Michael Easter on Huberman Lab: How Hard Things Build Drive

Andrew Huberman 0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Michael Easter. Michael Easter is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a world-renowned writer. His recent work has focused on how modern conveniences undermine our mental and our physical health, and as importantly, the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly steps we can all take to not just offset the damages of those conveniences, but to continue to grow and improve our ability to focus, to do meaningful and creative work, and to derive deeper connection with others. One of the reasons Michael Easter is on this podcast is that his book, The Comfort Crisis, changed my daily life. The Comfort Crisis made me realize that every activity available to us, easy or challenging, destructive or constructive, can and should be viewed through the lens of whether it spends our dopamine reserves or invests them in a worthwhile way. This is a key distinction that we don't often hear about, but it's one that can help you access much greater levels of focus and motivation, to be able to avoid and get over addictive or compulsive behaviors, and it also brings about greater meaning and depth of connection to your relationships and leisure time. During today's discussion, Michael and I explore these ideas and their practical implementation, including how you can tailor them to your own life. He explains how our choices in the physical world and in the online world shape us over time, and how to make better choices about both on a daily basis. He also provides the practical steps of how to get mentally stronger. You know, we hear about getting mentally stronger a lot, but he explains exactly how to do that, as well as how to live with a pervasive sense of gratitude. I'm certain that everyone, young, old, male, female, maybe you're driven or maybe you're a more laid-back type of person, will benefit from and be changed by the conversation with Michael Easter. The information and tools he offers and shares are that good. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Michael Easter.

Andrew Huberman 2:14 Michael Easter, welcome.

Michael Easter 2:15 Thanks for having me, man.

Andrew Huberman 2:17 You've changed my life.

Michael Easter 2:18 Really?

Andrew Huberman 2:19 You have.

Michael Easter 2:20 Tell me more.

Andrew Huberman 2:20 You've changed my behavior on a daily basis. So a ex-girlfriend of mine who lives in Colorado and I were in a discussion about the best place to live and raise kids. And she grew up in the mountains of Colorado, and she had just listened to your book, uh, The Comfort Crisis.

Michael Easter 2:40 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 2:41 And she w- was saying, I think this is the reason why people in her hometown are so mentally robust into their 70s, 80s, even 90s. Her grandparents were really robust. Uh, I think they lived into their 90s or late 80s at least. Uh, and we talked about her childhood a bit around this and she said that her mom actually used to take her and put her in a basket and put her into the river and just send her downriver to a friend's house. And, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that nowadays you would like, you know, parents would like lose their minds. Um-

Michael Easter 3:13 Yeah, like Moses.

Andrew Huberman 3:14 Like, exactly. Um, and that she, you know, grew up in cold water in the morning and, um, and of course skiing and doing all the things they do in Colorado. But she was absolutely convinced that the, uh, the sort of bodily expectation of daily activity, meaning just a sort of level of energy and almost stress if she didn't, um, get a ton of outdoor movement every day, um, was determined by that early upbringing, of just being outdoors almost all the time and doing hard things and experiencing cold and things of that sort. So, uh, I read the book, um, and started doing hard things on a regular basis, mostly rucking.

Michael Easter 3:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 3:56 But it has been a few years since I've had a really big adventure, and we'll talk about big adventures that include some actual danger. And I make it a point each week to write down one thing that I'm gonna do that is l- truly uncomfortable. So thank you for changing my life for the better. It's, uh, transformed my mental health and I wa- was already feeling really good.

Michael Easter 4:17 Amazing. I love that.

Andrew Huberman 4:18 So-

Michael Easter 4:18 That's great.

Andrew Huberman 4:19 So, let's talk about modern life versus, um, ancient nervous systems.

Michael Easter 4:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 4:25 Right? And I think this is, um, a, a big theme in, in your writing and your life. Um, what do you think the human brain and nervous system were, quote unquote, designed to do? I'm not implying, uh, the, the origins of the design. That's a different podcast. But w- what do you think the human species is really organized to do? And how do you think that fits into modern life or doesn't fit into modern life?

Michael Easter 4:51 Well, I think that we evolved in a context where we had to do hard things all the time. Life was uncomfortable, right? You were out, you spent 100% of your time outdoors. Uh, it was often too hot, too cold. You were physically active all day. People walked something like 20,000 steps a day on average. And by the way, as you were taking those steps, you were usually carrying something heavy, right? This could be your child, it could be tools, it could be an animal that you took down. You had to carry the meat back to camp. You also had long periods of downtime that were unstimulated where you would talk to other people face-to-face. I mean, life was just, it was effortful, it was challenging, and you had to do those challenges and go through those discomforts in order to survive. And I think that the sort of, uh, (laughs) promise and peril of modern life is that we no longer have to do these hard, challenging things to survive, right? If you want food, you can go to the gas station on the corner and get it. There's just ample food. I think we throw out about a third of the food that we produce. Um, physically, we obviously have to do a lot less physical activity to survive. If you wanna go somewhere, you just hop in your car, you walk across the parking lot. Um, you could actually just exist in your house and not really move, right? You could, like...... do Uber Eats for all your food. You could work behind a screen. So we really removed that physical discomfort out of our life. Um, and I also think, you know, even something like boredom, like boredom is an uncomfortable thing. And now when we feel boredom, we have this, like, very easy effortless escape from it in the form of a phone. Temperature swings, right? We can live at 72 degrees. I mean, th- this list goes on and on and on. I could answer this question for, for like hours, but I think that listeners get the point that we evolved in these environments of discomfort, and now we have shifted over to environments that are much more comfortable. Now let me be clear. This is a good shift in the grand scheme of time and space. But it does come with problems 'cause you find that because we evolved in environments of discomfort, I think humans, um, are sort of wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing 'cause that would have served us in the past, right? In the past, you didn't want to move too much just for the sake of it 'cause you wanted to conserve calories. If you had the opportunity to eat a little more food, you would probably do that 'cause that would give you a survival advantage, right? You'd put on some fat. You didn't want to spend too much time if it was too much, too cold or something. Um, and so we're wired to do the easy thing, but now we end up in this sort of easier world and those sort of instincts we have, I think, backfire. So call this an evolutionary mismatch really.

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Andrew Huberman 10:17 As a neurobiologist and, uh, in some sense, a comparative neurobiologist, I like to step back and say, you know, "What, what is a species, uh, you know, trying to optimize for?" It sounds like a lot of what we were trying to optimize for throughout human history is to limit discomfort. Um, and of course, ensure the species persists, so reproduction is key, and then making sure that our offspring, which need a lot of care over a long period of time compared to other species, are taken care of. Like when you step back and it's just like pure evolutionary lens-

Michael Easter 10:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:49 ... um, it, to me, it seems pretty much that simple. Uh, and all the rest is noise, as they say. So if our goal in human evolution is to rid ourselves of discomfort and make things easier and safer and propagate the species, then why at some point i- is more comfort bad for us?

Michael Easter 11:08 There are side effects that happen, right? Um, and when you look at most of the diseases that kill us today, they are a result of usually overconsumption of food, right? We eat too much, uh, far more than we often need. Um, we don't move enough. There's a lot tied to sort of metabolic health. And so I think that I put this in the... I, I like to say these are good problems to have in the grand scheme of time and space, right? I would prefer to have my problem be that, oh, I have to go exercise or something to take care of my physical activity than the fact that like, oh, I have to, I have to go hunt and gather every single day, like, to get my food. But I do think that they are problems that we need to solve. The fact that, you know, a lot of our modern problems are driven by the fact that our environments have become so comfortable. Does that answer your question?

Andrew Huberman 11:59 Yeah, that da- that answers the question. I, I heard someone say recently that a lot of what exists now in health and wellness is just trying to bring the outdoors indoors.

Michael Easter 12:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:07 So I, I've tried to persuade, as everyone knows, people to get outside in the morning and get sunlight in their eyes for all sorts of reasons. Um, but you know, the whole business with red light, you know, long wavelength light-... infrared light. You can use one of those panels, it can be quite useful. There's also a lot of long wavelength light coming from the sun.

Michael Easter 12:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 12:23 Um, fresh air. Uh, we could debate grounding, um, but many people believe it's helpful. Uh, green spaces. I mean, uh, I kind of agree with this idea that, you know, so much of what we're encouraging people to do is just, um, mimic doing what we used to do all the time.

Michael Easter 12:40 It's what life used to be, right? We... L- like I said, we spend 100% of our time in the outdoors. We evolved in the outdoors. That is kind of like our natural environment. And I think, um, to continue with this example, when you put us in four walls where we don't get that outdoor exposure, some interesting psychological things start to happen that probably aren't that good for us. Um, and this... You can apply this idea to everything, like I said. Like, even physical activity. It's like, exercise is a great example to me. No one exercised in the past, right? Exercise is something that we made up basically after the Industrial Revolution because what happened is we get these jobs where now we're much more sedentary. And we start to realize, "Oh, these people who have the jobs where they sit all day, they're getting these strange, new health problems that we've never seen. And yet the people who are kinda moving around all day still in their jobs, they don't seem to get those problems. So maybe activity is the difference maker." "Hey, you guys that are sitting all day, I want you to just go move around for the sake of it." "No, there's no actual point to it." "Just, like, move around for the sake of it. That'll improve your health." And this becomes this idea of, of exercise. Movement for the sake of it, which is this kind of strange idea in the grand scheme of time and space, but it does make sense in the context of a world where the average American is walking, you know, 4,000 to 6,000 steps a day. That's how we get our activities. We have to manufacture it, effectively. And I will say though, to continue with your example about how we sort of, uh, mimic what we used to do in the past, um, I do think that when we, we try to solve for these problems, sometimes, uh, the way we do it is sort of interesting. We go, "Okay, if we need to move more, well, what if we got, um... What if we got a belt and we put a motor on it and a person could just run on this belt in this air-conditioned building? Oh, and, and then we'll put a television there. And that way you can just watch CNN blare insane information into your face the entire time and be totally distracted." Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But when we do that, what are we missing? So when a person runs outdoors on the other hand, let's say it's on a trail, well, now you have all these other forms of discomfort and stimulation that are coming your way. So one, you've got the physical activity obviously. But two is that the trail isn't this perfectly predictable thing, right? If I'm on the treadmill I can go, "Okay, 1% incline, I'm gonna run six miles an hour," and I just do that. I don't have to think about it. Well, the trail, it's gonna go up and down. You're gonna have rocks and ruts you have to navigate under. That's its mental challenge. You're also gonna have to think about the weather, right? "Now, oh, I have to deal with the temperature changes. Oh, that looks like a storm might be coming in." There's also so much more that you take in from the environment. You're running through trees. You run into open spaces. And that has, I think, a real emotional and I would say even spiritual benefit from that nature. You're gonna see totally random things, right? Like, my favorite thing is when I go run on trails in Las Vegas and, like, you see that random coyote or the bighorn sheep and it's just like, "This is it."

Andrew Huberman 15:50 Mountain lion?

Michael Easter 15:50 Mountain lion, right. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 15:51 Have you s- Have you seen mountain lions?

Michael Easter 15:52 I've seen them other places, but not in Vegas, unfortunately. Most people would say fortunately. I'm on the other side. Like, mountain lion's not gonna hurt you. But if you get to see one, that's an opportunity.

Andrew Huberman 16:00 I don't know, that video of that kid in Colorado, you know, where it's chasing him-

Michael Easter 16:04 Oh, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 16:04 ... or, or stalking him. Uh, and we can talk about that. I totally agree. I think that, um, optic flow that, uh... of the sort that you get out when you're hiking or walking or cycling or, um, more dangerous activity like motorcycling out of doors, um, we know that it has a powerful effect in suppressing some of the areas of the brain involved in fear. I don't know if you're familiar-

Michael Easter 16:25 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 16:25 ... with this literature, but Francine Shapiro, who was... um, actually ran her clinic behind Stanford, uh, for a while, who came up with EMDR, this eye movement, uh, desensitization, uh, reprocessing for trauma, um, came up with that on a walk and developed the lateral eye movements that are the cornerstone of EMDR as a way to bring the walk into her clinic-

Michael Easter 16:48 Interesting.

Andrew Huberman 16:49 ... because, uh... And then for years I would hear about this and I thought it was complete garbage. I was like, "This... There's..." As a neuroscientist I was like, "Th- No." And people would say, "Oh, you know, the eye movements mimic rapid eye movements in sleep. That's why it works." And it... No, they don't look anything like the rapid eye movements in sleep, by the way. They'd say, "Oh, you know, it's, um, creating cross-hemisphere, uh, activation on the two sides of the brain." Uh, n- no. I mean, you get that s- if you have binocular vision, you know, vision scientists. I was like, "No, that's ridiculous." But then somewhere around 2016 to 2020, there were four papers and then an additional paper in animal, uh, in an animal study. So some... There's a mix of animal and human data showing that when, um, animals or humans engage in this, uh, lateralized re- repetitive eye movement back and forth that it suppresses, among other areas, the amygdala.

Michael Easter 17:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:39 So amygdala activation, you know, troughs. And so there's something about forward ambulation, nerd speak for walking and running, right?

Michael Easter 17:46 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 17:46 That, um, suppresses the, the fear areas of the brain. And I'm convinced that this is a, uh, a central reason why movement out of doors is so fundamentally different on our psyche, um, and our level of c- calm, uh, as compared to running on a treadmill or, um, God forbid, just sitting at a desk all day.

Michael Easter 18:05 Yeah, and that makes sense. And I would wonder evolutionarily if that would be, um, for hunting. So something like persistence hunting, right? That's a dangerous act. Yes, you have to hunt every single day. That's how you're going to survive to get that food. At the same time, it's still very perilous, right? You're not walking down to Walmart-

Andrew Huberman 18:21 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 18:21 ... and getting stuff. And so if you had that fear suppression in the context of an act that is somewhat dangerous, that would probably give you an advantage to actually end up taking down that animal.

Andrew Huberman 18:31 Huge. There's a, a video of, um, some hunters-... it appears to be in Africa, forgive me, uh, for not knowing exactly where it was. Um, prepared to e- essentially walk towards a group of lions that have, have, a- are on a kill. And the lions look up from the kill and there are these hunters walking, like, with spears vertical, right? And the, the lions are like, "Wait, what's going on here?" You know? Typically, this is the other, other, uh ... The, the scenario's the other way around. Are you familiar with this video?

Michael Easter 19:00 No.

Andrew Huberman 19:01 And the, the hunters, they're translating into the captions and assuming it's accurate, they're saying, you know, "It's key that we just keep moving forward." And that confuses the lions and they think that, you know, that because we're continuing to look at them and move forward, they'll move off the kill. But if we avert our, our gaze, then they won't and we can get attacked, and it's happened before. And they literally walk these lions off the kill. And the lions are, you can see that they're, they're perplexed, but like, th- they're like, "These guys aren't afraid at all." And they just sort of start backing away and a couple of them are negotiating in their minds, you can see (laughs) . And they basically walk these lions off the kill and take the kill.

Michael Easter 19:36 Unbelievable.

Andrew Huberman 19:36 And there's so much going on there that, but relates to what we're talking about. But forward ambulation, uh-

Michael Easter 19:41 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:42 ... in the context of hunting, I, I, I agree with you. I think it could have, um, a- huge implications.

Michael Easter 19:47 Also a great metaphor for life-

Andrew Huberman 19:49 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 19:49 ... right there. Right? It's like-

Andrew Huberman 19:50 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 19:50 ... just keep moving forward. If you just kind of focus on the kill, as it were, and just keep moving forward, don't hesitate, like, that can get you pretty far.

Andrew Huberman 20:01 So you're a writer.

Michael Easter 20:02 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:04 But you get into the outdoors a lot.

Michael Easter 20:05 I do.

Andrew Huberman 20:06 And you do hard, scary things on purpose.

Michael Easter 20:10 Sometimes.

Andrew Huberman 20:10 On, on ... Yeah. So, I'm curious about the, um, the younger Michael Easter. When you were a kid, were you the kid that w- would like hold on to the firecracker to the very last second? Were you the kid that was like, "Let's jump that roof into the pool"? I'm not giving suggestions here, but I, I knew kids like that.

Michael Easter 20:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:25 They usually were named Johnny-

Michael Easter 20:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:27 ... for whatever reason. There's a correlation there. Were you that kid or were you the, the writer kid?

Michael Easter 20:33 So I was not the kid that would hold the firecracker to the last second, um, jump from the second story into the pool, and I'm still not that person. I'm a person where if I had a good reason, what, what sort of bigger thing is holding that firecracker to the last end going to give me that I'm perfectly willing to accept that risk?

Andrew Huberman 20:55 (laughs) Okay.

Michael Easter 20:56 So the things (laughs) that I do that, um, might be considered dangerous or challenging, I always assume there's gonna be a greater reward at the end, you know? I'm not just doing something hard for the sake of doing something hard. Think about it like you're skateboarding, okay? As you were learning how to skateboard, I'm sure you fell a lot.

Andrew Huberman 21:18 Yeah, all the time.

Michael Easter 21:19 You banged yourself up, got all these scuffs on your arm.

Andrew Huberman 21:22 Yeah.

Michael Easter 21:22 But the point wasn't to fall.

Andrew Huberman 21:24 No.

Michael Easter 21:25 Falling, however, was something that came as you got better as a skateboarder.

Andrew Huberman 21:30 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 21:31 Right? So the point is not to fall. The point is to go, "Okay, what is the overall goal? To be better as a skateboarder. And in the process, I'm probably gonna have to do some things that maybe bang me up a little bit, that have some element of danger, but to focus on that overall goal." So I'd say I've always been, um, like that. And I personally find, um, as a journalist, I mean, I read a lot of studies, I speak to experts, I call people like you who have a PhD, pick their brain. Um, but I also find that, um, sometime I get the best information and can better process it and put it into a narrative that, um, someone can identify with and maybe learn from it more if I h- if I actually go to the source and I have a story around that. And sometimes for me, going to the source leads me into places that are a little bit, I would say, off the beaten path maybe. Yeah, sometimes I go to labs, you know, and it's, there's no danger there. Um, plenty of coffee, nice and air conditioned, um, nothing's gonna go wrong. But, you know, my work has taken me to some war zones, to the middle of the jungle in the Amazon, um, I went up to the Arctic for 30 days, I just completed this long hike in the middle of nowhere, Utah. Um, and I do find that on those trips, that's where you start to peel back the deeper layers of whatever idea I'm trying to communicate. So I think that there's a big difference between, um, intellectual understanding and experiential understanding.

Andrew Huberman 22:53 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 22:53 And it's that experiential understanding, like, I wanna get to the heart of that. I wanna get to the heart of that. Because if I can communicate that, I have a higher probability of getting a person who reads my work to perhaps take an action that could improve their life. And it doesn't have to be big. I'm not suggesting people have to go to the jungle or go up to the Arctic. But I am saying start where you're at and do something that's maybe a little bit out of your comfort zone, maybe a little bit of a challenge, and see how it goes. Oh, you didn't die? Great. Maybe try it the next day and the next day. And so by sort of continuously pushing that edge, I think that people find that you don't fall off the edge. The edge tends to expand. And as the edge expands, you end up a better person.

Andrew Huberman 23:39 Yeah, I definitely wanna talk about your 2% rule-

Michael Easter 23:42 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 23:42 ... and, and some of the other, um, actionable items that, uh, you've delineated in your books and elsewhere in your, in your Substack. I, I wanna sort of, um ... It's not a challenge, it's a, it's a question about, okay, if humans have introduced so many comforts to their lives that, uh, small things feel uncomfortable ... Like, for me, um, uh, I like flying places, but I don't like airports. Um, I, I travel-

Michael Easter 24:09 Who does? (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:09 I travel with a lot of supplements. I'm always secondary screened. I don't check luggage. And it's funny because, um, uh, it's such a small thing, right, to wait for your bag to be secondary screened. But, you know, the- these things can become annoyances, you know, we're human. And I, I love to laugh at myself, uh, e- when I get annoyed about these little things. You go, "Oh, like, this thing bothered me or something," you know?

Michael Easter 24:29 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:30 It's, um ... So if we lower our threshold for what we consider challenging-

Michael Easter 24:34 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 24:34 ... and, and I'm making myself the, the, the butt of the joke here-... but it's pretty serious if you look out and think, okay, you know, some people, they, they're hearing us talk about doing hard things, but for many people, even though there are so many comforts, um, life feels hard. It's like, work is hard. Uh, you know, things are expensive. Um, it's hard to get enough sleep. Uh, everyone's always blaring at us, uh, at all the things we're supposed to be doing, that the world seems unstable. So for, I think many people already feel like they're inundated with challenge, even though we're talking about the, the creature comforts that we all enjoy. So if somebody wants to start exploring leaning into discomfort in the way that grows them and actually makes those other discomforts that we're talking about, uh, kind of dissolve away, h- how should they start to go about that?

Michael Easter 25:24 So a couple things, um, come to mind and I'm trying to think how to get into it. (smacks lips) And what I think that I will, um, use is an example of myself and then I'll kind of unpack that, and I'll unpack it at a level, um, where we talk about something more, it's kind of a big challenge and then also something, like, people can use every day. So I'll give you the example of, um, for the comfort crisis, I go and I spend 30 days in the Arctic. M- a little more than 30 days. Now when I fly up there, I fly from, uh, Las Vegas to Anchorage, Anchorage to Kotzebue, which is this little town just 20 miles above the Arctic Circle. And then from Kotzebue, you get in a plane that is about the size of a pack of gum and you take that plane out, you know, more than 100 miles into the Arctic and it drops you off. Now when I get on that plane from Vegas, it's, like, a 747. And I'm like you, I hate flying, right? Because seats are too small and cramped, plane's too hot, and the movies in the seat back, they suck, right? The coffee not very good. There's usually a baby crying. If I need to go to the bathroom, bathroom's totally cramped. Like, flying is just terrible. I'm like, "Uh, flying is the worst."

Andrew Huberman 26:30 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 26:31 And then I go spend this 30 days in the middle of the Arctic. All right? So if I want to drink anything, I gotta hike down to a stream and I gotta carry the heavy water bags back up to camp. I am freezing cold the entire freaking time. If I want to go to the bathroom, I have to hike out onto the tundra and I have to bring the rifle because there's grizzly bears. Uh, I'm starving the entire time. Uh, if I want to get warm, it requires picking up firewood, of which there's not many, hauling it back. Like, everything is hard, everything is uncomfortable, that whole experience for the whole month. So then when I get onto the plane that goes from the Arctic back to Las Vegas, it's like, what do you think my experience of that flight was like?

Andrew Huberman 27:17 Pure luxury.

Michael Easter 27:18 Holy shit. Greatest thing that ever happened to me. And it's like, that chair, I hadn't sat in a real chair for more than a month. It's like, "This is so comfortable." Coffee was hot. I'm like, "This is the best thing I've ever drank." I had like, 12 bags of pretzels, right? The crying baby, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, just hand me that baby."

Andrew Huberman 27:37 (laughs)

Michael Easter 27:37 "I got it." Movies in the seat back. Like, w- w- it was so boring up there that we were reading the labels on our energy bars. And so when you show me Fast and the Furious, like, '79, it's like, poof, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. And then when I go to the bathroom, right, not only do I not have to take the rifle, right? (laughs) That would've been problematic on the plane. Um, but I hit this button in this bathroom, this metal thing, little red button, and hot running water comes out of a faucet and hits my hands. I hadn't had hot running water on my hands for more than a month and it was just like, "Oh my god." Now let me rem- let me remind you too that this is happening in a tube of steel that's hurtling through the air at, like, 600 miles an hour, 35,000 feet above sea level. And it was one of those moments where I'm like, "Holy shit, it is so amazing to be alive today." Like, we have the most amazing access to just luxuries and comforts ever, and yet we often forget that. Right? So what did it take for me to realize that that flight is a freaking miracle instead of this huge and personal injustice to Michael Leister? I had to go out and I had to sort of reset that goalpost and go out into a world that was totally different, that was totally challenging that taught me that the world I came from was actually quite great. So there's this, uh, psychologist, I believe he's now at Brown. When I spoke to him, he was just finishing up his PhD at Harvard, and he did this study that was published in Science. I can't remember its title, but he basically came up with this theory that's called prevalence-induced concept change. So what they did in this study is, um, they took a group of people, there was, like, three different phases of this study, but I'm gonna talk about two of them 'cause I think they're most relatable. What they did is they took a group of 800 different people in the first study or it's, I can't remember how many people, but they had them look at 800 different faces in a row. Okay? So they'd look at face after face after face, and these people had to deem whether these faces were threatening or non-threatening. So they're going, "Non-threatening, non-threatening, oh, threatening, threatening," face after face. Now at the 200th face, what they did is they started showing these people fewer threatening faces. Okay? So successively fewer. The second study they did, it was a similar setup, but they used research proposals and these people had to deem whether these research proposals were ethical or unethical. Same deal, about midway through, they start feeding these people fewer and fewer unethical proposals. Now these two scenarios, they should be pretty black or white, right? Either you look at a face and it either threatens you or it does not threaten you. You read a research proposal and it either crosses this, like, moral line you have in the sand or it doesn't cross it.What they found though is that people basically see gray. So as people started encountering fewer truly threatening faces, they started judging faces that were on the borderline as threatening. So they said threatening just as many times even though the faces weren't truly threatening, faces that they would have let slide before.

Andrew Huberman 31:01 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 31:01 Same with the research proposals. As they get fewer and fewer unethical ones, they start to get nitpicky. Right? They're like, "Oh, well, there's that one line in there. Yeah, that's unethical. Throw it in the pile." So the guy calls this prevalence-induced, his name's David Levari, he calls it prevalence-induced concept change, and it basically finds that as people experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied. We simply sort of lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. So when you apply that to life today to make this practical, it's like as the world has become a lot more comfortable, as we encounter fewer sort of traumas and real problems in our life, we don't necessarily stop and go, "This is amazing." We simply broaden our definition of what a problem is, of what a discomfort is. And so we end up with the exact same number of problems, of discomforts, but they've just become progressively more hollow over time. I like to think about that as the science of first world problems.

Andrew Huberman 32:02 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 32:03 I think you can think about it as a moving goalpost. So it's like you go into one environment and that sort of sets your expectations, right? And we're sort of designed to search for problems, more or less designed, um, designed to search for problems. So you're gonna find them in your environment no matter how unproblematic your environment is, sort of objectively unproblematic. So when I talked to, uh, Levari, he basically said like, "Yeah, I think it makes theoretical sense that if you're going into a place where your problems are more acute and say objectively (laughs) more realistically problems, when you go into this less problematic environment, um, you'll sort of be like, 'Wow, this is fantastic.'"

Andrew Huberman 32:46 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 32:46 Now, of course, over time you're gonna adapt back, and I found that unto myself. So when I got back from the Arctic, I'm like a, I'm like a zen monk, man. I'm just like, nothing's rattling me. That was my wife's comment, like, "Nothing rattles you since you're back."

Andrew Huberman 32:59 For how long?

Michael Easter 33:00 Probably a month. Probably a month. Then my question becomes, well, I can't go to the Arctic every month. One, I can't. Two, nor do I want to. So what can I do in my life that sort of constantly pushes that goal, goalpost back into a place where I'm less neurotic more or less? It's almost like we live on a neurotic treadmill in a way. As problems fade, we just keep searching for problems and finding them. So I think there's a lot of things that a person can do, like in their daily life, and people can get creative around this. For example, volunteering. Like, if you live a, a decent life, well, why don't you go help people whose lives are a little harder than yours? And you'll see what it could be like and what it's like out there, and that'll give you some sort of perspective. And that's something you can do. It takes an hour a week or something, right? I've talked to people who go to, uh, recovery meetings, including myself. Uh, you go into a meeting and you hear these stories from people who are at the most rock bottom moment of their life. I'm like, "That'll reset what you consider a problem pretty damn fast." You just walk out going, "Wow, I was complaining that, uh, my tax guy was asking for a lot of papers and this guy just told me a story that just blew my mind. Like, that's a real problem." And so I think we need to have moments like that that sort of press back against us and put things in a little bit more context. And I do think you need the sort of moment where you think about that and you tell yourself the story around that. Like, that's a really important part.

Michael Easter 34:33 Um, and I'm gonna... This is kinda going off on a weird path. I don't know it'll ta- where it'll take us, but we'll find out. Um, when you think about something like a rite of passage, what people would do in these, like these are, you know, tribes around the world had these different rites of passages all throughout time, and this was not like they're all communicating and figuring the same... No, these things arose spontaneous. And the point of a rite of passage is that we have a person who's at point A in their life and we need them to get, and we need to get them to point B where they're gonna be more capable, more confident, more competent. We don't just say, "Hey, you're ready to go to point B." We would often send them out to do something challenging. Could be like extended time in nature. There was all these different things. And in that process, the person would struggle. They would face all these different problems. They would have to figure their shit out. And then they would come back and they would be at point B. But there was a point where people would sort of gather around and say, "What did you learn about that? What story are you telling yourself about that?" And so shaping the narrative around a life event becomes critically important, I think, for mental health and how you frame issues. And so if you think of the concept of like event centrality. It's like, how central is an event going to be to my life and what story am I gonna tell around it? Right? So people who tend to take like something bad that happened in their life and they take that in as the central component of their personality tend to have worse mental health. Whereas people who take it and say, "Hey, this thing happened, but what can I learn from it? How can I grow from it? What might happen in the future? Yes, this sucks hard right now, but where might it take me in the past or in the future?" And those two people are gonna have completely different trajectories. So the narrative you tell yourself becomes really important.

Andrew Huberman 36:25 A few years ago, I started keeping a folder where I would look back, um, to different, uh, phases of life and just list out sort of the bullet point events of like 0 to 5 and, uh, you know, 5 to 10, with, with no particular end point in mind. Um, it's an exercise that, uh, I find very useful because, um, it-Offers the opportunity for this kind of like, "H- how do I frame this thing?" Oftentimes, the, the things that felt the worst at that time turn out to be some of the best things ever. And then you can start to create a, um, a timeline and you realize that most of the things that were, felt really bad at the time turned out to be the best thing ever. And, and that the big wins were almost always the, um, outgrowth of those prior negative experiences. It's just kinda wild. But it gets back to this theme that I think has, um, thread throughout so much of, uh, what we're talking about today and, and your work, which is that it seems like discomfort is, uh, a prerequisite for really feeling truly good about one's self in the world. Like, it, I, I'm not sure that they can exist, um, separately from one another. But I think we come into the world as these, like, bubbling babies and, like, nervous systems prepared to learn, uh, and, uh, so hopefully the early phase of life is nothing but joy and peace and comfort. I mean, our parents devote themselves to that, we hope, right? Um, and then at some point, they ought to pull us aside and say, "Hey, listen, you know, the next, like, 70 years are gonna be these, you know, this, uh, sawtooth of, of, uh-"

Michael Easter 37:59 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:59 "... of really tough, really great, really tough, (laughs) really great experiences." But they don't tell us that. And I think that most of us go through life trying to get back to this place where we're kind of, like, where everything's taken care of. But what you're te- what you're saying is that, uh, that's exact wrong approach. That, and in fact, it's, it's, it's not, um, it's not, uh, it's not ... We don't wanna be infants, but at some level, um, we, we, from a comfort perspective, we, we sort of infantilize ourselves.

Michael Easter 38:30 My thought is that th- vast majority of things that are good for us today and that help us grow and that help us become better humans, they're gonna be hard. Right? Uh, y- apply this to exercise. Exercise sucks. (laughs) Right? When you're doing exercise, it is hard. But you're gonna get this long-term benefit. If you're trying to get your eating in order, I can tell you, a salad is less delicious than a Dorito, and anyone who argues with me, you've just been eating way too many salads. You've deluded yourself, right?

Andrew Huberman 38:59 Or in my case, you know, I, I'll push back a little bit here because I, I love exercise and I love eating clean. And what's just happ- I got into early and, but, I, and people will be like, "This is ridiculous." But I just don't eat bad food. I quit eating bad food. And I stopped thinking about whether or not exercise is negotiable a long time ago.

Michael Easter 39:18 I could see that. Um, I think for probably most people, exercise is gonna be an uncomfortable event. Uh, it's why, uh, what are the federal exercise guidelines? 150 minutes of, uh, moderate to vigorous activity a week, strength train tries a week. Something like 18% of Americans actually do that. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 39:36 Only 18%?

Michael Easter 39:37 18%, yeah. Could be 20. I, uh, you know, fact check me. I'll, I'll put a fact on the thing.

Andrew Huberman 39:41 No, I believe you. I believe you.

Michael Easter 39:42 Um, yeah, because it is uncomfortable. You know, we have all these, I think for most people, it's uncomfortable. Uh, we have all these sort of internal levers that dissuade extra movement for the sake of it, you know? When you run, your legs are gonna burn. Your le- your lungs are gonna hurt. Um, but on the other side of that, discomfort is improved health, improved mental wellbeing, all these different things. Um, in short, I think that sort of, to sort of back up from the evolutionary perspective that I often take is that, um, the reason we have, uh, reason why things are often uncomfortable is because, you know, we wanted to dissuade extra movement in the past. Um, you didn't wanna feel hungry 'cause you needed that food, like, on and on and on. And today, the environments have really just flipped, where oftentimes, doing the uncomfortable thing is the buy-in to a better life-

Andrew Huberman 40:38 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 40:39 ... really. Yeah. And you can, and it applies to so many different places.

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Andrew Huberman 43:33 There's a kid that I've known since he was really little, um, who has some learning challenges, uh, but managed to get himself into a really fine university. Um, and then after a year, took on too many comforts of the social dynamics, let's say, and decided to leave, leave of absence. Um, he read your book, um, about halfway through the summer where he was working construction, and he called me and he said, uh, "I'm going back to, to college."

Michael Easter 44:03 Hell yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:04 And I, I said...

Michael Easter 44:05 If he's listening now, I applaud him.

Andrew Huberman 44:07 Yeah. Uh, he also, um, quit a heavy cannabis habit in the, in the same, uh, swipe. And, um, and his ... one of his parents, I don't wanna give too much information about him 'cause people are, are clever these days, will figure it out, uh, who he is and I'd like to, uh, maintain his anonymity, but one of his parents is a first-generation immigrant, um, and when his kid was leaving college was just like, "Oh my God."

Michael Easter 44:30 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:30 You know, he had really toiled in, in hopes of his, of his son not having to have as challenging a physical labor life as he did. And so I talked to this kid, um, just the other night and he's like, "Moving thousands of pounds of concrete every week is really hard on the body." And he's in his 20s.

Michael Easter 44:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:49 He's, he's saying he goes to bed every night s- not sore like sore from the gym, like, sore down to the bone.

Michael Easter 44:57 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 44:58 And, um, so I wanna extend a thank-you from him.

Michael Easter 45:02 Awesome.

Andrew Huberman 45:03 Most people will not, hopefully, have to go through that process to figure out that the path that they have an opportunity to take, um, is probably much easier than, um, the alternative in many cases. I wanna distinguish between daily self-induced discomforts and these larger discomforts like going to the Arctic.

Michael Easter 45:25 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 45:25 I, I wanna get to the, the, the Misogi theme and, and this idea of taking on things that are truly hard that you might not finish. But if we were to shrink this down to the, the morning. You wake up, you can scroll on your phone or you can hop in the cold plunge, take a cold shower. These days, there's a lot of, um, discussion around doing the cold shower, has numerous benefits. Wakes you up, dopamine, norepinephrine, but also, it kind of sucks. Nobody likes cold water. If you do, send me a note 'cause I, some, you know, I'll send you a neurologist's phone number. Um, but we all like the feeling of getting out of it.

Michael Easter 45:59 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:00 But what are some things besides cold showers and exercise, which I do believe everyone should do, and get sunlight, et cetera, that we can do on a daily basis? Morning or in the afternoon if we're feeling just kind of low, besides cold showers and exercise and sunlight, that are hard. Like, is it if I, um, like I love eating strawberries and I hate putting ... like, I, I leave the hulls in weird places without even realizing it. And I'll walk by a hull of a strawberry and I'm thinking ... and I, this morning I thought, when Easter's here, he'll laugh at me. Like, I'm like, "I gotta pick this thing up." I'm not just scattering them around my home, by the way.

Michael Easter 46:32 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 46:32 But I'm like, like, what is it? Like, we create these barriers to doing the simplest of things.

Michael Easter 46:37 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:38 So what are some difficult things that we can introduce to our daily routine that have been shown to make us feel better besides exercise, sunlight, and cold, and cold water?

Michael Easter 46:47 Yeah. So sort of my big picture answer here is my Substack is called The 2% Newsletter, and I'll tell you why it's called 2%. So there's this, uh, study that found that only 2% of people take the stairs when there's an escalator available. 2%. Now, 100% of people know that if they were to take the stairs, that would be better for them, right? They get a better long-term return on their health, on their wellbeing. And yet 90% of pe- 98% of people do the easier thing that could actually hurt them in the long run in the context of this environment where we don't move enough. So this tells me that we're sort of wired to do the next easiest thing. But living better in modern life often requires doing these slightly uncomfortable things that are just so obvious and in front of us. And it's like, you have to get to the second floor. So which route are you gonna take? Are you gonna take the one that's a little bit uncomfortable now but improves your life in the long run or are you gonna do the easy thing that might actually hurt you in the long run? So that to me is just a metaphor for, like, how do you improve in daily life, right? In the trenches of daily life, how do you improve? So I apply this, I try and apply this to as many different areas in my life than I c- as I can. It's like, if I can make something just a little bit more uncomfortable, I'm not talking about extreme, do the slightly harder thing that I know will give me a long-term re- return, I gotta take that. So for me it's like, okay, if I'm in my office, go through some examples, and I have a phone call, I could sit here and take the phone call...... or I could pop in my headphones and I could go for a walk and I could take that call while walking. I would say for the vast majority of phone calls, unless you're, like, talking to the CEO, your big boss, right, maybe sit behind the computer for that one. But, like, you're getting in all these steps that are gonna be beneficials. And steps are one of, like, the, the metric that is most correlated to better health. Like, people just need to generally walk more, and that's an easy way to do it. It's like, you gotta take the call, might as well get some steps in as you do it, right? Things like that. Things like, could you even just carry your groceries at the grocery store? You get the basket, you're carrying stuff. You're getting in this, like, low load of carrying that's gonna really help with back health, strength, all these different things. Even th- things as simple as, like, "I'm gonna park in the farthest spot away." Like, people go, roll their eyes and go, "That's so obvi- Yeah, everyone says that." It's like, okay, but no one actually does it. And if you look at just, um, non-exercise activity thermogenics, NEAT, this is basically, uh, a dorky way of saying all the movement in a person's life that isn't dedicated exercise. That often outweighs the benefits of exercise in many studies.

Andrew Huberman 49:32 Certainly by calories burned.

Michael Easter 49:34 Certainly by calories burned. Also, uh, some data suggests even health outcomes in the long run. Um, there's some Mayo Clinic data that says that, you know, people who just move around a lot more in their daily life, they're burning, like, 800 calories just from moving around, this incidental movement. It's like running eight miles or something if you do some really rough back of the hand math, right? And so I think looking for those opportunities, even beyond exercise, something like, um ... So in The Comfort Crisis, I write about the val- value of silence, for example. Um, we have increased the world's loudness four-fold as human beings, and yet silence is actually pretty good for us in this context of noise. So you put someone in silence and like, yeah, it's a little uncomfortable at first. People will generally report being like, "Oh, it's so quiet. This is weird. I'm a little weirded out." But as time goes on, people tend to calm down, and it's sort of like a nice reset. And so can you even go, "Hey, like, I go into my office and I just start blasting music immediately." Like, most people keep the TV on, who keep the TV on all day. It's not that they're watching it, it's that they just need noise in the background or else they feel weird. But if you can sort of cut that out, even though it's a little bit hard at first, it's probably gonna improve you over the long run. Like, how can we apply this to different areas? I did a post, it's called the 2% Manifesto, on my Substack, so I'll link to it, um, in that link I mentioned. Um, and it lists a bunch of different ways. But I think it really is, it's just like this mindset shift. Like, how can I take this thing I have to do and maybe make it a little bit harder and get a benefit? And once you start to stack those things up, like, things start moving, things start changing.

Andrew Huberman 51:07 Yeah, I agree. I, um, you know, my trivial example about the strawberry hulls, which I always put, like, next to the bowl of strawberries and they'll just sit there. Um-

Michael Easter 51:16 This is actually really beneficial for me 'cause I do that too-

Andrew Huberman 51:19 (laughs)

Michael Easter 51:19 ... and my wife-

Andrew Huberman 51:19 Okay, thank you.

Michael Easter 51:20 ... and my wife goes, "What kind of psychopath does this?"

Andrew Huberman 51:23 (laughs)

Michael Easter 51:23 I gotta be like, "Well, there's two of us now."

Andrew Huberman 51:25 Uh, at least two of us. Um, if you are a strawberry hull, um, a non, uh, throw awayer, um, y- definitely put, put a comment and we'll, we'll start a support group. Um, i- ... It taught me an important lesson though, because, um, it's less about the strawberry hulls, um, than noticing the feeling of resistance. Like, what is that? And, uh, and then recognizing how trivial that resistance is, but how, um, pervasive it is. So, like the, the things that we resist doing, like, uh, I've got the making the bed first thing in the morning down, I've got the morning sunlight thing down, I've got, got all that stuff down, but it's the little things that we can get away with not doing for a while that I think are the, the ones that really erode this ... whatever this, um, circuit in our brain is that, that you're talking about. And, and I-

Michael Easter 52:15 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:15 ... I do wanna talk about brain circuitry a little bit, um, but I don't think we have a name for it. And, um-

Michael Easter 52:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:21 ... because it's, it's, i- it's a little bit of willpower, it's a little bit of tenacity, it's a bit of reflection. Uh, but what I, what I'm getting to here, forgive me 'cause I'm stumbling through this a little bit because it's, it's something I'm just arriving to in this conversation, is that there's something about the contrast between prior experience and current experience, where we could say level of discomfort from, you know, one to 10. Um, the more uncomfortable something is in our prior experience, the better the next phase of life is going to feel, whether or not it's hours or days later, as you said, a month. You had to go to the Arctic (laughs) .

Michael Easter 52:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 52:57 For how long were you there?

Michael Easter 52:58 33 days.

Andrew Huberman 52:59 So more than a month. And you got a month of zen-ed out blissed, uh, you know, super Michael, to you and to-

Michael Easter 53:06 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 53:06 ... everybody else, right?

Michael Easter 53:07 And then the crazy start to slowly work their way back in.

Andrew Huberman 53:10 It starts to w- work out ... its way back in. And I think that it's a, um ... this is a microcosm for a lot of things a- about nervous systems, they adapt and, and so forth. So when I think about the examples you gave, and I love the one of taking the stairs, I always think when I travel, I'm gonna sit a lot. I, I don't like to sit too much. I always feel better when I've moved a lot. So I'm a farmer carrying my luggage, a big supplement bag, you know, hence the secondary screening at, uh, at the, you know, security. And then the stairs are a great opportunity. So we can reframe. By just humans, we can reframe, uh, tell ourself that things are good for us. Um, but it's these areas where we, where we experience a lot of resistance to ourselves, I think, that are the most challenging as opposed to resistance to the world. As you point out, the, the world isn't, um, uh, lacking opportunities to, to walk on a call or take the stairs. It's all around us, but it's that internal kind of like, you know-

Michael Easter 54:03 Right.

Andrew Huberman 54:03 ... shift towards what's more comfortable.

Andrew Huberman 54:05 What do you think about the, the more psychological things like, um, like God forbid, reading a book in paper form-

Michael Easter 54:12 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 54:12 ... as opposed to listening to it? And I love audiobooks, but, you know, forcing oneself to read, um, having the phone out of the room, um, read something difficult-

Michael Easter 54:22 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:22 ... like a hard book. Like, if I want a really good hard book, I ask Marc Andreessen for a book recommendation.

Michael Easter 54:27 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:27 Usually I have to go find the book from a, like, a special bookseller 'cause some of these books are hard to find, and then I open up the first page and I go-Well, I knew he was really smart. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met. I've met a lot of smart people. But this is really challenging, and then I have to just start lathing through it and lathing through it. And it reminds me of being a PhD student and learning about the nervous system for the first time. And that stuff feels so good when we, like, find a nugget of, of understanding.

Michael Easter 54:52 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:53 But-

Michael Easter 54:54 And get through it.

Andrew Huberman 54:54 And get through it.

Michael Easter 54:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:56 But, um, so in the, in the cognitive domain, in the emotional domain, like do you intentionally sit down with your wife and go, "Let's have like a really hard conversation so that we can have a really great weekend?" (laughs)

Michael Easter 55:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:07 Do you do that? Do you do this in all areas of your life?

Michael Easter 55:10 Um, well, I'm definitely not perfect. My wife and I actually, we go on very long walks and that's where all the magic happens.

Andrew Huberman 55:17 Hm.

Michael Easter 55:17 There's something about walking as a couple. We'll do like 12 miles on a Saturday, 8 to 12 miles on a Saturday.

Andrew Huberman 55:22 Those are long walks.

Michael Easter 55:22 Yeah. And you, you got like four hours together and, you know, the first hour you're just kind of this and that and, "You know, how was your work week?" "Eh, it was good. How was yours?" And then like by hour two, you're getting into like the deep and the gritty stuff. And I think there's something about forward ambulation-

Andrew Huberman 55:38 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 55:38 ... uh, with other people that is really, um, life giving. And there's something even sort of spiritual about it in the amount of connection that you can get from people. So, that's something that we definitely do. And I don't think those conversations would come if we were like, "Let's sit on the couch. Okay, we'll turn on this Netflix show. Hey, how are you?" Like, the shit just wouldn't happen, right? Yeah, the walk's a little bit harder, of course. Um, but magic happens there. I would also say there's a, there's a section in The Comfort Crisis, and I've written about this a little bit in my other book, Scarcity Brain, as well, where I talk about the value of boredom. So, boredom is effectively this evolutionary discomfort that tells us, "Go do something else." It's neither good, it's neither bad. It simply tells us, "Whatever you're doing right now, the return on your time invested is running thin. Go do something else." So in the past if you think of us, say, um, we're out foraging for food and we're in this one area and we can't find anything, there's nothing, boredom would kick in 'cause we're not getting a return and it would say, "Well, go do something else." And we'd probably go s-... "Okay, well what if we try fishing this river or something," right? And I think what happens in modern life is that when that evolutionary discomfort that tells us to go do something else kicks in, that something else is just like really easy effortless escape. And it's in the form of a cellphone, it's Instagram, it's whatever, right? It's like this hyper stimulating content. But I think that sort of sitting with boredom and leveraging it to see where else it might take you beyond a screen can be really valuable. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Um, but I've found I get my best ideas, and I think that there's y-... dec-... uh, centuries of thinkers who would say the same. Like, my best ideas come when I've sort of removed myself from outside stimulation. And yes, like, my mind wanders, I'm bored, but then bam, some magic happens. One point of messaging around screens today that I wanted to touch on, too, is that, like, there's so much media around cellphones and like, "You gotta use your cellphone less. Here's a million different ways to use your cellphone y- less." Yes, that's important. Yes, we should all do it, but I think it misses a big point and that is if we take, let's say, two hours off our phone screen time, what happens is that people often get bored and they go, "Shit, what am I gonna do?" And then they turn on Netflix. Not much different, right? It's not an algorithm, no, but you're still just like taking this information that is being beamed into you, rather than seeing what else the world can offer you and sort of coming up with your own ideas and creativity. So I like to say rather than focusing on, um, less phone, I like to think more boredom. Get yourself in a space where like boredom's gonna kick on 'cause it's gonna be uncomfortable. Your mind's gonna wander and you might find some good ideas. Yeah, you'll have some weird stuff in your brain, of course. That's what happens when your mind wanders, but I think you can find some interesting things out there.

Andrew Huberman 58:41 Does boredom include reflection? Or it's true boredom like, "Ugh."

Michael Easter 58:46 I think we need to be removed from the hyper stimulating-

Andrew Huberman 58:49 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 58:49 ... stuff that we often... When we get that moment of, "I've got nothing to do." Like, stand in a grocery line, right?

Andrew Huberman 58:56 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 58:57 What do people do? Everyone's on their cellphone. Like, you... We can't just like sit with our thoughts for more than three seconds. So I think even just having the moment where you go, "Okay. Gonna do nothing." Might get a little weird, might get a little uncomfortable. Might be a tiny bit bored, but like your mind's gonna go some interesting places that I think can be productive in the context of today.

Andrew Huberman 59:16 Well, I'm chuckling 'cause what were your thoughts on the, the brief, um, appearance of the, the raw dog flight experience that showed up last year? Did you see that? Where guys were posting online, uh, di- did seem to be guys, um, saying that they "raw dog" (laughs) a terrible use of language. Um, I didn't pick it. Uh, they would do a 10-hour flight or a six-hour flight with no media, just sit there as a, as a, a kind of sign of their toughness. I thought it was kind of interesting.

Michael Easter 59:48 Uh, here's what, here's what came out of that is my wife said, "The hell? These guys are weak." She's been doing that ever since I knew her.

Andrew Huberman 59:57 Interesting.

Michael Easter 59:58 She literally sits in that seat and she turns on the flight screen map and she just zones into that. I'm like, "You're a crazy person." No, it turns out she's just like the original raw dogger. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:00:09 (laughs) I love it. That was not the answer I expected.

Michael Easter 1:00:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:12 Um, yeah, that, that trend kinda came and went.

Michael Easter 1:00:14 Yeah. Came and went. I think that, uh, you know, a- and, and there's the, there's a performative element to that.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:19 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 1:00:19 Right?

Andrew Huberman 1:00:19 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 1:00:19 And so it was kinda became a performance for the, for the algorithms and whatever where it's, uh, I think maybe we need to get a little more nuance behind that and put some thought into it. It's like how... It's like, "Okay, if I'm not on my screen, like how am I gonna use this time? Can I use it to go sort of deeper into my thoughts?" And, I, I do think people need time.... especially when you're deal- trying to chew off big ideas. Like, I've found that a long walk where I don't take my cellphone, it's like, I need that.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:49 Hmm.

Michael Easter 1:00:49 And I think a lot of people... I think there's a lot of anecdotes historically that, um, good ideas come from these moments where you're just, that's all you're focused on. Maybe you're on a walk, you're just kinda sitting and just peeling away the layers. Not easy, but worthwhile.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:06 You know, throughout history and still now, many people get ideas, um, from dreams-

Michael Easter 1:01:10 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:11 ... during nighttime sleep or during the kind of liminal states between waking and, uh, and sleep. These times of, of inactivity, no sensory input coming in, are, are when the brain processes things.

Michael Easter 1:01:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:23 And, and it makes perfect sense to me that in daydreaming or, uh, in boredom, as you describe it, that, uh, new ideas would, would, would surface just as they would from the liminal state between sleep and awake.

Michael Easter 1:01:34 Yeah. And I think people sometimes experience this. Like, there's a reason we have that sort of cliche that's like, "You come up with your best ideas in the shower."

Andrew Huberman 1:01:41 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 1:01:41 'Cause there's not this stimulation, right?

Andrew Huberman 1:01:43 You're not on your phone. (laughs)

Michael Easter 1:01:43 You just kinda... Yeah, you're not on your phone. You're removed from, you're removed from the noise and you're just kinda, "Oh." Bam. But you gotta write 'em down too. I found that as well-

Andrew Huberman 1:01:51 You-

Michael Easter 1:01:51 ... if you have a good idea.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:52 Yeah. What's your idea

Andrew Huberman 1:01:53 capture mechanism? You write-

Michael Easter 1:01:57 Yeah. I usually have a notebook on me, just write things down.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:00 And much like a nighttime dream where we wake up and we're like, "Oh, I'm gonna remember this tomorrow," and then you-

Michael Easter 1:02:05 You won't remember it, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:06 ... you won't remember. I agree it's important to write things down during the day that come to mind.

Michael Easter 1:02:10 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:10 Actually, it was the great Joe Strummer of The Clash-

Michael Easter 1:02:13 Oh, awesome.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:13 ... and Mescaleros fame who... There's some clip of him someplace saying in that, like, heavy, like, breath voice where he's like, "You, if you have an idea, you have to write it down."

Michael Easter 1:02:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:22 Because not only will you forget, but even if you happen to remember it, you can't capture the essence of the, the, the inspiration unless you write it down at that moment. He really believed that-

Michael Easter 1:02:32 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:32 ... in that moment, it carried a certain, um, uh, a certain value that you couldn't replace just by writing it down later.

Michael Easter 1:02:40 Yeah. I agree. So I just did for a third book I'm working on, I did this, um... It was about 40 days. It was a hike through southern Utah and it goes into... Through the Grand Canyon to northern Arizona, and then ends in Zion. Took about 40 days. And so normally when I'm recording a book, like when I did The Comfort Crisis, when I did Scarcity Brain, like, I'm traveling, I'm doing all this stuff, but I'm usually writing using these notebooks. Use a very particular notebook to write in the rain because I'm in outdoor environments, whatever. But on this hike, like, I can't cover the mileage we need to cover all day if I'm constantly stopping and writing. And like, I can't hike and try and write. It was-

Andrew Huberman 1:03:17 Yeah.

Michael Easter 1:03:18 ... impossible.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:18 Thoreau had an advantage by just staying in one spot.

Michael Easter 1:03:20 (laughs) Yeah. Exactly, exactly. So I took voice notes actually on my phone. And, um, I found that to be really useful too that... Some... A tool that people can use. So I had... When I got back from the hike, I had like 500 different voice notes. Some of them were 10 seconds, some of them were six minutes of me just babbling. But there's some good stuff in there. And, um, so I think you do need to capture it in the moment, 'cause I did find too that I didn't really catch on to the voice note idea until maybe the second or third, fourth day of the hike. And I was like, "I c- I can't stop and write this down." And then I'd be in camp at night, we'd set up and I'd go and I'd start writing down the day's notes and I'd go, "What was that thought you had in that canyon? It was so good." And I'd just never find it, right? So I just was like, "Okay, we gotta use the voice notes tool and just take those." It was great.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:11 Uh, there's a very, very, uh, accomplished neurobiologist out at Caltech by the name of David Anderson and he's done some really interesting work on these more ancient brain areas like the hypothalamus, primitive states like aggression, mating behavior. But, uh, it carries out to a number of things that we're talking about now, um, about cognitive states and creativity and capturing ideas, and it's this notion of attractor states that basically that the brain, uh, much to most people's dismay, doesn't work such that you go, "Oh, I'm gonna write from 9:00 to 11:00 or I'll do some hard coding or I'm going to..." And you sit down and you start. No, y- y- you, you warm up. You kinda ratchet-

Michael Easter 1:04:49 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:49 ... into it and then, um... But over time, it's, it's almost like a ball bearing on a flat surface and then the, and then the surface starts becoming more and more concave and eventually it's a deep trench-

Michael Easter 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:58 ... and then that's usually when the buzzer goes off, it's time to move to something else.

Michael Easter 1:05:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:01 But those... So these attractor states are basically the, the shutting down of, of a lot of other circuitry as one circuit kinda ramps up its activity. But then over time, um, we can entrain these things, we can link them to specific, uh, events in time like the making of your coffee at 9:00 AM so your, your nervous system unconsciously starts to predict the attractor state of being in a state of deep focus in writing. Uh, that all starts to make sense. It starts to just... It's a different kinda lens on habit.

Michael Easter 1:05:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:30 Um, but if you look at most people, including my own activity, through the lens of attractor states and you say, "Well, what am I training my brain for? What am I entraining, entraining, entraining?" E-N and then also just drop the EN. "What am I, what am I teaching my brain to do on a daily basis?" You go, "Well, the attractor state is scrolling lots and lots and lots and lots of media."

Michael Easter 1:05:52 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:52 "It's reading peoples' comments. This is funny." It's talking to friends. It's texting a few people." And what we... what we've done, I think, is that we've created these attractor states of it's not that we're, we all have ADHD or something. Some people do.

Michael Easter 1:06:04 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:04 But we've... We're right where we belong given our pr- our prior behavior.

Michael Easter 1:06:08 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:09 We're just, we're just training up this, this trench of a bunch of noise. And then the, the end of the day comes and you're like, "Shit, I didn't get anything done." (laughs)

Michael Easter 1:06:17 Yeah. Totally.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:18 This kinda thing. So when you describe getting out into nature and removing all of that-

Michael Easter 1:06:22 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:23 ... and f- and kind of forcing yourself to, uh, to go in a particular not just physical direction, but, um, to go in a particular mental direction, um, I feel like it's getting back to something very fundamental. It's like a, it's like the overload principle of resistance training or-

Michael Easter 1:06:41 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:41 ... cardiovascular exercise and increasing stroke volume. It's like the, it's like the fundamentals of how the mind work, which is w- one of the reasons I, I love these practices so much.Which

Andrew Huberman 1:06:50 brings me back to this question of, okay, so there's the 2% rule.

Michael Easter 1:06:54 Yep. Taking the identity that I'm going to be this 2% of people that's gonna do this harder thing, it's gonna be harder in the short term, but it's gonna give me this long-term benefit. And if I can find areas to apply that in my life, I'm gonna get this big, long ... Like, the benefits just pile up massively.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:09 And then at the other end of the spectrum is the Misogi-

Michael Easter 1:07:13 Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:07:13 ... concept. Could you explain Misogi?

Michael Easter 1:07:15 Yeah. Um, so if I were to sort of give the CliffNotes, I'll give the CliffNotes and then the longer explanation. CliffNotes is that Misogi is sort of almost a modern rite of passage in order to teach people what they're capable of and to give them experience that really changes them thereafter. Now, I heard about this idea, um, from a guy whose name is Marcus Elliott. He came up with this idea back in the '90s. It was, like, this personal thing he did. I stumbled upon it. Um, Marcus, I believe, got his MD from Harvard and he decides like, "I don't wanna be a doctor. I wanna get into sports science." So he runs this facility that's called P3. They're actually not far from here, they're up in Santa Barbara. And he works with all these different sort of athletes. He's got contracts with the NBA, with the NFL, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But he also sort of realizes that, um, what really changes a person, it can't always be measured 'cause he's taking a lot of, um, movement measuring. He does a lot of, like, big data AI stuff around movement measurement, can predict injury and things like that. Um, he realizes that, like, these big changes that force a player to be better, that get them in a better state when a sort of game is on the line, they can't be measured. And he does this practice he calls Misogi. And the idea is that once a year, you're gonna go out and you're gonna do something really, really hard. Now he defines really hard as saying you should have a 50-50 shot at completing whatever your Misogi task is. So 50-50 shot 'cause today, I think he's right here, he argues like, even when we take on a challenge, we have to know we're gonna complete it, right? It's like people don't run marathons and go, "I don't know if I'm gonna finish the marathon." They say, "I don't know if I'm gonna finish the marathon," in sort of insert-some-arbitrary time. Um, so that's the challenge element. And then the second rule of Misogi is that you can't die, (laughs) right? So the implication is, yeah, do something pretty hard. And what tends to happen when you go out and you do something really sort of kooky, challenging, that you know is really gonna be hard for you, that you are truly unsure if you're gonna be able to finish this, is you get into this moment. And in this moment, you think you've hit your edge. You go, "I've hit my edge. Like, I'm not gonna be able to finish this thing. Like, all is lost." But if you can kind of just keep going, one foot in front of the other, you get this other moment, and that's where you look back and you go, "Well, wait a minute. I thought my edge was back there, but I am clearly past it right now. So I've sold myself short here." And then the question is, "Okay, if I've sold myself short here in this moment, where else in my life might I be selling myself short?" And that's where the big changes happen, right? That's the question that you wanna leave with from the Misogi. Now, in the past, I would argue ... So after I meet Marcus, he tells me about this, like, quirky Misogi idea he does, and he does all kinds of weird stuff. Um, I started sort of really doing some digging and going, "All right, this is, like, a interesting idea. It's also sort of wacky," you know? But if you look back in history, I think we had things like this in the form of rites of passage. And like I mentioned before, like, rites of passage just popped up naturally in all these different cultures. But there was a realization that doing something that truly thrust you beyond the bounds of what you thought you were capable of, where you had to figure things out, where you had to really doubt yourself, and where you had to overcome becomes this sort of great teacher for the human spirit. So that's the idea of Misogi. Go out, do something that you think is gonna be really, really hard, see what you learn. And even if you fail, that's fine. You're still gonna learn something along the path.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:00 I'm a huge fan of this Misogi concept. Um, so once a year, picking s- ... It could be physical.

Michael Easter 1:11:07 Could be physical.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:08 Could be intellectual, create-

Michael Easter 1:11:10 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:10 ... creative, um-

Michael Easter 1:11:11 Could be anything.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:13 And how important is it, you think, to, um, advertise that you're doing this versus, uh, important to keep it quiet and to yourself?

Michael Easter 1:11:25 I think it's better to keep it to yourself.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:27 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 1:11:28 So I think we live in a world where nowadays people do a lot of things, um, for external reasons. To get likes on social media, so your neighbor will be like, "Oh, that guy's the badass in the neighborhood. That lady did this," whatever. And I think if you can just do something only for you, um, that makes it sort of more valuable. Puts a sort of different spin on it. Um, once you decide, "Oh, I'm gonna do this thing because, oh, this guy did it in an hour, well, I'm gonna do it in 59 minutes," that also gi- puts a ceiling on you, right? Because now you're gonna shoot for 59 minutes rather than, well, what if you just went out and did this for yourself and you just went all in? Potentially you could do it in 55, you know? Um, and I think today we do live in a world where there's a lot of, um, sharing in order to get, uh, social approval. Um, you know, you can go back and forth about what are the goods and the bads of that. Um, but I would just argue that sometimes it's good to do things only for yourself and use that as the sort of lever that you know you have that maybe no one else knows-

Andrew Huberman 1:12:33 Mm-hmm.

Michael Easter 1:12:33 ... you have it, but you can pull that damn thing when you need to, and that's gonna really effect some change. I mean, one of my big, like my, one of my biggest messages is, like, people just need to go out and find some damn adventure. And it's very easy to get locked in a cycle of doing the same thing over and over.You exist at home and everything is nice and comfortable and, like, stresses come in, but they're, like, in the form of emails and deadlines, and things just get predictable. Go out into a place that is totally unfamiliar, do something that's gonna be challenging to you, go with the wind, you will find things that will really enhance your life, that will make you feel, as Joseph Campbell put it, the rapture of being alive. Like, I can tell you, I feel most alive when it's like, "Okay, I gotta go out to wherever it is, the Bolivian jungle, and I gotta figure this thing out 'cause I'm going down there to meet with this Tum- Tumane tribe," or whatever it is, or, "I gotta go to Iraq and investigate the drug trade." It doesn't have to be that extreme, of course, but that is where I absolutely feel that I am most alive. It's like we're going into this unknown world, we don't know what's gonna happen, we're gonna encounter all these wacky characters along the way. There's gonna be trials, there's gonna be hardships, but I'm gonna, like, get through it and I'm gonna have to figure things out. And it is just, like, so life-giving. It's, like, the most amazing thing. And I come back from that and it's taught me something that allows me to function better when I get back to my normal life 'cause I've learned all these skills and tools that I wouldn't have gotten had I not exited normal life and gone out and just had an adventure.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:12 What if you and I were to, um, run an online experiment, this is actually serious here-

Michael Easter 1:14:16 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:16 ... where we said, "Okay, uh, we are going to have you and I and a bunch of people that are going to join us, are going to, uh, refrain from any, any smartphone use for a certain number of hours per day. And instead of posting your sleep score, uh, which a lot of people are now doing, you're gonna post the number of hours that you managed to be offline completely at the end of the day." So we're gonna compete for time away from social media.

Michael Easter 1:14:40 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:40 And maybe we even get on Instagram Live once a week and we, we share our experiences and there's this club of wackos that wanna do this, right?

Michael Easter 1:14:49 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:49 For ... And, and, and see where we get with it. Do you think that the sharing of that experience