How to Know When to Give Up on Goals

A lot of people treat goals like some kind of sacred self-improvement law, where the most important thing you can do is set and achieve your goals. But goals are simply tools we use to point us in the right direction. Your goals should serve you—and so you shouldn’t be a slave to some arbitrary goal you set when it’s no longer serving you. So how do you know when a goal is no longer pushing you in the right direction? In this episode, I talk about why I gave up a pretty big goal I set at the beginning of the year. I discuss what I think are the criteria you should use when deciding whether to give up on a goal or stick it out. We also discuss what we learned from the goals survey we did for podcast viewers and listeners. How many stuck with their goals and how many have moved on? What are the most effective tactics people used to stick to their goals? What are the most important lessons they learned about their goals and themselves? Check it out. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:13 Mark's (failed) goal 00:05:11 Is Mark full of sh*t? 00:08:14 Drew's (half sucessful) goal 00:12:08 Extreme measures 00:14:08 Getting more specific with your goals 00:16:40 Survey results 00:18:55 Teachable moment: Selection bias 00:23:06 How did people stick with their goals? 00:24:49 The value of self-discovery in working towards goals 00:32:57 3 good reasons to give up on a goal 00:37:00 Bonus reason to give up a goal 00:39:34 Mark's new health goals 00:41:53 Drew's updated goals ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The podcast that's saving the world one fewer fuck at a time. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 0:13Mark Manson?

  So as listeners and viewers probably remember, we started the year, you and I talked about our goals for the year, and then we asked the podcast audience to submit their goals for the year, and we promised that halfway through the year, we were going to follow up ourselves and follow up with the audience to determine how disciplined is the Mark Manson audience? Or how bad are we fucking up? And so this is what we're here to discover today. We've sent out the survey, we've heard from the audience. Drew and I have our goals, we know how far we've gotten with our goals, or haven't gotten with our goals. And so today's podcast episode is, it's a return to goals and a discussion of when does it make sense to give up a goal? Because there are many circumstances that it makes sense to give up a goal.

• 0:58Mark Manson?

  And when you should just shut the fuck up and grit through it. And we're going to try to figure that out today. So I don't know, where should we start?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Let's start with our goals.

• 1:05Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  And then we can move on to responses that we got from everybody. We got some good responses, we got a lot of, a big response from, from the audience. So let's start with ours, then we'll get into that.

• 1:13Mark Manson?

  Okay, should I go first?

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Let's, let's, let's hear yours. What happened with the marathon?

• 1:17Mark Manson?

  Let's start with the failure. Let's kick this off.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  It's gonna make me look a lot better.

• 1:21Mark Manson?

  This is, let's kick this off with an abject failure.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 1:25Mark Manson?

  Okay, so for, to refresh everybody or anybody who didn't listen to that episode, my goal for the year was to run a marathon. I turned 40 this year, I like really got into running last year. I was like, you know what, you know, it's a great 40-year-old goal. Like, there was a marathon on my birthday.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:41Mark Manson?

  I was like, this is perfect, let's do a marathon. So I started training for a marathon actually in November, and then we did that podcast end of, end of last year, came out first week of January, made it very public that I was gonna... Go on a marathon and actually, the only marathon I ran on my birthday was a marathon of tacos in Mexico. There's no way around it. I didn't achieve the goal. Yeah. I gave it up, probably early February, late January, early February, maybe five weeks out. Oh, it wasn't that early? Okay. Yeah, it was maybe five weeks out. Yeah. But I feel good about giving it up. So I want to use myself as a case study of, and audience, I mean, Drew, keep me honest. If it sounds like I'm bullshitting myself, please tell me, because this is the tricky thing about giving up goals is like, you sound reasonable to yourself. Right.

• 2:26Mark Manson?

  Like, we all, we all find reasons to justify not sticking with them. But, you know, sometimes we're full of shit and sometimes we are being reasonable. I personally think I'm being reasonable. So, here's what happened. There are two things that I discovered. So initially, I started training for the marathon, really enjoyed it, was going very, very well. Once I worked up to around 10 to 12 miles, two things happened. One is, started really disliking it, just a lot of pain. Which I've since learned from other, like, from people who have done a lot of endurance sports, that that probably stemmed from training too quickly, like pushing myself too quickly, which is something that we talked about back in January of like, having unrealistic expectations of what is achievable in a certain amount of time.

• 3:11Mark Manson?

  So, you could chalk up, that could be part of the failures, that I overestimated how much I was capable of achieving in just three or four months. So, once I got into double-digit mileage, body started really hurt, recovery got, became very difficult. Just felt like my energy was sapped all the time, had, started having trouble getting out of bed. Second thing that I didn't account for, I didn't realize, was the time commitment. Like, you see these training regimens of like, oh, okay, you're gonna run six miles on Tuesday and four miles on Wednesday, and three miles on Friday, and then 12 miles on Saturday. Like, you look at that and you're like, okay, well, that's a cool challenge. Well, you don't realize, that's like, six hours of running.

• 3:51Mark Manson?

  And then when you add in, uh, prep, warm-up, stretching, uh, recovery, everything afterwards, like, you're dedicating like 10 to 15 hours a week just to training. And we're in a place in the business, like, we're growing, we're scaling, I'm working a lot. I have a lot of business-related goals that are higher priority. And so, being off in the mountains, running for 12 hours a week. And then being exhausted like another thirty to forty hours a week. I just started to realize that it was incompatible with other goals in my life, with a lot of the professional goals and career goals that I have this year. And it kind of forced me into a situation of like, does this even make sense?

• 4:36Mark Manson?

  I'm exhausting myself doing something I don't enjoy and actively harming things that I, that are more important to me, you know, is like, running this arbitrary distance really that important? Like, is it making my life better? Is it making me happier? I came to the conclusion, no, it's not. That there are plenty of ways that I can maintain my health and in getting great shape that don't involve suffering a dozen hours a week and interfering with all sorts of like work goals and life goals and not to mention like spending free time with my wife. So I dropped it and I felt good about it and I still feel good about it. I have zero regrets about it. Tell me, am I full of shit?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  No, that actually doesn't sound like you're bullshitting yourself or anybody else. It doesn't because I think you're being intentional about like, okay, I thought this thing was the most important thing for at this time in my life. And it turns out it wasn't. I mean, I think that's a very, that's kind of one of the criteria you should use. Is it really that important to you? And I think a lot of people, when they get into these goals, and I think we'll talk about this later too, they find out they're like, oh, I didn't, this actually isn't that important to me. I thought it was. Your health is very important to you.

• 5:40Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Right. But like this one, like you said, this one arbitrary goal of a distance run on a certain date, is that really that important compared to all the other things that are going on in your life?

• 5:50Mark Manson?

  I think you raise a good point there of like prioritization because there was a period a couple of years ago. So when I was really overweight and much, much more unhealthy, there was a part of my fitness journey that like I realized I had to make it the top priority in my life. One of the reasons I got so out of shape earlier in my life is because I always prioritized work and social life over health.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:16Mark Manson?

  And so I had a period for a couple of years where I had to prioritize health over work and social life. There is a context where that makes sense. If I was, let's say I was like sixty pounds overweight, horribly out of shape. I mean, maybe not a marathon, but maybe making health this year the top priority. Maybe that makes sense. But for where I am in my life, I'm pretty satisfied where I am health wise. Like, I don't feel like I need to. I have no desire to be like a David Goggins or a bodybuilder or anything like that. Like, I just want to be healthy. And actually, the area of my life that I have extremely ambitious goals is not health. It's, it's actually more work related. So to me, it makes sense to keep that as the top priority at this point in my life. So I still have fitness goals. I have new fitness goals.

• 7:01Mark Manson?

  We'll talk about them later. I think they're more reasonable fitness goals. They're probably more appropriate fitness goals. But I think this is the thing that gets missed. I think there's way too much emphasis put on what is the goal and did you achieve it or not? I think those two things, like, it's, it's actually less important than what the process teaches you. So like, setting the marathon goal, it taught me a lot about what matters to me, what is actually important at this point in my life. And by letting it go, I was able to replace it with actually a better goal for me. A goal that makes more sense for my current lifestyle, makes more sense for my current fitness goals, and is basically just gonna make me like a happier and healthier person overall.

• 7:42Mark Manson?

  So ultimately, it's like the goals should be used as tools to advance you towards behaviors that are closer to your values. And what people lose track of is that if you set the wrong goal or the goal isn't completely accurate, then it can lead you down a path of behavior that actually takes you away from what you value in your life. And as soon, so you have to be like very, very observant of when that starts happening, and then stop yourself and be like, okay, this is a bad goal. I should drop it and replace it with something else. So I'm curious, your goal was to sleep better this year. I'm curious, A, how, what sort of progress you've made? And B, have you, uh, did you decide that that was a, a waste of time?

• 8:25Mark Manson?

  And have you replaced it with, uh, you know, a more important goal like bench pressing 300 pounds or something?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, no. The thing is about sleep is that it's not, it's not really a goal I can ignore.

• 8:36Mark Manson?

  It's never gonna go away.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  It's never gonna go away. So, I mean, yeah, I could give up on like trying to get better at it, but it's like, it's just never gonna go away. So it's constantly there with me. So, um, I have gotten better. I've had, it's fits and starts.

• 8:49Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  The thing is, is that now that I've been more, uh, I've paid more attention to it. And I know kind of like what makes me get better or worse sleep. And I've had stints where I've had really good sleep over the last few months. I am even more aware of when I don't get

• 9:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  good sleep and it's worse when I don't get

• 9:05Mark Manson?

  So let's start with specifically, what have you done? What are the measures that you've taken?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  I did cut back on my caffeine. A lot of people were very concerned. My caffeine intake, because it was brutal. It was like I said, five or six cups, I think is what I used to drink. I've now capped it at three cups a day. I usually only do two, but I cap it, hard cap at three.

• 9:22Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I think the caffeine, that didn't help a whole lot. I think if I'm, if that's going to help, I need to just cut it out completely.

• 9:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Which I'm not quite there yet. Um, the screens, the screens, especially later at night, I, I had a very strong suspicion that that was a, a big impediment to my sleep and turns out it was. I've capped that at, uh, 10:00 PM. I tried to do 9:00 PM and didn't really see much of a difference, I don't think. So 10:00 PM, no screens after that. That seems to help quite a bit. If I have screens open later than that, it definitely, definitely fucks with my sleep.

• 9:49Mark Manson?

  Interesting, okay.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  I've gotten way better at regular exercise as well. Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to matter for my sleep. Yeah, whether I get a good workout, a bad workout, any workout, no workout, it doesn't really seem to affect my sleep.

• 10:02Mark Manson?

  You know what's funny? And I've noticed this with fitness goals over the last year. Sometimes if a workout's particularly like really intense or strenuous, I actually get worse sleep.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And later in the day too, if I do it later in the day, like a, an intense workout later in the day. A light workout later in the day is fine, but yeah. I've also kind of, I, I did some tracking too. I, I've never been huge on tracking, but with, you know, your stories about your tracking and how it's helped you and a lot of other people too. I did some kind of just basic tracking, not super detailed or anything like that. That's helped a little bit too. And I can see that I have incrementally gotten better. Like I, I plotted my sleep time actually on a, on a graph and stuff like that. And there is a, there's a slight upslope on how much sleep I've been getting.

• 10:42Mark Manson?

  What was your kind of average per night at the beginning of the year? And then what, what roughly where is it at now?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the way I track, it's a proxy. It's not a

• 10:50Mark Manson?

  Is it like a score?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically a score.

• 10:52Mark Manson?

  So what, like what score were you kind of at when you started?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  So I was usually getting in like the 60 to 70 out of 100 range before. And now I'm like consistently in the seventies and hitting in the eighties.

• 11:03Mark Manson?

  Nice.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Uh, which is, yeah, it's incrementally better. Really what I would like to get is like 90 and above.

• 11:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Um, and kind of consistently get there, you know, at least like five nights out of a week or whatever. For that, I think I'm going to have to Do some more drastic things. One thing I started experimenting with too was like the light exposure. Early morning stuff and then getting a little bit at night. That was sporadic. I think for the rest of the year, I'd really like to get into that.

• 11:24Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  And really, uh, even do like a sunlight protocol of some kind or something like that. I think that would, that would help me quite a bit. Because I did notice that it helps at least reset my clock.

• 11:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  If I get some good morning sunlight, I've like got good energy for the rest of the day.

• 11:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  So I think that I'm pretty sensitive to that. And I think that's why screens fuck me up so much too.

• 11:43Mark Manson?

  Where have your struggles been? Like where have you fucked up?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Screen time sometimes. I'd like to just veg out at night.

• 11:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Like throw a screen in front of my face and watch dumb TV. I watched all of Rick and Morty.

• 11:54Mark Manson?

  Oh, so good.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  It's like I binge through that and a lot of times I was doing it late at night and I was like, okay, I gotta shut this up. And that's another thing is just, we know what we need to do and we don't do it.

• 12:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Even with these goals and I don't know what that's about still. I don't know what that is for me just yet.

• 12:08Mark Manson?

  I had a friend who was like completely addicted to his phone, social media, everything, especially at night.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:13Mark Manson?

  And it was causing a lot of problems and he did something crazy, which I really admire, which is, so you can buy these plugs that have a timer on them.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:22Mark Manson?

  And you like preset like when they turn on and off. He put those plugs all around the house and then he set a password on them that he didn't have access to. I think he gave it to his wife or something. But he basically, the, the router that was plugged into the, that the wifi went through was set up with one of these plugs and the plug shut off at nine PM. So it's all the internet in the house went off at nine, nine PM.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:42Mark Manson?

  All the TVs went off at nine PM and there was like no way for him to, unless he like goes and like crawls under the, the console and like unplugs everything and replugs it in. It's basically like child protecting yourself. I do think stuff like that is underrated. I used to hear that stuff and I'm like, that's ridiculous.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:58Mark Manson?

  Like that's so over the top, but it, it is funny. Like we really are creatures of our environment. And so much of our behavior is influenced by incentive and availability. And yeah, if you just control the avail- availability of something.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Environment matters.

• 13:14Mark Manson?

  It matters a ton.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  It matters. It's, it's huge. Well, I noticed though too, is that, that like the, the environment and also like external pressures.

• 13:23Mark Manson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  For whatever reason, they work really well for me.

• 13:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Um, so like just doing this podcast and like the setting that up, setting that up for me, that puts the pressure on me that I need. I think everybody's kind of different around that, but there's so much around like, oh. Like you should only be doing your goals for intrinsic Y values, right? And like really doing stuff like that. I'm like, ah, you should set up your environment and like make there be external consequences.

• 13:47Mark Manson?

  Sure. I mean, social pressure is a real thing and it's never going to go away and you might as well leverage it for your advantage. Like you're never going to stop caring what people think.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:56Mark Manson?

  And so if you go tell all your friends, you know, hey, I'm going to quit smoking. And then a week later you light up a cigarette in front of them. Like that's embarrassing, right? So like you should be conscious of how you're using that to your advantage. What else? What else are you? Any plans going forward or?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  I realized I need to get a little more specific. I was just like, get better sleep.

• 14:16Mark Manson?

  Right. How do you measure that?

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I realized that through the tracking. I'm like, oh, I don't know. And a lot of people reported that tracking has been the most beneficial thing for them and valuable thing for them.

• 14:25Mark Manson?

  Well, it's a classic business principle, right? Like you, you improve what you measure.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  So yeah, I think getting more specific and like I said, get my scores if I can get those more in the eighties and nineties more consistently. Um, I think that's, that's a good tangible goal that I can see in front of my face. That would help me a lot of things.

• 14:40Mark Manson?

  And you were saying that now that you do, you have experienced some good nights of sleep, when you don't get one, you're just like, fuck me.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  It's like I, I see the extremes now and I see like, man, if I don't get a minimum of six hours, I am just useless. And it's this vicious cycle too, where it's like, I got something, I got a lot to do tomorrow and stuff like that. And I started getting in my own head and I don't sleep well. And then all that stuff I need to do now I'm doing it very shittily now or something like that.

• 15:07Mark Manson?

  Snowballs.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 15:08Mark Manson?

  Sometimes I think part of it's getting older, but yeah, if I don't get six hours, I mean, I might as well just like call the day off. I might as well just call in sick, you know, cause it's, it's even if I do brute force my way through the day, I'm going to do such a poor job at everything. It's kind of like, it's like, what's the point? All right. So let's get into the survey stuff. We asked you guys to send us your goals at the beginning of the year. We had 14, was it 1400 people sent in their goals?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Almost 1400, yeah.

• 15:34Mark Manson?

  1400 people sent in their goals. Then we sent out a survey last week asking people to, uh, report on how they've been doing. Here are the results. Drum roll.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, if we start off with the goals you all did submit, again, about 1,400 people submitted something and we had you write out, you know, what's your goal and everything like that. And I kind of just did a brief summary of them. They're around a lot of the things you would expect. A lot of them like career and professional development. People, you know, either trying to get a raise or get a new job.

• 16:00Mark Manson?

  What was the most common one?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Most common was fitness and health.

• 16:03Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Losing weight or running a marathon or, you know, stuff like that. Most common was around that. Next one was like career stuff.

• 16:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Kind of getting financial stuff in orders too. That was a, that was a common thing.

• 16:15Mark Manson?

  Saving money, getting a raise.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So a lot of the common ones, which is not surprising, but also like, yeah, that's what you would expect because people kind of all want the same things.

• 16:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  But yeah, so things like changing careers, starting a side hustle, that was really common. Or just like improving skills. Like a lot of people wanted to teach themselves a new coding language or design program or something like that. Mental health was a big one though, too.

• 16:37Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  People, you know, they're like, I need to do some things to really improve my mental health here. Whether that was just like taking more time to themselves or taking more time off work or self-care stuff, that kind of stuff, you know.

• 16:48Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Learning and education too. We got a, we got a very learning hungry crowd, which doesn't surprise me at all.

• 16:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Some people are doing some kind of cool stuff. One guy was, he wanted to learn, learn machine learning and AI by taking Nvidia's.

• 16:59Mark Manson?

  Oh, cool.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  They have this like course that he wanted to take. And I was like, that's a, that's a pretty cool thing to do.

• 17:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  But then like cool personal projects too. It always surprises me like the audience we have, you guys are always working on cool, really cool stuff. Like somebody was working on a graphic novel, which is really cool. Writing a book on their philosophical theory, developing a sports trading app. Like there was just really cool stuff. People were like, you're aiming high.

• 17:22Mark Manson?

  Nice.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  And that's awesome. In terms of results, about 80% of people said they have stuck with their goals, which is pretty good. Really good. 20% say now I've given up on that.

• 17:32Mark Manson?

  What are the exact numbers on that?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Exact numbers is 78.1% said they stuck with it. Yeah.

• 17:37Mark Manson?

  How many people responded to this survey?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  About 300.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  300, okay. Teaching moment, okay.

• 17:43Mark Manson?

  Teaching moment. All right, this is, this is actually really good. I'm glad.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Statistics lesson, what are we doing?

• 17:48Mark Manson?

  I'm glad this is, this happened because, well, this is important because, and I think this is important for the audience to hear because

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, okay.

• 17:54Mark Manson?

  There's a lot of podcasts out there, a lot of, a lot of journalists out there that you, you will see things like headline, you know, new study finds that 80% of people stick to their goals in June, you know, and it's, everybody's like, oh my God, that's so much higher than I would have expected, blah, blah, blah. And guys, I cannot tell you how many times, if you actually go look at the, the survey data, there's some things that stand, if you know what to look for, a few things stand out. So, we mentioned just a few minutes ago, 1,400 people responded in January with their goals. We sent out a survey last week, 300 people responded. That's 20, 25% of the original people. So that's actually, most people didn't respond to our survey.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:38Mark Manson?

  Now, if you did not stick with your goal, do you think you're more likely or less likely to respond to the survey?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:44Mark Manson?

  If you did stick to your goal, do you think you're more likely or less likely? So it's like,

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:47Mark Manson?

  What we're probably doing is like, most of the people who stuck to their goal probably responded, I would guess.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:53Mark Manson?

  We don't know for sure. But my guess is that there's gonna be, this is what's called selection bias in, in research. And this is why a lot of survey research is flawed, is because it's the way the, the survey is constructed, it filters who's gonna actually respond to the survey, whether intentionally or unintentionally. In this case, it was unintentional because we, we asked everybody. But there's probably a lot of people out there who didn't stick with their goal, they feel kinda bad about it, and they definitely don't wanna tell us.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:20Mark Manson?

  You know, so they don't fill it out.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:22Mark Manson?

  Whereas there's probably a lot of people who did stick with their goal, and they're feeling really good about it, and they're like, oh, I can't wait to tell Mark and Drew about sticking with to my goal. So, this 80% or the 78% or whatever, it's probably very skewed. And

• 19:37Mark Manson?

  There's definitely a selection bias flaw in this survey. So I want to just put that in front of the audience. The next time you see a big headline saying, "Survey says," or "Research says," that, you know, "social media makes everybody miserable." It's like, okay, well, look, go look at the sample size. Look at how they ran the survey. And I'd say at least 50% of the time, there are fundamental issues with the survey itself.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Yeah, this is not scientific.

• 20:02Mark Manson?

  No, no, no. And it's, but it's, I like to bring this up as frequently, because this is a huge problem in our industry. There are, huge problem. There's a lot of podcasts out there that will parrot shit like this. Like, there are a lot of podcasts out there that would get this result and be like, "80% of our audience sticks with their goals." Like, "Check out the Mark Manson podcast. His audience is crushing it," right? And it's like, ah, no, not really. It's not a representative sample. It's got extreme selection bias. There's, there's probably issues you could find with phrasing of questions and stuff. So I just want to put that out there. I think it's really important to point that out. It's a huge problem in the industry. I know people who listen to this podcast probably listen to a lot of other podcasts in the space or read a lot of other people in the space. There are some people in the space who are very aware of these sorts of things,

• 20:47Mark Manson?

  and they know how to filter for them. There are a lot of people in the space who don't know a fucking thing about this and will just repeat whatever statistic they find that sounds interesting. So be wary.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:59Mark Manson?

  Off my soapbox.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  For sure. I mean, it is a good point, though, because we tried to mitigate that a little bit, too, because in the email we sent out asking for responses, you know, you said, "Hey, I gave up on my goal, so it's okay if you did too. I just want to know."

• 21:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Right? So we tried to mitigate that a little bit, but obviously, there's still, you know, some shame attached to that for some people, I'm sure, and whatever.

• 21:19Mark Manson?

  It's also just a simple, like, "It's less exciting to fill out a survey about a goal that you gave up three months ago."

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. For sure, and I totally get that. You know, that said, though, too, of the people who said they gave up on their goal, 60% said they didn't regret it.

• 21:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  So, you know.

• 21:35Mark Manson?

  Which is also interesting, because I imagine that's probably skewed as well.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. Like, I don't, it's, the people were like...

• 21:41Mark Manson?

  I don't regret it. I can't wait to tell them about how I don't regret it, you know? There's probably a large number of people who gave up on it and feel bad about it that we're not hearing from, I would assume.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Well, okay.

• 21:53Mark Manson?

  That said, good job, guys. Way to go, team. 80%.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  There was some good stuff in here. There was some good qualitative data.

• 22:00Mark Manson?

  Let's hear, yeah, let's hear from the people who stuck with it first.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the people who stuck with it, we asked them, like, what did you do? Like, did you use any of these tactics? We kind of gave them a menu of tactics that, and what did you do to help you achieve this goal? About 55, 56% said productivity or other inspirational content, so they're watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts like these or whatever. The next highest one, though, was tracking. Almost half the people said they used tracking.

• 22:25Mark Manson?

  Wow.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  And some of the comments later we'll discuss, that was a big one, like I mentioned earlier. Journaling, about 35% of people use journaling, too. 25% use accountability partners.

• 22:35Mark Manson?

  Nice.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  15% were using coaching of some kind, which is kind of cool. And then one interesting one I found, about 18% of people said they, this is the whole, of the whole survey, this is everybody, said that they didn't use any, any sort of tactic or anything like that.

• 22:49Mark Manson?

  Wow.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  So...

• 22:50Mark Manson?

  Just brute force.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Just, just brute force. Just, one guy said, "pure fucking determination." That was his, that was his other.

• 22:57Mark Manson?

  Good old willpower.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  I found it kind of interesting, too. Again, this is not scientific and it's biased data, but about 20% of the people who gave up on their goals said they didn't use anything, while only about 10% of people who stuck with it said they didn't use anything. So people who were using some sort of system of some kind seemed to do a little bit better.

• 23:15Mark Manson?

  Clearly helped, yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  It helped them.

• 23:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Which I found was pretty interesting. We had them to fill out, like, what did you, what was the most valuable thing you learned out of all this? And a lot of, again, the traffic, tracking, people didn't realize how valuable. A lot of people were like, "that actually helped me a lot."

• 23:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  And that's just something simple, a checkbox every day or whatever it is. And for me, too, again, the tracking really helped me quite a bit. You already mentioned this a little bit, too, you alluded to this, but the self-discovery that people experienced as a result of setting, just setting the goal. And I think that's another underrated thing about goals that people don't, you know, whether you achieve it or not, kind of doesn't matter. It's what you learn about yourself along the way. People repeatedly, people were like, this was definitely like an eye-opening self-discovery.

• 23:58Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  And I think that's one of the most, if not the most valuable things about setting goals.

• 24:03Mark Manson?

  And it's funny because that discovery, it can go different way. Like, I've always had this weird fetish, I think that a lot of people have, for just like really grueling, challenging, painful things or deals. You know, it's like the guys who run do Ironmans and climb Everest and all this shit. Like, I've always had this kind of sick fascination with it and romanticized it to a certain extent. And all my whole life, I've always kind of like fantasized of doing something like that, accomplishing something like that. But it's one of those things that I discovered about myself

• 24:43Mark Manson?

  that it's like, when I'm actually out doing it, it feels completely meaningless and purposeless. I'm like, what am I doing out here? Like, why am I here?

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:52Mark Manson?

  But I know there's a lot of people that find a great amount of meaning and significance in it. So, but it's like, that happens all throughout our life. Like, there's something, when we're on the outside of something, we look in and it seems very meaningful and like it's gonna enrich our lives in a bunch of ways. And then we actually get in and start doing it and you're like, oh, no, no, no, it's not, it's not the thing I thought it was. You know, maybe I should find the next thing. And then sometimes it works the other way. Sometimes from the outside, something seems completely pointless and like, why would you ever do that? And then you go do it and you're like, oh, this is amazing.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:23Mark Manson?

  I can't believe I waited so long to do this.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, like you look at people who are like ultra-runners or something like that. And you look like me, I look at them, why do you?

• 25:30Mark Manson?

  Why, yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  That's just why. And then you talk to these people and it's like, oh, they're all in on this. And there's like a life around it.

• 25:36Mark Manson?

  You know, there's all sorts of things like that, that function that way. And it's not just physical activities, it's creative activities. One of the examples I use frequently is that I used to want to be a musician because my conception of what a musician was, was getting to perform to audiences. And then once I actually got into it, what I realized is that 95% of your time as a musician is spent either practicing or dealing with like... Rehearsals and logistics and bullshit. So you need to love practicing and rehearsing. Those are the people that become musicians. It's the, the, the performance is just the cherry on top.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then one other thing I'll, I'll mention too, which kind of stems from a lot of that. People often cited to the value of being flexible and adaptable. And I think you've, you've talked about this a lot, but I don't know if you've ever specifically addressed it. But, you know, life happens, right? There were some people who were like, they were doing, they had this workout goal and they got injured or, you know, a family emergency type of situation came up that they had to deal with over a longer period of time. And I think a lot of people just had an appreciation for like, I don't control nearly as much as I think I do. And that's okay.

• 26:47Mark Manson?

  What are you talking about, Drew? You fucking skipped that funeral. You get that run in.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right. Exactly, shit like that, right? Obviously you need to be adaptable, but I think people were just like, oh, life is still going on. The world's not stopping for my goals.

• 27:00Mark Manson?

  It's funny because I mean, I, I know I, I've said this many, I said this on the last podcast too. I think, I think the goals get oversold. Like the goal itself is not the point. The point is it gets you off your ass and doing something that teaches you something. That's what's meaningful. The goal itself is, is usually completely arbitrary. And I'd say nine times out of 10, isn't actually the thing that is rewarding. Occasionally it is. Occasionally you do have a goal and it is actually the thing that makes you really happy and it is very rewarding. That does happen, but I think that's the, that's a minority of the time. That's the exception. The majority of the time, the goal is just kind of this arbitrary thing for you to aim at. And it just gets you off the couch, gets you out in the world, gets you working on yourself, learning, growing, doing different things.

• 27:43Mark Manson?

  And it rarely works out the way you expect it to. Often my experience is that most goals, even when I hit them, it's, it's a mixed bag. It's like, okay, well, that was worthwhile. Like when I was losing weight, you know, I had a lot of weight loss goals and. As I hit them, there was never this like, oh my god, thirty pounds. Like, it was, it was always this mixed bag of, of like, okay, well, that was really hard. And I discovered that I have this kind of fucked up relationship with food. And I realized that my social life is probably contributing a lot to my health issues. So I'm gonna have to reexamine my social life. And it just became this very bittersweet thing of like, okay, well, I hit the goal, but that actually seems like the least important thing that's going on right now because

• 28:28Mark Manson?

  the path to get to the goal raised all these other issues and made me aware of all these other things happening in my life. That now, now I need to address those and think about those.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  There was quite a bit of that. And responses, people were like, I was gonna try to get healthy, but actually I realized that I smoked too much weed. Or whatever it is, or I need to quit smoking first, you know, or something like that. Um, I'd say to, um, one thing I, I've learned from this, I actually don't set a ton of goals. And I realized this is another self-discovery thing I figured out. I don't set a ton of goals and it's because I'm a perfectionist and I'm just afraid of failure. Why, why set yourself up for failure so, so starkly like that, you know? What I found though through all of this is, and listening to you talk about this has been more like, it's, it's fine. It's okay if you don't hit that goal. And so for me, that's just been like, okay, it's okay. You can change your goals. Give them up, you can find new ones.

• 29:20Mark Manson?

  You, you and I are opposite in that regard and it's, I mean, I don't have to tell you, like, how many goals have I set within the business over the last ten years? Like, hundreds. How many have I completely abandoned after like two months?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Ninety percent.

• 29:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, it's, it's, uh, they get you oriented in a certain direction and, I mean, it's the same within business as well. You're like, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna drive revenue up twenty-five percent in, on this product line this year. And then, you know, you get three months in and you're like, oh, actually pushing revenue over here is like creating a bad trade-off over here. And actually, we should be focusing on this because that's a better long-term opportunity. Okay, well, fuck that goal, you know, and it's like. That goal is basically gone, but you needed to have that goal to figure out that that trade off was bad, so you could reorient the strategy. They're stepping stones.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:08Mark Manson?

  They're stepping stones and whether you actually hit the goal or not is far less important than what the process teaches you. I guess that's the moral of the story.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  For sure. Okay, so before we get into your updated goals.

• 30:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  If you're what we're gonna do for the rest of the year, do you have kind of, can we sum that all up a little bit? And just give people like maybe a couple of rules of thumb. Obviously, there's no real algorithm for when to give up on a goal or when to stick with it or anything like that. But do you have kind of, you mentioned a couple of them, I think, already. Can we kind of tie this up a little bit?

• 30:34Mark Manson?

  So the principle is that your goal should be moving you towards your values. And the moment that they stop, they start moving you away from your values, that's when it's time to give it up. And I think another time to give it up is when you realize that to achieve one goal, you actually need to go back, like the smoking example is a great example. Like sometimes what you realize is to achieve one goal, you actually need to go back and set another goal first. You know, so that's another example of putting something on the back burner. Also, the realistic thing, like it is very hard, like we're human. We suck at predicting the future. We suck at having a realistic sense of, you know, what's possible to accomplish in three months or six months or a year.

• 31:17Mark Manson?

  We tend to overestimate or underestimate what is possible. And so the realism is part of it as well is like oftentimes you'll set a goal. It seems like a good goal, but it's actually, it's probably unrealistic. Like even if I wasn't having the trade off time at work to do the marathon goal. Like, let's say I had tons of free time and I had the time to just fucking spend every day of my life running. I probably could have powered my way through the marathon. But a couple of the people I know who do a lot of endurance stuff, they told me they're like, very good chance you would have gotten injured, just given the rate of that I was trying to push myself and lack of experience and everything. So even if that trade off hadn't existed, it might've been an unrealistic goal.

• 32:02Mark Manson?

  But again, sometimes you don't know if it's unrealistic until you start. You know, sometimes you have to get a month in and be like, oh, this is fucking impossible.

• 32:11Mark Manson?

  Let me, let me change the goal now. Let me like move the, move the goalpost back and be a little bit more realistic about it. So I think those are three principles that people can kind of follow, engage to, to know when a goal is worth dropping.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. I think there's, there's some research on when goals do turn bad or toxic or whatever. And they're definitely, like the findings are definitely in line with that.

• 32:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  A lot of times they've done this really at the organization level more than anything, like organizational psychologists study this a lot. And one of the things they find is that when you set goals, and I think we're very aware of this when we do this, in, in the business anyway. When you set goals, it often incentivizes people to, for bad behavior of some kind. And this can happen on an individual level too.

• 32:56Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Like if you're like, I set a goal to make this much money, then you go out and you start screwing people over or something like that, right? Well, you hit your goal of making money, right?

• 33:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Goes back to the values thing that you're talking about.

• 33:06Mark Manson?

  It's funny, I noticed I did a, I did a CrossFit workout last weekend for the first time in like three or four years. And I actually thought about this because when I'm working out alone, like let's say I, I'm like doing an extra, I'm doing like squats, like three sets of 10 or something. When I'm by myself, I count every rep.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:23Mark Manson?

  You know, I'm like, I don't overestimate, like I don't fudge one, you know, it's like, did I hit 10? No, I got nine. Okay, write down nine. It was funny, I went to the CrossFit gym and as you know, like a lot of CrossFit gyms, they put you in teams and they set time limits and they give you like, you know, all right, you gotta do 50 burpees in this amount of time and all this stuff. And so I started doing this workout and I started fudging reps. Like I started, I'm like, you know, that kinda counted, like, I'm like, okay, well, I'm supposed to do 50, I'm at 40, that's close enough, you know, let's move on to the next one. Like I found myself, I'm like, started cheating as you were saying that, like, cause I've seen that research too, that, that, an overemphasis on goals actually makes people less ethical.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:02Mark Manson?

  And it reminded me of that, of like, I'm like, I remember sitting there going through this workout at this CrossFit gym. I'm like, I have not cheated on reps like in five years, but suddenly I'm surrounded by all these other dudes who I'm like competing with. And now I'm like, okay, I'm gonna fudge on this one, you know? Uh, it's just funny, it's human nature.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:20Mark Manson?

  I thought of another one, another circumstance that you should give up a goal. If you feel like you've already learned what, what you wanted to learn, this is more for probably like an educational goal. But like sometimes people will like set a goal of like, oh, I want to get this certification this year, or I want to. Read 10 philosophy books this year or whatever. And then you read five and you're like, you know, I kind of feel like I know everything I want to know. Like, I don't feel like I'm getting anything more out of book number six or seven. Then just drop it. Like, if you feel satisfied, you should never feel like you're just suffering to hit an arbitrary number. Anytime you feel like you're making yourself suffer to hit an arbitrary number that people just made up out of thin air,

• 35:02Mark Manson?

  that's dumb. You should stop. Like, everything should have a purpose behind it. Every goal should have a purpose behind it. And as soon as that purpose disappears, or is no longer clear, or is misaligned with what you actually care about, drop the goal. Nobody's keeping score. Nobody's gonna judge you. Nobody cares.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I had a goal one year. It was to read a book a week. I think I made it almost three months in. I quickly came to that. I was like, what?

• 35:28Mark Manson?

  What am I doing? Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was powering through books that I was like...

• 35:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Only 100 pages left.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  And like the cheating on the reps thing, like, do you give it up or do you keep going through?

• 35:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's like, nobody's, nobody cares. Nobody's keeping score.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  There was like one person who was like, how are you even doing that? And I'm like, I sit down and I read. Otherwise, nobody cared. Nobody cared.

• 35:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Was all that suffering worth that one comment?

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Probably not. Was not. No.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Okay, cool. So, you've given up on your hopes and dreams to run a marathon?

• 35:58Mark Manson?

  For now. I mean, I might do one one day. But so what I realize now is that it's much more of two things. One is, I would have to ramp into the training slower.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:08Mark Manson?

  And two is, it's more of a time commitment than I realized. And so, for me to do it again, I would basically give myself more time to ramp up training. And then I would make sure that I don't have other stuff going on in my life that I prioritize higher.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  And but you do have, you have new health goals.

• 36:25Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  This is another reason I don't think you're completely bullshitting yourself, is that you've set new goals in the same domain.

• 36:31Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Like, because you still prioritize your health. One of the problems I've had in the past is I'll set a goal, and then I give up on it. And I'll set a completely different goal in a completely another area of my life, just like bouncing around.

• 36:41Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Like, not really giving any thought to it, not being very intentional about it. So... I think that you're not completely bullshitting us because you've still got, you've still got.

• 36:51Mark Manson?

  Passed the Drew Bernie test.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Caveat that you paid me to say that, but, but still, what are your new health goals?

• 36:57Mark Manson?

  So I should say, slightly related to that, I do like to set domains, like I feel like I should always have a health goal. I should always have a business or professional goal, and then I should always have like some sort of personal goal. So yeah, my new health goal, what I realized, I basically, I've been on this four or five year health journey, most of that involves weight loss. I'm pretty thin now, pretty skinny. I'd like to get stronger, especially like now that I'm 40. Been doing a lot of reading on longevity, long-term health.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Lifted's great, yeah.

• 37:25Mark Manson?

  And it's basically, yeah, it's like, build up as much muscle mass as you can while you still can, because that's what's gonna kind of carry you in the old age.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Helps with your skeleton a lot, with your bones.

• 37:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so I'm taking, I realized that, okay, probably the next step is to try to add some lean mass and get stronger. So I have goals in all three of the main major lifts, squat, deadlift, bench press. And so I'm working towards those this year. PRs on all three, hopefully this year.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  I'm not going to, but I want to ask you what you bench, bro, but.

• 37:56Mark Manson?

  I'm not very strong. I'm not very strong. I'm not very strong. I want to, they're pretty simple numbers. So I want to be able to deadlift 300 pounds for five reps, one set of five reps. Squat 250, one set of five reps, and then bench 200, one set of five reps. And I'm like, right now, I'm probably like 260, 215, 220, and then like 175, 180.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 38:22Mark Manson?

  So I'm like, it's possible, it's doable.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Okay, and what are you doing? You're on a regular workout schedule and everything?

• 38:29Mark Manson?

  Regular workout, uh, yeah, regular workout, I've up protein, eating at a slight surplus. So I've actually gained a little bit of weight the last couple of months. Travel has honestly been the biggest challenge with that. Traveling a lot for the YouTube channel, and yeah, that's the biggest challenge. So I'm staying consistent with those workouts. It's funny because it used to be I was always very consistent with exercise and my diet was terrible. Now it's kind of the other way around, like my diet, I feel I can kind of keep my diet in line without too much trouble. But hitting three to four workouts a week consistently.

• 39:07Mark Manson?

  Has been tough.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially with your schedule. And again, the travel thing.

• 39:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It wrecks everything.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does.

• 39:12Mark Manson?

  Everything.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  It does.

• 39:13Mark Manson?

  What about you?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, so.

• 39:15Mark Manson?

  How do we get you to sleep perfection?

• 39:17Speaker 02

  I really do. I want to do more of the light protocols, like sunlight protocols. Try that out. And some of the things I've already already mentioned, just to kind of double down on those. I think I need to get a little bit better with the tracking too. I've been using kind of crude, rough. Uh, ways to do that. I don't like wearables really, especially when I'm sleeping. So that makes it a little tougher. But I have, now that I've seen the light and the the value and the tracking, I think I want to get a little bit more specific with that.

• 39:44Mark Manson?

  Tracking is fucking.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  It's it's magic.

• 39:47Mark Manson?

  It's game changing.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Like the simplest stuff too, a checklist or whatever.

• 39:50Mark Manson?

  It's so dumb.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Boxing check every day.

• 39:52Mark Manson?

  It's so dumb, but it it is, it makes such a difference. I'm really happy to see that people are seeing that across the board. Tracking is what changed my wife's sleeping.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:00Mark Manson?

  It was the, it was the the big unlock for her. And then with me with diet, it was the probably the single big. It and quitting alcohol were like the two biggest unlocks for me. Fixing my nutrition was tracking and and not drinking.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. So I I think by the end of the year, if I can hit like those those scores of like in the eighties or above. Say four nights a week, I was thinking about that was that'd be about so more than half the time.

• 40:24Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I think that's a good goal to start with. I think it's realistic and it's definitely achievable for me. But it's it's would also be a little bit of work to get there.

• 40:31Mark Manson?

  And is the biggest thing the screens? Is there something else you can do?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I think it's, I mean, sort of.

• 40:35Mark Manson?

  Ketamine, maybe?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, sort of just like sedating myself. The big one, I think my ultimate boss and it just, I don't know, I can't caffeine. I have kicked so many bad habits in my life. Caffeine, for whatever reason, is just, I can't do it.

• 40:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Um, I've tried before, but I I think I can get there eventually. I'm just not sure if that's one I'm going to let go just yet.

• 40:59Mark Manson?

  I did about six months without caffeine in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. Fucking sucks.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:05Mark Manson?

  It was life not, it's a life not worth living.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  I haven't made it more than a day. So cool. I haven't.

• 41:12Mark Manson?

  I quit just because my wife gave me so much shit and I like did it to like prove that I could. And then I, you know, I had a few months where I'm like, you know, I'm gonna see if this really makes a difference. And then I got like three or four months in and I'm like, this sucks. Like, I miss caffeine and I went back to it.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  It's glorious and when I don't have it, it's just like, everything is like dull and honestly, like colors look different to me. Like, it's pretty wild, which obviously like, just highlights how much I depend on it.

• 41:40Mark Manson?

  How dependent? I mean, if you're gonna be dependent on anything, it's probably the best. Cool. Alright, man. That's a wrap.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  That's the pod.

• 41:48Mark Manson?

  Just a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, to go to the Subtle Art Not Giving a Fuck Podcast YouTube channel. We're moving the whole podcast over in July. You'll be able to watch everything there. So make sure you go over, subscribe there. New episodes will stop showing up on the Mark Manson channel soon. See you there.