SOLVED with Mark Manson - How to Set Goals and Create Healthy Habits in 2025

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In this special New Year's episode of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck podcast, we dive into the perennial challenge of making meaningful changes in our lives. Rather than falling into the typical "new year, new you" trap that leads most people to abandon their resolutions by February, Drew and I explore a different approach to personal transformation. We share our own struggles with perfectionism, control, and finding purpose. We also dig into some research about how evolution may have shaped our sense of purpose, the science of habit formation, and offer practical strategies for making lasting changes. Whether you're setting goals for the new year or just trying to build better habits, this episode will help you approach personal growth with more wisdom and less pressure in 2025. Enjoy. Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Follow me: https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Theme song: 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. Well, it's that time of year again, Drew. You know what time it is? What time is taking it?

It is time that time that we do every roughly 365 days where we arbitrarily decide that this is the time that we're finally going to change something about ourselves. And then we sit and we obsess and we. we get really excited and we write down a bunch of goals. And then by February, we were back to snacking on the couch and watching Love is Blind reruns. Right. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself. I don't know about you.

It checks out pretty much. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Are you ready for this time of year? Are you excited for this yet another new year, new you special? I do like a fresh start. I do. And maybe that's just because of the novelty of it or whatever, but I do appreciate the fresh starts. Yeah.

Yeah. I will say my evolution with New Year's or New Year, New You, it's changed. You know, when I was younger, I was very cynical about it. I was like, this is stupid. You should be able to change your life any time of the year. You don't need a specific date. But I do think there is some sort of value to the ritual of, hey, first week of January, let's sit down assess your life. what's working, what's not.

I think that the whole reason we have holidays, right, is that they are reminders for us to check in on certain things or topics about ourselves. So in my older age, I've mellowed a bit and I've come around to it. Come around, okay, good, good. Well, that's good because it's January 1st. And we have to do another fucking new year, new you episode.

I think it was you at one point, you compared this like the self-help industry, this is like our Christmas album or something like that, right? You have to do something on January 1st. It is impossible not to because it's just, it's especially now that I've been in this industry for like 16 years. Like I'm like, oh, it's another January 1st. Oh, God, we need to like, what are we going to promote this year? What's our new like PDF or special recourse or whatever?

Like every year it's something, right? Right. So this year you guys get a podcast. It's no longer a blog post or anything like that. Which is the sacca Cole equivalent of the. The sack of goal equivalent? I mean, it's just a podcast. I mean, people are probably going to listen to 20 different New Year's podcast.

True. You know, trying to set their goals or anything. So we'll do our part. Right. We will check in. You know, last year, you and I made New Year's resolutions. And then we did a check-in in June. I'm curious, yours was sleep better.

Yeah. You were currently undersliped. I am undersliped. Honestly, the year went pretty well. Well, last night did not know well. So if we step back to take the forest for the trees, I have improved my sleep habits. Well, I set a goal to run a marathon and I quit by March. You were done by March, yeah.

I think I was like the typical New Year's resolution candidate for the last year. But I like what we're doing this year. So what we're doing today is actually I've never been a huge New Year resolution guy. Same. A long time listeners and readers know I think most of the value of goals is just that they get you to do something. It's like the goal itself isn't really that important. So it won't surprise people that I've never been huge on big New Year's resolutions. What I've always liked to do is I've like to set a theme for the year of like this year I'm focusing on X.

And to focus on X, these are like the two or three modest changes or goals that I have throughout the year. So today, instead of doing fuck of the week, we're doing fuck of the year. The fuck of the year. What is our fuck of the year? What is either the thing that we want to give more fucks about or give fewer fucks about and why? And then we'll talk about what the repercussions of those things are. So do you want to kick us off?

I can kick us off. Yeah. Okay. Mine is perfectionism. Okay. And this is a lifelong battle. And 2025 is my year to finally slay this drag. And I think.

Okay. I think. How are you going to go about doing that? Well, first of all, what I did is I kind of took an inventory of like how much, how perfectionism is kind of like fucking up my life or there's areas where I'm like, I don't really pay attention to. But I'm like, if you weren't so perfectionist about this, you probably do a little bit better on that. Sure. So I kind of took an inventory first of that. What are some of those things?

Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, the big one I've noticed over years and years now is that perfectionism just leads to more paralysis around taking any sort of action for me. I have that kind of perfection. There's a few different flavors of perfectionism. The one I have is kind of leads to that anyway. And when you want everything to be perfect, you just don't even start on things sometimes. Or you get a little bit started on them. And then you're just like, I got to wait and let this be a little bit more perfect in my life.

And that's just, I can't keep doing that. Yeah. Because you end up spinning your wheels or I got like 10 projects that I start that I don't finish. Yeah. That sort of thing. So, yeah, that's a big one. So what's your plan of attack here? What are you tangibly going to change?

Yeah. So the thing I've learned, especially if I'm like doing this podcast is like how like you just don't, you can't get it perfect. You won't get it perfect. And so accepting, being more accepting around that and just trying more things and like failing in public. That's kind of going to be a big part of this, I think, too, is just be like. Well, you've done plenty of that last year. that, done plenty of that. But just being a little bit more open about things with people too and just be like,

hey, I'm planning on doing this. And knowing that, I mean, not even for the social pressure. I think a lot of people do that for like, oh, it's going to be social pressure, but just be like letting people kind of knock in on some more of like my plans. Because I usually keep pretty private about things because of the fear of like, oh, if I tell somebody this and I don't know it, it's going to look really bad and it'll be imperfect, you know. Is there a fear of criticism or judgment?

Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big part of my perfectionism. I fear that. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So being more open about plans, being more okay with things not going great. Like how are you going to keep yourself accountable on this stuff? Yeah. So that's just going to ask you about this because this is kind of wishy-washy a little bit like abstract. Sure. How do you take something that is more abstract like that and you have this?

I mean, just in general what we're doing here is more. Yeah. We're saying we're not going to set resolutions. We're going to have these themes. Well, that's pretty abstract. So how do we make that more concrete or should we? I think it's useful. When I approach this stuff, I always like, think of the theme or the issue that you want to attack.

Perfectionism is in your case, right? And it's like the thing about stuff like this as well is you've struggled with perfectionism your entire life. You're not going to get rid of it in a year. Right. Like the place you want to get to it is where it's manageable. And so the goal almost isn't necessarily to get rid of perfectionism. It's to develop tools and habits and behaviors. that allow you to manage your own perfectionism.

So what I would look for is, you know, identify common situations where perfectionism fucks you over and then develop a plan of action of like, okay, in that situation in the future or this year, I'm going to do this other thing instead, right? So, you know, broadcasting decisions, I would get very, very clear on like, okay, where that has tripped you up in the past,

and where you've been afraid to kind of express your plans or your ambitions or your ambitions, like get really clear on I'm going to share this with people in this context. So before I do this sort of thing, I'm going to shoot a message to my friends or my family or my siblings or whatever and be like, hey, this is what I have planned and make that commitment to include that the next time these situations come up, essentially. And I think it's probably useful to find like two or three situations like that and create those very tangible action plans. Because, yeah, if you kind of just go through the year all wishy-washy of like, I want

to be less perfectionist, then as we all know, it kind of, you kind of don't really change. So you have to like whittle it down to the actual behaviors that you're going to modify. And again, I think the goal shouldn't be to get rid of the perfectionism. it should be to find courses of action that help mitigate or compensate for the perfectionism. Yeah, the outcomes of it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Like damage control. Okay. Mostly. So I'll create an example. And I don't think you have a problem with this. But let's say that you were struggling with perfectionism, like within our business, the podcast, right? It's like every time I ask you for a podcast outline, it shows it like it's crickets. It's like nothing shows up and it's because you're just obsessing over all this stuff.

And let's say that that was a consistent problem. What I would do is I would create a like an agreement with yourself or even communicate it to me and be like I'm going to sit. When I think it's 75% done, I just have to send it to the market no matter what. And communicate it. Say like, hey, heads up. This is only 75% done. But this is where I'm at. This is the direction I'm heading.

And that's just an example. You know, you could apply it to a lot of other things, too. Like, I'm trying to think, like, if you're a perfectionist about, oh, shit, now I'm blanking. Like, what another perfectionist? What's another area that it fucks you up? I think any sort of, like, personal project outside of work right now that I'm like, I should like start to, I don't know, a newsletter or something like that. I just sat on my, just like, no, I'm not going to do that, you know?

Yeah. And for, for, the, the procrastination around it is like palpable too. It's just like, oh, this like hurts and I just need to stop thinking about it. So I avoid it that way. Yeah. So I don't know, personal, like more personal projects that have some sort of or what, at least what I see is like a big component of myself worth wrapped up in them. For whatever reason, though, like with work, and I think part of it is just working alongside you where you're pushing it along. You're like, no, let's go.

Let's go. Let's get us going. So that helps like accountability wise for me. I need that kind of like external accountability, I think. Yeah. Do you have other people in your life that are like that? Like, so for instance, we've talked about this before how I'm like an anti-perfectionist. I'm just like fucking ship it, whatever.

It's a mess. Let's figure out how to fix it as like, let's build the ship as we as we sail. And it's funny because I found that I naturally end up with a lot of perfectionists around me. Yeah. But it's funny because it works. both ways, right? Like it's, it's, like, I help the perfectionist in my life because I just, like, force them to ship. And the perfectionist helped me because they help me, like, slow down and be like, whoa, wait, we could probably fix this thing really quickly. Or, well, maybe actually you want to,

like, yeah, address that before you go any further. Like, I know that's, it's been true in my work career, but it's also, like, in my personal life, like, my wife's a huge, You're perfectionist. And I see that dynamic play out there as well. Do you have people in other areas of your life that are like that? Yeah. I think so. I mean, I have a pretty supportive network of people who, you know, that would support me either way.

And offer good criticism too, I think at the same time. So yeah, leaning on that might be a big thing for me. Yeah. Seeking those people out and then like really leveraging them as well. My fuck of the year is related. You'll get a kick out of this. I know. So I am very good at, you can almost look at not giving a fuck in like two different dimensions.

The first one is kind of the classic like not worrying about the things that don't really matter to you. And I think I'm excellent at that. Like there's a handful of things that I care about in my life. And I'm really good at focusing on those and caring a lot about them. And then the things that are not within that small little sphere, it's kind of dead to me. Like I don't really, I don't lose any sleep over it. Within that sphere, I am definitely, and you have experienced this directly, within the sphere of the things I give a fuck about, I think I'm a little bit obsessive and a little bit of a control freak. I knew I knew you'd enjoy this.

I knew you do, you'd really get a. I'll let you finish. You're the perfect co-host for this episode. And as you know, so the team's growing. There's a lot more people on the team, which means I need to like delegate and trust people like get things done and not metal as much. But also like as listeners are going to discover, we're doing a lot of new things this year.

Yeah. Like my business is going to change a lot over the next six to eight months. And in many ways by 2026, like my career is going to look very different than it does today. And that's terrifying. I am definitely discovering that I, there's a certain amount that I just need to let go and let it happen. Like, try not to, part of this too is controlling the audience's perception of me. Like I'm, I think I've been a little bit too worried over the years of like, well, we can't really do that because that's like not a Mark Manson thing and it doesn't really fit with the brand. And, you know, it's like all these people, they don't want to hear that.

Like I've worried a little bit too much about that. Or maybe it wasn't too much. But I think at this point in my career, I'm older. You know, the books are six, eight years old. It's time to move on to another phase of my career. And I think that moving on or that transition into like whatever the next version of my career is, it means letting go. It's like, okay, a large percentage of my fans, my audience are going to hate the next thing I do. I need to live with that and not try to like protect it and coddle everything and, you know, go the same way that it's always gone.

Because I think in a creative field, that's just that's death, you know, if you're not evolving and changing. So it's, it's, I see it on two fronts. I see it as the, as the team grows and expands, I need to relinquish a little bit of control and trust some of you guys to, you know, handle it and not move. metal and everything. But also, as I move into this next phase of my career, not worry so much that not everything is going to be loved or adored by all the people. You said it's terrifying. What about it is terrifying? It's the loss aversion. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is, it feels good to, to create something and put it out there and have a lot of people like it.

It feels really good to get all that attention and, you know, people get really excited over it. The feeling of, let's say the feeling of pleasing 10,000 people is like, it's a very nice feeling. The feeling of pissing off 10,000 people is like five times worse. Yeah, at least. It feels five times worse than pleasing 10,000 people feels good. And so I think what happens with people like me who have been doing what they do for a very long time and have built. a very large audience, kind of doing the same sort of thing for a long time, is you get complacent, right? It's like, well, I can just, it's kind of like the rock band that just keeps playing the same hit.

DCDC. Yeah, from like 1989. Yeah. So it's safe and you know it's going to be a crowd pleaser. But you're also, it's also not as creatively satisfying. Right. And I think you have that personality for that, which is like you need to keep. Try new things and doing different things.

I get bored. And pissing people off too. Totally. Like, yeah, that's part of it. I get bored easily and I've definitely felt there's been a really strong tension in my career probably the last three, four, five years of like I want to do something new. I want to do something different. I want to try something novel. But, man, if I just keep churning out the fucks, the whole not give a fuck thing.

Like, it's just, it's just safe and comfortable and everybody likes it. And it's what people know me for. And it's been hard to leave that comfort zone. It's become a comfort zone. Okay. Which is odd because I think the reason it did so well 10 years ago is because it was outside of everybody's comfort zone. It's not comfortable, yeah.

Right? And now it is the comfort zone. And so now I need to like push outside of the comfort zone again. Okay. Which means trying new things and maybe doing some things that, that people don't love as much, which my goal this year is to let go of control. Okay. Well, I think we can help keep you accountable then too.

Oh, oh. I just thought of something. Like, we should have a safe word, I think. A safe word. For when Mark is being too controlling, we'd say- A team safe word. Like, yeah, I don't know, banana or whatever, you know. Like, I don't know, something like that and we can call you out on that.

Sure. I'm in. Okay. I'm in. We'll come up with something. Okay. I've like my palms are sweating. Really?

That is that extent right now, yeah? Yeah. I didn't, I mean, I didn't realize up until like probably the last couple of years of how much of that. Because when it was just small, it was just a few of us. Yeah. You know, we all kind of had our own little area and you could kind of pull the strings from at wherever you needed to. Totally.

Yeah. But it's a very different piece now. Yeah. When it was just three or four of us, it's easy because it's just it's like all of us talked about everything. So it didn't feel intrusive. It didn't feel taxing on me. You know, now we have 12, 13 people.

So if I'm worrying about every, if I'm hearing about every little problem that's going on with all 12 or 13 people, I will get nothing else done the entire day. Yeah. And I will be stressed the entire day, right? So there have to be boundaries. And at some point, it's like, hey, this is your problem

or this is her problem or this is that guy's problem. It's not my problem. It only becomes my problem if it like clears certain thresholds, you know, that it's worth bringing to my attention. So some of that is just like business management stuff. But it's, I think the emotional experience and the thing that I'm working on is just the letting go of control. Okay. It's like, you know, I don't get to always determine what the outcome is and everything in my life. And this is true, by the way, and other, like, other things that I care about in my life, like, I also could probably do with backing off a little.

Backing off a little. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm just all in or all out. Okay. That's just my personality. Yeah. It's, I don't, I have no chill mode. Okay.

We'll see how this one goes. I just, from my perspective, you've hired a very competent team. I don't think there's anybody on the team who can't handle what you've assigned them to do in any way. So you're a little biased that's true. That's true. Also, we need to talk

about a pay raise option. Oh God, here it comes. Here it comes. No, no. I'm good. Okay, I'm excited to see how this goes for you. Yeah. So there we go. All right, we'll be right back. Amazon presents.

versus taco truck salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. All right, we're back with another. addition of brilliant or bullshit. What are we talking about today?

This one, Mark, you're going to have to keep me on the rails today, all right? Oh, boy. Evolution gave us our purpose and life. Data evolution gave us our purpose in life. Okay. So there's this- tell me more. There's this study. It's called surviving and thriving. The fundamental social motives provide purpose in life. It's by these two researchers out of Arizona State. Essentially, what they do first, let's first provide a definition, a nerdy psychological definition of purpose and life. Okay. Because that's important. Here. Purpose in life, as psychologists define it, is a sense that one has direction, meaning, and significance in their life.

Okay. Some sort of, okay, it involves long-term goals. Basically, like, you have direction in your life, essentially, is what they're saying. Okay. Now, where we've typically in the past derived meaning, purpose in our lives is from outer sources like, you know, the divine religion, that sort of thing. But what they say is that actually evolution probably gave us the pathway for having a purpose in our life. Okay. Logically, right?

From a general evolutionary perspective, okay, you should actually have some sense of well-being in your life if you are doing things that would increase your quote-unquote reproductive fitness, right? Totally. Like passing your genes on to the next. Absolutely. And that can involve, that's not just like sex, you know, or anything like that, but that can involve relationships, anything. indirect ways of doing that too, helping other people, status in your life,

getting social status in some way, affiliating with other people to keep you safe in a group, that sort of thing. That they say should drive purpose in life. But nobody's ever really tested this before, and so they tested it out. Okay.

All right. And how did they test it? Yeah, so the methods of this, it's kind of an exploratory study. Okay. The methods of this study, I'm going to say are like, I'm not going to call them bullshit

because I think they knew, that they're like, okay, this is exploratory and we're kind of like figuring this out. Basically, they have people come in and they're like, okay, write about different things in your life and they give them different inventories. How much purpose do you feel in your life in this area, that area, write about the things that you think would give you more purpose or meaning in your life and then they kind of analyze those, put them into buckets and figure out what people are. Okay. So it is pretty subjective by a lot of terms in a lot of ways. Right. But I think it's getting, they're starting to get at something.

This is kind of the foundational exploratory research they have to do in order to get to the next stage. I, oh man, I have really like mixed feelings about this. Okay, okay. Well, hold on. Hold on.

Okay. So I think it's a little both, but keep going. Probably, probably. That's what we always do on this. We pod all the time. Come on.

But, all right. I can take the bullshit around on this point. But finish, finish. So the specific social motives, what they're calling, social motives, which are these evolved drives that we have in social settings, they're saying,

that they've found. Self protection, just like keeping yourself safe in a physical environment, avoiding disease, made acquisition. Yeah. You know, finding somebody to get naked with, right? Yeah. Mate retention. So if you're already in a relationship, retaining, like, maintenance.

Yeah, relationship maintenance. What they call affiliation, basically just social connection, having friend group, that sort of thing. Kincare, so caring either for children or just other people. in your family. And then the last one is status, too, achieving some sort of social standing or respect within a social hierarchy. So they found evidence for all of those things. If you engage in behaviors that increase those in your life, you have a higher sense of, a more, an increased sense of purpose in your life and direction. You have direction in your life. By engaging in these types of behaviors. Okay. And we can pick apart one of those. There's one in particular I want to dive into

with. But first, let me get your reaction to see. I, I, I, I, I feel like this is so, and there's a lot of particularly evolutionary psychology. You see this a lot. I think I never go with this. There's a lot of circular, like thinly veiled circular reasoning that happens, which is, in this case, it's essentially like, hey, we have this term, purpose. We're going to define it as feeling a sense of direction or feeling like there's something in our future that's going to make us feel good or be happy.

So let's take all the things that people feel is in their future is going to make them feel happy. Let's measure those things. Oh, my God, look, it correlates with purpose. Right. The way we decided to define our key metric. Like, it feels like they're just, it's like, yeah, it's a little bit masturbatory intellectually. You know, like it's, but that said, I do, it makes sense to me that a sense of purpose, you know, much like pleasure, much like happiness. Like, these are all kind of psychological levers or evolutionary levers that we probably evolve to help us do behaviors and actions that help our reproductive status.

It's like it is by definition, it makes sense. So I think there's a little bit of voodoo going. The irony here is I think I agree with their hypothesis. I agree that like a sense of purpose is probably something that we evolved to get us to do. things to increase our survival and our reproduction. Well, okay, but let's take that point right there. Yes. Okay, which you agree with.

Yes. Okay. And I think the kind of the conclusion of the study they make is that, or at least one that I took away was we often have these like, oh, I need to find my purpose in life. Sure. I need to go out and I need to, some grand thing. I need to be a writer. I need to be an artist.

I need that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And they're saying actually what you need for direction and purpose in your life is to like do the things that humans do. Yeah. Totally. Like, like, the three biggest ones they found, too, but the three strongest relationships they found too were affiliation, so friends and social relationships.

Yeah. Working on those. Kincare, what they call kin care, so taking care of people in your family or, you know, whatever you consider your family necessarily. The last one was status too, actually, which I found interesting. People actually derive some sort of sense of well-being from. like seeking and status within their social groups. Yeah.

Interestingly, though, they're like, okay, there's other, there's other research out there saying when you seek status, this doesn't work. It actually ends up with a lot of bad outcomes, negative outcomes. Sure. But what they found was it's more like seeking social status within your social hierarchy in socially positive ways. Okay. All right.

So like one, what are you laughing at? I mean, okay. When I'm saying it out loud, sure, it sounds really obvious. But I think, again, the larger point is that there's like these really basic things that I think we can turn to. You don't have to like change the goddamn world. So as you know, I totally agree with that. That I think people overlook, especially in this day and age. And I think this would be a nice explanation of like why a sense of a lack of purpose seems to be epidemic at the moment.

And I think it's because people just overestimate how high the bar is to feel a sense of purpose, which 100% with you there. Absolutely. A sense of purpose is not found. It's generated. They're just doing a bunch of basic things that improve your life one step at a time, hanging out with friends and family, getting a little bit better at your job, getting a little bit healthier. You know, it's all incremental improvements. So that I'm with you there, like dispelling that kind of illusion of what purpose is. But yeah, I guess I guess it's one of those I'm just kind of like having this like, well, so what?

Like obviously, right? Maybe, maybe we got a reaction to Robert Green's episode. Remember Robert Green's episode where he talks about your life task. Yes. And there was some there was some reaction. in the comments and people email it and saying, well, that would be really nice to, you know, usually the language they would use us. That'd be really nice to pursue my passion. Yeah. But right now, you know, I'm just trying to put food on the table or something like that. Sure. Right. And

I mean, I, my response is he didn't say what you're like, you need to find your passion. He said, you need to find your life's task. Yeah. Sometimes your life task also, it's given to you. You don't get to choose it. Yeah. You don't necessarily like it all the time. Right. And so if you, if you are somebody who is struggling, you know, financially or whatever it is, that's like a safety issue. You need to take care of that. That's your life's task at that moment. It's not about your passion. Yeah.

It's about security, like having some sort of security, which is a basic need that we all have. Yes. You know, and then it slips into like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all that kind of thing. Sure. But I, the larger point, I think, is that there are really just some of these basic human drives that we have to fulfill. and it's not, it's just not this pie in the sky we need to all find our quote unquote passion.

Yeah. I definitely think the passion thing gets overrated. I think people can like overestimate what is required to feel a sense of purpose in their lives. I have a, okay, I have a little bit of a hairbrain theory. You mentioned religion,

how people traditionally would find purpose through religion. I've got a little bit. I made this argument in my second book. I think it still holds. So we're talking about purpose, a feeling of purpose is ultimately feeling a sense of direction, feeling a sense of things are improving in some way, that your action is bearing fruit in the future in some shape or form. And my second book I described it as hope, like a vision of a better future that is tangible and possible for yourself. For most of human history, most people's actions had absolutely no bearing on the quality of their own future. There were no opportunities.

Things didn't really get better. There was no economic growth. There was no job growth. There was no like people were hungry and impoverished and insecure their entire lives. And nothing changed that no matter what they did, which is why you needed religion to provide a vision of a positive or better future. Right. It's like your whole life is shit. If you're like a random peasant in say the ninth century, right?

Your entire life is shit. And nothing you say or do is ever going to improve the fact that it's shit. But if you believe in this religion, the religion offers you promises and visions of a better future, in this case an afterlife. And as long as you stay focused on that religion, that positive afterlife is guaranteed to you. And so it makes sense that from that it drives a lot of sense of direction and purpose. and fulfillment. These days, I think there's probably still a little bit of that. You know, like religion correlates very strongly with life satisfaction and psychological

well-being and all that. There might still be some of that left over. These days, I think the reason religion probably correlates so well with all these, like, psychological outcomes is because of what this paper is saying, is that generally people who are religious and they're involved in the local religious communities, they have a strong network of friends. They feel like they're part of a community. They've got a little bit of social status among that community.

They are able to meet mates. They're able to maintain those relationships. It's like all these basic nuts and bolts things that people struggle with in the 21st century. Old school religious communities actually do those things very, very well. So there's even like, you know, I guess dogma around health and, you know, taking care of being safe and just in your physical environment too. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think, I mean, the point you make about how purpose isn't necessarily.

And I guess this is why it's a useful metric aside from just like happiness or fulfillment or something. But like purpose isn't always pleasant. It's not always fun. It's not a, even the status thing, like I kind of smirked at that that caveat. out about like, well, positive social status. I think that's bullshit. I think it's just social status. Like it's, you can feel a great sense of purpose from building up your own social status

to the detriment of others. Like that's purpose doesn't have to be a pro social thing all the time. It can be, but it doesn't have to be, right? Like you can feel a lot of purpose, you know, trying to earn a million bucks and buy yourself a mansion or something like, there are a lot of people who derive a lot of purpose. out of materialistic things like that. So like all those things, like happiness as well, you know, you can be happy doing terrible shit.

So, you know, the happiness, purpose, like they aren't necessarily good in and of themselves. They are psychological tools that you need to leverage one way or the other. Like ethics is another question in my opinion. Okay. Anyway, sorry for shitting on this. Sorry for shitting on the circularity of the definitions, but it just like, I don't know. Like, I've just read so many evolutionary psych things over the years that it's like, we're, we have an evolutionary mandate to behave in XYZ fashion.

So we're going to take, we're going to take this term and we're going to define it as pursuing XYZ. Oh, my God, look, it all correlates to each other. I'm like, well, yeah, of course it does. Okay. Because we're all just kind of theorizing here. That's true. It's very much, like, abstract in the mind you can run these experiments in your own head and

come to whatever conclusion you want. I do. I do agree with that. Yeah. The larger point I think I wanted to make was in this new year, when you're going out and you're setting goals and you're trying to find some sort of direction in your life. Yeah. It's probably right in front of you. It's not, you don't need to go out and, you know, reinvent the wheel here. We, we, we, you have it right in front of you. Small incremental improvements will take you much further than maybe that's cheesy, but I think it's, you know. It's true. I mean, it's, it's boring. so it gets overlooked. Yeah.

It's not the big sexy, you know, complete life makeover that people dream about or that you see on television. But it's, you know, those small 1% 2% improvements each month. That's the real shit. I'll say too, okay, that the whole status thing. The one thing that kind of clicked for me in this was that I do this in my friend group and my social group that I have. and I've talked about this before is my status is gained through helping.

Like I've virtue signal before that I'm so helpful, you know, with my friends and whatever. But like I've noticed that. And I think that is within my like frame group, like I'm the helpful one, you know? I'll be there for you, that kind of thing. Everybody else has their own thing too.

And there's not really a hierarchy. It's just everybody has their own little status thing that they do. And that's mine. Yeah. I make my friends beg and grovel. for your attention for my attention yes I withhold it

I psychologically no I don't where do we land on that bullshit bit brilliant it was okay we should have a third option brilliant bullshit or it's okay I like the I mean I

I guess I like the idea of it I like the content of it I like the general thrust of it. I understand the nuances where it is getting a little bit circular or could be circular. Yeah. Yeah. That's a little bit bullshit. Yeah.

Okay. We punted once again. So it was a little bit of both. Yeah. Isn't everything a little bit of both brilliant and bullshit? That's true. Okay. We'll be right back.

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Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. All right, we're back. Listener question time. What are we talking about today? Yeah, we're talking about habits, creating good habits, kind of on theme for the new year here.

And it's a fairly basic question that I think has a fairly complicated answer. Why is it so difficult to create good habits and do them on a regular basis, but so easy to fall into bad habits and create more of them in a very short space of time? Well, it is a perennial question. I think it's simply because most good habits are short-term not fun and long-term very satisfying. And most bad habits are short-term fun and long-term very unsatisfying. That's kind of what makes them both good and bad habits. And ultimately, I think this is just a struggle, a universal struggle of every human on this planet of trying to balance your short-term pleasure and satisfaction with your. long-term interests in health and better judgment.

And it's something that I think we all suck at initially. And it's something we all have to learn as we go through our lives and get better at as we go through our lives. I don't think anybody has it completely like nails it every single time. So that's the why. Yeah. I guess the next question is the how. Yeah.

So to dwell on that for just a second, there's, you know, in habit science, there's, there's It's like the habit loop, right? You have the cue, then you have the behavior, then you have the reward. Charles Duhigg did that in his book on habits, and then James Clear kind of elaborated on that for sure. And what you're saying is there's this tension between immediate and long-term benefits. Right. And the reward part of that cue behavior reward with bad habits so often comes almost immediately. So it's reinforced.

It's much more easily reinforced for us, whereas the benefits of good habits are usually long-term. eating healthy exercise, sleep, all of that is often delayed. And so we don't see that. So yeah, the how part, that's the real question. How do we shift that time curve maybe? Do we, I've seen some suggestions like having a relationship with your future self, like being, yeah, like that sort of thing. Is there anything to do that for you? I don't know.

I not really like I don't think about that in that context I don't think about future and pass mark a whole lot I mean for me and again this is do Higg and clear land on this as well like the easiest modification you can make in that loop is the queue right it's like just remove the cues as much as possible so like let's say you you're a midnight snacker right Like the easiest thing to do is to just get rid of the snacks in your house. Right. It removes that cue. You can also figure out like what is it that makes you hungry or like what is the impulse

or the emotion that makes you want a snack at a certain time each day. Maybe it's because you're eating too big of a dinner and too light of a lunch. And maybe if you eat a larger lunch and a smaller dinner, like it fixes that craving in the middle of the night. So figuring out like what are the impulses that are driving the bad. behavior is, in my opinion, the most, most of it, right? Like, for me, the willpower is not really a factor as much. Or if you are relying on willpower, then you've probably lost. It's just, right. Yeah, it's, you're delaying the inevitable. Yeah. There has to be some sort of,

like, change you have to make that because just thinking about this stuff doesn't work, obviously, right? Like, like, you mentioned the environmental stuff. I know for me, like, cleaning up my diet was just like, it was removing. I just, when I grocery shop, I don't buy John. I actually do a lot of delivery and pick up now, so I'm not even in the store and don't grab those. Because you're not fighting the diet challenge at the refrigerator door. Then you do it way ahead of time. Yeah. If you're relying on your own decision making constantly, plan beforehand so that you're just not triggered in the first place, I guess.

I'm trying to think like what else is there? I'm blanking right now with that I recently so this is I've always been proud a proud non-gamer I recently borrowed a Nintendo Switch from

from a friend okay she wasn't using she's a new mom and she's like I don't got time for this so I borrowed it just to see what I was like oh my God Oh my God. Zelda is so far. Oh, man, that's such a cool game. What I found that was like, okay, I need to like stop playing this, whatever. I unplug the thing and like set it somewhere else. Yeah. From the TV completely. So I don't, I can't just like sit right down and do that. So that's like a, you know, inserting those friction, inserting like strategic friction. Strategic friction is a huge

one. We had near I, all a good friend of mine on the podcast a few months ago. And I remember he did something, uh, which you can get these plugs. Oh, yeah, the timers. With the time. With the timers on them. So you can like you can put a put a plug, plug it into your light socket and plug a device into it. And then you can program it so that it only gives power to that device like certain, you know, say from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. every day. So he he attached his video games to that. And so it's like the PlayStation wouldn't even work until 6 p.m. every day. So it just doesn't even give him the option. Like to change it, he has to like climb under the furniture and like redo everything. So being adding friction to the things that you don't want to do and then also adding

rewards and incentives to the things you do want to do. Again, increasing the reward of the positive habits. So this could be something like having an accountability buddy at the gym, you know, joining a class instead of, you know, trying to exercise alone, doing a miserable workout, like pick up a sport, a game that you can play, a new hobby. You know, anything you can add on the, like we're animals, right? Right. It's the old carrot and stick. Like we, I almost think of it as like training myself like a dog.

Like I use the smarter, instead of like using your enlightened part of your mind to like fight your animalistic mind in the moment because it's probably going to lose most of the time, use the smart and lighten part of your mind to like create incentive, structure incentives and frictions around your life. and just nudge yourself in the right direction. So, okay, but I think a lot of people have heard these things before, and I certainly have. And I think anybody who's been really into like this space is self-help or, you know, self-improvement space, they've heard these things. Is that just is that treating the symptoms a little bit? Because I think it might be because you and you mentioned there are these like emotional triggers and cues that we have. And that's probably really the root of the problem. Sure.

And addressing those long term, I think in the short, term, those things, all those things work. They do. I know they work for me. They definitely work for me. But there's still a little bit in my mind. I'm always like, you know, when that animal does rear its head, like, what is actually going on?

I don't think you can even have the space to address that until you've at least modified the behavior in the short term, right? So like, give you an example. Let's use video games as an example, right? Like if you, let's say you're binging video games, which I've done. many times throughout my life. It's only until you get yourself to stop binging video games that you actually have the cognitive space to sit there and evaluate.

What am I feeling at this moment? Why am I so, why am I being so compulsive around this? What is driving this? Is there a way that I could maybe not be so compulsive around this? Those questions, you don't even have space to deal with those questions until you've gotten yourself to stop to a lot. certain extent. That's a really good point because with with the video game my example of the video game too. I was like okay I just need to unplug it and like set it aside and then after

that I was like oh why do I need that why do I have to force myself to do that and it did get me to thinking about that goes back to the perfectionism thing too I was avoiding work because I wasn't going to be perfect so it all and the nice thing about video games is is that they've actually built into the video game a clear roadmap towards perfection so that's right You can collect all the items. You can beat all the bosses. You can get all the rewards and everything and max out your save file, which I love doing. Man.

But it's funny. It's also having good people around you to not only keep you accountable, but also just be an observer. So, like, for example, at some point in maybe six or seven years ago, you know, I would go in these periodic video game binges. And my wife pointed out to me at some point, she was like, you know, when you go into these binges, I've noticed that there's something wrong that you're not addressing. Oh. Like she noticed a correlation between my video game binges and like some sort of, you know, I don't know, issue with my family or with my work or my self-esteem or like some emotional problem that I was definitely avoiding. and until it got dealt with or resolved in some way, the binge would continue, essentially. Okay.

Yeah, I've found that too with other, like TV or whatever it is. Because I'll binge TV sometimes. Yeah. God, I feel awful after that too. Video games, I don't feel as bad. Like you're actually, you feel like you're accomplishing something. Yeah, you're at, yeah. So that's another lure of them too.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. That's really good, Mark. Yeah. Good job. Thanks, true. No, that is really helpful. Because I'm like, yeah, but that's, you know, if I'm sitting here, I'm like, I really want to get it the emotional thing.

It's like, well, yeah, okay, you can get it the emotional thing. You need to stop the behavior first. Yeah. And it's, I want to be clear, too, that like the emotional thing, understanding the emotional component of the cue or the trigger, it's useful. And you can definitely soften it. But it's not like, like sometimes I feel like people get this false impression of like, well, if you just do. deal with the underlying emotion, then you'll never want to binge a video game or drink alcohol or overeat midnight snacks ever again.

I was like, no. Like that impulse will still be there. It's just you'll have a much better understanding of what it is where it's coming from. And it'll have less control over you when it shows up. Yeah. So one other little thing I want to talk about too. Yeah. This though is the idea of how good habits generally.

take you out of your comfort zone, right, in a way that bad habits done. Bad habits almost by definition are like helping you into your comfort zone. Into your comfort zone. Good habits, though, often, there's often a lot of friction up front, you know, going to a new gym or something like that. Like when I started yoga a couple of years ago, that was super uncomfortable, right? Because it's not like I'd never moved that way. I'd never been around, you know, a bunch of half naked people like, you know, and there's

all body types and everything like that in there so anybody can feel comfortable I felt like. but it was just a very, it was just weird too, you know, like the language they use and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. I have good habits around half-naked people. Oh, do you? Do you?

Very, very much in my comforts. I need to hang out with you. But no, there is that, there is that like initial, you know, the starting cost basically are higher for good habits. And I don't know if there's a way to, you just got to grind. through that or what, I don't know. Same thing with like when I stopped drinking, there was actually some, some initial friction around that because everybody around me.

Right. And people ask and they, some people judge you and some people are like, come on, man, just have one drink. Yeah. And then on top of that too, the drinking, like I, you really don't see the biggest effects for like months at a time. So it's, that's one of those that it's like, there's all sorts of things working against you.

Well, I think there's a component here. I've called it before meta emotions, which is like an emotion. about an emotion, right? So, you know, going to a yoga class for the first time in your life and doing all these weird poses and hearing all these words you don't understand. Like, yeah, it is a totally uncomfortable, awkward, strange thing.

That's fine. Where a lot of people get tripped up is then how they feel about that awkwardness and discomfort, right? Because a lot of people will exit that experience and it'll be like, that was so weird, I never want to feel that again. I shouldn't have to feel so much. I shouldn't have to feel something awkward, right?

Like, this is supposed to be a good thing for me. Whereas some people say, like, okay, that was awkward and that was difficult, but I'm really glad I did it. I'm improving. I'm learning. This is part of the process, right? It's similar to when you fail a new habit. Like, no matter what your goal is or whatever your desired habit is, like you're going to slip up at some point, right? You're going to eat the burger or miss the workout.

or whatever. Again, the meta emotions have a huge role. That's where they become very significant. So you miss the workout that you're supposed to do. Some people are very harsh with themselves. They judge themselves horribly. They're like, man, I fucked everything up. This is why I never get better. This is why I never achieve any of my goals. Whereas some people are like, hey, you know, it happens. Nobody's perfect. It's, This is a marathon, not a race. Let's get back on the saddle. Let's do it again next week.

Right. And it's so again, it's how much are you judging yourself for the inevitable discomforts and failures versus how accepting are you of yourself? And then there's also there's also being too accepting, right? Like it's if you're missing every other workout and every single one, you're like, well, I deserve, I deserve missing this one because, you know, I work late yesterday or, you know, oh, I deserve missing this one because next week's my birthday. Like, if you're constantly excusing yourself, then that's also a problem. So there is a emotional process around the emotions that you're experiencing, which I think takes a lot of wisdom as well.

Yeah. We covered a lot of that in the self-discipline episode too. So we should link to that. But yeah, that's a good point. Or self-discipline is self-correction. Yes. But there's a balance you've got a strike. Yes.

Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. All right. Is there a wisdom of the week of the year? No. God damn it true. I forgot again.

No, no. It's the last time I leave you up to outlining the episode. This will never happen again. Oh, no. See, you're practicing your imperfection. Yes, and you need to let go of control. And I'm, I really, I'm already over it. That's wise.

Don't give a fuck. That's wise. So maybe that's our wisdom of the week. All right. guys we will see you next time the subtle art of not getting a fuck podcast is produced by drew burning it's edited by andrew micheemura jessica choi is our videographer and sound engineer thank you for listening and we will see you next week