Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And the painters who didn't make it, they just kind of presented their work in the same place over and over again, hoping that someone would find them, and nobody actually did.
Yeah, I think you can definitely take the lesson from artists who made it. It depends a little on the field. So the more talent, the more you're judged objectively based on your talent, the less hustling is going to matter. So athletes, for example, sometimes it matters less how much you hustle because it's much easier to see how good you are. So, you know, a lot of the NBA stars are
They didn't even play basketball when they were kids. They were just, you know, doing something else. And then they turned out to be seven feet tall and everyone's like, here, here, play basketball, dunk it. And they ended up being among the greatest basketball players of all time. So the world kind of just found them and discovered them and coached them and did everything for them.
Many fields are more like art than like athletics, where it's much harder to judge who's got the most talent or produce the best work. And in that case, hustling is kind of the answer. And you can take the lessons from the data of artists and apply it in your own life. And don't just stay in the same place, hoping that the world's going to find you. Travel widely to get your big breaks.
Yeah, so I became obsessed. There are these projects, it's called experience sampling projects, where they ping people on their phones and they ask them how happy they are, what they're doing, who they're with. And they've found the activities that make people happy, the people that make people happy, the weather that makes people happy.
And I was telling people the results of these studies, I was telling my friends, and I'm like, people are happiest when they're having sex or going on a hike or when they're with their friends or with their romantic partner when it's 75 degrees and sunny. And I was telling my friends, they're like, these are so obvious. Do we need scientists to tell us that?
But I think there's actually profundity in the obviousness of the happiness research that a lot of modern life is trying to trick us and tell us that if we work hard enough, make enough money, spend enough time on social media, we're going to be happy. But these don't really make people happy.
So I kind of concluded what's the data-driven answer to happiness, to really life, because I think happiness is many people's goal for life. And I think the data-driven answer to life is to be with your love on an 80 degree and sunny day, overlooking a beautiful body of water, having sex. Those are the simple things that tend to make people happy.
And if your life is very far from that, ask yourself, how can you do more of those simple, obvious things that tend to make people happy?
I think there's kind of this contrast between what the world is telling you about happiness and what commercials are telling you about happiness and what the data says about happiness. And yes, the data does offer simple answers to happiness. And I think the data there is basically right. Think of all the commercials, all the things you're advertised.
They've actually done studies when people buy these fancy products, you know, stuff, buy a lot of material goods. It doesn't make them happy at all. It wears off very, very quickly. So the things that do make people happy, the data says really are that simple. Walks, hikes. friends, romantic partners, nice days, all these things. There's nothing more complicated than that about happiness.
And I do think what gets in the way of a lot of people's happiness is they overcomplicate things and they don't do enough of these simple things that make people happy.
Nature plays a huge role in happiness. They've even done studies that when people visit parks, you see their tweets, and the mood of their tweets goes way up when they're in a park. And even for four hours after they've been in the park, they're still bathing in the happiness of their walk through the park. Being in a park, the data says, gives a mood boost equivalent to Christmas Day.
Yeah, exactly. So stuff is a great example of that, that buying stuff doesn't make people happy. Work is a great example of that. When they ping people and when people are working, they on average, it's the second least happy activity. The only more miserable activity is being sick in bed.
So the average person when they're working reports being unhappy and the world doesn't necessarily tell you that.
so in the quest to find love and the perfect partner how how can data help us there yeah so i think the big lesson from the data on dating and romantic fulfillment is that there's an enormous disconnect between what people seek and what people what makes people happy so if you look at data from dating sites What do people try to date? They try to date someone beautiful.
They try to date someone tall if it's a man. Tall men are much more likely to be clicked on to get messages on online dating sites. They try to date men with certain sexy occupations. Lawyers do very well in dating. Military men, firemen do very well in dating. They try to date people with sexy names. There are all these names that lead to better dating success.
They try to date people similar to themselves, even on silly dimensions. They try to date someone with their same initials. It's been shown that you're 11.3% more likely to match with someone if they share your initials. For some reason, people think this is attractive to people. And when you actually look at the data and what makes people happy in romantic relationships,
These things that people are drawn to tend not to correlate with long-term happiness. People who end up with beautiful partners really don't report that they're happier. People end up with taller men or men in desired occupations, or even people with lots of similarity to themselves don't report greater happiness.
If there's anything that leads to happiness, it tends to be the psychological traits in a partner. a partner having a growth mindset, being conscientious, satisfied with life, happy. This is from the largest study of romantic partners, more than 11,000 couples.
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