The Comfort Crisis

All those comforts we take for granted?

The climate-controlled environments? The cars? The computers? The constantly available, ultraprocessed food? The smartphones and all the other things that make our lives so easy?

Evolutionarily-speaking, they are all BRAND NEW.

Do the math from the first day “modern” humans walked the earth: 100 years divided by 300,000 years = .03%.

Do the math from the first day our not-so-modern human ancestors walked the earth: 100 years divided by 2.5 million years = .004%.

As Michael says, “Over these 2.5 million years, our ancestors’ lives were intimately intertwined with discomfort.”

We were constantly exposed to the elements. “It was either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, or too snowy out.”

We were always hungry. “The Hadza, a Tanzanian tribe of hunter-gatherers that lives similarly to our earliest ancestors, are constantly complaining to anthropologists that they’re ravenous.”

We worked incredibly hard. “When we weren’t sitting and doing nothing, our ancestors were working very, very hard. The Hadza exercise 14 times more than the average American. They move fast and hard about 2 hours and 20 minutes a day. (Although, to be clear, what they’re doing is just called ‘life’ instead of ‘exercise.’)”

What’s the big deal? Well... As Michael points out after sharing the above info in a chapter called “0.004 Percent,” although our ancient ancestors had to deal with all that discomfort, they DIDN’T have to deal with a lot of the things WE have to deal with these days—the anxiety and depression and obesity and diabetes and cancer and...

As he says: “Comforts and conveniences are great. But they haven’t always moved the ball downfield in our most important metric: happy, healthful years. Perhaps existing only in our increasingly overly comfortable, overbuilt environments and always obeying our comfort drives has had unintended consequences and caused us to miss profound human experiences.”

Let’s take a look at how we might be able to exit our comfort zones for a bit and reclaim our wild, happy, and healthy selves!

That’s from a chapter called “50/50” in which we meet a Harvard-trained physician turned peak-performance coach who takes his clients on epic challenges that stretch their capacities and... have a 50/50 chance of success.

Let’s talk about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his ideas on flow. While we’re at it, let’s bring Steven Kotler into the discussion and talk about *his* ideas on flow as well.

We’ll start with Kotler who talks about these ideas in his great book The Rise of Superman.

He tells us: “Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where we both feel our best and perform our best. It is a transformation available to anyone, anywhere, provided that certain initial conditions are met. Everyone from assembly-line workers in Detroit to jazz musicians in Algeria to software designers in Mumbai rely on flow to drive performance and accelerate innovation.

And it’s quite a driver. Researchers now believe flow sits at the heart of almost every athletic championship, underpins major scientific breakthroughs, and accounts for significant progress in the arts. World leaders have sung the praises of flow. Fortune 500 CEOs have built corporate philosophies around the state. From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.”

Now, Csikszentmihalyi.

We have Notes on his classic book Flow which is all about “The Psychology of Optimal Experience.“ We also have Notes on another one of his classic books called Creativity which is all about “The Psychology of Discovery and Invention.”

Csikszentmihalyi actually addresses the same general themes of this book when he poses this question in Flow: “Why is it that, despite having achieved previously undreamed-of miracles of progress, we seem more helpless in facing life than our less privileged ancestors were? The answer seems clear: while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.”

He also tells us: “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.”

Note: If we want to get into the state of flow we need the two things Michael talks about above: First, we need a CLEAR GOAL. Second, we need to STRETCH OURSELVES and find that sweet spot where the challenges meet our skills.

And... When I read this passage in this book, I immediately thought of a passage from that Note on Flow in which Csikszentmihalyi tells us about an Indian tribe of British Columbia whose wise elders would MOVE the entire community every 25 to 30 years because, they said, “at times the world became too predictable and the challenge began to go out of life. Without challenge, life had no meaning.”

Imagine a culture so attuned to the importance of creating challenges that they would deliberately pick up their entire community and MOVE.

Now imagine our modern culture in its comfort crisis as you ponder THIS wisdom from Csikszentmihalyi: “Thus we have a paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.”

P.S. Here’s a micro example of how I am using this wisdom to get myself into flow today. Context: I am in philosopher mode this week—getting ahead on PNs and +1s so I can focus on my book as the team executes the next step of our vision.

To help myself get into flow today, I started by setting a goal. I will put in AT LEAST 5.1 hours of Deep Work. I’m going for 7. That’s my #1 target. It focuses ALL of my energy. Within that Deep Work time, I’m excited to see if I can hammer out this Note and another Note on The Awakened Brain AND record 6 MP3s. That’s a stretch. It’s challenging but doable if I manage my time and my Energy (and my inputs!) at Heroic levels. Perfect. All in. LET’S GO!

How about YOU? Are you creating the conditions for YOU (+ your team!) to get into flow today?

btw: Technically, my commitment to getting into flow TODAY began YESTERDAY when I executed my PM Bookend protocol. I shut down on time, got to bed on time, spent 9.5 hours in bed. Woke up feeling ZESTY with an Oura Readiness of 92 and a Sleep Score of 93.

I can assure you it would have been MUCH harder to get into the flow state I’m already in if I was mentally and physically lethargic because I didn’t dominate my fundamentals...

That’s from a chapter about the importance of boredom and how we’re destroying our ability to be with ourselves doing nothing and the catastrophic consequences of our inability to do so.

The chapter is called 11 hours, 6 minutes.

2.5 MILLION years of evolution. 100,000 generations. ZERO digital inputs.

Now? We spend nearly every moment of our waking lives using digital media. Michael tells us that “The average American touches his phone 2,617 times.” Pause and reflect on that insane stat for a moment.

When I think of that, I think of Alberto Villoldo’s wisdom from One Spirit Medicine where he tells us: “From television and Internet alone, we’re exposed to more stimuli in a week than our Paleolithic ancestors were exposed to in a lifetime.”

All of which would be fine if it didn’t lead to catastrophic consequences. All of which calls for a philosophy for our digital technology usage.

Check out my class called Conquering Digital Addiction 101 AND a class my friend Cal Newport did for us called Digital Minimalism 101 (and my Notes on his book Digital Minimalism) for some wisdom on the subject.

You might also enjoy our Notes on Irresistible by Adam Alter, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, and Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi.

Here’s to conquering our digital addictions and using technology Heroically!

That’s from a chapter called “12 to 16 hours.”

Let’s do the math. If we have a 15-hour eating window, that means we only give our bodies 9 hours off to focus on “taking out the trash” rather than constantly trying to keep up with all the food we eat. And... That’s simply NOT enough time for our bodies to do their jobs.

We talk about the research on this in our Notes on Max Lugavere’s book The Genius Life.

Here’s how he puts it: “Some mice were given access to food around the clock, while others only had access during the night (when mice normally come out to forage and feed). The results of the experiment were staggering. While the mice that ate around the clock became obese and unhealthy, the group that was only given access to food within an eight- to twelve-hour window ended up slim and healthy. Both groups of mice consumed the same number of calories (and the same mixture of unhealthy fats and sugars), but the mice in the nighttime-only feeding group weighed 28 percent less and had 70 percent less body fat after eighteen weeks. Independent of what they were eating, sticking to their natural nocturnal feeding time protected them against obesity and even gave their health a boost.

Now, humans are not mice, but signs are pointing in a similar direction for people who practice time-restricted eating. A number of small trials have shown that merely eating an earlier dinner can improve blood sugar and blood pressure, independent of weight lost. It may even help fight cancer. One study from Spain involving over four thousand people found eating an earlier dinner (before 9 p.m. or at least two hours before bed) reduced the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancers by 20 percent. A UCSD study yielded equally promising findings, this time for cancer recurrence. The study involved 2,400 women with early-stage breast cancer and found that a nightly fast of fewer than thirteen hours was associated with a 36 percent higher risk of recurrence, compared to thirteen or more hours of food abstention per night. There was also a trend toward increased mortality for late-night eaters.”

Remember: We need a fasting window of 12 to 16 hours.

Pop quiz: How many consecutive hours a day do YOU go without eating?!

Max tells us that “round-the-clock eating is a new phenomenon for all of us, driven by an abundance of food that would have been inconceivable to our hunter-gatherer ancestors.”

He also tells us: “Thankfully, the solution is simple: if you can help it, avoid eating for two to three hours before bed.”

That’s from a chapter in part four of the book in which we are encouraged to think about our death EVERY DAY.

Michael also encourages us to think about the sheer miracle of being alive.

He tells us: “One scientist calculated the numbers and found that a person’s odds of being alive are 1 in 10 to the 2,685,000 power. The scientist explains that these odds are the same as having a group of 2 million people each roll a trillion-sided die and every roll landing on the same number. Like 550,343,279,007.”

I got goosebumps typing that as my mind EXPLODED.

Then he tells us: “This figure also doesn’t factor in my luck of being born in a developed country in a recent time. Even about a century ago, for example, between 30 and 40 percent of European children died before turning 5. That’s why in 1900 the average life expectancy in the world was 31. Now the world’s average life expectancy is 72.”

Yep. Our universe is incomprehensibly vast and we’re extraordinarily blessed to be alive.

It’s 11:59 and 33 seconds on December 31st and the clock is ticking.

Tell me...

What is it you plan to do with this one wild and precious life of yours?

Day 1. ALL IN. Let’s go, Hero!