The Balance Between Productivity and Happiness w/Stephen Dubner | Joe Rogan

And then you want to get guns. All right. Let me ask you a slightly different question. It's actually totally different question. Um, as I'm sure you know, um, if you look at any indicator of like prosperity, longevity, health, literacy, access to food, et cetera, humankind is way better off than it's ever been. Yes. No, without question, on average, there's still a lot of people with a lot of trouble. There's still parts of the world that are still in bad shape and so on. It's trending in an amazing direction. Amazing direction. Why are we so unhappy? I don't think, um, we know how to manage our life correctly and life doesn't come with a guide book. It doesn't come with when you're in this condition, seek out these remedies, start exercising, uh, get together with your friends, tell them you love them, meet up and have dinner and hug each other. Sleep well, sleep well, drink water, you know, there's a little bit of whiskey too. Right. And also, you know, so many of us have a bad headstart, like you're starting off, you know, like how about your dad? He'd been growing up getting kicked out of the family. Yeah. I mean, and then starts a family of his own where you don't even know your grandfather. I mean, it's madness, right? Madness. So you're, you're coming out of this stressful pocket, or maybe your dad goes to jail, or maybe your, your mom dies when you're young. All these things that happen to people where they have this bad start, right? And then they develop defense mechanisms to deal with all their insecurities and they get around similar minded people and you curse the world and fuck everybody and fuck the police and fuck the this. And then you get in these communities of people that think the same way. And then maybe there's gangs and maybe there's drugs and maybe there's crime and despair and sadness and maybe just negative people. Maybe there's none of the above. Maybe there's no danger. It's just fucking annoying every day. People complaining about shit. And you're stuck in the mud of humanity with people. It's real hard to engineer 350 million people out of that. But for yourself, you can take actions to make your life better. And if everybody did that, if everybody took actions to make their life a happier experience by doing those things, by exercising, eating well, hugging friends, enhancing community, just trying to be nicer to people. Everybody did that would be a massive shift. So let me ask you this. I feel like the list you just gave is basically my list too, right? I try. That's what I try to do pretty much. Um, and they all sound attractive. Yes. So why is it so hard for so many people to do it? Because people are lazy. And the reason why we're lazy is because it's very difficult for us to waste resources on something that we don't currently do. And even though we know something to be true, that if you do this long term benefits, yeah, we know that, but short term it's like, I want to do it right now. Right. Cause your body like craves relaxation because it used to be a very rare thing to achieve. All right. So if you could pick one thing, let's say, let's say I'm a person. Why would I pick one thing? Well, the first thing, let's say the first thing, let's say, let's say that I feel like, you know what, society says everything's great. I'm unhappy financially. Okay. Why is exercise the one? Because you get your blood pumping, right? Release natural endorphins and you legitimately feel better. And I also think of the, I think of this all the time. I think of your body as almost like the energy in your body is like a battery and it requires a certain amount of use. And when you don't use it, it overflows and then you get weird behavior and overreacting to things. And you almost like get antsy. You got to get up and move. Cognitively. It's a big, I find. What do you do with, let's say you have to take too long flights. Let's say you're unable to exercise for like, you know, 24, 36 hours. You're fine. You don't have to do it every day. No, I mean you, you don't, you don't, you don't. No, I take days off. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. The whole key is just to develop regular habits. If you have to take two or three days off, it doesn't matter. The whole key is just regular habits. What's your sleep regime? Well, I have a whoop in my whoop. Oh yeah. Yeah. It tells me every night how much I sleep. Yeah. And has it improved? Has the feedback improved your sleeping? Because it made me accountable. Yeah. Like I was like, ah, get like seven, eight hours every night. I was getting like four and five and I was like, Oh, you lying bitch. So it made me, it made me concentrate more on getting more sleep. What do you do to sleep better or sleep well? It's just a matter of the time. It's a matter of when I have to get up. Did you change? Like, do you sleep with earplugs, eye mask, anything like that? I don't have a problem sleeping. Okay. I sleep well. You just, the problem is doing things and waking up early and I realized like, okay, I, if I'm going to wake up that early, I got to go to bed earlier. Yeah. I really need to. You're not a napper? No, I don't nap. How come? Um, I just never enjoy it. Really? Yeah. You never tried it? No, I have. No, but it doesn't work. Uh-huh. Like when I'm done, I'm done. Do you drink caffeine? Yes. Have you ever tried the caffeine nap? Do you know about that? Yes. Yeah. I know what it is. So you, but that's not my problem. All right. My problem is, uh, when I'm off, when I shut down, I shut down. So 20 minute nap becomes eight hours of sleep. I'm not interested. I gotcha. I'll be laying down for hours. I don't mean to criticize your productivity. You're plenty productive plainly. But it's, there's a balance. There's a balance between being productive and being happy. Right. And I think it's hard to find that balance because we look at like the, the numbers that come in, whether it's money or productivity or, you know, the number of things you've been able to create. And you think of that as being like, but look, I can get so much done. But if you maybe got less of those numbers, but more of the numbers in terms of the amount of sleep you got, you would enjoy the whole overall experience more. I worry that, uh, I think for a lot of people who are successful in different realms, could be sports, business, entertainment, whatever, success is intoxicating. Yes. And then you want more of it. Right. And then it becomes very easy to see that as the main goal at the expense of loved ones, other people. Yep. I'm looking for, uh, I'd like to know how, and I know some people do manage that really well, and I know some incredibly successful people are incredibly generous in spirit to people around them, but I find that's pretty rare. I find that success often is driven by a sort of ambition that's a little bit unseemly. And I'd like to know how to deal with that a little bit better. Well, it doesn't have to be, but it seems like it would be if it's a number game. Right. If success meeting, like you're in a business, you're trying to sell the most placards or whatever, like whatever it is, you know, you have this thing in your head and like, you're really driven. Can I just say, if you're selling placards, you're already starting behind. Okay. Widgets. You're selling the most widgets and you have this goal in your mind of being number one and you're obsessed and you know, and everyone's going to tell your story, oh, Bob, he wouldn't let it go. Every time I got there, he was in the office and he left after everybody. But look, now Bob's got a fucking yacht and he's also got a pacemaker, right? Bob's ready to tick over any minute now. But also I think the thing is in pursuit of success, I think what often happens that I've seen in people I know and in people I don't know, but I've read about is that your moral compass starts to shift and you're willing to, it's not necessarily true. There's a lot of people that are successful and we're only talking about business, right? We're not talking about athletics, are we? I'm talking about, I'm thinking of some people in academia who, you know, even though the average person may not consider the stakes in academia super high, but like if you get in a big university department and you start to write papers and get published and then get grants and accolades and so on, you're on a trajectory that's very intoxicating and then all of a sudden, I think it's more, I think it's tempting or not even tempting. I don't think it's even a conscious decision. You start to make decisions that are not as sound, not as morally acceptable as you would have made five years ago when you were starting out. And I don't like, I see that happening a lot. I see it in media. I see people cutting corners. I see it in business.