your weight or move your legs, it's uncomfortable? Like, no matter how you sit, it's just, like, dissatisfying. It's kind of like that for hours and hours and hours and hours. So I don't know. Speaking of which, have you heard of this raw dogging flights?

No, it's not what it sounds like. Go on. Yeah. It is not sexual. So there's this movement, like Gen Zeters are doing this where they get on a flight. they do no phone, no music, no TV, no movies, nothing. They just sit and like stare at the back of the seat in front of them for the entire flight. Okay.

And they post on social media and they're like, I just raw dog a four hour flight from Miami to New York or whatever. And it's like everybody gets really excited about it. And then there was like some guy who posted he did like a nine hour flight raw dog like no sleep allowed at all. Oh, no sleep even. It's like. Wow. It's like a little mini meditation retreat in the sky. But anyway, it's becoming a thing.

Okay. And it's like, it reminds me of this. It's almost like a macho thing. It's like, oh, I raw dog the six hour flight. Oh, I raw dog the red eye across the Atlantic. It's like, oh, damn, dude. Like, you're fucking tough. I don't know.

This is like, I feel like this is a world we're coming to where stimulation is so overabundant that like the new machismo status symbol is like, well, I can be bored longer. you. We can't. I'll be bored longer than you. Like, that's like the new, like, bicep flex. That's not so bad. I think I kind of like that. I don't know. I've heard of raw do drug, alcohol, like no caffeine, everything. You're just raw do dog in life. I never heard of raw. Romanism. Yeah, straight edgers and like all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do, I remember when Wi-Fi started to be get on planes. They started to add Wi-Fi to the planes. And I thought, oh, this is going to be amazing. And then it started happen. I'm like, oh, God, this was like one spot where I could just like try to sleep.

Detach. Yeah. Yeah. So I love Wi-Fi on planes because it's good enough to actually get useful things done, but it's, it's still bad enough that like you can't get on and watch. I don't think it'll be too much longer before. It's all just Starlink and this high speed. I just like, I hope they keep the connection bad because I'm so productive on flights. I'm so productive. Well, so is there is there some value you think then in raw dogging life? in general. You know, purposely, is there a good way

to leverage boredom, I guess? I think so. I mean, I... You've talked before about like writing, you know, where you like, I sit down and, you know, if you turn off your Wi-Fi

or whatever it is, and I have to sit here for two hours and the only thing I can do is either write or do nothing. Sure. I got two options. Yeah. And I've heard other writers talk about that too.

Yes. So is it like using, leveraging that pain of the boredom to, do something for sure that's not boring for sure but difficult I also just think like if you develop a tolerance for boredom it's going to give you an advantage in so many areas of life like if you're willing to sit with hard thoughts longer than other people or have difficult conversations longer and other people or listen like educate you know watch a lecture or read a educational manual or something longer than other people.

Like, it's just, we're entering a world where, you know, boredom tolerance is a form of pain tolerance. And it's any form of pain tolerance is going to give you advantages in life. So, yeah, I think this is just like a, it's a new dimension of that. Yeah, I think so too. All right. Speaking of boredom, here's a message from our sponsors. It's Q&A time, Drew.

It is Q&A time. What do the people want? Let's give the people what they want. What do they want? Adina from YouTube, she asked, please explain the rules of quitting. I like the way she puts it to, when to quit and when to grit. When to quit and when the grit? No, but this was actually a pretty common question or some variation of this question.

Yeah, this comes up. When do I give up? When do I stick it out? All the time. All different contexts, too, whether it's a career path or a project you're working on, a relationship. It's tough, too, because persistence is super important. But also not. wasting time on something that's never going to work out is also is also really important.

For sure. My here, I have a couple of heuristics for this. One of them is, I just think of as momentum. So if something is very hard and it's not really working, do I still feel, do I feel like my progress? First of all, do I feel like progress is happening? And do I feel like that progress is accelerating? So it's basically like, you know, the more time that I spend trying do the first, failures get better.

Yeah. Are the failures improving? If they're not, then to me, that's, that's kind of a sign of like, all right, this is probably not going to work out. Whereas if they are, you know, so an example here is when I started my business, you know, I basically made no money for like a year, year and a half. But I was learning so much about marketing, sales, promotion, websites, e-commerce. like my my understanding of the business was growing at such a such a fast pace that I was like,

you know, if I keep at this, it feels inevitable that something will eventually work. So I should just keep going. Like I had a lot of confidence that that was going to be the case. Whereas I've had other things in my life, like music, for example, I was a good musician. I went to music school. I did decently in music school. but it was so clear to me that the best guys in music school

were able to first of all they were just so far ahead of me and the reality of the music industry is such that like you know the top 0.01% get 99% of the benefits that I was like I don't see how this is going to work out for me in the long run like I'm either going to have to work

10 times harder than that guy for the rest of my life or I can just go do something else that other people have to work 10 times as hard as I do you know so so yeah I gave it up and I'm honestly giving it up was one of the best things I ever did yeah does you talked about

you've talked about before too like when you were building your business and I think it was not like you were living with a girlfriend at the time or something like that and you said yeah I'm not making a lot of money just like what you said I'm not making a lot of money but I'm learning a lot as I go. Not only are you learning,

but you're like, this learning to me is very, very valuable. Yes. And like I value this even if nobody else around me does. Is that, do you think that's a good indication too?

It depends what. Well, because what I'm thinking about is there's, there's some, there's like outlier examples of this. Sure. Where somebody like should have given up. You think they should have given up at some point,

but they didn't. They stuck it out. You've written a lot about Charles Bukowski, before. He didn't become really all that famous until he was in its 50s. And even then, it was kind of hit and miss and he was up and down and all over the place. Yeah. There's other examples of that too. I'm a really big fan of like, it's always sunny and Philadelphia. Love it. Yeah. Rob McElhaney, the creator of that show, I mean, he should have gave up a long time before that. He wasn't getting roles in anything. And so he just decided to go make his own

thing and it turned as always sunny in Philadelphia. Most people would have given up by that point. Sure. And should have probably given up by that point. What do those outliers teach you, if anything? Well, with creative pursuits, I think the equation is a little bit different. My argument with creative pursuits is that you should be doing what you would be doing for free anyway. Okay. Because that's what you're going to be best at.

That's what you're going to be most passionate about. And that's probably what people are going to resonate with when they see your work. But I think there's also you just have to be realistic that any creative industry or market, 99% of the benefits go to the top 0.1%. Right. So and there's just, in a certain amount of that too, there's a certain luck factor. Right, right.

Timing factor that plays in as well. So I think if we're talking about creative pursuits, the equation changes a little bit. In professional pursuits, I think it's, you need to simply be really honest about your skill, talent, and what you're learning. And understanding when you are, working in a pursuit that you don't necessarily have like any natural advantages at that you don't have any natural talent at,

um, that's going to be something that's hard to stick with in the long run. So this is one thing that Tim Ferriss talks about is he often says that like when he's faced with a difficult decision, he will pick the option where failure teaches him the most. Oh. And so he will often try things that are a long shot, but the failure of that long shot will actually. create a lot of second order benefits or teach him a lot of things or give him a lot of

experiences that could be valuable in other areas of life. So that's a factor as well, right? And that was true with my business of like, because I was, I remember having a conversation with my dad about it. You know, I, he was like, where's this going? Like what? And I was like, look, even if this doesn't go anywhere, I'm learning so many useful skills. I learned how to, I literally became a web designer because I was trying to like put my work. put a together website for one of my businesses. And I did freelance web design for a number of years. So I learned web design. I learned copywriting. I learned, um, you know, Facebook ads and, and promotions. I, I learned all these skill sets that I probably could have gone and gotten a day

job doing one of those things if, if the writing hadn't worked out. So that's another example of like, okay, even if this fails, I'm developing skills or there are like, second order effects that are very beneficial. I was also building a network, right? Like, let's say the blog never took off, but I had 500 really hardcore fans as readers. Of those 500 people, like, I can probably find something. You know, I could probably ask that those 500 people, like, hey, I need a job or I want to work with somebody, like anybody of an opportunity. So there's like, there's relationship capital that you can get. So again, I think it's how, valuable is the process and how valuable is the failure. And if those two things are valuable,

then yeah, keep going. And then there's also the momentum question. It's like, is it getting easier the more you do it or is it getting harder the more you do it? If it's getting harder, that's a sign. The momentum thing is very true, I think, when it comes to relationships. I gave this analogy to a friend a couple years ago and it inspired him to dump his girlfriend. I told him, I was like, Please go on. Yeah, go on. Give us the secret.

I told him, because he, him and his girlfriend were like fighting all the time. Yeah. And I was like, look, I'm going to ask you a simple question. I was like, when you guys go through the fights and you like come to resolutions or compromises, I was like, does it feel like each subsequent fight? Does it feel like you're pushing a rock up a hill or does it feel like you're pushing a rock down a hill? Like, does each subsequent fight get easier because of the previous fights or is it getting harder because of the previous fights? And he said, it's getting harder. And I was like, okay, every relationship I've had that failed, it got harder.

It was a rock going up a hill. Whereas with my wife, it was a rock going down a hill. Every subsequent fight got easier because of the things we learned in the resolutions we came to and the compromises we came to in the previous ones. So the obstacles were still there, but they just, they were much more manageable. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

And it's you, there's a momentum to, to the obstacles. And I, I literally think it's a matter of like, you are in the real, you are building a skill set within the relationship. Like my, my wife and I have a Mark and Fernanda skill set that we've built together that makes us really good at fighting now. because we've successfully fought and found resolutions and compromises so many times. Whereas other people, they like, they don't build that skill set. They just kind of like take turns suffering. And the resentment builds and, you know, nothing actually gets better. Okay.

All right. You also too the other day you brought up this point to me. I think it's really interesting about hard work. Where does hard work come into this? Like where does it just like gritting it out, you know, when you really want something? or you think you want something, but you're not sure to keep going. Hard work. How do you define it?

How do you think other people define it? And where does that fit into all this? Hard work is, you know, you're expending a lot of time and energy. But what's funny is that your definition of a lot of time and energy is going to shift wildly based on your relationship with the activity. So I think the example I gave to you when we talked about this was like, when I was in music school, I could feel myself falling behind the other people. in my program. And so I started practicing more. And I went from maybe practicing

two to three hours a day to practicing like four to five hours a day. And in my mind, that was like a massive investment and I was kind of mentally at the ceiling of my capacity to practice and improve on the instrument. So at the time, I thought, I'm working my ass off. This is like as much as I can give

and it's still not really working. Meanwhile, there are other people in the program who were practicing eight, 10, 12 hours a day. So in my head, that was hard work and it wasn't working. I ended up quitting. When I got to writing, and especially when it came to blogging

and the business around blogging, I would sit down and start working on something and I wouldn't even get up to like eat for like 10 hours. And then after that 10 hours, I would like come back and still have more energy to keep going. And I realize I'm like, oh, this is hard work.

Like this is what actually like it's not that it feels hard. Like it's the subjective experience of like what is difficult is often misguiding because it's like the actual quantity of energy and work that was going into it. Like 12 hours of writing felt easier to me than four hours of music. And so again, that's like that's an indication. I was in the wrong thing before. Right. four hours feels like a lot of hard work, yeah, you're probably in the wrong thing. Whereas if you're able to go 12 hours and still like be kind of excited to keep going or like have trouble

falling asleep because you're still thinking about it, that's a sign that you're in the right thing. Right. So, so like the other students in the music program who were, they were practices six, eight, ten hours a day. Did you ever talk to them about that? Yes. Yeah. So there's a guy named Chris McQueen. He has a couple of Grammys now. He was like the top guy in my program. Okay. He was a guitarist and a band called Snarky Puppy. They're amazing. You should check him out. I remember I like, I cornered him in the cafeteria one day and I started talking to him. And I was like really curious about his practicing, his practice regimen. So I started asking him about like, you know, how much do you warm up and like how do you work on a song and all this stuff? And he was just giving me these blazay answers just like, I don't know, dude.

Like, I just kind of work on it. Like, whatever. It's like typical shit of like anybody who's actually really good at something, they don't think a whole lot about how they do it. And so I remember I had this whole conversation with him. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to kind of tell them what's going on with me because I was thinking about dropping out at that point. And so I told him.

I was like, look, man, I'm like, I'm practicing like four or five hours a day. I'm like starting to feel tendinitis in my left hand. I'm exhausted. I'm completely burnt out. I was like, what do you do when you feel like that? And he was like, I've never felt like that. And Mark walked out right there. I was like, all right.

I need to get the fuck out of here. This is not, you know, and it's, it's, he is a Grammy. Yeah. And I don't. Yeah. And that's why. That's a huge part of why. Right.

definitely so yeah I think it's it's important to be realistic about those things right right yeah what about for people who haven't found that thing maybe that's another question I don't know I mean yeah it is that is kind of another podcast but I don't know maybe that kind of comes back to the boredom thing like being able to stick with something through the boredom through the friction like everything has some amount of friction everything like even if you love something, you'll still wake up not really wanting to do it, maybe 20% of the time. Right. And, but I don't know, you still go do it. Like that, I don't know, there have been so many times where like I wake up and I'm like, ugh, I don't want to write today. But then I

force myself under the chair and I open the document and I like write a couple sentences. And then by like the second paragraph, I'm like, oh, yeah, this feels good, you know, and then it comes back. But I feel like if people don't, have the, so this is where the grit comes in. If you don't have the grit to like put your ass in the chair on those off days, you don't rediscover the fun, you know. So, grit is important too. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the final answer. All right. Quitting puts you, quitting is important because it points you in the right direction and then grit is only important once you found the right direction. If you use grit and you're pointing in the wrong direction,

it's just going to get you further off course. Oh, yeah. That's where the pain comes in. The unnecessary pain, yeah. That's when you start electrocuting yourself. As we all want to do. As we all wish we could. Yes. All right, what's the, oh, the wisdom of the week. So I picked this one out.

This is a very orthogonal thought, but I used to be a fan of the late Mitch Headberg, the one-liner comedian. I like this quote. This quote's not going to sound wise, but I would like people to think of it in the context of like, Quitting is never actually quitting. Quitting is simply making space for something else. So in those terms, Mitch Hedberg once said, I like an escalator because an escalator can never break.

It just becomes stairs. That's a great dad joke. Yeah, it is a great dad joke. All right, we'll be back next week. Be sure to subscribe, follow the show, leave a review. And if you want to submit one of your questions, either leave it as a comment

under this show on YouTube or you can submit it to podcast at markmanson.net. We will be back next week. Say goodbye, Drew. Goodbye. Drew? Drew.

The subtle art of not getting a fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishamura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.