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3MM: Happiness, Tinder & Troubles
3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, My LA and Toronto live shows sold out in hours. Absolutely wild. Limited tickets remain for all other US & Canada dates - get yours here. I’ve been thinking about impediments to happiness. And I can see two obvious roadblocks. First is wanting things to be different. “Happiness is the state when nothing is missing.
When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something.” — Naval Ravikant
If you want the world to be different, your happiness is held hostage until that change occurs. Sometimes this is an actual change you need to make. To leave an unhappy friendship, change from an unfulfilling career, complete a difficult conversation. And we often will remain in years of misery to avoid a few minutes of pain. The second roadblock is uncertainty. “Humans never genuinely pursue happiness; they only pursue relief from uncertainty.
Happiness emerges momentarily as a byproduct whenever uncertainty briefly disappears.”
If you feel like you can’t predict the future, you will default to fear, worry and rumination. Your mindscape will eclipse reality’s landscape. Worrying about the thing you can’t predict usually involves a nightmare fantasy which is way worse than what could happen in reality. However, this imagined nightmare briefly collapses the chaos of the world into certainty. This is how much humans abhor not knowing how the future will unfold; we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable. Sometimes these situations overlap. A family member gets an uncertain medical diagnosis and we can’t be with them, we argue with our partner while we’re apart and don’t know how they’re feeling overnight, we try to mend a broken friendship with a letter and haven’t yet got a reply. So, if you’re feeling unhappy, look to where you’re uncertain, and where you want things to be different first. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. A recent study examined the effect of education on dating success on Tinder. They analysed data on 3,600 evaluations of 24 fictitious profiles. They find that the effect differs sharply between men and women. Women strongly preferred highly educated men, however men exhibited no such preference. They also found no evidence that men have a preference against highly educated women. “In contrast with recent influential studies from the field of economics, we do not find any evidence that men would have an aversion to a highly educated potential partner. Additionally, in contrast with most previous research – again from multiple fields – we do not find any evidence for preferences for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level.” 2. "Men destroy each other during war, and themselves during peacetime." — Nassim Taleb 3. “Man is fond of counting his troubles but not his joys.” — Dostoyevsky LIFE HACKWhoop’s new 5.0. My favourite fitness tracker just released their newest version. Even smaller but now with a 14 day battery life. Heart Screener for on-demand ECG readings. Healthspan to track how your habits affect your pace of aging. And for the ladies, it now has Hormonal Insights for personalised cycle and pregnancy guidance. Join for free, pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap and get your first month for free, plus there’s a 30 day money-back-guarantee. Try the new Whoop risk-free. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
3 Minute Monday
Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, You’re probably pretty competent. You can do things. You’re prepared to try new stuff. And when you try new stuff, you don’t suck that much and you seem to make progress more quickly than most people. This is another Curse Of Competence. Your options for life-direction are less constrained by your abilities, and more by your choices. This sounds like a blessing. Indeed it’s better than the alternative. But it’s a unique category of problem, one which occurs while...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, My US & Canada Tour continues to sell el rapido. Get your tickets here. I came across a love letter Richard Feynman wrote to his wife. Beware, powerful stuff… October 17, 1946 D'Arline, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear that - but I don't only write it because you like it - I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you - almost two years but I know you'll...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, My US & Canada solo show tour goes live on presale at 10am PT / 1pm ET tomorrow. I think some shows might actually sell out before general on-sale on Thursday - so make sure you don’t wait if you want to come. Get first access to VIP, Meet & Greet and Tickets here. Anyway, I’ve been trying to work this idea into an understandable form for a while, I really hope you like it… "When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” —...