Why Keeping Your Options Open Backfires

0:05 I find it interesting that the phrase finding yourself implies that there is something external that you have to go searching or or exploring for that like yourself with a capital S is like hiding under a rock or buried in a closet somewhere. And if you just like signed up for enough class pass gyms or uh went on enough hinge dates, you would magically find yourself. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> And sure enough, this is often the conventional wisdom, right? People tell you like get out there, explore, go to new places, meet new people, try new things. And like sure, there is some value in that, but I don't necessarily think that is exactly how you find

0:50 yourself. In fact, I think Kirkagard would argue that that is a very efficient way of avoiding yourself. And so, in this chapter, we're going to talk about what happens when exploration goes too far. When novelty seeking prevents you from finding out who you are in your life rather than helping you. And we're going to start with the historical figure that took exploration and novelty seeking to the logical endpoint. You've probably heard of him. His name is Kasanova. Yes, that Kasanova. And while his story is exciting, it is maybe a little bit more tragic than you would suspect. So, Kasanova was born in 1725 in Venice. Uh, his parents were two actors. Um, his father, he never really knew, died when

1:37 he was eight, was never around in the first place, and then his mom was touring Europe all the time, so she basically just left him with his grandmother, and he barely ever saw her. Now, at the time, Venice was kind of like, I don't know, like the Las Vegas or New York City of Europe. It was where all of the fun was happening. It was where carnival originated. It there was full of parties and mass and big feasts and festivals and celebrations. And so, young Kasanova grew up in this world, in this environment. It was very hedonistic culture at the time. He got a law degree. Then he went to seminary. Then he got expelled for sleeping with too many people. So then he tried to become a soldier, decided it was too boring,

2:22 too structured. He tried to go back to the clergy, but he passed out drunk one too many times and got kicked out again. Studied violin for a while, tried to join an orchestra, and then supposedly, as he claimed, he saved a rich noble's life. Um, and that noble became a patron of his, started giving him tons of money. Casanova immediately began spending all of his money. Spent it gambling, spent it going out chasing girls, uh, spent it traveling, buying expensive clothing, basically just burning through everything. Eventually, he gets kicked out of Venice. He travels around Europe for a while. It's the same pattern everywhere he goes. He shows up. He's incredibly charming. He's incredibly charismatic. He looks like a

3:08 noble. He acts like a noble. He's extremely well-dressed. So, he ingratiates himself with the local aristocracy, seduces a bunch of guy's wives, uh creates a scandal, gets kicked out, and then has to move on to the next little thief or kingdom where the whole pattern plays itself out again. Now, while all of this is happening, there's just like an endless array of fantastic stories, ridiculous stories. I mean, stuff that like if it didn't happen, you would just read and be like, "Yeah, that there's no way that happened." Like, at one point he got arrested by the Venice Inquisition um and put in Piani prison in Venice. Uh nobody had ever escaped PMB before he was there. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was

3:55 the first person to ever escape from P&B prison. He carved his He was like an Andy Drain from Shashank Redemption. He found a metal spike and like slowly chiseled his way out of the prison. Supposedly he's he claims that he slept with over 120 different women. He contracted venerial disease 11 different times. He met Voltater, Pope Clement I 13th, Katherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin, and Mozart. At various points, he was a spy, a diplomat, a mathematician, and a partial translator of Homer. Obviously, Kasanova is perhaps an extreme example of what Kirkagard would call an estate. And an estate is somebody who lives in Kirkagard's first stage, the aesthetic stage. Now, estates are all about

4:43 sensation, novelty, stimulation. They generally have a refusal to commit to too many things. They they like having their options open. They they like seeing if anything better comes along. And the danger of the aesthetic life is that it is so easy to justify to ourselves, right? We can convince ourselves that we are maximizing our potential, that we are maximizing our freedom, that we are having a great time and we're doing so many interesting things and we're learning so much and we're finding so many opportunities. It's like there always seems to be an explanation beneath the surface that we can point at to justify these kind of instinctive automatic behaviors. Now in in his book sickness unto death, Kirkagard points out that this sort of

5:30 despair this kind of despair of optionality of freedom of indulgence. It is the most dangerous kind of despair because it largely goes unnoticed by the estite. Right? They are comfortable. They are entertained. They're surrounded by opportunities. But they feel completely empty. None of it seems to mean anything. None of it seems to matter. And so as soon as you sit with that emptiness, you desperately look and crave some new form of stimulation or entertainment to fill that void for you. There is an essay. It's actually a speech that I absolutely love. you are well aware of this uh because we've posted it so many times over the years. Uh this is water

6:17 by David Foster Wallace. I think he describes this perfectly. He he actually this is where I get the term the default state. He describes this as the default state. Our default state is always impulsive. It's self- serving. It is indulges. It seeks entertainment. It seeks novelty. It seeks stimulation. And a lot of Wallace's work was very preoccupied with the role of mass entertainment and the aesthetic life. You know, infinite jest and a lot of his essays really dig into kind of the addictive qualities of modern stimulation that comes with modern entertainment. And it's interesting because you know in last chapter we talked about how prophetic Kirkagard was particularly around media but I I don't

7:04 think he foresaw the n the the impact that mass entertainment was going to have right like Netflix and uh social media and um you know having like literally 500 channels available to you 247 like it it is the ability to distract yourself is available in every single moment. And so the gravitational pole of the aesthetic life, I think you could argue, is stronger now than it has ever been. >> Yeah. And easier to access. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. In every facet of life. >> Yeah. >> But I want to I do want to take a moment and I want to go through five predictions that Kiraard made that actually did turn out to be true and we actually have the modern psychological research to back it up these days. And I

7:52 think by going through these one by one, it will help us get a better understanding of the water we we all swim in and hopefully how we can navigate this gravitational pole a little bit better going into the future. The first prediction he made is he said that more reflection without commitment just produces paralysis. It doesn't actually produce wisdom. like there's a certain inflection point that thinking about your choices more doesn't help you make them. It actually prevents you from making them. It's interesting because because I think at the time this was probably a pretty revolutionary idea. He actually in the present age he talks about how there's uh he kind of divides the world up into kind of two eras. There's like the revolutionary era and

8:38 then there's the present age. Um, and he said that prior to being inundated with information, people just acted and if they wanted to see change in the world, they would just go do it. They would just make it happen. But he complained in the modern era, in the present age, which was the 1840s, he said people were so inundated with useless information and constant analysis and reflection that they were forgetting how to act in the world. that they were forgetting how to just throw themselves out there and make the change that they wanted to make. >> Yeah. It was endlessly possible to talk and not act. Like that was kind of his thing about the present age, right? Everybody's talking about this. Everybody's going up to the edge but

9:24 never taking the plunge, right? And that was his whole thing is this endless possibility for that now, especially with theformational environment that uh he was seeing the the changes for and now what we see on steroids. >> Yeah. >> Also kind of like the paradox of choice, right? This is Barry Schwarz's work on the paradox of choice. He he wrote the book on this, but he did a whole this whole body of research around it, too. Basically showing that the more options you have, the less satisfied with any one of them you end up choosing because you're like, "Oh, there was this other one over there." So, I had to sit here and I had to think about all these other options in front of me. You know, it's the classic example. You go to the grocery store and buy toothpaste and there's a whole aisle full of toothpaste and like which one are you supposed to buy, right? And you're never satisfied with the one you buy. That's a simple example. When you have abundance in front of you, all these options in front of you, that plays out on on steroids

10:11 itself, you're never satisfied with any one decision because you consider all the others, all the other lives you could have lived. >> Right. Right. In that realm, >> um Schwarz too, some of his later work, I I I love this concept and I think we've talked about it several times maybe before too, but in that same realm, you have the maximizers and the satisficers. So when given a set of options of any any kind of choice, there's kind of people tend to split into two different camps. Maximizers, they will try to overanalyze it just like what you're talking about like analyze it to death and make sure they're getting the absolute best option. They're they're making the absolute best choice for them in that situation. >> Then you have the satisficers who they seek a good enough uh solution or a good enough option. What's interesting about

10:57 this research too is that uh yeah, if you look at them objectively, right, maximizers tend to have like a better have better outcomes like if they they they pick the better product or they make more money doing something or a better investment, whatever it is, but they're less happy than the satisficers are. The satisficers like I picked good enough. Ah, could have went well, couldn't maybe not. >> Yeah. >> And they end up being happier over the long run. >> Also in relationships too, this happens. You got to maximize. Think about that, right? Yeah. >> Get a maximizer in a longterm relationship and they're going to be miserable because they're just going to sit there and think, "Well, I'm >> they're going to think about all the other potential people they could have gone out with, but they didn't or or maybe they stopped talking to or whatever." Yeah. >> Research Schwarz and others bear this out, too. I mean, it's they're they're less satisfied with their relationships

11:43 than satisficers are. So, yeah, Kirkugard was he was on the nose here. >> But real quick, a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by AG1. September is when everyone's calendar quietly turns against them. Summer's loose schedule is gone. School is [music] back. Work picks back up. And suddenly there is a lot more competing for the same 6:00 a.m. that you used to have to yourself. Now, most of my routine gets renegotiated this time of year. But one part of it doesn't, and that's AG1. It's a multivitamin, pre and probiotics, and whole food nutrients in one serving that supports steady energy production and gut health. It's one less thing to manage on a morning when everything else needs managing. I've been drinking it long enough that I don't really think about why anymore. But if I'm honest, digestion feels more regular on the days that I have it. And there's a sense of relief in knowing

12:29 that the nutrition side of things is already handled before my day even starts. Now, I'm not an easy cell on supplements, so it matters to me that there are four clinical trials behind this one. AG1 NextGen combined with a proper diet meets 94% of nutrient requirements, and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. Everything else about my schedule renegotiates itself this time of year. This is one part that doesn't have to. So, for a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 NextG or AG1 Pro at manon.deals/ a1. That's manon.deals/ aag1. Welcome back to the solve podcast. Let's get back into it. So, this brings us to our second prediction, which is that Kierkard argued that the benefits of optionality are in many ways an

13:15 illusion. When we are given more options, we it is easy to perceive the benefits of those options, but we don't realize the costs that those extra options are going to weigh on ourselves once we are forced to choose something. He talked about this in either or is having spectacles with two lenses. Like for some reason, we are only able to see the upside of each additional option, whereas we're unable to see the downside of having to give up each additional option. So, we continue to pursue optionality for its own sake. We just want an abundance of options in everything we do no matter what without considering the cost the emotional and psychological costs that we're inviting onto ourselves. >> Yeah. It's almost like a bias, right? Like we just have a bias towards optionality. Yeah. There's this one really interesting study. Um one of the

14:00 authors was Dan Arieli actually MIT uh professor. Uh it was this doorkeeping open experiment I guess for lack of a better name. But basically what they did is they had people come in. The details of the game don't really matter, but basically you could open one of three doors. Okay? And there was a reward associated with each door. Okay? It changed every time you chose a door, but one of the doors clearly had a a better reward and stayed that way during the whole thing. Like they would change up the reward so it wasn't super obvious, but if you chose the door that had the highest reward, you should be able to figure it out after a while. The rational response here is literally to open that door over and over and over again. The little catch was is that if you didn't open certain doors after a certain number of polls, like they would

14:46 go away. You would you would get no longer get the option to open that door. But again, the rational response was to find the the highest reward door and just hit that the whole time and you get the most points or money or whatever they were giving them, right? Didn't matter though. People like they were just scared of one of those doors disappearing after a little while. So they would open doors with worse prizes just to just >> just to keep that >> just to have the opportunity to open the door again in the future. >> And then they did these follow-up experiments too where they would basically train them to like like look it's this door, right? >> Just open this door. >> Just open this door and [laughter] you're going to get the the maximum reward out of all of this. They still wouldn't do it. So it is it's some kind of bias we have to just like oh we want more and more optionality. We'll get into why here in a little bit, but it's just it's it's it's just like this

15:33 hardwired bias we have towards keep your options open. >> You know, like the more the better, right? This brings us to prediction number three from Kira Kagard. Um this is also from either or. Uh in a life of endless abundance, everything becomes equally interesting and equally boring. This hits close to home for me. So we talked earlier about how I lived as a digital nomad for six or seven years. One of the reasons I stopped, and this is going to sound insane, especially to people listening to this who have not traveled much. I eventually reached a point where countries started feeling the same, [laughter] >> which is like completely illogical, but like I'd spend a month in uh like Peru and then I would go to Vietnam and it

16:18 would feel the same, which is kind of defeats the entire purpose of traveling. But it's interesting. And I think what Kierkagard correctly observed is that when everything is novel in some different way, that novelty stops meaning anything. No matter what country you go to, well, there's going to be a new different country coming up next. So, who cares? Like, whatever is unique and distinctive about this country, it it kind of stops mattering and you end up just focusing on the experiences that are the same everywhere. The way I always thought of it is that novel experiences have a diminishing return to them. Right? If you've only been to one country, then going to that second country, it's going to be a hugely novel experience because everything is completely different. But

17:04 if you've been to like 30 countries and you go to 31, that 31st country is just going to be like, eh, it's like a little bit different compared to my entire sample of 30 countries that I've been to. So it's like each additional novel experience you add the marginal novelty diminishes becomes less and less and less to the point where it's everything levels right every every experience every interaction every person you meet every date you go on feels like the same date it feels like the same interaction it feels like the same experience not because the novelty is not there it's because it the novelty has lost any meaning or significance >> because it's so it's so abundant or it's so cheap.

17:49 >> Yeah. You almost get desensitized to it. >> It's it's another version of the hyonic treadmill, right? Like we usually think of the hydonic treadmill of like buying stuff, which is that that definitely happens. You know, it's usually in the context of >> uh you know, trying to keep up with the Joneses or whatever it is, but in this case, it's more you're just the novelty itself >> is what you're chasing and it ends up just not not delivering. That's what you're saying over time. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. And of course there's all that research on the hydonic treadmill. The interesting thing though too, you know, we we talk about you hear the the phrase thrown around a lot about like dopamine, you know, you're just >> dopamine detox or dop you're just you're in for a dopamine fix or whatever it is, right? >> And I think we've maybe made this point before too, but the thing is about

18:35 dopamine is it's not it's not a reward signal. It's a it's a search signal. >> It's a pursuit signal. >> Pursuit signal. And you can get addicted to that pursuit. But again, it's like you're saying each time takes a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. It's like a drug. I mean, it is a drug, right? Technically, when you get down to it, like every new experience is like, "Okay, now what's the next one?" Right? That's what dopamine is. Where's the next one? Where's the next one? Where's And when that wears off, that's why you go searching again is because you're you're trying to look for that that payoff. Yeah. >> Which is never there. >> Yeah. >> Because dopamine isn't the reward signal. It's the search signal. It's the pursuit signal. >> Yeah. When we've talked about this in the past, we've talked about how the the concept of dopamine detox is a misnomer, right? Like it is when people like they

19:21 raw dog a nine hour flight or they like go no phones for a week. I think what they're actually doing is they're they're just resetting their uh like their optionality baseline, right? It's or their novelty baseline, right? They're getting rid of they've been leveled because they've experienced too much novelty. And so when they remove novelty from their life, suddenly novel experiences start to feel significant again because it's each subsequent experience is comp is compared relative to your your recent set of experiences. >> Yeah, that's another way to put it to dopamine is a comparison molecule I guess too and it really depends on what happened previous directly previously to what you just did or or achieved or got in some way. Well, next prediction, uh, and we talked about this a little bit in

20:07 in chapter one, is that Kierard did not say this explicitly, at least not to my knowledge, but I'm sure this would not surprise him, that the most free generation in world history with the most access to the most stimulation and information would also be the most anxious, the most alone, and the most dissatisfied. I don't think this would surprise him at all. In fact, the entire basis of his philosophy very much predicts it. >> Yeah. The book of the concept of anxiety. >> The whole concept of anxiety is based on this. Yeah. This phenomenon. I talked about this in my my second book, Everything is [ __ ] It's funny actually like I had not read Kira Kagard before I wrote Everything is [ __ ] Um

20:52 I actually wonder if I would have approached that that book a little bit differently if I had. That book really wrestles with this paradox. What I was trying to kind of get my brain around when I was writing that book is like why is it that the the better off people seem to be, the more anxious, lonely, and depressed they seem to become. And the research data, it's it's often called the Easterland paradox, which is that they find that uh the greatest rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicide are tend to be in the wealthier countries. And that even if you go kind of within countries, um you see the highest rates of mental health issues in the wealthiest neighborhoods. cities, counties. So, a lot of that book was just trying to like I guess kind of independently get at what Kirkugard was talking about. But

21:38 all that is to say is that there is a wealth of mental health data at this point really hammering home this fact. There is such a thing as too much optionality and too much opportunity and it seems to torture people at a certain point. >> Yeah, it does. and you know like the the surgeon general's report that came out I think it was 2023 about the loneliness epidemic um you know that 50% of US adults report being lonely there's all these stats you know uh Americans gain 24 extra hours a month spent alone just between 2020 or 2003 and 2020 so an extra 20 some hours a week being spent alone that's a lot that is a lot >> that's a part-time job >> and that's before the pandemic >> before the pandemic there's all these stats we I'm Sure, we've heard of all

22:24 these. It's been called the loneliness epidemic. >> Yeah, we've >> several times mentioned uh Robert Putnham's bowling alone. That book, it came out in the '9s, like early 90s, I think even too. And it was looking at data from the previous 50 years >> about how just Americans were spending less and less together and institutions were decaying and all of that. And this is at the same time as we were becoming wealthier. Yeah. And more connected and >> had more options and more freedom, more more uh freedom of like movement around the country too. Like you could change jobs much more easily. All of that >> that loneliness epidemic came along. There's one interesting thing and I think I brought this up in the friendship episode. You know Derek Thompson who's a journalist and podcaster too. Real smart guy. >> He's not so sure we could call you

23:09 should call it a loneliness epidemic though. the the phrase he uses for it is an aloneeness epidemic because people are choosing this. >> Yeah. >> People are complaining that they're lonely, but they're also choosing lifestyles that isolate themselves or selfisolating in a way. That's also interesting, too. That could be part of it is as you get wealthier, as you get more secure in a material sense, you're for whatever reason more likely to engage in these keeping my options open behaviors. You know what I mean? There's also a certain amount of friction to engaging with other people, right? Like it's you gotta get in your car and drive to their house and you know it's like am I going to know anybody there? Do I want to like make small talk? I'm tired. Like >> that was Dererick Thompson's point too. He's like you know back in the 50s and

23:56 60s everybody got a car and moved to the suburbs and we were away from each other. And then television came along and we stopped going to you know downtown and going to the theaters and we stayed home. And then the smartphone came along and not only were we not watching TV with our families, we weren't even interacting with our families at all. So it was just every step along the way we got more and more isolated and chose it >> was his whole point too. Yeah, that's another one of those trends that's uh I think just kind of like went right alongside this whole >> Yeah. >> optionality thing, >> you know. So on our old podcast, the subtle art podcast, um I interviewed Jonathan height and I remember I was kind of challenging him with some of the international data, right? because his big argument is smartphones are causing all the mental health issues among young people. And that is true

24:42 in the U. It seems to be true in the US, in the UK and Australia and a few other places. But I was kind of pushing back on him of like, well, why aren't we seeing this in Italy or Germany or Sweden and like bunch of other places? One of the theories that I kind of threw at him just to see gauge his response is that there are more collectivist cultures where there are expectations to spend more time with family, to live with family for a longer period of time, um to spend more time with grandparents and grandchildren. There's something about those cultures that kind of inoculates people to the the the hazardous effects of um of social media and smartphones. I still find that that explanation very compelling. It's not necessarily that smartphones themselves

25:28 [ __ ] us up, but it's like if you don't have the proper support system in place of of social connection, then you're susceptible to it. It's it's almost like a like an immuno deficiency or something except it's like a social immuno deficiency. Okay, last prediction and we also talked about this quite a bit at the the top of the show. U Kirkuggard argued that without commitment, you never really become a self. Without consciously choosing the sacrifices you want to make in your life, making the difficult tradeoffs, sticking with something even when it's not pleasant, even when it's not fun, you rob yourself of self- definitionf. You remove the ability to to know what you stand for um and and to find meaning in in your own personal life. I think this is something

26:14 that we talked about. I mean, we did a last year we did a whole episode on purpose for like 4 hours and I feel like this was the bulk of that episode is that purpose requires some degree of of struggle and sacrifice um to experience in your life. Um to put it another way is is finding purpose and meaning is not a [ __ ] 5day spa retreat. It is ugly and and messy and painful and uncomfortable and it it is the messiness and and discomfort that ultimately makes it meaningful in retrospect. >> Yeah. And and forms a self forms forms an identity for you. You form an identity around that. A much stronger identity around that. And we'll get into a lot of that research. That's going to be the whole next chapter. A little

26:59 tease there. But there's a lot of theories and research behind that too that we'll we'll get into. We talked a little bit about how we have a bias towards optionality. I think that we are in a very early stage of a little bit of backlash towards abundance. You know, Jenzir is kind of going back to flip phones and digital detoxes and uh raw dogging flights and all this stuff. I'm starting to see it kind of percolate through the culture a little bit more. Like I'm I'm meeting a lot more people who are just kind of casually, you know, deleting social media for periods of time, going through digital fasts, um trying to actively kind of remove some of the optionality from their lives. I mean, you got off dating apps entirely. I've met a lot of people who have done that lately. Why do we cling to optionality? Why why does optionality

27:45 just seem to be this this drug that we can't say no to? >> Well, okay, I can give you the the nerdy perspective. >> That's why I'm asking. Okay, we'll start with that. >> That's why you're here. >> We'll start with that [laughter] and I might throw something back at you here. Okay, >> we've kind of been dancing around this a little bit. There's kind of an evolutionary mismatch going on, right? This world of abundance is not the world that our ancestors grew up in, not the world that our species evolved in, right? The the world that our species came to came of age in was one of scarcity. Right. >> Right. You didn't have optionality in those. And so in any situation in which you found yourself with multiple options, you better maximize that situation as much as possible purely out of survival needs, >> right? >> We grew up in these like small kin-based

28:31 relationship groups for the most part. That's our our evolutionary adaptive period. That's when we as a species came about. And so there wasn't there weren't mega cities. We're in the middle of a city that's 12 to 14 million people, whatever it is, right right now. That is not >> our brains just aren't ready for that at all. We can't even I don't I can't even fathom the number 12 to 14 million, right? In my own mind, >> modern stimuli, the especially a lot of things that are in uh like the me mass media kind of they'll hijack this machinery that we have, this old paleolithic brain machinery that we have. One small example, they showed men uh a brief exposure to 10 attractive faces, 10 10 women, and then immediately gave them a questionnaire after that of like, how satisfied are you with your

29:16 relationship? These were men who were all in committed relationships >> and they they had a measurable decrease after just seeing 10 attractive women's faces, right? God, >> that that's like 30 seconds on the internet. [laughter] >> Think about this. Think about like like now now throw in internet porn into that, right? Like that like my god. Of course you're going to be >> thinking about other options when you have this level of access. Dating apps. So like you just mentioned too, swipe, swipe, swipe, right? Like there's just that evolutionary mismatch between the way our species evolved and the environment that we live in now is they're so divergent that our brains just can't even keep up. And this is what a lot of mass media and and and big tech will exploit. >> Sure. >> And again, we sign up for it, right?

30:02 Like >> Yeah. I mean, we sign up for it. >> Yeah. It is they are hijacking very primitive Yeah. psychological functions within our minds that are that evolve there for extremely good reasons and and the [ __ ] up thing is that we enjoy the hijacking. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like it wouldn't really be hijacking if we didn't enjoy it. So it's hard for us to be too upset. It it is interesting like I do think of of I mean Elon buying Twitter is a whole mess of a conversation but I do think one of the more interesting things that he pointed out um after he took over Twitter is that he wanted to optimize it for I think it was non regretinducing minutes spent. Most social media platforms or most apps in general measure success

30:48 based on how many minutes you spent on the app. He said that he wanted to optimize for non-regretinducing minutes, which is interesting because I think all of us have some degree of experience of engaging in apps or media or entertainment that like the next day were like, why did I do that? >> Yes. Yeah. >> Like why did I why did I stay up till 3:00 a.m. playing video games? Like I didn't even like the game. >> Yeah. It's the same reason why you binged on sugar on candy or you know the night before. It's not because like your your your brain evolved to seek out candy by any means. It was because like fruit in our environment was very scarce and so whenever you came across fruit you would you would gorge on it. Yeah.

31:33 Right. And so now that machinery is being hijacked >> and so you regret it the next day. [laughter] >> Right. Because it's been hijacked to such a degree that's just it's it's super supernatural, right? It's it's above and beyond what you would have encountered in any other uh environment prior to you know 100 years ago or even. Yeah. >> So that's that's one reason. Okay. Is this environmental mismatch that we have? Um >> optionality wasn't a big thing in our evolutionary past and now that it is we're like just we're we're stepping on the gas for it. >> There's this other uh idea though too and this list is not exhaustive. Um but I I found this interesting explanation for it called the additive bias. >> Okay. >> And this came I think the original um

32:20 study was like a I think it was like a Lego study or something like that where um people were were trying to improve a design that they were given by these researchers. And the vast vast majority of people always tried to add something to this design when really they thought that the most optimal thing to do was to take away part of the of the contraption that they gave them, right? >> And they've replicated this in other domains as well. But if you take that and you think about it, well, when you're dissatisfied with your life, Mark, what's the first thing you usually think of? >> I need to go >> I need to go do something. >> I need to find something to do. >> Find something to add. >> Something I'm not doing today that I should do a new city. I need a new group friend. I need a new partner. I need It's this additive bias that we have. And again, I think that does come a

33:05 little bit from the our our evolutionary past >> where you probably did need to go get something because the immediate environment was scarce. But still, so often, especially in an environment of abundance, what you probably need to do is subtract. You know, remember the the huge trend of minimalism for a long time. I mean, I was I was all in on it for a while even too, right? And I I don't know. >> There's something to it. There really is something to it. It's funny because I actually told you this morning before we we got on the mics. We did an episode on friendship last year and I talked quite a bit in that episode about my struggles with like finding making friends and and how I think part of it is my age, part of it my personality, part of it is Los Angeles and and my wife has been having a pretty hard time of it as well. And I was telling you this morning cuz we were

33:52 catching up. I mean it's been a month. So, um, you know, the kind of the new thing for us this last month is that we we were saying yes to all these things that we didn't really want to do. We were, uh, there was like a bunch of people that we had been hanging out with and we're like, well, maybe we just need to see him a little bit more. Maybe we just need to put the time in. Maybe we just need more frequency of exposure and all this stuff. And she and I just kind of hit a breaking point this past month and we're like, you know, [ __ ] this [ __ ] Like, we're just not going to do things we don't want to do. And it's funny because for the last month, we've really only hung out with like three or four people. And but it's the three or four people we really like. And it's so funny. We're so much happier. It's really amazing actually how how much like expending resources on people that like you're kind of lukewarm about >> is is actually just like detracts quite a bit from. >> I I there's a lot of other research too

34:38 that bears that out. You need somewhere between like two and maybe 10 people at the most who you regularly interact with and have a good connection with. Yeah. >> Beyond that. >> Yeah. No, it's hard to know like when you are just arbitrarily enforcing like a standard or expectation on yourself or when you actually do need something. It's it's um there's a fine line. >> There's there's another thing I found too though which is kind of interesting about anticipated regret. Okay. So, when we actually if you're given a number of options, okay, and you expect to and you're forced to make a decision, but you expect to find out how those other options would have turned out in some way, you're actually just really less likely to either be satisfied with the thing that you chose or even choose in

35:24 the first place. I think part of this is definitely like modern society. It's a lot easier to find out, I didn't go to that party. Oh, and now but I'm gonna find out what it was like and now I'm gonna regret not going or going or whatever it is or the other party I didn't go to. I'm gonna find out what happened there. We can anticipate our our regrets probably a lot more accurately now because everything's recorded or everything's documented in some way or somebody's going to tell you you're going to find out somehow about how some option you didn't choose how that went. >> Yeah. >> That makes us kind of just withdraw all together because we don't want to choose. >> Yeah. Well, this is FOMO, right? like it's I don't really want to go to the party, but I don't want to feel what it's going to feel like to not have gone to the party. And it was really cool, so I'm going to go even though I don't want to go, right? Like it's it's the condition of our age for sure.

36:09 >> The last thing I want to note too is just kind of the um decline of cultural institutions. I already kind of mentioned the Robert Putnham work. you know, he talked about this, but decline in church attendance, decline in clubs, uh decline in just I mean just people getting out of the house really just in general. But institutionally speaking, um where there are fewer people going to churches, there's less union membership even too like in work. Uh just civic organizations, civic engagement is down. Robert Putnham's famous the title is bowling alone, right? Bowling leagues have also declined. People just aren't getting out of the house. We all know this, right? Those institutions though used to kind of like force you a little bit, right, into making commitments, making commitments to other people, to

36:54 your communities, to anything in your environment around you just engaging with it more. >> Yeah, >> the disappearance of those has definitely led to people just not committing to things cuz it it is just easier to stay home. But real quick, a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Surf Shark. Closing doors. That's basically been the whole episode, right? You become somebody by shutting a few options and committing to what's left. But there's a set of doors in your life that you never chose to open. And you can't just close them with willpower. It's the one that data brokers, trackers, and every open network keeps propped wide into your personal life. Talking about your accounts, your location, your identity, sitting there for anybody who looks. Surf Shark is the all-in-one security suite that shuts them. At its core, it

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38:25 pod. code solved pod. You can also find the link in the top line of the description. All right, welcome back. Where I really feel the loss of institutions affects this a lot is that are you familiar with Seth Goden's the dip concept? Right. So, uh, we'll put it on screen, but for for those of you listening, um, Seth Goden's The Dip, it it it actually applies to businesses like starting a new business or a new venture. It's this curve that initially goes up a decent amount and then it crashes and goes, you know, negative for a little while and that's the dip. And then it it it you have to kind of sustain through that dip. And then if you sustain it shoots way up on the other side and and becomes like two or three times higher than that initial first kind of peak.

39:10 >> Okay. He used it in the context of businesses which is that everybody's excited to start a business when they start and then it the dips once that excitement kind of wears off and you actually realize how [ __ ] hard this is going to be. That's when the dip sets in. And it's most people give up somewhere in that dip. Um, but if you can sustain through the dip, that's when you actually hit escape velocity and really experience a lot of success. I don't know how true this is. I'm kind of just winging this, but like I feel like there's a dip sort of curve on a lot of things in life, right? Like if you think about >> a new romantic relationship or a new friendship or a new community that you want to join, right? There's always this kind of new anticipation and excitement early on which that sustains you for

39:56 through the first few weeks. Everything's new. Everything's novel. There's a lot of dopamine going on. But eventually that novelty wears off and you start bumping into the first hard moments, right? You have the first arguments. You have the first disagreements. You have the first uh situation where you're like, I don't really want to be here. And and that's the dip. And you have to like fight through that dip. to get to that second peak on the other side where you actually get the satisfaction of of having a deep commitment in your life of like having stuck with something over a long period of time. This is just how I think of these things. I think a lot of what institutions did for us is that they helped sustain us through that dip, right? like it's it's like okay, we're going to put you in a new situation and

40:43 it's it's going to be fun and exciting, but then it's going to be like kind of awkward for a while and you're going to have to like kind of stumble through, but because you signed up for this thing, you know, it's we're we're going to hold you accountable. We're going to keep you here and you're going to work through the the painful process, the pain period, and then you're going to get to the other side, and it's going to be you're going to start reaping the benefits of having committed, >> you know, >> I like that >> for a year or two years or three years or whatever. So without the institutions kind of binding us to these processes, it's so much easier to bail at the bottom of the dip. And with infinite optionality, as soon as that initial peak runs out, you can immediately just go to the next peak, right? It's like, well, why am I going to sit through a dip with this person when I can just go meet a new person and it's going to be

41:29 fun and exciting and sexy and interesting and whatever? And then you get three months into that and it stops being fun and you have your first fight and you're like, "Well, I think I'll just go find the next person and start all over again, right?" And so you have these people that are just kind of chronically chasing low initial peaks, never sustaining the dips, and so they're never actually building that long-term value or meaning uh in anything in their lives. I think dating is the obvious example, right? Like this is anybody who's been single in the last 10 years has like experienced this to some some extent. I mean I've known people who like they can't even find a hobby because it's like as soon as they hit the dip in any new hobby they're like oh this sucks and they bail. Every

42:15 time you you try something new there's going to be novelty and excitement early on but then when you actually realize how shitty you are at it and you you have to practice and like put the time in and try to get good. Most people don't sustain through that. They abandon it. They go find a new thing to try. You know, you see it, you could see it in careers. I I see this. I mean, I see this in applications all the you'll get sometimes I I'll get a a resume that comes in and it's like, you know, a guy has been four different industries over the last 10 years and has been entry level at all four of them. And I'm like, yeah, this person can't commit. Like, they're not in it for the long haul. They're in it till they get bored and then they're going to leave. Yeah. >> You know? >> Yeah. And I think another thing those in institutions do too, one of the

43:00 mechanisms that they help keep you in get you through that dip. >> Mhm. >> Is there's other people going through it with you. >> Yes. >> Right. You're bound to those other people. You know, that's why I think, you know, a lot of the whatever run clubs and >> you know, kind of the this kind of thing we're trying to social engineer a lot of this community or these old institutions, you know, like churches aren't there anymore, so we're going to start a run club or, you know, something like that where we do have community. They're just not as sticky. Yeah. And >> and you're you're not going to get through that dip because it's you're you are treating it like a this is a trial period. Open the dip. I'm out. >> Yep. Right. >> It's the customer service mindset, right? It's like >> Yeah. Yeah. The return return policy. >> Yeah. It's like, "Oh, this isn't fun anymore. I want my money back." We talked about this on the friendship episode, too, that like I talked about like why stuff like that doesn't really

43:45 work and it's because there's a lack of stakes involved. >> Yeah. And um and we're definitely going to come back to that in Kirkugard's religious phase >> because that is a key difference between >> say the ethical and the religious is that there's like a very meaningful set of stakes that are involved that like bind you to this this path in life almost almost to the point of like whether you want to be there or not. And in the friendship episode, I think it's like that's where like really deep relationships are built is when you share you were both invested in something extremely deeply and then can relate to each other on that investment. Um, but I think yeah, I think it's on the social side. It's just like I mean I've joined a million gyms. I've met a million people. They're all really

44:31 nice. I've never hung out with any of them more than like two or three times. Like it just >> it's just like it's not quite there. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's more optionality. >> Yeah. I've been going to yoga for almost four years now and I like barely know anybody there. It's still the same thing. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You said, you know, dating being the obvious one. What would you tell maybe somebody who's about 41 and has never had a relationship for more than three years. [laughter] >> Asking for a friend. >> Asking for a friend. Yeah. Who's sitting in the same chair as me? >> Yeah. >> Um >> I I see what you're saying. I mean, I just You're absolutely right. That's every time this has happened. Sure. It's when I hit the dip and I'm like I'm out. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. And you know there's all the you can there's the attachment stuff and there all you know I can blame my parents and I can do all this but at the

45:17 end of the day >> right? >> Yeah. >> I would say three years is a is a good amount of time. >> Never more than two good years I would say. So, [laughter] there there there's that. I've always said the most important moment in any relationship, any new relationship, is the first fight. Because that that first fight is going to tell you more about how long this is going to last than all of the good times combined. If you can fight well, if you can communicate, if you if you can repair, if you can forgive, it bodess really really well. Like if you if a fight makes you stronger as a couple, that is like a massive green flag. I think what happens is a lot of people, they get in fights, it's not a very productive fight, the relationship

46:05 does not get stronger, but they've been told their whole lives that relationships are hard. You have to work at it and you have to like keep trying and and so they stay in it for years with like even though it's not really the right person. It is really about that the quality of and and speed of repair >> after the breaches. >> If if there is no repair or the repair is extremely slow or it's only one person doing most of it, like those are all really bad signs. >> Yeah. >> Um but I don't get the sense that your issue is like novelty seeeking. Like that was my issue. I was just like like she's fine, but what about her? >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] What do you think my issue is then, Mark? Please tell me. >> I told you. I told you >> we we're turning this into a Drew therapy session. [laughter]

46:51 >> I think there are some aesthetic elements to it for sure. >> I could see that, but I don't I don't see your issue necessarily being like you want to go [ __ ] 20 other girls. So yeah, that you're not that guy. >> Yeah. >> From what I know about you, you've definitely got an aspect of like go with the flow. >> Yeah. >> Let me try out a bunch of different things. >> Oh, this is fun. Like kind of that novelty. >> I have a lot of hobbies, too. lot of hobby, a lot of traveling, lot of just like fun, cool little side things, but they're all like side things. There's no there's nothing that's like >> Yep. >> This is what Drew Bernie was [ __ ] born to do. >> That's true. >> And it's funny cuz it's like that is what >> people sink their teeth into. Like that that is what really like binds you with somebody super strongly and allows you

47:38 to know in in those relationships like this is what I'll compromise on. This is what I never compromise on. Right. Yep. >> So, it removes a lot of that ambiguity. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, I don't I don't know if that's a dip issue. >> That's a good point. Yeah. For me, I see the pattern in a couple of different areas of my life because like uh even with career stuff. So, had this whole thing around, you know, like I said in university, I had the five-year, the super senior year and all that. I loved university because of the variety of it. Yes. And especially like psychology. I I studied psychology. That was my major. Um, I think I'm one credit short of an anthropology minor. Like I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't have taken psychology. I got to study chemistry, biology neuroscience uh physics like a history of like they give you a very

48:23 wide, you know, stat stats. There's Native American studies, like all of it I was fascinated with. Yeah. And I think that's great to a certain extent, but I kind of got hooked on that a little bit. Like I always say this, I'm fascinated by everything. Well, congratulations. Like, [laughter] you know, >> it it's great because I got that breadth, >> right? But I never really did kind of like, you know, I went into neuroscience. I got into neuroscience. I was like, well, academia, god, this I don't like this. There were reasons for that. Sure, maybe some of those were uh a little bit um I don't know, motivated reasoning. But >> you know, >> there's the same thing in a lot of my relationships though too where I've kind of swung from more of like the more aesthetic side to the commitment side and then like give me back. And so again, it goes back and we'll get into this more in the next chapter, but it

49:09 goes back to holding that tension. >> Yeah. >> I'm really bad at that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And I think part of that tension we're talking about that dip you go through, that's part of the tension, you know, of being pulled one way or the other. >> Yeah. >> And you got to navigate that tension to get to the other side of it. And I don't think I'm good at that. >> I I think most of us aren't. >> No. Yeah. >> Yeah. Like it's hard. It's really hard these days. >> What you said earlier though, too, is like you just find a few areas of your life. >> Mhm. where you can navigate that tension and the rest of it might just not be very well balanced. >> Yeah. And I think some of that is is also like self-limitation. Um it's there's a chapter and everything is [ __ ] where I I write that like true freedom is self-limitation. It is it is putting guard rails around yourself

49:54 because you understand I shouldn't go over there. If I go over there, I'm gonna lose control of myself. Um and and actually that loss of agency and that loss of control is actually a loss of freedom. Like it's there's a paradoxical relationship between freedom and self-limitation like keeping yourself in a lane that allows you to act freely to become yourself without any doubts or distraction or anything. But it's hard like I I still struggle with this. I think it's something I've gotten much better at in the last five years. >> Yeah. Yeah. Outside looking in, I would I would agree with you. >> Yeah. Like it to me this is a very new thing. I think my marriage was kind of the first big wow.

50:40 >> That was profound. And then my relationship with my career really shifted a few years ago. Yeah. in in a way that it's I I would actually we we'll talk about it when we get to the religious chapter, but like I would I would put it in that category and that it I feel like it chose me. Um I didn't choose it. >> We just went through the nerdy examples of why we why we um why we choose the life of optionality, but you lived a pretty aesthetic for a long time. >> Yes. >> Why? Like besides all the nerdy stuff I tried to shoehorn in there, what was it for you that kept you hooked on that? I think it was a combination of two things. I think it was uh to put it really crudely ad ADHD and avoidance attachment.

51:25 >> Yeah. Okay. >> Combined. >> And a lot of curiosity as well. Like I think >> the openness to experience. Again, you're very high on openness to experience. >> Yeah. And I think you and I are very similar in that like we love to learn. Yeah. So I I love learning. I love new like a new country, a new language, a new history. Like one of my favorite things to do is just like whenever I landed in a new country, I would just open up the country's Wikipedia. >> Oh, same. Yeah. >> And I would just go so deep. I would like spend 5 hours just digging through everything about that country's history, its people, its culture, its demographics everything. >> So I I think it was a combination of all those things. But I mean, for me, I I really I love novelty. I love new experiences. Um and and I think my brain

52:10 is kind of predisposed to seek them compulsively. On top of that, I had a lot of attachment issues, avoidance issues. Uh I was a commitment phobe. So very early I I I be was very adept at building a lifestyle, right? Like I had a a nebulous quote unquote internet business that was really just like a smattering of websites and freelance work. So I was location independent. I could live anywhere in the world. I traveled all over the world. Um, I never really was a willing to to settle down with a girl and like the the few women I I did end up in a relationship with, like I I didn't stay faithful to them. I was just like I was bad at relationships, I really struggled to be in them. So, I

52:56 set up a lifestyle for myself where I was always in a new place. I was always meeting new people. I was always dating new women. Uh, I was always learning new things. And for I would say three or four years that was really satisfying. It was just like I was young, you know, I was in my 20s, like it was cool as [ __ ] It was tons of fun. Really learned a lot about myself, had a lot of great experiences. But there was an inflection point after a number of years where again that diminishing return started to kick in, right? where it's it's like, okay, the more places I travel, the less satisfied I seem to be with each subsequent place I travel. The more women I date, the less satisfied I seem to be with each subsequent woman I date.

53:42 Um, the more businesses and websites I I start, the more frustrated and dissatisfied I seem to be with each one that I start. And so, it was a clear pattern that was playing out on multiple vectors in my life. And I realized that like I really need to start kind of narrowing here. And um and I think it happened first on the business side is just like my dating relationship blog started to take off and that was like okay we something's working. I should just shut down everything else and focus on that. Um and I think eventually I just started kind of applying that across the different vectors um throughout my life. But like it was hard. It wasn't

54:28 pleasant. Um >> Yeah. Cuz cuz most people would see that and they would say, "Oh, I just" They would do the additive bias thing and just keep going. >> Yeah. >> You know what I mean? They they just they're like, "Oh, I was happy. This is when I was happy when I was doing all these crazy wild things. I just need to go find more crazy wild things." Yeah. >> What was it that you saw? >> Was it really just the business thing? Like I was like, "Oh, my business I when I focused on that my love life." you go back, I don't know if these articles are even still on the website, but there are a couple pieces back in like 2010, 2011 that I wrote. Yeah. >> Uh about being a digital nomad and like >> I know I remember those. Yeah. >> And they're really melancholy. Like they're wondering and I remember having this experience. I was like I don't know. I was traveling like somewhere in Asia or something and I did this crazy thing. I was like white

55:13 water rafting in Indonesia and I like I don't know like met some girl and spent a weekend with her. Couldn't even speak each other's languages and all this stuff. And I remember I flew home and I saw some of my friends from high school and we just hung out and had beers for two days. And I remember realizing I'm like I actually like this better >> than all the [ __ ] that I did. >> I've had some of those songs too. Yeah. >> Yeah. And and I wrote I remember writing a piece about that and it really mind [ __ ] me cuz I I was just like I'm like wait a second I'm like I'm putting so much into finding these novel exciting experiences and then at the end of the end of the day it turns out I just like really miss my friends and so I I started noticing that. I mean it was a lot of things. The other thing too on the dating front there were probably two

56:00 or three women that I met. So speaking of the dip, right? Like when I was a nomad, I never stayed anywhere for more than like 3 to 6 months because 3 to 6 months, that's when you start experiencing the dip. That's when you actually the novelty wears off, the excitement wears off, and you actually start getting really annoyed about all the [ __ ] in that particular country. >> It just so happens most tourist visas are three or six months, too. So >> yeah, that too. >> That helps. >> That too. Um >> hard out. >> So I I I I was never anywhere long term. Um and there were there were there were a couple women that I met that we had a really great thing going, like a really good thing going, and then I had to go. And, you know, the first time it happened, it's like, okay, well, that's

56:45 sad, but okay. You know, life goes on, but then it happened again, and then it happened again. And each time I was like, am I a [ __ ] idiot? Like, what am I wasting here? like I could potentially actually be wasting a lot here. Um, and so I actually promised myself the next time I feel this I'm going to stick around and like see where it goes. And then that's when I met my wife. So it's like that combined with the friend thing combined with the business thing. Like everything just kind of led back to the same principle which was like narrow narrow narrow narrow your options, narrow your focus, narrow what you care about, narrow what you're paying attention to. Um, and there's a reason why like subtle art, I mean, there's a reason that's the central message is like find a few things you care you really give a [ __ ]

57:31 about and just go all in on it because that that was like the antidote >> to everything I'd kind of been experiencing >> to aesthetic hell. >> To aesthetic hell and and I think it turns out that it's like it was a little bit of a premonition of like where our culture was going. we're doing a 10th anniversary edition of the book and um >> you know so I just wrote I just went back and edited the original manuscript and it was interesting because the things that jumped out to me the most going back 10 years later um were the small sections about kind of the aesthetic social media smartphone culture. It's interesting because in the book it they're not a significant part of the book. They're kind of just little

58:17 aides and observations here and there. >> And at the time, they they were not kind of the conventional wisdom or the accepted wisdom. >> And at the time, I also just thought

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