WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.031 --> 00:00:29.663
If you're listening to this podcast right now, chances are you have listened to multiple self-improvement podcasts. And if you've listened to multiple self-improvement podcasts, you have probably been told like 28 different things to do to improve your life. In fact, there's so much different advice coming at you from every different direction that sometimes it feels impossible to know what is actually credible, what actually works and what doesn't. And so here at the Solve podcast, what we do is we over-research everything.

2
00:00:29.663 --> 00:00:49.947
I've been in this space for almost 20 years. Drew, my co-host and lead researcher here, has been with me for over a decade. And in that time, we have dug deep into the science on so many different techniques, tactics, tropes, cliches, conventional wisdoms that we decided to actually sit down and rank them.

3
00:00:49.947 --> 00:01:04.949
We took 19 of the most conventional, cliche pieces of self-help advice, things that you've heard a million times in a million different places, and we decided to go into the science and find a way to rank them from worst to best. Which self-improvement techniques?

4
00:01:04.949 --> 00:01:33.957
You may be asking. Here is the full list in alphabetical order. We looked at affirmations, cold water therapy, crystal healing, eat that frog, which is do the hardest thing first, energy healing, fake it till you make it, gratitude journals, intuitive decision making, learning styles, meditation, microdosing psychedelics, morning routines, positive thinking, power posing, self-help books in general, speed reading, venting emotions, visualizations, and of course, willpower.

5
00:01:33.957 --> 00:02:03.370
Now, in the process of putting this episode together, I definitely was surprised by a few of these. I don't know about you, Drew. There's a few shockers in there, yeah. Yeah, there were some things that showed up way higher on the list than I expected and a few that were actually much worse than I expected. So it was a little bit illuminating. Obviously, there's a bunch of nuance and context for each of these things. Some of it is determined by how you actually define some of these practices or some of these pieces of advice. So we will talk about all of the different things

6
00:02:03.370 --> 00:02:09.800
specifics and angles and caveats whatnot when we get to the rankings themselves, but...

7
00:02:10.660 --> 00:02:33.796
I actually want to ask you a question. I aggregated all of the research that we had on all of these techniques. A lot of this is left over from previous episodes that we've done. A lot of this is new. A lot of this was compiled by the research team. And, of course, a lot of this was scooped up by AI. How many studies do you think in total were at least looked at for this episode? I never looked. I guess I didn't see. I couldn't even.

8
00:02:34.302 --> 00:02:59.142
I don't know. A thousand. I don't know. 2,603. Oh, God, really? 2,603. Okay. Obviously, not every single one of those was read. But a lot of them were. And I would say at least the abstract was read of probably at least half of them. Right, right. We did some quality vetting, too. Like really shitty studies we just didn't even bother with necessarily. But it was taken into consideration, sure.

9
00:02:59.210 --> 00:03:23.408
Which brings me to the question of how we actually went about ranking these. So we looked at three different factors. One is just the quantity and quality of the research. How many studies have been done on this particular piece of advice? And how good was that research? Was it actually respectable? Was it done at a very credible institution? Was it a very large sample size? Was it done cross-culturally? Was it replicated? All that stuff. Controls, all of that, yeah.

10
00:03:23.493 --> 00:03:52.163
Yeah. Second thing we looked at is what percentage of the studies came out in support of the practice. You know, say there are 100 studies that we found on it. 50 of them say it works. 50 say it doesn't. There are other ones that out of 100 studies, 98 say that it works and two say it doesn't. So obviously the one that had 98 that says it works is going to be ranked higher than the one that says 50. And then finally we looked at effect size. So effect size is essentially just how much does it work?

11
00:03:52.163 --> 00:04:21.222
Does it work a tiny bit or does it work really, really well? Like if you take 100 people and you have them gratitude journal every single morning for a month and then you have – take another 100 people and they do nothing. Not only do you look at whether the people who gratitude journaled are happier but how much happier are they? What is the degree of difference in the practice? And what we find is that there are some things that work very consistently but only a tiny bit. And then there are other things that can work a lot.

12
00:04:21.222 --> 00:04:47.210
but they work very inconsistently. So out of these 19 practices, we're going to go through them starting at the worst and working our way up to the first. And we have four categories that we're going to work through. So at the top of the pyramid, we have stuff that legitimately works and is good advice and should probably be adopted by most of us. The second category we have is the maybe depends category, which is this can work, but it kind of depends on the...

13
00:04:47.210 --> 00:05:11.594
Your situation, who you are, the way you do it, why you're doing it and so on. The third category is the probably nothing category. It's, you know, it's not hurting anybody, but it's probably not doing anything either. And then finally, the fourth category, which is our bullshit category, is it actually might be hurting you and you should probably stop doing it. Like I said, there's some shockers in here, a few things that surprised me even too.

14
00:05:11.645 --> 00:05:30.882
We go way too deep. We over-research everything. We over-complicate everything, Drew. Why do we do it? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we just interview fucking Instagram influencers like everybody else? God damn it, Drew. Because we're trying to solve actual problems. That's why. All right. So here we go. All right.

15
00:05:41.159 --> 00:06:02.624
We are going to start with the bullshit category. We're going to start with number 19. The worst of all of the practices that we examined is suppressing negative thoughts. Yes, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions. You could call this, if you want to be uncharitable, you could call this like the hardcore version of positive thinking.

16
00:06:02.624 --> 00:06:21.102
Which positive thinking often does get interpreted in this way is that people hear that, hey, I should think positive. And they immediately assume like, oh, if I have a negative thought or emotion, I should just push it away and pretend like it's not there. So take us through why is suppressing negative emotions a bad thing, Drew? Yeah.

17
00:06:21.288 --> 00:06:38.180
The biggest piece of evidence we have against suppressing thoughts and emotions is what they call the ironic process, which is basically if I tell you not to think about something, you're going to think more about it, right? Right. So if you have some negative or traumatic event or something like that in your life –

18
00:06:38.180 --> 00:06:55.527
And I tell you, okay, here's all these ways we can go about not thinking about this. Then when that thing pops up, you start thinking, how do I not think about this? And it just amplifies it in your mind, right? It just makes you focus on it more and it pushes out all the other good or neutral things that are going on in your world or in your life at that time.

19
00:06:55.831 --> 00:07:14.596
So, you know, people think that it reduces intrusive thoughts and images. Not really true. There's not a whole lot of evidence for that. Improves your mood, you know, decreases anxiety, depression. Again, not much in the way of that. But for people who have, let's say, like traumatic stress disorders, like PTSD or something like that,

20
00:07:14.596 --> 00:07:37.343
In certain very limited structured situations where they need to avoid that triggering event or that thought under very close careful supervision, that can maybe work sometimes. But it's not just for your average person walking around like, oh, like, you know, my girlfriend left me or, you know, I lost my job and I don't want to think about it. It's not helpful at all to go about just –

21
00:07:37.343 --> 00:07:55.180
shoving that all down basically. And this is – I feel like at this point in 2026, like we kind of know this. This is a bit of our parents' and grandparents' generation of like – 100 percent. Just like – just bury it. Just push it down here. Have a drink. Push it down further. I think –

22
00:07:55.180 --> 00:08:17.759
Our generation and Gen Z have grown up with the knowledge and understanding that like this is a bad long-term strategy. So there are a number of recent meta-analyses on this. And one of the ones that I found actually quite interesting is that it found that for some people, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions can be beneficial in the short term. So if you're in like a high pressure, high cognitive load situation –

23
00:08:17.759 --> 00:08:45.704
and it's just like, I can't deal with this right now, it can be short-term effective for that very moment to get you through that one little moment. What they found, though, is that it made things worse over the long term. That rebound effect was even worse. Right. So the rebound effect comes back harder. You are even more upset, more angry, more stressed out, more anxious in the long term. But the funny thing I found, too, and I'm just going to translate this very crudely, the researchers found that...

24
00:08:45.704 --> 00:09:08.182
The people who did this best, who actually like let's call it a successful suppression, the people who did it best or who benefited the most in the short term were people who had high levels of working memory and high fluid intelligence. So it's basically like very smart people can do it. Whereas if you're not a super smart person, it's probably just going to backfire super hard on you in the immediate term.

25
00:09:08.182 --> 00:09:29.714
But it was interesting because it's my stereotype of a very smart person is that they're actually very good at repressing their own emotions if they have to. True. No, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. But I think you're right, though. It is kind of like a tracheotomy, right? Like only use it if you absolutely have to. If you can't breathe, sure. And you need to just get through some rough situation. I get that. But just know that's going to probably bounce back harder.

26
00:09:29.714 --> 00:09:48.800
The interesting thing and I'm going to foreshadow a little bit is that because it is so popularly and widely known now that you're not supposed to suppress your negative emotions, a lot of people kind of assume the opposite must be true, which is you should express every negative emotion. And we're actually going to get to that in a minute.

27
00:09:48.800 --> 00:10:14.078
That did not score super well either. So there's probably a happy medium here that we're going to investigate. But that's number 19, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions. The effect size was relatively modest, but it was negative. It is not helpful. It's a pretty consistent finding. You're not doing yourself any favors. Don't pretend like the shit doesn't stink. Don't pretend like there's nothing wrong if there's something wrong. Turn and face the pain. Yeah.

28
00:10:14.078 --> 00:10:37.754
just yeah just take it take it on the nose there's something to be said about dealing with it right just deal with it and now don't just brush it aside number 18 this one's going to be spicy i can already see a bunch of angry commenters coming at us microdosing psychedelics i'm bummed by this one i'm happy

29
00:10:38.092 --> 00:11:05.378
I live in California. I can't tell you how many fucking people walk around here microdosing a bunch of crap telling me that they're getting in touch with the universe and their spiritual – like a bunch of bullshit. And sure enough, the research on this shows pretty consistently that not only is there not really any measurable benefit with any consistency, but there is a decline in cognitive functioning and executive reasoning.

30
00:11:05.378 --> 00:11:24.059
The only benefit that was found in the meta-analyses was improvement of mood. So it's like, dude, you're getting high. Like this is what you're doing. You're getting high and you're telling yourself that it's a productivity hack or you're like getting in touch with your creativity or whatever. And technically that's not even a microdose. If you can feel something, it's supposed to be sub-perceptual.

31
00:11:24.059 --> 00:11:42.453
Yes. Right. So the complicating factor of this is that there are reams and reams and reams of anecdotal case studies. There are plenty of case studies of people who claim that they suffered from lifelong depression, that they had anxiety disorders, that they had all sorts of like –

32
00:11:42.453 --> 00:12:09.622
crippling conditions that they struggled to get over and then microdosing changed their lives and saved them. There's also plenty of case studies of people who microdose for extended periods of time and fucked up their own mental health. So it is all over the map. There is no consistent benefit. It is, in my opinion, just getting high. And it's the 2020s version of smoking a little weed before you go into work in the morning to like –

33
00:12:09.622 --> 00:12:36.048
ease the stress. Like I knew people in college and some of my early jobs who like that made them a little bit more effective. Like they were very high, strong, anxious, like stressed out people. And it's like taking a little hit of weed, like helped, you know, smooth the rough edges before they went in for the day. If that's what you're doing, that's fine. It's just like, don't kid yourself. You're not getting in touch with like some deeper creativity there. You're not like accessing better decision making.

34
00:12:36.048 --> 00:13:03.149
It's not happening. There's no evidence of it. It's like it's mixed at best and it is just non-existent at worst. Yeah. There are a lot of people too with ADHD. There's a randomized control trial that came out. There was no improvement over a placebo effect. A lot of it's either probably a placebo effect. Again, if you're taking a sub-perceptual dose of anything, is it really doing anything anyway other than a placebo? When they do really careful studies on these, they find nothing.

35
00:13:03.149 --> 00:13:22.420
Or a decline in cognitive function. Cognitive functions, yeah. Yeah. It's just not. Reasoning, decision-making, yeah. The evidence isn't out there. I said I was bummed because I was in the probably 2015, 2016 era when everything was kind of ramping up with psychedelics. Yeah. I was real excited. I was like, oh, here's kind of a safer way we can explore with these. And then nothing came up.

36
00:13:22.673 --> 00:13:45.961
All of the promising research is around the macrodosing. Yeah. And it is – but the macrodosing is like that's a lot. Yeah. Like now you're entering – You can't not feel something on a macrodose, right? Yeah. And it's also like you really need to be careful about how you approach a macrodose, which we did not evaluate in this ranking. But it's funny because I remember when a number of friends of mine started microdosing –

37
00:13:46.484 --> 00:14:14.615
probably around the same time, 2016, 2017. And they kept telling me how it made them more productive and it made them like do this and they're like more creative at work and all this stuff. And I remember I microdosed once and around that time. And it was like, it sucked. It sucked. I just felt like, I just felt giggly and like I couldn't really think straight. And I was like, I feel like this is bullshit. And I remember looking at some of the early research at the time and it was basically turning up that there was nothing there.

38
00:14:14.615 --> 00:14:35.675
And it's nice to see that now that there are some meta-analyses that follow through on that. So that placebo effect, though, is going to be important through all of this as well. Again, if you're one of those people who are already typing in the comments, like, well, it works for me. It was like, okay, compared to what? Right. Okay. If I gave you something and I said it was psychedelics, you would probably still experience many of the same effects. Yes. Or nothing at all. So, yeah.

39
00:14:35.827 --> 00:15:04.261
Yeah, that's the tricky thing with self-help advice, personal development advice is... Compared to what? Right. And placebo effects are powerful. Yeah, they are. They are. Like if people believe that something works, it can really work for them. And you could argue that a lot of this industry is kind of just a fancy way of inducing placebo effects in people. My issue with the microdosing is that actually that they have seen in like long-term microdosers that there are some adverse health factors.

40
00:15:04.261 --> 00:15:17.187
You're taking a psychoactive compound long-term, even at low doses, that can have detrimental effects. Yes. And so that's why this is in the bullshit category, the stop doing it category rather than the probably nothing category.

41
00:15:17.710 --> 00:15:38.450
So if we haven't pissed off all of the California hippies yet with that one, we're definitely going to piss them off with this one. How many times, Drew, have you heard that you should trust your intuition, trust your guts, that you should listen to your deep inner voice, that your inner wisdom knows best for you?

42
00:15:38.450 --> 00:16:06.057
How many times? I hear that all the time. Yeah. In some form or another. And sometimes it's dressed up in ways that kind of hide it. But yeah, you hear it a lot. I don't know. I might push back a little bit on this one. We might argue a little bit. All right. Let's butt heads on it. This one, there are caveats. Yes. There are caveats too, which we will get into. Speaking generally, general life decision making. You've got a choice in your life. You can have dinner here or go there. You can call this person back or you can decide to be single.

43
00:16:07.424 --> 00:16:17.448
Any of these sorts of life decisions, following your gut, following your intuition, it does not make for a better choice.

44
00:16:17.752 --> 00:16:38.137
It often makes you feel better about your choice, which is a very different thing. Ah, okay. Yeah. Which is a very different thing. But it doesn't make a better choice. And I think that's the distinction. I think most people who really subscribe to trusting their gut, listening to their intuition, listening to their inner wisdom, all that stuff –

45
00:16:38.845 --> 00:16:57.661
Really what they're optimizing for is just feeling good about their choices and like minimizing doubt or regret or insecurity. Okay. Which is fine. Yeah. But you're not making better decisions. Your gut doesn't know better. Like all of the evidence suggests that your gut does not know better.

46
00:16:57.661 --> 00:17:18.738
Except, and I feel like this is what you're going to bring up, in very specific cases of expertise. Okay. So if you are a domain expert. So if somebody has been a brain surgeon for 40 years and they are brought into a surgery room and they are shown a patient and they see something –

47
00:17:19.750 --> 00:17:39.123
Their gut instinct is actually going to be accurate a lot of the time. Right. And you see this consistently around people who have lots of experience. And that's because like Danny Kahneman talks about this and, you know, there's that famous book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Right, yeah. You know, System 1, System 2. Like really what your gut reaction to things is, is it's –

48
00:17:39.123 --> 00:17:58.343
It's pattern matching based on experience. So if you have tons and tons of experience in a certain area, you're probably going to pattern match extremely well. But most of us are not experts at the vast majority of things we do. Therefore, I would be very, very careful relying on your gut or intuition. Okay. What say you, sir? Okay.

49
00:17:58.343 --> 00:18:19.994
Well, yeah. Okay. I definitely agree with that. If you're a surgeon, you're in the middle of surgery, something goes wrong. You don't have time to sit there and do a cost benefit. Pros and cons, yeah. Trust your gut in that situation. A fighter pilot or something like that. Even a commercial pilot, something goes wrong. Trust your gut. Sure. I get that. Actually, what you said at first makes a lot of sense. It's like you might feel better about the situation because I was going to bring up my own situation where –

50
00:18:20.146 --> 00:18:38.422
I left academia and came to work for Mark Manson. Right. And so that was – a lot of that was around kind of a gut, like minimizing regret, which again, what you said is fine. I still think it was the right decision. That might be the key point. You actually might have like taken care of my skepticism with this and with that. Like if you might feel better about that decision.

51
00:18:38.540 --> 00:19:08.527
But I mean, you know, there are certain situations, though, too, where it's just like there's not really a right or wrong outcome. It's just a values thing. Yeah. Or an emotions thing. Like with a job, like a long term, my long term fulfillment. Like I knew in academia there was this narrow path and there were a narrow set of outcomes. Yeah. And I was like, well, I'm going to go take the more variable path here with more variable outcomes and see what happens. And it worked out. And there's some survivorship bias there. I get that. Totally. But like a lot of that was a gut decision for me. Yeah.

52
00:19:08.527 --> 00:19:31.882
I will grant you that I think when it comes to primarily emotionally laden decisions or value-based decisions, then your gut probably has actually better access to that than your mind or your slow thinking system. Right. And I do think there is something to that, like trusting your intuition to know what's best for you or to know when you're going to be happiest.

53
00:19:31.882 --> 00:19:55.388
But it's like if my agent comes to me tomorrow and she's like, look, we've got three different publishers offering you three different book deals with different terms. What do you want to go with? I'm going to be like, OK. Obviously, I'm going to have a gut reaction. It's probably useful to acknowledge that and like recognize it. But it's also like you should sit and argue against it and think, you know, think in other terms.

54
00:19:55.473 --> 00:20:13.428
I would also argue in situations of like immediate, potential immediate danger. Like if you come, if you meet somebody, you know, like something's just off, I'm going to trust my gut and not interact with them. I'm okay with that. Yeah. Like I'm okay with that. You might err on the side like of being a little. Right. You might have some false positives. Right. Right.

55
00:20:13.428 --> 00:20:32.783
Yeah, that intuitive decision making, I would say this is probably only harming you if it is chronic. And like I definitely know some – OK, yeah. Some very, very woo-woo people who it's like – Everything. Everything is like, oh, I'm trusting my intuition. Right. Like, oh, the universe is telling me to do – actually –

56
00:20:33.880 --> 00:20:49.912
Yeah, I have a friend who is that way and – Telling me to eat three pieces of cake today and sleep with the next person I see. No, it's funny actually. No, I have a friend who they got very much into kind of the Joe Dispenza world and like –

57
00:20:49.912 --> 00:21:18.802
trust the energy like the universe is telling you and trust you're attuned to the energy of the universe and so you just trust your gut. My wife and I, we've basically watched them turn into the most self-serving, selfish, self-indulgent, completely detached from reality human and it's like it's fucking up a lot of their friendships, it's fucking up a lot of their relationships. It's a problem. It's a problem. And so I do think you have to be careful with –

58
00:21:18.802 --> 00:21:48.687
Your intuition because ultimately – your intuition is self-serving and that's fine in a lot of contexts like making a career decision. That's a self-serving decision. So you need to like – it's important to listen to yourself. But if you're thinking about in terms of like what party to invite people to or like what to do with your Saturday night or who to call when – like if somebody – a friend is going through a hard time, like how to respond to that.

59
00:21:49.413 --> 00:22:13.105
It's probably not going to be the best judge of a lot of those things. When the situation warrants a measured response. Yes. OK. All right. Yeah. All right. This was also Kahneman's point too, right? It's like ultimately system one and system two, you need both. Yeah. And they balance and counterbalance each other in various ways. So the last of the bullshit section, I think this one, this one might surprise some people.

60
00:22:13.105 --> 00:22:30.335
It surprised me a little. Yeah? It's funny. I had researched this before, so it did not surprise me. But I think this is definitely another holdover of probably our parents' generation. So the conventional wisdom, especially back in the 70s and 80s, they actually used to have therapeutic methods in the 70s around this of like –

61
00:22:30.368 --> 00:22:50.737
Scream into a pillow and like write all of your angry feelings onto a piece of paper and then flush it down the toilet. Like we'll call it catharsis theory. Yeah. I've also seen it described as like the hydraulic pressure theory of emotion, right? It's like, oh, there's anger pent up and you need to let it out. Otherwise – Boil over. Yeah. Otherwise, you're going to explode and all this stuff.

62
00:22:50.737 --> 00:23:15.526
This is bullshit. Most evidence shows no effect like screaming into a pillow or punching a wall or whatever. And what little effect size there is is actually on the negative side. So it shows that the more you scream into the pillow, the angrier you're going to be and the more angry you're going to be more often. And so it's this venting practice or the catharsis effect actually backfires and it just –

63
00:23:15.526 --> 00:23:40.973
Which makes sense because you're kind of training yourself to indulge in an emotion, which might be, I guess, marginally beneficial if it's an emotion that you've like traditionally suppressed within yourself. But indulging in an emotion is probably just going to lead to more – like a greater tendency to indulge that emotion. Now, you still need to process the emotion. Yes.

64
00:23:41.530 --> 00:23:56.752
Which is what the research finds is that actually finding better ways to actually calmly process, analyze it, be more introspective about it, be more self-aware around it. That's a much better way to deal with things like anger and frustration, any kind of angst that you have rather than just like, yeah.

65
00:23:56.752 --> 00:24:23.296
Acting it out. There was this one small study I did find, though, that it was like violent criminal offenders. Okay. Right? In a very controlled setting where they did some forms of catharsis with them. It seemed to help a little bit. But again, it was a highly controlled setting. And the times that do find either nothing or small positive effects that they do find, there's usually a lot of processing afterwards about the anger that they let out.

66
00:24:23.515 --> 00:24:41.960
So sometimes I think what it is is those people who are just so disconnected from their emotions to begin with, you use that anger to like maybe get them connected with it and then you really process it afterwards. But it's got to be highly, highly structured with somebody who really knows what they're doing. Yeah. Most of the time, though, in the kind of colloquial way we use it, it's yeah, it's it's harmful, actually.

67
00:24:42.044 --> 00:25:06.428
What I just noticed too is everything in our bullshit category is – it's basically unbridled – it's like letting your emotions loose without any check from the rational side of your brain. So whether it's just suppressing negative thoughts and diluting yourself into positivity, microdosing psychedelics, which suppresses your executive function, intuitive decision-making –

68
00:25:06.428 --> 00:25:23.438
or catharsis venting, you're in each and every case, you are kind of letting your emotion or your feeling brain off the leash. It's very indulgent. Yeah, yeah. And it makes things worse. No, I think that captures that category very well, actually.

69
00:25:27.185 --> 00:25:56.918
So moving on, that was number 16. We're moving up our ranking, up the charts. We're now moving into things that aren't harmful, but they're probably not helping either. This is our probably nothing category. Starting with number 15, this one was very upsetting, Drew. Very upsetting. Crystal healing. Okay. I had such high hopes. I had such high hopes. You know, you don't know this, but every podcast –

70
00:25:58.910 --> 00:26:25.184
I sit with my crystals here behind the table and I rub them. Where did you get these? They're my crystals. They heal my podcast chakra. I really don't like how you're touching those. Sorry. Sorry. All right. Before we get canceled, let me put these away. Okay. So no effects of these.

71
00:26:25.538 --> 00:26:31.748
Yeah, nothing. And very little research too. I kind of threw this in just for the lulls. Yeah.

72
00:26:32.204 --> 00:26:56.723
But I mean there are a lot of people who are really into the crystal thing. I mean I know a certain somebody whose girlfriend has been buying him crystals recently. I was getting pictures like, you like this one? You like this one? Right before we started recording. Yeah. What was the meme that you were talking about at lunch today? It's the single – Oh, yeah. Single guys. The single guy dilemma. Which is what? Yeah.

73
00:26:56.723 --> 00:27:06.848
Every single guy has a dilemma of making fun of like astrology and spirit crystals or getting laid.

74
00:27:07.709 --> 00:27:36.548
These are for decoration though. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. They're decorative. Okay. They're decorative. Quote unquote decorative. Okay. It's true though. There really is no evidence. Do we have anything to say about crystal healing and aligning our chakras to the vibrations of the crystal wisdom of the universe? They're rocks. They're expensive. They're very expensive. That was one thing I noticed when she was sending me pictures, the price tag on it. Maybe we should drop this into the bullshit category simply because if anything, it's just going to harm your bank account.

75
00:27:36.599 --> 00:27:55.465
This one is the placebo effect like on steroids. Okay. If you believe that crystals will have some healing power over you, whether that's like some mild pain or anxiety or whatever problem in your life and you engage in some ceremony, then yeah, you're probably going to see a little bit of something. If you don't.

76
00:27:55.465 --> 00:28:13.893
It's not going to. That's just, that is the placebo effect. That's a definition of the placebo effect. Yep. So there's a lot of ways you can go about doing that and spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on rocks is probably not the best one. It's pretty harmless. Yeah. This next one though might, it might actually not be harmless. Number 14.

77
00:28:13.893 --> 00:28:35.560
Willpower. In the literature, this is known as ego depletion. It's actually a very controversial concept within the psychological literature. A lot of psychologists strongly argue that it's just not even a thing. A lot of psychologists argue that it actually is very much a thing and it's very important. I guess how would we categorize this? It would probably be like …

78
00:28:35.560 --> 00:28:57.599
Would you call it like the willpower as a muscle theory of effort, right? It's like this idea that willpower is finite. It's something that you need to work and improve and practice and you can overexert yourself or some people just are born with a weak will and some people are born with a lot of willpower. Like how would you characterize this?

79
00:28:57.599 --> 00:29:16.600
Yeah, I think that's – I mean the whole ego depletion theory is basically you have a tank of willpower or whatever it is. If you work on something or you're focusing on something or you're spending a lot of time and energy on something, then your tank is drained over time. And then afterwards, you're not going to be able to apply any of that time and energy to anything else.

80
00:29:16.600 --> 00:29:35.332
Else very effectively, you know, this was – there was some early evidence for those kinds of things. Even like the whole – the lemonade study. I think if you remember that one. Yeah, yeah, with the sugar. If you don't have enough – if your blood glucose is low, you won't have enough willpower. So you should have a little bit of sugar before. That turns out to be – you know, there's more careful studies done. Not true. Not true.

81
00:29:35.332 --> 00:30:02.230
Will power, though, it's treated like a resource. I mean, yes, you have energy levels, just metabolic energy levels in your brain or whatever it is. But like the actual, is there a willpower center? No, probably not. The harmful thing is when you start to think that, oh, I only have so much. I have this little bit of willpower that I need to piecemeal out throughout my day or whatever it is. Otherwise, I'm just going to be exhausted in the middle of the day and I won't be able to get anything done. I think that's where like the more harmful willpower.

82
00:30:03.091 --> 00:30:19.139
What's interesting to me is that what you just said is probably super ineffective. Like if you really believe that you only have so much energy in the day and that you have to be very careful of like how you expend it, yeah, you're probably really going to underperform your potential.

83
00:30:19.139 --> 00:30:40.520
What's interesting though is that observationally you see the opposite as well. Like you see there's so much stuff out there that's just like, dude, you got to grind. You got to hustle. You got to push yourself. You got to do all this. And we consistently see that that advice also doesn't work. So it's like the people who are telling you, hey, willpower is kind of this fragile thing that you need to manage. That's not showing up in the research. But just –

84
00:30:40.520 --> 00:31:09.207
from my experience in this industry too, it's like all the people who are like, dude, you just got to fucking grind, bro. You got to push yourself. You got to like, we like all the new year's resolutions. Like none of that works, right? None of it works. None of it is like, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to lose 40 pounds and work 12 hours a day and, uh, run a marathon next month and, uh, you know, start getting up at 4am. Like it, it doesn't work no matter how, how hard you go, how hard you push yourself. Um,

85
00:31:09.207 --> 00:31:19.535
It's just, to me, it just seems like such a faulty framing of how things get done, of how, like, of, like, what motivation is or, like, what effort is.

86
00:31:19.822 --> 00:31:42.299
The better version of the advice out there that you sometimes hear, if you hear it at all, is set up the discipline systems. Yes. Right? So even when you don't feel like it, even when you have no willpower, quote unquote willpower, you set yourself up where it's more likely that you're going to do what you need to do. Yeah. Whether you want to or not. Right. That's not willpower though. That's just a form of discipline. Right.

87
00:31:42.299 --> 00:32:06.734
This harkens back to our procrastination episode last year where really the big conclusion we arrived at in that episode is that really productivity problems are emotional problems disguised as productivity problems. It's either you are – the work doesn't feel meaningful or it doesn't – it's not fun. It's not interesting. It's not connecting you to others. It's not fulfilling some deeper value or purpose. It's not fulfilling some deeper value or purpose.

88
00:32:06.734 --> 00:32:26.950
And I feel like this is kind of like motivation in a nutshell is kind of the same thing. Like willpower as a concept is just the idea of trying to force yourself to do something you actually deep down don't want to do or don't see the value in doing, which by definition means it's self-defeating in a lot of ways. Right, right.

89
00:32:26.950 --> 00:32:47.555
Right. Yeah. Example, like you go to a job you hate all day. Yeah. That's going to take a lot of willpower, quote unquote. Yeah. But then you get home and you're like, I don't know, you won't play video games. You go out with your friends or like all of a sudden you have all this energy and motivation to do things. It's not because you don't have any willpower. Like your willpower hasn't been drained. Motivation has been directed in the wrong place. Yeah.

90
00:32:47.555 --> 00:33:12.412
The irony is that if you're living very aligned, you don't experience anything as willpower. Yes. Yeah. Right? It's just – you're just doing things. You're just doing it. Yeah. You can just do things. Yeah. All right. That's number 14. Number 13, power posing. I remember when this was a thing for a hot minute. There was a big TED Talk I think in 2013. Yeah, I did. I never saw any of this stuff. So this was all new to me.

91
00:33:12.412 --> 00:33:40.205
You know, it's funny. This was a big thing. It was funny seeing this blow up because this was a big thing in the pickup artist community back in the 2000s. So the pickup artist, like a big part of the pickup artist scene for people listening who don't even know what this is. Yeah. First of all, I'm sorry. Second of all, what it was is a bunch of nerds in the mid 2000s got online together and started scientifically studying what attracted women and calling themselves pickup artists.

92
00:33:40.205 --> 00:33:52.000
it went about as well as it sounds like it went. But one of the things that they got really into, I remember at the time, is they got really into body language research. And they developed a lot. They actually...

93
00:33:52.186 --> 00:34:13.516
Like a lot of the old pickup artists were like, no, put your shoulders back, stand up straight because that – it's not just that it exudes confidence. It like trains you to feel confident. Right, right. And so I remember when all the power posing stuff came out. Amy Cuddy I think was the big researcher behind it. She did a TED Talk in 2013. It went super viral.

94
00:34:13.516 --> 00:34:33.513
She framed it much more in a professional setting, right? So it's like if you've got to give a presentation at work and you're like really unsure of yourself, it's like put the shoulders back, stand up straight, like create a power pose for yourself and then you'll suddenly feel confident. And there's all this kind of evolutionary backwards rationalization explaining it.

95
00:34:33.513 --> 00:34:45.747
I think even Jordan Peterson has gotten into it. I remember in 12 Rules for Life, he talks about how like shoulders back is like a status symbol and it trains your reptilian brain to see yourself as higher status and all this stuff.

96
00:34:45.848 --> 00:35:13.507
Anyway, I can keep going. Basically nothing there. Long story short, there's nothing there. There's some of the nuance here. Yes. You can have very short-term like little boosts in your mood or just energy, I guess, levels. Very short-term, very transient. There were some early studies too that purported to find some hormonal changes like increases in testosterone, that sort of thing. That's been debunked since then though too. Yeah.

97
00:35:13.507 --> 00:35:29.977
You can maybe get a tiny little boost out of it in some situations, but it's very transient and it's not really clear if that even translates to anything tangible anyway. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I wonder if it's just – and again, speaking of placebos, right? Like I wonder how much of it is just –

98
00:35:29.977 --> 00:35:47.645
Being aware of your posture in the moment, right? Like I can sit here. I'm kind of slouched over over the mic right now, right? Like let's say I'm sitting here and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to scoot up. I'm going to stand up straight, shoulders up. This is my power pose, Drew. Are you fucking ready for my power pose? I'm about to crush this fucking podcast. I'm about to crush this fucking podcast.

99
00:35:47.645 --> 00:36:08.873
It gives you an end to create a narrative in your brain. Yeah. You've activated some self-awareness there. Yes. Yeah. And then there's like a little embedded mini narrative there of like, okay, I'm sitting up with my shoulders back. I'm going to crush this podcast now, which then, you know, a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy of like you tell yourself that narrative. It generates the emotion that you're thinking about.

100
00:36:08.873 --> 00:36:36.802
Whatever you think about is it's just going to it's just going to multiply. OK. Power posing number 13 kind of a nothing burger. This one was interesting. This was a bit of a surprise. And it was funny because this actually got roped in, you know, when when we when I was doing the initial kind of sending the AI out to like go grab early research on a bunch of different topics. It just kind of lumped this topic in. And I was like, wow, I never thought about that topic. I don't know about you, but I remember when I was a kid, there was a whole thing about like, are you?

101
00:36:36.802 --> 00:37:00.173
a visual learner, an auditory learner, a kinesthetic learner. And if you're a visual learner, it means that you need like diagrams and videos and pie charts to understand a topic. Whereas if you're an auditory learner, like you need to like listen to a lecture and kinesthetic learners need to like touch and feel the thing and all this stuff. Anyway, not really a thing. Yeah.

102
00:37:00.173 --> 00:37:28.034
Not a whole lot there. I still hear that today. Like you still hear about learning styles today. So crazy. This one shocked me a little bit. Crazy thing I saw when we were researching this. I saw that over 90% of teachers in the United States believe this is a thing. And they're actually trained on it. Like there's still training that goes on on VAK learning styles. On grade school teachers. And there's actually like the research consistently shows that there's not really anything there.

103
00:37:28.034 --> 00:37:48.605
People who take this seriously and have done more careful studies, they've kind of concluded what it is is more that you're giving the person a choice or agency in the matter. Not necessarily their learning style. It's not that you're just sitting down and say this is how we're doing it. You're giving them some choice in the matter. Right. Whatever that is. Which they're probably going to – whatever they choose, they're just going to like more.

104
00:37:48.605 --> 00:37:59.253
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a liking effect than anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number, that was number 12. Number 11, affirmations. As you know, I've been shitting on affirmations for-

105
00:38:00.029 --> 00:38:21.275
This has been paying my bills for a long time. That's right. A long time. That's right. Affirmations, I mean, kind of similar to power posing. There's a little bit, a little, like, little. For certain people in certain situations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I found interesting is that the most evidence that they see of this is,

106
00:38:21.275 --> 00:38:36.665
is around people who are around like minorities, underprivileged people, people who feel like – who have been like oppressed against or like discriminated against in some way. Those people are some of the only people that you actually do see –

107
00:38:36.665 --> 00:39:06.196
legitimate effect size. The rest of the population, it seems to be a bit of a nothing burger. I think you've said this before, though, too. Just like if you're going from no self-worth whatsoever and completely just fixated on a negative, a huge negativity bias, then going to some form of positive thinking, then yeah, that's going to help, right? Right. Like in most situations. Most people, though, you're going to get little to no effect whatsoever. Right.

108
00:39:06.348 --> 00:39:15.123
I think that the thing that's interesting about the marginalized groups is that if you take people who have like actually seen evidence of the world treating them worse –

109
00:39:16.051 --> 00:39:45.498
then I think it makes sense to tell yourself, no, no, I am smart, I am able, I am lovable, people do like me. I can see why that would have power, whereas if you're just a random person living their life, what you see is that it actually, affirmations often backfire for people. Secretly, it's like you know, they're like, oh, I have to sit here and tell myself I'm smart and likable. It must mean that I'm not very smart and likable.

110
00:39:45.498 --> 00:40:08.060
And so what you see is that affirmations are kind of – I consider them like a win-more strategy. And there's actually – there's a few things in here that I would consider what I'll call win-more strategy. So like anybody who's played strategy games, oftentimes what will happen is that you'll find a strategy that seems on the surface like a really good strategy. But actually it only works if you're already winning.

111
00:40:08.060 --> 00:40:30.807
So it takes somebody who's winning and it just helps you win a little bit more. Whereas if you're not winning, it's actually not going to help you win at all. Affirmations is totally the same way. So what the research finds is that people who already feel good about themselves, if they give themselves affirmations, yeah, they feel a little bit better. But they already feel good about themselves. So they don't really need it. Whereas the people who feel bad about themselves, when they use affirmations, it actually makes them feel worse.

112
00:40:30.807 --> 00:40:49.505
Because what happens is they stand there in their bathroom and they're like, wow, I'm the kind of person who has to fucking look in the mirror and tell myself that I'm beautiful and that I'm smart and that I'm lucky. It's that gap, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what a loser I am. I can't believe I have to do this. Yeah. So it is – in a way, it's like polarizing mental health outcomes.

113
00:40:49.505 --> 00:41:04.793
It really, what it does is it highlights whatever the underlying belief actually is, either positive or negative, right? That's a good way to look at it. So if you're already there, if you are like that star athlete and you're on the free throw line one second left and you tell yourself you've got this, you're the man, probably going to help you a little bit. Right.

114
00:41:04.793 --> 00:41:23.457
But yeah, if you have just been taken loss after loss in your life and you're down and out and you tell yourself, no, I'm an amazing, good looking, hardworking, rich, whatever, you know, that's just going to highlight how you're not all of those things. Yes. So, yeah. Yeah. And that's what they found in the research as well.

115
00:41:23.457 --> 00:41:45.968
People with lower self-esteem actually don't benefit from this very well. Yeah. Yeah. It's a mixed bag. It's definitely a mixed bag. And even when it works, it doesn't work much. Right. It's a very, very small effect size. Last one in this category, in the probably nothing category, this one's a little spicy. I feel like we're going to get a lot of the Huberman, Tim Ferriss, biohacker people in our comments for this one.

116
00:41:46.087 --> 00:42:15.179
Morning routines. Yeah. Morning routines, number 10. You've been shitting on these for a while too. Dude. Yeah. Who cares? Do you not have like any morning routine? You know what my morning routine is? What is your morning routine? I wake up, no alarm. I wake up, I go to my desk and I work. And you get to work. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much what I do too. I don't fucking do anything. Yeah. Nothing. I don't need to like, come on. Come on guys. Like just do the thing. Okay. So what's, what's so wrong about morning routines? There's nothing. Okay. Okay.

117
00:42:15.989 --> 00:42:32.273
First of all, I do think this is a very personality-based thing. I would agree with that, yeah. And this is also – it bears on the research is that it is a very personal thing. Some people love their morning routines and they swear by it. Other people like me could not give two fucks.

118
00:42:32.273 --> 00:42:58.818
So my guess is that it probably maps very, very strongly to conscientiousness and probably a little bit to neuroticism as well. I think it's one of those things that because it's very tangible and measurable, like we all want an answer that feels very explicable. Yeah. Right? Like if I look at some super successful, admirable person that like I really admire and I want to be like them.

119
00:42:58.818 --> 00:43:24.620
Like the thing that actually makes them successful is that they have like this very rare combination of personality traits and background and history and various social influences and connections and relationships in their life. Like that's so messy and intangible and indefinable that like it's hard to get motivated and feel good about myself learning about that.

120
00:43:24.687 --> 00:43:47.114
Whereas if you tell me what they eat for breakfast and like how long they meditate in the morning, I'm like, I can do that. Let me do that. It gives you a sense of control. Exactly. It's like, well, let me just do what, I don't know, Steve Jobs does and then maybe I'll be a little bit more like Steve Jobs. So it scratches that.

121
00:43:48.312 --> 00:44:00.698
That underlying emotional itch. But it is – the evidence is mixed at best. Yes, it is very mixed. It's useful for some people, not useful for a lot of people. Right. And it is all over the map.

122
00:44:00.867 --> 00:44:29.453
So, yeah, some of the some of those situations in which it's not helpful. OK, again, it's mixed. Yeah, it can be helpful. But some of those situations where it's not matching your chronotype. Right. Yes. So if you're not a morning person and you try to be like be a morning person with a morning routine. Yeah. You know, there's there's genetic phenotypes of like early risers versus night owls, all of that. Right. That can change over time. Again, you you're an example of that. You used to be a night owl. Now you're an early bird pretty much. Right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

123
00:44:29.453 --> 00:44:54.547
The point though is, is that if you're mismatching those things and trying to like shoehorn in, you know, this morning routine and you're just not a morning person, like, yeah, don't, don't force that. Right. Yeah. People who are very rigid around this are probably those highly conscientious, highly neurotic people you're talking about. You almost get attached to that morning routine as like a, oh, it's almost a superstition. Yes. Like I have to start my day like this. Otherwise. It's another placebo.

124
00:44:54.547 --> 00:45:19.420
The whole day is ruined, right? Like I missed my whatever, my workout because something popped up with work or the kids or whatever it is. Now my whole day is ruined and I can't get anything done. There's some evidence to that. They found like a subset of people who are like that. Yeah. It's just like can't function without it. Well, that's not a healthy coping mechanism at all. That's just a crutch you're trying to leave at that point. Again, probably for some sense of control.

125
00:45:19.420 --> 00:45:49.087
Yes, you're seeking. It's really like a placebo is probably inspired by some credible story of like, OK, this I it makes sense why this would work. There needs to be some sense of meaning behind like whatever it is. Right. So it's like the people who believe in the crystal stuff, like there's some sort of metaphysical, spiritual explanation that makes them believe it. And because they believe it, they actually get some benefit out of it. I kind of same thing with the power poses. Like I feel like morning routines is probably in the same boat.

126
00:45:49.087 --> 00:46:13.893
Right. It's it's there's something about knowing like, well, the science says that it's optimal to work out at this hour and eat this macronutrient at this this hour of the day. And it's and these really successful people wake up at this time and they do these things first. If that gets you into a good emotional state first thing in the morning, if like that's what it takes.

127
00:46:13.893 --> 00:46:38.058
to get you fucking fired up by 7.30 a.m., 8 a.m., and, like, ready for your day, then great. Like, that's wonderful. There's nothing wrong with that. But, again, it's like let's not pretend there's anything magical about the routine itself. It's the confluence of understanding your own biology, psychology, and your environment, and then just finding –

128
00:46:38.058 --> 00:47:02.122
The repeatable pattern that reduces friction as much as possible. For me, it's just like I wake up excited to work. By the way, I've tried all this shit. I've tried literally everything. I've done all of – broken up every time. I've done like morning stretches, yoga, meditations, workouts, ice baths, smooth – like every smoothie, supplement, fasting, like everything. None of it stuck.

129
00:47:02.358 --> 00:47:31.585
eventually, by the time I was in my late 30s, I was like, I just kind of wake up wanting to work. Why don't I just work? And so I start working at like six. Within two minutes of opening my eyes, I'm working. And then I actually, this is the ironic part, I have a little bit of a morning routine like two or three hours later. So when I go have my breakfast, I've got a whole routine around my breakfast, which is like, that's when I do my household chores. That's when I listen to

130
00:47:31.585 --> 00:47:51.751
The podcast I like, that's when I eat. Any sort of like hygiene stuff I do then. Yeah, this isn't an argument against good habits. Yeah, but it's not – yeah. But it's not – that's not making me better. Right. It's not – that's – it's just I like it.

131
00:47:51.937 --> 00:48:10.448
If you're, if you are in like some sort of rut or something like that, and like you change to a new morning routine or whatever, the, again, it's a placebo effect probably, but it's just like, oh, now you're seeing the world in a different way, a slightly different way. And that could change something, but there's a lot of different ways you can do that. It's not necessarily the morning routine that's responsible for that. Yeah. Yeah.

132
00:48:13.992 --> 00:48:43.861
We are halfway through, Drew. We just wrapped up. We started with the bullshit section, the stuff that not only doesn't work but may actually be harming you. We noticed that that was mostly emotionally indulgent behaviors, things like intuitive decision-making or catharsis. We just went through the section that was – we agreed was probably mostly placebo, like kind of nothing, probably nothing there. But it's not really going to hurt you. That includes everything from power posing to positive affirmations to morning routines.

133
00:48:44.114 --> 00:48:59.116
Now we're getting into the stuff that works. And by works, I put like – for this next section, I put an asterisk next to works, which is that it technically works, but there are real questions around how much does it work.

134
00:48:59.116 --> 00:49:16.548
When does it work? For who does it work? Basically this – Mechanisms, yeah. This next section, it's all about stuff that kind of works some of the time a little bit. For some people. For some people. Starting with number nine, everybody's favorite. This is a classic.

135
00:49:16.548 --> 00:49:42.974
visualization. Yeah. Visualizing the future outcome that you want, visualizing the success, being confident. Oh, look at you, Drew, on that mic, just fucking owning this podcast. Seeing myself killing it. Crushing it. Millions of people out there in their cars, taking out their trash, being like, that Drew Bernie, man, he's got it figured out. How's that visualization working out for you? That's my routine every time I record.

136
00:49:42.974 --> 00:50:12.809
That explains the success. That's why we're doing so well. Got it. All right. Visualization. I will admit I – you know, the affirmations, I could always kind of understand why some people did them, why it worked. And I will say this too. On the margin – like I've definitely used affirmations on the margins. For example, like if I'm about to go on stage in front of like 2,000 people and I'm like –

137
00:50:12.809 --> 00:50:28.537
fucking nervous as shit, I'll be like, bro, you're going to kill this. Your talk is awesome. You're going to nail it. Like I'll give myself that little pep talk beforehand. But other than that, I've never really used affirmations. Visualization, I've never really been able to bring myself to do. Yeah. Same.

138
00:50:28.537 --> 00:50:49.512
I don't totally know why, but I do know some people who swear by it. And especially these days with manifestation coming back with the vengeance, like it is, there's stuff all over TikTok and Instagram of telling people to visualize their future, visualize their success, and then it will make it happen. Tell us, Drew. Is it that simple? No.

139
00:50:50.238 --> 00:51:17.238
So this one did. It surprised me a little bit in some ways. But then when you dig into it, you're like, oh, this makes a whole lot of sense. Yeah. OK, because because what they find, especially for like athletes or really any any physical like activity that you're doing. Yeah. And you have some level of competence around it. Positive visualization works fairly well. Yeah. They've done a lot of studies, especially with athletes, especially like elite athletes. Yeah. So as the competence level goes up, I think this works a little bit better, too.

140
00:51:17.238 --> 00:51:41.133
To me, that makes sense. That kind of stuff makes sense to me too. Anything physical, if I'm like a basketball player and I need to – if I need to like think about how I'm going to play against the guy who's going to play defense against me, it makes sense to me that visualizing that process, imagining him in front of me, imagining me like going around him, shooting over him or whatever, I can see why that sort of mental rehearsal –

141
00:51:41.588 --> 00:52:01.467
works what i don't understand is like i don't know you're sitting in your bedroom uh playing right you know like i don't know you're a slob on the couch and you're like yeah you're playing grand theft auto and you're just like imagining yourself yeah surrounded by dozens of beautiful women cheering for you okay for existing mm-hmm

142
00:52:01.467 --> 00:52:24.451
Well, you said the word already. There's a finer point we have to put on this. Okay. When you're talking about the athlete and, you know, if you're a basketball player or something like that and you are visualizing the process, you said, of how do I beat this opponent? How do I make this shot? How do I – whatever it is, right? Make this awesome pass. Yeah. Okay. You're visualizing the process. Yeah.

143
00:52:24.451 --> 00:52:41.343
Yes. Of that happening. Not the result. Not the result. Okay. Yeah. And that's what they found in the research is that if you, the positive visualization around the process of getting to where you want is actually what's the most important part. So yes, you're a slob sitting on the couch playing video games, nothing going on.

144
00:52:41.343 --> 00:53:03.112
Just imagining that tomorrow is going to be different is not going to do anything for you. Now, imagining getting off the couch and going to the gym and, you know, like actually trying at your job or whatever it is and all of the actual things that will get you somewhere, positively visualizing around those things. That's what's most important. This maps to from what I saw with some of the meta analyses.

145
00:53:03.112 --> 00:53:31.647
the largest moderator by far on whether visualization works or not is whether it is accompanied with planning. Yes, exactly, the process. Yeah, like if you – the whole manifestation juju, like it can work if it's accompanied with an actual action plan of like, okay, these are the five steps I have to go through, and okay, now I'm going to visualize what success looks like at the end of those five steps. Whereas if you're just visualizing the success and have no idea how you're going to get there, then it doesn't really do anything.

146
00:53:31.765 --> 00:53:51.020
Yeah, no, exactly. There's one one study in particular that I found around health behaviors, actually. So as people who were unhealthy or felt they were unhealthy and wanted to change something about their lifestyles. Right. And so they had it was a it was a control study that they used and they had some people visualize around the health behaviors that they wanted to engage in.

147
00:53:51.020 --> 00:54:18.138
With the commensurate plan. Yeah. That went along with it. Those people stuck to those health behaviors much more than the control group who didn't have the planning or the visualization around it. So, yeah, the plan and the process is actually the most important part around visualization. That makes total sense to me. Right. Which makes me wonder if you just take that away, how much benefit is actually left. Take what away? The planning. Oh, the planning. Oh, yeah. Probably not much, if any. Yeah. Yeah. It's –

148
00:54:18.138 --> 00:54:29.900
Maybe a little bit of a mood boost. And then, like you said, if it's like a physical activity, the mental rehearsal of that activity, like there's probably a marginal benefit to it.

149
00:54:30.136 --> 00:54:53.423
Yeah, there was another study, too, around just motivation and energization towards your goals. Yeah. And they just had people purely focus on results, on the outcome-based, what they call outcome-based imagery around this. And it decreased motivation for those people. Interesting. Yeah, if you just positively visualize that, you're immediately less likely to be motivated to go do those things.

150
00:54:53.609 --> 00:55:19.951
Whereas when you focus on the process and the planning, then you actually like create some momentum. So like with affirmations, there's a bit of a backfire effect here. Yes. Yeah. Potentially as well. It could be a rebound effect there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. If somebody wanted to put up a vision board, let's say, right? Like I've never been into those for sure, but usually those are very much outcome based and just, you know, I'm here. This is where I want to go. Nothing in between. So I actually looked at a couple of studies around vision boards and, uh, yeah.

151
00:55:19.951 --> 00:55:37.079
Yeah, just boost your mood a little bit. Yeah, right. You could do a short term. Yeah, you probably have a rebound effect though, too. So I think it comes back to the point that we made in like some of the entries at the bottom of this list. Right. Because one thing we noted is that all the things at the bottom of the list are just purely emotional indulgence with no sort of.

152
00:55:37.079 --> 00:55:54.595
mental planning or logic component to it. I think this is another example of like if there's no planning component, if there's no logic component married, like the visualization is probably an emotional boost. Like it gives you a little bit of a jolt of motivation or excitement.

153
00:55:54.595 --> 00:56:14.778
Indulgence a little bit even too. Right. Which is great. Yeah. Like, and, and it's definitely, I will say this, like whenever I've had big goals, like I definitely fantasize about what it's like to have that goal, but I've never considered that like a success strategy. It's, it's more just been like, man, it's going to be so awesome once I achieve this goal.

154
00:56:14.778 --> 00:56:34.859
And imagining what my life is going to be like once I do achieve that goal. Like I definitely do that. But I have no illusions that that is actually what's helping me achieve the goal. I think it's just – that's just being excited about my goal. It's actually the planning and the strategizing and the action that achieves it.

155
00:56:34.859 --> 00:57:00.509
Well, let's move on to the next one because this next one is a little bit spicy, a little bit of a surprise. I never would have guessed it would come out this high. Energy healing. Oh, Mark. Get you a plate of crow, maybe. This is the revenge of the woo-woo. All of our woo-woo stuff or most of the woo-woo stuff was at the very bottom of this list. This one somehow made it to the top half. Right, right.

156
00:57:00.509 --> 00:57:28.724
I might question our methodology a little bit on this one, but we'll see. We'll see what you have to say about this. There are different types of energy healing. Yeah. This is a very big like catch-all bucket that we made. I do have a hypothesis around this, which is that – and I was very curious about this. So as you probably know, there's a concept sometimes referred to as touch therapy, which is just that having human touch is in and of itself therapeutic. It helps people calm down. It helps people regulate their emotions.

157
00:57:28.724 --> 00:57:50.375
So things like – things as simple as just hugging somebody, touching somebody, holding somebody, having somebody put their arm around you. Like there are real emotional, psychological benefits of human touch. It's like very much an innate part of our nature. There is actually plenty of research on quote-unquote touch therapy and sure enough –

158
00:57:50.375 --> 00:58:16.750
The effect sizes of that research come out to be very similar to what a lot of the energy healing effect sizes look like, especially when it comes to managing pain. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So my hypothesis here is that the 99% of the benefits of energy healing actually come from the fact that another human is just focusing on you, touching you, and doing it in a sympathetic and caring way.

159
00:58:16.750 --> 00:58:43.295
I would probably agree with that. Um, I think, you know, the one, one study I found, it was actually a placebo controlled study as best as you could with this anyway. So Reiki, there's this, this old Japanese, ancient Japanese tradition called Reiki. And it's kind of like, it's, uh, either light touch or no touch, actually just kind of a practitioner, an experienced practitioner hovering over you. Yes. Um, while you're laying down, uh, you know, eyes closed, very relaxed environment.

160
00:58:43.295 --> 00:59:03.140
In the study, they used that versus a sham control they called fakie, which I thought was really funny, which is like just an inexperienced – nobody who's – they're not a practitioner and they just go in and kind of waving their hands around. Yeah, basically what it was. And they did actually find – so they compared that to a meditation group as well. Okay. And then they had just a weightless control, no intervention whatsoever. Okay. Okay.

161
00:59:03.140 --> 00:59:31.304
So they did find that Reiki, meditation, and the feiki group actually immediately improved a pain. This is with people with knee pain. Okay. So it did immediately, all three of those immediately improved it. Yeah. Which I thought was very interesting. So, you know, and about to the same degree as well. So meditation, Reiki, and the feiki. The interesting part with this study though, so that would suggest that Reiki and feiki, like there's just a placebo effect going on, right? The interesting thing though was a couple of months later they followed up with them. Mm-hmm.

162
00:59:31.304 --> 00:59:54.423
And my guess is what happened, you know, after the study, they take these measurements. How's your pain doing? They tell them. And then they tell them, okay, actually, you were in the fakie group. You were in the Reiki group. You were obviously in the meditation group. Yeah. Right? Two months later when they followed up with them, though, the only ones that still had improved pain were the meditation and the Reiki group. Interesting. The fakie group had went back to their old pain, which was interesting.

163
00:59:55.013 --> 01:00:10.673
So there could still be an expectancy effect. Well, I was going to say that that could just be the placebo. Right. Right. Right. It's just like that Reiki is a strong placebo basically. Right. So I – Okay. Keep going. I'm just saying it's like technically it worked. Right. Yeah. Technically it worked. Yeah.

164
01:00:10.673 --> 01:00:38.028
I have two personal experiences around this. Okay. One is that I dated a girl at one point who had taken a bunch of Reiki courses and was supposedly certified in Reiki. And she did it to me once. And I remember it was because I was having lower back pain. Okay. And she was like, oh, I can fix that for you. And I was like, really? And she was like, yeah, lay down, you know? And she like did her whole thing. Didn't fix it for me. Okay. Didn't feel a thing. I was like –

165
01:00:39.040 --> 01:01:00.404
made fun of her. I was like, what the fuck? You paid for this? I was kind of an asshole back then. Second experience. So I had a really good friend back when I lived in Boston, an older guy who was really into like energy healing. And he was an interesting guy because he was, he was definitely woo woo, but he was much more scientifically minded, more,

166
01:01:00.404 --> 01:01:22.628
Then – and often I would talk to him about things and he would even tell me. He's like, I don't know why this works but it does. And I was like, okay, that's fair. So anyway, he was a energy healer. He had trained under some guru for multiple years and it was like – he kept saying. He's like, no, it's really good. Like it's very powerful. And I was like, sure, whatever.

167
01:01:22.628 --> 01:01:40.094
I broke up with a girlfriend. I just got out of a relationship, was really depressed, really down. And I was staying with him one weekend. And he was like, he's like, you know, man, like, let me just do a session with you. Like, it can't, it can't make it worse. Right. Right. And I was like, sure. Fuck it.

168
01:01:40.094 --> 01:02:00.091
Why not? You're like anything. Yeah. I'm like, all right, man, whatever. Sure. So I like I laid down. He had this like little it was kind of like a massage table. So I laid down on a massage table and he started doing all this stuff. He sort of put his hands on all these places. And it was very at the time I was like, this is very meditative. It was very relaxing. Right. But.

169
01:02:01.103 --> 01:02:24.931
From what I could tell consciously, like I couldn't tell if anything was happening or not. Okay. And then afterwards he was like, that was a very intense session. You definitely want to take it easy for the next day or two. I don't know what it was. I slept like 10 hours that night, 12 hours that night. I was absolutely exhausted the next day. I had crazy fucking dreams. And...

170
01:02:26.416 --> 01:02:46.328
And I felt better a couple days later. Like it – I wasn't completely over the relationship. I wasn't over the breakup. It wasn't that I wasn't like depressed anymore. But I noticeably felt better a day or two later. And there was a weird like exhaustion, mental, emotional exhaustion that happened. And then there was definitely like a –

171
01:02:46.328 --> 01:03:11.877
To this day, I don't know what the fuck he did. And he used to always just kind of laugh and be like, you know, if I explained it to you, you wouldn't even believe me. And I was like, okay. So it could have been a placebo. I have no clue what happened. There's a lot of people with the Reiki that report the whole sleep thing. They're like, yeah, I slept great after a session. And it gave me the relaxation part, the self-awareness part, I'm sure. Yeah.

172
01:03:11.877 --> 01:03:41.864
factors into that. But yeah, I don't know. So I still don't. It works for some people. You know, one of the things that's not on here that we could have done is hypnosis. Yeah. Part of me, because this friend of mine, he also had a background in hypnosis. And so part of me wonders if there was like some aspect of like physical hypnosis that went along with it. I don't know. TBD. Yeah. One of the mysteries of Mark's life. Yeah. Again, it works. It works for some people. I think there is a huge expectancy effect. It works better if you think it's going to work better.

173
01:03:41.864 --> 01:03:55.921
But that said like, okay, that whole study I explained about the knee pain and all that. I mean meditation worked just as good as Reiki. Right. So you don't necessarily have to go and pay somebody probably a couple hundred bucks to wave their hands over you necessarily. Yeah. But if you're into it, I don't know.

174
01:03:56.140 --> 01:04:17.926
There is a cool little ceremony around it. There's a social aspect, like you said. Yes. Like that. OK, sure. Maybe there's different mechanisms between meditation and this. And just to speak briefly to the power of the placebo effect or the expectation effect, I don't think people realize like how absolutely powerful a placebo effect can be. And like all the things you just said about there being a –

175
01:04:17.926 --> 01:04:42.884
ritual around it, a social expectation around it, being in a context or a mental state where you're open to it, which actually if you look into hypnosis, the biggest thing about hypnosis is that you have to be open to being hypnotized. Like you need to be suggestible is what hypnotists call it. There's crazy, crazy stories of placebo effects in medicine around – there are things called sham surgeries.

176
01:04:42.884 --> 01:05:10.373
Where it's like they put people to sleep and they don't give them the surgery. And then when they make an incision and that's it. And then when they wake up, they they're told that they had the surgery and they're like, oh, great. My knee feels great, doc. Thank you. Yeah. And they don't have knee pain anymore. Right. Yeah. Especially around the pain stuff. It's not to say that like pains in your head or anything like that. But there is a very, very much like a connection between the mind body connection there is very real. Yeah. And pain is very much modulated by the way you perceive it.

177
01:05:10.373 --> 01:05:39.365
Big-ass question mark next to that one. But hey, energy healing made it to number eight. The thing that's interesting, I mean, looking at – so like the way we measured this, right? So most of these – it's actually an interesting juxtaposition between visualization and energy healing. So visualization, average effect size of the best meta-analysis we found was 0.29, which is a pretty small effect size. Like that's – Yeah, pretty small. That is in the neighborhood of a placebo. It –

178
01:05:39.500 --> 01:06:01.235
But 95% of studies found a positive effect from it. Energy healing, the effect size that we found, the best effect size that we found was 0.53, which is a medium effect size. But only 56% of the studies that we looked at found any reportable effect whatsoever. So it's one of those like –

179
01:06:01.235 --> 01:06:29.618
It works half the time and when it works, it works really well. Whereas something like visualization, it works almost all the time, but it's very negligible. It's very marginal. Yeah. All right. Let's move to the next one, which is a little bit more modern. Cold water immersion. Well, yes. Well, it's modern, but it's actually very ancient at the same time. So yeah. Excuse me. Dr. Bernie. There's a modern version of it. Right. But people have been dipping into cold water for thousands of years.

180
01:06:29.618 --> 01:06:49.261
Yeah, that is true. My biohacker bro science bias is kicking in. You've got a cold bath, don't you? I do have a cold plunge. It is the most unreasonable, impractical thing to own. Don't get me wrong. I love cold plunges, but it is such a pain in the ass to maintain and keep up. I mean –

181
01:06:49.261 --> 01:07:00.787
Who would have thought, Drew, that keeping a running body of water outside of your house takes a lot of fucking maintenance. They don't tell you that when you click on the Instagram ad.

182
01:07:02.457 --> 01:07:28.175
You're going to be cleaning this thing twice a week for the rest of your life. I live in Colorado, so in the winter, you can just go to the lake. You're going to go. Yeah, just jump in. It's funny because I remember there was a cold shower craze about 10 or 15 years ago. There was a bunch of TED Talks about it. A bunch of YouTubers made videos about cold showers. I remember doing the cold shower thing and being like, well, this is cool. Like it puts me in a good mood, but it definitely – I don't feel like it's changing my life or anything. Yes, yeah. Yeah.

183
01:07:28.175 --> 01:07:49.049
Interestingly, cold water immersion has positive mental health benefits. This is found fairly consistently. It's not uniform across the board, but it is like – at this point, it is consistent enough that it does seem to be a real thing. And with that said, there's a lot of caveats and nuances here.

184
01:07:49.268 --> 01:08:11.678
I would put cold water immersion in the win more category. From what I saw from the research, it's the sort of thing that if you're already kind of healthy and already in a good mental health space, it makes you feel better. Yes. But if you are not healthy and you have serious mental health issues, it could potentially make things worse. Yes. Just because it is –

185
01:08:11.678 --> 01:08:40.737
getting into a body of very cold water is physically and mentally stressful. Like it is a jolt to the system. And so if your system is already fragile for various reasons, that jolt can actually make things worse. Whereas if you're already pretty robust and resilient, then it can make you feel even more robust and resilient. There's also just a like consistency aspect to it too. Doing it once, like you said, you might get some short term, Hey, I feel better for the rest of the day or a couple hours. Um,

186
01:08:40.737 --> 01:09:03.350
Doing it every day, probably not either too. There's a little bit of a U-curve here, like a sweet spot you got to hit. But like consistency over time when you're already healthy, like you said, you have all those other things taken care of. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Probably helps in the margins. Yeah. I do – Around things like stress and anxiety especially. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. I do it pretty consistently in the summers. Yeah. I'm too much of a pussy to do it when it's –

187
01:09:03.350 --> 01:09:29.860
It's cold outside. Oh, yeah. Those freezing L.A. winters out here. It gets cold, man. I had to wear a jacket a few days ago. It was rough. It's tough. Winter in L.A. is tough, Drew. You have no idea. I mean sometimes you go to a restaurant and they seat you outside and it's windy. And they bring you a blanket. It's very uncomfortable. Bring your blanket with a heater and everything. It's a problem. It's a big problem out here. I know.

188
01:09:29.860 --> 01:09:53.063
Anything else we want to say about cold water immersion? I feel like all the bro science people are probably angry that we're not lauding the benefits of this. Like this is the number one, yeah. I have a little bit of a theory around this one, actually. And like I said, people have been doing this for a long time. It's an ancient practice using cold water immersion for health purposes. It goes way, way back, thousands of years as far as we know.

189
01:09:53.131 --> 01:10:09.331
My theory, you know, kind of the modern rendition of it though too, a lot of people point to like the Scandinavian countries that do this, right? They'll go out and, you know, get a hole in the ice in the middle of winter and they're all jumping in it. There's a huge social aspect around that too. And I think this is what a lot of people miss is –

190
01:10:09.331 --> 01:10:32.855
The real benefits come from you getting together with a bunch of people, going out and doing something kind of weird and strange together in a little bit. Like it's out of the norm, shocks your system a little bit, but you're all doing it together. I think that's actually would probably give you more benefit, especially around stress reduction, any kind of anxiety you have, depression, whatever it is. Interesting theory. Yeah. There's actually a huge social component to it. And so when, you know, they market you.

191
01:10:32.855 --> 01:10:43.030
an ice bath to put in your backyard and go do it by yourself. Yeah. You might still get some of that, that benefit, but I think it's going to be smaller than if you would, you know, go out to some frozen Lake and,

192
01:10:43.385 --> 01:11:13.372
I buy that. I buy that. Although I imagine they probably control for that in a lot of the research. Sure, yes. But I do agree with that. And it's funny too because it's such an LA thing. But a bunch of my friends and I, we get together to do cold plunges. Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah. It's like a thing to do out here. Right, right. Another interesting caveat that is actually really important to point out, two things actually that both surprised me. One is that colder water isn't necessarily better.

193
01:11:13.372 --> 01:11:37.756
At least for mental health benefits. Okay. There might be certain recovery benefits or whatever that colder water is more beneficial. But you don't get any added effect by like making it ice cold versus just really cold. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then the second thing is that like you need to work up to those colder temperatures. If people just jump into freezing ice water –

194
01:11:37.756 --> 01:12:02.410
point blank, like with no work up to it or no experience, then again, you can set yourself up for a certain level of system shock and have worse outcomes than, um, than if you gently push yourself up to it. One thing I've noticed is I really enjoy a cold plunge down to maybe 50 degrees Fahrenheit, like, which is 10 degrees Celsius. Anything below that,

195
01:12:02.832 --> 01:12:17.969
in my opinion, it hurts. Okay. Yeah. And I'm like, why, why would anybody do this? Uh, so I was happy to see that. Yeah. I only looked at like the, the psychological outcomes for this. Have you like looked into more of the physiological stuff? Like I, I've,

196
01:12:17.969 --> 01:12:34.253
heard before, like if you, you know, the cold plunge will like help you burn off like internal fat reserves that you have or like the brown fat around your organs and stuff. There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff around, uh, my, my understanding is that it's actually sauna that's

197
01:12:34.321 --> 01:12:54.773
Oh, so it's heat therapy instead. Well, heat therapy, I believe, is much better for your cardiovascular system. Oh, okay. And then the cold therapy, I believe, is better for, like, body composition and recovery. I've used it for recovery primarily. It's funny. I don't notice a huge difference in my recovery when I use it. Yeah.

198
01:12:55.162 --> 01:13:14.770
I notice a big mood boost. Like I get out and I'm like glowing for the next hour and a half. Like I just feel I'm in a great mood. I feel like I have tons of energy. I think it's the combination of adrenaline and dopamine. Like it does release just a massive amount of dopamine into your system.

199
01:13:14.770 --> 01:13:28.287
I just like how it makes me feel. I personally can't attest to any sort of physical benefits or mental health benefits either. I mean, sure, maybe it marginally makes me a little bit happier. Right. Yeah. I mean, hey, if you need shock data, like some funk.

200
01:13:28.625 --> 01:13:51.794
Yeah. Give it a try. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. All right. Let's move to the next one, which is a very interesting one, which I also have a lot of experience with. Yeah. Speed reading. Yeah. This actually really tracked my expectation. Like if you had asked me before we researched this where I thought it was going to come out, I would have said kind of middle of the pack. It works, but with a lot of asterisks and caveats. Yeah. And I think I would have said...

201
01:13:51.794 --> 01:14:08.213
Exactly what we're going to say here, which is that you can train yourself to read faster. You cannot train yourself to read that much faster. It's like marginal improvements in speed. So important to note here –

202
01:14:08.213 --> 01:14:35.011
The average person, I believe, reads around 200 words per minute. A lot of the advertising around speed reading promises that they can get you up to 1,000 words per minute, which is a 5x increase. Yeah. What the research shows is that really what's realistic for most people is that you can go from 200 to 300. Okay. Or 200 to 400. Okay. That's pretty decent though, yeah. It's significant, right? Like imagine cutting – every book you read, it takes –

203
01:14:35.011 --> 01:15:02.146
30% less time. Like that is actually very significant. And that's my experience as well. I think now I read at 350, 400 words per minute or something like that. Two interesting caveats around this is that the research on reading speed basically finds that it's mostly genetic. It has to do with, I forget what the actual word for it is, but it's your eye's ability to see peripherally. Yeah, right. Right.

204
01:15:02.146 --> 01:15:25.653
Like so if I'm focusing like on your face, like how aware is my vision of like the stuff that's in the peripheral parts of my vision? So some people apparently have much, I guess, a wider aperture of visual information that they can take in simultaneously. And some people have like an extremely narrow aperture of the visual information that they can take in. And so what they find is that people who are –

205
01:15:25.653 --> 01:15:43.203
just genetically have a wider aperture, they can take in more words simultaneously. And so the core technique of speed reading that they teach you, like any speed reading course you take, the first thing they teach you is about your kind of internal monologue as you read. And they give you techniques to –

206
01:15:43.203 --> 01:16:11.772
help shut that off. Okay. Because once you shut that off, you can actually start ingesting multiple words simultaneously. Because the argument is that it's that internal monologue is your... It's what slows you down. It's your speed ceiling. Okay. Because you have to wait for your brain to like read every word to you. But if you can train your brain to stop saying every word out loud, you can ingest words much quicker. Okay. And you can ingest like chunks of words, like phrases and stuff simultaneously. So it's just kind of like you just like absorb the content.

207
01:16:11.772 --> 01:16:40.325
Except of the words or what? I've never tried speed reading. Yeah. So I don't know. And I'm a slow reader. Yes. And it's very much like every single word in my head. The answer is yes. All right. But that brings us to the next caveat is that they find that speed reading techniques decrease retention. Okay. Of course. So you are – There's a tradeoff there. Yes. So there's a tradeoff. You recall things worse. You remember things worse. You remember details worse. Okay. And that is probably a direct result of eliminating that internal monologue.

208
01:16:40.325 --> 01:17:00.946
Because when you construct that internal monologue, it's kind of like writing stuff down. There's a cliche that people say there's a magic to writing things down. And it's like I don't think there's a magic. I think it just forces your brain to slow down and focus enough. Get very clear. Yeah. That it makes a larger imprint on your memory.

209
01:17:00.946 --> 01:17:16.606
And I think the same is true with – there's probably just an inherent tradeoff with speed of informational ingestion and retention. OK. And as you speed up, that retention goes down and as you slow down, that retention probably goes up. Right. OK. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

210
01:17:16.606 --> 01:17:32.637
There's been studies, too, where just metacognitive training, like just making you aware of those sorts of processes in your in your mind, like speed reading courses versus just generic metacognitive skills. No difference there, too, which makes sense.

211
01:17:32.637 --> 01:18:00.245
Yeah. And because speed reading is teaching you a metacognitive skill. Yes. If you just have metacognitive skills in general, you can do just as well. So, yeah. So, Tyler Cowen is who I believe we both follow. Yeah. Writes the blog Marginal Revolution. He is a person I believe that are known as like hyper readers. Like he literally reads, I think, three, four, five books a day on average. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah.

212
01:18:00.245 --> 01:18:28.156
And it's funny because I listened to an interview where he was asked about this. And he said, he was like, I did research on it. It seems to be primarily genetic. It's like a very rare thing. He said, I've always been a fast reader my entire life. And I've only gotten faster the more I've read. And he actually made that point. He said, it's like anything else. The more you read, the faster you get at it. Right. And so the faster you get, the more you can read. So it becomes kind of a virtuous cycle.

213
01:18:28.156 --> 01:18:53.587
But he actually made a very interesting point, which I agree with as well, is he said the more you read, the more stuff you already know. And so when you pick up a new book – Oh, you could skip a whole bunch of it. Yeah, which is – I've experienced this within certain topics and domains. So like if I pick up a pop psychology book, generally speaking, it's like I open chapter one and it's like, oh, it's the marshmallow test. I've read that fucking 100 times. I see. So I skip it.

214
01:18:53.587 --> 01:19:23.472
I'm like, okay, I already know the point he's making and I skip to the next section and then I read for, say, two or three pages and then it's like, then it's the Milgram experiment. It's like, ah, I know the Milgram experiment. All right, so let's skip the next three or four pages and it's like, okay, now what point is he making? So now I technically just, quote unquote, read 10 pages in like a minute. Whereas somebody who's not familiar with those things is like probably still on page two. Okay, yeah. Reading as a skill in general, that's a very good example of

215
01:19:23.523 --> 01:19:44.380
oh, if you're reading a book and you come to something that you know, skip to the next chapter, you're going to be a faster reader, a more effective reader just in general. So yeah, that makes sense. Which is, it blows my mind that people don't think about that. Like I've said this, like I've made, we've made content around it. Like I've made content around this and people are just like, oh my God, I never thought, I'm like, and I, some of it, I think it's just. I was that way before I heard you talk about it too. So yeah.

216
01:19:44.380 --> 01:20:07.651
I just like – some of it I think is the education system because it's in school. You have to read – Do the assignment. You have to read every fucking paragraph and you're going to be tested. You don't know what you're going to be tested on. So you have to read the whole thing. Whereas it's like in real life, if the only thing you care about is chapter 8, just read chapter 8. Right. There's not an exam at the end of this. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. Just read chapter 8 and put the book down. Go pick up another one.

217
01:20:07.651 --> 01:20:35.613
You know, one of the realizations I had around this too was when I was in high school and my cousin, he was like a year older than me and he had to do a book report. And he just read the first page and the last page of the book and he got like an A minus on it or something like that. And I was like, oh, shit, you can do that? So, yeah. Talk about 80-20. I know. I know. Yeah. All right. We are back and we're in the final five, the five self-help techniques that actually work.

218
01:20:36.473 --> 01:20:48.438
counting down, number five, is actually something I have never done in my life. Oh. That might surprise you. Okay. Gratitude journaling. Okay. You're all right.

219
01:20:50.412 --> 01:21:15.438
You seem stunned. Have you ever just like – Been grateful for things? Right. Like consciously like, okay, I'm going to be like – So I've done like gratitude meditations. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I've actually never gratitude journal. I'm what I call a crisis journaler. Yeah, yeah. So I like – I journal when shit's hitting the fan and I want to jump off a bridge. That's when I journal. Okay. I've never like journaled being like, I'm so grateful for Drew. He's such a good co-host.

220
01:21:15.674 --> 01:21:38.692
But you've practiced gratitude in some way. Like you said, meditation. Gratitude's awesome. Okay. I looked a little bit more into like just gratitude interventions in general. We can talk about the journaling aspect of it too. But gratitude interventions in general. It doesn't have to be journaling, which is I think maybe a relief for some people. Because I just always found it hokey too. Just a little bit like write these three things down. And you end up just kind of making it another chore. Yeah.

221
01:21:38.692 --> 01:22:05.422
Yeah, it's probably useful differentiating those. By the way, journaling works by and large. And gratitude practices work. So you can combine them. You can do them separately. But why don't we just focus on gratitude practices? First of all, like you can do – like I said, you can do the journaling. You can do the meditations. You can just take a moment and do it. I think really what I've found though too – and this checks out kind of anecdotally is like if you're not a grateful person, this is probably something you need to do.

222
01:22:05.422 --> 01:22:34.683
Yeah. You're going to have the most. There's like a kind of a floor effect here. Yes. You can't go any lower. You may as well try it and it's going to help you. Right. In some way or another. I just find myself to be a pretty naturally grateful person. I think I've just been fortunate in my life. And like I can look around and be like, oh, I'm very grateful that I have these opportunities or whatever it is. The other thing, though, that I found about in the research, which was very interesting. It works. Gratitude works. It helps reduce stress. It helps with depression. It helps with anxiety to some extent.

223
01:22:34.683 --> 01:23:01.565
The thing is, is again, we go back to that question compared to what? If you're doing nothing and you start a gratitude practice, that's going to help you. Yes. If you're doing nothing and you start a meditation practice, we're going to talk about that in a little bit. Or you start some sort of positive intervention of any kind, like actively positive, trying to like change things. It's about the same as gratitude as well. So I don't know if there's anything necessarily special about gratitude. I think being gracious and being grateful is.

224
01:23:01.733 --> 01:23:25.257
is a good thing, like just in general, and it has other effects we can talk about too. Gratitude works and it's very accessible. It's a very easy thing for a lot of people. I just don't think there's necessarily anything special about it. Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, in terms of just the aggregate data, this had a very small effect size. Of the top eight, it had the smallest effect size. But very consistent.

225
01:23:25.257 --> 01:23:49.422
It was extremely consistent. It was the most consistent out of everything that we analyzed. Out of 166 studies, 98% of them found a positive effect of gratitude practices. So it is consistent but small. Right. I find gratitude very easily. Right. I'm often – like one of my first reactions – anytime anything goes wrong, one of my first reactions is always to think of like why I'm lucky to have this problem.

226
01:23:49.422 --> 01:24:05.572
And it's just kind of a default that my brain goes to. So I could see why for seniors – like but if you're somebody who tends to dwell on problems and always think very negatively, then like I could see why this would be a very useful practice to train in yourself.

227
01:24:05.622 --> 01:24:21.164
And especially this is another one where consistency matters a lot. If you if you, again, are going from a not very grateful disposition to try to instill more gratitude in your life, being consistent with it matters a lot more than just like doing it haphazardly. Right. Yeah.

228
01:24:21.164 --> 01:24:50.273
There's just a little bit of a compliance issue sometimes with people. Like, you know, if you're trying to like not be depressed or anxious or something like that, like you're probably going to be better off with medication and therapy than you are just like a straight gratitude practice. Right. It can help on the margins. Again, the effects are usually small, but they're consistent. There was a study, too, an interesting study I found, too, where they called it a menu-based gratitude practice. So you could choose from a number of different of these practices. There was journaling. There was meditation. There was just –

229
01:24:50.273 --> 01:25:19.653
like thinking about it, those sorts of things. People were way more compliant when they had like a menu of options to choose from so they can mix it up a little bit and they stuck with it longer doing that. Isn't it funny how you see that show up in so many different study, like experiment constructions? Like it just, when you give people choice, they're more likely to adhere to it. Right, right. Even if the choice is kind of fake and made up. It really is. It's a bit arbitrary. Yeah. For sure. Okay. Anything else you want to say about gratitude or are you just grateful for this section? Yeah.

230
01:25:19.653 --> 01:25:46.889
I am. I'm so grateful for this podcast, Drew. Oh. I'm so lucky. The one study that I found that really focused on this question is like gratitude versus what? Right. If it's just measurement only versus doing nothing, the effect size is pretty – like it's moderate, I would say. If it's compared to alternate activities, like just listing out the things you did during that day, good nor bad, whatever, writing about just neutral events that happened –

231
01:25:46.889 --> 01:26:07.612
You get a little bit of a smaller effect. And then if you compare it to positive interventions, like I said, things like encouraging people to engage in acts of kindness or they have this best possible selves exercise where you write about like this is my best self when I'm my best. This is how I am. Yeah. The effect kind of starts to pretty much go away. Go away. Interesting.

232
01:26:07.612 --> 01:26:37.598
So it's more – again, I don't think there's like a specific gratitude mechanism necessarily. It's just being more self-aware around just the positive events in your life I think in general. Yeah. It's probably just helpful. Yeah. All right. Number four, meditation. OK. A big favorite. A big crowd favorite. Right. Comes in at number four on this list. I would expect it near the top.

233
01:26:37.598 --> 01:27:04.379
are a little surprising. Yeah. But I'm not surprised that it is in this cat. It definitely works. At this point, we know that. There are caveats. We covered that in our meditation episode last month. But by and large, for the vast majority of the population, it is a good thing. And your mileage is going to vary. But generally speaking, it's probably going to help something. There's been tons of study on meditation as we covered in the meditation episode. But like the meta-analyses around this just show

234
01:27:04.379 --> 01:27:30.569
Yeah, you can, especially for stress and anxiety. So they have this, there's a thing called mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is a meditation, a modified meditation kind of program. It's like an eight-week program they've used that goes all the way back to the 70s or 80s, I think. And they've consistently used this in work settings and personal settings and organizational settings, whatever, to decrease feelings of stress, anxiety, even some depression to some degree. And it's effective and it works.

235
01:27:30.569 --> 01:27:49.250
This is another thing too. Another study I found as well though was a comparison to like an SSRI medication. Like basically equivalent. Yeah. If you do like a consistent mindfulness-based activity that you can do has about the same effect as a lot of SSRIs for depression. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.

236
01:27:49.250 --> 01:28:08.116
Again, though, just like with gratitude, there is a little bit of an issue around the active control problem. So compared to nothing, meditation is great. Yeah. Compared to other positive interventions. Like for instance, there was a pretty well done study around active health education versus meditation. So just teaching people about meditation.

237
01:28:08.116 --> 01:28:34.475
healthy behaviors in their lives versus a meditation group, they did about the same as well. Interesting. So, you know, in the meditation episode, we talked about like the different types of people who probably would benefit from meditation more than others. You're just somebody who's just like, I just can't meditate. You don't have to meditate. It's like you don't have to journal. All of these things. Right. But finding ways to be mindful and more intentional in your life is obviously going to help quite a bit. I would say we have definitely –

238
01:28:34.610 --> 01:28:55.957
Not hit. There's maybe one thing on this list. I think number one is might be the only thing that I would say people have to do. I would have the confidence to say that people have to do. Yeah. You have to learn how to do it. That's a good point. I think everything else on this list is optional. Yeah. And your mileage is going to vary. And pretty much everything past –

239
01:28:55.957 --> 01:29:14.131
Number 10 or 11 is like probably you're fine not doing. Yes. Now, all of that said, I would still encourage people to meditate because not for these reasons, though, of like stress reduction, even or better sleep or all of this. This is the point I made in the meditation episode.

240
01:29:14.300 --> 01:29:30.854
The reason you should meditate is so you can know your mind better. Yes. And you can control your intention. Know yourself better. Know yourself better. Right. That might have all of these secondary effects, all these secondary benefits. But the primary goal of meditation is just to know your mind and yourself better.

241
01:29:30.854 --> 01:29:55.728
I 100% agree. And it's funny too. If you talk to any serious meditation practitioner, they always say they're like stress reduction is like you're an inch deep in a 20-foot pool. Right? Like you barely even crack the surface of what meditation can do. Sure. It can lower stress and anxiety. But like that is honestly like –

242
01:29:55.728 --> 01:30:12.350
the very, the very first sliver of the benefits that you get. It's the hook that like a lot of like marketers kind of use. Oh, you get better sleep and stress and anxiety and depression and all of that. Yeah. The real benefit comes much deeper. Yes. All right. Number three, this was a surprise for me. Hmm.

243
01:30:12.670 --> 01:30:40.902
But then once I started reading through the research and the summaries, I was like, oh, okay, that actually makes sense. So there is a very famous self-help book from the 1980s. It's called Eat That Frog. It's one of those classic self-help books that probably should have been an article. It was written by Brian Tracy. But the concept of Eat That Frog, it's you take the most important task of your day and you do it first. That's the whole book.

244
01:30:41.476 --> 01:31:09.235
More or less. I mean there is a system of prioritization that he has within the book. Sure. And then you take – there's like kind of a process that he walks you through to figure out what that most – what your frog is. But then the advice is just that's what you should do first thing every single day. So that's all fine and dandy. And I think we briefly mentioned this in the procrastination episode. And we actually – I think you and I, we were a little bit ambivalent about it. I was surprised to see it land this high.

245
01:31:09.235 --> 01:31:27.967
It turns out 95% of the benefit of Eat That Frog is figuring out what the most important thing is. And then 5% of the benefit is the fact that you did it first thing in the morning. Yeah. So it's almost like a Trojan horse to just get you thinking about your priorities and what matters to you.

246
01:31:28.169 --> 01:31:53.920
That in and of itself like drastically changes outcomes for people. Whether you do it first or second or at 11 a.m. or 2 p.m. is probably like secondary. Right. Yeah. You don't – you actively practice the opposite of this, don't you? Yeah. I eat cake first and then eat my frog. Okay. Second. Yeah. And it seems to work for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, you kind of like have a warm up a little bit in the morning and then you get to the stuff you need to do.

247
01:31:53.920 --> 01:32:16.010
But it is – I am very often thinking about what is the most important thing that I can be doing with my time. What is the thing I should be working on? What is the thing I should be thinking about? Like those are questions I think about constantly. And there's so much value in that. So much value in that. And I do agree that like I think a lot of people go through life never considering those things.

248
01:32:16.060 --> 01:32:40.681
Well, think about the clarity you achieve when you do that. I think that's what a lot of people want when they're thinking about – the constant question they're asking is, what should I be doing next? Right. If you have the most important thing in front of you, well, there's no question. Right. What you should be doing next, there's no anxiety around what you should be doing next, you just do it. Yeah. Interestingly, though, too, on top of that effect, I think there's another effect that this has, which is –

249
01:32:40.681 --> 01:33:09.503
They found in several different studies that if you like starting with the hardest task first, ending your day on the easier tasks, that actually has increases self-efficacy. So it increases kind of like your confidence that, oh, that was a good productive day rather than doing it the other way around. Makes sense. For whatever reason. So it might be a little mind trick here that you're playing on yourself. But still, like people just feel better. Like I got all this stuff done. I ended my day on a high note too because it was an easy task. Like I think it's just the momentum you create from it.

250
01:33:10.280 --> 01:33:25.957
You're not necessarily any more productive is the thing. So even if you switch those around, you do the easy things first and you do the hard things later, you still get the same amount of work done. Right. But you feel better about it. You feel better about it. Which means you're more likely to continue doing it that way. Yeah. In the long run. So I think that's a huge benefit as well.

251
01:33:25.957 --> 01:33:49.312
It kind of reminds me of what we talked about with intuitive decision making, which is that listening to your gut doesn't make better decisions. Right. Yeah. But you feel better about those decisions. Right. Which gives you the perception that you made better decisions. Yeah. There is some value in that. Yeah. It gives you some peace of mind. Sure. Why not? Yeah. And I can absolutely see the self-efficacy argument of like just knowing you did the hardest, most important thing first in your day.

252
01:33:49.312 --> 01:34:10.507
And it's like 930 in the morning and you're like, I just – I already accomplished something very, very valuable. I can see how that could give you a high that you can kind of ride through the rest of the day. So I would have guessed that eat that frog would have been kind of in the middle of the pack. It would have been one of those maybe depends on the context, the person, what you're doing. Right.

253
01:34:10.507 --> 01:34:30.250
I'm a little bit of a convert here. The prioritization thing really hit close to home when I saw that. Obviously, it's like that's basically what the subtle art and not giving a fuck is about is prioritizing. I definitely understand the power and the clarity that comes from that. I guess I just never thought of it in those terms. Like I never –

254
01:34:30.250 --> 01:34:52.728
A lot of these things are like that. Yeah. It's not eating the frog that is the benefit. It's the process that leads to eating the frog that is the benefit. Very much similar to like the visualization stuff that we talked about. It's not universally beneficial across all tasks. They found, you know, just in some realistic settings when they're doing more naturalistic observations and stuff, it's not always clear that this works the best.

255
01:34:52.863 --> 01:35:18.850
Also too, there's, let's go back to the ego depletion and the willpower thing. Like some people think, oh, I need to do this thing first in order to have energy. Maximize my willpower. Yeah. That's not really how it works either. So because again, you can do the easy task first and the hard ones later and you still get the same amount of work done. If you're just trying to like get up in the morning and eat that frog, but you're a night owl, that's not really going to help you a whole lot either. So yeah, I mean, there's some, there's some borders to it for sure. Yeah.

256
01:35:18.850 --> 01:35:36.755
Overall, I was very surprised by it too. I was also surprised by the next one. And this is – people are going to listen to this and they're going to think that I totally planted – I put a gun to you and our research team's head and it was like, put this number two, motherfuckers. You better find those studies. Right, right.

257
01:35:36.755 --> 01:36:00.329
Number two is reading self-help books. Yeah, bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy, reading self-help books. So I had done some research on this before. So I knew reading self-help books did something. Like I knew that there was a consistently positive effect size. I did not expect it to be this big. We looked at 188 studies. 93% of them came out in support. Average effect size of 0.56, which is –

258
01:36:00.329 --> 01:36:17.052
Decent. Like that's no – like you're approaching kind of effect size levels of some modalities of therapy at that point. And so, yeah, I – shocked. A little shocked, especially as somebody who's – I know it sounds weird coming from a self-help author. But like –

259
01:36:17.052 --> 01:36:35.952
I don't think super highly of this genre. I don't – I definitely – and I think a lot of self-help books are pretty trashy. I was – yeah, I was surprised. Well, OK. I mean they did find the quality of the information matters a lot. Bibliotherapy itself as it's defined like in therapy and in psychology –

260
01:36:35.952 --> 01:36:58.210
There's some structure to it as well. It's like they find it's most helpful, like if you're in therapy for a specific problem or issue and, you know, the therapist assigns you some books and walk you through it. The more structured it is, the better you get out of it. That said, there's still some just like unstructured evidence as well or evidence around unstructured reading that also shows a lot of benefit too.

261
01:36:58.210 --> 01:37:24.485
I don't know if I was surprised by this. And maybe that's just because I over-intellectualize things. But like some of the biggest like aha moments I've had have definitely been reading books. Yeah. Of all kinds. And even self-help books, sure. I've changed behaviors based on them. I mean, there is definitely a point where you go too far with this, obviously. Yeah. Like, you know, you procrastinate changing anything because you want to read more. Yes. But just in terms of like –

262
01:37:24.485 --> 01:37:47.317
changing your mind i don't think there's a better way for me anyway than like reading a book that really lands you know what i mean i think maybe the thing that makes me wrestle with it is the unevenness of the quality because like yes for example like if i think about all of the self-help self-improvement health books pop psychology books that i've read

263
01:37:48.447 --> 01:38:15.937
It is definitely a very – it's definitely a power law distribution, right? There's probably two or three that were very impactful on my life that I would call like quote-unquote life-changing. There's probably another 10 that I would say like were influential. We're definitely a positive influence. And then there's probably like 100 that I was like, okay, well, that was a thing. Or I just didn't finish them or I was like, wow, that's –

264
01:38:15.937 --> 01:38:34.364
Six hours of my life I'll never get back. So it's an extremely uneven experience. And I could see why in the context of a therapist recommending a book, you do get a much higher hit rate because the therapist is probably speaking to the patient. They're probably noticing. They're like, oh –

265
01:38:34.364 --> 01:38:57.061
You're struggling with this one thing. You have this type of personality. You know what book you'll love? You should go read this book. It's right up your alley. It's definitely – it's what you need right now. I think you'll relate to the author. Go check it out. I could see why that has a much higher hit rate than say just wandering into the self-help section at your local bookstore and grabbing something off the shelf at a random. Yeah.

266
01:38:57.061 --> 01:39:17.918
So perhaps it's skewed to the positive a little bit in that regard and that there's a little bit of a filtering that's happening in these studies. Yes, yes. That makes total sense to me. So maybe this is – we cross this out and replace it with good self-help. Good – obviously. Well, yeah, yeah. That is a big qualifier we have to point out. But that's true. Yeah.

267
01:39:17.918 --> 01:39:39.434
I think you've done some YouTube videos on this. What is like a self-help book that you think really changed or that had such an impact on you that you could still even today be like, yeah, that? I mean, honestly, reading Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek completely changed my life. Yeah, yeah. Completely changed the trajectory of my life. Okay, so this is the thing about self-help though too is like –

268
01:39:39.907 --> 01:40:08.273
When you read it, the reason you read it, like it's very personal, right? Like it's kind of hard to recommend a book to somebody because usually what happens is I found this book at the right time when I was going through a particular problem and it helped me a lot there too. Would I say the four-hour work week is one of the best self-help books of all time? I don't know, but I know a lot of people have like changed their ways because of it. Yes. That is – timing is a huge component of this and I've experienced that going in –

269
01:40:08.273 --> 01:40:23.731
Both like multiple directions, right? So like I remember when I was – just came out of college, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and I was like, oh my god, I'm going to do all this. I'm going to – I need to start doing this today, right? And it seemed very powerful and profound at the time.

270
01:40:24.136 --> 01:40:42.648
Looking back, it was a bunch of nothing. Like it was – I don't think it really had any effect on my life whatsoever. And I remember – it's funny because we just – we did a YouTube video about Napoleon Hill. So I went back and I read parts of Think and Grow Rich. And like the whole time I'm reading it, I'm just like what the fuck?

271
01:40:42.648 --> 01:41:11.167
How did I ever read this? How did I ever get through this? But I've seen that go in the other direction as well. For example, like when I was a teenager, I read Scott Peck's The Roadless Travel. And I – because it was my dad's favorite self-help book. And I remember at the time being like, God, this guy is such a downer. Like this is so – like stodgy and boring and it's all about like love and how hard everything is. And I was just like –

272
01:41:11.842 --> 01:41:20.735
fuck off. And I remember I didn't, I didn't even finish it. I went back and read it in my late twenties. And I was like, this might be the best self-help book ever.

273
01:41:21.258 --> 01:41:42.335
I've ever read. Yeah. Like it was excellent. I haven't read that one. It's very good. Is it? Yeah. So it, yeah, a lot of it is timing where you are in your life at the time, what you're struggling with. You kind of have to be receptive to the message at the moment, I think for it to land. Yeah. But yeah, I mean the right book at the right time can be absolutely life-changing. Mm-hmm.

274
01:41:42.335 --> 01:41:59.378
I do remember several years ago, I was dating a girl and she came over and she said, so my brother, he just broke up with his girlfriend. And I was like, oh no, what happened? And he goes, well, he read a book. And I said, oh yeah, what was that? You want to guess what book it was? Subtle Arden. Yeah. He didn't even know I worked for you or anything like that.

275
01:41:59.378 --> 01:42:27.323
So, I mean, obviously, you know, there's been, I don't know, tens of thousands of people have told you this at this point, you know, that your book changed their life. And I think it more than anything, it just, like I said, if you're open to the message, you then enter like this, a new kind of like mind space around how you approach things. Like, yeah, a book can do that. A book can definitely do that. It's almost like hopping on a cognitive plane and visiting somebody else's brain for hours at a time.

276
01:42:27.678 --> 01:42:53.075
So you essentially get to live inside somebody else's mind temporarily. And if that person has perspectives and experiences and ideas that are extremely profound for where you are in that moment, then it makes sense. I see why it happens. Maybe I'm a negative Nancy. I did not expect it to be this high. I didn't expect it to be this consistent, although the way you talked about the –

277
01:42:53.075 --> 01:43:18.320
how the experiments were constructed, like that kind of explains some of it. There's definitely some filtering that's going on here. I think if you, if you just raw dogged a random self-help book, it would not be, be this high on the list, but for sure the right self-help book at the right time can be very powerful. I'll give my recommendation to, um, just one that most recently anyway, I guess it's been a few years. I don't read a whole lot of self-help anymore, but yeah,

278
01:43:18.438 --> 01:43:43.582
Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks. That's a fantastic book. Yeah. It masquerades as a productivity book and it's not. No. It's all about your relationship with time. Yeah. And it like changes a lot of how you see just how you live your life. He sent me the manuscript of that about six months before it came out. Yeah. And I started reading it. I remember I got through like the first chapter and I became angry. Yeah. That he wrote it.

279
01:43:43.582 --> 01:43:57.908
And I didn't. And you didn't. It's like very rare that I have that experience. Like just like very intense envy. And I actually – like Oliver is an old friend. So like I emailed him and I told him that. I was like, I – this is so good that I'm like pissed.

280
01:43:59.157 --> 01:44:23.204
That you got to write it and I didn't. The writing, the content, the thinking around it. He pulls ideas from so many different traditions. And it's – yeah, it's very, very good. Should we get to number one? We actually initially started researching the concept of fake it till you make it. Right. Which is – as we researched it, we realized it was kind of nebulous. Yes. Like what does that mean? Does that mean that you like pretend –

281
01:44:23.609 --> 01:44:48.145
You're a clown at the circus and then before you actually become a clown at the circus or do you pretend like you know how to code in JavaScript before you code in JavaScript? Like what does that mean? Yeah, right, right. And eventually we kind of just settled on this idea known as behavioral activation, which is actually more akin to what I call the do something principle in my work.

282
01:44:48.145 --> 01:45:17.592
which is just do the thing. Even if you don't know what you're doing, even if you don't know what you should be doing, just do something. And if it's intimidating and scary or you don't feel motivated, reduce the scope of what you do until you feel like you can do it. And it almost doesn't even matter what you do. Like, just fucking go do something. Do the thing. There was a great essay that went viral a couple years ago called Do the Thing. It's this whole thing, it's like,

283
01:45:17.592 --> 01:45:33.320
talking about doing the thing is not doing the thing. Planning how you're going to do the thing is not doing the thing. Fantasizing about doing the thing is not doing the thing. Promising yourself that you're going to do the thing is not doing the thing. It just like goes through all the typical ways that we avoid doing the thing.

284
01:45:33.320 --> 01:45:50.920
So I think what you could call number one, behavioral activation, and behavioral activation is – it's actually – it's like a very old therapeutic practice. It comes from clinical studies of basically taking depressed people and just making them do something. Right.

285
01:45:52.388 --> 01:46:10.985
Because when you're depressed, you don't want to do anything. You don't want to do anything. I mean, like, it can be as bad as I don't want to take a shower, right? Yes. Like, it can get down to that point. So, yeah. And sure enough, what they found is that doing the thing even when you don't want to do the thing has incredible positive effects. Doing anything when you don't want to do the thing.

286
01:46:10.985 --> 01:46:34.171
also has robust positive effects. And if you are too intimidated or too scared to do the full thing, breaking it down and only doing part of the thing has highly replicable, repeatable positive effects to the point that it's actually more effective than a number of therapeutic modalities. It's on par with CBT, which is considered the most effective therapy.

287
01:46:34.171 --> 01:46:48.076
It doesn't cost you a fucking thing. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it right now during this podcast. It is the single most robust thing that we found in our research. I love that it basically boils down to take action.

288
01:46:48.582 --> 01:47:06.065
The best thing you can do is just fucking just act. Just do the thing. So are we really saying number one is you just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just just just do it. It's the shield. We should just put the shield. The booth meme here. Just do it. Fucking do it.

289
01:47:06.824 --> 01:47:22.332
This, though, to me, over this last holiday season, I was traveling a whole bunch. So I was getting very shitty sleep. Like I need consistency for sleep. But I was bouncing all over the place, coming out here, going back to my parents, being home. My diet was garbage. I wasn't getting my workouts in.

290
01:47:22.433 --> 01:47:38.515
I started to feel pretty depressed. Right. Like I was, I was slipping into that where I was like, Oh, I haven't felt this way in a very long time, but I remember it like what's going on here. And then after a weekend of literally just sitting around and Netflix, it wasn't Netflix and chill. It was Netflix and like that, you know, you know,

291
01:47:38.515 --> 01:48:04.418
That's what I did for an entire weekend. And my house was a disaster. I hadn't cleaned it. I usually clean it once a week. Yeah. I hadn't like all the things I enjoyed doing. I hadn't been out in my wood shop. I hadn't exercised. All of these things. And I was just like, I don't want to do any of this. And just after that weekend of Netflix, I made myself clean my house. That's what I did. I was like, I'm cleaning my house. I'm finally going to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

292
01:48:04.908 --> 01:48:29.343
Felt okay. Like I really did not want to do it, but it felt okay. I did that. I was like, okay, fine. Then I got back into the gym one day and it was shitty, shitty workout. I probably put 10% effort into it. Yeah. But it felt a little bit better. Cooked some meals that were nice and healthy. Like started doing the things that I knew before kind of kept me sane. Don't you hate that? Magically here I am again, right? I'm feeling okay. Don't you kind of hate that it's this simple? Yes. Yes.

293
01:48:29.748 --> 01:48:57.220
Don't you wish it was – don't you wish there was some complex theoretical framework that we could just apply to everything and that there was a secret – you know, the secret morning routine that the billionaires don't want you to know or the powerful affirmations that come from the ancient Vedic text that no one has translated before. Like no. No secret. Do the thing. Just go. You just have to do it. Just go do the fucking thing. Learn how to do it when you don't want to do it. Yeah, pretty much. Especially.

294
01:48:57.220 --> 01:49:24.676
This is from research from an episode last year. But I remember there was – so there was a meta-analysis last year that came out around interventions for depression. Oh, yeah. And it looked at everything across the board. And I remember it went viral because the number one thing that they found – they did kind of a ranking similar to what we did here. The number one thing that they found was exercise. So obviously that got a lot of attention. But it was interesting because a few weeks later, one of the psychologists that I follow on –

295
01:49:24.676 --> 01:49:51.490
Twitter, he got curious and he went and looked at the source studies that fed into that meta-analysis to see what exercise. And the funny thing was is it didn't fucking matter. Like it was literally just walking in the park was 98% as effective as the most intense gym routine. Dancing was super effective. Lifting any weights, doing anything, swimming. And basic- Kegels workout.

296
01:49:51.490 --> 01:50:15.773
Fucking anything. Just doing a thing. Just doing a fucking thing. It's absolutely maddening. You know, there is a classic self-help book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffries. She has probably been vindicated on this. I would like to break it down a little bit more minutely because it's easy to sit here and just tell people over and over to –

297
01:50:15.773 --> 01:50:35.888
Just do it. Just do it, bro. So I talk about – in Subtle Art, I talk about this. I've got YouTube. I've been talking about this for years. But I call it the do-something principle, which is the biggest misconception that I think people have around this is that when they're in that sloth-like state that you were in, they have this mistaken belief that –

298
01:50:35.888 --> 01:50:55.987
inspiration or motivation has to strike. That it's like, well, I'll get off the couch when I feel like doing it. Yeah, I feel like doing it. When it's the other way around, it's the way to feel better is by getting off the couch. Motivation is not the cause of action, it is the effect of action. And so when you are in a situation like that,

299
01:50:57.218 --> 01:51:16.962
Where you're like, my God, I'm disgusting. I'm like a puddle on my couch. I haven't done anything useful in three days. I need to get up and do something. You start imagining all the things that you wish you were doing and you're not doing and that overwhelms you. It feels like a lot. You're like, oh my God, I can't even imagine like the amount of willpower that's going to take.

300
01:51:16.962 --> 01:51:34.411
Again, if you're thinking in terms of willpower, you're already losing. We covered that. What works is you just take all those things you want to do and you just find the smallest viable thing that feels doable in that moment. So in your case, it was just like cleaning up the house a little bit, right? It's like I'm going to go take out the garbage.

301
01:51:34.411 --> 01:51:58.475
Or let me go make the bed. Like that's another huge self-help book, right? Is make your bed. Again, I think probably the large percentage of the value of that book is simply it's getting people who are prone to not doing things to do something. Do it first thing in the morning. Build a habit out of it. And that way it creates momentum for the rest of your day. So when we were developing Purpose, our AI coaching app, I did a lot of market research into like various –

302
01:51:58.475 --> 01:52:25.357
mental health apps, different things that people use. There's one that's been blowing up the last couple of years. It's called Finch. It's almost comically simple. You get this little baby bird and you have to take care of it. And the way you take care of it is by completing actions throughout your day. And the actions are hilariously simple. It's like brush your teeth gives you five points. Take a shower gives you five points.

303
01:52:25.357 --> 01:52:43.548
Go for a walk gives you like 10 points. Eat a meal gives you five points. And I remember sitting there like hitting the – I'm like, yes, I ate a meal today. Yes, I took a shower today. And I'm just like accumulating all these points and my baby bird is growing. And I'm like, this is so ridiculous. But then –

304
01:52:43.548 --> 01:52:57.014
There's a certain logic to it that, first of all, it gets a little bit addictive and you keep like wanting to find – because obviously once you get past taking a shower and eating food, it actually starts giving you kind of more meaningful things to do with your day.

305
01:52:57.166 --> 01:53:26.815
And I was like, okay, so I actually see the logic behind this. And it turns out like if you read the user reviews online and you go look at their community, like people rave about it. They're like, I couldn't get out of bed for months. This app got me out of bed. Now I'm actually doing things with my life. We want to imagine it's complicated, that it's hard to understand, that we have to listen to like multiple five-hour-long podcasts to know how to do a thing.

306
01:53:27.355 --> 01:53:52.263
When really it's like the most effective intervention you can do is just do the thing. Yeah. It's like do something. Question. Does your baby bird die if you don't do the things? How does – I don't know. You don't know. You never let it get to that point. Yeah. Maybe we should go back and look and try to resuscitate my dead baby bird. You know how we almost – in previous episodes, we've almost always opened in some way with Aristotle, right? Oh, boy.

307
01:53:52.972 --> 01:54:09.425
You had to go find one. No, I'm not shoehorning this in. There's an actual – it actually kind of marries this whole do something principle with the fake until you make it even too. Okay. Aristotle, I think we've mentioned this before. He actually said the way that you become virtuous –

308
01:54:09.425 --> 01:54:28.274
is through your actions action yes if you want to be brave and courageous you must behave bravely and courageously right if you want to be if you want to be an honest person known as an honest person you have to engage in honest interactions with people yeah this goes all the way back to that even too and kind of it's kind of like the fake until you make it but it's also very much just that you must you have to act

309
01:54:28.274 --> 01:54:56.236
Yes. Like your virtue, your life, who you are is only developed through your actions. Yes. I think identity follows action, right? Like you are – I believe it originates with Aristotle where he says like you are what you do repeatedly. Right, right. Therefore, excellence is a habit, not a practice. And this is why fake it till you make it works. It's not comfortable. It's not easy. It doesn't necessarily feel good. Sometimes you feel like you're lying or you're an imposter.

310
01:54:56.236 --> 01:55:17.212
But it's why it works. It's if you do an action repeatedly, you start to – you eventually become that sort of person. Yeah. You talk about it in terms of building evidence a lot. Yes. That's what I've heard you say. You have to build the evidence around this. If you want to take on a new identity, you have to have evidence for that identity. If you want to be a fit person, it's not about –

311
01:55:17.313 --> 01:55:38.255
your body fat percentage or how you look in the mirror. It is somebody who is regularly working out and developing fitness. And there's an interesting chain here of like identity follows action. And I think emotions tend to follow identity in terms of like we talked about on the ego episode how whatever our identity is, we will psychologically defend it.

312
01:55:38.255 --> 01:55:55.805
So it's – if something challenges that identity, we will become angry or scared or envious or whatever. So it's like the actions lead to the identity. The identity leads to the emotions and then obviously the emotions lead to your subjective well-being.

313
01:55:59.602 --> 01:56:16.848
One thing I saw too, and I kind of pointed this out earlier, was just kind of the arc of how we think about these things. You know, positive psychology was kind of all the rage back in the 90s and into the 2000s. Yeah. There was all these studies coming out about it that – these huge effect sizes and then –

314
01:56:16.848 --> 01:56:46.514
Then the real kind of science had to come in behind it and be like, well, okay, here's some boundaries on it. The effects aren't necessarily as big. So it was really good to get caught up like on all of this research that's been going on for the last like decade or so that, you know, I knew a lot of these older studies. And this was, yeah, this was good to see. Science works. It's just slow. It is. It is. You know, we went through the replication crisis. It feels like we're kind of coming out of that a little bit. Yeah. And we're starting to get a better, more nuanced picture of all of these things. Seven of the top 10 originated in the ancient world.

315
01:56:47.543 --> 01:57:06.325
which I think is very interesting. Most of the new stuff is pretty close to the bottom of this list. If you look at the bottom five, it's pretty much all stuff that's from the last 50 years. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of ads. Except for, yeah, except for maybe intuitive decision-making. Yeah.

316
01:57:06.325 --> 01:57:29.512
The other thing that I noticed, you know, we've already mentioned a couple of times that the bottom of this list is pretty much just indulging your emotions. Is that hurt too? I would say the middle of this list is it's very cognitively focused or physically focused, right? So it's – you're either trying to alter your body or you're trying to adopt the right framework or mindset in your mind. Yeah.

317
01:57:29.512 --> 01:57:58.283
Pretty much all the stuff that like either is placebo or only works in very specific context is cognitively driven or biologically driven. Everything at the top of this list is action based. It actually involves you doing a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Whether you're meditating or you're eating the frog or you're reading a book or you're practicing gratitude. Like you are actively doing something. Right.

318
01:57:58.891 --> 01:58:16.205
Whereas everything in the middle of the list, it's like, oh, I figured out your learning style, practice your power poses, recite your affirmation. Like these are all very cognitively driven things. All if not the majority of the value is driven from the perception that they're doing something much more than –

319
01:58:17.369 --> 01:58:42.057
what they're actually doing. One of my real big takeaways from this was just how like individual and personal all of this can be. So like if we shat on one of your, you know, favorite little methods or whatever, like don't take it too personally. It's just like, this is what the, this is what the research says so far. Yes. And then not only that, if it works for you, great. Yeah. Like even, even, even the crystal healing, if that's working for you, sure. Fine. Just don't go around claiming it's, you know.

320
01:58:42.057 --> 01:58:59.185
So I can bring my crystals to the next episode? Is that what you're saying? The rubbing. Just don't rub them? The rubbing, you were like – That's the best part. Oh, it was uncomfortable. That's the best part. It was uncomfortable. That's actually most of the therapeutic value. That's where you get the therapeutic value. Rubbing my crystals as if they're –

321
01:58:59.185 --> 01:59:24.397
Large boost. If it works for you, fine. And this is why I think too, I try not to just tell people, oh, you have to do this or that. I think you're right in saying that the only one we think you really should do is go do something. That's mandatory. Yeah. It's really the do something principle I would say is the one mandatory thing. Even if you want to call it fake it till you – like I do think it's mandatory. Like at some point in your life, you're going to be in a situation where you –

322
01:59:25.156 --> 01:59:43.195
There is something you need to do that you don't feel like doing. And so you have to get good at that. Yeah, that's how to do that. That is – like if I had a child and I was raising them and I was looking at this list of like, okay, what do I want to teach my kid? I would probably cross off everything in the bottom 10. Yeah. Yeah.

323
01:59:43.195 --> 02:00:02.281
The next five I would kind of keep – You need to try. Yeah, I would like see like how his or her personality would develop, what they're into or whatever. Maybe introduce them to a couple things. But it's like really the – I'd say the top three or four I would be like – to me would be mandatory, right?

324
02:00:02.686 --> 02:00:22.885
behavioral activation or like the do something principle, read books, eat the frog. So task prioritization. And then I would have them at least try meditation. Yeah. I think it was James Clear who said in his book, he's like, do the things you have to do so you can do the things you want to do. Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it as well. Like there's some behavioral activation, some eat the frog in there too.

325
02:00:22.885 --> 02:00:52.417
Again, I think though too, it's just like I really like that a lot of this is you can personally experiment with a lot of this stuff. And that's what I think the big takeaway is is like personal experimentation around this stuff. Find what works for you. And if it works for you, great. And you don't have to proselytize it or anything like that. You don't have to. It's not a religion necessarily. And it's also very likely it will work for a while and then it will stop working. That's the other thing I think I realized definitely too is that like especially when you get into something new, like it's going to work. Yeah.

326
02:00:52.417 --> 02:01:12.633
Right away. There's probably some placebo effect with all of these things. Yes. And another big takeaway was just doing anything, you know, just doing just doing anything that is somehow positively related to you doing getting closer to what you want or what you what you who you want to be. Yeah. Any of it. Like, that's great. That's just a good starting point.

327
02:01:12.751 --> 02:01:27.365
I think I might give Eating the Frog another shot. Yeah? I might try that in the next couple months. It's like maybe take a week and just try to really do the most important thing first thing in the morning. That's not solely based on this episode. I noticed that I've been...

328
02:01:28.411 --> 02:01:58.043
futzing around a little bit more than usual in the mornings and being kind of slow to like ramp up into useful, valuable stuff. So I might give that a shot. All right. You can tell us how that goes. I will. I will. You're going to have to listen to it. You will have to. These people, they can turn us off, but you're going to have to sit there and listen to it. Be sure to check out the Purpose Coaching app. It is at purpose.app. We have a free seven-day trial. It is kind of crazy. Yeah.

329
02:01:58.043 --> 02:02:16.893
how quickly it can spot your weaknesses and inconsistencies. So if you want your bullshit called, check that out and be sure to follow, leave a review, like, and subscribe, smash that like button, bro. Smash it, smash it. And we will see you next time. Bye.