5 Ways to Hack Your Mind For Success

The way you think about the world and your place in it can have a huge impact on your life. And yet, when it comes to evaluating the way we think, we’re rarely able to smell our own bullshit. So today, Drew and I break down five different mindsets you can adopt to live a more examined, successful life. This requires you to reject many of the mindless beliefs you’ve been force fed your entire life. Let’s do it. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Success Hack Problem 00:01:22 Find the Pain You Enjoy 00:04:14 Ass Power and the Dogs That Don't Quit 00:05:57 Mark's Cross Country Disaster: An Obliviousness Advantage 00:09:16 Focus on What You Can Control and Ignore What You Can't 00:14:09 Media Consumption, Bad Netflix Shows, and Personal Responsibility 00:16:13 Can You Choose Who You Love? 00:20:21 Turn Off the Autopilot 00:24:21 The Costanza Theorem: Do the Opposite 00:26:42 Adopt a 10X Mindset 00:30:20 10X in Relationships: Don't Run Your Love Life Like a Business 00:34:35 Focus on Fewer Things for Longer Periods of Time 00:42:31 Wrap-Up: Still Not Successful ⇨ 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.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Drew, I want to be successful. I'm really trying to get it together over here.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  You need to get it together.

• 0:07Mark Manson?

  Just things have not been falling my way for the past 12 years at all. You know, the internet is full of a lot of hokey pieces of content talking about life hacks and mind hacks and success hacks. And, you know, most of them involve some configuration of alarm clocks and ice and bathtubs. And, uh, yeah, they didn't really work for me. So let's actually talk about what the psychological research shows can completely hack your brain towards being more oriented towards success. So we've got five topics here and I want you to walk me through these and explain how

• 0:48Mark Manson?

  I'm finally going to be successful enough that my mom is proud of me.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm teaching you today. Okay. All right, let's do this.

• 0:58Mark Manson?

  This wasn't, this wasn't on the job description when you applied.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  This was not.

• 1:04Mark Manson?

  I need, I need a researcher, podcast producer and life coach.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:22Mark Manson?

  Find the pain you enjoy. We all have a little bit of masochism in us. There's like a certain area of our lives that we become masochistic in a, to a certain degree. And I personally think that that's probably the area of our life that we're going to end up having an advantage in. Another way to think about it is just like, what is the bowl of shit that you don't mind eating that most people do? And a lot of this is, it's personality based. Like you don't teach yourself to like a bowl of shit that you don't actually like. Like there are going to be some things that you just naturally.

• 2:02Mark Manson?

  Enjoy doing or don't mind doing that most people fucking hate doing, or it stresses them out, or it freaks them out, or it scares the shit out of them. Find those things because that's going to be your competitive advantage. It's almost like, I think, when, when thinking about skills or talent, people, again, tend to focus almost entirely on the positive. Like, what am I good at that other people maybe aren't as good? Even if you're good at something, there's gonna be a lot of other people who are good at it. But it's like, what, what can you stomach that most other people can't? Like, what's the bullshit that you kind of secretly enjoy? That you get like a satisfaction out of that most people don't? And that's probably the secret sauce.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46Mark Manson?

  You know, and I think in my case, it's two things. One is just, I think the self-consciousness or the, the anxiety and self doubt that comes with writing or creating in general, I enjoy it to a certain extent. Like, I, I just, I really love the creative process, the actual process itself. Like, not just like fantasizing about ideas, but like actually making the thing and seeing how bad it is and then trying to make it better and seeing how bad that is and then trying to make it better, like that's, that really enlivens me. And then I think the other thing I, I think I'm just built for is, I don't know, I don't really mind the haters and the feet, like the bullshit, you know?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're good at that.

• 3:25Mark Manson?

  That come at me, like, I don't.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  You don't let it bother you? I mean, it, it affects you, but you don't let it.

• 3:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Bother you, I think, yeah.

• 3:31Mark Manson?

  It'll like, like ruin my lunch, but that's about it.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And then you're over by lunch. Whereas me, I'm still thinking about like that thing I fucked up 10 years ago. So, yeah, I totally get it.

• 3:43Mark Manson?

  That's what's keeping you up at night.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  That's what's keeping me up at night, no, for real, yeah, yeah. No, I get that. I think for me, I like the, I think, I think I'd call it like the, the pain of learning.

• 3:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  For whatever reason, I've always just like, I'm just, that's just one of my kind of core values is like learning. And there's a lot of like discomfort that comes with that, too. You know, just, that's what got me through school. I don't think I was ever actually the smartest person. I was just like, always like, so like, I had to figure this out. You know, I had, I liked to sit down and figure it out.

• 4:14Mark Manson?

  Do you think your tolerance for boredom is higher than most?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 4:18Mark Manson?

  I, I believe that, knowing the academic papers I've sent to you to have you read instead of me, I believe.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, God. If you get a good one of those, man, yeah. Hell, yeah.

• 4:30Mark Manson?

  It's fucking rough, dude.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I, somebody called it, I like, what somebody, I heard this years ago, they call it ass power. You have an ass, yeah. So you can sit your ass in a chair and like work through, um, just figuring shit out. And whether that's like an academic paper or like some new software or something like that. I love figuring out like a new program, like just getting it. Like, there's people who just hate that.

• 4:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Or like spreadsheets. I'm good. This is, oh, my God, this is.

• 4:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I'm with you there.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  I love that kind of stuff. There was this, there was this story I heard years ago about this. It was the, the State Patrol. I went to a, a talk for the State Patrol and they had a canine unit there.

• 5:06Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And they were talking about how they, uh, train and select dogs and everything like that. So what they do is they'll, they'll go out to a field and it's like full of just brush and, you know, bushes and it's whatever. And they take their favorite toy and they'll throw it out there and it's hidden, buried. They don't show them where it is or anything like that. And they turn them loose. And they don't select the dogs that necessarily find it the fastest. They select the dogs that don't quit.

• 5:28Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Which I thought was really interesting. And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, I'm not the fastest or smartest dog. I'm the one who won't quit until I find the ball.

• 5:35Mark Manson?

  That's so interesting.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  I love that story. So, yeah, yeah.

• 5:39Mark Manson?

  There's like, there's so many areas of life that, that applies to.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. Whatever that is, that seeking or that, I gotta figure this out. I got, I got, I know there's an answer to this and I have to figure it out. Especially when I know there's an answer to something. I'm like, I know this is figure outable.

• 5:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I can do it. It's like, that sets me off.

• 5:57Mark Manson?

  I feel like sometimes my advantage is just, it's not even, I, uh, like, I think people think that I don't give a fuck of what other people think. Whereas it's more accurate to just say that I'm oblivious to what other people think. Like, I'm just so in my own little world.

• 6:16Mark Manson?

  Like, I remember I was in high school, uh, and I, I, I'm like.

• 6:22Mark Manson?

  I'm super unathletic and I went to a, I went to a small school that because there were so few kids, we all had to sign up for a sport. So I signed up for cross country because the only alternative was football and I didn't want to get the shit knocked out of me. So I signed up for cross country even though I was a terrible runner. And I was so fat and slow and out of shape. I was the worst runner on the team by a large margin. And I remember we, we went out for the first cross country meet and I think it was like four or five miles or something. I had never run that far in my life.

• 6:53Mark Manson?

  So we start to race. Everybody runs out in front of me. I'm just like trotting along. I get maybe like two miles in and I'm, I'm exhausted. I just start walking and I'm walking and I'm walking. I'm by myself for like thirty, forty minutes. The race that started after us begins and those kids start passing me. And I'm just like, at this point, I'm like way off in the woods by myself, you know? And I'm still walking and like, I remember all these like high school girls are running past me and they're like, don't give up. Keep going. And I was like, go fuck yourself. And I just keep walking and walking and walking. And like finally I get to the finish line after the next race had finished.

• 7:39Mark Manson?

  And, uh, and it's literally just my dad and my coach there. Yeah. And, uh, and I'm like, this sucks. I want to go home, whatever. And so I go to school the next week and we had, you, we used to have these like announcements and they kind of announced like the sports from that weekend. And my coach gets up and he announces, first of all, nobody, nobody on my school's team placed or won anything. And like, everybody knew that. Yeah. And, but then the cross country coach gets up in front of like the whole school. It was like a hundred people, the whole school. And he's like, I want to give out an award today. And I'm like, oh, maybe somebody did finish. And he's like, he calls my name, Mark Manson.

• 8:22Mark Manson?

  Everybody starts clapping and I'm like, I'm like, are you like, I thought he was trolling me. I thought he was like trying to embarrass me. And he told me it was, he said it was the most inspirational thing that he had ever seen. Because he said that half of the team quit after like two miles.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:40Mark Manson?

  And like, nobody placed. And like, it was just this horrendous and embarrassing showing. And I walked the entire route and I let all the next race pass me and. But the funny thing is, he was like telling me how inspirational it was and I remember I was sitting there like I went up and got like this like trophy or something. I remember thinking, I was like, it never occurred to me to even quit. Like, I never even.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:07Mark Manson?

  It didn't even, I was just like, whatever. Okay, this race goes by, whatever. Like, anyway. It's obliviousness can be an advantage.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. Focus on what you can control and ignore what you can't. Um, I think this one, to use your phrase, people give too many fucks about the wrong things.

• 9:27Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I think. And a lot of times what that is, is that we're trying to control things we just can't control.

• 9:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Right. People's feelings, um, people's actions, other people just in general. I think we try to do that a lot. Um, those are kind of obvious ones. If you're aging, you're getting older, stuff like that. People worry about that kind of thing. Worrying about the past, you know, all these ones are pretty common. I would say though too, like your emotions, you can't really control your emotions, though you can control your reaction to your emotions, right?

• 9:53Mark Manson?

  I hate that term.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:54Mark Manson?

  Control your emotions.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:56Mark Manson?

  I think it is a complete misnomer and I think it really leads people astray. I get, I couldn't not tell you how many emails I've gotten over the years of people saying, how do I control my emotions? And I'm like, you can't. That it's the animal part of you. It just happens. And what you have to do is take the wi- like the smart human part of you and tame the animal part of you and be like, don't shit on the carpet. Bad dog. Go to your room. I mean, that is essentially just what self-discipline is in a nutshell. It's kind of like the higher order, your neocortex, like, training and subduing your more animalistic side. But yeah, I mean, this is the classic Stoic thing, right?

• 10:38Mark Manson?

  Focus on what you can control, be at peace with what you can't. And I would throw in there, most things you can't control. So beware of obsessing too much, or getting too caught up in all the things that are going on outside of you that can simply be distracting or draining on you. The emotional piece is super important. You can't control the emotion, but you can control the response to the emotion. You can't control other people, but you can control your response to other people, right? Like, I can't control if a friend is an asshole, but I can control how I confront him. I can control the conversation I have with him

• 11:21Mark Manson?

  around his behavior. I can control whether I hang out with him again or not. I hate to bring this back to responsibility. It feels like we always fucking bring everything back to responsibility. But like, that's where the responsibility piece comes in, of like, by focusing on what you can control, you are then forced to take responsibility for the things you can control. Because, once you recognize the things you can control and change, then the only excuse for not changing is that you didn't do anything.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I've noticed a lot lately, since I've, you know, I've talked about my sleep problems a lot. And a lot of times, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't go back to sleep, my mind starts to churn. And a lot of emotions start coming up during that, too. And it's usually like, I'm worrying about something, and getting like, real fatalistic about it. And it's like, it's pretty intense emotions sometimes, too. I've really trained myself to be like, ah, this is, this will pass. This too shall pass. And that's the reaction I've chosen with that. That's helped me a lot. And I go back to sleep a little bit better. That's been part of my sleep journey this year, too. Just doing that whole reframe, like, oh, this is a temporary thing. It's like... Tomorrow is not necessarily gonna suck when I wake up, or my life is not gonna get any worse, actually.

• 12:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  This will pass, I'm gonna let that go.

• 12:34Mark Manson?

  You know, it's funny you bring that up. Like, one of the best thing, you know, as we've talked about before, my wife, Fernanda, she's struggled with sleep her whole life. One of the biggest things for her was when she started meditating, and what she realized, it was really interesting, because I think a lot of people who struggle with sleep, part of it is that they fall into that doom loop of like, you know, maybe you lay down, you put your head on the pillow, your mind starts worrying about something, and then you realize your mind is worrying about something, and you're like, "Oh, God, I'm worrying about something, I'm never gonna sleep." And then you, like, then that kicks the loop in the gear, and you're like, "Well, now I'm worrying, then I'm worrying. Oh, God, now I'm worrying about everything, and I'm not, now I'm never gonna sleep." And it becomes this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and, you know, she's not a huge meditator,

• 13:19Mark Manson?

  but one of the most effective things that she found was, was simply meditating for 10 or 15 minutes before bed, because it helped her, you know, if she put her head on the pillow, that worrying thought came up, it allowed her to just let that thought go, and, and not get caught in that loop, and just by, simply by not getting caught up in that loop, it like, made everything else flow much easier.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So those are things you can't control necessarily. I think there's a few things that people can control that they don't, though, too.

• 13:47Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Things like boundaries, that sort of thing. What you consume, like media consumption, I think people get caught up in, in, you know, news cycles or whatever it is, and they're like, "Oh, I can't control all these crazy things going on in the world." Yeah, you're right. You can't, but you can control what you consume and what you pay attention to.

• 14:05Mark Manson?

  Can I just go on a tangent here?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Oh, please. I'll allow it.

• 14:11Mark Manson?

  So I have this weird thing where I, bad TV shows, I know all the platforms have analytics, and they're measuring watch time, and they're basing their production budgets on watch time of previous shows. So if I start watching a Netflix show, and it's bad, I turn it off as soon as I possibly can, because you don't wanna reward bad content, right? It kills me when people I know are like, "Yeah, that show was terrible," and I'm like, "Yeah, I turned it off in episode one." And they're like, "I finished the whole season." I'm like, stop doing that. You're promoting bad behavior. I'm like, this is particularly salient for me right now because Three Body Problem came out recently and it's one of

• 14:55Mark Manson?

  my favorite sci-fi books, favorite fiction series ever, and the show was complete garbage and everybody I know watched the whole thing and didn't like it. And I'm like, they're gonna make more. This is why, this is why we don't have nice things. So, anyway, don't finish bad Netflix shows. Carry on.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  There is a larger conversation under that, though, like the personal responsibility around your media consumption. If you don't like the landscape, change your own behavior. And that does have an impact. I know it's small and whatever, and it's an individual, on the individual level, but it does have an impact and I think we all have a responsibility around that. And again, that's paying, paying attention to what you can't control. The biggest thing you can't control is your attention.

• 15:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. In today's media environment, I mean, I joke about the Netflix thing, but in seriousness, like, the social media algorithms that the news companies rely upon, they notice your engagement, right? So it's like, block them, stop following them, stop reading them, stop clicking on articles, stop watching videos of, of people you don't respect or you don't like, because that simply reinforces to all the algorithms that, hey, we should show this to more people. I feel like everybody should understand that in 2024, but sometimes it seems like people don't. Like, if you hate something, the best thing you can do is block it and not engage with it.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Right. I got another one for you. This is an example that a lot of people, I think, think they don't have control over, but they do, which is who you love. I think that's more of a choice than most people think. I think it's actually almost entirely a choice. There's that whole, like, kind of a cliche, like, oh, you can't help who you love, you can't help who you like. And actually, I think there's a lot more control over that than, than we think. And I first came across this idea, actually, in Derek Sivers's book, How to Live, and he had this whole section on, you, you can choose to love anybody who's around you. That is a choice you can make. In a relationship, it is. It's a constant choice you make on who to love. But it's also just like, if someone's around and you don't even like them, I think you could actually choose to like them eventually and love them. Because there's that emotional side that we've already talked about you can't control.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  But I think there's a deeper type of love that you can control that you choose.

• 17:05Mark Manson?

  I think you can choose to empathize.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:09Mark Manson?

  And I think you can choose to take on the perspective of somebody completely openly and non-judgmentally. If you do that in a very radical and compassionate way, is that the same thing as love? I don't know. Like, as you know, the definition of love is super murky, especially in the English language. But I agree with you that your disposition towards somebody is largely within your control. And I would even say, so to your point, those unconscious emotions that emerge, you know, if you go on a date with somebody and you just like find yourself completely infatuated and kind of head over heels with them, a lot of that is because they are reflecting back to you certain values and characteristics

• 17:50Mark Manson?

  that you have chosen to seek and prioritize. I look back at this like, I think back to some of my, some of the women that I dated when I was younger and it really did not go well. And I can see that part of the reason it didn't go well is because I was prioritizing the wrong things in a partner that I look for. I, like most young immature people, I prioritize really superficial things. And that gets you into trouble. And I think as you get older, you realize that you should deprioritize those things and prioritize other, you know, deeper, more intimate things. And then that will be reflected in the emotions that emerge around the right person.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:33Mark Manson?

  That's a very long-winded way of saying, "You're right, Drew." How wise.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  In some way.

• 18:38Mark Manson?

  How wise.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so how does this make you, how does only focusing on what you can control make you more successful?

• 18:46Mark Manson?

  I think part of this is, it's almost like the essence of productivity, of like expending your time and energy on things that will generate positive change for you. If you're expending most of your time and energy on... Reacting the bullshit that's outside of your control, then by definition, that is a waste of time and energy, right? So I think it's almost like the crux of productivity is this ability to focus on what's what's within your control and then what's also like the highest leverage thing within your control. But some of it too is just like freeing up that mental and emotional space, like not

• 19:26Mark Manson?

  getting bogged down in distraction, not getting bogged down in outrage and emotional overreacting and drama with people that ultimately you kind of don't really care about. It's almost like it frees up your energy to be directed in the most efficient direction possible.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think too, there's a the concept of locus of control in psychology.

• 19:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  You have an internal locus of control where these are the things I can control and you look for the things you can control versus external locus of control. These things are happening to me, I have no control of it. This trains you to kind of find the things you do control in your environment.

• 20:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  And can have an impact on and like you just said, be more efficient with it.

• 20:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And can generalize to other areas of your life.

• 20:13Mark Manson?

  It always blew me away how much internal locus of control just like maps onto almost every positive life outcome.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:19Mark Manson?

  In the research, like it's just happier, more successful, more productive, better relationships, like boom, boom, boom, boom. You can go down the entire list and it's generally internal locus of control.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  So that's what we're here to do.

• 20:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah. To people internal locus of control. So what's the next one?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The next one, turn off the autopilot.

• 20:36Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I need some help with this one, Mark.

• 20:38Mark Manson?

  What's what's your autopilot?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  I'm very much a creature of habit.

• 20:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  And if they're healthy habits, sure, that's fine. But I just notice any change in my environment, I don't like it, like, you know, coming out here to LA and stuff like, oh, I don't have my gym and I don't have my, you know, my whatever, my little coffee shop that I like.

• 20:59Mark Manson?

  Oh, no.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Or all that kind of stuff. And I definitely get into those routines and I feel this kind of safe, comfortable areas of my life that I really like to retreat to. I feel like, I don't know, I just feel like you're way more open to experience than I am. Way more, but quite a bit more and you see you're more adaptable with it. I that's kind of a personality thing, I think, but I don't know. I think there's there's also something to being able to just be a little bit more spontaneous than I am sometimes.

• 21:26Mark Manson?

  I personally feel like a certain amount of chaos is probably optimal. There's a great like one of my favorite movies is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and there's a scene with the Joker where he's talking Harvey Dent. And he says, inject a little bit of chaos into your life. And I always love that line because it's I do feel like a modest amount of chaos is probably more optimal than zero chaos. Because it's I think a certain amount of unpredictability and spontaneity can ignite a lot of insight, a lot of growth, a lot of excitement and meaning and purpose. And I don't know, it just makes life a lot more interesting. I also think you can kind of intentionally

• 22:10Mark Manson?

  inject that chaos yourself. Like you don't have to do something crazy and destructive. I think we can find unpredictability or disrupt that routine or that autopilot in a way that's that's effective. Like I met, I was at a dinner recently and I met a professional MMA fighter and she was saying that once a year she gives herself a goal that feels impossible. A physical goal that feels impossible and then she goes and does it.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:37Mark Manson?

  And so last year she climbed Everest with zero mountain training. I was like, okay, I'm never gonna fuck with you.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  No shit.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Not that you were before, but you really are now.

• 22:49Mark Manson?

  But like she was kind of like she she was like kind of telling the table. This is like an inspiration. She's like, yeah, I just always find stuff like one year, you know, she went, I she like spontaneously she like walked like 100 miles or something and didn't stop till she finished and and you know, everybody's like, oh, that's cool. And then they were like, what'd you do this year? And she was like, I climbed Everest. They're like, do you climb mountains? She was like, no.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  My god.

• 23:14Mark Manson?

  I was like, okay, uh, I'm gonna dial it back a little bit, but uh, I like that concept of pick something that is intention, like almost irrationally difficult and just see if you can do it. Will Smith used to have this, this thing that he used to say to me, uh, he said that he was like, I used to try to bite off more than I can chew and then I'd figure out how to chew it afterwards. And he was very aware that we tend to, our assumption of our own capacity is, is, is generally as a rule, always below our actual capacity. And so he would intentionally set himself up to do things, do more things than he thought he was capable of. So like, he, I remember he told me, he was like, yeah, when I started

• 23:58Mark Manson?

  doing movies, I went to my manager and I was like, we're gonna do an album. And the manager was like, whoa, our, our schedule's booked the next two years. There's no time. And he's like, no, we're gonna do an album while I'm doing the movies. And his team was like, that's impossible. And he's like, we're gonna figure it out. And he fucking did, right? So it's, you intentionally set those kind of impossible bars and then your brains start setting to inventing and innovating new ways to find them. Also, when I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think about the, that Seinfeld episode. Did you ever see the episode where George Costanza does like the opposite?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great episode.

• 24:37Mark Manson?

  It's like one of the best Seinfeld episodes. So for listeners who haven't watched Seinfeld, there's a character, George Costanza, he's kind of like Jerry's, Jerry Seinfeld's best friend in the show. And he's just kind of a loser. Like everything he does, he, he's just, he's a mess. He's always screwing things up. He's single, he's blowing dates, like his family, his parents are assholes to him. It's, he's just a classic loser. And then there's-

• 25:02Speaker 01

  A lot of dark psychology in them too.

• 25:05Mark Manson?

  And then there's one episode where he gets so fed up with his own life that he's like, I'm just gonna do the opposite of everything I would normally do. And so like- He goes in the work and he starts cursing out his boss and telling of his boss how stupid he is and his boss is like, wow, I really needed to hear that. You know what? You're due for a raise. And then like, he goes on a date and he's like, saying all the opposite stuff that he normally says. And this like gorgeous woman is like, completely falls in love.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, I don't have a job. I live with my mom. I'm bald. I'm short. And she's like, hey.

• 25:37Mark Manson?

  She's like, wow, you're so honest. That's so sexy.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So it's the Costanza theorem.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:44Mark Manson?

  Of like, if you feel stuck in an area in your life, try the opposite.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:49Mark Manson?

  See what happens.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  It sounds so simple because it's like, yeah, you're in a rut. So just do something different, right? But we don't think of that. We don't, we get so comfortable even in the ruts. You know what I mean?

• 25:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  I don't know what that is. And I'm, I'm very much like I said, a creature of habit because of that, I think, too. It's just the, you get your comfortable spaces.

• 26:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Well, I like this because it, it, I mean, aside from pushing comfort zones, it, it helps us redefine what we consider possible and impossible. Right? Like, if we usually kiss up to our boss, maybe being bluntly honest and borderline offensive.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:29Mark Manson?

  You'd be shocked at what's possible. Maybe that actually does go better. Right? Or, um, you know, putting work goals on your plate that feel impossible today. Turns out, actually, it's like, you have more capacity than you thought you did.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 26:45Mark Manson?

  Speaking of which, the next one, adopt the 10x mindset. What is a 10x mindset?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  The basics of it, though, is that we all kind of just limit ourselves. We think too small. And it makes sense because if you want to do anything big, you have to think big, right?

• 26:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I think you're really good at this, too. Um, another area you could impart some wisdom onto me, I think, here. But we do, we limit ourselves. You know, you've several times on the podcast told the allegory about the elephant.

• 27:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Uh, who gets tied to the fence post and doesn't realize he can break away from it. Um, that sort of thing, uh, definitely happens a lot, I think. And we just, we set very small goals.

• 27:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  And.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Then I think some of us wonder why we don't have more. And I don't know, what is, what's the key to thinking bigger, do you think? You have a very good sense of the big picture, I think, a lot of times.

• 27:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  You tend to aim high, shoot high, and you fail sometimes with it, but.

• 27:39Mark Manson?

  Most of the time.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  What's your secret, Mark?

• 27:41Mark Manson?

  What's my secret?

• 27:44Mark Manson?

  I, first of all, I like zooming out. I like the big picture. That's just like, my brain kind of goes that direction naturally.

• 27:53Mark Manson?

  I like asking myself, what does this look like three years from now? What does this look like five years from now? And I think that's an important tendency to develop because I think it's so easy to get. Everybody tends to get caught up in like the immediate future. Everybody's worried about next month or next quarter or, or next year. And I like to ask myself, like, if I did what I'm doing this month for the next 10 years, where am I going to end up? And, okay, how do I optimize for that? So I think part of it is, is time scale, zooming out and looking at, at time scale. Cause a lot of what, you know, the 10x rule, one way to think about it is it's,

• 28:33Mark Manson?

  to get the 10x of anything, you're going to have to compound your way there. And compounding requires time. So like, what's the best way to leverage time the next five to 10 years? So that's one element of it. I think the second element of it is just like, big goals are more exciting. They're sexier. They feel, I mean, obviously if you manage to accomplish them, they feel better. And then I also, to come back to the Will Smith point, like, we tend to underestimate what our actual capacity is. So if you were overshooting what you perceive your capacity to be, you're actually probably going to end up much closer to your real capacity.

• 29:14Mark Manson?

  So you're actually maximizing your brain quite a bit more. And then of course, there's like that old cliche, which is a shoot, shoot for the stars. And even if you miss, you'll land on the moon, Drew.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  I think it's the other way around. Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

• 29:33Mark Manson?

  The stars are further.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:38Mark Manson?

  I just.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I see what you're saying.

• 29:40Mark Manson?

  I have qualms with this, with this Instagram.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:43Mark Manson?

  This inspirational Instagram quote. I'll take it up with somebody else, though.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:50Mark Manson?

  But yeah, I think it's, it's, uh, I think it's a combination of a lot of those things.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  I, I think, yeah, you, you hear about this a lot, like in money and business and stuff like that. Like, um, and I think, uh, uh, there's some business gurus out there, even like Ramit Sethi talks about this a lot where, you know, you can, this is kind of a variation on the 10x rule, I think, you can cut your expenses to zero.

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  You could do that. You cut your expenses all the way to zero, but that's the limit on that. On the other side of it, though, there's no limit to how much you can make. So there's like a switch in thinking there too, over like what to 10x or what to, what to optimize for. But I think you could apply that to other areas as well, not just like money and business and stuff like that. I think you could apply it to, I'll go back to the relationships thing again. You can cut out the problems in your relationship and as much as you can, as much as is practical, right? But is there, is there a limit on how deep your connection can go? Is there a limit on the number of things you can learn about your partner? Stuff like that, like to me, that's like going from like, oh, let's make our relationship a little bit better to, let's make this a lot better.

• 31:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  And you're by, and you're changing what you're focusing on, rather than changing on the little problems you can cut out. You're changing more the focus to how, how can we connect on these things? How can I learn more about you?

• 31:11Mark Manson?

  10x in a relationship.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a thought experiment I went through with this.

• 31:16Mark Manson?

  I'm, I'm like wondering what that would look like. I always get wary around relationships because you, you run into a lot of backwards law stuff of like, trying to optimize a relationship.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 31:29Mark Manson?

  Becoming the relationship problem. Whereas if you just stop trying to optimize it, it would be happier now.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I see, okay.

• 31:37Mark Manson?

  It's funny, I've run into a couple of friends recently who are in new relationships and they've gotten really excited because they've set up like Notion dashboards to track KPIs and stuff. And I'm like, stop, fucking stop. Like, just don't do it. Don't go down that road. I, I understand the motivation and the, the desire, but I will say this, like it's to me, the.

• 32:04Mark Manson?

  You know, ultimately, the principle of the 10x rule or whatever is that there's a degree of success available to you that is much larger than you're currently conceiving of. And in the relationship realm, the way I've experienced that is an incredible amount of comfort in security with the same person, which is ironic because you can't force that. It's actually the the lack of forcing that gives you that. Like, it's the the unbelievable, after 12 years together, my wife and I, we have such a like insane level of comfort and ease around each other that you you can't achieve that.

• 32:48Mark Manson?

  You can't shortcut it and you can't achieve it in any other way. And if you tried to shortcut it or achieve it in another way, you would be removing the comfort and ease. And so you'd be like, it'd be self defeating. So anyway, it's a little bit of a tangent, but.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  No, I think I think you make a good point. It's probably, which is, don't necessarily apply business principles to your relationships.

• 33:12Mark Manson?

  Which.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Jesus, tell me you're an American by not telling me you're an American, right?

• 33:18Mark Manson?

  I was just gonna say, judging by my my friend group, a lot of people need to hear that. It's it's so funny, dude, like, a lot of a lot of, you know, we don't have kids, so a lot of our friends out here in LA, like, a lot of the new friends that we've made are five, 10 years younger than us. And and so a lot of it is, it's kind of like, a lot of our friend, our couple friends out here are are couples who are likely to get married, you know, but either aren't married or they just got married, but they haven't had kids yet. And but they're all, you know, two, three, four, five years into the relationship and and we're kind of like the elder couple now, right?

• 34:01Mark Manson?

  So like, we're we're over 40 and we've been together for longer than everybody. And so we've we've actually had a number of couples who have kind of come to us and like.

• 34:11Mark Manson?

  Peppered us with questions and it's like every single time Fernando and I are just like, "Yeah, maybe you just don't try so hard."

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:19Mark Manson?

  Just enjoy being together.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And you know a lot of business people, so you're saying a lot of them like trying to run it like a business?

• 34:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  All right, well, I'll, I'll, yeah, I'll not do that from now on.

• 34:35Mark Manson?

  Okay, we got one more. What is it?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Focus on fewer things for longer periods of time.

• 34:42Mark Manson?

  So, this is the kind of classic Cal Newport productivity advice, the deep work advice. We had an episode with him a couple of months ago where we touched on this quite a bit. You know, there's just, there's a lot of hidden, he calls it overhead tax. You could call it like task switching tax. Like there's a mental tax that comes with the diversity of information that we're being bombarded with. So like the simple act of switching from email to your phone, to a web browser, to a phone call, to a Zoom call, to a notification, like just your attention moving between all of those things

• 35:27Mark Manson?

  over the course of like five or 10 minutes generates much more of a mental burden than say just reading an academic paper for those 10 minutes. And, and it's really counterintuitive because on paper,

• 35:44Mark Manson?

  a stupid Zoom meeting and a notification on your phone and checking a Slack message, like those, in a vacuum, none of those actions are difficult. None of them are intellectually difficult, none of them are physically difficult. They're certainly far easier than reading a challenging book or paper. But for some reason, that series of activities will tire you out much faster than just sitting down and reading the single paper. And so, you know, a lot of Cal's advice revolves around being very conscious of like how you organize all your tasks, blocking out notifications, blocking out social media, staying off YouTube,

• 36:27Mark Manson?

  getting rid of dumb meetings or, or, you know, batching them together at the very least. And I, I mean, I have to say like, I really think, I think he's on to something. Like, I think this is the, he calls it like the fundamental challenge of knowledge work. And I think he's right about that. And I think it's hard to ignore how the increase in burnout has coincided with work that is just kind of objectively easier than it was, say, 50 years ago. As a population, we're not out in factories. We're not like dying in coal

• 37:06Mark Manson?

  mines, like we were generations ago. We're sitting in air-conditioned rooms on computers with amazing devices in our hands, talking to people remotely in our gym shorts, working whenever we want, however we want, with the people we want. Yet, we are experiencing a mental and emotional fatigue that we haven't really experienced before. And so I just, it's a really interesting phenomenon. And I just think it's so important for our generation to understand the nature of it, so that we can adapt.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  I think that you're talking kind of on the micro level, the daily level, just getting shit done type of level. If you step back one level, though, too, and just the number of things that you're focusing on in general. I have a problem with this because I'm just, I'm fascinated by everything. I'm interested in everything. Everything like, you know, everything grabs my attention and I go with it. I mean, even when I, like, out here, I'm like drilling holes in ceilings and then I sit down and I'm, we're talking about-

• 38:13Mark Manson?

  By the way, everybody, Drew built this studio.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I was fishing for that. I was, yeah.

• 38:18Mark Manson?

  With his bare hands. I'm not even exaggerating. Like, if you pull up the video, if you're listening to this, open Spotify, look at the video. Drew built this fucking studio with his bare hands. So, I, apparently I hired a GC when I was hiring a research assistant and I had no idea.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  But okay, that's, that's my point. My point is, though, Mark, is that I don't know, there's like, you, I feel very much like the jack of all trades, master of none type of thing, you know? And that's what I mean, that next level, if you back out and you say, okay, I need to focus on fewer things rather than chasing every little, you know, rabbit down the hole.

• 38:55Mark Manson?

  So, this, well, actually, this raises an interesting question, because, you know, cow-

• 39:02Mark Manson?

  Cal kind of bangs on the drum of specialized focus, really drill deep on one thing. There is a prevailing counterargument. There's a different, there's an opposite school of thought. There's a great book called Range by David Epstein. I think Tyler Cowen has talked about this a bit as well, or maybe it was Peter Thiel. But like, the importance of generalists today, because a generalist today, because there's access to so much information, and there's so much disparate things and opportunities and different trends and fields and research coming out and data coming out, that we actually need generalists more than ever simply to tie the thread between all the stuff out there.

• 39:47Mark Manson?

  Like, if you're only zoomed in on your field and your, like, your knowledge base, you're gonna become too detached from the wider world. And actually, generalists are gonna be the ones who are going to be able to, like, keep track of everything. I don't know if I buy that, but I think it's a really interesting argument. And Epstein, in particular, you know, he tries to argue in his book, he finds examples of how some of the people that we consider domain experts were actually generalists. You know, like Steve Jobs was very famously kind of a generalist. Like, he was really into art and calligraphy and eastern spirituality. And like, all those things really influenced his views of technology and consumer products.

• 40:31Mark Manson?

  He talks about Roger Federer, and how like Federer, you would assume that Federer was like, playing tennis all day, every day, since he was four years old. But it turns out that Federer actually spent as much time playing soccer and a bunch of other sports. Or like Magnus Carlsen, the best chess players ever lived. Like, apparently, he spends, when he was like, competing for world championships, he actually spends his days playing soccer with his friends.

• 40:58Mark Manson?

  The day before he goes in to actually play the chess match and it like it like frees up his brain to be more creative during the chess match. So it's an interesting argument. I don't, I don't know where I land or, or how much I, I buy it, but it's, uh, it's out there.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  No, I, and I've, I've tried that on before. I've, I've tried to kind of take that view and I think there is some merit to that. There's also a great little book. It's a, it's an easy read. It's called How to Be Everything by Emily Wapnick.

• 41:27Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Um, and she talks about the kind of this same thing. She was very much a generalist and fascinated by everything and also left a PhD program like I did, you know, and which is very common amongst people like us, I think. And she talks about what you're saying is got, if you can find a theme across these domains.

• 41:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Um, and I do think, I, I do really like it when I am like feeling scatterbrained, but then all of a sudden I find one idea in one domain and bring it over to another and tie the two together. That's very satisfying to me. So maybe if I focused on that more, that would be a little bit more, um, more productive for me. I don't know.

• 42:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I don't know. I, I do think we live in a time that rewards that more than ever before.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:10Mark Manson?

  Like intuitively, that feels true to me. But that said, to be able to make those connections, you need to be able to focus on that theme, right?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  One at a time. I think it's the one at a time.

• 42:21Mark Manson?

  It's the one at a time that's important. Uh, you can't, like Magnus Carlsen can't be playing chess while he plays soccer.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:29Mark Manson?

  Like he needs to play one and then go play the other.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know.

• 42:33Mark Manson?

  Although it'd be fun to watch him try.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  He could probably, if anybody could do it.

• 42:39Mark Manson?

  He could probably do it. If anybody could do it, it's probably.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  No, for real. For real.

• 42:45Mark Manson?

  All right. What else? Is that it?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I think that's it. I think that's the pod, Mark.

• 42:49Mark Manson?

  I still don't feel successful, Drew.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:51Mark Manson?

  Perhaps it's just a faulty definition of success.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  That could be, that's a whole nother podcast.

• 42:59Mark Manson?

  That's a whole nother podcast.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  That's a whole nother podcast, yeah.

• 43:02Mark Manson?

  Well, until we dig into that, until we dig into my faulty sense of success or lack of success, that's all for today's episode. Be sure to like and subscribe, leave a comment, leave a review, sign up for the newsletter. It's at markmanson/newsletter. I send out a newsletter every Monday morning with a few pieces of advice and also breakthroughs from readers. Anything else you'd like to add, Drew?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  That's all I got today.

• 43:28Mark Manson?

  That's it? That's it?

• 43:29Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 43:29Mark Manson?

  No quirky sign off, no...

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Doing this one straight.

• 43:33Mark Manson?

  Okay, alright. Alright, well, we'll be better next time. Until next time.