Habits and Hustle
Episode 397: Michael Easter on The Comfort Crisis: Is Optimizing Life Making Us Weaker?
Tue, 12 Nov 2024
Is our obsession with optimization actually making us weaker? In this episode of the Habits and Hustle podcast, I am joined by Michael Easter, author of "The Comfort Crisis" and "Scarcity Brain," to explore how modern society's relentless pursuit of wellness and optimization might be backfiring. We discuss the possibility that the more requirements we add to basic human functions (like sleeping, exercising, or working), the more fragile we become. We also dive into elaborate morning routines, sleep-tracking devices, how subtraction, not addition, might be the key to building real resilience in our overly-comfortable world, and the best way to end a day of intellectual work. Michael Easter has made a career as a New York Times bestselling author by traveling the world to uncover practical ideas that help people live healthier, happier, and more remarkable lives. His research spans from war zones to the Arctic to the Bolivian jungle, where he's interviewed thousands of experts including Nobel laureates and world-class athletes. Easter shares these science-backed insights in his books, including Scarcity Brain and The Comfort Crisis, as well as in his newsletter, Two Percent with Michael Easter. His work has been adopted by professional sports teams, Fortune 500 companies, and elite military units to transform their approaches to physical health, mental well-being, and performance. What We Discuss: (00:00) Book Authors Discuss Success and Integrity (08:27) The Scarcity Loop in Behavior Psychology (15:34) Behavioral Psychology and Impulse Control (28:16) Unpredictability and Stimulus Seeking (42:21) Efficiency Through Resource Subtraction (50:30) Daily Habits and Mental Stamina …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. BiOptimizers: Want to try Magnesium Breakthrough? Go to https://bioptimizers.com/jennifercohen and use promo code JC10 at checkout to save 10% off your purchase. Timeline Nutrition: Get 10% off your first order at timeline.com/cohen Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Michael Easter: Website: https://eastermichael.com/ Books: https://eastermichael.com/books-v2-wip/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michael_easter/
Chapter 1: What is The Comfort Crisis about?
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it. Okay, so this is the book. This has been out for a year, The Scarcity Brain, yeah?
Yeah, a year tomorrow, actually.
Wow, happy anniversary. And this one is The Comfort Crisis, which is, I really enjoyed this one, too.
Oh, thank you.
This is your first one. Yep. I'm going to ask you a couple questions from that, too, because I really, I noticed something which I found to be very interesting in it. You talk about, in that book, I just did a TED Talk. Let me just get back up. Three days ago. Thank you. Part of that TED talk was me talking about this cool concept of like how boredom has been a lot is a lost feature in our world.
And because of that, I think mine was much more about kids and how building mental strength and toughness has been, it's, it's becoming a problem in a very soft world. And I think a big part of it is because of boredom. We've, we've lost that ability.
And then you talked about that a little bit, which is an interesting, I didn't realize, I didn't realize, like, I was like, oh my God, I really like this guy now. Like you kind of make, you kind of make mention of it also, like what the benefits of boredom are and like how the world has evolved to not having it anymore.
Yeah. Well, we'll have to talk about that.
I know. Let's talk about it. Go ahead. We're starting.
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Chapter 2: How does the scarcity loop influence behavior?
That happens. That actually happened with like a couple of things, Family Man that happened with and like Breaking Bad. Like certain things like don't really have like a strong, very rarely, maybe a strong out of the gate, but then through word of mouth and picks up momentum and it becomes like a cult hit, a cult following. I thought your book, I thought it was great.
I thought The Comfort Crisis was a really, really good. I thought this was a New York Times bestseller.
No, but we've, you know, we got there. We got where we needed to get. So I love it. Yeah.
So let's talk about the scarcity loop and then we can go into the comfort race. Is that cool? Yeah, it's good with me. Good. So because that is like the more topical for now, but can we talk about number one, the scarcity brain? And you talk a lot about something called the scarcity loop. Can you just start by talking and defining and explaining what the scarcity loop is?
Yeah, so the easiest way to think of the scarcity loop, it is, I argue in the book, the most powerful habit loop in the sense that it pushes people into repeat behaviors that they later regret. So the easiest way to understand how it works is to picture a slot machine and why people get hooked on slot machines. So the scarcity loop, it has three parts. It's got opportunity.
Part two is unpredictable rewards. And then part three is quick repeatability. So when you play a slot machine, you have an opportunity to win money, right? But two unpredictable rewards, you don't know when you're going to win money or if you're going to win money, right?
Any random game you play on a slot machine, you could lose, you could win like a dollar, or you could win thousands of dollars. There's this insane range of possibilities that can happen from this one behavior. And then three, quick repeatability. Once you finish a game, you can play over, right? And so people play over and over and over.
So I live in Las Vegas, which was really kind of the impetus for me to start thinking about this loop, just watching people play slot machines all day long. Because when you look at that behavior, you're like, that doesn't make any damn sense. It's like everyone knows the house always wins in the long run, yet people keep repeating and repeating the behavior.
And it's simply because that three-part system is incredibly powerful at grabbing people's attention and incentivizing this repeat behavior that is fun in the short term, but it's detrimental in the long run. Now, the reason that it's important is, you know, people are probably listening to this going like, I don't play slot machines. Why do I care?
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Chapter 3: What are the effects of unpredictability on our decisions?
So is it that companies really understand the schedule? So if they understand that loop, then they have technology that's based around creating, basically working on the human psychology of at what point do people get anxious if they don't look at something or do something? Is it like... Is there a particular speed? Is there a particular... What is that? What is the actual precision?
Is it the same with the algorithm and it is with slot machines? Because what I found interesting, and you talk about this, is the slot machine, when it was a handle versus when it was a digital form... When it became digital, you just press a button, the amount of usage for slot machines like skyrocketed.
Yeah, it went. So the average slot player went from playing 400 games an hour on the handled machines because it's slower, right? You got to pull this clunky handle to playing about 900 games an hour when you could just hit this button repeatedly. So basically doubled. So, yeah, the three things that it needs is the person has to get something that's of value to them.
First of all, it has to be unpredictable, right? If something is predictable, like I'll give you an example of a slot machine. That's kind of a ridiculous example, but it'll help you understand it is if you were to put a dollar in a slot machine and every time you hit the button, you got two dollars. It's like, OK, that would be nice, but it wouldn't be that fun.
I mean, that's basically what a job is, right? It's like a basic labor job. Like I pull this hand, it's like working in a factory. I pull this handle and I get a predictable amount of money for the act. That is a job. So you need to have that unpredictability. And then third, to your point, the faster you can deliver and repeat the behavior, the more likely someone is to get hooked on it.
So for example, like buying a house, that has a certain amount of unpredictability too, right? If you're looking at it as an investment. But no one gets hooked on buying houses because, you know, you're going to own the house for like 10 years. So you need the speed, the faster.
Basically, as a general rule, the faster you can repeat behavior that you get something good from, the more likely you are to repeat it.
I guess that's a dope. Isn't that like a dopamine hit, though?
Yeah, it's like so dopamine sort of drives is the wanting element of it makes you want to do the behavior. And then there's a different system that delivers the reward. That's called the liking system.
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Chapter 4: How can we improve mental stamina through daily habits?
Yeah. Okay. So I don't think people do anything that is completely irrational. There's always some benefit we get from these behaviors. So take buying stuff. That's fun as hell in the short term. You're like, oh, this is great. I got my, I just scratched off 20%. I'm going around the store. I'm throwing stuff in my shopping cart. I'm like, I'm going to look amazing in this.
Everyone's going to love me. You buy it. You're like, oh God, that was so much fun. And then you get home though, and you're like, why did I do that? So the point I'm trying to make is that we often, when we get ourselves in trouble, is that we choose these sort of short-term rewards at the expense of long-term growth, long-term good decision-making.
Like we're very much wired to look to the short-term for satisfaction. And, you know, part of what I argue, a lot of my work looks into sort of the bigger why we do that. And I think a lot of these sort of quirks that we have today, I think they go back to evolution and how in the past, you know, to survive, you just had to do the next thing that was going to get you a benefit. Right.
We like didn't make sense to think long term in the past. Like you were just trying to survive. You're trying to get food. You're trying to keep your kids alive. Right. You're trying to procreate like you just needed to do the next thing that was going to give you a reward.
And in today's age, with all the opportunities we have to have fun in the short term, I think that's not always the thing that leads us into long term places we want to be.
No, no, absolutely. I find it. But I guess the question is, how do we stop ourselves really from wanting more? If even if when we know better, like how do how do we do that?
Yeah, well, I can tell you ways to stop that sort of short-term bad decision-making, and then I'll give you kind of a larger, more existential answer. So in the short term, I think because we know that speed is such a driver of these decisions we later regret, I think if you can figure out a way to slow down a behavior, that can be a really great way to basically stop it.
So if you think about online shopping, even something as simple as like, okay... I got a rule for myself. I'm going to put this thing in my cart and then I got to wait 48 hours, 72 hours. And then I'm going to come back to it in 48 hours or 72 hours and say, okay, do I really want this thing? Now I found personally, literally probably 80, 90% of the time, I'm like,
I don't actually need those shoes. I don't actually need that new workout gizmo. Like you just, you don't actually need it. Right. And so I think that can cut it down, but you can apply this to all sorts of things. I mean, even like even food and eating junk food, like getting junk food in a place where there's a long barrier to entry to getting it, that'll slow down how much junk food you eat.
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Chapter 5: Why is boredom important for resilience?
Right. Like absolutely. Even I mean, literally even drug addiction. If you can slow down the delivery that leads people like addiction rates go down.
I think that grayscale thing is a really interesting, like, stat that I'd never really heard of before.
Yeah, I'll send you a link. So I wrote about it on my newsletter. I'll send you a link to the post. It's called 2%. And so, yeah, I'll send you a link to that. That'll give you all the details.
Yeah, that's your newsletter, right? I know I was actually, I meant to sign up for it and I haven't yet. Can you give me some other things like that? That's a really good one. The great turning your phone to grayscale.
Do you have anything else that you want to like, or you can share that are things that maybe the people haven't heard of that can help them with all that stuff, like helping them with like reducing social media or helping them like get into the moment where they can rethink or anything like that's a really good one. I love that.
Yeah, well, I think a lot of it goes back to finding pauses. I gave you the one about food. I gave you the one about shopping. Gave you the one about cell phones.
What's that app called that you said, ClearSpace?
ClearSpace. Yep. It's great. It's great. We actually did, through my newsletter, we did a ClearSpace challenge. I think it was in April where we got... Everyone went on the app and there was like a competition of who could use the apps they had banned the least. And it was awesome. So many people are like, I downloaded this just because I wanted to win the prize.
And it has totally changed my relationship with my phone. It's been awesome.
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