Seek Purpose, Not Pleasure - Life Changing Habits To Reinvent Yourself In 2025

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is In Depth, a semi-regular series where I interview interesting people

00:00:07.740 | about their quest to cultivate a deep love.

00:00:11.520 | Today's episode is presented by Defender, a vehicle designed for those seeking adventure

00:00:17.040 | in a distracted world.

00:00:18.320 | Now, I've been looking forward to this episode for a while, as it's a chance to talk to a

00:00:23.600 | writer who I've long followed and long have wanted to meet.

00:00:29.600 | His name is Michael Easter.

00:00:31.440 | He's a health and science journalist.

00:00:32.960 | He used to be the fitness director at Men's Health Magazine.

00:00:35.880 | He also used to be a journalism professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas,

00:00:41.080 | but he is most known now for his two best-selling books, The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain,

00:00:47.720 | both of which I've read and highly recommend.

00:00:51.360 | He's now a full-time writer who runs the very popular 2% Substack newsletter and podcast

00:00:59.520 | I subscribe to it and I recommend it.

00:01:01.440 | If you're wondering, 2% refers to the fact that only 2% of people take the stairs instead

00:01:07.800 | of the escalator when both options are offered, even though research shows that taking the

00:01:14.440 | stairs would significantly improve your longevity.

00:01:18.200 | This concept encapsulates a lot of Easter's writing, where he looks at the sort of common

00:01:23.200 | sense but no-nonsense evidence-based advice for how human beings can get the most out

00:01:30.120 | of their body, live healthy, live fit, get the most longevity out of their time here

00:01:37.480 | on earth.

00:01:38.480 | Now, in this interview, I have two purposes.

00:01:40.400 | One, I just want to learn his advice, the type of stuff he writes about his newsletter

00:01:44.080 | and his books.

00:01:46.280 | Stick around for the end of the interview where I actually just ask him point-blank.

00:01:49.160 | I said, "Okay, imagine you're one of my listeners and you haven't been thinking about your health

00:01:55.040 | and fitness and you want to start making changes.

00:01:57.640 | What's the first thing you do?

00:01:58.960 | What's the entry ramp?"

00:01:59.960 | Actually, it's sort of a surprising answer that overlaps with things we've been talking

00:02:04.000 | about on my show.

00:02:05.000 | So stay tuned for that.

00:02:06.000 | But here's my secret secondary goal for this interview, was to hear Michael's story.

00:02:13.560 | Michael was a busy journalist and then he switched from writing for Men's Health magazine.

00:02:18.640 | He had a relatively busy writing life because he was writing freelance, working on books

00:02:23.840 | and teaching a pretty full, I think it was a two-two or perhaps even a three-three course

00:02:27.760 | load at UNLV on journalism, and he dropped all of that.

00:02:33.440 | He now pays his expenses with his newsletter and can just write full-time.

00:02:39.560 | He lives in sort of, I don't know if you'd call it the countryside, but the desert makes

00:02:43.040 | more sense.

00:02:44.040 | He lives outside of Las Vegas and he goes on these epic rucks and runs with his dog

00:02:48.920 | through these scenic canyons.

00:02:51.880 | His time is his own.

00:02:53.960 | He can write what he wants to write in his books because his newsletter covers things.

00:02:57.240 | I mean, he's cultivated a deep life and I'm interested in his story and I take him through

00:03:03.320 | a story how he got from working for Men's Health out of college to where he is today,

00:03:09.320 | including by the way, a very meaningful first stop with substance abuse.

00:03:15.040 | It was in him kicking substance abuse, in him learning about himself on how to do that,

00:03:21.200 | that this more crystallized version of the deep life that he lives now was formed.

00:03:25.520 | I think his tale is fascinating.

00:03:26.640 | You're going to hear his story and you're going to hear his advice.

00:03:29.640 | Now, here's a side note, a little insider knowledge.

00:03:34.080 | When I interviewed Michael, the interview you're about to hear, this was two days before

00:03:39.680 | me having to go in for a surgery, actually the first surgery that I had ever gotten.

00:03:45.520 | Spoiler alert, I survived because I'm recording this intro after the surgery has already happened,

00:03:51.360 | but I was in a mindset when I was talking to Michael where I was thinking about and

00:03:55.600 | taking seriously my health and fitness in a way that I probably hadn't been before.

00:04:01.080 | You might pick this up in the tone or the approach to my questions, but I was eager

00:04:07.600 | to learn.

00:04:08.960 | I have come on the other side of that surgery with a lot of big plans in motion to reprioritize

00:04:15.080 | the type of things that Isser talks about.

00:04:16.800 | As I'm now in middle age, this stuff matters.

00:04:21.040 | It's going to give me a massive return potentially for the decades that follow.

00:04:25.320 | I'm coming into this interview in a vulnerable state and in a well-timed state to receive

00:04:29.760 | this type of wisdom.

00:04:31.520 | This interview extra matter to me.

00:04:33.080 | Anyways, I think you'll like it.

00:04:34.880 | Before we get to it, I want to say a word about today's presenting sponsor, which is

00:04:38.240 | Defender.

00:04:39.240 | Our presenting sponsor is what allows us to present the interview that follows with zero

00:04:42.960 | commercial interruption.

00:04:44.800 | The iconic Defender line of vehicles has been reimagined for a new generation of explorers.

00:04:50.320 | The Defender 90, 110, and 130, which can seat up to eight passengers, all maintained a legendary

00:04:57.360 | off-road capability for which Defender is known, but now combine that with legendary

00:05:01.880 | new on-road capabilities and comfort as well.

00:05:05.680 | Talk a little bit about the construction of these cars.

00:05:07.920 | Aesthetically, if you've seen these things, they feature really compelling proportions

00:05:12.720 | and precise detailing.

00:05:13.720 | I mean, I just love the look of this line of vehicles I always have.

00:05:18.080 | If you learn from the engineers about what's going on sort of underneath these nice aesthetics,

00:05:24.120 | you figure out that they're built with a tough, rigid body design that helps add to their

00:05:30.000 | famous durability.

00:05:31.000 | It's a very sturdily made car, but also it's beautiful to look at.

00:05:35.040 | So in other words, we think of it as a good looking car that performs perfect for finding

00:05:38.520 | adventure as you cultivate your own vision of the deep life.

00:05:43.280 | So visit LandRoverUSA.com to learn more about the Defender.

00:05:49.920 | And now, here's my conversation with Michael Easter.

00:05:53.200 | All right.

00:05:54.200 | So I am thrilled to be here with Michael Easter.

00:05:57.960 | Michael, one of the ways I explain, by the way, starting to do these semi-regular interview

00:06:03.160 | episodes, the people who ask like, "Why are you adding something else?"

00:06:06.400 | Eighty percent of the reason is an excuse to talk to people that I want to talk to anyways,

00:06:11.240 | and you are an embodiment of that.

00:06:13.320 | This is my evil plan coming to fruition.

00:06:15.640 | I've read your books and wanted to talk with you, and I had an excuse to get you on the

00:06:20.440 | microphone.

00:06:21.560 | Well, I will say that works both ways, right?

00:06:25.000 | Like when you emailed me, I was like, "Oh, my God, this is awesome.

00:06:28.240 | I've always wanted to talk to this guy."

00:06:29.720 | So here we are.

00:06:31.040 | The world works in mysterious ways and works in good ways a lot of times.

00:06:34.720 | Everyone else can just sit back and enjoy you and I enjoying this.

00:06:38.680 | So I'll start by explaining the goal of the conversation for you and for the audience.

00:06:42.840 | So I think a lot and talk a lot about mismatches between the modern digital environment and

00:06:48.240 | the way our Paleolithic bodies and Neolithic culture operate.

00:06:51.640 | I think in these mismatches are a lot of disorders of the modern world that we need to address.

00:06:58.040 | One of the most consequential such mismatches, in my opinion, is what has happened when we've

00:07:01.720 | made our lives, professionally, personally, like all aspects of our lives, more abstract

00:07:08.800 | and more taking place on screens.

00:07:11.440 | So this disembodiment of our life, it's where we're disembodied from our bodies in any particular

00:07:16.680 | location.

00:07:17.800 | More and more what we do is just mediated back and forth through a screen.

00:07:20.600 | There's a lot of economic advantages to that, to other players, but it has been difficult

00:07:25.720 | for us, the actual people.

00:07:27.400 | Now, I see you, Michael, as being at the forefront of thinking about what goes wrong when we

00:07:33.560 | switch to this Cartesian brain in a vat model and how we can reclaim some of what our Paleolithic

00:07:40.760 | bodies are actually expecting, how to sort of fight back against this abstraction.

00:07:45.360 | So that's really what I want to get into with you today.

00:07:47.120 | But I want to get there via your story, which I think is fascinating.

00:07:51.980 | I think it highlights a lot of the issues you talk about and will sort of bring us to

00:07:56.840 | the sort of more concrete principles we want to discuss.

00:07:59.320 | So if you're willing, I want to go all the way back.

00:08:03.320 | You got started off, magazine journalist, Men's Health Magazine.

00:08:06.560 | For a lot of people, this itself would be the end goal.

00:08:09.200 | Man, if I could just live in the city and write for a well-known magazine, do cool articles,

00:08:16.040 | everything would be cool.

00:08:17.040 | So I want to start with just how did you even get that job?

00:08:21.840 | Coming out of college, what did you have to do to even get that job?

00:08:25.080 | Oh, man, yeah.

00:08:26.440 | So I grew up in Utah, and I was raised by a single mom.

00:08:31.600 | I'm the only child.

00:08:33.320 | And my mom, I mean, she's like kind of a giant.

00:08:36.600 | So the odds are really stacked against single moms.

00:08:39.520 | Like you look at the stats, and I think more than half live in extreme poverty.

00:08:43.800 | But my mom, I mean, she's just like driven, super driven, super smart.

00:08:48.520 | She usually reads like at least 50 books a year.

00:08:51.800 | And so we always had books lying around at home.

00:08:54.160 | And I remember when I was, I think I was 13, I read this book, "Into Thin Air" by John

00:08:59.520 | Krakauer.

00:09:00.520 | And it was just like, whoa, this dude went and climbed Everest and wrote an account of

00:09:06.580 | it.

00:09:07.580 | But the way it was written was really fascinating because he was kind of weaving in and out

00:09:10.000 | of topics.

00:09:12.360 | I read a lot of Hunter Thompson when I was in high school.

00:09:15.800 | And that was like another, oh, my God, I didn't know someone could do this with language.

00:09:20.440 | Now when I went to college, I'd always been this book and magazine junkie.

00:09:25.000 | But just in my mind, I'm like, no one is actually a writer.

00:09:28.600 | Like no one actually does that job.

00:09:30.700 | And if they do, they probably live in their mother's basement.

00:09:33.600 | And so I, my plan was to do like a business law degree, maybe work in natural resources

00:09:39.400 | because I've always been kind of outdoorsy.

00:09:42.540 | But I ended up taking this, it was a nature writing class.

00:09:48.240 | And it was just like, oh, my God, this is what I want to do with my life.

00:09:51.440 | So I ended up going to grad school because I also happened to graduate the year that

00:09:54.600 | the economy totally tanked.

00:09:57.680 | And so for my class, my graduating class, it was like, you're either going back to your

00:10:02.980 | parents' house and you're going to work some random job you don't want to work as you look

00:10:07.240 | for your real job, or you can go to grad school.

00:10:10.080 | So I went to grad school and I ended up going in New York City just because that's where

00:10:14.680 | all the magazines are based.

00:10:17.160 | And the program that I was in grad school in, it was a science, health and environmental

00:10:23.920 | reporting program.

00:10:25.640 | So really, really focused on writing about different topics in science.

00:10:30.500 | And even in that class, though, I was kind of, I was a little bit different in that like,

00:10:36.740 | you know, most people took their internship at Scientific American, but I took mine at

00:10:41.060 | Esquire just because the writing in that mag, that was like during the, to kind of get a

00:10:46.100 | little bit down the rabbit hole, that was during the David Granger years, he was the

00:10:49.140 | editor in chief, and the writing in that magazine was just so good, like so good, these features

00:10:56.340 | that just blow your mind.

00:10:58.580 | So I interned there for a while, then when I graduated, I took these kind of two part

00:11:03.820 | time jobs at Scientific American and GQ.

00:11:07.860 | So when you looked at my resume, I had on one hand, I had these dude magazines.

00:11:12.160 | And on the other hand, I have this science magazine and a job opened up at Men's Health

00:11:15.900 | and they were like, well, we pretty much write about science for dudes.

00:11:20.140 | So you seem like a good fit.

00:11:22.180 | And yeah, I took that.

00:11:23.180 | I took that job.

00:11:24.460 | And what was nice about that job to kind of getting back to this theme of mismatches is

00:11:32.060 | that I had, I'd been living in New York City, which that was fun for about a month until

00:11:38.300 | you realize the place just drives you crazy and humans aren't necessarily designed for

00:11:42.620 | 24/7 noise, light, never ending energy.

00:11:49.820 | And Men's Health was actually their headquarters was in this little town in Pennsylvania that

00:11:54.260 | was like an hour and a half away from New York City.

00:11:57.060 | So I was able to live there.

00:11:59.340 | And I would occasionally go into the city, we had an office there, but it was like once

00:12:02.540 | every two weeks.

00:12:03.940 | So that was also another big upside of that job.

00:12:06.380 | And yeah, I worked that job for about seven years.

00:12:11.020 | And yeah, that's pretty good.

00:12:12.580 | I learned a lot there.

00:12:13.580 | I mean, that was the big thing.

00:12:14.580 | I learned a lot there.

00:12:16.260 | Where was the town in Pennsylvania?

00:12:18.580 | So the town that we were in is called Emmaus and the closest town that people would know

00:12:24.020 | is Allentown.

00:12:25.020 | Okay.

00:12:26.020 | I didn't realize it was based out there.

00:12:27.100 | So what were you living in like a house at that point?

00:12:29.420 | I mean, there's not a lot of apartments out there.

00:12:32.140 | I was living at, so it's a lot of it's a lot of kind of like row houses.

00:12:36.820 | So when I moved out, I remember I had moved from a apartment in Hoboken, which was like

00:12:43.220 | one bedroom.

00:12:44.220 | It was like two grand a month.

00:12:45.860 | And I moved out to that area.

00:12:47.840 | And I had this place that had like two bedrooms.

00:12:51.740 | It had a backyard and it was $800 a month.

00:12:54.760 | And it was just like, Oh my God, why?

00:12:57.700 | Why haven't?

00:12:58.700 | Why did I live in New York at all?

00:13:00.340 | Yeah.

00:13:01.340 | What was I trying to do?

00:13:02.340 | Yes.

00:13:03.340 | Okay.

00:13:04.340 | So now you're at Mentos.

00:13:05.340 | What's that job like?

00:13:06.340 | I mean, when you're, I don't know what the word would be, but when you're new, you just,

00:13:09.460 | I don't know if it's junior reporter or whatever it was, but, but what is the day-to-day of

00:13:13.620 | magazine journalism in the first decade of the two thousands?

00:13:16.940 | Yeah.

00:13:17.940 | So when I started the internet hadn't really taken off.

00:13:22.060 | Our website at the time was, we would take what was in the magazine and we would put

00:13:27.300 | it on the internet.

00:13:29.060 | And that was that like the website was this afterthought and it was all these kind of

00:13:33.500 | old school magazine types who really just kind of saw the website as this kind of little

00:13:40.740 | annoyance.

00:13:41.740 | And it was often just kind of farmed out into, to another team that was sort of like looked

00:13:45.540 | down upon by the old school magazine editors.

00:13:49.500 | But I was mostly, I was mostly on the magazine side that eventually transitioned and the

00:13:54.180 | job was really developing ideas and then just reporting them out.

00:13:59.580 | And also of course, because it's a magazine, like your presentation is so much different

00:14:05.080 | than it would be online or in a newspaper.

00:14:08.500 | So it's nice cause I could get creative, come up with weird ideas.

00:14:12.260 | And I will say, I mean the first three years, probably four years of my career was me basically

00:14:18.480 | just realizing that I sucked.

00:14:20.920 | Like I went into that job, I had my fancy graduate school degree and I thought, oh,

00:14:26.220 | this is going to be great.

00:14:27.580 | And I remember I had to do this section that was called bulletins back in the magazine

00:14:33.340 | where you would summarize studies and you would, it'd be about a hundred words to summarize

00:14:38.080 | a study.

00:14:39.080 | You'd have five studies on a page.

00:14:40.980 | So I sent my editor like 500 words of, you know, these five different summarizations

00:14:46.360 | of studies.

00:14:48.020 | And this dude sent me back probably a thousand words in edits.

00:14:52.380 | It was just like, I got that, opened the document and was just like, oh my God.

00:14:57.780 | And he was right.

00:14:58.780 | Of course he was right.

00:15:00.300 | And yeah, it was just, I mean that first four years was just really figuring out like how,

00:15:06.100 | how do you write?

00:15:07.100 | How do you write in a way where you're presenting information that is pretty complex in a way

00:15:13.180 | that the average person can immediately understand, but also use, right?

00:15:19.060 | Because men's health is a service magazine, meaning that when you read something in that

00:15:22.260 | magazine, there's a implicit takeaway about how do I use this in my life?

00:15:25.460 | Yeah.

00:15:26.460 | Now, did you have an implicit idea going into that, that pretty soon you would be like 1990s

00:15:32.060 | Susan Casey, uh, outside magazine going on like long adventures that you would report

00:15:36.580 | back on.

00:15:37.580 | Like, what was your, what were you thinking?

00:15:40.220 | Like I've heard, for example, at Columbia journalism school from my friends who, who

00:15:43.500 | went there years back, everyone's goal is to write long form for the New Yorker.

00:15:46.980 | Like, this is what I'm going to do out of it.

00:15:48.620 | And you know, only three people end up doing that.

00:15:50.740 | So what was the dreams versus reality when you started doing magazine journalism?

00:15:55.460 | Um, I thought that it was going to be that.

00:15:58.820 | I thought that I was going to be, um, eventually going out to report crazy stories.

00:16:04.900 | And I will say this though, I, I was persistent and I was always pitching ideas that would

00:16:11.100 | get me out of the office.

00:16:13.300 | And um, luckily they said yes to quite a few of them.

00:16:17.820 | It's like once I pulled off one that was, um, that worked pretty well, I had, I did

00:16:22.340 | this, I pitched this story where I was going to go, uh, basically join a power lifting

00:16:29.460 | federation.

00:16:30.660 | But part of it was that I was lifting, I was training with this guy who, um, was the first

00:16:36.500 | guy to ever bench press a thousand pounds.

00:16:39.340 | And uh, his gym was this, it was in the middle of the woods, it was this rundown old garage

00:16:44.180 | they converted.

00:16:45.180 | And this guy was the most giant human being you've ever seen.

00:16:48.420 | He had a Mohawk that was pink.

00:16:50.400 | There was about five pit bulls that were running around the gym.

00:16:53.480 | Every single dude in there was like a bouncer in a motorcycle gang.

00:16:57.740 | And I roll in, you know, six foot one, 170 pounds with my notebook, like, Hey guys.

00:17:04.400 | And um, the story just worked cause it was just so funny that I was in there.

00:17:08.220 | And so after I did that, um, I would say the editors became a little more amenable to sending

00:17:13.680 | me out to report pieces.

00:17:15.420 | And I really, I mean, that's really what I lived for.

00:17:17.580 | Like the day to day in the office, it was, you know, it was what it was, but if I could

00:17:21.200 | go out and meet people, get out into the world and just meet these weird subcultures, that

00:17:25.740 | was like, that was my jam.

00:17:27.260 | So what was your interest, you know, coming out of college, coming out of grad school,

00:17:30.860 | for example, were you outdoorsy at this point or not?

00:17:34.020 | Were you in the fitness at this point or not?

00:17:35.700 | Where was, where was your, like, why did you want to get out of the office?

00:17:38.700 | What was it that attracted you?

00:17:40.420 | What type of activities attracted you?

00:17:43.180 | Um, I would say big picture.

00:17:45.780 | What attracted me is, um, I've always just been interested in, in people and subcultures

00:17:52.100 | and ideas.

00:17:53.100 | Uh, my own personal interests is that I've always been pretty outdoorsy.

00:17:56.900 | Um, you know, grew up, grew up in Utah, so you kind of have to ski or snowboard and spend

00:18:02.820 | a lot of time mountain biking.

00:18:04.840 | And um, fitness wise, I'd always, I'd been mildly interested.

00:18:07.780 | Like I always worked out, but it was kind of like, it was what it was.

00:18:11.020 | Um, but I did actually become a lot more interested in health and fitness by taking that role

00:18:15.900 | just because you start to impel a lot of layers and you go, Oh, this is actually, this is

00:18:19.860 | pretty interesting.

00:18:20.860 | So then in the comfort crisis, you talk about how this dream job began to unravel or how

00:18:27.820 | you began the struggle.

00:18:28.820 | So what, what happened there?

00:18:31.380 | Well, I think that, um, I think that I'm a person, like I said, I like to get out.

00:18:40.740 | I like, I am happiest when I'm outdoors, arguably maybe doing something a little extreme when

00:18:45.560 | I'm in a, when I'm in a weird place where there's kind of a level, there's a lot of

00:18:50.740 | stimulation going on, right?

00:18:52.500 | Like I'm just one of these people who I just kind of need stimulation.

00:18:56.620 | And um, there could be long stretches of that magazine where I would just go into the office

00:19:00.640 | at nine.

00:19:02.820 | You stay till six and eventually you're kind of doing the same thing over and over.

00:19:09.200 | And eventually when I send in those studies, those like study blurbs, I get no edits back

00:19:15.300 | because now I've perfected that.

00:19:16.940 | Like now I get it.

00:19:18.580 | And so it starts to kind of become, all right, I'm, I'm standing behind this.

00:19:23.100 | Of course we all had standing desks and that's how I'm standing behind this screen for from

00:19:29.340 | nine to six every single day, I can pretty much predict exactly what is going to happen.

00:19:34.220 | I'm indoors, my, my office for most of the time didn't have a window, took a while for

00:19:39.840 | me to get a window.

00:19:40.840 | That was a big day.

00:19:42.520 | And um, it just kind of, it just starts to kind of be at odds with what I think fundamentally

00:19:51.120 | get made me excited to get up and go to work every single day.

00:19:55.060 | You know, even though I would occasionally get those reporting stories to your point

00:19:59.400 | about asking about what was, what was magazines like when you first started the funds for

00:20:05.760 | those kinds of stories started to kind of go away as the internet rose and there started

00:20:10.560 | to be more of the magazine became this sort of second thing to the internet and on the

00:20:17.680 | internet, especially as I was probably the last year of my time at men's health, we figured

00:20:24.440 | out, oh, if you run these crazy headlines, you can get clicks and the place started running

00:20:30.940 | stories that literally had nothing to do with health and it was all just about getting people

00:20:34.520 | to click.

00:20:35.520 | And I'm just like, what the hell are we doing here?

00:20:37.680 | What do you do?

00:20:38.680 | Just a quick aside question.

00:20:39.680 | What do you do for six or nine hours at a day?

00:20:43.360 | What are you doing as a journalist?

00:20:44.940 | That seems like a lot of time.

00:20:46.380 | Are you writing that whole time?

00:20:47.640 | Like what happens in a nine hour day?

00:20:49.680 | I mean the capsules take you an hour to write.

00:20:52.120 | Maybe you're in the, you're writing up a story and it as someone who writes and does a lot

00:20:56.520 | of other things and has to fit it in, I'm, I'm fascinated just as an aside, what was

00:21:01.800 | happening on your computer screen for nine hours in that windowless office?

00:21:04.920 | Oh dude, I mean you know this more than anyone that a person can't really crank out great

00:21:11.840 | writing for more than like four hours would be my absolute max and that's if we're on

00:21:18.080 | a run for a few days maybe.

00:21:20.440 | Yeah.

00:21:21.440 | And then beyond that, it's like maybe you're getting in two hours of solid writing a day.

00:21:25.520 | I mean, and the thing is, is that it was kind of this old school, almost like madmen mentality

00:21:32.400 | coming out of the, coming out of the magazine industry where it's like you show up at nine

00:21:37.280 | and you leave at six.

00:21:38.880 | Yeah.

00:21:39.880 | Doesn't matter.

00:21:40.880 | And so how do you fill that time?

00:21:42.840 | We would have these meetings where we would go sit on these couches in the main room and

00:21:47.280 | we would come up with headlines for stories, right?

00:21:50.600 | So we'd put all the, all the stories, like print them out, put them on the wall and we

00:21:56.080 | would come up with headlines for individual stories.

00:21:58.880 | And I'm not kidding you.

00:22:01.220 | We could take one hour going back and forth about a headline that was going to be on a

00:22:05.640 | one page story and you're going, like people just thrown out ideas.

00:22:09.860 | And really it was just, it really, it was just dude sitting around BSing because we

00:22:14.080 | needed to fill the time pretending like it was productive.

00:22:16.680 | And it was just, you know, sometimes you'd have good conversations, it could be fun,

00:22:20.520 | but sometimes you're just going, what the hell are we doing here?

00:22:24.080 | Yeah.

00:22:25.080 | Oh man.

00:22:26.080 | So then how did you talk frankly in, in, uh, in your comfort crisis about, um, the alcohol

00:22:32.000 | dependency?

00:22:33.000 | Yeah.

00:22:34.000 | Does that arise in this time and is this in response to this, uh, what's your disillusionment

00:22:39.240 | from work or is it help create your issues at work?

00:22:42.120 | I mean, how did, how did that begin to raise its head?

00:22:45.920 | Yeah.

00:22:46.920 | I don't think, I don't think the boredom of the job helped.

00:22:49.200 | I'll say that.

00:22:50.520 | Um, I think there's some, I think that's one of those topics that's like really complicated

00:22:55.240 | and you kind of start to unpeel the layers of why over time.

00:22:59.640 | Um, but, uh, I think the fundamental reason that my drinking definitely kicked up while

00:23:07.760 | I was there.

00:23:08.760 | Um, no, I will say that even the first time I drank, I was like, oh wow, this makes life

00:23:16.080 | more interesting.

00:23:17.080 | Yeah.

00:23:18.080 | And if one is good, what would two be like?

00:23:21.760 | And if two is like that, what's three like?

00:23:24.340 | So I always like to say that my, my favorite drink was always the next one.

00:23:29.600 | And when you drink like that, you can accumulate some problems.

00:23:34.000 | And a good sign that you have a drinking problem is that all of your problems are caused by

00:23:37.760 | your drinking.

00:23:39.500 | And that was totally me.

00:23:40.880 | And I think that it, uh, when I kind of peel back and it's taking me a while to figure

00:23:44.800 | this out, when I peel back, I think that, um, because my life, especially at that time

00:23:50.480 | was really kind of predictable routine and wrote, um, and I'm a person who kind of needs

00:23:57.880 | stimulation likes to explore the edges.

00:24:00.760 | It's like if I could go back on a weekend to my apartment in Allentown or whatever,

00:24:06.760 | if I were to drink, I can guarantee that that night was going to be more interesting and

00:24:12.480 | more unpredictable than if I were to not drink.

00:24:15.640 | All right.

00:24:16.640 | If I didn't drink, I'd be like, all right, I'm probably going to watch Netflix.

00:24:19.760 | Maybe I'll go get dinner.

00:24:20.760 | I'll go to bed by 10.

00:24:21.760 | If I have one drink, I just go roll in the dice.

00:24:25.200 | Who the hell knows what's going to happen here.

00:24:27.280 | And so I think that was that like searching for stimulation and just something else to

00:24:31.560 | do that was more exciting was really, um, kind of push that and drove that.

00:24:38.400 | And like I said, it's like, you know, some people they do that and they're, they're good

00:24:42.840 | with three.

00:24:43.840 | I was never that type of person.

00:24:45.880 | And, um, that eventually just led to, um, yeah, a lot of problems in my life and I kind

00:24:50.280 | of had to, I kind of had to figure that out.

00:24:52.760 | So, okay.

00:24:53.760 | So you have all this going on, uh, and this brings us to the point that my listeners are

00:24:58.320 | often really interested in, which is the, both the practical and psychological reality

00:25:03.200 | of when people began doing, um, intentional lifestyle crafting, right?

00:25:09.000 | And so we're getting to the point now where some relatively large changes happen in your

00:25:14.720 | life.

00:25:15.720 | And so I'm interested in kind of dive it into the psychology at this moment.

00:25:19.720 | What were the thoughts that began to crystallize that would eventually push you to do something

00:25:27.400 | different?

00:25:28.400 | How can we understand, uh, you beginning to think, okay, I want to change things about

00:25:33.000 | my life.

00:25:34.000 | What was the thought process that was happening as you were there in Allentown and going to

00:25:37.400 | the windowless room and drinking too much?

00:25:39.840 | And, um, what's inside the mind of Michael Easter that began to push you towards let's

00:25:44.400 | change some things.

00:25:45.400 | Yeah.

00:25:46.400 | I mean, I wish I could, I wish I could say that I had this planned out at the time.

00:25:51.120 | Um, I didn't, but I think really when you look at, uh, addiction, it's basically choosing

00:25:59.680 | a short term benefit at the expense of longterm growth.

00:26:04.240 | That's really how I see it.

00:26:05.320 | And so for me, it's like I needed, I needed something to just like feel something and

00:26:10.240 | alcohol gave me that.

00:26:12.040 | Now eventually the downsides of alcohol, they begin to really outweigh any of the benefits

00:26:18.160 | I'm getting.

00:26:19.400 | And yet I don't really know how to get out of that.

00:26:21.800 | Right.

00:26:22.800 | Because the thing is, is if I drink, like immediately I can fix whatever this underlying

00:26:28.040 | problem is.

00:26:29.040 | It's like really short term, easy way to fix a problem.

00:26:32.700 | Eventually that stops working.

00:26:33.700 | And eventually I think the, the, the downsides just start to really pile up.

00:26:38.480 | And I'd tried to quit drinking, I mean, a hundred times, you know, and eventually just

00:26:45.920 | for whatever reason, one morning I woke up and it was kind of like this shift where I

00:26:50.200 | realized that if I was to continue this behavior, I was probably, um, not to get too dramatic

00:26:55.680 | here, but this is what I thought that I was probably going to die early.

00:26:59.640 | Like I could just kind of see it.

00:27:02.080 | And I kind of realized that in all the times I had tried to quit drinking before, I'd always

00:27:09.560 | kind of looked for like the easy way out, you know, it's like, oh, well maybe I could

00:27:13.240 | do this and then I can just drink less.

00:27:14.840 | And I came up with all these schemes and I just kind of accepted like, Hey, this is going

00:27:18.760 | to be really hard.

00:27:19.760 | Like, this is definitely going to be hard.

00:27:21.520 | And another thing I did is that, um, my mom has actually been sober for about four years.

00:27:26.720 | She got sober right before she had me.

00:27:28.600 | And I'd never really talked to her about my drinking.

00:27:30.900 | And I called her and I told her, I'm like, Hey mom, she had no idea I even drank much

00:27:35.360 | less had a problem with it.

00:27:37.000 | And I told her, Hey, I got a drinking problem.

00:27:38.480 | And so I think that sort of that admission and that reaching out and asking for help,

00:27:42.700 | I think that shifted something in my mind where I just kind of went, okay, I can't figure

00:27:49.400 | this out on my own.

00:27:50.400 | I'm probably going to have to talk to people who've been there and who can help me.

00:27:54.560 | And so I talked to her, I found a handful of people that had been in a similar situation

00:28:00.520 | as me.

00:28:01.520 | And one guy in particular was just extremely helpful.

00:28:05.400 | And so I do think it was just the problems piled up so much that something had to give.

00:28:11.160 | And when it gave that sort of pushed me to do something other than drinking.

00:28:18.000 | And then you find the problem, okay, now we got to solve for what alcohol was solving

00:28:22.840 | for and we have to overhaul our life.

00:28:25.400 | And so I just had to add in new things that would sort of give me that stimulation.

00:28:32.920 | And once the alcohol was gone, though, it's like, okay, the job is only doing so much

00:28:36.880 | for me.

00:28:37.880 | And that's when I started looking for sort of other ways out.

00:28:40.880 | That's fascinating.

00:28:41.880 | Well, I'm part of what's fascinating is we see that same effect with smartphone addiction,

00:28:47.000 | much more attenuated.

00:28:48.000 | Yeah.

00:28:49.000 | But I mean, this comes out of my work is that people who succeed in drastically changing

00:28:53.240 | their relationship to their phones do so because they aggressively invest in alternatives.

00:28:58.320 | And the people who white knuckle like, all right, well, here's what I'm going to do.

00:29:01.120 | I'm just going to use it less and I'm not going to have my bedroom, they start putting

00:29:05.280 | rules around it, but don't have any replacement for what the phone was doing for them.

00:29:09.760 | They all go back.

00:29:10.840 | So there's an interesting parallel.

00:29:12.900 | So did you try and try to replace this with other more other stimulating activities while

00:29:18.440 | you still had your job at men's health?

00:29:20.000 | What type of things were you trying at first before you made the decision I need to actually

00:29:23.160 | change my job itself?

00:29:24.160 | Right?

00:29:25.160 | This was outdoors activity, like getting back in the mountain biking.

00:29:28.360 | Like, what did you what were you what were your first steps towards adding like recasting

00:29:33.640 | your lifestyle?

00:29:34.640 | Yeah, if I can, if I can think about a few of them, I started hanging out with other

00:29:40.500 | people that would kind of, you know, like I was the type of person that like, I would

00:29:45.980 | just kind of hang out either with my girlfriend or alone.

00:29:50.300 | And then on the weekends, I might have some friends come in for from college and you know,

00:29:54.060 | our sort of thing we do together is just go out and get crazy.

00:29:59.140 | And so I had to start hanging out with other people who the relationships didn't evolve

00:30:04.420 | around revolve around drinking.

00:30:05.660 | And I will say that my girlfriend at the time, she is now my wife.

00:30:10.020 | She's never been a big drinker and she was exceedingly supportive and awesome.

00:30:14.920 | And so hanging out with a new group that had kind of been there was really useful.

00:30:20.500 | I also I got a dog.

00:30:23.700 | And and part of the reason that we're now a lot of people would say like, and this was

00:30:27.940 | like a month after I've been sober, a lot of people would be like, you got a dog after

00:30:32.100 | a month of being sober, you're insane.

00:30:34.980 | But here's the thing that dog saved my life, because all of a sudden, I had to care about

00:30:39.220 | something else other than myself.

00:30:41.600 | And I and I'd spend like all my drinking years pretty much giving a shit about one person.

00:30:46.060 | And that was me.

00:30:47.060 | And now all of a sudden, I have to, I have to care for this dog.

00:30:51.360 | And so what that did, and and I also got a German short hair pointer, which is a hunting

00:30:57.180 | dog that needs a whole hell of a lot of exercise.

00:31:00.700 | So I would have to get up early, I would have to take that dog.

00:31:04.460 | And morning before work, I would take the dog to this park that was out in nature.

00:31:10.380 | It was right by a river.

00:31:11.740 | And we would just walk the park for about an hour as the sun was coming up.

00:31:16.500 | And that was like this new way of seeing like, oh, there's like something here that had kind

00:31:21.200 | of been removed from my life and in drinking, but is kind of giving me this deeper thing

00:31:27.180 | I need that's making me happy, really.

00:31:31.540 | And so that was super useful.

00:31:34.340 | And then I started exercising more, I start like on the weekends, I would, I would get

00:31:40.540 | up early and I'd go do I'd go for a hike, I'd go for a long bike ride, I'd go, I'd go

00:31:44.820 | do something.

00:31:45.820 | And that gave me a reason to go to bed on time and to like not drink.

00:31:49.820 | And if I ever really wanted to drink, which I was lucky that I will say a lot of people

00:31:54.540 | have fits and starts.

00:31:56.440 | When I was done, I was done.

00:31:58.900 | It was like, we're like, we're going for this.

00:32:02.060 | You know what I mean? like I didn't have like urges to go out and drink.

00:32:07.260 | And I will also say that over time, the times that I have thought I've missed alcohol, when

00:32:14.580 | I unpack that, it's really that I missed the context of the drinking.

00:32:19.060 | And that's that you're with friends, you're able to let loose.

00:32:22.560 | And I was like, Oh, well, do you really need to have two drinks to let loose?

00:32:26.340 | No, you can just like, you can just like let loose without having alcohol around.

00:32:31.780 | You know?

00:32:32.780 | And so I think it's just like kind of this long process of self discovery where you have

00:32:36.060 | to, but if nothing changes, nothing changes.

00:32:39.460 | You got to start making these big, deeper changes.

00:32:41.940 | And I think you see that, like you said, as a theme from getting out of any behavior that

00:32:49.700 | you are overdoing, that is hurting your life.

00:32:54.300 | Like you got to, you got to change something.

00:32:56.380 | So then how did your, what caused the evolution of your relationship with men's health?

00:33:01.340 | It's not that you stopped writing for them.

00:33:02.460 | I mean, even your Guy Fieri article is not even that old.

00:33:06.380 | And I've looked through your bibliography.

00:33:08.540 | There's periods where you'll write six or seven articles freelance for them.

00:33:11.940 | So when it comes to that particular professional transition, you've now been exposed to other

00:33:15.660 | things just to use like the terminology my audience knows.

00:33:18.660 | You've been exposed to these other lifestyle factors that are resonating.

00:33:21.460 | It's the time outside, the caring for someone else, the exercise, the deeper connections

00:33:26.780 | with community.

00:33:27.780 | And so suddenly you're gaining this insight into what resonates and what doesn't.

00:33:32.460 | What was the sequence of changes you made to your actual professional situation and

00:33:37.740 | how did that unfold?

00:33:39.540 | Yeah.

00:33:40.580 | So I was probably at the magazine for about maybe two years when I was sober.

00:33:48.800 | And so I think after, you know, I sort of go through the most acute period of, you know,

00:33:55.060 | white knuckling as they call it, of sobriety.

00:33:59.300 | Then once I was through with that, you realize, okay, well, I'm still in this office.

00:34:03.500 | It's still boring.

00:34:04.780 | Nothing has changed in the magazine industry here.

00:34:07.900 | And so I just, I knew I loved the writing aspect.

00:34:12.300 | Didn't love the standing at a desk in an office behind a screen all day.

00:34:17.020 | Did like getting out in the world and reporting.

00:34:18.820 | And so, and having interesting experiences, meeting interesting people.

00:34:23.220 | And so for a while I thought, well, maybe I just need to find a new career.

00:34:26.340 | I kind of looked around at some different things, apply for some jobs, kind of got deep

00:34:30.620 | into them, but they didn't work out.

00:34:33.120 | And eventually it just, it occurred to me.

00:34:35.420 | We started talking to my now wife and we decided, all right, let's try and move somewhere.

00:34:42.580 | Maybe I could, maybe I could freelance cause then I would only be writing, but it would

00:34:46.100 | be more on my terms.

00:34:48.300 | And then it popped in my head, oh, well I know I can only write well for about four

00:34:54.140 | hours a day max.

00:34:56.500 | So what could I do to earn income and have a safety net in those other hours of the day?

00:35:04.380 | And I'd always thought it would be awesome to work at a university in a, you know, in

00:35:09.820 | a teaching role.

00:35:11.700 | And it occurred to me like, well, if you, if you teach journalism, like your research

00:35:16.180 | is continuing to do the work.

00:35:17.820 | If you're in the professional position, like a lot of journalism departments have and my

00:35:23.340 | wife and I, and this is crazy how this worked out.

00:35:27.460 | My wife and I had identified either Phoenix or Las Vegas as somewhere we wanted to move.

00:35:31.540 | Why?

00:35:32.540 | And that's, I don't mean that, I don't mean that in like a dismissive way, but in like

00:35:35.300 | a curious way because you're both East coasters and that's like a very specific decision.

00:35:40.980 | Totally.

00:35:41.980 | So I'll tell you why.

00:35:43.300 | It's because we wanted to move West and she said, no snow.

00:35:47.580 | And I said, no California.

00:35:49.280 | And so that kind of left us with, all right, we got like maybe certain parts of Texas,

00:35:53.540 | but definitely Arizona, definitely Las Vegas.

00:35:55.500 | And we, we had come out to Las Vegas for some reason or another and we're like, oh wow,

00:36:00.180 | this is actually a really great town.

00:36:02.180 | The strip is what it is.

00:36:03.460 | Some people love it.

00:36:04.460 | Some people hate it.

00:36:05.460 | I personally love it for the people watching and the fact that it's just like this big

00:36:09.660 | human behavior laboratory.

00:36:12.100 | And so I ended up sending an email to a guy who ran the magazine program at UNLV and I

00:36:20.060 | was just like, hey, thinking about moving out, wondering if you have any adjunct courses,

00:36:26.980 | here's my background, blah, blah, blah.

00:36:29.820 | And it just so happened that they were looking for a professional, a full-time professional

00:36:36.140 | instructor to teach health journalism because they just opened a medical school.

00:36:41.500 | Like they hadn't even advertised the role.

00:36:43.820 | And he forwarded my email on to the head of the department and literally a week later

00:36:48.980 | I went in, I interviewed and a week after that, this was, this would have been December.

00:36:54.580 | They said, okay, we'd like to hire you, but can you start in January?

00:36:58.740 | And so we were like, all right, fire sale, just like pack up the house.

00:37:03.660 | We're driving across the country to move to Las Vegas.

00:37:06.020 | And that was that.

00:37:07.380 | And what were you looking for?

00:37:09.260 | Like what were the properties the job had that made you say, yeah, let's roll with this?

00:37:15.500 | I think that it was the ability to continue to write for magazines to do just the writing

00:37:21.340 | thing.

00:37:22.380 | And also I think the uncertainty and the learning that would come with the teaching aspect of

00:37:29.540 | that job.

00:37:30.540 | Yeah.

00:37:31.540 | So I was teaching three classes when I started and then the other half of my job was continuing

00:37:36.140 | the writing.

00:37:37.700 | So the university could have people who were actually doing the thing in the department

00:37:41.520 | because there weren't many in the department when I started.

00:37:43.780 | I think I was the only one.

00:37:44.860 | So that's a reduced, they gave you, that's a reduced load because they wanted you to

00:37:47.860 | write.

00:37:48.860 | Correct.

00:37:49.860 | Yeah.

00:37:50.860 | So it would have otherwise been like a four, four or something like that, or it would have

00:37:52.860 | been, would have been a four, four.

00:37:54.420 | Yeah.

00:37:55.420 | Yep.

00:37:56.420 | They had me do three classes and then the professional work filled in that fourth spot.

00:38:00.380 | And you had, um, a nice thing about these jobs is it's the opposite of the standing

00:38:05.100 | desk, nine to six, whenever or wherever, however you get it done is up to you about these jobs.

00:38:10.220 | You need to be in the classroom when your class is being taught.

00:38:12.340 | You need to be in your office for the office hours, but otherwise, however you want to

00:38:16.940 | do it, that's kind of a nice thing about these positions.

00:38:19.340 | So that must've been a nice change of pace from what you were doing.

00:38:22.740 | Oh yeah.

00:38:23.740 | Cause I was coming from, I was coming from the magazine world where you have all these

00:38:26.980 | 60 year old guys who were going, no, you come in at nine and you leave at six.

00:38:31.360 | That's just what you do.

00:38:32.740 | And so it gave me a lot more freedom.

00:38:34.020 | And I think that, um, that was good for me.

00:38:36.900 | I could, you know, go explore Las Vegas.

00:38:40.140 | I could, uh, I could work reporting trips around my teaching schedule and I also, yeah.

00:38:46.020 | What was the typical day like, like what, how did you work out your schedule?

00:38:49.260 | Yeah.

00:38:50.260 | Over time.

00:38:51.260 | I mean, when I first started, they were kind of just like, here's your schedule.

00:38:53.580 | And I was in four days a week prepping a lot, probably and all that prepping a ton when

00:38:58.740 | I heard, I mean, when I first started, I didn't do as much writing as I wanted cause that

00:39:02.940 | first semester was really, we got to figure out how the hell do you do this?

00:39:07.180 | I mean, it was hilarious too, because I'd never, I'd never taught.

00:39:12.300 | And um, I said, okay, like what do I do?

00:39:16.180 | And they go, okay, well your class.

00:39:17.660 | And they gave me the names of the three classes.

00:39:20.180 | And I said, okay, great.

00:39:21.780 | So like, is there an instruction handbook on how to do that?

00:39:25.140 | And they go, no, those are the names of the three classes.

00:39:27.700 | Figure it out.

00:39:28.700 | I was like, okay.

00:39:29.700 | Um, so that was a lot of time figuring it out.

00:39:32.180 | But once I, but once I had figured it out, um, obviously a lot of that, that time frees

00:39:36.620 | up and, um, I could then start to focus, start to focus more on the writing.

00:39:42.060 | But I did, um, I did love the teaching element, just interacting with young people.

00:39:46.740 | And I like that it forced me to have to think about why I did the things I did in my, in

00:39:54.060 | my writing work and reporting work, you know, so some, you know, some of that, well, why

00:39:58.460 | do you do that?

00:39:59.460 | And you're like, Oh, that's a good question.

00:40:02.980 | Why do I do that?

00:40:03.980 | And then you have to unpack your thinking and you find some flaws in it.

00:40:07.220 | You, it strengthens ideas.

00:40:08.980 | Maybe you start to see how could I do this better?

00:40:10.740 | And so, yeah, that was, it was a lot of fun.

00:40:12.940 | And what year was this when you started in Las Vegas?

00:40:16.020 | This would have been 2017.

00:40:17.580 | Oh, that's interesting.

00:40:19.380 | Okay.

00:40:20.380 | And then in, okay, so between your two books, there's like several really large scale reporting

00:40:27.480 | trips mentioned, right?

00:40:28.780 | You have investigating the, the rising drug trade in sort of post-war Iraq.

00:40:36.580 | You have your time in Bhutan.

00:40:38.660 | Where did those larger reporting trips that you then use in your books, where do those

00:40:42.180 | fall in this timeline?

00:40:43.340 | Was that while you were still in Allentown or these, these, you found a way to do these

00:40:46.900 | longer form pieces once you're in Las Vegas?

00:40:49.980 | Yeah.

00:40:50.980 | Those are all when I was in Las Vegas.

00:40:52.100 | Now I will say, um, the Arctic trip, I, um, I was blessed to have a good head of the department

00:40:58.940 | and he was like, okay, so you have to be in the Arctic from basic all of September.

00:41:03.820 | And we should explain this.

00:41:05.180 | This is the, the structuring story of the, if I'm thinking of the right story of the

00:41:09.580 | comfort crisis where you go on an elk hunting trip in Arctic Alaska that was, um, not comfortable

00:41:16.700 | in a very, very specific way.

00:41:20.140 | Okay.

00:41:21.140 | Um, and was that, but that trip, was that even for reporting or at the time or was that

00:41:24.860 | just, you wanted to do it?

00:41:25.860 | Yeah, that was for reporting.

00:41:27.620 | So I, um, I had done, uh, what happened with, uh, with that is I had, I had done a magazine

00:41:33.300 | article for men's health that, um, was a profile of the guy, Donnie Vincent, who I was in the

00:41:39.060 | Arctic with.

00:41:40.060 | He's this sort of, um, for listeners, he's this back country bow hunter and filmmaker

00:41:44.220 | who's really, I think changing the face of hunting, how it's perceived, how it's practiced

00:41:50.180 | and just, uh, just a really deep thinker in the space.

00:41:53.340 | And so I had profiled him and, and done this short hunt with him.

00:41:57.220 | And I realized that piece could probably be blown out into a bar.

00:42:02.980 | I mean, there was just so much that I wanted to write in that, in that story.

00:42:07.260 | And of course it, you know, it could only run at three, 4,000 words or something.

00:42:11.780 | And so, um, from that piece, I ended up, um, pitching the book to publishers.

00:42:18.100 | And as part of that, it was, okay, the overarching narrative is going to be this, um, 30 plus

00:42:24.420 | day journey I take into the Arctic on a hunting trip with him to sort of get into these fundamental

00:42:30.820 | discomforts that humans face every day in the past that we no longer face anymore that

00:42:36.580 | can be healthy for us.

00:42:38.660 | And so I pitched that and when, once the publisher bought it, um, you know, I had to go to my

00:42:42.900 | head of the department and be like, Hey, I got to be gone in September.

00:42:46.180 | Can, can someone just fill this like one class I have?

00:42:49.980 | And I was able to like get the others online just for the month.

00:42:54.140 | So I had two that I was able to put online for that month and then come back in person.

00:42:58.100 | And then I had one that was, um, just a lecture every week that my department had, he had

00:43:03.860 | taught the class before and so he was like, all right, I'll get it for you.

00:43:08.060 | And um, he was just, he's just a saint to do that.

00:43:10.980 | But then, then the other trips, I would just plan those during times I wasn't teaching.

00:43:15.460 | So I mean, it's interesting to me that the type of reporting you wanted to do all along,

00:43:19.860 | you really started doing after you weren't a full time employee of a magazine.

00:43:25.140 | Is that, so how did that, I guess there was still maybe like the pay wasn't great for

00:43:29.460 | the pieces, but people were still willing to take long form reporting like this.

00:43:36.580 | But it, if you were on salary, they're like, no, no, no, you have to, we need seven articles

00:43:40.860 | a week from you for the web.

00:43:42.020 | Like what, how did that happen that you began doing the reporting that you really wanted

00:43:45.380 | to do after you left, um, being a full time journalist?

00:43:48.740 | Yeah.

00:43:49.740 | Well, I mean the answer is that if you're on salary as a editor writer, they want you

00:43:54.260 | in the office a certain amount of time and you can only leave the office so much because

00:43:58.060 | you've got a million different tasks.

00:44:00.940 | Um, the budgets are kind of constrained and frankly they would rather just give it out

00:44:06.980 | to a freelancer, um, who has ample time to spend to doing these crazy reporting trips.

00:44:13.620 | So I almost kind of took on, left the magazine and took on the role of what would be a freelancer

00:44:18.900 | and what was able to fund those, those trips was, um, the book advances basically.

00:44:25.300 | Right, because economically you can't really make a living doing those long form freelance

00:44:29.260 | pieces.

00:44:30.260 | It just, it doesn't work out because you can only do what, two a year if they're really

00:44:33.780 | reported and you know, here's your like $6,000 or whatever for six months worth of effort

00:44:39.100 | that the economics don't work out.

00:44:40.940 | Yeah.

00:44:41.940 | Okay.

00:44:42.940 | That's fast.

00:44:43.940 | Okay.

00:44:44.940 | So then we get to your books.

00:44:45.940 | I love how this is unfolding.

00:44:46.940 | Um, so we get to your book, the comfort crisis, your first book, and then the scarcity brain

00:44:49.100 | came second.

00:44:50.100 | Um, so you, you pitch it, you've done a profile already of the main person, but you had not

00:44:55.700 | yet done the trip.

00:44:56.940 | So if I understand this right, when you did the actual hunting trip, this was after you

00:45:00.780 | already sold the book.

00:45:02.340 | Um, and you had pitched like, here's, I'm going to go back out, I'm going to go to the

00:45:06.220 | Arctic with this character I wrote about over here.

00:45:09.300 | Were you imagining, and I love that we're going to get into this now we can dive into

00:45:12.420 | the book.

00:45:13.420 | So it's perfect.

00:45:14.420 | Um, were you imagining, I think most writers, myself included, my first instinct would be

00:45:17.940 | thinking of like coming to America, this is going to be John McPhee.

00:45:20.900 | It's going to be really just character driven.

00:45:24.740 | Whereas the book ended up being like one of the big idea books, you know, of, of the,

00:45:31.180 | of the last, however many years, I mean, it's a fantastic book.

00:45:33.660 | I mean, it really became much more of like a Gladwellian idea book with that as the spine

00:45:38.260 | where you went off and met lots of other people that talk about or the help uncover these

00:45:43.500 | other types of principles.

00:45:45.060 | So, you know, how did that evolve from this is going to be me and this character and what

00:45:51.100 | I'm learning from this exposure to like, that's going to be the spine of an idea book.

00:45:54.660 | It's going to actually have a lot of ideas, a lot of science back stuff, a lot of actually

00:45:58.020 | like talking to other people and, uh, how did that unfold?

00:46:02.260 | Yeah, I think that it was really just noticing that the books that I liked to read usually

00:46:09.220 | had a narrative, um, a kind of, uh, a big overarching narrative, but, um, also realizing

00:46:14.540 | that I've also always been fascinated with research that can, um, hopefully improve the

00:46:20.700 | reader's life and, um, realizing that I, and I think, I think most people, the story gets

00:46:29.500 | them into the big idea.

00:46:31.460 | So when I teach this, it's like, if I'm trying to write a book, like I have this, I'm sure

00:46:35.180 | you're the same way.

00:46:36.180 | I have this big idea.

00:46:37.180 | I need to communicate.

00:46:38.180 | Right.

00:46:39.180 | So the big idea is often abstract.

00:46:41.020 | It's somewhat complex.

00:46:42.500 | And if I just go right into the big idea, I've lost you because you haven't bought in.

00:46:47.580 | So the story, it almost acts as the vehicle, um, sort of the express way into that bigger

00:46:54.580 | idea.

00:46:55.580 | Cause if I can get someone in with a story, um, they buy in, they buy into a character.

00:47:00.740 | They want to know, you know, the character is in this, um, precarious position.

00:47:04.660 | It's like just basic storytelling and they got to figure things out and they're learning

00:47:08.740 | things along the way.

00:47:09.740 | And as the character is learning things along the way, that is to say me and these books,

00:47:14.340 | um, I can peel off into these bigger ideas where the person will have, have bought in

00:47:19.900 | and hopefully have more interest in the big idea because they bought into this interesting

00:47:26.060 | story.

00:47:27.060 | That's sort of getting there.

00:47:28.060 | Yeah.

00:47:29.060 | So then one of the energies I see in the book and my audience knows, because I've raved

00:47:33.780 | about both your books, but about comfort crisis in particular, I really thought it was one

00:47:38.140 | of the better idea books the last half decade.

00:47:40.780 | And there's a symmetry I saw between it and my book deep work, which was, you know, when

00:47:45.060 | I was writing deep work, I was also very personally invested in this idea because I was a young

00:47:50.380 | professor and I was trying to figure out cognitive life and, and the incursions into it.

00:47:55.100 | And I think that that there's an energy that comes into it.

00:47:57.420 | And then the comfort crisis has that as well.

00:47:59.940 | You can kind of sense there is a personal, this big personal investment you have in these

00:48:05.660 | ideas.

00:48:06.660 | And you invest in them, like which, which sells them as potentially transformative.

00:48:10.020 | So you're at this stage of your life when you're writing this book where you've just

00:48:12.820 | started making like a lot of changes.

00:48:15.380 | You've grabbed the reins of autonomy.

00:48:18.100 | What happened in your own personal life in terms of like your habits or how you lived

00:48:21.860 | or et cetera?

00:48:22.860 | What changes began to come out of working on the book about discomfort?

00:48:29.180 | Like what was that feedback loop between the book and then how you were actually living

00:48:32.660 | your life?

00:48:33.660 | Yeah.

00:48:34.660 | Well, I think you're right and I have deep work right here.

00:48:38.260 | I think you're right that like a lot of times writers are just kind of figuring out their

00:48:42.020 | own shit on the page, you know?

00:48:45.060 | And so that was definitely the comfort crisis, like coming out of getting sober, figuring

00:48:51.220 | that out.

00:48:53.700 | And I think it was the, this recognition that all the work I did for men's health, we were

00:48:59.340 | talking about these sort of lifestyle changes that would lead to improvements.

00:49:05.540 | Every single lifestyle change that we talked about, it was usually uncomfortable, right?

00:49:09.420 | If it's, if it's exercise to improve your fitness, exercise is uncomfortable.

00:49:12.940 | If it's losing weight, you're probably going to have to eat less.

00:49:15.220 | You're going to be hungry.

00:49:16.220 | That's uncomfortable.

00:49:17.220 | Mental health, getting over your mental health stuff is usually uncomfortable.

00:49:20.420 | So seeing that, that sort of path that doing things that are uncomfortable leads is sort

00:49:28.000 | of a necessary buy into improvement to these greater goods.

00:49:31.940 | And having that exact same story in my sobriety, I mean, that's absolutely the most uncomfortable

00:49:36.660 | thing I've ever done.

00:49:37.660 | But once I went through that, my life improved so much, like unbelievable changes, like everything

00:49:44.380 | got better.

00:49:45.920 | And so sort of seeing that and then through my time outdoors, realizing that the outdoors

00:49:55.020 | are uncomfortable, too hot, too cold.

00:49:59.860 | Everything takes effort.

00:50:01.940 | You have long stretches of boredom, like just on and on and on.

00:50:05.460 | And then you go back from the outdoors into everyday life.

00:50:08.260 | And it's like, oh my God, like everything is so comfortable in our world.

00:50:13.940 | And just realizing that that shift where, where I kind of go, well, humans live for

00:50:18.460 | all of time, walking around outdoors, looking for food, basically trying to keep their kids

00:50:25.740 | alive.

00:50:26.980 | Nothing was ever comfortable.

00:50:29.620 | And then we as a species suddenly get place.

00:50:33.260 | We engineer our environments to be comfortable in so many different ways across the board.

00:50:39.540 | And then the big idea question is, okay, well, how has that changed us and, and what can

00:50:43.980 | we do about it?

00:50:44.980 | - Yeah, well, and I think the digital, when it enters this conversation, brought us cognitive

00:50:48.900 | comfort.

00:50:49.900 | So there's a lot of things in the last 200 years, maybe even just 150 years that gave

00:50:53.820 | us physical comfort.

00:50:54.980 | It's the cars and HVAC and comfortable mattresses.

00:50:58.700 | But then what's the, what's the story of the last 10 years is this cognitive comfort of

00:51:02.700 | no boredom, take out all of the friction of sociality and all the sort of like uncertainty

00:51:08.140 | and just, it's, it's on here and I can just tap this thing.

00:51:12.460 | Get rid of the difficulty of putting yourself out there for leadership and community.

00:51:15.660 | Like I can be a leader by posting things on Twitter that gets like comments.

00:51:19.500 | You can kind of play with these, these like these human drives and it, it takes away all

00:51:26.020 | cognitive discomfort.

00:51:27.500 | And that was one of the big threats to your book is, you know, it's not just physical,

00:51:31.060 | but also cognitive discomfort that, that there, that there's something to it.

00:51:35.480 | How do you think about this theory?

00:51:36.480 | Here's a theory I've been pitching, which I don't have science for it, but it sounds

00:51:40.500 | reasonable, right?

00:51:41.500 | So one of the things I've been pitching on my show recently is this idea that we have

00:51:45.380 | fundamental human drives.

00:51:46.940 | You know, there's like for, for community and leadership and food, obviously.

00:51:54.300 | Boredom is a big drive.

00:51:55.300 | It feels really bad.

00:51:56.300 | Right?

00:51:57.300 | So alleviation of boredom.

00:51:58.340 | And at the, the goal of these drives is to push us to do hard things that will be rewarding

00:52:02.300 | in the future because they, we have a very strong pull and fundamental human drives.

00:52:06.460 | They're hard to ignore.

00:52:07.460 | So eventually they make us get up and do stuff.

00:52:10.500 | And that is like a, a big difference from some other animals because like, we're not

00:52:14.780 | just energy conserving.

00:52:16.260 | We are, we get up and do things.

00:52:17.740 | And that one of the issues with technology is it subverts the drives.

00:52:20.900 | It kind of simulates the reward.

00:52:23.620 | Like these drives need just enough that like you lose that motivation to get up.

00:52:27.580 | Like the video game makes you feel just competent enough that, that like you don't get up in

00:52:33.540 | a way that if you didn't have the video game, like eventually that like drive towards competency

00:52:37.100 | is like, I got to get up and go learn how to hunt or whatever.

00:52:41.060 | Right.

00:52:42.060 | Yeah.

00:52:43.060 | And so I have this theory that like when the technology, we have drives that push us to

00:52:45.500 | do the type of things that you talked about in your book and technology can subvert them

00:52:48.860 | just enough to prevent action, but we get none of the rewards that the, that the action

00:52:53.420 | gives us.

00:52:54.420 | It's just kind of track.

00:52:55.900 | Oh yeah, I, I agree a hundred percent.

00:53:00.780 | And I'll give you a good example.

00:53:03.020 | It's, um, so when I was in the Arctic for a month, um, we're up there hunting, um, hunting

00:53:11.220 | is for those who've never hunted, it's actually not action packed at all.

00:53:14.580 | It's like a lot of waiting.

00:53:16.660 | And so we'd sit on these Hills waiting for caribou to come through.

00:53:19.580 | Cause we're kind of timing our hunt to this migration.

00:53:22.660 | No caribou are coming through for like a couple of weeks.

00:53:26.700 | And I didn't have my cell phone.

00:53:28.700 | I had my cell phone, but it didn't, it was useless.

00:53:31.300 | Right.

00:53:32.300 | I didn't have televisions and computers and iPads and all this stuff.

00:53:37.180 | And so when you're sitting out there, all of a sudden I find myself like really bored.

00:53:43.460 | And so when boredom kicks on, I kind of think about it as this uncomfortable cue that tells

00:53:49.180 | people go do something else.

00:53:51.780 | So it's neither good nor bad.

00:53:53.180 | It's just this drive that says, Hey, the return on your time invested with what you're doing

00:53:57.220 | right now, it is worn thin, go do something else.

00:54:00.100 | So when you think about it in the context of evolution, if it's a million years ago

00:54:05.580 | and you and I are sitting on this Hill hunting and we need food to survive, if no animals

00:54:10.200 | are coming through boredom kicks on and it says, go do something else.

00:54:13.820 | And in the past that something else was often productive to your point.

00:54:17.240 | So you and I would go, Hey, no animals.

00:54:19.100 | Why don't we go, why don't we go search for berries?

00:54:21.260 | Why don't we go to hunt another speed?

00:54:23.180 | Like there's all these things we would do that were often productive, pushing us towards

00:54:26.660 | survival.

00:54:28.420 | But now we have this easy, effortless escape from it that is just highly stimulating in

00:54:33.020 | the form of cell phones, right?

00:54:34.900 | It's like you feel that, and obviously everyone sees it.

00:54:37.620 | Everyone experiences it.

00:54:38.620 | The moment you feel that you immediately pull the phone out.

00:54:41.900 | Now in the Arctic, I didn't have that.

00:54:44.100 | So like I said, neither good nor bad.

00:54:46.880 | Some of the stuff we would do to alleviate our boredom, which is totally stupid.

00:54:50.820 | Like we would read the labels on our food.

00:54:53.940 | We would just tell these ridiculous stories that went nowhere.

00:54:57.640 | On the other hand, I also came up with more good ideas for my writing than I've ever come

00:55:03.360 | up with in my entire life.

00:55:05.300 | I wrote things that ended up in the book that are probably some of the best things I've

00:55:08.420 | ever written.

00:55:09.420 | I came up with like Christmas shopping lists for all my friends and family, like all these

00:55:14.380 | like weird, productive things that I just never would have gotten had I been bored at

00:55:19.060 | home because the default would have been, Oh, go to the screen and work.

00:55:23.660 | Oh, an alert just came in from your cell phone.

00:55:27.020 | And so I think that kind of to the bigger points that that's why kind of this removal,

00:55:32.060 | having these times where you remove yourself and yes, you will have to be uncomfortably

00:55:37.960 | bored for a little bit, but seeing where that takes you is going to be a lot more interesting

00:55:44.580 | and arguably productive than watching the next amazing dog video that comes upon your

00:55:51.140 | Instagram feed or whatever it might be.

00:55:52.900 | So was your book, your first book, was it a success right away or was it a slow burn?

00:55:58.020 | What was the experience like when that came out?

00:56:03.020 | So we got lucky the first week, got on some big podcasts.

00:56:05.820 | So we had a big, pretty big opening week.

00:56:08.020 | But then it kind of just kind of slowed and it, you know, it was like a steady, steady,

00:56:13.800 | but over time it took about a year for it to really pick up in sales.

00:56:16.820 | So yeah, it took about one year and there was, you know, I think it was a word of mouth.

00:56:23.100 | It was people who had platforms, eventually it getting to them and them saying, just like

00:56:29.540 | you right now, right?

00:56:30.860 | The book Comfort Crisis came out more than three years ago and we're talking right now.

00:56:35.680 | That sort of spread.

00:56:36.680 | I think the idea is just spreading people, I know people liked reading it.

00:56:40.340 | Not everyone liked reading it, but enough people liked reading it.

00:56:42.900 | It's a good news and bad news about publishing, right?

00:56:46.380 | You can't, there's no formula to make your book sell a lot of copies.

00:56:50.820 | It just has to be, it's simple in the sense that it just has to be something that like

00:56:54.900 | people are really interested in and want to tell people about.

00:56:57.580 | The bad news is that's really hard to do, but that is the common experience of not everyone.

00:57:03.540 | Sometimes your book is the right book for the right time and everyone reads it immediately.

00:57:06.420 | This is like John Haidt in the Anxious Generation.

00:57:08.300 | Like if you, if you've been working for a decade on a topic that everyone cares about

00:57:12.180 | and your book comes out right at the right time, then it could just like immediately

00:57:15.580 | be a big success.

00:57:16.780 | But Deep Work had a similar experience.

00:57:18.940 | That's never, it was never on the New York Times bestseller list.

00:57:22.340 | Never on a weekly national bestseller list and is like 2 million copies in, you know,

00:57:28.140 | that's crazy.

00:57:29.140 | Just like, yeah, that's it.

00:57:30.340 | That's it.

00:57:31.340 | Right.

00:57:32.340 | It's like, it's you, it's you wrote a book that is really good, that helps people, that's

00:57:36.780 | actionable that they can apply and word just spreads, you know, that's fantastic.

00:57:42.620 | So then what was the plan?

00:57:43.620 | You had the first book come out.

00:57:45.900 | Did you have like a new plan?

00:57:47.020 | Like, okay, here is, here's my plan for my life.

00:57:49.460 | Like I'm going to write books on a certain frequency while my, my position at Las Vegas,

00:57:53.980 | like I'm sure it changed your thought of like, okay, here's my rhythm between freelancing

00:57:58.240 | books and professorship.

00:58:00.580 | How did you revise your kind of life plan if at all in this sort of post first book

00:58:04.940 | period?

00:58:07.820 | I wish I could tell you that I had a life plan going in.

00:58:10.820 | I mean, I wrote like, you know, my thought then was like, you write a book to write the

00:58:16.020 | book and then you realize that, oh, the book opens up all these other doors that I just

00:58:21.840 | had no idea were there.

00:58:23.860 | And so a lot of it was kind of figuring out, all right, now that this book seems to be

00:58:27.300 | resonating with people, it's like, what the hell do you, what do you do with that?

00:58:31.980 | Right.

00:58:33.180 | And so it kind of, I think it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do.

00:58:38.980 | And I, um, I actually, I signed the contract for scarcity brain right before the comfort

00:58:45.860 | crisis came out because I was like, all right, this will guarantee I have more work.

00:58:51.060 | Cause I don't, I have no idea if this book's going to sell or not.

00:58:53.780 | So let's strike while the iron's hot.

00:58:55.920 | And so I immediately just started working on scarcity brain, um, eventually just through

00:59:02.980 | sending out some random newsletters here or there.

00:59:05.620 | My newsletter list had grown and, um, I started to get more regular with that.

00:59:11.180 | And then I eventually took that over to sub stack and I publish on that three times a

00:59:16.700 | week because that allows me to kind of write in real time.

00:59:21.580 | Right.

00:59:22.580 | I'm sure you've noticed that with a book, um, I love books because it kind of gets to

00:59:28.900 | the heart of things and you, you get real clear on ideas at the same time.

00:59:33.820 | It's, you know, on a two, three year cadence or whatever it might be.

00:59:37.820 | And so being able to talk about things in real life or in real time rather, I think

00:59:42.420 | it's been useful for sub stack.

00:59:44.740 | And then how did that start changing?

00:59:46.140 | Let me be more specific.

00:59:48.380 | When did you, first of all, when did you go over to sub stack?

00:59:51.180 | What was what when you, when you fix the regular cadence of three times a week, when was that?

00:59:57.300 | That would have been may of what you're 22, no 23.

01:00:01.220 | Yeah.

01:00:02.220 | So I've been doing that for about a year and a half now coming up on two years.

01:00:07.820 | And that really was just that I had this newsletter that was going out once a week.

01:00:10.900 | I enjoyed writing it.

01:00:12.460 | And um, one of the guys that sub stack reached out and said, Hey, we think you could do a

01:00:16.540 | successful sub stack.

01:00:18.420 | You want to try it?

01:00:19.420 | And I was like, no one's going to sign up for this and like pay for this, you know,

01:00:23.220 | it's not going to happen.

01:00:24.220 | Um, but I was just like, all right, worst that happens is like, it's not a success.

01:00:28.220 | And then I just go back to once a week, you know, what the hell do I care?

01:00:31.620 | And so I tried it and I had this like goal.

01:00:33.540 | I was like, Hey, if I can, if I can have this many subscribers and this amount of time,

01:00:38.900 | that'll be a success.

01:00:39.900 | And I kind of pushed that.

01:00:41.060 | I said, all right, if I can do that in like three years, then this is worth it.

01:00:45.380 | And I think I hit that goal in like three months.

01:00:47.700 | So it was like, all right, looks like sub stack is the thing we'll be doing this.

01:00:52.220 | So, and it's, it's been fun.

01:00:53.220 | It's been awesome.

01:00:54.220 | I mean, I will say that it is, um, a lot of work, but it is also trained me to get better

01:00:59.700 | at distilling my thoughts and writing them quickly.

01:01:02.860 | Whereas I was like in book mind where I'm like, Oh, I got, I got, I got two years for

01:01:06.580 | this project, man.

01:01:07.580 | We can just take this real nice and slow.

01:01:10.140 | And it has kind of trained me to get faster.

01:01:12.940 | So it took me about a year to not feel like I was constantly in sort of crazy sprint mode.

01:01:18.620 | But once I got it, I got it.

01:01:20.260 | And um, it's been a real fun project.

01:01:21.980 | So, and do I understand right that now you write full time?

01:01:25.700 | Yeah.

01:01:26.700 | Okay.

01:01:27.700 | So was, was sub stack that success a big part of that decision?

01:01:31.660 | Just because that's more, it's more immediate, it's more regular, um, from just like a financial

01:01:37.260 | perspective, it feels somehow more predictable than books, which, you know, it could be years

01:01:41.620 | till it comes out.

01:01:42.620 | You don't know how it's going to go.

01:01:43.620 | What was sub stack?

01:01:44.620 | The thing that changed, like made that an option in your mind, or was it like the success of

01:01:47.540 | the books?

01:01:48.540 | Um, I would say it was a little bit of both, but I would say that sub stack made me feel

01:01:54.780 | like I had something that was more predictable and regular.

01:01:58.260 | Right?

01:01:59.260 | I mean, with books, I'm like, okay, things are going great now, but next week, who knows?

01:02:04.820 | I'm sure you've, you've probably seen the numbers on your books where it's like one

01:02:08.620 | week for whatever reason, you sell a lot.

01:02:10.620 | And then the next you're like, well, why did we sell less than like, you just don't know.

01:02:14.100 | So sub stack was a little more, um, predictable.

01:02:18.220 | And um, the other thing that kind of made me switch to writing full time is that the

01:02:23.100 | university, um, kind of altered how they were going to approach things.

01:02:27.500 | And they wanted me to teach four classes.

01:02:29.900 | And it was just like, I can't do sub stack and books and teach four classes, guys.

01:02:34.220 | Sorry.

01:02:35.220 | This just like, isn't going to work out.

01:02:36.220 | And luckily the books and the sub stack had put me in a position where I was totally fine

01:02:40.820 | with that.

01:02:41.820 | And also God bless my wife who has a, um, works for a big insurance company and brings

01:02:47.680 | in the healthcare and all that sort of thing.

01:02:49.380 | So yeah.

01:02:50.380 | So, so that worked out.

01:02:51.980 | Okay.

01:02:52.980 | So now you're writing, so that is a geek question, writing geek question.

01:02:56.060 | So how do you structure your week in terms of when, when you work on the newsletter versus

01:03:01.800 | when you might be working on a book, um, or freelance, do you have a, a rhyme or reason

01:03:06.480 | to how you do it?

01:03:07.480 | I'm curious, like how much time these different things take up and what your workday now looks

01:03:10.380 | like.

01:03:11.380 | Yeah.

01:03:12.380 | Um, so I'll first say that, uh, I, even if I was a plumber or a auto mechanic or a lawyer,

01:03:20.440 | I would still be writing.

01:03:21.900 | So writing, I'm, I love it.

01:03:23.420 | I'm passionate about it.

01:03:24.420 | It's my hobby.

01:03:25.420 | Just so happens that I'm, I'm lucky that it's also the, the career.

01:03:29.020 | Um, so pretty much every day I get up pretty early, um, usually in between four and 5am

01:03:36.820 | and uh, I immediately just start writing.

01:03:39.240 | Like I read, I once read this book called deep work and it told me that like finding

01:03:43.900 | your most productive time and really guarding that is a good plan, which I ironically stole

01:03:49.620 | from you this morning for this interview, which we're doing only I get to do the deep

01:03:55.700 | work.

01:03:56.700 | Come on.

01:03:57.700 | Yes, you get it.

01:03:58.700 | You obviously get a pass cause you've greatly improved my productivity.

01:04:01.540 | Uh, so yeah, I, I usually will write until I don't know, maybe nine.

01:04:07.340 | So just having that time where it's like, we're really just focused on the writing has

01:04:12.260 | been really great and you differentiate between newsletter and book writing.

01:04:18.260 | Is it like that, that morning is when I'm writing books and then I have other time for

01:04:22.020 | newsletter or it's just like whatever is next on whatever you want to work on next, you're

01:04:25.220 | doing it.

01:04:26.220 | Yeah.

01:04:27.220 | You put those, you mix those two together.

01:04:28.220 | Yep.

01:04:29.220 | I would say those two get mixed.

01:04:30.220 | And then, um, you know, after that I'll do the kind of other things that don't take as

01:04:35.420 | much thought.

01:04:36.420 | And then a lot of times I can get some good time in, um, in the afternoon, like after

01:04:40.740 | breakfast, I usually eat at like 10 and then I can jam some more time in there depending

01:04:44.700 | on what's going on with meetings and things.

01:04:46.820 | That obviously kind of fluctuates based on what else is happening in my life.

01:04:51.300 | But yeah, I mean a lot of it is just writing every day.

01:04:55.300 | I try and get outside every day.

01:04:56.820 | Yeah.

01:04:57.820 | You do these long walks.

01:04:58.820 | So like when do you normally do those long walks, those desert walks you talk about?

01:05:02.820 | That will sometimes be before breakfast.

01:05:04.820 | Sometimes it's after breakfast.

01:05:06.300 | Um, Sunday is probably the one day where I eat into that writing time where when the

01:05:11.700 | sun's, when the sun's coming up, my dog and I will usually go do a long run.

01:05:16.380 | And, um, but by, by Sunday I've usually kind of figured out the coming week of sub stack

01:05:21.820 | and all that stuff.

01:05:23.220 | So what about exercise outside of walking?

01:05:25.900 | Would you do it at home?

01:05:27.500 | When'd you do it?

01:05:28.500 | How much time do you spend?

01:05:29.500 | At home?

01:05:30.500 | Uh, before dinner usually.

01:05:32.300 | So, um, just because at that time it's like I try to, I try to get my most productive

01:05:42.660 | time of thought and ideas and creativity.

01:05:47.060 | I try and do the writing then, you know, and, and I think kind of the takeaways you've talked

01:05:50.900 | about, it's like, what's your goal, what's your big goal.

01:05:54.980 | Um, what's the time that you were most productive to your big goal.

01:05:58.220 | All right.

01:05:59.220 | Pair those two things.

01:06:00.220 | Yeah.

01:06:01.220 | Right.

01:06:02.220 | It's like at one point I had, I had tried exercising in the morning cause then it's

01:06:03.740 | like, all right, I'll, I'll be done with this.

01:06:05.140 | But it was cutting into my most important writing time and I wasn't as good of a writer

01:06:09.620 | between three and five and so it was like, all right, put exercise at the end of that.

01:06:13.380 | And I think that, um, I don't, you know, there's a lot of talk online about morning routines

01:06:20.180 | and um, my morning routine is immediately start writing cause anytime that I'm, you

01:06:26.780 | know, drinking magic mushroom coffee or meditating or writing at a gratitude journal, I'm not

01:06:33.940 | doing the writing that is like my main goal.

01:06:37.060 | So I try and just go right into it and then put the other stuff other times of the day

01:06:41.520 | if that's useful.

01:06:42.820 | Oh, fascinating.

01:06:43.820 | Uh, I love the schedule, jealous of the schedule.

01:06:46.660 | And are you, when it comes to the exercise in the afternoon, um, you know, I just met

01:06:50.900 | Peter Attia for the first time and I know you know, um, are you like in the Attia school

01:06:55.020 | of like the, it's, it's very locked in exactly what I'm doing because it's part of, you know,

01:07:00.500 | I'm building my mitochondrial through six hours of zone two on a 17 schedule.

01:07:04.740 | Are you more of a, let's, let's, you know, carry a heavy thing and like run up a mountain

01:07:10.140 | or where do you fall on that spectrum of just moving rocks and uh, you know, doing your

01:07:18.520 | carefully calibrated zone too?

01:07:20.100 | Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely not as calibrated as, um, as Peter.

01:07:23.820 | I don't think many people are, he's, he's the man.

01:07:27.380 | I love that guy.

01:07:28.380 | He's so great.

01:07:29.380 | Um, I, I try and strength train at least two or three times a week.

01:07:35.580 | Most of what I'm doing goes back to, am I physically capable outdoors and in the mountains?

01:07:41.100 | Because I like to do a lot of backcountry hunting.

01:07:43.060 | I do like long stuff outdoors.

01:07:45.820 | I do think when you look at, um, humans, I think there's a really good case to be made

01:07:52.460 | for taking exercise outside.

01:07:54.620 | One, it gets you outside that has plenty of, you know, mental benefits.

01:07:59.180 | But also when you think about the context of the outdoors, there's a lot more unpredictability.

01:08:03.680 | So I'll give you an example of running on a treadmill versus running on a trail.

01:08:08.020 | When you run on a treadmill, you can just totally zone out.

01:08:11.780 | You're watching Mari Povich or whatever the hell it is.

01:08:14.700 | Each step is the exact same.

01:08:16.140 | You can perfectly dial up your, uh, the, uh, up and down, the incline doesn't change the

01:08:22.820 | ground below you.

01:08:23.820 | It doesn't change.

01:08:24.820 | You're just totally out there, right?

01:08:26.460 | Like you can just totally zone out.

01:08:27.780 | But if you're on a trail, all of a sudden that changes, that all of a sudden becomes

01:08:31.780 | very cognitively demanding too, because where you place your foot really matters.

01:08:36.460 | So you don't roll an ankle, your hills are going to be up and down.

01:08:39.140 | So you have to learn to pace yourself.

01:08:40.660 | You're getting all this outdoor exposure.

01:08:42.700 | You're seeing all these interesting things along the way that are taking your attention.

01:08:47.260 | And also I think kind of forcing a little more creativity, not to mention things are

01:08:52.680 | just unpredictable in other ways.

01:08:54.580 | Like the other day I was out running and there's this like pack of coyotes, just, you know,

01:08:58.780 | coming up the trail, ran right past me.

01:09:00.580 | It was like, Hey, what's up guys?

01:09:01.900 | And they're like, huh, what are you doing out here?

01:09:03.740 | And we went our separate ways.

01:09:04.980 | And that, that's something that I'm always going to remember.

01:09:07.740 | Whereas if I'm indoors, really kind of trying to dial in everything perfectly, I don't get

01:09:13.380 | that.

01:09:14.380 | Yeah.

01:09:15.380 | There may be a coyote attack in the Mori Povich episodes.

01:09:17.060 | You never know.

01:09:18.060 | All right.

01:09:19.060 | So I know we're up against time.

01:09:20.460 | So I'm, my final question is going to be an advice oriented question.

01:09:24.060 | I'm working on this new book called the deep life and you don't know this yet, but I talked

01:09:28.340 | about you somewhat extensively in it because one of the big ideas of the book is we too

01:09:33.960 | often jump right into the big changes we want to make to make our life more intentional.

01:09:39.260 | And we skipped the first part where we prepare to succeed with those changes.

01:09:43.100 | There's the get your act together.

01:09:44.420 | I talked about this a lot on my show.

01:09:45.420 | You kind of have to get your act together first before you make major changes to your

01:09:48.700 | production or the changes are going to sort of fizzle out.

01:09:52.220 | And I talk about you and I talk about the comfort crisis in part because, um, one of

01:09:56.580 | the things a lot of people have to get used to first is there's going to be a lot of discomfort

01:10:00.260 | in all these changes that are going to follow.

01:10:03.560 | So why don't you get comfortable with this comfort early on?

01:10:06.300 | That's part of your preparation.

01:10:08.180 | So to that end, if you're talking to, I'll give you a sample audience member you're talking

01:10:13.660 | to, like you're, it's maybe it's someone in their twenties and you know, they have a job

01:10:17.760 | they're doing.

01:10:18.760 | Okay.

01:10:19.760 | They're not really that happy.

01:10:20.760 | They're on their phone.

01:10:21.760 | Right.

01:10:22.760 | And maybe otherwise partying, playing a lot of video games or what have you.

01:10:26.120 | And we're saying, okay, we want to give you the six month plan for, um, just turning up

01:10:32.400 | your comfort with this comfort off of zero.

01:10:34.940 | So we, we, we don't want to overwhelm you.

01:10:36.560 | We don't want to send you in the Arctic, you know, to do the, the hunting of the caribou

01:10:40.600 | right away.

01:10:41.600 | What are the, like the things you would suggest, whatever it is, the two or three things of

01:10:46.600 | someone who is overly comforted in that first six months that just break the seal on I can

01:10:52.320 | survive this comfort.

01:10:53.400 | What type, what have you found from your readers and experience to be like good ways into that?

01:10:58.680 | Yeah.

01:10:59.680 | So here's what I'd say is big picture.

01:11:01.640 | Um, I call this the 2% mindset.

01:11:04.360 | Okay.

01:11:05.360 | So there's this study that really sort of changed how I think about humans and human

01:11:10.280 | behavior and it found that 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator

01:11:15.400 | available.

01:11:17.200 | Now 100% of those people knew that if they were to take the stairs, they would get a

01:11:21.360 | better longterm return on their health, probably on their mindset.

01:11:25.680 | They'd get all these different benefits, right?

01:11:28.000 | But 98% of people choose to do the thing that is easier in the short term that actually

01:11:33.120 | often causes them longterm harm, right?

01:11:36.880 | And so this tells me that humans are wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing,

01:11:43.160 | even when it doesn't serve us.

01:11:45.120 | And so I think if you can, the sort of bigger metaphor here is that it's not just about

01:11:49.240 | the stairs and the escalator.

01:11:51.080 | It's about if you have an opportunity to do this slightly harder thing, it's like you

01:11:55.320 | have to get to the second floor.

01:11:57.280 | You can take the stairs, you can take the escalator.

01:11:59.480 | If you take the stairs, that's going to give you this longer return.

01:12:02.560 | And so sort of taking that mindset and thinking, okay, where else can I apply that into my

01:12:06.960 | day?

01:12:07.960 | It's like, if I come up on a set of stairs and escalator, I'm taking the stairs.

01:12:11.760 | If I need to talk to someone, I can either send this text where I have no real interaction

01:12:18.000 | with them, or I can call them.

01:12:20.840 | Can you figure out if I have a work phone call, you can take it sitting at your desk

01:12:26.400 | doing nothing, or you can pop in your earbuds and like, "Hey, go for a walk."

01:12:31.040 | I have a whole 2% manifesto on the sub stack that really gets into a bunch of different

01:12:35.440 | ideas.

01:12:36.440 | But I do think it is thinking of ways to just make what you're already going to do a little

01:12:40.560 | bit more challenging, a little bit more uncomfortable in a way that's going to give you a long-term

01:12:44.860 | return.

01:12:45.860 | And once you start doing that, it's like, I like to explain that once you get out to

01:12:50.560 | edges, people don't fall off them.

01:12:53.060 | The edge expands.

01:12:54.280 | So you're kind of slowly like really just stretching this comfort zone.

01:12:58.000 | And then eventually you look back and you've made these big changes and now you can do

01:13:03.240 | all these other things that you weren't able to do in the past and what you used to think

01:13:07.220 | was uncomfortable.

01:13:08.220 | These are just everyday routine things and along the way to that, things have changed

01:13:13.460 | and you've become a better person.

01:13:14.700 | - Oh, I love that.

01:13:15.700 | So it's not just, okay, I want to make a change tomorrow.

01:13:19.040 | It's 90 minutes a day of endurance runs in the mountains.

01:13:23.320 | It's maybe starting with all of these mild ways throughout the days in which you can

01:13:27.340 | choose slight discomfort over comfort in a way that's going to have value.

01:13:31.280 | That rewires your brain, that changes your thresholds.

01:13:33.960 | And then as you say, that edge expands, you might find yourself six months later.

01:13:38.000 | Now doing something that if you had tried day two, would have fizzled out.

01:13:44.680 | I think there is a great message for my audience, especially when it comes to the preparation

01:13:49.360 | point of the decline.

01:13:50.760 | You'll even find, I would argue for my audience, the struggles you're having with the digital

01:13:55.160 | will get easier by adding discomfort to the analog and that we often separate these two.

01:13:59.680 | The digital is its own problem and I need to stop using my phone so much.

01:14:03.040 | Oh, unrelated.

01:14:04.320 | I should take the stairs more, I should exercise more.

01:14:06.560 | They're completely connected because it's uncomfortable not to use your phone in the

01:14:10.960 | way you're using before.

01:14:12.800 | And if you're comfortable with discomfort, like, yeah, of course it is, so are a lot

01:14:16.800 | of things.

01:14:17.800 | So is like the runs I do and this, I, you know, that's fine.

01:14:21.560 | You're much more likely to say, that's fine.

01:14:23.560 | You know, it's not going to overwhelm me.

01:14:25.100 | So totally.

01:14:26.100 | And, and I'll also say that sometimes when I'll talk about this, people, people will

01:14:30.720 | kind of go, yeah, right.

01:14:32.800 | Just taking the stairs.

01:14:33.800 | I can't, I can't do that much.

01:14:35.200 | Well, one, it's a metaphor, two, I'll give you a good data point.

01:14:39.400 | There's this study that found that people who took, I think it was just five flights

01:14:43.100 | of stairs a week, they had a 30% lower risk of all cause mortality.

01:14:48.320 | Like we've engineered so much discomfort out of our life that just adding a little bit

01:14:52.400 | back in, especially if you were like the most comfortable, it has huge outsized returns.

01:14:58.760 | And it's not interrupt to your point.

01:15:00.360 | It's not interrupting your life.

01:15:01.520 | You're not going from, well, I used to do nothing and now I'm doing 90 minutes of zone

01:15:05.640 | two and this heart rate, but it's like, no, you're just doing something that you're already

01:15:10.280 | going to do.

01:15:11.280 | You're just making the slightly more uncomfortable version that's going to give you these big

01:15:14.240 | benefits and not upending your life.

01:15:15.960 | Yeah.

01:15:16.960 | Well, I love this.

01:15:17.960 | Well, Michael, this has been fantastic, you know, for my listeners, the, the books are

01:15:21.640 | the comfort crisis and it's the scarcity mindset.

01:15:24.800 | I have that, right.

01:15:25.800 | I actually read scarcity brain, scarcity brain.

01:15:27.920 | Yeah.

01:15:28.920 | So I love scarcity brain and the comfort crisis.

01:15:31.480 | The sub stack that Michael's been talking about is that 2% PCT, T W O P C T.com.

01:15:37.880 | It's also in podcast form.

01:15:40.220 | So I subscribe, Michael.

01:15:41.220 | So I know about this.

01:15:43.120 | You can get, you can read it, but also you get the subscriber access to the podcast.

01:15:47.320 | Um, and if you want to decide whether to be a paid subscriber or not, is it one out of

01:15:51.640 | three?

01:15:52.640 | What, what is the non defree one out of three a week?

01:15:56.560 | Yep.

01:15:57.560 | So Tuesday is always free.

01:15:59.000 | And then Wednesday and Friday, I try and I try and give some useful information.

01:16:04.280 | Um, so if you're a, if you're a free subscriber, you still get Wednesday and Friday, you'll

01:16:08.440 | get a little bit of, um, useful information, but paid subscribers kind of get the full

01:16:12.120 | boat on Wednesday and Friday that has like all the deeper stuff.

01:16:15.560 | Yeah.

01:16:16.560 | And I'll, I'll often find myself maybe seeing your email in my inbox, like, Oh, I'm interested

01:16:20.600 | in that article, but I'm in a hurry.

01:16:22.460 | And then later if I'm doing a workout, there's the podcast version and like, great, I'll

01:16:26.120 | just listen to it, which I think is a nice touch.

01:16:27.760 | All right.

01:16:28.760 | Well, Michael, this has been fantastic.

01:16:29.760 | I'm loved having a chance to talk to you and thanks for sharing, uh, thanks for sharing

01:16:34.000 | your wisdom.

01:16:35.000 | Yeah.

01:16:36.000 | Thanks so much for having me, man.

01:16:37.000 | This is great.

01:16:38.000 | All right.

01:16:39.000 | So there we go.

01:16:40.000 | That was my conversation with Michael Easter presented by Defender.

01:16:45.460 | Visit LandRoverUSA.com to learn more about Defender.

01:16:47.720 | All right.

01:16:48.720 | I really enjoyed that interview.

01:16:49.720 | I love the mix of Michael's story plus his advice.

01:16:54.440 | I think just hearing Michael's story actually helps us learn a lot of the way he thinks

01:16:59.080 | about the things he writes about.

01:17:00.900 | We see where his advice comes from.

01:17:03.320 | One thing I wanted to underscore here at the end of the interview was that advice he gave

01:17:08.040 | at the end.

01:17:09.040 | Right.

01:17:10.040 | So let's say you're, you're suffering from the comfort crisis.

01:17:13.160 | You're a knowledge worker.

01:17:14.160 | You're on your screens all the time.

01:17:15.160 | You listen to a lot of Cal Newport caring about not using social media and having your

01:17:20.240 | emails organized.

01:17:21.760 | How do you, what's the first step I asked him to trying to move towards this embracing

01:17:28.400 | discomfort, living more the way that our Paleolithic bodies were evolved.

01:17:33.120 | What's the first step?

01:17:34.160 | Notice what he said.

01:17:35.880 | Start very small.

01:17:37.720 | You don't have to come out of the gate saying, all right guys, I'm rucking 10 miles a day

01:17:43.120 | in the woods.

01:17:44.120 | I'm going to walk 50,000 steps a day and lift rocks and carry rocks underwater and rivers.

01:17:50.760 | You know, you don't have to come out of the gates like an endurance athlete.

01:17:55.560 | It's a mindset shift.

01:17:57.080 | He says do something every day, a little bit of discomfort and your mind begins to learn.

01:18:04.520 | It's okay to not try to optimize comfort.

01:18:07.720 | It changes its story about yourself.

01:18:10.600 | And on top of that new story, you can then weave over time a life that much more aggressively

01:18:16.840 | engages with the health and fitness tips that he gives later on.

01:18:20.160 | This is very similar to the discipline ladder concept we talk about on our podcast, where

01:18:23.960 | I say, look, discipline is not a personality trait you're born with or not.

01:18:28.360 | It's also not something you turn on or off binary.

01:18:31.400 | It's a belief you have about yourself.

01:18:33.520 | I am a disciplined person that you build through evidence and the discipline ladder says start

01:18:37.040 | with something simple that helps you begin to rewrite your stories.

01:18:41.360 | Like I talk about daily metrics, have a few daily metrics that are tractable but non-trivial

01:18:47.480 | for the things that matter.

01:18:48.480 | Take you a couple of minutes every day, but you do those for a month or so.

01:18:52.640 | Your mind says, I'm someone who's willing to take extra effort on the things I care

01:18:56.480 | about.

01:18:57.480 | I'm willing to put in extra effort on the things I care about, even if I don't have

01:19:01.640 | to.

01:19:02.640 | And even if it's a little hard.

01:19:03.640 | And then once your mind believes you're that type of person, you can ladder up to slightly

01:19:07.200 | harder things and from there to something slightly harder.

01:19:10.880 | That's exactly what I think Michael is talking about with health and fitness here.

01:19:13.800 | You start with a little discomfort, you teach yourself discomfort is okay, and then you

01:19:18.960 | start laddering.

01:19:21.040 | And so it's the walk before the sun, the 10 minute walk before the sun comes up becomes

01:19:27.200 | later the longer rock, which later becomes the burn the ships workout that Michael talks

01:19:34.080 | about on his newsletter every Friday.

01:19:36.560 | Every Friday as they called burn the ships, just like crazy workout all of his readers

01:19:40.000 | do.

01:19:41.000 | So I love that.

01:19:42.000 | Michael and I are in sync.

01:19:44.040 | And of course, I love to hear stories of people who have a very similar life to mine.

01:19:48.080 | They're academics, they're writers, they're busy who simplify things and spend time walking

01:19:51.760 | the desert with a dog.

01:19:52.960 | Michael, you are convincing me.

01:19:54.920 | Don't be surprised if you find me six months from now as your new neighbor saying, all

01:19:58.240 | right, when are we rocking?

01:19:59.240 | I just started a sub stack and that's what I'm doing now.

01:20:02.280 | Very appealing.

01:20:03.280 | It was cool interview.

01:20:04.280 | Read the comfort crisis.

01:20:05.280 | Read scarcity brain, two percent.com that's two p w o p c t.com to learn more about newsletter

01:20:11.960 | and I hope you enjoyed today's in depth.

01:20:14.480 | I don't know when the next one's coming, but I'm enjoying this now.

01:20:16.640 | I'm able to talk to people I like about.

01:20:18.200 | So in January I want to do at least one, maybe two more.

01:20:20.800 | If you have suggestions, you can send those to Jesse@calvinreport.com.

01:20:24.800 | Otherwise I'll see you back on Monday with the next normal episode of the podcast.

01:20:29.640 | Tell them as always, Hey, if you like this video, I think you'll really like this one

01:20:35.120 | as well.

Seek Purpose, Not Pleasure - Life Changing Habits To Reinvent Yourself In 2025 | Michael Easter

Chapters