Arthur Brooks

Yeah, the truth is that we actually can do both, but it's it's hard to do it because of our addictive behavior.

So if I'd gone back and I'm just going to take a guess, I could have taken that 14th hour on Instagram and I could have made it a phone call with one of your best friends and it wouldn't have hurt you a bit.

But you were stuck on the Instagram because it was this thing is the shiny thing is like blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.

And it was making you nuts.

Right.

And you and everybody else.

I've made this mistake a bunch of times because I've had these moments where my career is absolutely blowing up and I've had to say, okay, buddy, eat your own cooking.

I'm a happiness specialist.

I can't, it's very embarrassing to me if my relationships melt down.

It's like, yeah, did you see Brooks?

He gives good advice, but you know, he's alone.

So I don't want any of that.

But the key thing is almost everybody who's having this intense period of ambition and success, they tend to get monomaniacally focused on that.

And then they'll act addictively at the margin.

Now, what's the margin?

It's the 12th hour of work, 13th hour of work, 14th hour of work, where you're actually really, really unproductive, but you can't get the machine of success turned off.

That requires a whole lot of self-discipline to basically say, okay, I'm not going to get any more done today.

So now I'm going to actually focus on the things that are these long-term investments in my life.

Now you're in your twenties or early thirties.

It's pretty forgivable that you made these errors.