Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Michael Easter. He is the
Speaker 2: author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, and we're
Speaker 2: discussing tangible ways we can add wildness back into our
Speaker 2: lives and the real impact that can have on our happiness,
Speaker 2: our outdoor pursuits, and our sense of satisfaction across all things.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light, and Happy New Year.
Speaker 2: A new Year's upon us. I can't believe that's the case.
Speaker 2: We're two weeks in now, I suppose, and it's always
Speaker 2: shocking how quickly these things sneak up on us. But
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six is here, and we're gonna be kicking
Speaker 2: off the new year.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Last week we discussed some of the top conservation issues
Speaker 2: to be thinking about and looking forward to today, and
Speaker 2: then again in a couple of weeks we're going to
Speaker 2: do a couple outside the box episodes, some episodes where
Speaker 2: we explore topics that are a little bit beyond strictly
Speaker 2: deer hunting, beyond strictly how to, and we're gonna zoom
Speaker 2: out a bit and explore some different ideas and philosophies
Speaker 2: or concepts things that can help you become a better
Speaker 2: deer hunter, but also help you become a better angler
Speaker 2: outdoors men or woman, a student, businessman or woman, dad, mom, son, daughter,
Speaker 2: person in general. We're gonna get outside of the usual
Speaker 2: and talk about some higher level things that impact our
Speaker 2: daily lives but definitely have a significant influence on who
Speaker 2: we are as hunters or anglers. Some of these will
Speaker 2: be discussing, you know, how to perform better, how to excel,
Speaker 2: how to be excellent at something like hunting or fishing
Speaker 2: or hiking or backpacking. But we're also going to discuss
Speaker 2: how to, you know, think about success, how to set
Speaker 2: better goals, how to be more productive or happier or
Speaker 2: enjoy the pursuits that you are chasing, whatever that might be.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what we're going to explore a couple
Speaker 2: times here to set ourselves up to hopefully have maybe
Speaker 2: our best year ever, and today's guest is I think
Speaker 2: the perfect person to help us do that. As I
Speaker 2: mentioned in the introduction, this is Michael Easter. He is
Speaker 2: a journalist and an author of two really great books
Speaker 2: that I've enjoyed in the past. The Comfort Crisis, which
Speaker 2: explores the many different ways that our increasingly comfortable world
Speaker 2: is impacting us in possibly negative ways. Great book. It
Speaker 2: uses a really exciting Alaskan backcountry hunt as the spine
Speaker 2: of that story with Donnie Vincent, who's a past guest
Speaker 2: of this podcast too, so highly recommend that. His book,
Speaker 2: Scarcity Brain explores how kind of the evolutionary history of
Speaker 2: humanity has led us to have this constant desire for
Speaker 2: more and more and more, and how all sorts of
Speaker 2: things out there in the world kind of spike these
Speaker 2: habits or addictive behaviors that make us crave more food,
Speaker 2: or more social media, or more status or more many
Speaker 2: different things. So very interesting read. And then here in
Speaker 2: the next couple weeks, I believe he has another book
Speaker 2: coming out called Walking with Weight, and that's all about
Speaker 2: the very specific physical practice of rucking hiking around with
Speaker 2: a big, heavy backpack. That book's got a lot of
Speaker 2: very relevant stuff for hunters or outdoors. People who get
Speaker 2: outside carry heavy things. So that's the background he brings
Speaker 2: to this. He also has the two Percent sub Stack,
Speaker 2: which is a terrific website, a newsletter that he sends
Speaker 2: out and that is on a quote here that explores simple,
Speaker 2: actionable strategies to improve your physical health, mental resilience, performance,
Speaker 2: and purpose. And I think that sums up his work
Speaker 2: very well. But I would add one additional qualifier, and
Speaker 2: this is something that came up in my conversation with Michael.
Speaker 2: This idea that kind of bubbled up for me that
Speaker 2: much of what he talks about, much of what he prescribes,
Speaker 2: is all about rewilding our lives. It's inserting stuff back
Speaker 2: into our lives that used to be just what regular
Speaker 2: wild humans used to do. Even humans one hundred years
Speaker 2: ago used to do this stuff all the time. But
Speaker 2: modern day life, cities, technology, all of that has kind
Speaker 2: of stripped it away in many ways. It's stripped discomfort,
Speaker 2: it's stripped challenge, it's stripped community or structure out of
Speaker 2: our lives. And Michael has explored unique ideas for bringing
Speaker 2: that back. And so that's what we discussed to we
Speaker 2: discuss how to rewild our lives in this new year.
Speaker 2: How that can make you a better hunter, How that
Speaker 2: can make you a better outdoors men or woman, and
Speaker 2: a happier, more satisfied, productive, successful, healthy person in whatever
Speaker 2: pursuit it is you want to apply it to. So
Speaker 2: some very specific things we discuss include New Year's resolutions,
Speaker 2: the science behind them, if they work or not, ideas
Speaker 2: for setting goals for the new year, the possible risks
Speaker 2: of setting goals around your recreational pursuits and your hobbies
Speaker 2: like hunting or fishing. We think discussed some different things
Speaker 2: around how modern high tech life today is changing our experiences,
Speaker 2: changing what it means to be human. It's changing our happiness,
Speaker 2: our satisfaction, even how we experience hunts or fishing trips
Speaker 2: or camping trips. How all that's kind of infiltrating our
Speaker 2: outdoor pursuits. We talk about social media. We talk about
Speaker 2: how that's kind of hijacked our minds and how we
Speaker 2: might be able to reclaim control over that, which is
Speaker 2: certainly relevant to us as hunters and outdoors people who
Speaker 2: you know, we of course engage in social media. But
Speaker 2: then there's this whole other comparison culture thing that is
Speaker 2: happening within our community and influencing how we, you know,
Speaker 2: judge success, how we feel about our you know, whether
Speaker 2: it be an animal that we tagged, or the goals
Speaker 2: we set for the year, or anything like that. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot to unpack there. We discuss different ways
Speaker 2: to set big outdoor challenges and ways to explore our
Speaker 2: edges and exploring you know, how to do things outside
Speaker 2: of our comfort zone and why that's important, how to
Speaker 2: best do that. Some cool ideas around that. We get
Speaker 2: into some physical training, some simple ways that we can
Speaker 2: become healthier, more capable backcountry hunters or mobile deer hunters
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be. There's some simple but useful
Speaker 2: ideas here that we discussed with Michael. So there's a lot.
Speaker 2: This is a great conversation.
Speaker 4: Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend picking up those books I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: If you're into the rocking idea, this kind of backpacking
Speaker 2: for physical fitness, check out his newest book, Walking with Weight.
Speaker 2: And I will just say again, this is a conversation
Speaker 2: that is really relevant to you as a deer hunter
Speaker 2: or outdoors person. But I think you're going to see
Speaker 2: a lot here that can be applied across the rest
Speaker 2: of your life too. So I hope you enjoy it
Speaker 2: as much as I did. And thanks for being here
Speaker 2: all right now with me on the line is Michael Easter.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. Michael.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: Man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to chatting again. It's always funny to you.
Speaker 2: I agree. I enjoyed our last podcast, which felt like
Speaker 2: it wasn't that long ago. But when I went back
Speaker 2: to kind of double check that, I realized it was
Speaker 2: five years ago, which is nuts. How fast this is
Speaker 2: all going.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 5: I told my wife was like, what are you doing?
Speaker 5: So I'm gone on podcasts? You said, oh, what is it?
Speaker 5: And I told her it was yours. She goes, have
Speaker 5: you ever been on that? And I said yeah, and
Speaker 5: she goes, oh, when was that same deal? I was like,
Speaker 5: I want to say it was like a year ago,
Speaker 5: but if I actually look, it's like half a decade ago.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's it's pretty wild. How all the cliche things
Speaker 2: that are that our parents and teachers and everyone said
Speaker 2: about how fast life goes, It's it's all very true. Yes,
Speaker 2: So here we are twenty I was about to say
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. It's twenty twenty six now New Year,
Speaker 2: and as I think, you know a lot of people
Speaker 2: do at this time of year, there's all this focus
Speaker 2: on New Year's resolutions, new year, new you, setting new goals,
Speaker 2: setting new plans, all of that. And I am one
Speaker 2: of those nerds who gets into that. I'm very into that.
Speaker 2: My wife and I literally had a sit down like
Speaker 2: annual review last night, talking through our plan for the
Speaker 2: new year and our goals and some things like that.
Speaker 2: But what's your take on that, What's what's your personal
Speaker 2: take on, you know, this kind of new year, new
Speaker 2: youth thing. And then what does the you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if you've looked in this specifically, but do
Speaker 2: you have any sense of what the literature says or
Speaker 2: what the you know, the the research points to as
Speaker 2: far as the effectiveness of setting your year kind of
Speaker 2: on this kind of annual calendar type of reset.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, look, man, I think it's I
Speaker 5: think it's good. Like people can change any time they want, right,
Speaker 5: it's like to begin begin, but the new year gives
Speaker 5: us an impetus to change. I think that set this
Speaker 5: is the bad news when you look at their research,
Speaker 5: most people fail, so like ninety five percent of New
Speaker 5: Year's resolutions fail. Yeah, and there's a variety of reasons
Speaker 5: for that, which I think we can get into in this,
Speaker 5: But first I would actually like to hear how'd you
Speaker 5: fair in your uh in your annual review? Tell me
Speaker 5: all about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, without getting into too many of the gory details.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five passed. I had a passing grade as
Speaker 2: far as both my personal goals and what my wife
Speaker 2: was hoping for from me. There's always a little bit
Speaker 2: of that, you know, friction, not friction, but just you know,
Speaker 2: you're married, you know how it is with a marriage.
Speaker 2: It's trying to bring together two totally different world views
Speaker 2: and perspectives and lives to then say like are we
Speaker 2: heading to the right direction? And are we going there
Speaker 2: in the right ways? And so fortunately it's a great marriage.
Speaker 2: I have a great wife, and so we're mostly on
Speaker 2: the same page. But then there's always you know, you know, well,
Speaker 2: she'll say things like can't you just be normal? And
Speaker 2: I guess I don't know how to be normal. I
Speaker 2: am what I am, so overall good, but with a
Speaker 2: typical marriage fund, So what's exciting year for us.
Speaker 5: What I like about that though, is that there was
Speaker 5: some sort of analysis that happened. So I think one
Speaker 5: problem that people run into and why these things often fail,
Speaker 5: these resolutions, if you'll call them, is that there's no
Speaker 5: analysis of well, where have I gone wrong?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right? We don't look.
Speaker 5: Back and try and take measurements of what are my
Speaker 5: weak points, what are my failures so I can improve
Speaker 5: upon those weak points. Instead, people often say I'm going
Speaker 5: to create this new big goal and I'm just going
Speaker 5: to work towards that. But if you haven't fixed what
Speaker 5: your biggest problems are, this is like trying to give
Speaker 5: gas to these big new habits as you have your
Speaker 5: foot on the break. So in my opinion, and I
Speaker 5: think the research backs this, is that it is our
Speaker 5: worst habits that really hold us back. Like if you
Speaker 5: don't fix your worst habits, you're not going to go
Speaker 5: forward at all. So I say that because I like
Speaker 5: how you did that analysis, and I think that a
Speaker 5: lot of people would benefit in the new year instead
Speaker 5: of picking some random goal and saying, no, I'm going
Speaker 5: to do this big thing, it's going to change my life.
Speaker 5: To look back and go, Okay, well, what do I
Speaker 5: think is actually holding me back? And what can I
Speaker 5: do to sort of alleviate that whatever whatever it might be.
Speaker 5: Oftentimes you don't have to set a big new goal.
Speaker 5: If you just take your foot off that break, all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, everything else will start changing. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think the extreme kit to just give an extreme case,
Speaker 5: because I think people like examples.
Speaker 3: For me at least it helps them stick.
Speaker 5: Is if you think about someone who's let's say an alcoholic, right,
Speaker 5: people who are in the grips of drinking will often go,
Speaker 5: I just need to exercise more. I just need to
Speaker 5: eat a healthy diet. My life will improve. I just
Speaker 5: need to do X y Z. It's like, but if
Speaker 5: this person, if your fundamental problem is that, like you
Speaker 5: have this terrible habit of drinking too much, it doesn't
Speaker 5: matter all the good stuff you do, like, you're still
Speaker 5: going to be held back in life. So it's like,
Speaker 5: how can you just pull your foot off the break
Speaker 5: of that bad thing? And then oftentimes everything will sort
Speaker 5: itself out afterwards.
Speaker 2: So I got to believe that most of your work
Speaker 2: around this for people, or I think why many people
Speaker 2: come to you really is how do they you know,
Speaker 2: build better habits, change their lifestyle, build better frameworks and
Speaker 2: systems to have a healthier, more satisfying life, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But on this topic of goals and and you know,
Speaker 2: developing some sense of direction of where you want to
Speaker 2: take things, whether it's eliminating a bad habit or adding
Speaker 2: a better habit, or setting some kind of stretch goal
Speaker 2: or taking on something challenging. What happens when you apply
Speaker 2: that to a recreational pursuit? You know? I mean, there's
Speaker 2: there's the thought around, like hunters and anglers, we do
Speaker 2: this thing that brings us joy, that that brings us peace.
Speaker 2: But then there's also the desire to set goals within that. Right,
Speaker 2: Increasingly people want to get the next big buck or
Speaker 2: a bigger buck, or they want to get three bucks,
Speaker 2: or they want to do this big new fishing trip
Speaker 2: or achieve this grand slam thing. Fish x y Z states,
Speaker 2: there's all these different ways that we gamify recreation in
Speaker 2: our pursuits and passions. What's the impact of that? Is that?
Speaker 4: Is there a.
Speaker 2: Danger in that? Is that a healthy thing to do?
Speaker 2: Does that risk our enjoyment or help it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I'm going to answer that multiple ways, because I feel
Speaker 5: like there's kind of a layering of questions in there,
Speaker 5: which I like. So on one hand, it's good to
Speaker 5: have a big goal, right it inspires you, maybe starts
Speaker 5: you to get acting. But the problem often is that
Speaker 5: if the goal is way too big, you start to fail,
Speaker 5: and when you start to get the negative feedback towards failure,
Speaker 5: people often quit. And it's also asking for a lot
Speaker 5: of change at once. So I think sometimes it's better
Speaker 5: to break things up into manageable sections and to think, Okay,
Speaker 5: my goal is to complete this Grand Slam or whatever,
Speaker 5: but what are the ten things I'm going to have
Speaker 5: to do in order to actually reach that? And so
Speaker 5: the goal becomes the first step of that because that's
Speaker 5: a lot more easy to reach. And so once you've
Speaker 5: hit that, you get some momentum, you get this positive feedback,
Speaker 5: and you can start to build on that positive feedback.
Speaker 5: So I wouldn't you know, I'm not the type of
Speaker 5: person to say, like, oh, just just pick the easiest
Speaker 5: goal and go for that, because I think that can
Speaker 5: be limiting to people. Keep your big goal, but how
Speaker 5: can you chop it up into much more manageable steps.
Speaker 5: I mean, like A big part of my so might
Speaker 5: substack newsletter is called the two percent newsletter, and it's
Speaker 5: the name comes from a study that found that only
Speaker 5: two percent of people take the stairs when there's an
Speaker 5: escalator available. Now, to me, one hundred percent of people
Speaker 5: know that taking the stairs is going to be better
Speaker 5: for their health, well being, their mental health, all these
Speaker 5: different things, and yet ninety percent of people just default
Speaker 5: to the easy, effortless thing where if you can just
Speaker 5: start with the stairs, one set of stairs is not
Speaker 5: going to change your life. But if you take the
Speaker 5: next setistairs, the next setistairs, and then you go, oh,
Speaker 5: you know what, by going through that little bit of discomfort,
Speaker 5: I sort of improved. And where else can I apply
Speaker 5: that two percent mindset across the board to different things?
Speaker 5: Now I'm parking in the farthest spot of the parking lot,
Speaker 5: Now I'm going you know what, I'm not going to
Speaker 5: eat those oreos before I go to bed or whatever.
Speaker 5: It might be just like finding these little wins, and
Speaker 5: I think those wins can stack up and that can
Speaker 5: be applied to these larger goals too, of like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what's the next small win I can do?
Speaker 3: What can I do?
Speaker 5: Today to sort of get me there, and you sort
Speaker 5: of keep doing that and then you find yourself going,
Speaker 5: oh my god, I just I just complained to this
Speaker 5: grand slam.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like the way that James Clear puts it.
Speaker 2: He says something something along the lines of, you know,
Speaker 2: every action you take is a vote for the kind
Speaker 2: of person you want to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I thought about that a lot. It's like, Okay, this
Speaker 2: is this is something that signals my end state that
Speaker 2: I want to be at it. This is the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that that kind of person would do, and
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna start to do that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: take the stairs, or drink the water or whatever it
Speaker 2: might be. It's those little things that, to your point,
Speaker 2: they stack up. And I don't know if you meant
Speaker 2: this with your you know, or at least when I
Speaker 2: first saw you the title for your newsletter. The two
Speaker 2: percent thought that I had was not only is two
Speaker 2: percent representative of the small minority of people who will
Speaker 2: do the harder thing, but I also think that also
Speaker 2: if you think about doing the harder thing, it's getting
Speaker 2: like two percent better every day or every week. That's
Speaker 2: how we get better at anything. That's how we grow
Speaker 2: that's how we build satisfaction or accomplishment or whatever. It's
Speaker 2: by like stacking up these little one percents here, two
Speaker 2: percents here, week after week, year after year. That's something
Speaker 2: we talk about in the hunting world all the time.
Speaker 2: It's it's stacking all these tiny little variables, getting a
Speaker 2: little better in all these different little ways over time,
Speaker 2: and that compounds, and so that mindset, I think, you
Speaker 2: know there's a lot to it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know it's not two percent of people
Speaker 5: climb everest, it's two percent of people take a freaking
Speaker 5: staircase right at Sometimes the most obvious wins in life,
Speaker 5: we just neglect them. I think a lot of this
Speaker 5: goes back to like our evolutionary wiring of we're effectively
Speaker 5: wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing, because
Speaker 5: that always kept us alive in these harsh environments. But
Speaker 5: now we've engineered our world for comfort and ease, we
Speaker 5: still have that sort of wiring that pushed us to
Speaker 5: do the easy thing, even though it doesn't help us
Speaker 5: in the long run. So it's sort of overcoming that
Speaker 5: in different ways all the time. And then to sort
Speaker 5: of continue answering the question that you asked a bit ago,
Speaker 5: and you you basically asked about gamifying habits.
Speaker 3: Okay, to me, that's a double edged sword.
Speaker 5: On one hand, having gamification and numbers can incentivize people
Speaker 5: because it allows us to measure and see our improvements.
Speaker 5: The downside, though, is that the way that we gamify
Speaker 5: things narrows the goal to a set of numbers, and
Speaker 5: we get fixated on those numbers, whereas if we look
Speaker 5: at the actual big thing we're trying to accomplish, it's
Speaker 5: often not to just get a number. I'll use the
Speaker 5: example of like fitness trackers and step counts, so people
Speaker 5: will get a step counter. So we're gonna quantify our activity.
Speaker 5: We're gonna tell ourselves I need to get twelve thousand
Speaker 5: steps a day. So you start to like, okay, twelve
Speaker 5: thousand's my number, right, goal, go twelve thousand. I got
Speaker 5: to get this twelve thousand every day, and you get
Speaker 5: fixated on that number.
Speaker 3: But if you pull back, what is the point? What
Speaker 3: is the overall point?
Speaker 5: The overall point is not to get twelve thousand steps
Speaker 5: a day. The overall point is to become a more
Speaker 5: active person. Why do we want to become a more
Speaker 5: active person, so we can get healthier, maybe our mindset
Speaker 5: will improve, maybe will be less stressed, all these other
Speaker 5: thing But when we start to fixate on the number,
Speaker 5: we often lose sight of those bigger, larger goals, and
Speaker 5: that can sometimes steer us wrong. So it's again, it's
Speaker 5: one of those double edged swords, and you have to
Speaker 5: kind of realize, how is the gamification helping push me
Speaker 5: towards this larger like this larger goal I'm going for,
Speaker 5: But you also have to avoid getting sucked into just
Speaker 5: the goal of this number for the sake of the number.
Speaker 5: If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It does. And here's another kind of double edged sword
Speaker 2: issue within this that I've wrestled with a lot, is
Speaker 2: like this tendency that many of us have to want
Speaker 2: to be achievement oriented, to want to grow, to want
Speaker 2: to get better at something, and how that impacts something
Speaker 2: that is a passion, a recreational pursuit. Again going back
Speaker 2: to this core example of like hunting or fishing, right,
Speaker 2: for a lot of people, they come to that as
Speaker 2: just like a thing for fun. And you write about
Speaker 2: in the Comfort Crisis about the importance of you know,
Speaker 2: having space and peace and boredom and quiet time and
Speaker 2: all of that. And you experience that in the Arctic
Speaker 2: when hunting with Downey, and I think many other people
Speaker 2: do when they're deer hunting or fishing or anything like that. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a place for you know, it's not necessarily boredom,
Speaker 2: but it's it's space and quiet and indifferent than normal
Speaker 2: everyday life. But then so many times this thing all
Speaker 2: of a sudden like builds momentum, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden it's like, well, now I want to get more
Speaker 2: or I want to get better, I want to do this,
Speaker 2: and so you start attaching goals to this thing where
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, what was just a fun, peaceful
Speaker 2: joy experience transitions to this achievement experience, and all the
Speaker 2: things that you just talked about there where all of
Speaker 2: a sudden it's like I need to get ten fish,
Speaker 2: I need to kill you know, one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five inch buck, or I need to do whatever the
Speaker 2: thing is. And then all of a sudden, there's not
Speaker 2: only the you know, there's not only kind of this like
Speaker 2: reinforcing effect of chasing, you know, losing sight of the
Speaker 2: forest for the trees kind of thing, but then you're
Speaker 2: also attaching pressures to it, and I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's there's these two things that there's the value of
Speaker 2: doing hard things that you talk about so often it
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense, But then there's also this
Speaker 2: value to sometimes just having experiences or just joy for
Speaker 2: the sake of that too, like being a human. How
Speaker 2: do you reconcile that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think your example of Antler scores is that
Speaker 5: the correct terminology. Yeah, that's a perfect example. Yeah, where
Speaker 5: it's like, why'd you start hunting in the first place?
Speaker 5: Probably day one, it wasn't oh I want to get
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy five, Like it's just it's such
Speaker 5: an arbitrary y exactly, But once you get deeper into it,
Speaker 5: that becomes the goal and like not really the goal
Speaker 5: of hunting is like you're going to get outside, You're
Speaker 5: going to move around, You're going to engage in this
Speaker 5: practice that humans have engaged in ever since we started
Speaker 5: walking on two feet, and even before then when we
Speaker 5: weren't even humans.
Speaker 3: Right. So for me.
Speaker 5: To answer your question about how do I sort of
Speaker 5: balance those things, I just try and not pay attention
Speaker 5: to the numbers. I try and always ask myself why
Speaker 5: am I doing this thing in the first place? I
Speaker 5: could apply that to like, I don't know weekly run mileages.
Speaker 5: I've never really gotten into antler size and hunting, and
Speaker 5: I don't hunt all that often, maybe like once a
Speaker 5: year about the past couple of years.
Speaker 3: Haven't made it out at all. I just like, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm just very cognizant of the fact that, Okay, why, I'm.
Speaker 3: Always going back to the why, the deeper why? What's that?
Speaker 5: Like a istn't there's some practice in Toyota. The guy
Speaker 5: who found a Toyota was like, you got to ask
Speaker 5: why six times?
Speaker 2: Interesting?
Speaker 3: So you go, okay, well why are we doing this?
Speaker 3: But why? Let's the answer to that. But why?
Speaker 5: And then once you get down to the sixth time,
Speaker 5: you're like that, that's what we're after right there. So
Speaker 5: I think if people can do that, you can sort
Speaker 5: of get back to the original joy and purpose of
Speaker 5: an activity you're doing. M and I will I will
Speaker 5: admit this is like very philosophical, right I. Unfortunately with
Speaker 5: a question like this, I can't give you, Well, here's
Speaker 5: my three step framework. Just do exactly this and your
Speaker 5: life will change immediately. It's like, well, life is actually
Speaker 5: a lot more complicated than that. Yeah, which is probably why,
Speaker 5: which is probably why I don't know my sub stack
Speaker 5: couldn't be as good if I could, couldn't have as
Speaker 5: many subscribers. If I would just say, here's a secret
Speaker 5: to life, two steps to do it, pay me my
Speaker 5: seven dollars month, we'll move on.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Well, well to your point that life is not black
Speaker 2: and white and simple. It is complex, and your work
Speaker 2: I think ties in very well and is a part
Speaker 2: of a growing collection of thinkers and writers and other
Speaker 2: people exploring something that I think is succinctly I mean,
Speaker 2: you call it the comfort crisis. Another way of describing
Speaker 2: that I saw with the title of book is like
Speaker 2: the extinction of experience, that being kind of this losing,
Speaker 2: this losing connection to like, our humanity because of all
Speaker 2: of these different forces of the modern day kind of
Speaker 2: bearing in on us. Whether that be more and more
Speaker 2: people living in cities and all the chaos that comes
Speaker 2: with that, whether it be the addiction to screen time
Speaker 2: you've written about that of course, whether it be the
Speaker 2: way that corporations are hijacking our psychology to get us
Speaker 2: to go deeper and deeper into all those things. Now
Speaker 2: you have AI, which is infiltrating our lives in all
Speaker 2: these different places, and now you know whether it's filling
Speaker 2: all media with a bunch of AI slop, whether it
Speaker 2: be distorting what we can believe is true or not,
Speaker 2: or whether it be actually like creating intermediaries where we
Speaker 2: are now interfacing with machine intelligences instead of real people
Speaker 2: when we have relationship problems, or when we need advice,
Speaker 2: or when we look for answers to questions. There's all
Speaker 2: of these things that are pulling us further and further
Speaker 2: away from being I think what we what a fundamentally
Speaker 2: means to be a human. And I feel like hunters
Speaker 2: and anglers, like outdoors people are fortunate and that we've
Speaker 2: maybe stumbled into one of the potential antidotes to much
Speaker 2: of this. But even within this community, I know from
Speaker 2: myself experiencing it and from talking to many other people
Speaker 2: like we're feeling it too. We're still experiencing many of
Speaker 2: these other things. So you wrote The Comfort Crisis five
Speaker 2: years ago, You've you've done similar We've explored this overarching
Speaker 2: top I've talked about in the Scarcity of Brain. I'm
Speaker 2: sure in your new book you're working on. I know
Speaker 2: in your newsletter, what is your prognosis of where we
Speaker 2: are today five years after the Comfort Crisis was published?
Speaker 2: Now that AI is overwhelming, We're in a different world
Speaker 2: than we were five six years ago when you worked
Speaker 2: on that first major piece. What's your sense of where
Speaker 2: we are right now? And are the things that you
Speaker 2: started writing about then more important now less important? Do
Speaker 2: you have a different perspective in any kind of way?
Speaker 3: I think they're more important.
Speaker 5: I will say that there are signs that people are
Speaker 5: starting to realize this, probably because I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: like you said, there's people writing, but a lot of
Speaker 5: people are noticing this and writing about it and thinking
Speaker 5: about it and thinking what can we do about it?
Speaker 5: Like I read an article in the New York Times
Speaker 5: the other day about a group of high school kids
Speaker 5: who went back to flipflons just started hanging out in person.
Speaker 2: That's great, yea.
Speaker 5: At the same time, these are rare instances. I think
Speaker 5: technology the point of technology is to make life easier,
Speaker 5: more thoughtless, more effortless, more nice, comfortable.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 5: The problem is is that humans don't grow and learn
Speaker 5: through everything being effortless and comfortable. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of the thing. There's fundamental problems with the technology, but
Speaker 5: I think one of the biggest problems is that it
Speaker 5: takes us out of the experiences that we need to
Speaker 5: have in order to be healthy, happy.
Speaker 3: And well. So, what are you doing when you are
Speaker 3: sitting at home on your phone watching the seventy ninth
Speaker 3: Instagram reel of the last you know? Five minutes you're indoors.
Speaker 3: You're not outside.
Speaker 5: The temperature is perfect, right, it's exactly dial to your specification,
Speaker 5: so you're not getting any sort of outside friction from
Speaker 5: the weather and temperature changes. You're also not moving right,
Speaker 5: You're not moving your body. You're not with other people
Speaker 5: because you're sucked into this device. There could be your
Speaker 5: wife or your kid could be sitting right next to you,
Speaker 5: but you're not with them at all. And so I
Speaker 5: think that fundamentally technology is taking us out of these
Speaker 5: things that are really important for us. Whereas if you
Speaker 5: go out on a hunt with your friend or your
Speaker 5: son or daughter, what happens all of a sudden you're outside.
Speaker 5: There's a million reasons why being outside is good for us.
Speaker 5: Some of them we don't fully understand. We just know
Speaker 5: that all the data says that being outside is really
Speaker 5: good for us too.
Speaker 3: You're having to move your body.
Speaker 5: That's very good for us. Best thing you can do
Speaker 5: long term for your health, and longevy is moving. You're
Speaker 5: also with the other person, right, and you're not just
Speaker 5: with them b yesing, you're on a quest together that's
Speaker 5: really important. The quest is to this like goal of
Speaker 5: finding a buck, right. Humans are most happy and engaged
Speaker 5: when we have a goal or a mission to accomplish.
Speaker 5: Even if you don't get along with the person, if
Speaker 5: you put two people on a mission together, that'll repair
Speaker 5: relationship really best. And there's actually data that suggests this
Speaker 5: insert like twenty to thirty other really good things that
Speaker 5: are happening in that environment. So I think the fundamental
Speaker 5: issue as technology is taken over, which don't get me wrong,
Speaker 5: it's had a ton of upsides, but is that it's
Speaker 5: removed us from the things that make us most well.
Speaker 5: So then the question I think for me and everyone
Speaker 5: else becomes, Okay, how can I get back to those
Speaker 5: rhythms that humans you still live and exist in for
Speaker 5: all of time? But also I'm not telling people to go,
Speaker 5: you know, build a yurt and hunting fish for all
Speaker 5: of their food. But it is like, how do you
Speaker 5: how do you find small ways to weave that into
Speaker 5: your daily life every single day, whether it's just like
Speaker 5: a walk on the trail by your house with your
Speaker 5: kid or your spouse, and then also in bigger things
Speaker 5: like your you know, your annual hunt, your insert whatever
Speaker 5: it might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: this for me echoes an idea within conservation. There's this
Speaker 2: idea of rewilding, and so in many places across the world,
Speaker 2: we've lost wildlife species that used to exist in that region,
Speaker 2: and there's a growing movement now rather than just trying
Speaker 2: to stop the bleeding where species are disappearing, they're actually
Speaker 2: trying to rewild areas, so bring back these native species
Speaker 2: that used to exist on the landscape. And I feel
Speaker 2: like a lot of what you've prescribed, and a lot
Speaker 2: of what some of these other people have talked about
Speaker 2: is almost like rewilding our lives. I've thought a lot about,
Speaker 2: like my general philosophy of this, and much of what
Speaker 2: I've taken from the Comfort Crisis, from your other writing
Speaker 2: is like ways to bring back our wild past, our
Speaker 2: evolutionary history. What it means to be human if you
Speaker 2: want to keep it a little simpler and bring that
Speaker 2: back into us, make us wild again, make us human again.
Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of why hunters and
Speaker 2: anglers love doing this and being a part of this
Speaker 2: and having that lifestyle. And I think, you know, many
Speaker 2: of these other things that can help us deal with
Speaker 2: modernity in general all kind of tie back to that
Speaker 2: kind of rewilding idea. But one thing I've noticed is
Speaker 2: that even when doing the right things, like you talked about,
Speaker 2: you've written about the importance of nature, the many different
Speaker 2: benefits of being outside. Right, there's all sorts of studies
Speaker 2: that you've referenced about, you know, the ways that sounds
Speaker 2: and smells and fractals and all these different things give
Speaker 2: us real physiological benefits, right, And hunters and anglers have
Speaker 2: stumbled on this, and we have, accidentally, you know, in
Speaker 2: many ways, built a life around being outside. And that's great,
Speaker 2: and we're all benefiting from it. But even those of
Speaker 2: us who do this stuff, we're still bringing in this
Speaker 2: outside world. And I remember reading that there's this idea,
Speaker 2: the three day effect that you talked about, which is like,
Speaker 2: after three days in the back country, it's like a
Speaker 2: mental re there's something really special that happens after three
Speaker 2: days in the wild in the back country, right, both
Speaker 2: of us have experienced that. But then a very important
Speaker 2: qualifier was including that, which is that if you have
Speaker 2: your phone, it negates that. And I'm curious if you
Speaker 2: can expand on that a little bit because I feel
Speaker 2: like there's an epidemic of phone use by hunters too.
Speaker 2: And I've like there's memes that go around. There's like,
Speaker 2: you know, people saying, like what hunting was, and you know,
Speaker 2: the year nineteen fifty was somebody actually out there hunting.
Speaker 2: What hunting is in twenty twenty five is a guy
Speaker 2: sitting in a tree looking at you know, Instagram reels
Speaker 2: for four hours. So how does introducing our phones and
Speaker 2: in time to our outdoor pursuits maybe changing the benefits,
Speaker 2: changing the experience, pulling away from what's actually supposed to be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, big picture is that you're not actually hunting, you're
Speaker 5: on your phone.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So there's some interesting studies and they there's a lot
Speaker 5: of these. A short term one was at the University
Speaker 5: of Utah. They took people to this outdoor area outside
Speaker 5: of Salt Lake City and they had one group do
Speaker 5: a hike, they couldn't use their phone at all. They
Speaker 5: had another group take the hike, but they could use
Speaker 5: their phone. They could call people, they could look at it,
Speaker 5: whatever the hell they wanted to do. And when they
Speaker 5: got back, they measured stress levels attention levels of the
Speaker 5: two groups, and the people who were on their phone
Speaker 5: saw no benefits, whereas the people who weren't on their
Speaker 5: phone couldn't use their phone, their stress levels had gone
Speaker 5: down significantly, their attention levels had been restored.
Speaker 3: Focus was much better.
Speaker 5: All these different markers improved, and then the longer term studies,
Speaker 5: like the three day effect, same thing happens. If a
Speaker 5: person is using their phone for a lot of the
Speaker 5: time outdoors, it just sort of negates all the benefits
Speaker 5: that you get from that, and it goes back to attention.
Speaker 5: So if I'm in the wilderness and I'm paying attention,
Speaker 5: i don't have my phone, your brain goes into this
Speaker 5: mode that researchers call and this is a terrible name.
Speaker 5: It should never allow scientists to come up with names.
Speaker 5: It's called soft fascination. And what you can think about
Speaker 5: it is it's sort of like sort of like a
Speaker 5: form of meditation, but with meditation, you're kind of going inward.
Speaker 5: It's almost an outward meditation where you're sort of lightly
Speaker 5: focusing on all this stuff around, this natural stuff, and
Speaker 5: that does really good things for the brain. Once you
Speaker 5: insert a phone, not only are you taking yourself out
Speaker 5: of that, but what are you looking at on your phone?
Speaker 5: If you're on Instagram reels, you're like, Okay, here's a
Speaker 5: fight video that's going to stress me out. Here's some
Speaker 5: political video that's going to stress me out. Here's some
Speaker 5: news about all the terrible things happening in the world
Speaker 5: that's going to stress me out. And so you're just
Speaker 5: adding this outside stressor and while not getting all the benefits. Now,
Speaker 5: I think that there's a balance to be found. So,
Speaker 5: for example, I did this. It's about eight hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty mile route in southern Utah in the spring last year.
Speaker 5: It takes about forty five days. Now, I could have
Speaker 5: carried in all these topo maps right, but now I'm
Speaker 5: not going to do that, like so many damn maps,
Speaker 5: so heavy.
Speaker 3: So I brought my.
Speaker 5: Phone and I used a GPS mapping application for that.
Speaker 5: So I had to be on my phone occasionally out there,
Speaker 5: but I didn't have service. I didn't download anything. I
Speaker 5: didn't download pods, even yours.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I didn't download a bunch of music and stuff. I
Speaker 5: only use my phone when I really needed to use it,
Speaker 5: and I also asked myself, do I really need to
Speaker 5: use this phone? So, for example, when you navigate, you
Speaker 5: can do it two ways. You can stare down at
Speaker 5: the thing and look at the blue dot and follow
Speaker 5: the line the whole time, or you can actually pull
Speaker 5: back and read the map and go, Okay, here's where
Speaker 5: I am situated in this landscape.
Speaker 3: If I look, oh, I can see a bluff over there.
Speaker 5: Looks like I just kind of need to walk toward
Speaker 5: that bluff, and it might be five miles. I don't
Speaker 5: need to look at my phone. I just know I
Speaker 5: generally need to go in that direction, and so that
Speaker 5: way I can pay attention. So I think there's a
Speaker 5: good balance to be found with technology because it can
Speaker 5: absolutely help us. I know, like apps like on x
Speaker 5: really help a lot of hunters. But the question is
Speaker 5: how reliant are you going to be on that? How
Speaker 5: much of your attention are you focusing on that? And
Speaker 5: can you sort of just use it to the minimum
Speaker 5: effective dose that you need to users as a use
Speaker 5: it as a tool rather than it sort of using you.
Speaker 2: So on that line of thinking of the technology using you,
Speaker 2: I feel like the best example that might be social media. Right,
Speaker 2: can you expand a little bit on just how and
Speaker 2: why social media can be still particularly dangerous or toxic
Speaker 2: slash addicting? Spell that out a little bit for us.
Speaker 5: I'll give you a surprising answer for the same exact
Speaker 5: reason hunting is addicting. So social media works on random rewards.
Speaker 5: Random rewards capture the attention of every single animal, always have. Now,
Speaker 5: the difference is social media is able to really tweak
Speaker 5: that random reward schedule to get it to the perfect,
Speaker 5: perfect amount of random rewards that keep us coming back.
Speaker 3: And it's also very accessible.
Speaker 5: So in my book Scarcity Debrain, I talk about this
Speaker 5: thing called the scarcity loop, and it's the ultimate vehicle
Speaker 5: for capturing human attention. And so I'm going to unpack
Speaker 5: it's a little bit complicated, but bear with me. It's
Speaker 5: got three parts. It's got opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick,
Speaker 5: quick repeatability. So opportunity, you have an opportunity to get
Speaker 5: something of value, unpredictable rewards. You know you'll get that
Speaker 5: thing at some point, but you don't know when. You
Speaker 5: don't know how valuable it'll be. And quick repeatability you
Speaker 5: can immediately do the thing again to try and get
Speaker 5: that thing of value. So with social media, if you
Speaker 5: unpack that, it's opportunity. I might see a hilarious reel
Speaker 5: or a reel that makes me pissed off about politics,
Speaker 5: or I might get a like or a DM, but
Speaker 5: it's unpredictable. You don't know when that's going to happen, right,
Speaker 5: Could happen in half a second, could happen in thirty seconds.
Speaker 5: You don't know how valuable it's going to be. Is
Speaker 5: it like a DM that's from someone I don't really
Speaker 5: know this person, that's a random request I don't like it.
Speaker 3: Or is it like a.
Speaker 5: DM being like, hey, come on my podcast and blah
Speaker 5: blah blah, and then you can recheck and recheck and recheck.
Speaker 3: So it just points you into this book.
Speaker 5: Right, And it's because it's on your person all the time. Now,
Speaker 5: hunting works on the exact same schedule. Yeah, opportunity. You
Speaker 5: have an opportunity to kill a giant buck, but it's unpredictable.
Speaker 5: You don't know where the hell it is. You don't
Speaker 5: know when you're going to see it. You don't know
Speaker 5: if that oh I might have seen a buck, I
Speaker 5: don't know if it's a was it actually dough or.
Speaker 3: Was it that giant buck I got on my camera?
Speaker 5: And then you just repeat that. Right, you're out there
Speaker 5: and you're searching and searching for that buck. It's the
Speaker 5: exact same schedule that makes both of those activities so addicting.
Speaker 5: But what's happening in the meantime When you're hunting, you're outside,
Speaker 5: you're moving around, you're often with friends, Like all these
Speaker 5: good things are happening as you're in aged in that
Speaker 5: three part game, as it were, Whereas with social you're
Speaker 5: sitting at home, you're not doing anything. The stuff that's
Speaker 5: coming into you is often making you ramped up, anxious,
Speaker 5: anxietiss and you're not doing all these things that make
Speaker 5: you better as a person. So the big question is,
Speaker 5: you know, with these sort of games that we get
Speaker 5: pulled into and they're everywhere, Like basically I can tell
Speaker 5: you if listeners open their phone and look at the
Speaker 5: apps they spend the most time on, I will guarantee
Speaker 5: that they fall into that scarcity loop, whether it's email,
Speaker 5: whether it's sports betting, whether it's of course social media,
Speaker 5: whether it's even finance apps, the exact same thing. But
Speaker 5: the question is I lost my train of thought a
Speaker 5: little bit. But the question is, is that three part game,
Speaker 5: that scarcity loop doing things that are helping you in
Speaker 5: the meantime rather than hurting you?
Speaker 2: And I wonder, you know, given that, you know, what
Speaker 2: do you you know in the case that there's positive
Speaker 2: scarcity loops and there's negative scarcity loops like you mentioned,
Speaker 2: and so in these ones, you know, like social media,
Speaker 2: that seems so you know, so clear to so many
Speaker 2: of us that there's these obvious negatives to it. But
Speaker 2: for most of us, we kind of just fell into it.
Speaker 2: We started using social media fifteen years ago or twenty
Speaker 2: years ago or whatever, when everybody got a Facebook account,
Speaker 2: and then the next thing was like, oh well, you
Speaker 2: got to get an Instagram account, and then oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to be on Twitter, and then oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to get on TikTok, and you're just kind
Speaker 2: of doing it and using it, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you said this earlier, it starts to use
Speaker 2: you and we don't even realize it. But it becomes
Speaker 2: a compulsion. It becomes this thing that you're doing, and
Speaker 2: you don't know why you're doing it. It doesn't bring
Speaker 2: you all that much value. And then to your point,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, all this time goes by and
Speaker 2: you have nothing to show for it, and you write
Speaker 2: about this and scarcity brain, the fact that there's Yeah,
Speaker 2: this isn't happening by chance. This is not random. This
Speaker 2: is highly engineered by people using very you know, seriously
Speaker 2: researched practices to take advantage of our psychology to do this,
Speaker 2: to hijack our brains to do this. So we're up
Speaker 2: against like a serious challenge here. It's not just that
Speaker 2: we are like weak minded people. It's also that people
Speaker 2: are using very sophisticated like weaponizing of this stuff that
Speaker 2: we think is like a fun little thing for us
Speaker 2: to look at. But instead there's people on the other
Speaker 2: side who are really gearing this to suck us in.
Speaker 2: How do you break out of that? How do we
Speaker 2: reclaim some kind of control.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that just for context, why we fall into
Speaker 5: this this system, the reason we're attracted to it is
Speaker 5: evolved out of hunting and hunting and gathering in our ancestors.
Speaker 5: Like I said, hunting is hunting and gathering. It is
Speaker 5: fundamentally a random awards game, and if humans weren't inherently
Speaker 5: attracted to that and willing to keep playing it all day.
Speaker 3: We would have all died off today.
Speaker 5: Though it gets put into like you said, all these
Speaker 5: different technologies, and in the book, I actually talk about
Speaker 5: how we really started to figure out how to tweak
Speaker 5: it perfectly for the desires of corporations in Las Vegas
Speaker 5: in the eighties. It's crazy story, But how do you
Speaker 5: get out of it? Like I said, there's three parts,
Speaker 5: and if you just remove or change any of the
Speaker 5: three parts, you can fix it. So for me, the
Speaker 5: biggest part that's relatively easy to tweak is that quick repeatability.
Speaker 5: So the faster you can do a behavior, the more
Speaker 5: likely you are to do a behavior. If we had
Speaker 5: to say, run a mile to check our Instagram, no
Speaker 5: one would check their damn Instagram like ever, So I
Speaker 5: think the question is how do you add friction into
Speaker 5: getting into Instagram or your apps, or turning on Netflix
Speaker 5: or whatever it might be that's hurting you. How do
Speaker 5: you how can you slow down that process? So on
Speaker 5: cell phones, and I realized it's ironic to tell people
Speaker 5: to download an app so they can use other apps less.
Speaker 5: There's a great app that's helped a lot of people.
Speaker 5: It's called clear Space, and what it does is you
Speaker 5: pick the apps that you want to limit. Let's say
Speaker 5: you pick Twitter. When you go to open Twitter, clear
Speaker 5: space makes you pause, take a breath in, take a
Speaker 5: breath out. Then it asks you, do you actually want
Speaker 5: to use this app? Because a lot of times we
Speaker 5: just pull out our phone like reflexively to check whatever
Speaker 5: app it is we're addicted to. And then once you
Speaker 5: say yes, I would actually like to check Twitter, it
Speaker 5: asks you how long do you actually want to stay
Speaker 5: in Twitter?
Speaker 3: And it gives you options.
Speaker 5: You can you know, you can set up for five minutes,
Speaker 5: ten minutes, twenty minutes, so you pick ten minutes. Because
Speaker 5: the problem is we'll often go open Twitter to go, oh,
Speaker 5: I need to respond to that direct message, or I
Speaker 5: want to see what Mark Kenyon has tweeted about this
Speaker 5: season's hunting, and then we often just start scrolling into
Speaker 5: all this southern nonsense. In an hour has gone by.
Speaker 5: So by limiting the time, you're forced to kind of
Speaker 5: do what you actually want to do. So I think
Speaker 5: that's a good use for bones. But also, I mean,
Speaker 5: people get like the scarcity loop isn't shopping. One of
Speaker 5: the reasons people buy so much crap now is because
Speaker 5: it's so easy and fast to buy stuff. So if
Speaker 5: you can even tell yourself, all right, this thing I
Speaker 5: think I want, I'm going to put it in my cart,
Speaker 5: my online shopping cart, and I'm going to wait seventy
Speaker 5: two hours, I'm going to slow this down.
Speaker 3: You'll buy way less.
Speaker 5: Stuff, like so much less stuff because so much is
Speaker 5: this stuff is just on board. I was online, Oh
Speaker 5: I saw this, Yeah, I'll buy it. You insert a
Speaker 5: little bit of time and friction, purchasing tends to go down.
Speaker 5: And so the question is, with any behavior you have
Speaker 5: that is something you're compulsively doing that's hurting you, how
Speaker 5: can I slow it down?
Speaker 2: So I want to circle back to to I guess
Speaker 2: a little bit more of One of the best ways
Speaker 2: to slow things down is to get outside. Is to
Speaker 2: insert this big pause in normal life, everyday life, by
Speaker 2: experiencing nature, which again I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: that's like a big thing for them to go out
Speaker 2: and do anything right. Getting there twenty minutes. You know,
Speaker 2: three times a week is like a stretch goal. You know,
Speaker 2: asking someone to go out in the back country for
Speaker 2: three days a month or a year is like a
Speaker 2: big deal for some people. For folks listening to this podcast,
Speaker 2: it's not that big of the deal. It's what we
Speaker 2: want to do. But you have recommended something that's even
Speaker 2: beyond that, which I loved when we talked about last time,
Speaker 2: and I've thought about it since and then kind of
Speaker 2: forgot about. And then when I reread your book recently,
Speaker 2: was reminded of And that's the Massagi idea, this idea
Speaker 2: of pushing you know, we talked earlier about pushing yourself,
Speaker 2: having goals and everything, and is that a good thing
Speaker 2: or can that sometimes get you out of focus of
Speaker 2: why you love something? But there does seem to be
Speaker 2: this benefit to kind of pushing the edges of the possible.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious over the last five years or so
Speaker 2: since you I think I think you can be widely
Speaker 2: credited with popularizing that idea. It's really caught on. Where's
Speaker 2: your head on this? I guess for people who aren't familiar,
Speaker 2: what is it? Number two? Where are you now? Five
Speaker 2: years into this as it's grown, and as people have
Speaker 2: been increasingly coming to you to talk about this, and
Speaker 2: you've been talking about it, and I guess where what
Speaker 2: are your best practices now, five years after you first
Speaker 2: brought this idea out to the world, give us that.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah.
Speaker 5: So a masogi easiest way to think about it is
Speaker 5: it a big epic challenge that you take on once
Speaker 5: a year for the sake of growth. There's two rules.
Speaker 5: Make it really hard, don't die. So the second rule,
Speaker 5: it is kind of tongue in cheek, just be safe.
Speaker 5: But the first rule we define by saying you should
Speaker 5: have a fifty to fifty shot of accomplishing whatever your
Speaker 5: masogi task is. So the fifty to fifty shot that
Speaker 5: means two things. One is that everyone's fifty to fifty
Speaker 5: is going to be different.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Let's say that my masogi is I'm going to run
Speaker 5: fifty miles. Well, the lady down the street from me,
Speaker 5: who's you know, sixty seven years old, first might be
Speaker 5: to run ten miles. But we're still going to do
Speaker 5: something that we think we only have a fifty percent
Speaker 5: shot of doing. And the fifty percent shot part second
Speaker 5: part of this is that it's really important because it
Speaker 5: means you have a really high chance of failure. And today,
Speaker 5: when we take on challenges, we often pick things that
Speaker 5: are well within the range of possibilities, like ninety percent.
Speaker 5: Sure we're going to acomplish this thing. But the problem
Speaker 5: is is we don't ever get pushed out to our edge.
Speaker 5: So whether you actually accomplish this thing or not is irrelevant.
Speaker 5: The point is that you want to meet this point
Speaker 5: where you think you are going to fail this. You're like,
Speaker 5: I'm done, I can't go any further. But if you
Speaker 5: can just push a little bit past that, just keep pushing,
Speaker 5: you get this second moment where you realize, well, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, I'm past what I thought was my limit
Speaker 5: back there. So I've sold myself short here, and then
Speaker 5: the important question becomes where else in my life could
Speaker 5: I be selling myself short? So I'm a firm believer
Speaker 5: that humans don't learn through sitting around thinking all the time.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: We can intellectually understand a lot of concepts in our brain,
Speaker 5: but they don't actually stick until we get out in
Speaker 5: the world and we actually experience them. And the massogi
Speaker 5: teaches you through experience, you're probably a lot more capable
Speaker 5: then you think, and that changes your worldview afterwards. So
Speaker 5: then to follow up on the second part of your
Speaker 5: question is how has my thinking evolved on this? Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think a couple things. I think when I first
Speaker 5: wrote about it, like the book really focused on physical things.
Speaker 5: I don't think masogis always have to be physical. So
Speaker 5: let's say you took a I don't know someone who's
Speaker 5: into ultra ultra marathon running right, A tendency for that
Speaker 5: person would would be, Okay, I'm gonna my masogi is
Speaker 5: a fifty miler. Oh, I completed that. Now I'm going
Speaker 5: to do one hundred miles. Completed that, Now I'm going
Speaker 5: to do two hundred miles. And it just becomes this
Speaker 5: arms race. It's like you kind of know you're going
Speaker 5: to do it, and it sounds to me like you're
Speaker 5: actually pretty good at running. That's a strong spot for you.
Speaker 5: So for me, what if that person your masogis you
Speaker 5: have to go do a meditation retreat for twenty four
Speaker 5: hours because a lot of times these endurance types they
Speaker 5: just can't sit still. I always got to be moving.
Speaker 5: So it's like the question becomes what is the thing
Speaker 5: that really scares me that I'm not doing and how
Speaker 5: can I try that, because I'll tend to peel away
Speaker 5: new layers of the onion that you haven't explored. And again,
Speaker 5: I mean, this could really be anything. I was given
Speaker 5: a talk one time and I talked about this masogi
Speaker 5: idea of my talk, and this woman came up to
Speaker 5: me afterwards and she said, hey, I read your book
Speaker 5: and I did a masogi.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, great, what was it?
Speaker 4: Was?
Speaker 3: My masogi? I was trying sushi.
Speaker 5: I was like, really, tell me about that, you know,
Speaker 5: and she goes all my life I had all like
Speaker 5: a fear of different foods, especially sushi, just like, oh,
Speaker 5: I can't do that. I'm just you know, because I
Speaker 5: tried it, because I didn't love it, but also didn't
Speaker 5: hate it.
Speaker 3: It was totally fine.
Speaker 5: And it made me realize that I had all these
Speaker 5: irrational fears that I'd never tested, and that opened the
Speaker 5: door for me to start questioning, Okay, what are this
Speaker 5: other laundry list of heres?
Speaker 3: Is this rational?
Speaker 5: Is this? We're trying and experiencing and seeing what I think,
Speaker 5: and that is what we're after that big opening of
Speaker 5: the door of our thoughts, how we see ourselves how
Speaker 5: we think about the world.
Speaker 3: That's really what we're going for.
Speaker 2: What's been the most impactful masogi you've experienced yourself.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think probably my Arctic trip qualifies as
Speaker 5: one that was really I hadn't been hunting. I'd never
Speaker 5: killed an animal with a weapon besides my Nissan Ultimate
Speaker 5: in high school in an unfortunate accident, and that really
Speaker 5: sort of changed my thinking around the food system. I
Speaker 5: think that happens for a lot of hunters, so that
Speaker 5: one had a lot of these moments that just changed
Speaker 5: my thinking about things and affected my behavior moving forward.
Speaker 5: And I think too, probably more recently, as that hike
Speaker 5: I just did. I mean, I didn't enter it thinking
Speaker 5: it was a masogi, But the reality is is probably
Speaker 5: wasn't masogi. Because I didn't, I probably had a ten
Speaker 5: percent chance of finishing it. I won't tell you if
Speaker 5: I finished it or not. You can learn that in
Speaker 5: the book when it comes out, and whoever the hell
Speaker 5: knows how long. But I think it changed a lot
Speaker 5: of my thinking around what I was capable of, and
Speaker 5: also how we should think about living in the modern world,
Speaker 5: and also friendship. I did it with a friend and
Speaker 5: I've always been one of those people who, you know,
Speaker 5: I like people, but only in smallish and fleeting clusters
Speaker 5: more or less. And that was like, you know what, dude, Like,
Speaker 5: maybe you need to go go out and hang out
Speaker 5: with people more time. Like you really got a lot
Speaker 5: out of this, and I think that just changed my
Speaker 5: perspetition perception about some of the social stuff in my life.
Speaker 2: Have you figured out how to harness or how do
Speaker 2: you take something like that? How do you have an experience?
Speaker 2: And for so many of us, we have these things,
Speaker 2: We have these transcendent experiences, oftentimes in wild and then
Speaker 2: wild places right awe is something that seems to be
Speaker 2: really important to humans. It's something that comes in spades
Speaker 2: in the wild world. It often, you know, doing hard
Speaker 2: things often inspires like you just said, reflection and self
Speaker 2: kind of understanding. How do you carry that forward? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you take that and not just let it
Speaker 2: slip away over the next week or two, but instead
Speaker 2: somehow bottle that up and use it for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life. Have you figured that out? Do you
Speaker 2: have any idea?
Speaker 5: That's the great question. I mean, Joseph Campbell wrote about this.
Speaker 5: You had a quote, It's like you get up to
Speaker 5: a height and then your question becomes do I stay
Speaker 5: with that or do I return and back to normal life.
Speaker 5: So in the Hero's Journey, there's typically I assume people
Speaker 5: are somewhat familiar with the Hero's Journey, but it's basically
Speaker 5: someone goes out into this really trying environment, encounters these
Speaker 5: challenges like a big adventure, and it fundamentally changes their
Speaker 5: self concept and they have these you know, peak experiences,
Speaker 5: and there's always there's two paths. It's like the hero
Speaker 5: either stays out in this wild world or they have
Speaker 5: to return back to their normal life and figure out, Okay,
Speaker 5: how do I stay with this thing? And it's not easy,
Speaker 5: and I think most of us are going to be
Speaker 5: returning back.
Speaker 3: To the normal world. So for me, I think it's.
Speaker 5: I think when you first get back from something, whether
Speaker 5: it's like a big hunt or whatever it might be,
Speaker 5: that changes you. The lessons and the feelings are really
Speaker 5: kind of intense, but they fade over time naturally the
Speaker 5: longer you stay in normal life. And for me, it's
Speaker 5: always trying to bring to mind what did I learn
Speaker 5: on that, and then making sure I have new things
Speaker 5: on the horizon, you know, It's like you can re
Speaker 5: up that every year if you go out and you
Speaker 5: do something interesting that changes you and finding new things
Speaker 5: to do. I think the big takeaway is how can
Speaker 5: I add adventure back into my life, both big and small?
Speaker 5: What am I doing yearly? But what am I doing weekly?
Speaker 5: You know, there's a lot of ways to spend a weekend.
Speaker 5: You can hang around and watch Netflix, so you can
Speaker 5: be like, hey, family, get in the truck. I saw
Speaker 5: this place on the map. Looks kind of interesting. I
Speaker 5: don't know anything about it, but that's the point.
Speaker 3: Let's go.
Speaker 5: And so it's having to constantly do something. I think
Speaker 5: it's easy in modern life to get kind of caught
Speaker 5: in the exact same routine and people start to have
Speaker 5: these kind of feelings of restlessness discontent. Okay, what's the point.
Speaker 5: But you can sort of break that up by getting
Speaker 5: out of your routine and doing something new and interesting
Speaker 5: and adventurous and continuing that over time. That's helped me anyways.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, there's this guy's names I I of
Speaker 2: get his last name wrong, Jesse Eisler. I think or
Speaker 2: Ike's like, you know, you know, Jesse. He's all over
Speaker 2: the place and he has this rule that he got
Speaker 2: from some friend of his, where he basically says, I'm
Speaker 2: going to get the specifics run. But I think every
Speaker 2: single year he does one thing basically a masogi every year,
Speaker 2: like one thing that he never thought would be possible,
Speaker 2: some crazy, big adventure of some kind. And then once
Speaker 2: every other month he tries to do something that he
Speaker 2: never would have thought he would do, just like something
Speaker 2: out of the ordinary, something outside of his comfort zone.
Speaker 2: And basically what the idea is like, Hey, if you
Speaker 2: live a life like that where once every year you
Speaker 2: do some really big adventure and then every other month
Speaker 2: you're doing something outside of your comfort zone, one of
Speaker 2: those things will stand out. You know, when we go
Speaker 2: outside of the normal, those are the memories that stick
Speaker 2: with us. Those are the experiences that form a life.
Speaker 2: It's typically not just sitting and watching Netflix. Right, So
Speaker 2: if you do that, you build a very full, rich life,
Speaker 2: which I think is which I think falls right in
Speaker 2: line with a lot of what you're saying here now
Speaker 2: with that goal, I guess out there, I've recognized one
Speaker 2: challenge in my own life in trying to live this way,
Speaker 2: which is my daily life. Like you, in many ways
Speaker 2: of sitting in a computer and writing right taping on
Speaker 2: the keyboard, or recording podcasts or doing stuff in an office,
Speaker 2: which increasingly more and more of us are. So we're
Speaker 2: very sedentary for large parts of our lives. And then
Speaker 2: ever once in a while, whether it be every weekend
Speaker 2: doing a smaller thing, or a handful times a year
Speaker 2: doing some big back country trip like ILL have. Like
Speaker 2: maybe I'm lucky I get to do more than most.
Speaker 2: I might have three or four or five or six
Speaker 2: like big, very intense backpacking trips or big hunts or
Speaker 2: something like that where you're carrying a lot of weight
Speaker 2: and you're doing really strenuous things. It's it's intense. So
Speaker 2: my life goes from like very sedentary to very intense.
Speaker 2: And I've gotten very good at having a consistent cardio base,
Speaker 2: but not as well with my strength base for that,
Speaker 2: and I have had, you know, injuries because of that.
Speaker 2: I have had problems where I've jumped from you know, thinking, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm in pretty good shape. I run a ton and
Speaker 2: do a lot of this stuff, and I go and
Speaker 2: do this big, intense thing and I'm not quite ready
Speaker 2: for that. You have popularized another idea that I think
Speaker 2: addresses this for a lot of people, which is the
Speaker 2: very simple but seemingly powerful idea of walking with weight.
Speaker 2: It seems like that might be a solution to what
Speaker 2: many people today, especially hunters and anglers, are dealing with,
Speaker 2: and that they're probably working some kind of office job,
Speaker 2: relatively sedentary, and then all of a sudden they want
Speaker 2: to go out for their weekend, or they're once a
Speaker 2: month or once a year big adventure hunting or fishing,
Speaker 2: going somewhere and maybe aren't quite ready for Tell me
Speaker 2: about how walking with weight might be a solution for
Speaker 2: that kind of lifestyle. Why that's so powerful?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the short answer and I'll say, in
Speaker 5: the comfort crisis, I use the word rocking. It's basically
Speaker 5: walking with a weighted backpack. I've started to shift to
Speaker 5: the term walking with weight because when I would tell
Speaker 5: women about rocking and that they should do it, rocking
Speaker 5: is a military term, so when they'd google it, they'd
Speaker 5: see these special forces dudes with these giant backpacks and go, yeah.
Speaker 3: That is not for me.
Speaker 5: But the reality is is that humans are built to
Speaker 5: carry weight over distance. We are the only mammal that
Speaker 5: can do that. We are uniquely good at carrying weight
Speaker 5: for distance, and it totally shaped us into who we
Speaker 5: are today, allowed us to take over the world, but
Speaker 5: we often don't do it anymore. And I think the
Speaker 5: reason it's so particularly good for backcountry hunters and anglers
Speaker 5: is you're building strength while also getting cardio. So if
Speaker 5: you are too skinny, it'll help put some muscle on
Speaker 5: your fame. If you're too if you have too much fat,
Speaker 5: you have too much muscle, it'll lean you out because
Speaker 5: you actually don't want too much muscle when you're covering
Speaker 5: a lot of ground.
Speaker 3: Because it's just extra weight you have to carry.
Speaker 5: So it's kind of this dual activity that hits both
Speaker 5: strength and cardio at the same time. And of course
Speaker 5: it's very applicable to the pack out right. That is
Speaker 5: exactly what you're doing when you have to pack out
Speaker 5: an animal. And I think too, it's nice because it's
Speaker 5: very approachable. A lot of people run, it's great. A
Speaker 5: lot of people also get injured by running. So the
Speaker 5: data on this is everywhere, but anywhere from I think
Speaker 5: twenty to I think seventy five percent of runners get
Speaker 5: injured every single year. It's a lot of people, a
Speaker 5: lot of injuries but when you walk with weight, the
Speaker 5: injury rate is basically like that of walking, rises as
Speaker 5: you add more weight. But I think if you're walking
Speaker 5: with anywhere from ten to say, thirty percent of your
Speaker 5: body weight, like you're probably not going to get injured,
Speaker 5: and you're going to build a really good base of
Speaker 5: strength that's going to apply to the mountains and the
Speaker 5: streams wherever you might be. That's gonna make you a
Speaker 5: lot more physically prepared for the activities of backcentry hunting.
Speaker 2: So one of the pushbacks I've internally had to it
Speaker 2: has been like an ROI on my time. If I
Speaker 2: have an hour that I can devote to some kind
Speaker 2: of exercise, I could run. I don't know, in an hour,
Speaker 2: I'm going to run five miles or something like that.
Speaker 2: I feel like that I'm going to get a really
Speaker 2: good workout and fire you know, five miles in or
Speaker 2: six miles in or whatever it is in that hour
Speaker 2: that feels like something. I'll really feel it afterwards, I'll
Speaker 2: work up a good sweat, et cetera. But with an
Speaker 2: hour hike, you know, I'm only going to go two
Speaker 2: and a half miles or three miles or something. It
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like I'm going as far, it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: as high output. Maybe do you have a sense in
Speaker 2: your new book, I know you've charted out some of this.
Speaker 2: Could you speak to you know, how does like a
Speaker 2: run stack up to a ruck or walking with weight
Speaker 2: and how much weight do we need to get the
Speaker 2: same ROI out of that hour if we're walking with
Speaker 2: weight versus going for a trail run or something. Can
Speaker 2: you is there some way to kind of compare apples
Speaker 2: to oranges?
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the way you would compare it if you
Speaker 5: just want to think about it as energy burned i e.
Speaker 3: Calories.
Speaker 5: So when you add weight to your walk, you start
Speaker 5: to burn anywhere from twenty to as much as say,
Speaker 5: two times more calories per mile when you add weight.
Speaker 5: Out of course, that number change is based on the
Speaker 5: amount of weight you have, So effectively, the more weight
Speaker 5: that you add, and I do tell people keep it
Speaker 5: under thirty percent of your body weight. That's usually kind
Speaker 5: of the cut off point where some bad things can
Speaker 5: start to happen if you go over thirty percent. But
Speaker 5: you're not going to be burning that much less calories
Speaker 5: by walking with weight. And the important thing is too
Speaker 5: you've just told me, Yeah, my endurance is good, but
Speaker 5: I'm sucky at strength. It's like, okay, well, so you're
Speaker 5: gonna go do more endurance and do less strength work,
Speaker 5: like if you want to balance this out. So I
Speaker 5: would never tell people, hey, don't ever run, no matter
Speaker 5: who you are, if you're a hunter, no matter you know,
Speaker 5: whatever thing you're into. But I do think adding some
Speaker 5: walking with weight in can't help round out a lot
Speaker 5: of your fitness. I said, caring weight is a fundamental
Speaker 5: human movement pattern that we don't do now, and once
Speaker 5: we start to do it, it tends to fix a
Speaker 5: lot of the issues that modern people tend to have
Speaker 5: just because of desk work. Not to mention, you can
Speaker 5: just throw in a backpack whenever you're doing everyday stuff
Speaker 5: if you have to, Like if I have to take
Speaker 5: my dogs for a walk, I'm going to toss on
Speaker 5: a backpack and throw out a thirty pound backpack and
Speaker 5: take them for a walk. So now I've taken that
Speaker 5: walk from something pretty low level relaxing to now it's
Speaker 5: actually kind of in the workout zone. I would have
Speaker 5: to walk my dogs no matter what. So if I
Speaker 5: just toss on that pack, now I'm getting a lot
Speaker 5: more out of it. Or if you take a nightly
Speaker 5: walk with your wife. My friend John Deloney, who also
Speaker 5: has a pot podcast, does this. He was like, you know,
Speaker 5: my wife and I would always have these great conversations
Speaker 5: on our walks, but I always felt like I was
Speaker 5: taking time away from my workouts. You know, He's like, man,
Speaker 5: I just start throwing on a pack and now I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm solid. I'm getting some work from this. And I
Speaker 5: would also say probably, you know, I'm not one of
Speaker 5: those people who's going to sit here and tell you
Speaker 5: that rocking walking with weight is the only thing you
Speaker 5: should do. I don't believe that at all. Humans are
Speaker 5: extremely versatile. I think you should run. I think you
Speaker 5: should rock. I think you should.
Speaker 3: Lift things, carry things.
Speaker 5: I think you should basically do everything because that's what
Speaker 5: the mountains ultimately demand of you. You're having to hike
Speaker 5: some sketchy terrain, you often have a pack on. You're
Speaker 5: taxing your cardio system, you're taxing your strength system. You're
Speaker 5: going to have to pick up some stuff and carry it.
Speaker 5: So you want to be doing everything if the mountains
Speaker 5: are demanding everything from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So for people specifically looking to train for a
Speaker 2: backcountry hunt. You know, walking with weight is the prescription
Speaker 2: for a lot of people. Right. There's a lot of different,
Speaker 2: you know, training plans that have been built out there.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of best practices that people expert hunters
Speaker 2: have have pitched and talked about and gyms promote. But
Speaker 2: I don't think any of these people have written an
Speaker 2: entire book all about the science and research behind walking
Speaker 2: with weight. You have which is coming out soon for
Speaker 2: somebody who is who is not just rucking to establish
Speaker 2: a fitness but is specifically walking with weight to train
Speaker 2: for a backcountry elk hunting trip or mule deer trip
Speaker 2: or caribou hunting trip or something like that. Excuse me,
Speaker 2: what is your what's your what are your best practices
Speaker 2: or recommended you know, ways to build out a plan
Speaker 2: to actually practice for that. So that's like, hey, I
Speaker 2: need to be ready to pack out one hundred pounds
Speaker 2: and it might be ten miles over and over or
Speaker 2: whatever might be. You've experienced it, what would you prescribe
Speaker 2: for that person in that situation.
Speaker 5: It's a great question. My first word is if a
Speaker 5: person had never rucked before, never walked with weight thrown
Speaker 5: weight in their pack is to start lighter than you think.
Speaker 5: Especially with guys, we tend to just low the thing
Speaker 5: up and then we get out We're like, this sucks,
Speaker 5: I hate this, my shoulders hurt, I'm never doing this again,
Speaker 5: and then we don't ever do it again. Yeah, So
Speaker 5: I tell people to on ramp slowly, start with say pounds,
Speaker 5: work your way up from there, and then find a
Speaker 5: weight eventually through trial and air that feels uncomfortable and
Speaker 5: challenging but also not soul crushing. You want to find
Speaker 5: a weight where you feel like you could just go
Speaker 5: for miles and miles and miles. Yes, it's hard, but
Speaker 5: you're gonna be able to accomplish it. So for me,
Speaker 5: like my go to is thirty pounds thirty five about
Speaker 5: and I feel like you can also push that every
Speaker 5: now and then, So sometimes I'll do say sixty something,
Speaker 5: because I know, okay, I might have to have a
Speaker 5: really heavy pack out if you just structure this across
Speaker 5: a week, if I was leading into a hunt season,
Speaker 5: I would probably want to do three days of rucking
Speaker 5: each week per se. I don't know an hour each time.
Speaker 5: And granted this goes back to the dog walking thing.
Speaker 5: It's like I have to walk my dogs anyway. I'm
Speaker 5: just throw my damn pack on. It's not even really lot.
Speaker 5: I've done an extra workout. Do three days of rocking
Speaker 5: with week. You might want one day where you're a
Speaker 5: little bit heavier to kind of get used to those
Speaker 5: heavier loads. Don't go above a thirtyier body weight. I
Speaker 5: don't think it's really worth it. You're not going to
Speaker 5: gain anymore when you go do that much heavier pack out.
Speaker 5: You'll help avoid injuries. Three days of rucking do say
Speaker 5: one day. If it were me, I would maybe do
Speaker 5: one day of long slow run, like really slow. You'd
Speaker 5: also do a bike something like that, and then I
Speaker 5: would want to do two days of strength training a week,
Speaker 5: really focusing on lower body because in the mountains the
Speaker 5: legs feed the wolf. The mountains don't give a shit
Speaker 5: how big your biceps are. They really don't. So you
Speaker 5: want to do some heavy squats. You definitely want to
Speaker 5: be doing a lot of weighted carries like farmers walks,
Speaker 5: suitcase carries, things like that.
Speaker 3: Upper body stuff that uses a lot of your body.
Speaker 5: So for example, a bench press, you're just lying on
Speaker 5: this thing you don't have to engage your core as much.
Speaker 5: You just sort of press, but a push up like
Speaker 5: you actually have to engage your core, and it's more
Speaker 5: realistic for like, oh I fell on the mountains, now
Speaker 5: I need to like get up using my entire body.
Speaker 5: So really just trying to mimic, like what are the
Speaker 5: exercises that I'm going to be doing in the mountains.
Speaker 5: That's very vague. It's hard to like lay out an
Speaker 5: entire week of fitness, but I do think probably two
Speaker 5: days of strength training a week, three days are rucking,
Speaker 5: and then another day of some other type of cardio.
Speaker 2: Makes sense. You are in a you're in an interesting
Speaker 2: line of work, and I can relate to it, and
Speaker 2: that you have attacked a single problem or idea in
Speaker 2: book form, and I know that takes years and years
Speaker 2: before it finally comes out. So I'm sure you've worked
Speaker 2: on the comfort crisis for years behind the scenes, and
Speaker 2: then finally it came out in twenty twenty one or
Speaker 2: whatever it was, and then you talked about a bunch,
Speaker 2: but it had been like three or four years or
Speaker 2: however long of that kind of marinating in your subconscious
Speaker 2: And then same thing with Scarcy of bring you. You
Speaker 2: went off into the dark, and you work for years,
Speaker 2: and then you finally came out into the world with it,
Speaker 2: and then everybody wants to talk to you about that
Speaker 2: set of ideas. But you've already been working on for
Speaker 2: three years now. You're doing that with Walking with Weight.
Speaker 2: But oftentimes the thing that you just published is something
Speaker 2: that you're almost tired of already thinking about because you've
Speaker 2: been writing about it for so many years, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Even though nobody else realized that you've been thinking about
Speaker 2: this entire time, you have, and so you're almost sick
Speaker 2: of it. So you do this newsletter where you're talking
Speaker 2: about kind of this intersection of fitness and mental health
Speaker 2: and mindset and nutrition and all these different things. And
Speaker 2: you've written these books about kind of the intersection of
Speaker 2: all these different things. What right now are you actually
Speaker 2: not sick of talking talking about, not exhausted by, but
Speaker 2: genuinely most excited and fascinated about when it comes to
Speaker 2: the world that you were working What's this is? This
Speaker 2: is my last question for it. What's the one thing
Speaker 2: that you are the most full of, bestination by and
Speaker 2: excited about and that we could kind of leave off
Speaker 2: with one set of ideas around.
Speaker 5: That's a great question, and my answer will be somewhat
Speaker 5: unsatisfying because it's this next book I'm working on about
Speaker 5: that long hike I did and the book. I'll kind
Speaker 5: of give you a preview without giving too much away.
Speaker 5: And I also don't want to talk too much because
Speaker 5: I'll say something that will get cut out of the
Speaker 5: book entirely.
Speaker 4: I know it is.
Speaker 3: So the book really looks at.
Speaker 5: I think we can all agree that the world has
Speaker 5: never been better if you look at it in the
Speaker 5: grand scheme of time and space. We're living twice as long,
Speaker 5: we have roofs over our head, vast majority of people
Speaker 5: have ample food, we have climate can We have modern
Speaker 5: medicine that would make the gods jealous. We have instant
Speaker 5: entertainment at our fingertips all the time. Things should be perfect,
Speaker 5: But when you look at mental health, things have never
Speaker 5: been worse than slow down trend despite things being perfect.
Speaker 5: And so why is that? And that's what the book
Speaker 5: gets into, and I think I think it goes back
Speaker 5: to some of what we've been talking about in this conversation,
Speaker 5: is that the world no longer forces our hand in
Speaker 5: a way and what actually makes people healthy and happy
Speaker 5: and feel alive is having your hand get forced and
Speaker 5: having a mission and having to figure shit out and
Speaker 5: being pressed up against and it can be hard in
Speaker 5: the short term, but you get through that and it
Speaker 5: teaches you something fundamental about being a person where you
Speaker 5: stand in the world, and about what it means to
Speaker 5: be alive. And as the world got better and more comfortable, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's been great because I can watch a thousand dog
Speaker 5: reels if I want, and modern medicine is amazing and
Speaker 5: all these things. It really is amazing what we have
Speaker 5: in the process lost these really fundamental things that make
Speaker 5: us happy and satisfied. And so to me, the answer,
Speaker 5: to sort of re quote myself from before, it's not, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm just going to go live in the woods like
Speaker 5: hell no, But it's what can I do in my
Speaker 5: day to day life that pushes back against that so
Speaker 5: I can get the best of both worlds. So that's
Speaker 5: kind of what the book covers. And that's the I
Speaker 5: as I know you're down a rabbit hole with your
Speaker 5: book as well, that's the rabbit hole I've been down.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like a fascinating one, and it you know,
Speaker 2: it's almost back to the idea of like rewilding your life.
Speaker 2: I feel like is kind of part of the answer
Speaker 2: to many of those questions and many of the questions
Speaker 2: that a lot of us are asking. So I can't
Speaker 2: wait to see the new book when that one comes out.
Speaker 2: I've enjoyed every single one of the things you've written
Speaker 2: to this point. For those people who have not yet
Speaker 2: picked up the books, and obviously the one that's going
Speaker 2: to be releasing here shortly, could you plug a quick
Speaker 2: description of what those are, where they can find them,
Speaker 2: how they can connect with you and your substack and
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Probably the best place to find me is on
Speaker 5: my substack. It's called two percent. It's at two pct
Speaker 5: dot com. There's links to all the books there, and
Speaker 5: that's kind of where I publish about three times a week.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of writing, but it allows me to
Speaker 5: think and get my ideas out, and that's probably the
Speaker 5: best place to find me.
Speaker 2: Perfect. I appreciate this time, Michael, I enjoyed it. I
Speaker 2: you know, as I've mentioned already, really appreciate your work
Speaker 2: and what you're bringing into the world. So keep it up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: try to stay sane in the midst of this book project,
Speaker 2: and I can't wait to circle back.
Speaker 3: Yeah you two likewise man, all right, and.
Speaker 2: That's going to do it for our episode today. Thanks
Speaker 2: for being a part of this community, were tuning in
Speaker 2: today here. I hope this is a useful way to
Speaker 2: kick off the new year, giving you some ideas that can,
Speaker 2: you know, come with you throughout twenty twenty six, help
Speaker 2: you as you start planning your next hunting season, or
Speaker 2: your next fishing trip or outdoor adventure, or maybe just
Speaker 2: your next regular day of life, because those sometimes need
Speaker 2: some pick me ups too, and some new ideas as well. So,
Speaker 2: without any more from me, thanks for being here, and
Speaker 2: until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.