Episode 397: Michael Easter on The Comfort Crisis: Is Optimizing Life Making Us Weaker?
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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. All right. We're starting. That's how we start here. We go right into it.
I like it. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. This is Michael Easter. He's a two-time New York Times bestseller. Did the scarcity brain become a New York Times bestseller? Yeah. So Scarcity Brain was New York Times bestseller. Comfort Crisis wasn't because Comfort Crisis had this like... What? So Comfort Crisis was interesting because it was one of those books that it came out, you know, had a decent opening week and then it kind of sat and it just needed to like, it was kind of like the virus where, you know, two people to four to eight to 16, word of mouth. And so now, I mean, at this point, three years later, we're selling... a lot more per week than we were like even in week three of the release. So it just kind of word of mouth took over.
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.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is The Comfort Crisis about?
0:01–2:08
2
How does the scarcity loop influence behavior?
2:08–5:58
3
What are the effects of unpredictability on our decisions?
5:58–11:04
4
How can we improve mental stamina through daily habits?
11:04–17:55
5
Why is boredom important for resilience?
17:55–51:42
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