There’s a stoic saying: “Misfortune weighs most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune.” Expecting nothing but good feels like such a good mindset – you’re optimistic, happy, and winning. But whether you know it or not you’re very likely piling up a hidden debt that must eventually be repaid.
Most decisions aren’t made on a spreadsheet, where you just add up the numbers and a rational answer pops out. There’s a human element that’s hard to quantify, hard to explain, and can seem detached from the original goal, yet carries the most influence.
You cannot measure empathy like you can SAT scores, so it’s not surprising that one is given more weight on resumes. But who is more likely to succeed in life – a person whose main skill is memorizing formulas, or someone who can instantly relate to the emotions of coworkers, customers, spouses, and friends?
Here’s one of my favorite examples of a helpful diversion: Children are notoriously anxious before surgery, and their levels of preoperative anxiety are known to reduce the effectiveness of anesthesia and increase recovery times. But sedative medications aren’t generally a good idea for kids, so physicians need alternatives to keep them calm.
The part of the person that we envy doesn’t exist without the rest of that person … One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.
Have you ever had a mounting pile of work you know you need to do but for some reason didn’t? There’s an important deadline looming, your boss is breathing down your neck, the pressure is on — all signs are pointing to you getting it done. Yet you put it off, turn on Netflix, and fantasize about how you’re going to crush it tomorrow.
Passive aggression is the surreptitious, indirect and often insidious means by which we express antagonism or noncompliance while ensuring the plausible deniability of any such intentions.
Previously on Behavior:
Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required. It’s easy to come home, sit on the couch, watch TV, and zone out until bedtime rolls around. But that’s not going to help you get smarter. Sure, you can go into the office the next day and discuss the details of last night’s episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones. And yes, you know what happened on Survivor. But that’s not knowledge accumulation; that’s a mind-numbing sedative.
An important skill – an incredibly hard one – is identifying when things in your life are temporarily too good, and preparing for the inevitable adjustment.
When people returned to work Monday, those who spent the weekend like vacationers reported more happiness, less negativity and more satisfaction than those who approached the weekend like they always did. Weekend “vacationers” also spent more money in vacation mode — about $130 compared to $104. But it wasn’t money that bought happiness. After controlling for the amount of money spent, the vacation group was still happier than the control group.
Controlling your behavior amid uncertainty can be hard enough. Controlling your reactions to other people’s behavior is way harder. Fear is more contagious than any virus, and can instantly push people to react in ways that would have seemed unthinkable a moment prior.
recently heard a phrase I love: Mental liquidity. It’s the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when you come across new information.
One day in 1995, a large, heavy middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn’t wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. ‘But I wore the juice,’ he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn’t come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.
Put simply, illeism is the practice of talking about oneself in the third person, rather than the first person. The rhetorical device is often used by politicians to try to give their words an air of objectivity. In his account of the Gallic War, for example, the emperor Julius Caesar wrote “Caesar avenged the public” rather than “I avenged the public”. The small linguistic switch seems intended to make the statement feel a little more like historical fact, recorded by an impartial observer
It always seems as if there are not enough hours in the day. You didn’t complete even the one big priority project that would have taken just a couple of hours if you’d focused. Still, you spent all day on the computer, even leaving your partner to handle dinnertime alone and canceling pickleball with friends.
Joseph Tussman, a UC Berkeley philosophy professor, wrote in the 1960s that, “What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities.” What could be more obvious than that? Figure out how the world works and align with those realities.
In each case it’s easy to underestimate risk – or at least be surprised at what happens – because the initial ingredients seem harmless. The idea that two innocent small things can combine to form one big dangerous thing isn’t intuitive.
You’re talking about people who have almost no income. It was not uncommon for El Chapo to stop and talk to someone and say, “What’s going on in your life?” And the person would say “Oh, my daughter is getting married.” Chapo would say, “I’ll take care of it.” He’d get a big place, provide the band, provide the booze and food and the whole town is invited. The father of the bride says, “Chapo made this possible.”
Everything that the government should be to these people, Chapo was.
From the outside it looked like as interesting and lucky a life anyone could hope for. Everyone loved him. He was rich. He was on top of the world.
But after he died in 2017, Cassidy’s daughter revealed that his last words were, “So much wasted time.”
It’s never as good as it looks.
In 2004 the New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the late scientist whose motor-neuron disease left him paralyzed and unable to talk since age 21.
Recently, after I gave a virtual presentation on my book Indistractable, a listener wrote something in the Zoom chat that drove me bonkers: “This is great but wouldn’t work for me. I’m a Gemini.” Insert face plant.
In reality, motivation only starts to build again once we have taken the first steps and gained some momentum in our task. In the words of Lao Tzu: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Motivation is all about getting started and consistently taking action, making sure we get back on track when we fall off the bandwagon.
All greed starts with an innocent idea: that you are right, deserve to be right, or are owed something for your efforts. It’s a reasonable feeling.
All optimistic beliefs can be dangerous – potentially appealing fictions – because they’re so comforting, so easy to accept without asking further questions. Pessimism seduces in its own way. But those who accept optimism can be just as blind to reality. Hope often masquerades as optimism when you think things will improve only because the alternative is too scary to contemplate.
The unhappiest people of the world are those in the international watering places like the South Coast of France, and Newport, and Palm Springs, and Palm Beach. going to parties every night. Playing golf every afternoon. drinking too much. Talking too much. Thinking too little. Retired. No purpose. So while there are those that would disagree with this and say “Gee, if I could just be a millionaire! That would be the most wonderful thing.” If I could just not have to work every day, if I could just be out fishing or hunting or playing golf or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the world – they don’t know life. Because what makes life mean something is purpose. A goal. The battle. the struggle – even if you don’t win it.
There’s a well-known meme for this phenomenon. It’s known as the “bitch-eating-crackers effect.” No matter what that person does, it can’t be good. “Look at Veronica over there; look at how she’s eating those crackers… what a bitch!” Of course, Veronica is probably perfectly harmless, but still! The reverse is also true. We oftentimes treat people who make us feel a certain way better than they deserve. Several studies have shown good-looking people get better service, make more money, and are more likely to succeed in their careers.
With a bit more observation, you realize your initial impression was entirely wrong. Gloria does indeed do nothing much of the time. But every so often, a request, instruction, or alert comes from Tony and she leaps into action. Within minutes, she answers the call, sends the letter, reschedules the appointment, or finds the right document. Any time he has a problem, she solves it right away. There’s no to-do list, no submitting a ticket, no waiting for a reply to an email for either Tony or Gloria.
Do the work.
That's all the productivity advice you need, and the only useful productivity advice you're ever going to get. You can direct your attention to a million optimizations— email, meetings, notes, calendar, time tracking, goals, todo lists, time estimates, prioritization frameworks, quantified self sensors, analytics, apps, documents, journaling. But don't. Ignore all this, and do the work. When you do the work, everything else optimizes itself.
When researchers Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach developed the “Facing Failure” game, they wanted to test how well people learn from failure. The game consists of successive rounds of multiple-choice questions, where feedback from earlier rounds can help you perform better in later rounds—and getting more correct answers means making more money.
People naturally lose focus when they forget that focus means saying no to good opportunities and good people. Average ideas are everywhere, and they try to pull you in. The more successful you are, the more people will want to work with you. If you start saying yes to average ideas, you quickly lose the space and time you need to execute on great ones.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield
Hidden within its hilarity is a profound point.
Becker was referring to the fundamental tension that lives at the heart of the human condition: We are equipped with godlike imaginations, but are constrained by the biology of our evolutionary lineage. No matter how amazing the byproducts of our minds are (architecture, technology, literature, etc.), we still have to defecate just like our monkey ancestors, and will slowly deteriorate until the day our bodies cease to function.
I want to be rich, because I like nice stuff. But what I value far more is to be wealthy, because I think independence is one of the only ways money can make you happier. The trick is realizing that the only way to maintain independence is if your appetite for stuff – including status – can be satiated. The goalpost has to stop moving; the expectations have to remain in check. Otherwise money has a tendency to be a liability masquerading as an asset, controlling you more than you use it to live a better life.
The Economist – a magazine I admire – publishes a forecast of the year ahead each January. Its January 2020 issue does not mention a single word about Covid. Its January 2022 issue does not mention a single word about Russia invading Ukraine. That’s not a criticism – both events were impossible to know when the magazines were likely planned in November and written in December each year. But that’s the point: The biggest news, the biggest risks, the most consequential events, are always what you don’t see coming. How do you live with that?
Taking a hard look at how we socialize helps us spend time the way we truly want.
The coronavirus pandemic gave us a pause to ask ourselves if we really should go back to the old way of doing things. For example, many people ditched their traffic-snarled commutes for work-from-home jobs. The pandemic also drastically altered our social lives. When bars, restaurants, and most other venues shut down, many resorted to catching up with friends and family over video calls or by taking socially distant walks.
The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.
Why do many problems in life seem to stubbornly stick around, no matter how hard people work to fix them? It turns out that a quirk in the way human brains process information means that when something becomes rare, we sometimes see it in more places than ever.
Think of a “neighborhood watch” made up of volunteers who call the police when they see anything suspicious. Imagine a new volunteer who joins the watch to help lower crime in the area. When they first start volunteering, they raise the alarm when they see signs of serious crimes, like assault or burglary.
“Gamification” is the practice of adding game-like elements to non-game contexts. It isn’t new, nor it is always a negative, but it is being aimed at consumers and employees more and more frequently, whether to keep you addicted to an app, motivated at work, or inclined to spend your money on something. If you’re going to be forced to play different games (even when they don’t look like games)—and you are, right now—you should at least recognize how you’re being played, and try to learn the rules. Because knowing the rules is the first step to bending them to your advantage.
Johnson and Goldstein were studying organ donation rates across Europe. They were investigating why some countries had a perpetually high rate of donations every year, whereas some had a perpetually low rate. This was very perplexing because organ donation rates in Sweden and Denmark, which were similar to each other geographically, demographically and culturally, stood at 85.9 per cent vs 4.25 per cent, respectively. The researchers ruled out all potential causes for the difference in rates, until only one remained.
When he was nine years old, my godson Adam developed a brief but freakishly intense obsession with Elvis Presley. He took to singing Jailhouse Rock at the top of his voice with all the low crooning and pelvis-jiggling of the King himself. One day, as I tucked him in, he looked at me very earnestly and asked: “Johann, will you take me to Graceland one day?” Without really thinking, I agreed. I never gave it another thought, until everything had gone wrong.
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues that the ability to focus deeply on a single project, idea or task for long periods of time is not only one of the most important skills for succeeding in the information age, but it’s also an ability that appears to be dwindling among the population. But I would go even further. I would say that our ability to focus and hone our attention on what we need is a core component of living a happy, healthy life. We’ve all had those days or weeks (or months or years) where we’ve felt scatterbrained—out of control of our own reality, constantly sucked down rabbit holes of pointless information and drama comprised of endless clicks and notifications.
Musk is right that some things that will probably fail are worth trying anyway. That’s true for everyone in almost all areas of life, because we live in a tail-driven world where a few events drive the majority of outcomes. It’s a world that demands you become comfortable with a lot of things not working, lots of things failing, and constant disappointment, because “success” means you tried ten things and eight of them fail miserably but two change your life.
Just when Covid-19 appeared to be fading, the largest military conflict since World War II broke out in Eastern Europe leading to devastating consequences for millions of people, spiking commodity prices, weaker equity markets, and geopolitical uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, countless people have commented how “unbelievable” this series of events has been. But is it? It is really unbelievable? Or, is it actually completely believable? Better yet, is it something we should come to expect by now?
Forecasting is hard because it’s easy to skip the question, “And then what?”
Saying, “higher gas prices will cause people to drive less,” seems logical.
But then what?
Well, people have to drive, so maybe they’ll look for more fuel-efficient vehicles. They’ll complain to politicians, who will offer tax breaks to buy those vehicles. Oil company CEOs are hauled before Congress; OPEC is asked to drill more. Energy entrepreneurs innovate. And the oil industry knows two speeds: boom and bust. So they’ll probably pump too much. Then prices fall, all while people own more efficient vehicles. Then maybe the suburbs become more popular – and people end up driving even more than before.
So who knows.
But as soon as I entered college, everything changed. Those things that had once given me status were gone. No longer was I one of the smartest kids in my school, I was just average. Now status was determined based on what fraternity you joined and where you were going to work after you graduated. But this wasn’t the last time that I had to learn a different status game. Following college I worked at a litigation consulting firm where status was based on prestige, pay, and performance (like most corporate environments). And today, as a content creator, status is mostly determined by the size of your audience and how much you can keep their attention. No matter which environment I was in, I noticed that there was always a status game being played.
We adapt to what we learn. But sometimes hypotheses are so strong that they resist change. They are maintained not by evidence but by ideology. They become scientific myths.
Making choices based on the desires of others is a part of human nature. But there are ways to counteract the force.
Obsession is more than a cultural phenomenon — it’s part of our brain chemistry, and part of what it means to be human. For hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved in environments of scarcity, where social structures were required for survival, and seeking and curiosity were imperative. In the modern era, the same brain chemistry that lured us to the sweetness of fruit and alerted us to the presence of danger now draws us to fads like the Tamagotchi.
The stress of uncertain pain outsizes the stress of certain pain. These were the results of a 2016 study, published long before the uncertainty of Pandemic 2020 was running the world show. In the study, participants with a 50 percent chance of receiving a shock were more stressed than those with a one hundred percent chance of receiving a shock. In other words, it wasn’t just the possibility of a shock that caused stress—it was its uncertainty.
"Workplaces can be very unhealthy environments – if there was any time to change the way we work, now is the time to do it," says Maslach. "If you take a plant and put it in a pot and don’t water it and give it lousy soil and not enough sun, I don't care how gorgeous the plant was to begin with – it isn't going to thrive."
As I've described previously, the rule of awkward silence is simple: When faced with a challenging question, instead of answering, you pause and think deeply about how you want to answer. This is no short pause; rather, it involves taking several seconds (10, 20, or longer) to think things through before responding. If you're on the receiving end--and not used to this type of communication style--it can seem very awkward
I’m an ostrich. At least, I used to be. Ostriches are known for being ridiculous-looking creatures, and for their (actually fictional) habit of sticking their head in the sand when they sense danger. This is completely useless as a defense strategy, but it’s very useful as a metaphor. Us ostriches avoid the uncomfortable. Ostriches don’t go to the doctor, because if we don’t have a diagnosis, we don’t have to deal with the fact that we’re sick. We avoid doing unpleasant things, like spending all of our hard-earned cash on paying school loans or water bills. Rather than face the ugly realities of life head-on, we ostriches prefer the comfort of a dark and stuffy hole. It beats paying bills.
Why do many problems in life seem to stubbornly stick around, no matter how hard people work to fix them? It turns out that a quirk in the way human brains process information means that when something becomes rare, we sometimes see it in more places than ever. Think of a “neighborhood watch” made up of volunteers who call the police when they see anything suspicious. Imagine a new volunteer who joins the watch to help lower crime in the area. When they first start volunteering, they raise the alarm when they see signs of serious crimes, like assault or burglary.
In the tao te ching, Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner.” He no doubt intended it as a dire warning. But as the years have passed, I have come to interpret it as more of a promise and an opportunity.
Let’s say you’re on a diet. You’ve cut calories and avoided junk food like a champ. But now you’re faced with a powerful adversary: chocolate cake. You somehow muster the strength to resist, but as you exit the kitchen, you can’t stop thinking about the chocolatey goodness you could’ve enjoyed. You tell yourself to not think about it — but that only makes you think about it more. For some strange reason, you can’t get that stupid cake out of your head and soon you find it’s in your mouth. Yum, but also ugh!
We live in a world of T20s, quarterly results, “get rich quick” schemes and overnight successes. We glorify speed, we obsess over daily metrics, and track our steps and heart rates each day. We love things that give us an adrenaline rush. The press makes heroes out of the twenty-something founders that raise money at a high valuation in under two years of existence!
Do you want to come up with more imaginative ideas? Do you stumble with complicated problems? Do you want to find new ways to confront challenge
In an insightful book written 40 years ago, French philosopher, Rene Girard, explains how in our desires, we are programmed to imitate each other. That in turn leads to conflict & grief which in turn creates the need for scapegoats who can act as a lightning rod for our grievances. Great leaders are those who can game this construct by using religion, culture, and other people as scapegoats.
“The force of mimetic desire has been responsible for the very formation of culture, and the rise and fall of civilizations.”
Some of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime will occur while you feel stressed and anxious. From medical decisions to financial and professional ones, we are often required to weigh up information under stressful conditions. Take for example expectant parents who need to make a series of important choices during pregnancy and labour – when many feel stressed. Do we become better or worse at processing and using information under such circumstances?
Feeling low because your boss hasn’t congratulated you on your work recently? You need to read this.
These experiments are a bit weird, but the main idea is familiar: everyone knows that food never tastes so good as when you are hungry, lying on the sofa is blissful after a long run, and life itself is wonderful when you’re leaving the dentist’s office.
Being a leader requires confidence, decisiveness, and quick thinking--none of which are served by overthinking every decision or scenario or worrying about every move you make. There’s a time to think, a time to act, a time to reflect, and a time to move forward.
If you asked people what was special about Einstein, most would say that he was really smart. Even the ones who tried to give you a more sophisticated-sounding answer would probably think this first. Till a few years ago I would have given the same answer myself. But that wasn't what was special about Einstein.
Creativity is a process, not an event. It’s not just a eureka moment. You have to work through mental barriers and internal blocks. You have to commit to practicing your craft deliberately. And you have to stick with the process for years, perhaps even decades like Newton did, in order to see your creative genius blossom.
I recently had dinner with a financial advisor who has a client that gets angry when hearing about portfolio returns or benchmarks. None of that matters to the client; All he cares about is whether he has enough money to keep traveling with his wife. That’s his sole benchmark. “Everyone else can stress out about outperforming each other,” he says. “I just like Europe.” Maybe he’s got it all figured out.
"All the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference - the hallmarks of liberal democracy - are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviours. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness.”
What Actually Happened During the Cuban Missile Crisis (And What You Can Learn About Influence)
There are so many factors that can hold a person back in this life. Many are circumstantial – a lack of connections, money, education, a stable home environment. These conditions are outside of our control, especially when we’re growing up.
Contrary to the “ego depletion” theory, willpower is not a depletable resource if you know how to use it wisely.
Feedback loops affect the efficacy of behavioral interventions more than we realize. Just because an intervention was successful five years ago does not mean it will be successful today.
Warren Buffett’s holding company is the most impressive long-term compounding machine in history, increasing in market value at 20% per year for nearly 6 decades. Compounding is a wonderful thing but it can also become an unhealthy obsession if you view every financial decision through that lens.
In his 1851 work American Notebooks, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.” This is basically a restatement of the Stoic philosophers’ “paradox of happiness”: To attain happiness, we must not try to attain it.
You can train your brain to retain knowledge and insight better by understanding how you learn. Once you understand the keys to learning, everything changes—from the way you ask questions to the way you consume information. People will think you have a superpower.
