Self-improvement becomes useful when it leaves the realm of belief and enters practice. The strongest tools are often ordinary: gratitude, meditation, meaningful action, and carefully dosed stress.
Full transcript with clickable timestamps linking back to the source video.
If you're listening to this podcast right now, chances are you have listened to multiple self-improvement podcasts. And if you've listened to multiple self-improvement podcasts, you have probably been told like 28 different things to do to improve your life. In fact, there's so much different advice coming at you from every different direction that sometimes it feels impossible to know what is actually credible, what actually works, and what doesn't. And so here at the Solve Podcast, what we do is we over research everything. I've been almost 20 years. Drew, my co-host and lead researcher here, has been with me for over a decade. And in that time, we have dug deep into the science on so many different techniques, tactics, tropes, cliches, conventional wisdoms that we decided to actually sit down and rank them. We took 19 of the most conventional cliche pieces of self-help advice, things that you've heard a million times in a million different places, and we decided to go into the science and find a way to rank them from worst to best. Which self-improvement techniques, you may be asking, here is the full list in alphabetical order. We looked at affirmations, cold water therapy, crystal healing, eat that frog, which is do the hardest thing first, energy healing, fake it till you make it, gratitude journals, intuitive decision-making, learning styles, meditation, microdosing psychedelics, morning routines, positive thinking, power posing, self-help books in general, speed reading, venting emotions, visualizations, and of course, willpower. Now, in the process of putting this episode together, I definitely was surprised by a few of these. I don't know about you, Drew. There was a few shockers in there, yeah, there were some things that showed up way higher on the list than I expected, and and a few that were actually much worse than I expected. So, it was a little bit illuminating. Obviously, there's a bunch of nuance and context for each of these things. So, some of it is determined by how you actually define some of these practices
or some of these pieces of advice. So, we will talk about all of the different specifics and angles and caveats, what not, when we get to the rankings themselves. But, I actually want to ask you a question. I aggregated all of the research that we had on all of these techniques. A lot of this is left over from previous episodes that we've done. A lot of this is new. A lot of this was compiled by the research team, and of course, a lot of this was scooped up by AI. How many studies do you think in total were at least looked at for this episode? I never look I guess I didn't see I couldn't even I don't know. A thousand. I don't know. 2, 603. [laughter] 2, 603. Okay. Obviously, not every single one of those was read, um but a lot of them were, and I would say at least the abstract was read of probably at least half of them. Right. We did some quality vetting, too. Like really shitty studies we just didn't even bother with necessarily, but it was taken into consideration, sure. Which brings me to the question of how we actually went about ranking these. So, we looked at three different factors. One is just the quantity and quality of the research. How many studies have been done on this particular piece of advice, and how good was that research? Was it actually respectable? Was it done at a very credible institution? Was it a very large sample size? Was it done cross-culturally? Was it replicated? All that stuff. Controls, all of that, yeah. Second thing we looked at is what percentage of the studies came out in support of the practice. You know, say there are 100 studies that that we found on it, 50 of them say it works, 50 say it doesn't. [clears throat] There are other ones that out of 100 studies, 98 say that it works and two say it it doesn't. So, obviously, the one that had 98 that says it works is going to be ranked higher than the one that says 50. And then finally, we looked at effect size. So, effect size is essentially just how much does it work? Does it work a tiny bit, or it does it work really, really well? Like if you take 100 people and you have them
gratitude journal every single morning for a month, and then you have take another 100 people and they do nothing, not only do you look at whether the people who gratitude journal are happier, but how much happier are they? What is the degree of difference in the practice? And what we find is that there are some things that work very consistently, but only a tiny bit. Right. And then there are other things that can work a lot, but they work very inconsistently. So, out of these 19 practices, we're going to go through them starting at the worst and working our way up to the first, and we have four categories that we're going to work through. So, at the top of the pyramid, we have stuff that legitimately works and is good advice and should probably be adopted by most of us. The second category we have is the maybe depends category, which is this can work, but it kind of depends on your situation, you who you are, the way you do it, why you're doing it, and so on. The third category is the probably nothing category. It's uh you know, it's not hurting anybody, but it's probably not doing anything either. And then finally, the fourth category, which is our [__] category, is uh it actually might be hurting you, and you should probably stop doing it. There's like I said, there's some shockers in here, a few things that surprised me even, too. We go way too deep. We over research everything. We over complicate everything, Drew. We do. Why do we do it? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we just interview [__] Instagram influencers like everybody else? God damn it, Drew. Because we're trying to solve actual problems. That's why. All right. [music] So, before we jump into it, I just want to remind everybody that if you want to get an ad-free version of this show, you can go to membership. solvepodcast. com. You will also get access to all of our research and citations there. You can get access to all sorts of PDF guides, membership guides, course-ified versions of these episodes, and on. Go check it out. Help support the show.
We are going to start with the [__] category. We're going to start with number 19, the worst of all of the practices that we examined, is suppressing negative thoughts. Yes, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions. You could call this, if you want to be uncharitable, you could call this like the hardcore version of positive thinking, which positive thinking often does get interpreted in this way is that people hear like, hey, I should think positive, and they immediately assume like, oh, if I have a negative thought or emotion, I should just push it away and pretend like it's not there. So, take us through why is suppressing negative emotions a bad thing, Drew? The biggest piece of evidence we have against suppressing thoughts and emotions is what they call the ironic process, um which is basically, if I tell you not to think about something, you're going to think more about it, right? So, if you have some negative or traumatic event or something like that in your life, and I tell you, okay, here's all these ways we can go about not thinking about this. Then when that thing pops up, you start thinking, how do I not think about this? And it just amplifies it in your mind, right? It just makes you focus on it more, and it pushes out all the other good or neutral things that are going on in your world or in your life at that time. So, you know, people think that it it reduces intrusive thoughts and images. Not really true. There's not a whole lot of evidence for that. Um improves your mood, you know, decreases anxiety, depression. Again, not much in the way of that. For people who have, let's say, uh like traumatic stress disorders, like PTSD or something like that, in certain very limited structured situations where they need to avoid that triggering event or that thought, under very close careful supervision, that can maybe work sometimes. But it's not just for your average person walking around like, oh, like, you know, my girlfriend left me or, you know, I lost my job and I don't want to think about it. It's It's not
helpful at all to go about just shoving that all down. Basically, right. And this is I feel like at this point in 2026, like we we kind of know this. This is a bit of our parents and grandparents' generation of like just bury it. Yeah. [snorts] Just push it down here. Have a drink. Push it down further. I think our generation and Gen Z have grown up with with the knowledge and understanding that like this is a bad long-term strategy. So, [clears throat] there are a number of recent meta-analyses on this, and one of the ones that I found actually quite interesting is that it found that for some people, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions can be beneficial in the short term. So, if you're in like a high-pressure, high cognitive load situation, and it's just like, I can't deal with this right now, it can be short-term effective for that very moment to like get you through that one little moment. What they found though is that it made things worse over the long term. That rebound effect was even worse. Right. So, the rebound effect comes back harder. You are even more upset, more angry, more stressed out, more anxious uh in the long term. But the funny thing I found, too, and I'm I'm just going to translate this very crudely, the researchers found that the people who did this best, who actually like, let's call it a successful suppression, the people who did it best who or who benefited the most in the short term, um were people who had uh high levels of working memory and high fluid intelligence. So, it's basically like very smart people can do it, whereas if you're not a super smart person, it's probably just going to backfire super hard on you in in the immediate term. But it it was interesting because it's my stereotype of a very smart person is that they're they're actually very good at repressing their own [laughter] emotions if Yeah, true. No, that's a good point, yeah. But I think you're right there. It is kind of like a tracheotomy, right? Like only use it if you absolutely have to. If you can't breathe, sure. And you need to just get through some rough situation. I get that. But just know that's going to probably bounce back harder. The interesting thing, and I'm going to foreshadow a little bit, um is that because it is so popularly and
widely known now that you're not supposed to suppress your negative emotions, a lot of people kind of assume the opposite must be true, which is you should express every negative emotion. And we're actually going to get to that in a minute. That did not score super well, either. So, uh there's probably a happy medium here that we're going to investigate. But, that's number 19, suppressing negative thoughts and emotions. The effect size was was relatively modest, but it was negative. It is not helpful. It's a pretty consistent finding. You're not doing yourself any favors. Don't pretend like you're the [__] doesn't stink. Don't pretend like there's nothing wrong if there's something wrong. Turn and face the pain. [laughter] Just yeah. Just take it on the nose. There's something to be said about dealing with it, right? [laughter] Just deal with it and don't don't just brush it aside. Number 18, this one's going to be spicy. I can already see a bunch of angry commenters coming at us. Microdosing psychedelics. I'm bummed about this one. I'm happy. [laughter] I live in California. I can't tell you how many [__] people walk around here microdosing a bunch of crap, telling me that they're they're more creative they're getting in touch with the like the universe and their spiritual like bunch of [__] And sure enough, there's the the research on this shows pretty consistently that not only is there not really any measurable benefit with any consistency, but there is a decline in cognitive functioning and executive reasoning. The only benefit that was found in the meta-analyses was improvement of mood. So, it's like dude, you're getting high. Like, this is what you're doing. You're getting high and you're telling yourself that it's a productivity hack or you're like getting in touch with your creativity or whatever. And technically, that's not even a microdose. If you can feel something, it's technically it's supposed to be subperceptual. Yes. Right. So. The complicating factor of this is that there are reams and reams of anecdotal uh case studies. There are plenty of case studies of people who who claim that they suffered from lifelong
that they suffered from lifelong depression, that they had anxiety disorders, that they had all sorts of like, you know, crippling uh conditions that they were they struggled to get over and then microdosing changed their lives and saved them. There's also plenty of case studies of people who microdose for extended periods of time and [__] up their own mental health. So, it's it is all over the map. There is no consistent benefit. It is, in my opinion, just getting high. Yeah. And it's it's it it's the 2020s version of smoking a little weed before you go into work in the morning to like ease the stress. Right. Like, I knew people in in college and some of my early jobs who like that made them a little bit more effective like they were very high-strung, anxious, like stressed-out people. And it's like taking a little hit of weed like helped you know, smooth the rough edges before they they went in for the day. If that's what you're doing, that's fine. It's just like don't kid yourself. You're not getting in touch with like some deeper creativity. You're not like accessing better decision-making. It's not happening. There's there's no evidence of it. It's like it's mixed at best and it is just not [clears throat] existent at worst. Yeah. There are a lot of people, too, with ADHD. There's a randomized control trial that came out. There was no improvement over placebo effect. A lot of it's either probably a placebo effect. Again, if you're taking a subperceptual dose of anything, is it really doing anything anyway other than a placebo? When they do really careful studies on these, they find nothing. Or a decline in cognitive function. Cognitive functions, yeah, it's just not reasoning, decision-making, yeah. The evidence isn't out there. I said I was bummed because I was in the probably, you know, 2015-2016 era when everything was kind of ramping up with psychedelics. I was really excited and I was like, oh, here's kind of a safer way we can explore with these and then nothing came of it. All of the promising research is around the macrodosing. And it is but the macrodosing is like that's a lot. That's yeah. Like, now you're entering in not feel something on [laughter] a macrodose, right? Yeah, and it's also
like you really need to be careful about how you approach a macrodose, which we we did not evaluate in this ranking. But, it's funny cuz I remember when a number of friends of mine started microdosing probably around the same time, 2016-2017. And they kept telling me how it made them more productive and then made them like do this and they're like more creative at work and all this stuff. And I remember I microdosed once and around that time. And it was like it sucked. I just felt like I I just felt giggly and like I couldn't really think straight. And and I was like, I feel like this is [__] And I remember looking at some of the early research at the time and it was basically turning up that there was nothing there. And it it's nice to see that now that that there are some meta-analyses that that follow through on that. So, that placebo effect, that's going to be important through all of this as well. Again, if you're one of those people who are already typing in the comments like, well, it works for me. It was like, okay, compared to what? Right. Okay? If I gave you something and I said it was psychedelics, you would probably still experience many of the same effects or nothing at all. So, yeah, that's the tricky thing with self-help advice, personal development advice is compared to what? Right. Like, well, but in placebo effects are powerful. Yeah, they are. Like, if you if if people believe that something works, it can really work for them. And and you could argue that a lot of this industry is kind of just a fancy way of inducing placebo effects in people. My issue with the microdosing is that actually that that they have seen in like long-term microdosers that there are um there are some adverse health physical health effects. compound Yeah. long-term even at low doses, that can have detrimental effects. Yes. And so, that's why this is in the [__] category, the stop doing it category rather than the probably nothing category. So, if we haven't pissed off all of the California hippies yet with with that one, we're definitely going to piss them off with this one. [laughter] This one, yeah. Before we continue, I want to thank Henson Shaving for supporting the show. So, we've been ranking the worst self-improvement techniques and there's kind of a pattern. Most of them boil
down to one idea: try harder, push through it, apply more pressure to a system that's already broken. Funny enough, your razor does the exact same thing. Most cartridge razors use springs and flexible blade mounts. The blade shifts mid-stroke, feels unstable, so your hand instinctively presses harder. And you didn't choose that. The design trained you to do it. And that pressure is the actual cause of the irritation on your face. There's more friction, so there's more razor burn. So, the industry sells you lubrication strips, [music] aftershave balms, five-blade cartridges, all the workarounds for a problem that the design created. Henson Shaving took a completely different approach. Designed by aerospace machinist in Canada, instead of letting the blade move, they lock it in place and control the cutting angle with tight machining tolerances. No springs, no pivots, no workarounds. [music] I've been trying mine out and the first time you use it, it kind of feels wrong. You're just waiting for resistance and it doesn't come. You're barely touching your face, but it's actually working. And it's this weird moment where you realize how hard you've been pressing your face your whole life and for no reason. And it goes to show, sometimes the fix isn't trying harder. It's just fixing the thing that was broken in the first place. So, if you want to try Henson's razors for yourself, they're offering 100 blades for free with the purchase of a razor. That's a 2-year supply. So, head to hensonshaving. com / solved and use the code solved at checkout. That's Henson, h e n s o n, shaving, all one word,. com / solved for 100 free blades with the purchase of a razor using the checkout code solved. How many times, Drew, have you heard that you should trust your intuition, trust your gut, that you should listen to your deep inner voice, that the uh your inner wisdom knows best for you? How many times? I I hear that all the time. In some form or another. And sometimes it's dressed up in ways that kind of hide it, but yeah, you hear it a lot. I don't know, I might push back a little bit on this one. We might argue a little bit on this one. let's butt heads on it. This one there are caveats. There are caveats to which we will get
into. Speaking generally, general life decision-making. You've got a choice in your life. You can have dinner here or go there. You can call this person back or you can decide to be single. Any of these sorts of life decisions, following your gut, following your intuition, it does not make for a better choice. It often makes you feel better about your choice, which is a very different thing. Ah, okay. Yeah. Which is a very different thing. But, it doesn't make a better choice. And I think that's the distinction. I think most people who really subscribe to trusting their gut, listening to their intuition, listening to their inner wisdom, all that stuff, really what they're optimizing for is just feeling good about their choices and like minimizing doubt or regret or insecurity. Okay. Which is fine. Yeah. But, you're not making better decisions. Your gut doesn't know better. Like, all of the evidence suggests that your gut does not know better except, and I feel like this is what you're going to bring up, in very specific cases of expertise. Okay. So, you if you are a domain expert. So, if somebody has been a brain surgeon for 40 years and they are brought into a a surgery room and they are shown a patient and they see something, their gut instinct is actually going to be accurate a lot of the time. Right. And and you see this consistently around people who have lots of experience. And that's because like Danny Kahneman talks about this and, you know, there's that famous book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Right. Yeah. You know, system one, system two. Like, really what your your gut reaction to things is is it's it's pattern matching based on experience. So, if you have tons and tons of experience in a certain area, you're probably going to pattern match extremely well. But, most of us are not experts at the vast majority of things we do. Therefore, I would be very, very careful
relying on your gut or intuition. What say you, sir? Well, yeah, okay. I definitely agree with that. If you're a surgeon, you're in the middle of surgery, something goes wrong, you don't have time to sit there and you know, do a cost-benefit and cons, yeah. Trust your gut in that situation. A fighter pilot or, you know, something like that, or even a a commercial pilot, if something goes wrong, trust your gut, sure. I get that. Actually, what you said at first makes a lot of sense. you might feel better about the situation cuz I was going to bring up my own situation where I left academia and came to work for Mark Manson, like Right. And so, um that was a lot of that was around a kind of a gut, like minimizing regret, which again, what you're saying was is fine. I still think it was the right decision. That might be the key point. You actually might have like taken care of my skepticism with this one with that. Like if you might feel better about that decision. Um but I mean, you know, there are certain situations though, too, where it's just like there's not really a right or wrong outcome. It's just a values thing. Yeah, or an emotions thing. Like with a a job, um like a long-term my long-term fulfillment. Like I knew in academia there was this narrow path and there were a narrow set of outcomes. Yeah. And I was like, well, I'm going to go take the more variable path here with more variable outcomes and see what happens. And it turned it worked out and there's some survivorship bias there, I get that. Totally. But like a lot of that was a good decision for me, yeah. I will grant you that I think when it comes to primarily emotionally laden decisions or value-based decisions, then your gut probably has actually better access to that than than your your mind or your slow thinking system. And I I do think there is something to that, like trusting your intuition to know what's best for you or to know when you're going to be happiest. But it's like if my agent comes to me tomorrow and she's like, "Look, we've got three different publishers offering you three different book deals with different terms. What do you want to go with?" I'm going to be like, "Okay." Obviously, I'm going to have a gut reaction. It's probably useful to acknowledge that and like recognize it, but it's also like you should sit and argue against it and think, you
know, think in other terms. I would also argue in in situations of like immediate potential immediate danger. Mhm. Like if you come if you meet somebody, you know, like something's just off, I'm going to trust my gut and not interact with them, I'm okay with that. Yeah. [laughter] Like I'm okay with that. You might err on the side like of being a little Right, you might have some false positives, yeah, that that intuitive decision-making, I would say this is probably only harming you if it is chronic. And like I definitely know some Okay, yeah. some very, very woo-woo people who it's like everything everything is like, "Oh, I'm trusting my my intuition." Or like, "Oh, the universe is telling me to do that." Actually, I yeah, I have a friend who is that way and uh telling me to eat three pieces of cake today and, [laughter] you know, sleep with the next person I see. No, I it's funny, actually, no, I I have a friend who they got very much into kind of the Joe Dispenza world and like trust the energy, like the universe is telling you and trust your like you're you're attuned to the energy of the universe and so you just trust your gut. My wife and I, we've basically watched them them turn into the most self-serving, selfish, self-indulgent, completely detached from reality human and it's it's like it's [__] up a lot of their friendships, it's [__] up a lot of their relationships, like it's it's a problem. And so, I do think you have to be careful with with your intuition because ultimately, your intuition is self-serving. And that's fine in a lot of contexts, like like making a career decision. That's a self-serving decision, so you need to like it's important to listen to yourself, but if you're thinking about in terms of like what party to invite people to or like what to do with your Saturday night or who to call when uh like if somebody a friend's going through a hard time, like how to respond to that. Like it's your gut's probably it's probably not going to be the best judge of a lot of those things. Well, when they're when the situation warrants a measured response. Mhm, yes. Okay. All
a measured response. Mhm, yes. Okay. All right. This was also Kahneman's point, too, right? It's like ultimately, system one and system two, you need both. And they they balance and counter-balance each other in in various ways, so. Uh the last of the [__] section, I think this one might surprise some people. It surprised me a little. Yeah? Mhm. It's funny, I I had researched this before, so it did not surprise me, but I think this is definitely another holdover of probably our parents' generation. So, the conventional wisdom, especially back in the' 70s and' 80s, like they actually used to have therapeutic methods in the' 70s around this of like screaming to a pillow and like write all of your angry feelings onto a piece of paper and then flush it down the toilet. Like we'll call it catharsis theory. Yeah. I've also seen it described as like the hydraulic pressure theory of emotion, right? It's like, "Oh, there's anger pent up and you need to let it out. Otherwise boil over. Yeah, otherwise you're going to explode and all this stuff. This is [__] Most evidence shows no effect, like screaming into a pillow or punching a wall or whatever. And what little effect size there is is actually on the negative side. So, it's it shows that the more you scream into the pillow, the angrier you're going to be and the more angry you're going to be more often. And so, it's this venting practice or the catharsis effect actually backfires and it just and which makes sense because you're kind of training yourself to indulge in an emotion, which might be I guess marginally beneficial if that if it's an emotion that you've like traditionally suppressed within yourself. But indulging in emotion is probably just going to lead to more like a greater tendency to indulge that emotion. Now, you still need to process the emotion. Which is what the research finds is that actually finding better ways to actually calmly process, analyze it, be more introspective about it, be more self-aware around it, that's a much better way to deal with things like anger and frustration, any kind of angst
that you have. Rather than just like, yeah, acting it out. There was this one small study I did find though that um it was like uh violent criminal offenders, Okay. right? In a very [laughter] controlled setting where they did some forms of catharsis with them, it seemed to help a little bit. But again, it was a highly controlled um setting. The and the the times that do find either nothing or small positive effects that they do find, there's usually a lot of processing afterwards Interesting. about the anger that they let out. So, sometimes I think what it is is those people who are just so disconnected from their emotions to begin with, you use that anger to like maybe get them connected with it and then you really process it afterwards. But it's got to be highly, highly structured with somebody who really knows what they're doing. Yeah. Most of the time though in the kind of colloquial way we use it, it's yeah, it's it's harmful, actually. What I just noticed, too, is everything in our [__] category is it's it's basically unbridled it's like letting your emotions loose without any check from the rational side of your brain. Uh so, whether it's it's just suppressing negative thoughts and deluding yourself in the positivity, microdosing psychedelics, which suppresses your executive function, uh intuitive decision-making, um or catharsis venting, you're in each and every case, you are kind of letting your emotion your feeling brain off the leash. Very indulgent. Yeah, and it's [snorts] uh and it makes things worse. No, I think that captures that category So, moving on, that was number 16. We're moving up our ranking up the charts. We're now moving into things that aren't harmful, but they're probably not helping, either. Right. This is our probably nothing category. Starting with number 15, this one was very upsetting, Drew. [laughter] very upsetting, crystal healing. Okay. I had such high hopes.
You know, you don't know this, but Oh. I sit with my crystals here behind the table Right. and and I rub them. Where did you get these? My they're my crystals. They're my my they heal my podcast chakra. I really don't like how you're touching those. [laughter] That's all right. [gasps] All right, we're before we get canceled, let me put these away. [laughter] Okay, so no no effects of these. Yeah, nothing. And and very little research, too. I kind of threw this in just for the lols. Yeah. Um But I mean, there are a lot of people who are really into the crystal thing. I mean, I I know a certain somebody who's who's girlfriend is buying It was so funny. buying him crystals recently. I was getting pictures like, "You like this one?" One right before we started recording. [laughter] Yeah. What What was the meme that you were talking about at lunch today? It's the the single single guys. The single guy dilemma. Which Which is what? It's every single guy has a dilemma of making fun of um like astrology and spirit crystals or getting laid. [laughter] These aren't for decoration, though. That's what I'm looking at. They're decorative. Okay. They're decorative. Quote unquote decorative, okay. It's true though, there really is no evidence for it. Do we have anything to say about crystal healing and aligning our chakras to the vibrations of the the crystal wisdom of the universe? They're rocks. They're expensive. They're very expensive. That was one thing I noticed when she was sending me pictures, the price tag on them was maybe we should drop this into the [__] category simply because uh if anything, it's just going to harm your bank account. This one show this the placebo effect like on steroids, okay? If you believe that crystals will have some healing power over you, whether that's like some mild pain or anxiety or whatever whatever problem in your life uh and you engage in some ceremony, then yeah, you're probably going to see a
little bit of something. If you don't, it's not going to. That's just that is the placebo effect. That's the definition of the placebo effect. Yep. So, there's a lot of ways you can go about doing that and spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on rocks is probably not the best one. It's pretty harmless. Yeah. This next one though might not it might actually not be harmless. Number 14, willpower. In the literature, this is known as ego depletion. It's actually a very controversial concept within the psychological literature. A lot of psychologists strongly argue that it's it's just not even a thing. Uh a lot of psychologists argue that it actually is very much a thing and it's very important. I guess the how would we categorize this? It would probably be like the would you call it like the willpower as a muscle theory of effort, right? It's like this idea that willpower is finite. It's something that you need to work and improve and practice and you can overexert yourself or some people just are born with a weak will and some people are born with a lot of willpower and like how how would you characterize this? Yeah, I think that's I mean, you know, the whole ego depletion theory is basically you have a tank Mhm. of willpower [clears throat] or whatever it is. If you work on something or you're focusing on something or you're you're spending a lot of time and energy on something, then your tank is drained over time and then afterwards you're not going to be able to apply any of that time and energy to anything else very effectively. I you know, this what there was some early evidence for those kinds of things. Even like the whole the lemonade study, I think if you remember that one. Yeah, with the sugar. If you don't have enough if your blood glucose is low, you won't have enough willpower, so you should have a little bit of sugar before. That turns out to be you know, there's more careful studies done, not true. Willpower though, it's treated like a resource. I mean, yes, you have energy levels Right. uh metabolic energy levels in your brain or whatever it is, but like the actual is there a willpower center? No, probably not. The harmful thing is when you start to think that, oh, I only have so much I have this little bit of willpower that I need to
piecemeal out throughout my day or whatever it is, otherwise I'm just going to be uh exhausted in the middle of the day and I won't be able to get anything done. I think that's where the like the more harmful What's What's interesting to me is is that what you just said is probably super ineffective. Like if you really believe that you only have so much energy in the day and that you have to be very careful of like how you expend it, yeah, you're probably really going to underperform your potential. What's interesting though is that observationally you see the opposite as well. Like you see there's so much stuff out there that's just like, dude, you got to grind, you got to hustle, you got to push yourself, you got to do all this and we consistently see that that advice also doesn't work. So, it's like the people who are telling you, hey, willpower is kind of this fragile thing that you need to manage, that's not showing up in the research, but just from my experience in this industry, too, it's like all the people who are like, dude, you you just got to [__] grind, bro. You got to push yourself. You got to Like we like all the New Year's resolutions, like none of that works. Right. None of it works. None of it is like, oh, I'm going to lose 40 lb and work 12 hours a day and uh run a marathon next month and uh you know, start getting up at 4: 00 a. m. Like it it doesn't work. No matter how how hard you go, how hard you push yourself. It's just to me it just seems like such a faulty framing Yes. of how things get done, of how like of like what motivation is or like what effort is. The better version of the advice out there that you sometimes hear, if you hear it at all, is it you know, set up the the discipline systems, right? So, even when you don't feel like it, even when you have no willpower, this quote unquote willpower, you set yourself up where it's more likely that you're going to do what you need to do, whether you want to or not. Right. That's not willpower though. That's just a form of discipline. This hearkens back to our procrastination episode last year, where really the the big conclusion we arrived at in that episode is that really productivity problems are emotional problems disguised as productivity problems. It's it's either
productivity problems. It's it's either you are it does the work doesn't feel meaningful or it uh it it doesn't it's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not connecting you to to others, it's not fulfilling some deeper value or purpose. And I feel like this is kind of like motivation and nutshell is kind of the same thing. Like willpower as a concept is just is the the idea of of trying to force yourself to do something you actually deep down don't want to do or don't see the value in doing, which by definition means it's self-defeating in a lot of ways. Right. [laughter] Right. example, like you go to a job you hate all day and yeah, that's going to take a lot of willpower, quote unquote. Yeah. but then you get home and you're like, I don't know, you're going to play video games or go out with your friends or like all of a sudden you have all this energy to and motivation to do things. It's not because you don't have any willpower. Like your willpower hasn't been drained. Motivation has been directed in in the wrong place. Yeah. The irony is that if you're living very aligned, you don't experience anything as willpower. Yes. Yeah. Right? It's just you're just doing things. doing it. Yeah. [laughter] [laughter] You can just do things. Yeah. All right, that's number 14. Number 13, uh power posing. I remember when this this was a [laughter] a thing for a hot minute. Uh there was a big TED Talk, I think in 2013. Yeah, I did I never saw any of this stuff, so this is all new to me. You know what's funny? Uh this was a big thing thing it was funny seeing this blow up because this was a big thing in the pickup artist community back in the 2000s. So, the pickup artists, like a big part of the the pickup artist scene for people listening who don't even know what this is. Yeah. First of all, I'm sorry. Uh second of all, what it was is a a bunch of nerds in the mid-2000s got online together and started scientifically studying what attracted women and calling themselves pickup artists. It went about as well as it sounds like it went, but one of the things that they got really into, I I remember at the time, is they got really into body language research. And they developed a lot they actually like a lot of the old pickup artists were like, no, put your shoulders back,
were like, no, put your shoulders back, stand up straight because that it's not just that it exudes confidence, it like trains you to feel confident. Right. And so, I remember when all the power posing stuff came out. Uh Amy Cuddy, I think was the big researcher behind it. She did a TED Talk in 2013. It went super viral. She framed it much more in a professional setting, right? So, it's like if you've got to give a presentation at work and you're like really unsure of yourself, it's like put the shoulders back, stand up straight, like, you know, create a power pose for yourself and then you'll suddenly feel confident and there's all this kind of evolutionary backwards rationalization explaining it. Um I I think even Jordan Peterson has gotten into it. I I remember in 12 Rules for Life he talks about how like shoulders back is like a status symbol and it trains your reptilian brain to see yourself as higher status and all this stuff. Anyway, I can keep going. Basically nothing there. Yeah. [laughter] Long story short, there's nothing there. There's some of the nuance here, okay? You can have very short-term like little boosts in your mood or or um just energy I guess levels. Yeah. Very short-term, very transient. There were some early studies, too, that purported to find some hormonal changes like increases in testosterone, that sort of thing. That's been debunked since then though, too. So, you can maybe get a tiny little boost out of it in some situations, but it's very transient and there's it's not really clear if that even translates to anything tangible anyway. Yeah, I wonder if it's just I and again, speaking of placebos, right? Like I wonder how much of it is just being aware of your posture in the moment, right? Like I can sit here I'm kind of slouched over over the mic right now, right? Like let's say I'm sitting here and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to scoot up. I'm going to stand up straight. Shoulders up. This is my power pose, Drew. You [__] ready for my power pose? About to crush this [__] podcast. It gives you an in to create a narrative in your brain. Yeah. You've activated some self-awareness there.
Yes. And then you there's like a little embedded mini narrative there of like, okay, I'm I'm sitting up with my shoulders back, I'm going to crush this podcast now, which then, you know, a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy of like you tell yourself that narrative, it generates the emotion that you're thinking about. Whatever you think about is it's just going to multiply. Okay, power posing, number 13, kind of a nothingburger. This one was interesting. This was a bit of a a surprise and it was funny cuz this actually got roped in, you know, when when we when I was doing the initial kind of sending the AI out to like go grab early research on a bunch of different topics, it just kind of lumped this topic in and I was like, wow, I never thought about that topic, but it's that's actually kind of interesting. This episode is brought to you by Brain. fm. Vision boards, affirmations in the mirror, trying to manifest your way into discipline, [music] the self-help industry is full of stuff that sounds smart, but it does absolutely nothing. And if you've been paying attention to today's episode, you know we have opinions about which techniques belong in the trash. So, let me tell you about something that actually does work and science backs it up. Brain. fm uses music that's actually engineered by neuroscientists to shift your brain waves into focus, relaxation or even sleep. It's not a playlist, it's not lo-fi beats with an anime girl studying. This is purpose-built [music] audio that changes your brain state within minutes. I've been using it for a while now and it's become one of my go-tos for writing sessions. I put it on and within a few minutes mental noise just kind of drops out. There's no willpower required. [music] Instant flow state. You don't need a motivational quote, you just got to get a little bit of good music with some good brain wave [music] juice to go with and best of all, Brain. fm is one of the few tools in self-improvement space that is backed by real science and it actually delivers. [music] We're giving Solve listeners 30 days of unlimited access for free. There's no catch, no credit card tricks, and just a full month to see if it actually works for you. So, head to brain. fm / solve. [music] [music] That's brain. fm / solve. You get 30 days for free. Stop manifesting focus, and just go focus. So, learning styles. I don't know about
So, learning styles. I don't know about you, but I remember when I was a kid, there was a whole thing about like are you a visual learner, an auditory learner, a kinesthetic learner? And you know, if you're a visual learner, it means that you need like diagrams and videos and pie charts to understand a topic. Whereas, if you're an auditory learner, like you need to like listen to a lecture. And kinesthetic kinesthetic learners need to like touch and feel the thing and all this stuff. Anyway, not not really a thing. Yeah. Not not a whole lot there. As a kid, I still hear that today. Like you still hear about learning styles today. So, crazy one shocked me crazy thing I saw when we were researching this, I saw that over 90% of teachers in the United States believe this is a thing. And they're actually trained on it. Like there's still training that goes on on VAK learning styles on grade school teachers. And there's actually like the research consistently shows that there's not really anything there. People who take this seriously and doing more careful studies, they've kind of concluded what it is is more that you're giving the person a choice or agency in the matter. Not necessarily their learning style. It's not that you're just sitting down saying this is how we're doing it. You're giving them some choice in the matter. Right. Whatever that is. which [snorts] they're probably going to whatever they choose, they're just going to like more. Exactly. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, it's more of a liking effect than anything. Yeah. All right, number that was number 12. Number 11, affirmations. As you know, I've been [__] on affirmations for This has been paying my bills for a long time. That's right. [laughter] [laughter] Um Um affirmations, I mean, kind of similar to power posing. There's a little bit little like little bit For certain people and certain situations, yes. What what I found interesting is that the most evidence that they see of this is around people who are around like minorities, underprivileged people, people who feel like who have been like oppressed against or like discriminated against in some way. That those people
against in some way. That those people are are some of the only people that you actually do see legitimate effect size. The rest of the population, it seems to be a bit of a nothing burger. Right. I think you've said this before though, too. Just like if you're going from uh you just complete no self-worth whatsoever, and you know, completely just fixated on negative a huge negativity bias, then going to some form of positive thinking, then yeah, that's going to help, right? Like in some in most situations. Most people though, you're going to get little to no effect whatsoever. I I think that the thing that's interesting about the marginalized groups is that if you take people who have like actually seen evidence of the world treating them worse, then I think it makes sense to like tell yourself like no, I am smart. I am able. I am lovable. I am people do like me. Like I can see why that would have power. Whereas, if you're just like a random person living their life, it's what what you see is that it it actually affirmations often backfire for people, right? It's like secretly it's like you know they're like oh, I I have to sit here and like tell myself I'm I'm smart and likable, it must mean that I'm not very smart and likable. And so, what you see is that affirmations are kind of I consider them like a win more strategy. And there's actually there's a few things in here that I I would consider what I'll call win more strategy. So, like anybody who's played strategy games, often times what what will happen is that you'll you'll find a strategy that seems on the surface like a really good strategy, but actually it only works if you're already winning. So, it takes somebody who's winning and it just helps you win a little bit more. Whereas, if you're not winning, it's actually not going to help you win at all. Affirmations is totally the same way. So, what the research finds is that people who already feel good about themselves, if they give themselves affirmations, yeah, they feel a little bit better. But they already feel good about themselves, so they don't really need it. Whereas, the people who feel bad about themselves, when they use affirmations, it actually makes them feel worse. Right. Because what happens is that they
stand there in their bathroom and they're like, "Wow, I'm the kind of person who has to [__] look in the mirror and tell myself that I'm I'm beautiful and that I'm smart and that I'm lucky."gap, right? Yeah. Like what a loser I am. I can't believe I have to do this. Yeah. So, it's it is in a way it's like polarizing mental health outcome. It It really what it does is it highlights whatever the underlying belief actually is. Either positive or negative, right? If you're already there, if you are like that star athlete and you're on the free throw line 1 second left, and you tell yourself you got this, you're the man, Yeah. probably going to help you a little bit. If but yeah, if you have just been taken loss after loss in your life, and you're down and out, and you tell yourself, "No, I'm an amazing good-looking hard-working rich whatever, you know, "just going to highlight how you're not all of those things. So, yeah. And that's what they found in the research as well is people with lower self-esteem actually don't benefit from this very well. Yeah. It's a mixed bag. It's definitely a mixed bag. And even when it works, it doesn't work much, right? It's a very very small effect size. Last one in this category, in the probably nothing category, this one's a little spicy. I feel like we're going to get a lot of the Huberman Tim Ferriss biohacker people in our our comments for this one. Morning routines. Yeah. Morning routines, number 10. You've been [__] on these for a while, too. Dude. Yeah. Who cares? Do you not have like any morning routine? You know what my morning routine is? What is your morning routine? I wake up, no alarm. I wake up, I go to my desk, and I work. And you get to work, yeah. [laughter] That's pretty much what I do, too. Yeah. [__] do anything. Nothing. I don't need to like come on. guys. Like just do the thing. Okay, so what's what's so wrong about morning routines? There's nothing Okay. I First of all, I do think this is a very personality-based thing. I would agree with that, yeah. And this is also this bears on the research is that it's it is a very personal thing. Some people love their morning routines and they swear by it. Other people,
like me, could not give two [__] So, it My guess is that it probably map maps very very strongly to conscientiousness and probably a little bit to neuroticism as well. I think it's one of those things that because it's very tangible and measurable, like it we all want an answer that feels very explicable, right? Like if I look at some super successful admirable person that like I really admire and I want to be like them. Like the thing that actually makes them successful is that they they have like this very rare combination of of personality traits and and background and history and and various social influences and connections and relationships in their life. Like that that's so messy and intangible and indefinable that like it's it's hard to get motivated and and feel good about myself learning about that. Whereas, if you tell me what they eat for breakfast and [laughter] and like how long they meditate in the morning, I'm like, "I can do that." Let me do that. It gives you a sense of control. Exactly. It's like well, let me just do what I don't know. Steve Jobs does, and then maybe I'll be a little bit more like Steve Jobs. So, it scratches that that underlying emotional itch. But it is it the evidence is mixed at best. Yes, it is very mixed. for some people, not useful for a lot of people, and it it is all over the map. So, yeah, some of the some of those situations in which it's not helpful. Okay, again, it's mixed. It can be helpful, but some of those situations where it's not, matching your chronotype, right? Yes. So, if you're not a morning person and you try to like be a morning person with a morning routine, um you know, there's there's genetic phenotypes of like early risers versus night owls, all of that, right? That can change over time. It can You you're an example of that. You used to be a night owl, and now you're an an early bird pretty much, right? Yeah. The the point though is is that if
you're mismatching those things and trying to like shoehorn in, you know, this morning routine and and you're just not a morning person, like yeah, don't don't force that, right? Yeah. People who are very rigid about this are probably those highly conscientious, highly neurotic people you're talking about. You almost get attached to that morning routine as like a oh, it's almost a superstition. Yes. Like I have to start my day like this, otherwise It's another placebo. the whole day is ruined, right? Like I missed my whatever my my workout because something popped up with work or the kids or whatever it is. Now my whole day is ruined, and I can't get anything done. There there's some evidence to that. They they found like a subset of people who are like that, which is like can't function without it. Well, that's that's not a healthy coping mechanism at all. That's just a crutch you're trying to lean on that point. Again, probably for some sense of control you're seeking. It's really like a placebo is probably inspired by some credible story of like, "Okay, this I it makes sense why this would work." There needs to be some sense of meaning behind like whatever it is, right? So, it's like the people who believe in the crystal stuff. Like there's some sort of metaphysical spiritual explanation that makes them believe it. And because they believe it, they actually get some benefit out of it. I kind of same thing with the power poses. Like I feel like morning routines is probably in the same boat, right? It's it's there's something about knowing like, "Well, uh the science says that it's optimal to work out at this hour and eat this macronutrient at this this hour of the day, and it's and these really successful people wake up at this time, and they do these things for us." If that gets you into a a good emotional state first thing in the morning, if like that's what it takes to get you [__] fired up by 7: 30 a. m., 8: 00 a. m., and like ready for your day, then great. Like that's that's wonderful. There's nothing wrong with that. But again, it's like let's not pretend it's the root There's anything magical about the routine itself. Right. It's the confluence of
understanding your own biology, psychology, and your environment, and then just finding the repeatable pattern that is that reduces friction as much as possible. For me, it's just like I wake up excited to work. I By the way, I've tried all this [__] Like I've tried literally everything. I've I've done all of Wim Hof a bit every time. I've done like morning stretches, yoga, meditations, workouts, ice baths, uh smooth like every smoothie, supplement, fasting, like everything. None of it stuck. Eventually, by the time I was in like my late 30s, I was like, "You know, I just kind of wake up wanting to work. Why don't I just work?" And so I start working at like 6: 00. Right. Like I'm within 2 minutes of opening my eyes, I'm working. And and then I actually This is the ironic part. I have a little bit of a morning routine like 2 or 3 hours later. So when I go have like my breakfast, I've got a whole routine around my breakfast, which is like that's when I do my household chores. That's when I listen to the podcasts I like. That's when I you know, I eat any sort of like uh hygiene stuff I do then. Yeah, this isn't an argument against good habits. Yeah, but it but it's not Yeah, but it's not That's not making me better. Right. It's not That's It's just I like it. If you're if you are in like some sort of rut or something like that, and like you change to a new morning routine or whatever, the again, it's a placebo effect probably, but it's just like, "Oh, now you're seeing the world in a different way, a slightly different way." And that could change something. But there's a lot of different ways you can do that. It's not necessarily the morning routine that's responsible for that. We are halfway through, Drew. We just wrapped up We started with the [__] section, the stuff that not only doesn't work, but may actually be harming you. We noticed that that was mostly emotionally indulgent behaviors, things like intuitive decision-making or catharsis. We just went through the section that
was We agreed was probably mostly placebo, like kind of nothing. Probably nothing there, but it's not really going to hurt you. That includes everything from power posing to positive affirmations to morning routines. Now we're getting into the stuff that works. And by works, I put like For this next section, I put an asterisk next to works, which is that it it technically works, but there are real questions around how much does it work, when does it work, for who does it work. Mechanisms, yeah. This next section, it's all about stuff that kind of works some of the time a little bit. For some people. [laughter] Starting with number nine, everybody's favorite. This is a classic. Visualization. Yeah. Visualizing the future outcome that you want, visualizing the success, being confident. Oh, look at you, Drew, on that mic just [__] owning this podcast. Seeing myself killing it. Crushing it millions of people out there in their cars, taking out their trash, being like, "That Drew Burney man, he's got it figured out." How's it How's that visualization working out for you? That's my routine every every time we record. [laughter] Oh, that explains the success. That's why we're we're doing so well. Got it. All right. Visualization. I I will admit I You know, that the affirmations, I could always kind of understand why some people did them, um why it worked. And and I will say this, too, on the margin Like I've definitely used affirmations on the margins. I also For example, like if I'm about to go on stage in front of like 2, 000 people, and I'm like [__] nervous as [__] I'll be like, "Bro, you're going to kill this. You Your talk is awesome. You're going to nail it." Like I'll give myself that little pep talk beforehand, but other than that, I've never really used affirmations. Visualization, I've never really been able to bring myself to do. Yeah, right. I I don't totally know why, but I do
know some people who swear by it, and especially these days with manifestation coming back with a vengeance, like it is there's stuff all over TikTok and Instagram of telling people to visualize their future, visualize their success, and then it will make it happen. Tell us true, is it that simple? No. [laughter] I This one did it surprised me a little bit in some ways, but then when you dig into it, you're like, "Oh, this makes a whole lot of sense." Yeah, okay? Cuz because what they find, especially for like athletes or really any any physical like activity that you're doing, Yeah. um and you have some level of competence around it, positive visual visualization works fairly well. They've done a lot of studies, especially with athletes, especially like elite athletes. Yeah. So as as the competence level goes up, I think this works a little bit better, too. To me, that makes sense. that kind of stuff makes sense to me, Anything physical, if I'm like a basketball player, and I need to If I need to like think about how I'm going to play against the guy who's going to play defense against me, it makes sense to me that visualizing that process, imagining him in front of me, imagining me like going around him, shooting over him, or whatever. I I can see why that sort of mental rehearsal works. What I don't understand is like, I don't know, you're sitting in your bedroom uh playing You know, like I don't know You're a slob on the couch, and you're like Yeah, you're playing Grand Theft Auto, and you're just like imagining yourself surrounded by dozens of beautiful women cheering for you for existing. Well, you you [laughter] You you said the word already. There's a finer point we have to put on this. Um we're talking about the athlete, and you know, if you're a basketball player or something like that, and you are visualizing the process, you said, of how do I beat this opponent, how do I make this shot, how do I whatever it is, right? Make this awesome pass. Yeah, okay? You're visualizing the process Yes. of that happening. Not the result, okay? And that's what they found in the research is that if
you the positive visualization around the process of getting to where you want is actually what's the most important part. So yes, you're a slob sitting on the couch playing video games, nothing going on, just imagining that tomorrow's going to be different is not going to do anything for you. Now, imagining getting off the couch and going to the gym, and you know, like actually trying at your job or whatever it is, and and all of the actual things that will get you somewhere, positively visualizing around those things, that's what's most important. This maps to, from what I saw with some of the meta-analyses, the largest moderator by far on whether visualization works or not is whether it is accompanied with planning. Yes. Yeah, exactly. The process. Yeah, like if you It's If the whole manifestation juju, like it can work if it's accompanied with an actual action plan of like, "Okay, these are the five steps I have to go through, and okay, now I'm going to visualize what success looks like at the end of those five steps." Whereas if you're just visualizing the success and have no idea how you're going to get there, then it doesn't really do anything. Yeah. No, exactly. There's one one study in particular that I found around health behaviors. Actually, so it was people who were unhealthy or felt they were unhealthy and wanted to change something about their lifestyles, right? And so they had It was a control study that they used, and they had some people visualize around the health behaviors that they wanted to engage in with the commensurate plan that went along with it. Those people stuck to those health behaviors much more than the control group who didn't have the planning or the visualization around it. So yeah, the plan and the process is actually the most important part around visualization. [laughter] That makes total sense to me. Right. Which which makes me wonder if you just take that away, how much benefit is actually left? Take what away? The planning. Oh, yeah. Probably not much if any. It's uh maybe a little bit of a mood boost, and then like you said, if if it's like a physical activity, the mental rehearsal of that that activity, like there's probably a a marginal benefit to it. Definitely. Yeah, there there was
another study, too, um around just motivation and ener - energization towards your goals. Yeah. They just had people purely focus on results, on the outcome base, what they call outcome-based imagery Yeah. around this, and it decreased motivation uh for those people. Like Yeah, if you just positively visualize that, you're immediately less likely to be motivated to go do those things. [laughter] Whereas when you focus on the process and the planning, Yeah. then you actually like create some momentum. So like with affirmations, there's a bit of a backfire effect here. Yeah. as well. Could be a rebound effect there, yeah. Okay. So so what Okay, if somebody wanted to put up a vision board, let's say, right. I've never been into those, for sure. But usually those are very much outcome-based, and just, Yes. I'm here, this is where I want to go, nothing in between. So I actually looked at a couple of studies around vision boards, and uh yeah, it just boosts your mood a little bit. Yeah, right. It could do a short-term mood boost. Yeah, you you get Probably have a rebound effect though, too. So I think it comes back to the point that we made in in like some of the the entries at the bottom of this list, right? Because what what one thing we noted is that all the things at the bottom of the list are are just purely emotional indulgence with no sort of mental planning or logic component to it. I I think this is another example of like if there's no planning component, if there's no logic component married Like the the visualization is probably an emotional boost. Like it gives you a little bit of a jolt of motivation or excitement. Indulgence a little bit, even too, yeah. Right. Which is great. Like in in it's definitely I I will say this, like whenever I've had big goals, like I definitely fantasize about what it's like to have that goal, but I've never considered that like a success strategy. It's It's more just been like, man, it's going to be so awesome once I achieve this goal, and imagining what my life is going to be like once I do achieve that goal. Like, I definitely do that, but I have no illusions that that is actually what's helping me achieve the goal. I think it's just that's just a being excited about my goal. Right. Yeah. [laughter] Right. It's It's actually the
planning and the strategizing and the action that achieves it. Well, let's move on to the next one cuz this next one is a little bit spicy, a little bit of a surprise. Uh I never would have guessed it would come out this high. Energy healing. Oh, Mark. Get [laughter] your plate of crow, maybe. Uh this is the revenge of the woo-woo. We have All of our woo-woo stuff or most of the woo-woo stuff was was at the very bottom of this list. This one somehow made it to the top half. Right. I might question our methodology [laughter] on this one, but but we'll see. We'll see what you have to say about this. There There are different types of energy healing. Yeah, this is a very big like catch-all um bucket that we made, yeah. I do have a hypothesis around this, which is that and and I was very curious about this. So, as you probably know, there's a concept sometimes referred to as touch therapy, which is just that having human touch is in and of itself therapeutic. It helps people calm down. It helps people regulate their emotions. So, things like things as simple as just hugging somebody, touching somebody, holding somebody, having somebody put their arm around you. Like, there are real emotional, psychological benefits of human touch. It's like very much an innate part of our nature. There is actually plenty of research on {quote} touch therapy, and sure enough, uh the effect sizes of that research come out to be very similar to what a lot of the energy healing effect sizes look like, especially when it comes to managing pain. Okay. Yeah. So, my my hypothesis here is that the 99% of the benefits of energy healing actually come from the fact that another human is just focusing on you, touching you, and and doing it in a sympathetic and and caring way. I I would probably agree with that. Um I think, you know, the one one study I found, it was actually a placebo-controlled study as best as you could with this anyway. So, Reiki, there's this this old Japanese ancient Japanese tradition called Reiki, and it's kind of like it's
called Reiki, and it's kind of like it's uh either light touch or no touch actually, just kind of a a practitioner an experienced practitioner hovering over you. Yes. Um while you're laying down, uh you know, eyes closed, very relaxed environment. In the study, they used that versus a sham control they called fakey, which I thought was really funny. [laughter] Um which is like just an inexperienced Nobody who's They're not a practitioner, and they just go and wave their hands around. Basically what it was. And they did actually find so they compared that to a meditation group as well. And then they had just a weightless control no no intervention whatsoever, okay? So, they did find that Reiki, meditation, and the fakey group actually immediately improved uh a pain It was This is with people with knee pain. So, it did immediately all three of those immediately improved it. Yeah. Which I thought was very interesting. So, uh you know, and about to the same degree as well. So, meditation, Reiki, and the fakey. The interesting part with this study though. So, that would suggest that Reiki and fakey like there's just a placebo effect going on, right? The interesting thing though was a couple of months later they followed up with them. Mhm. And [clears throat] my guess is what happened, you know, after the the study, they take these measurements, how's your pain doing, they tell them, and then they tell them, "Okay, actually you were in the fakey group, you were in the Reiki group, you were obviously in the meditation group." Right? Two months later when they followed up with them though, the only ones that still had improved pain were the meditation and the Reiki group. The fakey group had went back to their their old pain, which was interesting. So, this could still be an expectancy effect. Well, I was going to say that that could just be the placebo. Right. It's just like that Reiki is a strong placebo basically, right? So, I Okay, keep going. I'm just saying it's like technically it worked, right? Technically it worked, yeah. I have two personal experiences around this. Okay. One is that I dated a girl at one point who [clears throat] had taken a bunch of Reiki courses and was supposedly certified in Reiki. And uh and she did it to me once, and I remember it was because I was having lower back pain. And she was like, "Oh, I can fix that for you." And I was like, "Really?" [laughter]
And she was like, "Yeah, lay down, you know." And she like did her whole thing. Uh didn't fix it for me. Didn't feel a thing. I was like, made fun of her. I was like, "What the [__] You paid for this?" [laughter] Uh I was kind of an [__] back then. Second experience. So, I had a really good friend back when I lived in Boston, my an older guy who was really into like energy healing and he was an interesting guy cuz he was definitely woo-woo, but he was much more scientifically minded than and and often I would talk to him about things, and he would even tell me he's like, "I don't know why this works, but it does." And I was like, "Okay, that's fair." So, anyway, he was a energy healer. He had trained under some guru for multiple years, and it was like he kept saying he's like, "No, it's it's really good. Like, it's very powerful." And I was like, "Sure, whatever." I broke up with uh a girlfriend. I just got out of a relationship, was really depressed, really down, and I was staying with him one weekend, and he was like, he's like, "You know, man, let me just do a session with you. Like, it can't It It can't make it worse, right?" And I was like, "Sure, [__] it.""Why not?" Yeah, I'm like, [laughter]"All right, man. Whatever. Sure." So, I like I laid down. He had this like little It was kind of like a massage table, so I laid down on the massage table, and he started doing all this stuff. He started putting his hands on all these places, and and it was very at the time I was like, "This is very meditative. It was very relaxing." Yeah. Right. But from what I could tell consciously, like I I couldn't tell if anything was happening or not. Okay. And then afterwards, he was like, "That was a very intense session. You You definitely want to take it easy for the next day or two." I don't know what it was. I slept like 10 hours that night, 12 hours that night. I was absolutely exhausted the next day. Uh I had crazy [__] dreams, and and I felt better a couple days later. Like, it it I wasn't completely over the
relationship. I wasn't over the breakup. I I wasn't that I wasn't like depressed anymore, but I noticeably felt better a day or two later. And there was a weird like like exhaustion, mental emotional exhaustion that hit that happened, and then there was definitely like a To this day, I don't know what the [__] he did, and and he used to always just kind of laugh and be like, "You know, if I explained it to you, you wouldn't even believe me." And [laughter] I was like, "Okay." So, it could have been a placebo. I have no clue what happened, but um I don't There's a lot of people with the Reiki that report the whole sleep thing. They're like, "Yeah, I slept great after a session." And it could mean the relaxation part, the you know, self-awareness part, I'm sure Yeah. factors into that, but yeah, I don't know. So, I still don't some people. You know, one of the things that's not on here that we could have done is hypnosis. Yeah. So, part of me could cuz this guy this friend of mine, he also had a background in hypnosis. And so, part of me wonders if there was like some aspect of like physical hypnosis that went along with it. I don't know. TBD. Yeah. One of the mysteries of Mark's life. Yeah, again, it works for some people. I think there is a huge expectancy effect. It works better if you think it's going to work better. Yes. That said, like, okay, that whole study I explained about the knee pain and all that. I mean, meditation worked just as good as Reiki. So, you don't necessarily have to go and pay somebody, you know, probably a couple hundred bucks to wave their hands over you necessarily. Yeah. But if you're into it, I don't know. There is a cool little ceremony around it. There's a social aspect like you said. Yes. Um like that Okay, sure. Maybe there's different mechanisms between meditation and this, but And and just to speak briefly to the power of the placebo factor, the the expectation effect, I don't think people realize like how absolutely powerful a placebo effect can be. And like all the things you just said about there being a ritual around it, a social expectation around it, um being in a context where or uh an a mental state where you're open to it, which actually if you look in the hypnosis, the biggest thing about hypnosis is that it's you have to be
hypnosis is that it's you have to be open to being hypno - hypnotized. Like, you you need to be suggestible is what hypnotists call it. There's crazy crazy stories of placebo effects in medicine around. There are things called sham surgeries, where it's like they put people to sleep, and they like don't give them the surgery, They make an incision, and that's it, and yeah. And then when they wake up, they they're told that they had the surgery, and they're like, "Oh, great. My knee feels great, doc. Thank you." Yeah. And they don't have knee pain anymore. Right. [laughter] [laughter] Especially around the pain stuff. It's not to say that like pain's in your head or anything like that, but there is a very very much like a a connection between the mind-body connection there is very real. And pain is very much modulated by the way you perceive it. Big uh big ass question mark next to that one, but hey, uh energy healing made it to number eight. The thing that's interesting, I mean, looking at so like the way we measure this, right? So, um most of these for it's actually an interesting juxtaposition between visualization and and energy healing. So, visualization, average effect size of the best best net meta-analysis we found was. 29, which is a pretty small effect size. Like, that's Yeah, it's pretty small. That is in the neighborhood of a placebo. Uh it it but 95% of studies found a positive effect from it. Energy healing, the effect size that we found, the best effect size that we found was. 53, which is a medium effect size, but only 50% 56% of the studies that we looked at found any reportable effect whatsoever. So, it's one of those like it works half the time and when it works, it works really well. Whereas, something like visualization, it works almost all the time, but it It's a small effect. It's very negligible. It's very marginal. All right, let's move to the next one, which is uh a little bit more modern. Cold water immersion. Well, yes. Well, it's modern, but it's actually very ancient at the same time. So, yeah, go on. Excuse me, [laughter] [laughter] Dr. Bernie. modern There's a modern version of it, right. But, people have been dipping into cold water for thousands of years. Yeah, that is true. My my biohacker broscience bias is
My my biohacker broscience bias is kicking in, where You've got a cold bath, don't you? I do have a cold plunge. It is the most unreasonable, impractical thing to own. Don't get me wrong, I love cold plunges, but it is such a pain in the ass to maintain and keep up. I mean, who would have thought, Drew, that uh keeping a running body of water outside of your house takes a lot of [__] maintenance? Yeah. They don't tell you that when they uh when you click on the Instagram ad. [laughter] You're going to be cleaning this thing twice a week for the rest of your life. I live in Colorado, so in the winter you can just get you know, go to a lake. You're good to go. Just jump in. It's funny cuz I remember there was a cold shower craze about 10 or 15 years ago. There was a bunch of TED Talks about it. A bunch of YouTubers made videos about cold showers. I remember doing the cold shower thing and being like, well, this is cool. Like, it puts me in a good mood, but it definitely I don't feel like it's changing my life or anything. Yeah. Interestingly, cold water immersion has positive mental health benefits. This is found fairly consistently. It's not uniform across the board, but it is like it at this point it is consistent enough that it does seem to be a real thing. Mhm. [clears throat] And with that said, there's a lot of caveats and nuances here. I would put cold water immersion in the win more category. Um from what I saw from the research, it's the sort of thing that if you're already kind of healthy and already in a good mental health space, it makes you feel better. Yes. But, if you are not healthy uh or in you have serious mental health issues, it could potentially make things worse. Just because it is getting into a body of very cold water [laughter] is physically and mentally stressful. Like, it is a jolt to the system. And so, if your system is already fragile for various reasons, that jolt can actually make things worse. Uh whereas, if you're already pretty robust and resilient, then it it can make you feel even more robust and resilient. And there's also just a like
resilient. And there's also just a like consistency aspect to it, too. Doing it once, like you said, you might get some short-term, hey, I feel better for the rest of the day or a couple hours. Yeah. Um doing it every day, probably not either, too. There's a little bit of a U-curve here, like a sweet spot you got to hit. But, like consistency over time, when you're already healthy, like you said, you have all those other things taken care of. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It helps in the margins, yeah. I do Around things like stress and anxiety, especially. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. I I do it pretty consistently in the summers. Yeah. I'm I'm too much of a [__] to do it when it's [laughter] when it's cold outside. Oh, yeah, the the those freezing LA winters, you know, out here. It gets cold, man. I I had to wear a jacket a few days ago. It was [laughter] It was rough. It's tough. Winter in LA is tough, Drew. You You have no idea. I mean, sometimes you go to a restaurant and they seat you outside and it's windy and it's And they bring you a blanket. It's very uncomfortable. It's your blanket with a heater. the problem. It's a big problem out here. I know. Uh anything else we want to say about cold water immersion? I feel like all the broscience people are are probably angry that we're not uh lauding the benefits of is the number one, yeah. Okay, I have a little bit of a theory around this one, actually. And like I said, people have been doing this for a long time. It's an ancient practice, um using cold water immersion for health purposes. This goes way, way back, thousands of years, as far as we know. Yeah. My theory, you know, kind of the modern rendition of it, though, too, a lot of people point to like the the Scandinavian countries that do this, right? They'll go out and, you know, drill a hole in the ice in the middle of the winter and they're all jump in it. There's a huge social aspect around that, too. Interesting. this is what a lot of people miss is um the real benefits come from you getting together with a bunch of people, going out and doing something kind of weird and strange together in a little bit, like it's out of the norm, shocks your system a little bit, but you're all doing it together. I think that's actually what probably give you more benefit or especially around stress reduction, any kind of anxiety you have, depression, whatever it is. Yeah. There's actually a huge social component to it. And so, when, you know, they market you
they market you an ice bath to put in your backyard and go to it by yourself, you might still get some of that that benefit, but I think it's going to be smaller than if you would, you know, go out to some frozen lake and I I buy that. Although, I I imagine they probably control for that in a lot of the research, but but I do agree with that. And it's funny, too, because I I it's such an LA thing, but uh bunch of my friends and I, we get together to do cold plunges. yeah. [laughter] Yeah, that's great, yeah. It's uh it's like a thing to do out here. Right. Another interesting caveat that is is actually really important to point out. Two things, actually, that that both both surprised me. Uh one is that uh colder water isn't necessarily better. At least for mental health Okay. Um there might be certain recovery benefits or whatever that that uh colder water is is more beneficial, but you don't get any added effect by like making it ice cold versus just really cold. Yeah. And then the second thing is that like you need to work up to those colder temperatures. If people just jump into freezing ice water water point-blank, like with no work up to it or no experience, then again, you can set yourself up for a certain level of system shock and have worse outcomes than um than if you gently push yourself up to it. One thing I've noticed is I really enjoy a cold plunge down to maybe 50 ° Fahrenheit, like which is 10 ° Celsius. Yeah. Anything below that, in my opinion, it hurts. Okay. And I'm like, why would anybody do this? Yeah. Uh Uh so, I was happy to see that. Okay. [laughter] [laughter] Now, I only looked at like the the psychological outcomes for this. Have you like looked into more of the physiological stuff? Like, I I've heard before like if you, you know, the cold plunge will like help you burn off like internal fat reserves that you have or like the brown fat around your organs and stuff. There's a lot Yeah, there's a lot of stuff around uh My My understanding is
stuff around uh My My understanding is that it's actually sauna that's Oh, so it's heat therapy instead, huh? Yeah. Well, heat therapy, I believe, is is much better for your cardiovascular system. Okay. Um and then the cold therapy, I believe, is is better for like body composition recovery and recovery. I've used it for recovery primarily. It's funny, I don't notice a huge difference in in my recovery when I use it. Um I I notice a big mood boost. Like, I get out and I'm like glowing for the next hour and a half. Like, I just feel I'm in a great mood. I feel like I have tons of energy. Um I think it's the combination of of adrenaline and dopamine. Like, it does release just a massive amount of dopamine into your system. I just like how it makes me feel. Yeah. I personally can't attest to any sort of physical benefits or mental health benefits, either. I mean, sure, maybe it marginally makes me a little bit happier, but Right. Yeah, I mean, hey, if you need shocked out of like some funk. Yeah. All right, give it a try, yeah. All right, let's move to the next one, which is a very interesting one, which I also have a lot of experience with. Yeah. Speed reading. Yeah. This actually really tracked my expectation. Like, if you would ask me before we researched this, where I thought it was going to come out, I would have said kind of middle of the pack. It works, but with a lot of asterisks and caveats. And I think I would have said exactly what we're going to say here, which is that you can trade train yourself to to read faster. You cannot train yourself to read that much faster. It's like marginal improvements in speed. Like, so, important to note here, the average person, I believe, reads around 200 words per minute. A lot of the advertising around speed reading promises that they can get you up to 1, 000 words per minute, which is a five x increase. What the research shows is that really what's realistic for most people is that you can go from 200 to 300 or 200 to 400. Okay. So, like a That's pretty decent, though, yeah. It's significant, right?
Like, imagine cutting every book you read, it takes 30% less time. Like, that is actually very significant. Uh and that's my experience as well. I think now I read at 350, 400 words per minute or something like that. Two interesting caveats around this is that uh the research on reading speed basically finds that it's it's mostly genetic. It's It has to do with uh I forget what the the actual word for it is, but it's your eyes' ability to see peripherally. Yeah, right. Like, so if I'm focusing like [snorts] on your your face, like how aware is my vision of like the stuff that's in the peripheral parts of my vision? So, some people apparently have much I guess a wider aperture of of visual information that they can take in simultaneously and and some people have a very like a extremely narrow aperture of of the visual information that they can take in. And so, what they find is that people who are just genetically have a wider aperture, they can take in more words simultaneously. And so, the core technique of speed reading that they teach you, like any speed reading course you take, the first thing they teach you, is about your kind of internal monologue as you read and they they give you techniques to help shut that off. Cuz once you shut that off, you can actually start ingesting multiple words simultaneously. Cuz the argument is is that it's that internal monologue is is your It's your speed ceiling. cuz you have to wait for your brain to like read every word to you. But if you can train your brain to stop saying every word out loud, you can ingest words much quicker okay and you can ingest like chunks of words like phrases and stuff. So it's just like you just like absorb the concept of the words or what? I've never tried speed reading I guess so I don't know like and I'm a slow reader and it's very much like every single word in my head. The answer is yes. All right. But that brings us to the next caveat is that they find that speed reading techniques decrease retention. Okay, of course. So you are There's a trade-off there. Yes, so there's a trade-off. You
recall things worse. You remember details worse and that is probably a direct result of eliminating that internal monologue. Right? Because when you construct that internal monologue, it's kind of like writing stuff down. There's a cliche that people say there's a magic to writing things down and it's like I don't think there's a magic. I think it just forces your brain to slow down and focus enough Get very clear. Yeah. that it makes a larger imprint on on your memory and I think the same is true with reading. There's probably just an inherent trade-off with speed of informational ingestion and uh retention. Okay. And as you speed up that retention goes down and as you slow down that retention probably goes up. Right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. There's been studies too where just metacognitive training like just making you aware of those sorts of processes in your mind. Uh like speed reading courses versus just generic metacognitive skills. Mhm. No difference there too. So which makes sense. Yeah. Uh and and because speed reading is teaching you a metacognitive skill. Yes. But if you just have metacognitive skills in general, you're you you can do just as well. So yeah. So Tyler Cowen is who I believe we both follow writes the the blog mar - Marginal Revolution. He He is a person I believe they're known as like hyper hyper readers or like he literally reads I think three, four, five books a day on average and surprise me. Yeah. And it's funny cuz I I listened to an interview where he was asked about this and he said he was like I did research on it. It seems to be primarily genetic. It's like a very rare thing. He said I've always been a fast reader my entire life and I've only gotten faster the more I've read and he he actually made that point. He said it's like anything else. The more you read the faster you get at it. Right. Yeah. And so the the fast and the faster you get, the more you can read. So it it becomes kind of a a virtuous cycle. But he he actually made a very interesting point which I I agree with
as well is he said the more you read, the more stuff you already know and so when you pick up a new book, Oh. You can skip whole bunch of it. Yeah, which is I I've experienced this within certain topics and domains. So like if I pick up a pop psychology book, generally speaking it's like I open chapter one and it's like oh it's the marshmallow test. I've read that [__] 100 times. So I skip it. I'm like okay, I already know the point he's making and I skip to the next section and then I read for say two or three pages and then it's like then it's the Milgram experiment. It's like I know the Milgram experiment. All right, so let's skip the next three or four pages and it's like okay, now what point is he making? So now I technically just quote unquote read 10 pages in like a minute. Uh whereas somebody who's not familiar with those things is like probably still on page two. Okay, yeah. Reading as a skill in general what that's a very good example of oh if you're reading a book and you come to something that you know, skip to the next chapter, you're going to be a faster reader or a more effective reader just in general. So Which is it blows my mind that people don't think about that. Like I I I've said this I've made we've made content around it. Like I've made content around this and people are just like oh my god, I never thought of I'm like And I some of it I think is that way before I heard you talk about it too. So yeah. I just like some of it I think is the education system. You know, cuz it's in school you have to read every assignment. You have to read every [__] paragraph and you're going to be tested you don't know what you're you're going to be tested on so you have to read the whole thing. Whereas it's like in real life if if the only thing you care about is chapter eight, just read chapter eight. There's not an exam at the end of this. Nobody's putting a gun to your head. Just read chapter eight and put the book down go pick up another one. [laughter] I you know, one of the realizations I had around this too was when I was in high school and my cousin he was like a year older than me and he had to do a book report and he just read the first page and the last page of the book and [laughter] he got like an A minus on it or something like that. I was like oh [__] you can do that? Like so yeah. Talk about 80 / 20. I know. All right, we are back and we're in the final five.
final five. The five self-help techniques that actually work. Counting down. Number five is actually something something I've never done in my life. Oh. That might surprise you. Okay. Gratitude journaling. Okay. You're You're all right. You've never [laughter] [laughter] You seem stunned. Have you ever just like Been grateful for things? Right. Like consciously like okay, I'm going to be like okay. So I've done like gratitude meditations. I've actually never gratitude journal. I'm what I call a crisis journaler. So I like I journal when shit's hitting the fan and I want to jump off a bridge. That's when I journal. I've never like journaled being like I'm so grateful for Drew. He's such a good co-host. But you've practiced gratitude in some way or like you said a meditation consciously Gratitude's awesome. I looked a little bit more into like just gratitude interventions in general. We can talk about the journaling aspect of it too, but gratitude interventions in general. It doesn't have to be journaling which is I think maybe a relief that for some people because I just always found it hokey too. Just a little bit like write these three things down and you end up just kind of making another chore. Yeah, it's probably useful differentiating those. By the way, journaling works Yeah, sure. and gratitude practices work so you can combine them. You can do them separately, but let why don't we just focus on gratitude practices. Yeah. First of all like you can do like I said, you can do the journalings, you can do the meditations, you can just take a moment and do it. I think really what I found though too, this is and this checks out kind of anecdotally is like if you're not a grateful person, this is probably something you need to do. Yeah. You're going to have the most There's like a kind of a a floor effect here. Like you can't go any lower, you may as well try it and it's going to help you in some way or another. I just find myself to be a pretty naturally grateful person. I think I've just been [clears throat] fortunate in my life and like I can look around and be like oh I'm very grateful that I have these opportunities or whatever it is. The other thing though that I found about in the research which was very interesting, it works. Gratitude works. It helps reduce stress. It helps with depression.
reduce stress. It helps with depression. It helps with anxiety to some extent. The thing is is again we go back to that question compared to what? If you're doing nothing and you start a gratitude practice, that's going to help you. Yes. If you're doing nothing and you start a meditation practice, we're going to talk about that in a little bit or you start some sort of positive intervention of any kind like actively positive trying to like change things, it's about the same as gratitude as well. So I don't know if there's anything necessarily special about gratitude. I think being gracious and being grateful is a good thing like just in general and it has other effects we can talk about too. Gratitude works and it's a very accessible. It's a very easy thing for a lot of people. Um I just don't think there there's necessarily anything special about it. Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean in terms of just the aggregate data, this had a very small effect size. Of the top eight, it had the smallest effect size. But But very consistent. Extremely consistent. It was the most consistent out of everything that we analyzed. Out of 166 studies, 98% of them found a positive effect of of gratitude practices. So it is consistent but small. Right. I find gratitude very easily. I'm often like one of my first reaction anytime anything goes wrong, one of my first reactions is always to think of like why I'm lucky to have this problem and it it's just kind of a default that my brain goes to. Uh so I could see why forcing your like but if you're somebody who tends to dwell on problems and always think very negatively, then like I could see why this would be a very useful practice to train in yourself. And especially this is another one where consistency matters a lot. If you again are going from a not very grateful disposition to try to instill more gratitude in your life, being consistent with it matters a lot more than just like doing it haphazardly. Right? There's just a little bit of a compliance issue sometimes with people like you know, if if you're trying to like not be depressed or anxious or something like that, like you're probably going to be better off with medication and and therapy than you
with medication and and therapy than you are just like a straight gratitude practice. It can help on the margins. Again, the effects are usually small but they're consistent. There was a study too, an interesting study I found too where they called it a menu-based gratitude practice. So you could choose from a a number of different these of these practices. So there was journaling, there was meditation, there was just like thinking about it, those sorts of things. People were way more compliant when they had a like a menu of options to choose from. So they could mix it up a little bit and they they stuck with it longer doing that kind Isn't it funny how you see that show up in so many different study like experiment constructions? Like it just when you give people choice, they're more likely to adhere to that. Even if the choice is kind of fake and made up. It really is. It's been arbitrary. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Anything else you want to say about gratitude or you just grateful for this section? I am I'm so grateful for this podcast Drew. Oh. I'm so lucky. The one study that I found that really really focused on this question is like gratitude versus what? If it's just measure - measurement only like versus doing nothing, the effect size is pretty like it's moderate I would say. If it's compared to alternate activities like just listing out the things you did during that day and good nor bad whatever, writing about just neutral events that happened, you get a little bit of a smaller effect and then if you compare it to positive interventions like I said things like encouraging people to engage in acts of kindness or they have this best possible selves exercise where you write about like this is my best self when I'm my best this is how I am. Yeah. The effect kind of starts to pretty much go away. Interesting. So it's more again I I don't think there's like a specific gratitude mechanism necessarily. It's just um being more self-aware around uh just the positive events in your life I think in general. Yeah. Probably just helpful. Yeah. All right. Number four. Meditation. Okay. A big favorite a big crowd favorite. Comes in at number four on this list.
I would expect it near the top. Um there are I would say the things above this are a little surprising. Yeah. But I'm not surprised that it is in this cat. It definitely works. At this point we know that. There are caveats. We covered that in our meditation episode last month. But by and large for the vast majority of the population it is a good thing and your mileage is going to vary but generally speaking it's probably going to help something. There's been tons of study on meditation as we covered in the meditation episode. But like the meta-analyses around this just show that yeah you can especially for stress and anxiety. Mhm. So they have this there's a a thing called uh mindfulness-based stress reduction which is a meditation uh modified meditation kind of program. It's like an 8-week program they've used that's been goes all the way back to the 70s or 80s I think. And they've consistently used this in work settings and personal settings and organizational settings whatever to decrease feelings of stress anxiety even some depression to some degree and it's effective and it works. This is another thing too that another study I found as well though was a comparison to like an SSRI medication. Mhm. Like you basically equivalent. Yeah. If you do like a consistent mindfulness-based activity that you do it can do has about the same effect as a lot of SSRIs for depression. Yeah. Again though just like with gratitude there is a little bit of an issue around the active control problem. So compared to nothing meditation's great. Yeah. Uh compared to other positive interventions like for for instance there was a pretty well-done study around active health education versus meditation. So just teaching people about healthy behaviors in their lives. Right. Uh versus a meditation group they did about the same as well. Interesting. So you know in the meditation episode we talked about like the different types of people who probably would benefit from meditation more than others. If you're just somebody who's just like I just can't meditate. You don't have to meditate. It's it's like you don't have to journal. All of these things Right. But finding ways to be mindful and more intentional in your life is obviously going to help quite a bit.
Yeah. I would say we have definitely not hit the there's maybe one thing on this list. I think number one is might be the only thing that I would say people have to do. I would have the confidence to say that people have to do. You have to learn how to do it. I think everything else on this list is optional and and your mileage is going to vary and pretty much everything past number 10 or 11 Yes. is like probably you're fine not doing. Yes. Now now all of that said I would still encourage people to meditate because not for these reasons though of like stress reduction even or better sleep all of this. This is the point I made in the meditation episode. The reason you should meditate is so you can know your mind better. Yes. And you can control your yourself better. Know yourself better. Right. That might have all of these secondary effects all these secondary benefits but the primary goal of meditation is just to know your mind and yourself better. I I 100% agree. I it's and it's funny too if you talk to any serious meditation practitioner they they always say they're like stress reduction is like you're an inch deep in a Who cares? in a 20-ft pool. Like right? Like you're you've barely even cracked the surface of what meditation can do. Sure it can lower stress and anxiety but like that is honestly like right the very first sliver of the benefit that you It's the hook that like a lot of like marketers kind of use you know get better sleep and reduce stress and anxiety and depression and all of that. The real benefit comes much deeper. Yes. All right. Number three. This was a surprise for me. Mhm. But then once I started reading through the research and the summaries I was like oh okay that actually makes sense. So there is a very famous self-help book from the 1980s. It's called Eat That Frog. It's one of those classic self-help books that probably should have been an article. It was written by Brian Tracy. Uh but
the concept of Eat That Frog it's you you take the most important task of your day and you do it first. That's the whole book. [laughter] More or less. I mean there is a system of prioritization that he has within the book and then you take There's like kind of a process that he walks you through to figure out what that most what what your frog is but then the advice is just that's what you should do first thing every single day. So that's all fine and dandy and I think we briefly mentioned this in the procrastination episode. And we actually I think you and I we had a we were a little bit of ambivalent about it. I was surprised to see it land this high. It turns out 95% of the benefit of Eat That Frog is figuring out what the most important thing is and then 5% of the benefit is the fact that you did it first thing in the morning. Yeah. So it it's almost like a Trojan horse to just get you thinking about your priorities and what matters to you. That in and of itself like drastically changes outcomes for people. Whether you do it first or second or at 11: 00 a. m. or 2: 00 p. m. is probably like secondary. Right. Yeah. You you don't prac - you actively practice the opposite of this don't you? Yeah I I eat cake first and then eat my frog. Okay. So yeah. And it seems to work for you. Yeah. Like you said you kind of like have a warm-up a little bit in the morning and then you get to the stuff you need to do. Right. But it is I am very often thinking about what is the most important thing that I can be doing with my time. What is the thing I should be working on? What is thing I should be thinking about? Like I those are questions I think about constantly and there's so much value in that. And I do agree that like I think a lot of people go through life never considering those things. Well think about the clarity you achieve when you do that. I I think that's what a lot of people want Yes. when they're thinking about what The constant question they're asking is what should I be doing next? Right. If you have the most important thing in front of you well there's no question what you should be doing next. There's
no anxiety around what you should be doing next. You just do it. Yeah. Interestingly though too on top of that effect I think there's another effect that this has which is um they found in several different studies that if you like starting with the hardest task first ending your day on the easier tasks Mhm. um that actually has increases self-efficacy. So it increases kind of your like your confidence that oh that was a good productive day rather than doing it the other way around. Makes sense for whatever reason. So it might be a little mind trick here that you're playing on yourself but still like people just feel better like I got all this stuff done. I ended my day on a high note too cuz it was an easy task. Like I think it's just the momentum you create from it. You're not necessarily any more productive is the thing. So even if you switch those around you do the easy things first and you do the hard things later you still get the same amount of work done but you feel better about it. better [clears throat] about it. Which means you're more likely to continue doing it that way Yeah. in the long run. So I think that's a huge benefit as well. It kind of reminds me of what we talked about with intuitive decision-making which is that listening to your gut doesn't make better decisions Right. Yeah. but you feel better about those decisions which gives you the perception that you made better better decisions. So yeah there is some value in that. you some peace of mind sure why not? And I can absolutely see the self-efficacy argument of like just knowing you did the hardest most important thing first in your day and it's like 9: 30 in the morning and you're like I I just I already accomplished something very very valuable. Mhm. I can see how that could give you a high that you can kind of ride through uh the rest of the day. So I would have guessed that Eat That Frog would have been kind of in the middle of the pack. You know it would have been one of those maybe depends on the context the person what you're doing. I'm a little bit of a convert here. Um the prioritization thing really hit close to home when I saw that. Obviously it's like that's basically what The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F is about is prioritizing. I definitely understand the power and the clarity that comes from that. I guess I just never thought of it in those terms. Like I never A lot of these things are like that.
Yeah. It's not eating the frog that is the benefit. It's the process that leads to eating the frog that is the benefit. Very much similar to like the visualization stuff that we talked about. It's not universally beneficial across all tasks. They found you know just in some realistic settings where they're doing more naturalistic observations and stuff it's not always clear that this works the best. Also too there there's let's go back to the ego depletion and the willpower thing. Like some people think oh I need to do this thing first in order to have energy and maximize my willpower. Yeah. That's not really how it works either so because you again you can do the easy task first and then the hard ones later and you still get the same amount of work done. If you're just trying to like get up in the morning and eat that frog but you're a night owl that's not really going to help you a whole lot either so yeah I mean there's some borders to it for sure. Yeah. Overall I was very surprised by it too. I was also surprised by the next one and this is people are going to listen to this and they're going to think that I totally planted I put a gun to you and our research team's head and it was like put this number two [__] [laughter] You better find those studies. Right. Uh number two is reading self-help books. Yeah. Bibliotherapy. Biblio - therapy. Reading self-help books. So I'd done some research on this before, so I knew reading self-help books did something. Like I knew that there was a consistently positive effect size. I did not expect it to be this big. We looked at 188 studies, 93% of them came out in support, average effect size of 0. 56, which is decent. Like that that's no like you're approaching kind of Yeah. effect size levels of some modalities of therapy at that point. And so, yeah, I shocked, a little shocked. Especially with somebody who [laughter] [laughter] I know it sounds weird coming from a self-help author, but like I don't think super highly of this genre. I don't I definitely and I think a lot of self-help books are pretty trashy. I was Yeah, I was surprised. Well, okay. I mean, they did find that the quality of the information matters a lot. Yes. Bibliotherapy itself as it's defined like in therapy
as it's defined like in therapy and in psychology, there's some structure to it as well. It's like they find it's most helpful like if you're in therapy for a specific problem or issue and you know, this the therapist assigns you some books and they walk you through it. The more structured it is, the better you get out of it. That said, there's still some just like unstructured evidence as well or evidence around it unstructured reading that also shows a lot of benefit, too. I don't know if I was as surprised by this and maybe that's just because I over intellectualize things, but like some of the biggest like aha moments I've had have definitely been reading books. Yeah. Um of all kinds and and even even self-help books, sure. I've changed behaviors based on them. I mean, there is definitely a point where you go too far with this, obviously, where you like, you know, you procrastinate changing anything because you want to read more. Yes. But just in terms of like changing your mind, I don't think there's a better way for me, anyway, than like reading a book that really lands. You know what I mean? I think maybe the thing that makes me wrestle with it is the unevenness of the quality. Cuz like for example, like if if I think about all of the self-help, self-improvement, health books, pop psychology books that I've read, it is definitely a very it's definitely a power law distribution, right? There's probably two or three that were very impactful on my life that you I would call like quote unquote life-changing. [clears throat] There's probably another 10 that I would say like were influential, were definitely a positive influence. And then there's [clears throat] probably like a hundred that I was like, okay, well, that was a thing. [laughter] Or I I just didn't finish them or I was like, wow, that's six hours of my life I'll never get back. So, there's it's an extremely uneven experience and I could see why in the context of of a therapist recommending a book, you do get a much higher hit rate because the therapist is probably speaking to the
patient, they're probably noticing they're like, oh, you're struggling with this one thing, you have this type of personality. You know what book you'll love? You should go read this book. It's it's right up your alley. It's definitely it's what you need right now. I think you'll relate to the author. You know, go check it out. I could see why that has a much higher hit rate than say just wandering into the the self-help section at your local bookstore and grabbing something off the shelf at random. So, perhaps it's skewed to the positive a little bit in that regard and that there's a little bit of a filtering that's happening in these studies. Yes. That makes total sense to me. So, maybe this is we we cross this out and replace it with good self-help. Good, obviously. Yeah. [laughter] That's a that is a big qualifier we have to point out, but that's that's true. I think you've done some YouTube videos on this. What what is like a self-help book that you think really changed or that had such an impact on you that you could still even today be like, yeah, that. I I mean, honestly, reading Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Workweek completely changed my life. Yeah. Completely changed the trajectory of my life. Okay, so this is the thing about self-help though, too, is like the when you read it, the reason you read it, Yes. like it's very personal, right? Like it's kind of hard to recommend a book to somebody because usually what happens is I found this book at the right time when I was going through a particular problem and it helped me a lot there, too. Yep. Would I say The 4-Hour Workweek is one of the best self-help books of all time? I don't know, but I know a lot of people like changed their ways Well, Yes, that is a timing is huge component of this and I I've experienced that going in both like multiple directions, right? So, like I remember when I was just came out of college, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and I was like, oh my god, I'm going to do all this. I'm going to I need to start doing this today, right? And it seemed very powerful and profound at the time. Looking back, it was a bunch of nothing. Like it was I don't think it really had any effect on my life whatsoever and I remember
on my life whatsoever and I remember it's funny because we just we did a YouTube video about Napoleon Hill. So, I went back and I read parts of Think and Grow Rich and like the whole time I'm reading it, I'm just like, what the [__] How did I ever read this? How did I ever get through this? Uh but I I've seen that go in the other direction as well. For example, like when I was a teenager, I read Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and I cuz it was my dad's favorite self-help book. And I remember at the time being like, God, this guy is such a downer. Like this is so like the stodgy and boring and it's all about like love and how hard everything is and I was just like, [__] off and I remember I didn't even finish it. I went back and read it in my late 20s and I was like, this might be the best self-help book I've ever read. Like it it was excellent. I haven't read that one. It's very good. So, it Yeah, a lot of it is timing, where you are in your life at the time, what you're struggling with. You kind of have to be receptive to the message at the moment, I think, for it to land. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the right book at the right time can be absolutely life-changing. I do remember several years ago I was dating a girl and she came over and she said, "So, uh my brother, he just broke up with his girlfriend." And I was like, "Oh, no, what happened?" And he goes, "Well, he read a book." And I said, "Oh, yeah, what was that?" [laughter] [laughter] You want to guess what book it was? Art of Not Giving a He didn't even know I worked for you or anything like that. So, I I mean, obviously, you know, there's been I don't know, probably tens of thousands of people have told you this at this point, you know, that that your book changed their life. And I think it more than anything, it just like I said, if you're open to the message, you then enter like this a new kind of like mind space around how you approach things. Like yeah, a book can do that. A book can definitely do that. It's almost like like hopping on a cognitive plane and visiting somebody else's brain Yeah, for hours at a time. So, you you essentially get to live inside somebody else's mind temporarily.
inside somebody else's mind temporarily. Yeah. And if that person has perspectives and experiences and ideas that extremely profound for where you are in that moment, then it it makes sense. Like it I I see why it happens. Maybe I'm a negative Nancy. I I did not expect it to be this high. I didn't expect it to be this consistent, although the the way you talked about the how the experiments were constructed, like that kind of explained some of it. There's definitely some filtering that's going on here. I think if you just raw dogged a random self-help book, it would not be be this high on the list, but the right self-help book at the right time can be very powerful. I'll give my recommendation, too. Okay. Um just one that most recently, anyway. I guess it's been a few years. I don't really read a whole lot of self-help anymore, but Oliver Burkeman's 4000 Weeks. That's a fantastic book. Yeah. It masquerades as a productivity book and it's not. It's all about your relationship with time and it like changes a lot of how you see just how you live your life. He sent me the manuscript of that about six months before it came out Yeah. and uh and I started reading it. I remember I got through like the first chapter and I became became angry Yeah. that he wrote it and I didn't. [laughter] [laughter] It's like very rare that I have that ex like just like very intense envy. And I actually I like Oliver's an old friend. So, like I I emailed him and I told him that. I was like, I this is so good that I'm like pissed [laughter] [laughter] that you you got to write it and I didn't. The writing, the content, the thinking around it. He pulls ideas from so many different traditions and it's yeah, it's very very good. Should we get to number one? We actually initially started researching the concept of fake it till you make it, which which is is as we researched it, we realized was kind of nebulous. Yes. Like what does that mean? Does that mean that you like pretend you're uh uh a clown at the circus and then before you actually become a clown at the circus or do you pretend like you know
circus or do you pretend like you know how to code in in JavaScript before you code in Java Like what does that mean? Yeah, right. And eventually we kind of just settled on on this this idea known as behavioral activation, which is actually more akin to what I call the do something principle in my work, which is just do the thing. Even if you don't know what you're doing, even if you don't know what you should be doing, just do something. And if it's intimidating and scary or you're not you don't feel motivated, reduce the scope of what you do until you feel like you can do it. And it almost doesn't even matter what you do. Like it just [__] go do something. Do do the thing. There's been There was a great essay that went viral a couple years ago called do the thing. This is a whole thing. It's like talking about doing the thing is not doing the thing. Planning how you're going to do the thing is not doing the thing. Fantasizing about doing the thing is not doing the thing. Promising yourself that you're going to do the thing is not doing the thing. It just like goes through all the typical ways that we avoid doing the thing. So, [clears throat] I think what you could call number one, behavioral activation. And behavioral activation is it's actually it's like a very old therapeutic practice comes from from clinical studies of basically taking depressed people and just making them do something. [laughter] Right. Because when you're depressed you don't want to do anything. Like it can be as bad as I don't want to take a shower. Right? Like it can get down to that point. So yeah. And and sure enough what they found is that doing the thing even when you don't want to do the thing has incredible positive effects. Doing anything when you don't want to do the thing also has robust positive effects. And if you were too intimidated or too scared to do the full thing breaking it down and only doing part of the thing has highly replicable repeatable positive effects to the point that it's actually more effective than a number of therapeutic modalities. It's
on par with CBT which is considered the most effective therapy. It doesn't cost you a [__] thing. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it right now during this podcast. It is the single most robust thing that we found in our research. I love that it basically boils down to take action. The best thing you can do is just [__] Just act. Just do the thing. So wait, are we really [laughter] saying number one is you just do it? It's the Shia we should [laughter] just put the Shia LaBeouf meme meme here. Just do it. Just [__] do it. [laughter] This though to me over this last holiday season I was traveling a whole bunch. So I was getting very shitty sleep. I need consistency for sleep but I was bouncing all over the place coming out here going back to my parents being at home. My diet was garbage. I wasn't getting my workouts in. I I started to feel pretty depressed. Like I was slipping into that where I was like oh I haven't felt this way in a very long time but I remember it. Like what's going on here? And then after a weekend of literally just sitting around and Netflix it wasn't Netflix and chill it was Netflix and [laughter] you know? That's what I did for an entire weekend and and I think my house was a disaster. I hadn't cleaned I usually clean it once a week. Yeah. I hadn't like all the things I enjoyed doing I hadn't been out in my wood shop. I hadn't gotten I hadn't exercised. All of these things I was just and I was just like I don't want to do any of this. Mhm. And I just [clears throat] after that weekend of Netflix and blah I made myself clean my house. That's what I did. I was like I'm cleaning my house. I'm finally going to do that. Yeah. Felt okay. Like I really did not want to do it but it felt okay. I did that. I was like okay. Yeah. Fine. Then I got back into the gym one day and it was shitty shitty workout. I probably put 10% effort into it. Yeah. But felt a little bit better. Cooked some meals that were nice and healthy. Like started doing the things that I knew before kind of kept me sane. Don't you hate that? Magically here I am again, right? I'm feeling okay. Don't you kind of hate that it's this simple? Yes. [laughter] [laughter] Don't you wish it was I'm going to take Don't you wish there was some complex
Don't you wish there was some complex theoretical framework that we could just apply to everything and that there was a secret, you know, the secret morning routine that the billionaires don't want you to know or the the powerful affirmations that come from the ancient Vedic text that no one has translated before. Like no, just go do the secret. Do the thing. You just have to do it. Just go do the [__] Learn how to do it when you don't want to do it. [laughter] Yeah, pretty much. This is from research from an episode last year but I remember there was so there was a meta-analysis last year that came out around interventions for depression. Oh yeah. And it looked at everything across the board and I remember it it went viral because the number one thing that they found they did kind of a ranking similar to what we did here and the number one thing that they found was exercise. So obviously that got a lot of attention but it was interesting because a few weeks later one of the psychologists that I follow on on Twitter he got curious and he went looked at the source studies that fed into that meta-analysis to see like what exercise. And the funny thing was is it didn't [__] matter. Like it was like literally like just walking in the park was 98% as effective as like the most intense gym routine. Dancing was like super effective. Lifting any weights like doing anything. Swimming. Any basic Kegels workout. Like [__] [laughter] anything. Just doing a thing. Just do doing a [__] thing. It's it's absolutely maddening. You know, there is a classic self-help book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. She has probably been vindicated on this. I would like to break it down a little bit more minutely because it it it's easy to sit here and just tell people over and over to just do it. bro. So I talk about in Subtle Art I talk about this. I've got YouTube been talking about this for years but I call it the do something principle which is the biggest misconception that I think people have around this is that when they're in that sloth-like state
that you were in they have this this mistaken belief that inspiration or motivation has to strike. That it's like well, I'll get off the couch when I feel like doing it. Yeah, I feel like doing it. When it's the other way around. It's the way to feel better is by getting off the couch. Motivation is not the cause of action it is the effect of action. And so when you are in a situation like that where you're like my god, I'm disgusting. I'm like a puddle on my couch. I haven't done anything useful in three days. I need to get up and do something. And you start imagining all the things that you wish you were doing and you're not doing and that overwhelms you. It feels like a lot. You're like oh my god, I can't even imagine like the amount of willpower that's going to take. Again, if you're thinking in terms of willpower you're already losing. Covered that. What works is you just take all those things you want to do and you just find the smallest viable thing that feels doable in that moment. So in your case it was just like cleaning up the house a little bit, right? It's like I'm going to go take out the garbage or let me go make the bed. Like that's another huge self-help book, right? It's make your bed. Again, I think probably the large percentage of the value of that book is simply it's getting people who are prone to not doing things to do something. Do it first thing in the morning, build a habit out of it and that way it creates momentum for the rest of your day. So when we were developing purpose, our AI coaching app, I did a lot of market research into like various mental health apps. You know, different things that that are people use. There's one that's been blowing up the last couple years. It's called Finch. It's almost comically simple. Like you you get this little baby bird and you have to like take care of it and the way you take care of it is by completing actions throughout your day. And the actions are are hilariously simple. It's like brush your teeth gives you five points. Take a shower gives you five points. Go for a walk gives you like 10 points. Eat a meal gives you five point and I remember sitting there like hitting the I'm like
yes, I ate a meal today. Yeah yes, I took a shower today. [laughter] I'm just like accumulating all these points and my baby bird is growing and I'm like this is so ridiculous. [laughter] But then there's a certain logic to it that first of all it gets a little bit addictive and you keep like wanting to find like cuz obviously once you get past taking a shower and eating food it actually starts giving you kind of more meaningful things to do with your day. And I was like okay, so I I actually see the logic behind this and it turns out like like if you read the user reviews online and you go look at their community and like people rave about it. They're like I couldn't get out of bed for months. This app got me out of bed. Now I'm actually doing things with my life. We want to imagine it's complicated that it's hard to understand that there's that we have to listen to like like multiple five-hour - long podcasts to know how to do a thing. When really it's like the most effective intervention you can do is just do the thing. It's like do something. Question, does your baby bird die if you don't do the [laughter] things? How does I don't know. Oh you don't know. You never let it get to that point. Yeah, maybe I should go back and look. The The [clears throat] [clears throat] try to resuscitate my my dead baby bird. You know how we almost in previous episodes we've almost always opened in some way with Aristotle, right? Oh boy. [laughter] [laughter] You had to go find one. No, I'm not shoehorning this in. There's actual actual There's there's an actual it actually kind of marries this whole do something principle with the the fake it till you make it even too. Okay. Aristotle, I think we've mentioned this before. He actually said the way that you become virtuous is through your actions. yes. If you want to be brave and courageous you must behave bravely and courageously. If you want to be an honest person known as a an honest person you have to engage in honest interactions with people. Yeah. This goes all the way back to that even too and kind of it's kind of like the fake it till you make it but it's also very much just that you must you have to act. Yes. Like your virtue your life your who you are is only
only developed in through your actions. Yes. I think identity follows action, right? Like you are I believe it originates with Aristotle where he says like you are what you do repeatedly. Right. Therefore excellence is a habit not a practice. And this is why fake it till you make it works. It's not comfortable. It's not easy. It doesn't necessarily feel good. Sometimes you feel like you're lying or you're an impostor. But it's why it works. It's if you do an action repeatedly you start to you eventually become the person that sort of person. Yeah, you you talk about it in terms of building evidence a lot. Yes. That's what yeah, I've heard you say like build the evidence around this. If you want to take on a new identity you have to have evidence for your identity. Right. It's if you want to be a fit person it's not about your body fat percentage or how you look in the mirror. It is somebody who is regularly working out. Right. And and developing fitness. And there's an interesting chain here of like identity follows action and I think emotions tend to follow identity in terms of like we talked about on the ego episode how whatever our identity is, we will psychologically defend it, right? So, it's if something challenges that identity, we will become angry or scared or envious or whatever. So, it's like the actions lead to the identity, the identity leads to the emotions, and then obviously the emotions lead to One thing I saw too, and I kind of pointed this out earlier, was just kind of the arc of how we think about these things. You know, positive psychology was kind of all the rage back in the' 90s and into the 2000s. Yeah. There was all these studies coming out about it that you had these huge effect sizes and and then then the real kind of science had to come in behind it and be like, "Well, okay, here's some boundaries on it. The effects aren't necessarily as big." So, it was really good to get caught up like on all of this research that's been going on for the last like decade or so that, you know, I knew a lot of these older studies and this was good
to see. Science works, it's just slow. It is. You know, we went through the replication crisis. It feels like we're kind of coming out of that a little bit and we're starting to get a better, more nuanced picture of all of these things. Seven of the top 10 originated in the ancient world. Which I think is very interesting. Most of the new stuff is pretty close to the bottom of this list. [laughter] [gasps] If you look at the bottom five, it's pretty much all stuff that's from the last 50 years. Yeah, a lot of ads. Except for yeah, except for maybe intuitive decision-making. Um the other thing that I noticed, you know, we we've already mentioned a couple times that the bottom of this list is pretty much just indulging your emotions is that hurts you. I would say the middle of this list is is it's very cognitively focused or physically focused, right? So, it's you're either trying to alter your body or you're trying to adopt the right framework or mindset in your mind. Pretty much all the stuff that like either placebo or only works in very specific contexts is cognitively driven or biologically driven. Everything at the top of this list is action-based. It's it actually involves you doing a thing. [laughter] Yeah. Whether you're meditating or you're Yeah. eating the frog or you're reading a book or you're practicing gratitude. Like you are actively doing something. Whereas everything in the middle of the list, it's like, "Oh, I figure out your learning style, practice your power poses, you know, recite your affirmation." Like these are all very cognitively driven things. All, if not the majority, of the value is driven from the perception that they're doing something much more than what they're actually doing. One of my real big takeaways from this was just how like individual and personal all of this can be. So, like if we shat on one of your, you know, favorite little methods or whatever, like don't take it too personally. It's just like this is what the research says so far. Yes. And then not only that, if
so far. Yes. And then not only that, if it works for you, great. Like even the crystal healing, if that's working for you, sure, fine. Just don't go around claiming it's, you know, So, I can bring my crystals to the next episode? Is that what you're trying to say? the rubbing you were like That's the best part. Oh, it was uncomfortable. That's the best part. uncomfortable. That's actually most of the therapeutic value. [laughter] That's where you get the therapeutic my crystals as if they're large boobs boobs. works for you, fine. And this is why like I I think too is like I try not to just tell people, "Oh, you you have to do this or that." I think you're right in saying that the only one we think you really should do is go do something. That's mandatory. Yeah, it's it's really the the do something principle I would say is the the one mandatory thing. Even if you want to call it fake it till you Like I do think it's mandatory. Like at some point in your life, you're going to be in a situation where you there is something you need to do that you don't feel like doing. And so, you you have to get good at that. Like that is Like if I had a child and I was raising them and I was looking at this list of like, "Okay, what do I want to teach my kid?" I would probably cross off everything in the bottom 10. The next five, I would kind of keep Yeah, I would like see like how his or her personality would develop, what they're into or whatever. May maybe introduce them to a couple things. But it's like really the I'd say the top three or four I would would be like to me would be mandatory, right? So, uh behavioral activation or like the do something principle, read books, eat the frog, so task prioritization, and then I would have them at least try meditation. Yeah. I I think it was James Clear who said in his book, he's like, "Do the things you have to do so you can do the things you want to do." I think that's a good way to put it as well. Like there's some behavioral activation, some eat the frog in there, too. Again, I think though too is just like I really like that a lot of this is you can personally experiment with a lot of this stuff. And that's where I think the big takeaway is is
like personal experimentation around this stuff. Find what works for you. And if it works for you, great. And you don't have to proselytize it or anything like that. You don't have to It's not a religion necessarily. it's also very likely it it will work for a while and then it will stop working. That's the other thing I think I realized definitely too is that like especially when you get into something new, like it's going to work uh right away. There's probably some placebo effect with all of these things. Yes. So, and another big takeaway was just doing anything. You know, just doing any thing that was somehow positively related to you doing getting closer to what you want or what you who you want to be. Yeah. Any of it. Like that's great. That's just a good starting point. I think I might give eating the frog another shot. Yeah. I I might try that in the next couple months. It's like maybe take a week and just try to really do the most important thing first thing in the morning. That's not solely based on this episode. I'd noticed that I've I've been futsing around a little bit more than usual in the mornings and being kind of slow to like ramp up in the into useful, valuable stuff. So, I might give that a shot. All right. You can tell us how that goes. I will. You you're going to have to listen to it. You will have to The these people, they can turn us off, but you're going to have to sit there and listen to it. All right, everybody. That is another episode of Solved. Be sure to check out the membership, get an ad-free experience, get all of our citations, references, get a guide to the each episode, and implement all of the lessons from these episodes with a community of like-minded people. Go to membership. solvedpodcast. com. Be sure to check out the Purpose Coaching app. It is at purpose. app. We have a free 7-day trial. It is kind of crazy how quickly it can spot your weaknesses and inconsistencies. So, if you want your [__] called, uh check that out, and be sure to follow, leave a review, like and subscribe.
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Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
126 minutes of source material 65 Reacher quality score
Cold immersion activates arousal chemistry and demands controlled breathing. For some people, that produces a cleaner mood state and a sense of agency.
Meditation does not remove stress. It changes the relationship to sensation, thought, and reactivity. That makes the nervous system easier to guide under pressure.
Doing the next meaningful action can restore momentum before motivation arrives. The body often learns safety through movement, structure, and completion.
Not every popular practice earns its reputation. A calm protocol keeps what works, releases what does not, and measures life by lived change.
The practice that works is the one that changes what you do next.
Choose the smallest dose that creates a clear, repeatable response.
Track sleep, mood, training quality, and energy the next day.
Adjust the protocol around medical context, stress load, and recovery capacity.
