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00:01:34.680 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:42.120 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:44.080 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am so happy you're here, but there is always room for

00:01:48.800 | more happiness, and that's exactly what we're talking about today.

00:01:52.440 | I'm joined by Arthur Brooks, a social scientist who studies human

00:01:56.120 | happiness and teaches about it and leadership as a professor at Harvard.

00:02:00.320 | He's the best-selling author of 12 books, including his most recent.

00:02:04.800 | And the topic of our conversation today, finding success, happiness, and deep

00:02:10.200 | purpose in the second half of life, which debuted last month at the number one

00:02:15.160 | spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

00:02:17.400 | He's also the creator of the popular how to build a life column in the Atlantic.

00:02:22.280 | And previously he served for 10 years as the president of the American

00:02:25.900 | Enterprise Institute, a think tank in DC, during which time he was named as

00:02:30.600 | one of fortune magazine's world's 50 greatest leaders, Arthur is a wealth

00:02:35.360 | of knowledge, and I am excited to chat with him about how we can all live

00:02:39.160 | happier and more fulfilling lives.

00:02:40.960 | We'll dig into all the tactics and hacks you need to start putting these

00:02:45.080 | lessons into practice today, and hopefully also touch a bit on the

00:02:48.840 | links between money and happiness.

00:02:51.320 | There is a lot to cover.

00:02:52.520 | So let's jump in.

00:02:53.760 | Arthur, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:58.320 | Thanks for having me.

00:02:59.160 | I'm delighted.

00:03:00.000 | It's going to be great.

00:03:00.800 | When I first read the title of this book, I thought maybe this book is

00:03:04.680 | for my parents and it's not for me.

00:03:06.360 | Now I've since learned that that's maybe not the case, but could you talk

00:03:09.400 | about who the book's for and how that's different from maybe the time

00:03:12.840 | of your life that it's about?

00:03:14.000 | Yeah, this is a book that basically says you don't have to leave your

00:03:17.400 | happiness up to chance as you get older.

00:03:19.760 | And, you know, there are people who are old who are going to read it and

00:03:21.760 | there are people who want to get old and there are people who are getting

00:03:23.960 | older and that is 100% of the population.

00:03:25.920 | And a lot of people think like, am I going to be happy when I'm old?

00:03:28.600 | I don't know.

00:03:29.360 | Hope so.

00:03:30.040 | Live right.

00:03:30.600 | Hope for the best.

00:03:31.360 | And, and this book is basically a claim based on science and talking to the

00:03:37.760 | happiest people and the unhappiest people as they get older, that we don't

00:03:40.960 | have to leave our happiness up to chance.

00:03:42.320 | You can build a happiness 401k.

00:03:44.560 | Now we all know, and you know perfectly well, because you do a lot of stuff

00:03:47.720 | in finance, that the sooner you start your savings, the better it's

00:03:50.920 | going to look when you're older.

00:03:52.400 | So this is about happiness in the second half of life, but it's about starting

00:03:55.800 | to get happier in the first half of life.

00:03:57.880 | I love that.

00:03:58.720 | I think we all want to be happy, but one thing I think it's important is how

00:04:02.480 | are we defining happiness in these conversations here and in the book?

00:04:06.600 | As the first thing I ask my students, I have this MBA class that teaches

00:04:09.280 | at Harvard Business School.

00:04:09.960 | And the first day of class, I go around and say, what's happiness?

00:04:12.240 | And they start talking about their feelings.

00:04:13.560 | The way you feel when dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

00:04:15.960 | It's the feeling of whatever.

00:04:17.680 | That's not right.

00:04:18.920 | And that's like saying that Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of the turkey.

00:04:22.120 | That's not the Thanksgiving dinner.

00:04:24.400 | That's evidence of the Thanksgiving dinner that you can perceive.

00:04:27.120 | Happy feelings are evidence of happiness.

00:04:30.080 | Happiness is something else.

00:04:31.200 | When I look at the social scientists and people who are happy and unhappy,

00:04:33.960 | happiness is a combination of three.

00:04:36.280 | You might say they're macronutrients.

00:04:38.040 | So food can be defined in terms of three macronutrients,

00:04:41.320 | protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

00:04:43.120 | And you have to have them in balance and abundance.

00:04:45.360 | If you're going to have good health and feel good.

00:04:47.240 | Happiness has three macronutrients that you need in balance and abundance.

00:04:51.400 | You need enjoyment, you need satisfaction, and you need purpose.

00:04:55.160 | When I meet somebody who is not happy, I start looking

00:04:58.640 | diagnostically at these three things.

00:05:00.720 | The first practical takeaway that comes from all this theory is that if somebody

00:05:04.960 | is like, ah, my life isn't complete.

00:05:06.840 | Some things are good.

00:05:08.040 | Some things aren't, but I'm not really happy.

00:05:09.560 | It means there's a lack of balance in one of these things.

00:05:13.080 | Either you don't have enough enjoyment in your life or you're actually not hitting

00:05:16.600 | goals, which means you don't have satisfaction or you don't have a sense

00:05:20.240 | of purpose and direction in your life.

00:05:22.120 | It's one of those three things.

00:05:23.880 | And so that's the first place to start looking.

00:05:25.880 | If you feel like you're not where you want to be in terms of your happiness.

00:05:28.720 | Is there like a quiz or a question you can ask yourself for each one of those

00:05:32.560 | things to figure out how you are on each one?

00:05:35.160 | There actually are.

00:05:36.000 | And that's why I write my column in the Atlantic every Thursday morning.

00:05:38.600 | So I'm digging into different aspects of that.

00:05:40.760 | And so the column in the Atlantic has got a whole bunch of quizzes.

00:05:43.480 | People who are into it, they want to read a little bit of the underlying research.

00:05:46.360 | Sometimes I'll talk about it like the Greek philosophers did.

00:05:48.880 | So Epicurus said, happiness is all enjoyment.

00:05:51.640 | And the Stoics said, happiness is all virtue and meaning.

00:05:54.640 | And the truth is, we need to be both.

00:05:56.760 | I have a column about, are you more Epicurus or are you more Epictetus?

00:06:00.160 | And it actually has a quiz in there on how to do that.

00:06:02.400 | So my column on that is a good way to start to test yourself.

00:06:05.160 | Well, like to the column and maybe some of those quizzes in the show notes.

00:06:08.880 | Yeah. One of the things I saw in the book that I thought was interesting was

00:06:11.920 | the reason why this shift from the beginning of your life.

00:06:15.400 | I've seemed to be somewhat linked to the type of intelligence we have

00:06:19.640 | and how that changes over time.

00:06:21.280 | I think most people here

00:06:22.160 | probably haven't heard about fluid and crystallized intelligence.

00:06:24.880 | Can you walk through that for people who aren't familiar?

00:06:27.320 | Yeah, this book has the seven habits of people who get happier as they age.

00:06:32.280 | And there's one thing to keep in mind

00:06:33.400 | that's really important that I found over the course of my research

00:06:35.600 | is that there's a lot of similarity in the patterns of happiness

00:06:39.680 | over the first part of their lives.

00:06:40.840 | Generally speaking, the older you get, the more that people diverge.

00:06:44.680 | So you see that people after about 65 go into two groups.

00:06:47.720 | One gets happier and the other gets less happy.

00:06:50.080 | And the group that's getting less happy, paradoxically,

00:06:52.560 | they tend to be the strivers who work the hardest early in their lives.

00:06:56.280 | You got to look at that. That's a big mystery.

00:06:58.200 | That doesn't mean it has to be that way, but we need skills.

00:07:01.000 | That's why I have the seven skills that the happiest people later in life have.

00:07:04.880 | So that even if you are a striver, you're not doomed.

00:07:07.280 | You just have to adopt these skills and do the work is what it comes down to.

00:07:10.760 | You know, everybody who is getting the hacks needs the hacks.

00:07:13.640 | And these are the seven hacks.

00:07:15.040 | Now, what's the first skill?

00:07:16.520 | And the first skill is making sure that you're on the right success curve.

00:07:20.120 | A little bit of background on this.

00:07:22.080 | For about 100 years, psychologists have noticed that there's two types of geniuses.

00:07:25.920 | There's early bloomers, people who have an early appearance

00:07:29.680 | in their genius, like child geniuses and young entrepreneurs.

00:07:33.880 | And then you've got the late bloomers, the Elon Musks and the Dalai Lamas.

00:07:38.280 | Those are the two types of geniuses out there.

00:07:40.520 | One's really young and one's really old.

00:07:42.400 | For the longest time, we thought, well, two types of people,

00:07:44.480 | the people who do this kind of thing, people do this type of thing.

00:07:47.000 | Later, we figured out everybody has both.

00:07:50.040 | That doesn't mean that I'm going to be Elon Musk or the Dalai Lama,

00:07:52.520 | but I have a lot of power to actually use my potential to the max.

00:07:57.360 | Early on, it's going to be innovative capacity, processing speed,

00:08:01.720 | indefatigability, my ability to go later in life.

00:08:05.600 | My abilities migrate toward my wisdom, not necessarily to work all night

00:08:10.360 | and solve problems that are brand new and innovative,

00:08:12.840 | but to take existing knowledge, understand what it means,

00:08:15.920 | combine ideas and teach them.

00:08:18.480 | That's what you're really good at later in life.

00:08:20.320 | Now, the first type of genius is called fluid intelligence.

00:08:23.120 | It increases naturally all the way through your 20s and early 30s.

00:08:26.840 | And it starts to decline in your late 30s and goes down really fast in your 40s.

00:08:31.120 | That's the reason that people are less likely to come up

00:08:33.480 | with some weird, big, eye-popping innovation when they're 50,

00:08:37.600 | much less so than when they're 30.

00:08:39.360 | When you're 30, you're at maximum innovative capacity.

00:08:42.360 | In your 40s, you're crystallized intelligence.

00:08:45.360 | That's the second type starts to increase,

00:08:47.400 | which means that you get more wisdom, more perspective.

00:08:50.040 | You know more, you have a good memory.

00:08:52.160 | Your memory actually improves in a lot of ways, believe it or not.

00:08:54.520 | You can't recall Joe Smith's name.

00:08:57.320 | You forget that, but you remember all the important things

00:09:00.520 | and you can combine them.

00:09:01.800 | It's like you have a vast library and you know how to use it.

00:09:04.720 | One of the reasons that you forget stuff when you're older

00:09:07.080 | is because your library is so big that it takes time to go

00:09:10.040 | get a piece of information. It's not degradation.

00:09:12.480 | It's just the size of the library.

00:09:13.960 | The filing system is dense.

00:09:15.760 | And so later on in life, people use it.

00:09:17.680 | They become better scrabble players.

00:09:19.640 | They can actually be better at foreign languages,

00:09:21.760 | even though their vocabulary is no good.

00:09:23.920 | Historians do half of their work on average after age 65

00:09:28.400 | because of pure crystallized intelligence, this wisdom.

00:09:30.960 | They're teachers.

00:09:31.960 | And at my university, the best teaching evaluations

00:09:35.120 | are uniformly over 70 years old.

00:09:37.880 | That's crystallized intelligence.

00:09:39.800 | The key thing is you got to be on the right curve.

00:09:42.440 | If you're 50 or 60 years old, you're like,

00:09:44.840 | I'm struggling to keep up with a 30 year olds.

00:09:47.640 | You're doomed, man. You're doomed.

00:09:49.800 | You're going to feel horrible about yourself.

00:09:51.320 | You're going to run circles around you.

00:09:53.120 | But here's what you need to do.

00:09:54.080 | You need to school them with your wisdom.

00:09:56.320 | This has so much potential for rocking our world.

00:09:59.200 | Basically, you're on the first curve.

00:10:01.040 | And here's the thing.

00:10:01.800 | If you want to be happy and successful,

00:10:03.000 | you got to jump to the second curve.

00:10:05.040 | You got to go from the Elon Musk to the Dalai Lama.

00:10:08.280 | You got to go from the innovator to the instructor.

00:10:10.920 | You might change jobs and might not.

00:10:12.920 | But you got to retool your life

00:10:14.480 | and what you're paying attention to and what you're trying to do.

00:10:17.040 | That's the first big skill of people who get happier as they age.

00:10:21.200 | So if you're someone listening to this and you're like, OK,

00:10:23.880 | I'm in that late 20s, early 30s part of my life.

00:10:27.560 | I know I need to jump the curve eventually.

00:10:30.000 | What does that jump look like?

00:10:31.800 | How do I prepare for it?

00:10:33.120 | What should I be doing with my time?

00:10:34.760 | OK, so to begin with, when you're starting to see the decline,

00:10:38.240 | you're going to see it before anybody else does.

00:10:40.400 | The big problem is if you deny it and rage against it.

00:10:43.280 | But you're going to notice that if you're starting to burn out a little bit,

00:10:45.920 | you're starting to be a little less interested.

00:10:47.920 | The reason you want to do it less is because you're not

00:10:50.960 | as naturally good at it as you were before.

00:10:53.560 | That's your tell.

00:10:54.680 | Ability is not to tell.

00:10:55.680 | Desire is always the tell.

00:10:57.680 | Desire tells all always.

00:10:59.840 | What you like always indicates what your capacities are.

00:11:03.560 | And so when you're first learning, it's like, I don't know, man,

00:11:05.840 | this guy came to me with this great new startup idea.

00:11:08.320 | But I like I don't have a fire in the belly anymore.

00:11:10.680 | That's a good sign.

00:11:11.960 | That means that you're actually in liminality.

00:11:14.360 | You're between the curves.

00:11:16.240 | So what do you need to do?

00:11:17.280 | You need to learn and you need to actually start combining knowledge

00:11:20.480 | instead of writing the book that has the big new mathematical treatise

00:11:24.120 | that nobody's ever come up with before.

00:11:25.720 | You write the book that combines everybody's best idea

00:11:28.760 | and start learning about synthesis of things

00:11:32.000 | as opposed to the creation of brand new ideas, synthesize things

00:11:36.240 | as opposed to inventing things.

00:11:38.280 | And that means different things in different professions.

00:11:40.040 | If you're a lawyer,

00:11:41.080 | that means what you should do is you start running a team of young lawyers.

00:11:44.200 | You should go from a cowboy to a team leader.

00:11:47.240 | That's a really good way to do it.

00:11:48.600 | If you're going to be an entrepreneur, don't come up with a big innovation.

00:11:51.640 | Find people who can and make them successful.

00:11:54.200 | That's the reason that great athletes who are unbelievable early in their careers.

00:11:58.360 | They're really, really good as commentators on TV.

00:12:00.600 | It's not just because their knees have gone out, right?

00:12:02.680 | It's the same reason that entrepreneurs who are unbelievably successful

00:12:05.960 | can be graded VC later because what they are is actually teachers.

00:12:10.280 | They're cultivating the next big talent.

00:12:12.400 | And every profession has something like this.

00:12:15.600 | Are there people that kind of are household names

00:12:18.800 | that have either done this well or poorly that bring the example to life?

00:12:23.440 | There are a lot of historical figures that have done it poorly and well.

00:12:26.440 | In the book, they talk about Charles Darwin.

00:12:28.400 | Charles Darwin is on everybody's list of greatest scientists.

00:12:31.040 | He changed the way that we think with this theory of natural selection

00:12:33.760 | and the theory of evolution. Unbelievable.

00:12:35.200 | He came up with that at age 27

00:12:37.600 | when he came back from his around the world voyage on the Beagle

00:12:40.600 | collecting botanical and zoological samples from his late 20s.

00:12:44.040 | He was already the most celebrated scientist in Europe.

00:12:46.320 | He was rich. He was he was the king of the Mambo, man.

00:12:49.280 | I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:12:50.600 | And he dined out on these theories for the next 30 years.

00:12:53.160 | He just developed them, nurtured them and used this big innovation.

00:12:57.200 | Now, the problem was he got stuck when he was about 50 years old

00:13:00.960 | because he hadn't been a very motivated student.

00:13:02.880 | So he didn't learn very much math or statistics.

00:13:04.960 | He didn't learn German.

00:13:06.160 | And if you were going to be a serious scientist,

00:13:07.560 | you needed to know German in the late 19th century.

00:13:10.000 | So what happened was that his own field passed him by mathematically.

00:13:14.960 | There's a Czech priest and scientist named Gregor Mendel,

00:13:18.360 | who actually was more mathematically sophisticated.

00:13:20.800 | He invented the theory of genetics.

00:13:23.000 | And that's what Charles Darwin needed to progress in his own field.

00:13:26.240 | And he couldn't understand it, couldn't read it and got stuck.

00:13:29.200 | And from the age of 50 until he died at 73, he never did original work ever again.

00:13:33.280 | He wrote 11 more books, but he hated them all.

00:13:35.400 | He died feeling like a disappointment. Why?

00:13:37.840 | He was stuck on his first curve, Chris.

00:13:40.040 | He was on his fluid intelligence curve, and it doesn't have to be that way

00:13:42.520 | because he could have jumped onto the second curve,

00:13:43.920 | but he didn't know it existed or he didn't want to do that.

00:13:47.280 | That's the mistake.

00:13:48.960 | OK, let's get a better case study.

00:13:50.640 | Somebody did it right.

00:13:52.080 | Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived,

00:13:55.200 | according to a lot of people, including me.

00:13:56.920 | I made the first 12 years of my career as a classical musician

00:13:59.600 | and Bach was my favorite composer.

00:14:01.360 | He was unbelievable.

00:14:02.240 | He was the innovator of the High Baroque.

00:14:04.520 | He was inventing mind blowing stuff when he was in his 20s.

00:14:07.600 | He was so famous. He was so great.

00:14:09.760 | And then music passed him by at the age of 50.

00:14:13.720 | His son, he had 20 kids, by the way.

00:14:15.880 | So that guy was productive.

00:14:17.640 | His son, Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, invented a new style of music

00:14:21.480 | called the classical style, and Bach, the father, couldn't keep up.

00:14:24.720 | He's like, I don't know how to write in this style.

00:14:27.040 | He couldn't keep up because his fluid intelligence was too low.

00:14:29.920 | So what did he do?

00:14:30.640 | He retooled his career as a teacher.

00:14:32.880 | He turned from writing original pieces of music to writing textbooks

00:14:37.480 | about the High Baroque.

00:14:39.240 | He went from doing commissions for the greatest pieces of music

00:14:42.160 | to writing music for the church as part of his teaching responsibilities.

00:14:45.840 | And he became the most beloved teacher of his time.

00:14:48.400 | He was jumping onto his crystallized intelligence curve.

00:14:51.200 | He had a studio full of students who adored him.

00:14:53.960 | He was known as a truly great teacher.

00:14:56.400 | He was working on this textbook called The Art of Fugue.

00:14:59.400 | He literally died mid-measure while writing one of the fugues.

00:15:03.080 | A hundred years later, a famous composer named Felix Mendelssohn

00:15:06.040 | found his manuscript.

00:15:07.720 | It's like, dude, you got to hear this to his friends.

00:15:10.640 | And they played it like this is beautiful.

00:15:12.520 | Today, we play that textbook as a work of art.

00:15:15.080 | He died with his kids surrounding him and his students

00:15:19.840 | surrounding him and his grandkids surrounding him.

00:15:21.920 | And he died with love and happiness on his success curve, by the way,

00:15:26.680 | on his better success curve, because dying happy is a good way to die.

00:15:31.920 | Yeah. So he definitely nailed skill number one.

00:15:35.720 | And two. OK, he nailed it, man.

00:15:38.680 | He nailed it.

00:15:39.280 | And he was a living proof that everybody's got both.

00:15:42.280 | But you got to jump when it's time to jump.

00:15:44.400 | You have to have faith that it exists and you got to have courage to make the change.

00:15:47.960 | And then what? What's next?

00:15:50.080 | The skills you got to master next are the things that make you not want to jump

00:15:53.480 | and the things that make it easier.

00:15:56.000 | So one of the key things you find about people who are really unhappy

00:15:59.480 | and actually can't get happier, they wind up going downward in their happiness

00:16:02.800 | and stuck on this fluid intelligence curve and thinking about the past

00:16:05.840 | and kind of pissed off because, you know, I'm not appreciated anymore

00:16:09.640 | and trying to hide their weaknesses and all that.

00:16:12.120 | They have a really bad and nasty addiction,

00:16:14.920 | which is something that a lot of people suffer from.

00:16:17.080 | It's a success addiction.

00:16:18.840 | Now, all addictions implicate a neuromodulator in the brain called dopamine.

00:16:23.560 | Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of reward.

00:16:26.760 | It's of anticipation.

00:16:28.120 | This is what gets you addicted to alcohol or cigarettes or gambling or methamphetamine.

00:16:34.720 | It's the dopamine that makes you want it, want it, want it.

00:16:37.040 | Gives you a mild burst of satisfaction.

00:16:39.240 | And then it goes away and you want it again, hit the lever again.

00:16:41.920 | We're like monkeys on cocaine.

00:16:44.240 | We lose our sense of proportion.

00:16:45.840 | We lose our sense of inhibition.

00:16:47.280 | We hit the lever, hit the lever, hit the lever again and again and again.

00:16:49.880 | Addiction is bad because dopamine can chain us.

00:16:53.520 | The worst kind of addiction that I see for really, really successful people.

00:16:57.200 | I mean, some drink too much.

00:16:58.720 | Some smoke. They shouldn't.

00:17:00.360 | But they're success addicts.

00:17:02.200 | You know what? A lot of the ambitious people you and I know from a young age,

00:17:05.240 | their parents are like, you're special.

00:17:07.520 | You're a hard worker.

00:17:08.880 | You get A's. You always win.

00:17:11.040 | I mean, they objectify their kids and the kids objectify themselves

00:17:14.320 | as homo economicus, as the victorious one, as the successful one.

00:17:18.400 | And they get the cookie of success and they hit the lever.

00:17:20.760 | They get the promotion.

00:17:22.120 | They get the extra money.

00:17:23.240 | They get the adulation.

00:17:24.400 | They get the compliments and they love it.

00:17:26.280 | It literally it stimulates dopamine in their brain.

00:17:28.360 | And when they're getting better on their fluid intelligence curve, man,

00:17:31.560 | it's like flying with terrifying speed.

00:17:34.480 | It's like the monkey in front of the lever, hitting the lever again

00:17:36.800 | and again and again and again.

00:17:38.320 | And then when the hits come less frequently, it's misery.

00:17:42.160 | It's a dysphoria.

00:17:43.320 | It's literally a scarcity of dopamine in the brain.

00:17:46.680 | And this is one of the things that distracts them

00:17:48.840 | from the evolution of their own strengths.

00:17:50.960 | Addiction makes them unable to pursue happiness.

00:17:55.480 | You know, I live in Silicon Valley.

00:17:56.880 | So often, everyone's like, you got to find your purpose.

00:17:59.600 | Whatever you're working on, it could be bigger.

00:18:01.080 | You could be doing more.

00:18:02.240 | I juxtapose that to most of the people who I know who aren't obsessed

00:18:06.480 | with that seem much happier in their lives.

00:18:08.640 | Yet it's still something that even knowing that so many people chase.

00:18:13.400 | Hustle culture is a cult called workism,

00:18:16.560 | where your work is your identity, your work is your fulfillment.

00:18:19.920 | Your work is your ego.

00:18:21.000 | Your work is everything.

00:18:22.160 | And your work is your pleasure because of your success addiction.

00:18:25.160 | The main thing that we need to do is to establish what we call metacognition.

00:18:29.880 | Metacognition is very simple.

00:18:32.080 | The Buddhists always say when you have feelings and urges,

00:18:34.520 | you need to observe those feelings and urges.

00:18:37.040 | Now, literally what's going on neurophysiologically

00:18:39.680 | is that an urge or a feeling originates in the limbic system of the brain.

00:18:44.080 | That's the lizard brain.

00:18:45.280 | That's the back part of your brain that is stimulated

00:18:47.760 | automatically because of outside happenings.

00:18:51.240 | You'll be managed by that if you're reactive

00:18:53.960 | and you're simply hitting the lever.

00:18:55.080 | If you're a cocaine monkey, you're just a limbic creature.

00:18:57.760 | You're like my dog, Chucho.

00:18:59.440 | Sees the cookie, eats the cookie.

00:19:01.040 | He's highly mindful.

00:19:02.560 | He's not paying any positive attention or spending any time thinking about anything.

00:19:05.840 | That's how a lot of people are who are deeply workist in that cult.

00:19:08.720 | The way to defeat that is by simply journaling and thinking

00:19:14.120 | and putting time between your impulses and your actions.

00:19:17.040 | The Buddhists always say the time between action and reaction

00:19:20.760 | is the humanity in what we do.

00:19:23.440 | It's the true humanness in what we do.

00:19:25.560 | What's really going on here is you're moving an urge

00:19:28.400 | from your limbic system of your brain to your prefrontal cortex.

00:19:31.280 | That's the human part of your brain, the big meaty lobes behind your forehead.

00:19:35.040 | Once it's there, you can manage it to be metacognitive is to say, OK,

00:19:39.320 | I have the urge to be successful.

00:19:41.760 | I feel like I'm going to be unhappy unless I'm successful.

00:19:44.840 | And yet I'm not happy.

00:19:46.520 | You need to start journaling.

00:19:48.040 | That's the bottom line.

00:19:48.960 | Journaling, it sounds sort of wimpy and weak and kind of dumb and sentimental.

00:19:52.640 | No, no, no, no, no.

00:19:53.880 | This is highly neuroscientific.

00:19:55.840 | Journaling is the single best way to go from my dog Chucho to me,

00:20:00.320 | to my prefrontal cortex.

00:20:02.080 | It moves your urges into the front part of your brain,

00:20:04.960 | and then you can manage them.

00:20:07.000 | That's the single best technique for breaking.

00:20:09.080 | These addictions is thinking about them metacognitively.

00:20:11.520 | Do you need to journal that often to benefit from journaling?

00:20:15.480 | I actually do recommend writing down a few thoughts every day.

00:20:18.600 | I don't think that actually spending half an hour in the morning,

00:20:21.200 | half an hour at noon, half an hour at night is probably a really great use of your time.

00:20:24.640 | I think it's really, really important to make sure that you record what you're doing.

00:20:27.840 | Now, some people don't have to do this in terms of journaling.

00:20:30.160 | One of the great things about functioning romantic partnerships

00:20:33.240 | is that you can be jointly metacognitive, but you have to work every day

00:20:37.120 | to be talking about what's happening to you limbically,

00:20:40.040 | to discuss your feelings with each other.

00:20:42.000 | For example, when I'm feeling workist and it's really my tendency,

00:20:46.240 | but left to my devices, I'm cocaine monkey all day long.

00:20:50.000 | I'm unhappy when I'm doing it.

00:20:51.680 | And I know enough about that because I'm pretty metacognitive, pretty self-aware guy.

00:20:55.080 | I don't necessarily go and write in my journal.

00:20:57.120 | What I do is I go and I talk to my wife and say, I got a problem.

00:21:00.120 | I'm doing this thing again.

00:21:01.480 | And we jointly metacognitively move it to the prefrontal cortex of my brain

00:21:05.880 | where I actually can manage it.

00:21:07.320 | So having a partner with whom you can discuss these things with confidence

00:21:10.640 | is arguably an even more effective way to do this.

00:21:13.360 | Could be a partner, your wife or your husband, it could be a friend,

00:21:18.280 | I assume, or a mentor.

00:21:19.560 | It has to be somebody who actually understands you,

00:21:21.200 | who can do joint metacognition with you, which is to say they really want

00:21:24.400 | to understand what's happening to you limbically,

00:21:26.720 | and they want to help you manage it as an executive

00:21:29.760 | so they can actually function as the third lobe of your brain.

00:21:32.840 | It has to be somebody who knows you deeply.

00:21:34.520 | It can't be your subordinate at work.

00:21:37.000 | That's not going to work at all.

00:21:38.400 | It seems like with every business, you get to a certain size

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00:24:45.040 | I want to come back to some of these other skills that you can learn.

00:24:48.560 | You said something interesting when it was OK, you could go to your partner.

00:24:51.200 | There are things that I think often get construed with happiness.

00:24:55.560 | Things like love or money.

00:24:58.640 | Are there components of happiness?

00:25:00.640 | I know you talked about enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose,

00:25:03.600 | but some of the common things I think people think of.

00:25:06.480 | I'm curious to get your perspective on them.

00:25:08.080 | So let's at least include like love or romance and money

00:25:11.480 | and maybe other common things people think are associated with happiness.

00:25:15.200 | And how do they fit into the picture?

00:25:16.880 | Sometimes they're idols and sometimes they're real.

00:25:19.160 | So here's the way to think about that in a very practical way.

00:25:21.920 | There are four things that you want that are idols

00:25:25.200 | and that have a little bit of a divine quality to them.

00:25:28.400 | They attract you. They're magnetic.

00:25:30.840 | You know you want them, but they're not intrinsically satisfying.

00:25:34.640 | Those things are money, power, pleasure and fame.

00:25:38.120 | All those things can be really good, but only when you pursue them

00:25:40.840 | instrumentally towards something that's more important than those things.

00:25:44.160 | Money is great, but if you pursue it for its own sake,

00:25:46.840 | it will leave you frustrated and empty.

00:25:48.520 | Power is the same thing. You'll become a tyrant.

00:25:50.680 | Pleasure is incomplete because it's entirely limbic.

00:25:53.840 | It'll make you a little bit more animal.

00:25:55.440 | You need to actually combine it with elevation and morality

00:25:58.160 | to make it into enjoyment, which is one of the macronutrients of happiness.

00:26:01.400 | And fame is literally the only idol that we pursue.

00:26:04.960 | You can only ever be happy in spite of.

00:26:07.080 | It's super dangerous, which is why social media is making us all so crazy today

00:26:12.080 | because everybody can establish a little bit of local fame

00:26:14.360 | and they get a lot of dopamine by seeing likes.

00:26:16.800 | And it's awful.

00:26:18.120 | So those are the evil four.

00:26:19.800 | And they're not evil if we use them appropriately like anything else.

00:26:22.960 | Wine isn't evil until you become an alcoholic.

00:26:25.680 | So these things create addiction and instrumentally they can be OK,

00:26:29.040 | but intrinsically, they're the bad for they're the idols.

00:26:31.360 | There's the good for now.

00:26:33.080 | Here's the four accounts that you need to invest in every day.

00:26:36.680 | If you want to be among the happiest people, this is what they all have in common.

00:26:40.080 | There's ten thousand articles of the habits of the happiest people.

00:26:42.440 | I've boiled the ocean down to these basic four.

00:26:45.680 | They all do these things every day.

00:26:47.520 | They practice their faith or life philosophy.

00:26:49.760 | You don't have to be religious.

00:26:51.160 | You have something bigger than you that zooms you out on your own life.

00:26:56.080 | Your life is like the most boring sitcom ever with which you're obsessed.

00:26:59.800 | My job, my car, my money, my it's just so boring.

00:27:04.440 | And yet we're obsessed with it.

00:27:05.600 | You need relief. You need peace.

00:27:07.440 | Life philosophy or faith or spiritual practice gives you that uniquely.

00:27:11.720 | So it's meditation or prayer or studying the Stoics or whatever it happens to be.

00:27:15.920 | You got to do your thing and you got to do it seriously.

00:27:18.320 | Second is family.

00:27:19.720 | The ties that bind and don't break.

00:27:21.880 | It's important that you not choose them, but that you have them for your happiness.

00:27:25.760 | And God knows, in many cases, we wouldn't choose them.

00:27:27.880 | Right, Chris.

00:27:28.520 | And a lot of people having a lot of trouble, their families, one in six

00:27:30.760 | Americans is not talking to a family member because of politics today.

00:27:33.640 | It's a huge problem for us, unless it's a case of abuse.

00:27:38.400 | Don't let that be you is the bottom line.

00:27:40.760 | The third is friendship.

00:27:42.000 | We have a major loneliness crisis in the United States.

00:27:44.880 | Vivek Murthy, our surgeon general, said that the biggest public health

00:27:48.120 | crisis in America today is loneliness, not the coronavirus epidemic,

00:27:51.640 | not opioids, not guns.

00:27:53.400 | No, no, no, no, no. Loneliness.

00:27:55.560 | The average number of close friends that somebody 30 years old has

00:27:58.960 | has been cut in half in the past 20 years.

00:28:01.440 | About half of people under 30 say that no one knows them well.

00:28:04.440 | It's horrible for every aspect of happiness.

00:28:07.600 | And part of the reason for that is that everybody knows how to make deal friends.

00:28:11.320 | But we know less and less how to make real friends.

00:28:13.760 | My book talks about how to make real friends

00:28:16.080 | if you're incompetent because you've only had deal friends.

00:28:18.760 | And the last is work.

00:28:20.560 | And work doesn't mean working hard all night long.

00:28:23.760 | It doesn't mean making tons of money.

00:28:25.320 | It doesn't mean having prestige.

00:28:26.400 | It means exactly two things.

00:28:28.160 | Earning your success, meaning your skills, meet your passions

00:28:30.800 | and serving other people, the people who need you.

00:28:33.200 | If you earn your success and you're serving other people,

00:28:36.080 | I don't care if you're an electrician or a librarian or a podcast host

00:28:40.320 | or a Harvard professor, you will be happy from your work.

00:28:42.760 | And if you don't have those things, you won't be happy from your work.

00:28:45.640 | Faith, family, friends and work are the big four are the things

00:28:49.200 | that we need to shoot for.

00:28:50.200 | And the things we need to avoid is intrinsics are money, power,

00:28:53.440 | pleasure and fame.

00:28:54.800 | There's a book called Happy Money, which talks about using money for happiness.

00:28:59.240 | And one of the interesting things they say is spending money on others

00:29:02.120 | is one of the five ways that can make you happy.

00:29:04.280 | That seems to fit a little bit in work.

00:29:06.560 | But is it important to share happiness, to spread happiness,

00:29:10.720 | to give happiness in order to be happy ourselves?

00:29:13.040 | Yeah, the way to get happier, there's an algorithm to it, believe it or not.

00:29:16.360 | A lot of people wish they were happier, but they're not.

00:29:18.480 | They're just obsessing on their unhappiness.

00:29:20.400 | But like anything else, you got to do the work.

00:29:22.520 | And there's three steps to it.

00:29:23.800 | You need to understand it by doing the work and study it.

00:29:26.200 | Learn what the practices are.

00:29:27.600 | Now, you can do it by talking to your grandmother.

00:29:29.600 | You can do it by reading my column.

00:29:31.280 | You can do it lots and lots of ways, but you've got to do the work.

00:29:33.560 | The second is you got to practice it.

00:29:35.200 | You got to apply it.

00:29:36.400 | You can't read just a book about golf and become a better golfer.

00:29:39.200 | You got to get out there and golf.

00:29:40.520 | And so you need to take the applications that all of us in this field

00:29:43.600 | are talking about and practice them in your life.

00:29:45.480 | Do your gratitude list, do your forgiveness exercise,

00:29:48.240 | do your happiness strategic plan.

00:29:50.080 | But you got to do the application and then you got to share it.

00:29:53.400 | This is the most beautiful thing of all.

00:29:54.560 | Why? Because you've got to make it metacognitive.

00:29:56.840 | The best way to make something metacognitive is to teach it.

00:29:59.360 | Why? Because you can't teach something limbically.

00:30:01.960 | You can only teach something from the executive center of your brain

00:30:04.640 | because you have to be able to articulate the idea.

00:30:07.000 | And so if you want to get happier, you really have to understand it and manage it.

00:30:10.520 | And the best way to do it is to teach it.

00:30:12.720 | And teaching is just another form of sharing.

00:30:14.720 | So understand, apply, share.

00:30:18.080 | That's your happiness algorithm.

00:30:19.880 | Is sharing telling people about how they can be happy or trying to make people happy?

00:30:25.240 | Ordinarily, it's both.

00:30:27.200 | But I actually strongly recommend showing your cards.

00:30:29.720 | And I've got this class.

00:30:30.720 | I got 180 MBA students in my happiness class.

00:30:33.040 | And so I say one of the ways they can get final credit for the class

00:30:35.480 | instead of writing the exam,

00:30:36.680 | they can set up their own happiness class for students who didn't get in.

00:30:39.600 | So what do they do?

00:30:40.720 | They take my PowerPoint slides.

00:30:42.280 | They take my name off.

00:30:43.320 | They put their name on.

00:30:44.360 | They put together their own syllabus and they videotape the classes.

00:30:46.960 | They turn the whole thing in.

00:30:48.440 | And they're becoming totally metacognitive in everything that we've talked about.

00:30:52.240 | They will never forget these technologies once they teach them.

00:30:55.200 | So here's the great thing about happiness.

00:30:56.760 | The most beautiful thing.

00:30:57.960 | Write it all down.

00:30:59.240 | Make your slides.

00:31:00.680 | Discuss it at dinner or talk about it and say, I heard Chris Hutchins podcast,

00:31:04.440 | which I love because it's a great podcast.

00:31:06.240 | And he had this guy who teaches at Harvard talking about the science of happiness.

00:31:09.840 | Here's the thing he said.

00:31:11.320 | I guarantee you there will not be a peep.

00:31:13.720 | People are going to be listening to you as if you were the Dalai Lama

00:31:17.240 | because everybody wants it.

00:31:18.600 | It's great to be a happiness professor, because suffice it to say

00:31:21.080 | that it piques people's interest.

00:31:22.960 | I love episodes like this.

00:31:24.360 | Sometimes we talk about money and I know people aren't going to go home

00:31:27.560 | and meet up with their friends at night and be like, you know,

00:31:29.880 | what's in your bank account?

00:31:32.720 | Maybe some of our listeners are more excited about investing,

00:31:36.120 | but when it comes to the deeply personal side of money, it doesn't get spread.

00:31:39.760 | I know the other one that you just mentioned in the good for that.

00:31:43.400 | I think I want to spend a minute on is with faith.

00:31:45.840 | So you mentioned that it's not just organized religion, but I think so often

00:31:50.040 | someone might listen to this and think those two must be the same thing.

00:31:53.800 | It's not for me. I'm kind of scared of this. Right.

00:31:56.320 | But I hear it.

00:31:56.880 | I'm like, gosh, you're telling me that the people that are the happiest

00:31:59.640 | have these four things.

00:32:00.800 | How does someone who's maybe organized religion isn't a part of their life,

00:32:04.400 | but wants to bring faith into their life in the happiness sense?

00:32:08.080 | How would someone get started with that?

00:32:09.800 | There are lots and lots of ways to do that.

00:32:11.560 | And so the two ways that I recommend, if you're uncomfortable

00:32:14.160 | with traditional religion and or prayer,

00:32:16.240 | I recommend that you start a secular meditation practice

00:32:18.800 | because meditation is highly concentrating.

00:32:21.080 | It actually will bring you to mindfulness

00:32:23.120 | and at the same time can zoom you out on the experience of your own life.

00:32:26.280 | It concentrates you on the experience of your own life

00:32:28.720 | and it zooms you out on the experience of your own life simultaneously.

00:32:31.400 | It's also extremely satisfying and it can help you to rebalance

00:32:34.600 | your hormone profile, all kinds of good physiology behind it.

00:32:37.360 | And the second thing is reading big ideas.

00:32:40.240 | Start with the Brothers Karamazov.

00:32:42.240 | This is a study in human transcendence.

00:32:44.280 | That's really what it is.

00:32:45.680 | Read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

00:32:48.200 | Read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

00:32:50.720 | Read the Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.

00:32:54.080 | All of these things are hugely available to us and they'll blow your mind.

00:33:00.040 | If you're doing half an hour a day of that deep wisdom reading,

00:33:03.280 | you just won't be the same.

00:33:04.760 | At some point, you might want to experiment with the religion of your youth

00:33:07.920 | because that stuff is unbelievable.

00:33:09.360 | I'm a Catholic and Catholic philosopher, St.

00:33:11.240 | Thomas Aquinas, he's the reason that we read Aristotle today.

00:33:14.440 | Before him, nobody read Aristotle.

00:33:16.640 | Aristotle was lost.

00:33:18.280 | And he said, no, no, no.

00:33:19.400 | Hey, guys, this is the best thing ever.

00:33:21.840 | And you understand Aristotle in this brand new way,

00:33:24.280 | whether you're religious or not.

00:33:25.480 | Read the Confessions of St.

00:33:26.800 | Augustine, a study in human psychology about the stirrings of the human heart.

00:33:31.400 | This stuff is so good.

00:33:32.680 | By the way, even if you're not religious at all, read the Bible

00:33:35.280 | because it's the most culturally inflecting and impactful book ever written.

00:33:39.880 | So just to understand what's going on in society,

00:33:42.720 | it's a good idea to read the most impactful book that's ever been read.

00:33:45.440 | You can actually think that God was behind the writing of it

00:33:47.800 | or not behind the writing of it.

00:33:49.000 | Your mind will be blown.

00:33:50.120 | You'll experience day to day life in a completely different way.

00:33:52.880 | And that's really what it's all about, because you need relief

00:33:56.200 | from the reality show of Chris Hutchins' life.

00:33:59.000 | Does that mean that practicing faith could just be reading these deep ideas

00:34:03.680 | like that is actually a method for that aspect of happiness?

00:34:06.520 | Now, what I recommend is reading them, but reading them in a very, very deep way.

00:34:10.720 | When I talk about reading something, slow down and read two pages,

00:34:14.760 | underline those two pages and take notes and then take 15 minutes

00:34:19.200 | and think deeply about what those ideas mean

00:34:22.320 | in the context of your day to day life.

00:34:24.560 | That's what the ancient philosophers called Lectio Divina, divine reading.

00:34:29.560 | In other words, is to let the reading ideas seep into your soul.

00:34:33.520 | And it's a very powerful cognitive technique for reading in such a way

00:34:37.640 | that it really will change your perspective.

00:34:39.280 | So, yeah, I just read Man's Search for Meaning today.

00:34:42.000 | No, you didn't.

00:34:42.960 | I read the writings of Seneca this week.

00:34:46.040 | It's like, get out of here.

00:34:48.040 | You didn't. You read one page and then we'll talk.

00:34:50.840 | Because it's so full of wisdom, I want to see the underlined.

00:34:54.320 | I want to see the highlighting.

00:34:55.560 | I want to see your notes.

00:34:56.920 | And I want you to tell me what that actually did to change your way of thinking

00:35:00.120 | and change your way of behaving today.

00:35:01.720 | That's Lectio Divina.

00:35:03.480 | Wow. It's not audible at 2x.

00:35:05.800 | No, not no.

00:35:07.200 | You know, that is so Silicon Valley, man.

00:35:09.080 | That is so absolutely true.

00:35:10.800 | Is that I'm reading to harvest information

00:35:13.800 | so that I can use it for money, power, pleasure and fame.

00:35:16.720 | Hugely problematic.

00:35:19.120 | We got way off track, and I think if we were to try to come back,

00:35:22.600 | the next thing would be about using the science of satisfaction.

00:35:26.120 | Am I bringing us to the right place?

00:35:27.360 | Sure, absolutely.

00:35:28.440 | The science of satisfaction really is back to dopamine.

00:35:31.520 | It's the success addict is the one who keeps hitting the lever

00:35:35.000 | because they think they're going to get satisfaction.

00:35:37.240 | And Mick Jagger saying, I don't get no satisfaction,

00:35:39.920 | which is a super famous song.

00:35:41.400 | It's the third most popular rock and roll song of all time.

00:35:44.200 | The reason is because it has a message that people can really relate to.

00:35:47.240 | I try and I try and I try and consumer culture and sex and all that.

00:35:51.080 | But I can't get no satisfaction.

00:35:52.920 | The truth is you can get satisfaction, but you can't keep no satisfaction

00:35:57.200 | because dopamine won't let you.

00:35:59.160 | Here's the concept for the moment.

00:36:01.080 | Every five minutes, we cycle through some really heavy thing here on this.

00:36:03.960 | I love this conversation, by the way.

00:36:05.440 | You know, you're fast, man.

00:36:07.440 | So the concept is homeostasis.

00:36:10.040 | Homeostasis is the natural tendency of the brain

00:36:13.560 | to return all physical and mental processes to equilibrium.

00:36:18.040 | For example, you get on the treadmill in the morning and you're running

00:36:20.840 | to get your heart rate up to 160.

00:36:22.400 | You step off 15 minutes later, your heart rate is back down to 80 or 70

00:36:26.400 | or whatever happens to be.

00:36:27.280 | If it didn't, you die.

00:36:28.560 | Homeostasis returns you to baseline.

00:36:31.040 | It also returns you emotionally to baseline.

00:36:33.880 | Something really great happens to you.

00:36:35.680 | Your book is a bestseller.

00:36:36.680 | Congratulations.

00:36:37.520 | One week from now, you're not going to feel a thing.

00:36:39.480 | Why? Because you can't stay on that high forever.

00:36:42.040 | You die.

00:36:43.160 | In ancient times, you'd be like, I found some tasty berries on a bush

00:36:46.760 | and I'm going to be permanently happy

00:36:48.040 | while the saber tooth tiger sneaks up behind you and eats you for lunch.

00:36:51.080 | You need to have emotions to guide your behavior, but you got to go back

00:36:54.520 | to the baseline to be ready for the next set of circumstances.

00:36:57.480 | That's the reason you can't keep satisfaction in life.

00:37:00.400 | You hit the lever and you think it'll stay forever and it doesn't.

00:37:03.920 | It stays for a minute or a day

00:37:06.000 | or if it's something really, really great, a week or a month.

00:37:08.160 | So the science of satisfaction says you can't keep it.

00:37:11.160 | And so therefore, you shouldn't tie your bliss to the idea

00:37:14.480 | that you can by running from thing to thing to thing.

00:37:17.240 | And the happiest old people have got this figured out.

00:37:20.200 | The happiest old people are no longer chained to the happiness wheel.

00:37:24.600 | We call it the hedonic treadmill where you run and run and run.

00:37:27.880 | The thing is running against you.

00:37:29.000 | And there's a little evil guy in the corner turning up the speed.

00:37:31.440 | And after a while, you're running out of fear

00:37:33.520 | because if you stop on a treadmill, boom, face plant.

00:37:36.120 | This is the very important thing that old people figure out

00:37:39.600 | and they step off the hedonic treadmill.

00:37:42.000 | Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact,

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00:38:34.240 | So jumpstart this year by signing up for a trade subscription.

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00:38:53.440 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to Chef David Chang

00:38:59.640 | about leveling up your cooking at home?

00:39:01.800 | If not, definitely go back and give it a listen.

00:39:04.000 | But one of his top hacks was using the microwave more.

00:39:07.400 | I'll admit I was a skeptic at first, but after getting a full set

00:39:11.520 | of microwave cookware from Anyday, I'm a total convert,

00:39:15.040 | and I'm excited to partner with them for this episode.

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00:39:21.360 | from scratch in the microwave.

00:39:23.200 | And honestly, using it feels like a kitchen cheat code

00:39:26.240 | because it speeds up and simplifies the process so much.

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00:39:33.840 | store and reheat all in the same dish.

00:39:36.640 | That happens to be dishwasher, freezer and oven safe, too.

00:39:40.320 | And if you need a recipe suggestion to kick off your Anyday adventure,

00:39:43.760 | I highly recommend David Chang's Salmon Rice.

00:39:46.560 | It is so good.

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00:39:51.880 | they launched last year, you have to check it out.

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00:39:58.280 | go to allthehacks.com/anyday.

00:40:01.280 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/anyday for 15% off.

00:40:06.720 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:40:11.800 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:40:14.920 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals and discounts from our partners,

00:40:19.400 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:40:22.600 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:40:26.000 | Is the hedonic treadmill similar to the concept of keeping up

00:40:30.160 | with the Joneses in our financial or cultural lives?

00:40:33.240 | It's related.

00:40:34.360 | That's actually a phenomenon called social comparison.

00:40:37.000 | The great philosopher, President Theodore Roosevelt,

00:40:40.240 | called social comparison the thief of joy unambiguously.

00:40:44.840 | Social comparison will wipe out your happiness.

00:40:47.240 | It will mow down your joy.

00:40:49.560 | That's the reason that social media is a misery machine.

00:40:52.560 | It's based on social comparison and you're getting a fake version

00:40:55.920 | of somebody else's life,

00:40:57.280 | which you're comparing to the terrible version of your own life.

00:40:59.880 | Meanwhile, you're posting a fake version of your life.

00:41:02.880 | B.S. That's not right.

00:41:04.840 | And so the result of it is all fake, fictional social comparison.

00:41:09.040 | And it makes you miserable.

00:41:11.360 | So the hedonic treadmill is bad enough.

00:41:13.160 | Lard on social comparison on top of that and misery is in the future.

00:41:16.720 | Wow. People, when they're old, that are the most happy,

00:41:19.560 | have gotten off the treadmill. Yeah.

00:41:21.280 | And I know you have a lot of opinions on bucket lists.

00:41:23.800 | I interviewed a guy named Ben Nempton a few months ago,

00:41:26.480 | who has written a lot about bucket lists.

00:41:28.720 | And his inspiration was reading research of people who on their deathbed

00:41:33.720 | said one of their regrets was not living the life they wanted to.

00:41:36.600 | He has, through plenty of conversations, come to the conclusion

00:41:40.240 | that part of the reason people don't do the things they want

00:41:43.120 | is because they never take the time to write it down,

00:41:45.640 | write down how they want to get there.

00:41:47.360 | And life just gets in the way.

00:41:49.040 | So they don't do the things they care about.

00:41:50.560 | So his answer was, I think people should create a list,

00:41:53.960 | not just of jump off a bungee jump in New Zealand, but things in their life,

00:41:58.440 | in their relationships, in their family, with their health,

00:42:00.920 | and write it down as a bucket list.

00:42:03.320 | And I know you have some strong opinions about bucket lists.

00:42:06.040 | So I'd love to hear your perspective on all that.

00:42:08.400 | There's a lot that's right that you just said, but we have to be really careful.

00:42:12.080 | Bucket lists, as we usually understand them, are metastatically

00:42:15.720 | stupid and misery provoking.

00:42:18.000 | I want to go in a hot air balloon.

00:42:19.440 | I want to make a million dollars.

00:42:21.480 | I want to publish a self-help book.

00:42:23.240 | Basically, money, power, pleasure, honor, bucket list items.

00:42:26.240 | Those are bad for you because what they do is they lower your satisfaction.

00:42:30.360 | They increase your attachment.

00:42:31.760 | They increase your craving.

00:42:33.160 | And it grows around you like kudzu.

00:42:35.240 | Your satisfaction is not a function of what you have.

00:42:39.120 | Your satisfaction is a function of what you have divided by what you want.

00:42:43.360 | Don't have a haves management strategy with a bunch of trivial bucket list items.

00:42:48.040 | Have a wants management strategy of decreasing your worldly wants

00:42:52.440 | and your satisfaction will grow.

00:42:54.320 | That's the reverse bucket list.

00:42:56.440 | The reverse bucket list is to make a list of all of the tacky cravings.

00:43:00.280 | I want the admiration of these strangers and I want this kind of car

00:43:05.240 | and I want this glamorous vacation.

00:43:07.240 | Write it all down.

00:43:08.200 | Great. Write it all down and then say, I detach myself from this.

00:43:11.600 | I officially no longer care about this.

00:43:14.120 | The right thing in the bucket list that you're talking about

00:43:16.440 | is making a list of the good for faith, family, friends

00:43:19.320 | and work that serve other people.

00:43:21.320 | Make a bucket list of those things.

00:43:23.240 | So the love that I want to have, the relationship

00:43:25.160 | I want to have with my adult children, the relationship

00:43:27.480 | I want to establish with my parents and learn about them before they die.

00:43:30.360 | Those are family items, the deep friendships.

00:43:33.160 | I want to migrate all my deal friends to real friends

00:43:37.000 | because this is one of the great sources of unhappiness and loneliness.

00:43:40.040 | That's a bucket list item is real friends.

00:43:42.240 | That's actually meritorious.

00:43:43.520 | Seeing how I can do work that truly serves other people who need me.

00:43:47.920 | I want to go on a spiritual journey.

00:43:50.240 | That's a bucket list item that's really meritorious.

00:43:52.280 | So those are the things that actually should stay in the bucket

00:43:54.560 | and everything else should come right out.

00:43:56.680 | So it's less about not having a bucket list

00:44:00.040 | and more about calling it down to the things that will matter.

00:44:02.440 | And then it sounds like you and Ben, at least, would share

00:44:04.920 | that having them written down somewhere and talking about what you can do

00:44:08.760 | this week, this day to make progress towards them is a valuable exercise.

00:44:13.280 | It's just not a valuable exercise.

00:44:14.960 | If there's 300 things that include all kinds of crazy wants.

00:44:18.520 | I know. Sure. Bunchy jumping in the Mekong Delta.

00:44:20.760 | No, no. Getting to know my father better.

00:44:25.200 | Yes. Yes, that's actually right.

00:44:27.640 | So I think that he and I would agree to a very, very large extent.

00:44:30.440 | A bucket list is not a bucket list is not a bucket list.

00:44:33.360 | If you're filling your life with unsatisfied trivialities,

00:44:36.920 | all that's going to happen is you're going to wind up being less satisfied

00:44:39.960 | and unhappier than you were before.

00:44:42.440 | There's been a common conversation about experiences

00:44:45.240 | like money should buy experiences because experiences is, you know,

00:44:48.160 | the way to fulfill yourself and be satisfied and be happy.

00:44:50.760 | But I think a little bit of what you just said contradicts that concept.

00:44:54.240 | Yeah. So there's a lot of research on this.

00:44:56.200 | And I have two colleagues at the Harvard Business School,

00:44:58.040 | Ashley Williams and Mike Norton.

00:44:59.400 | They're kind of the leading experts on how to buy happiness.

00:45:02.960 | And there's basically you can classify in different ways.

00:45:06.040 | Some people say five, some people say six.

00:45:07.520 | It's really four things you can do with happiness.

00:45:09.080 | You can buy stuff, you can buy time, you can buy experiences

00:45:13.040 | and you can give it away.

00:45:14.440 | Those kind of the big four ways that you can use money.

00:45:16.880 | Now, what everybody wants to do for their satisfaction is they want to buy stuff

00:45:20.600 | because they think that's the most tangible, but that's not right.

00:45:23.640 | Let me tell you a story.

00:45:24.400 | So I've been married 30 years and 29 years ago.

00:45:27.840 | I was having this great, big blowout, unbelievably bitter argument

00:45:31.520 | with my new wife, and we were arguing about how to celebrate

00:45:35.800 | our first wedding anniversary, ironically.

00:45:38.120 | And here was the deal.

00:45:39.560 | My wife's from Barcelona, and she's all about vacation, going to the beach.

00:45:43.440 | And I'm a thrifty, practical American.

00:45:45.240 | And we had zero money.

00:45:46.840 | And so I thought we should buy a couch to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

00:45:50.040 | I was a musician and we just moved to the States from Spain,

00:45:52.840 | and she didn't speak English.

00:45:53.960 | She's working a minimum wage job, and it was brutal.

00:45:56.360 | And so this is the argument, beach, couch, beach, couch, beach, couch.

00:46:00.280 | And finally, we compromised and went to the beach.

00:46:02.320 | And that's why I've been married 30 years.

00:46:04.480 | But that's not my point.

00:46:05.720 | The key thing to remember is that we were talking about that a couple of years ago

00:46:09.800 | and we got a couch that was like seven couches ago or something.

00:46:13.600 | And I don't even remember the couch.

00:46:15.560 | But I can tell you everything we did on that beach vacation

00:46:18.120 | because we were in love and experiencing it together.

00:46:21.160 | Here's the main mistake that people make.

00:46:23.320 | They think that physical things are permanent and experiences are evanescent.

00:46:27.640 | It's exactly the opposite.

00:46:29.920 | Well, if you experience something with somebody you love, it's permanent.

00:46:33.400 | But if you get a thing, you'll forget it and not care about it.

00:46:36.720 | And it'll be out on the curve of your emotions almost immediately.

00:46:40.560 | Buying stuff seems permanent and it will give you the satisfaction.

00:46:44.200 | And you're wrong.

00:46:44.920 | Your brain is lying to you.

00:46:46.920 | And there's all kinds of evolutionary reasons why your brain is lying to you.

00:46:49.480 | You need to go to the other three, but you got to do it in the right way.

00:46:53.320 | Buying experiences is great, but you have to do that with someone you love.

00:46:57.840 | Maybe the person that you love and you want to know better is you, by the way.

00:47:00.880 | And if you really want to go to the Cambodian temples by yourself

00:47:04.640 | because you're actually trying to get in touch with something spiritually,

00:47:07.040 | that's great. Fantastic.

00:47:09.040 | But it has to be for a reason.

00:47:10.440 | And the reason has to do with experiences and improvement

00:47:13.360 | of a particular relationship.

00:47:15.120 | Second is buying time.

00:47:17.000 | Buying time means paying somebody to do something you don't want to do.

00:47:19.920 | Now, not everybody listening to us can do that because they don't have enough money.

00:47:22.360 | But if you can, why would you pay somebody to cut your yard

00:47:25.320 | so you have more time to do something you do want with someone you love?

00:47:28.920 | If you do it so you can watch something stupid on Netflix,

00:47:32.360 | all you did is waste your time and your money.

00:47:34.720 | And that's not so great.

00:47:36.440 | The last is giving it away, but giving it away to a cause that you love.

00:47:40.520 | It has to serve your values.

00:47:42.320 | And you see what I'm talking about here, Chris.

00:47:44.160 | It's love and then love and then love and then love.

00:47:46.960 | You want to turn your money into happiness.

00:47:49.000 | It has to be based on love.

00:47:50.040 | I heard you say not to watch something on Netflix.

00:47:53.440 | Would it be fair to say unless you watch something on Netflix,

00:47:56.160 | it's stupid with someone you love, then it's OK?

00:47:58.600 | Precisely. You've got it.

00:48:00.160 | You're a plus student.

00:48:02.680 | Find anything I'm not supposed to do.

00:48:04.240 | As long as I do it with someone I love, then I can get around.

00:48:06.480 | Yeah, this is the reason that neglecting your loved ones

00:48:08.880 | while scrolling social media is such a terrible thing for your happiness

00:48:12.240 | because you're doing two things at once.

00:48:14.080 | Number one is you're numbing yourself

00:48:16.120 | with just a little shot of inadequate dopamine and your foregoing love.

00:48:20.760 | It's crazy plus crazy.

00:48:22.960 | That's an interesting point.

00:48:23.880 | I have to assume that technology has made a lot of building happiness

00:48:27.880 | in our lives difficult because of distraction or social comparison.

00:48:31.960 | Is there anything it's done to make happiness easier?

00:48:35.000 | Yeah. So here's the key thing about technology.

00:48:37.000 | It always over promises and under delivers.

00:48:39.080 | And I'm not a Luddite.

00:48:40.200 | On the contrary, I think this stuff is really great.

00:48:42.600 | Anything that substitutes for love will make you unhappier.

00:48:46.120 | Anything that complements your love will make you happier.

00:48:49.080 | All of the technologies, what do they promise?

00:48:51.160 | It promises you more love, and that's why you want it.

00:48:54.400 | I'm going to connect with people.

00:48:55.960 | I'm going to get social contact.

00:48:57.680 | I'm going to meet people.

00:48:58.760 | Phenomenal. It looks really great.

00:49:00.560 | But almost inevitably, it actually crowds out true human experience.

00:49:05.360 | The experience of getting to know somebody, to share your heart with somebody.

00:49:09.440 | Now, there's a lot of neurophysiology to this.

00:49:11.760 | For example, a neuropeptide that functions as a hormone in the brain

00:49:14.680 | called oxytocin.

00:49:16.240 | This is intensely pleasurable that we get in response to eye contact and touch.

00:49:21.120 | With other people, when people are really lonely,

00:49:23.320 | they do exactly the opposite of what they should do.

00:49:25.360 | Instead of going someplace and talking to somebody in person,

00:49:28.120 | they scroll social media, which gives you no oxytocin.

00:49:31.440 | It makes you lonelier.

00:49:33.160 | Social media is the junk food of social life and apps for dating.

00:49:37.880 | What they do is they crowd out the experience of meeting somebody de novo.

00:49:41.960 | They also have another big problem, which is that they don't give you

00:49:45.080 | enough complementarity with other people and they overload on compatibility.

00:49:49.360 | They make you so compatible as you're dating your sibling,

00:49:52.440 | which is, how shall we say, not hot.

00:49:54.800 | This is a problem with how technology works.

00:49:57.520 | So here's the way to judge technology.

00:49:59.560 | Is it a complement to my relationships, my real in-person,

00:50:02.840 | human loving relationships, or is this a substitute for those relationships?

00:50:06.640 | If it's the latter, it's bad for you.

00:50:08.760 | I want to jump to one last section, which was about turning weakness into strength.

00:50:12.960 | Yeah. And I want to hear a little bit about that because I have some questions.

00:50:16.080 | Yeah, I know that's a scary one, man.

00:50:17.640 | But this is a skill that all happy old people have in common.

00:50:21.600 | That's really hard for young people to absorb.

00:50:23.760 | And once again, what's this book all about?

00:50:25.840 | This is the happiness 401k, meaning that these are the kinds of investments

00:50:30.120 | we need to start making at 25 or 45 or 65 so they'll pay off later.

00:50:34.480 | So it's very important to understand these things from the very beginning.

00:50:37.240 | Old people all know that what's really off putting is saying

00:50:41.960 | that you don't have strengths and being defensive about your weaknesses.

00:50:45.280 | I could come and be wearing an obvious toupee right now.

00:50:49.080 | And I'd be like, I think it looks pretty natural.

00:50:51.040 | And you'd be like, that thing looks like a bird's nest.

00:50:53.560 | Are you kidding me?

00:50:54.840 | And it would be ridiculous.

00:50:56.320 | And it would be a sign of defensiveness and insecurity.

00:51:00.040 | And that's the problem, because life tells you if you've got a weakness,

00:51:03.320 | you should not share it.

00:51:04.280 | You should defend yourself against it.

00:51:05.560 | You should hide it, as a matter of fact.

00:51:07.800 | And that's actually a huge mistake.

00:51:09.400 | What we need is human connection.

00:51:11.120 | And your weaknesses connect you with other people.

00:51:13.280 | We're all weak.

00:51:14.680 | You have good things about you that people admire.

00:51:16.720 | And that's magnetic, too, to be sure.

00:51:18.560 | But if you really want to relate to somebody,

00:51:20.440 | you've got to lead with the ways that you are like other people.

00:51:23.040 | And that's what old people do.

00:51:24.360 | I was a musician for a long time, and it really hurt my hearing

00:51:27.320 | because it's very loud playing in a symphony orchestra.

00:51:29.760 | And now I don't have hearing aids, but I'm getting a little deaf, quite frankly.

00:51:33.480 | And I'm in lecture.

00:51:34.680 | And these kids, they fricking whisper.

00:51:36.800 | You can't hear a word they're saying.

00:51:38.320 | So I'm like, what? What?

00:51:40.240 | I said, so I asked my colleague, one of my colleagues, like, what do I do?

00:51:43.480 | And he's like, you say, hey, I'm fifty seven.

00:51:46.640 | I'm deaf. Speak up.

00:51:48.640 | And it's hilarious.

00:51:49.720 | They all laugh and they can actually relate to you and they like you better.

00:51:53.040 | And they speak louder.

00:51:55.040 | So you see what I'm saying, right?

00:51:56.520 | The connection is human frailty.

00:51:58.360 | And this is what we need to do.

00:51:59.880 | The most winsome people are non-defensive about their humanity.

00:52:03.880 | They're not hiding things.

00:52:05.720 | They know what they do well and they know what they do poorly.

00:52:08.600 | And it's all good.

00:52:10.480 | You said in the book, negative emotions make us more effective

00:52:13.400 | in our day to day activities.

00:52:14.880 | Yeah. Without negative emotions and experiences, we don't learn

00:52:17.840 | and we don't learn, we don't find meaning and purpose.

00:52:20.520 | So when people are trying to go from happy feeling to happy feeling to happy feeling

00:52:24.480 | and they're trying to force unhappiness out of their life, paradoxically,

00:52:28.520 | they're actually avoiding their happiness

00:52:30.320 | because they're not getting sufficient meaning and purpose.

00:52:32.600 | That doesn't mean we should go looking for suffering,

00:52:34.680 | but suffering is going to find us and we need to find ways

00:52:37.640 | to experience it and learn from it.

00:52:40.400 | Is that an indirect argument against being eternally optimistic?

00:52:44.640 | It's a common argument in our household.

00:52:47.760 | It's like circumstance arises.

00:52:49.680 | You could think of glass half full, glass half empty.

00:52:51.920 | My wife and I often take different sides of that.

00:52:54.080 | And it's a little frustrating.

00:52:55.280 | And I read that line about negative emotions.

00:52:57.560 | And I thought, maybe sometimes you should take glass half empty.

00:53:00.720 | Maybe it's better. Or am I misinterpreting?

00:53:03.240 | You know, it's absolutely the case.

00:53:04.480 | So my great mentor and friend, Martin Seligman, he talks about rational optimism,

00:53:08.760 | but what he's really talking about is hope.

00:53:10.880 | People often use them synonymously.

00:53:13.000 | But optimism is really just a prediction that everything will be OK.

00:53:17.080 | Hope, there's nothing unrealistic about it.

00:53:19.760 | It's the idea that something can be done to improve the situation and I can do it.

00:53:24.160 | It's hugely empowering.

00:53:25.760 | There's always a reason for hope.

00:53:27.240 | Hope is a theological virtue in Christianity and Judaism.

00:53:30.760 | Hope is a good thing. It's a good way to be.

00:53:33.480 | It'll make you happier.

00:53:34.520 | And it's a virtuous way to be as well.

00:53:36.320 | It's better to be realistic and to do what's appropriate and to do so with hope.

00:53:40.720 | So that's the distinction that I would make.

00:53:43.040 | So I got a few rapid fire things before we wrap up.

00:53:45.520 | I know you have talked in the past about how you had this amazing job

00:53:48.880 | and then you thought about happiness and you decided to quit.

00:53:51.320 | People in their 20s and 30s, they're working a job.

00:53:54.360 | They don't love it, but they know that for some reason,

00:53:57.320 | sticking it out for a little bit of time, maybe not forever, will bring something,

00:54:02.040 | whether it's they'll hit their bonus six months from now

00:54:04.880 | and that'll give them some comfort with their financial situation

00:54:08.520 | or they'll get that promotion.

00:54:10.480 | And I'm curious if you think is the answer that sometimes, yes, that's the case

00:54:14.800 | or is the answer always you should probably cut bait

00:54:17.600 | as soon as you feel like it's not a good fit?

00:54:19.360 | It really depends on the circumstances.

00:54:21.040 | I know all kinds of cases where couples are not getting along,

00:54:24.040 | but they want their marriage to work.

00:54:25.960 | You need to think ahead about exactly what the circumstances are

00:54:29.800 | and whether you know something can be fixed.

00:54:32.040 | And it's perfectly legitimate to suffer through circumstances

00:54:35.760 | you don't like in the moment because there's a greater prize.

00:54:38.400 | It's also the case that quitting a job every time you don't like it

00:54:41.600 | is a lost opportunity for you to prosper.

00:54:43.600 | It's a lost opportunity for you to grow as well, too.

00:54:46.160 | The biggest mistake I see for young people, and this is a very practical thing

00:54:49.600 | that I tell my students, is if you quit a job like your first job at a college,

00:54:53.920 | usually within 18 months, you're probably making an error

00:54:57.960 | because you're incapable of learning to like it

00:55:00.880 | when you change jobs and careers and cities all at the same time.

00:55:04.960 | That is the same cognitive and emotional impact as immediate family member dying.

00:55:09.440 | So what happens is people like, congratulations,

00:55:11.760 | but you're actually grieving because there's so much change in your life

00:55:14.960 | and you tend to cross the cables in your mind.

00:55:17.360 | And you think that the change per se, the grief that you're feeling

00:55:20.440 | is because you made an incorrect decision.

00:55:22.720 | That's wrong.

00:55:24.040 | And so there are all kinds of ways to stay the course.

00:55:26.400 | Now, that doesn't mean you should be like, I hate this job.

00:55:28.720 | My life sucks.

00:55:29.800 | But 25 years from now, I'm going to get a pension.

00:55:32.080 | So I'm going to stick with it.

00:55:33.120 | That's an error.

00:55:34.680 | OK, you've lived in a lot of places.

00:55:37.320 | I'll give you the freedom to pick anywhere you've lived and tell people

00:55:40.960 | if they're going to that place, what's that kind of off

00:55:43.400 | the beaten recommendation for a meal, a drink and something to do?

00:55:47.360 | My favorite city in the world is Barcelona,

00:55:49.160 | which has been my second home for the past 35 years.

00:55:51.560 | That's where I got married.

00:55:52.800 | That's where I played in the symphony orchestra.

00:55:54.480 | I consider that my own home and it's the city that I actually know best.

00:55:57.360 | So where are you going to eat any place?

00:55:59.920 | It's Barcelona.

00:56:01.040 | It's one of the foodie capitals of the world.

00:56:03.400 | You go to a bar and you eat some bar food.

00:56:06.240 | You can be like the best thing I've ever had.

00:56:08.160 | What are you going to drink?

00:56:09.000 | I don't know. I don't drink at all, but live it up.

00:56:11.280 | That's all I can say. It's Barcelona.

00:56:13.240 | And what are you going to see as a tourist?

00:56:15.000 | Oh, man, throw a dart.

00:56:16.600 | Place is unbelievable.

00:56:18.560 | You can go to the Roman ruins.

00:56:19.760 | You can go to the Sagrada Familia.

00:56:21.160 | You can go to the ancient Romanesque churches.

00:56:23.480 | You can look at the Gothic cathedrals.

00:56:25.760 | Holy cow.

00:56:26.720 | It's just like a living, walking museum

00:56:30.080 | of everything from modernism all the way back to prehistoric times.

00:56:34.080 | And so go to Barcelona, everybody.

00:56:36.040 | If you haven't been to Barcelona yet, you're barely living.

00:56:38.840 | I have been for only a few days, but it's on the list to go back.

00:56:43.240 | There's a story you open the book with that I know in a lot of interviews

00:56:46.520 | you started with, but I figure we should end on it, which is your situation

00:56:50.000 | on an airplane that kind of inspired you to write the book.

00:56:52.200 | Yeah, the great thing about being a social scientist is that the world

00:56:55.720 | is my laboratory and all the research is actually me search.

00:56:59.320 | That's actually the dirty secret of being a happiness specialist.

00:57:02.320 | And every time I start on a brand new project, it usually comes

00:57:05.480 | because I have an experience that really affects me.

00:57:07.160 | And that's actually where the story started.

00:57:09.120 | Eight years ago or so, I was on a flight, night flight from L.A.

00:57:12.480 | to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.

00:57:14.560 | And I heard a couple talking behind me on the plane.

00:57:16.800 | I could hear them.

00:57:17.800 | It sounded like a married couple, a man and a woman, and they sounded old.

00:57:21.160 | Their voices were elderly.

00:57:22.520 | And I couldn't quite make out the husband's words, but I can tell

00:57:25.000 | by his wife's comments that this was serious business.

00:57:27.400 | She was consoling him and saying, oh, it's not true

00:57:30.160 | that it would be better if you were dead.

00:57:31.800 | It's not true that people don't love you and respect you,

00:57:34.280 | that everybody's forgotten you.

00:57:35.520 | It's like this went on for 20 minutes and it was just it was brutal.

00:57:38.880 | So their flight finally ends and they turn on the lights.

00:57:41.880 | And I'm curious and I'm a student of human behavior.

00:57:43.840 | This is probably somebody who's disappointed with his life

00:57:45.560 | because he didn't live up to his own dreams.

00:57:47.600 | And I stood up and turned around.

00:57:49.160 | It was one of the most famous men in the world.

00:57:50.920 | This is somebody who's achieved 10 times what I will in my life.

00:57:55.480 | I would die to be this guy.

00:57:57.440 | So it seems.

00:57:58.080 | And if I did, I'd dine out on my success for the rest of my life.

00:58:00.640 | His feats of heroism are decades in the past, but still he's rich.

00:58:04.640 | He's famous. He's got it all.

00:58:06.120 | I thought something's up here.

00:58:07.680 | This is no insurance policy that what the world tells you,

00:58:10.280 | that you get successful and you can bank it and enjoy it for the rest of your life.

00:58:14.000 | That's a lie.

00:58:15.440 | That's an obvious lie.

00:58:16.960 | So what's the deal?

00:58:18.160 | Is he an outlier or is he typical?

00:58:20.840 | Are the strivers the ones who tend to suffer or is he just have some mood disorder?

00:58:25.280 | And that's what started this investigation on what we can all do

00:58:29.160 | to invest in our happiness later in life.

00:58:31.400 | They came up with a lot of the stuff

00:58:32.640 | that we're talking about today was that poor man on the plane.

00:58:35.840 | And I still look him up and I pray for him.

00:58:38.800 | I hope for the best.

00:58:39.760 | That's all I can say.

00:58:41.160 | I, for one, am fortunate you had that experience

00:58:43.480 | because it led you to all this research, led you to the book.

00:58:46.400 | I think I'll be a happier person in the future because of it.

00:58:48.920 | So thank you.

00:58:50.160 | Where can anyone here other than by the book

00:58:53.040 | follow up with what you're doing and stay in touch?

00:58:56.160 | So I have a column every week in the Atlantic called

00:58:59.200 | How to Build a Life every Thursday morning in the Atlantic.

00:59:01.720 | And if you want to see just all the different essays and books

00:59:03.840 | and things that I write about happiness and even learn about my classes

00:59:06.200 | at Harvard, you go to Arthur Brooks dot com, all the information's there.

00:59:09.760 | Perfect. We'll link to everything in the show notes.

00:59:12.720 | And thank you so much for being here.

00:59:14.200 | Thank you, Chris. Thanks for what you're doing.

00:59:15.840 | You're making me happy, too.

00:59:16.800 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

00:59:20.120 | Thank you so much for listening.

00:59:21.920 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review

00:59:24.080 | for the show in Apple podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

00:59:28.200 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me or just want to say hi.

00:59:32.200 | I'm Chris at all the hacks dot com or at Hutchins on Twitter.

00:59:36.320 | That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.

00:59:38.600 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

00:59:59.080 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

01:00:02.840 | It's called the Personal Finance Podcast, and it's much more about building

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