Mindfulness

Humans make decisions first and then do their research, and that’s backward. 

I should know. I fall into the following trap again and again. 

1- I have an idea.
2- “Somebody Smart” questions the idea.
3- I call my friend, Jason.
4- Jason tells me it’s a good idea.
5- I say, “See, it’s a great idea!”
6- I carry out my great idea.
7- My great idea often turns out to be a bad idea.
8- Oh well, it was fun anyway.
9- “Somebody Smart” rolls her eyes.
10- Aaaand… repeat. 

Academics have a name for this behavior: it’s called Confirmation Bias. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s the process of making a decision before we do our research. Not only do we put the cart before the horse, but when we actually get around to doing our “research,” it just consists of gathering evidence that supports what we’ve already decided and summarily dismissing everything that disagrees with us. 

We all do this. And it’s an incredibly difficult habit to break. But that’s not to say impossible. 

There is one way I’ve found to circumvent this behavior. I call it the Confirmation Bias Prevention Program. Here’s how it works. 

1- Find someone who disagrees with a decision you’re about to make (an anti-Jason).
2- Ask them why they disagree with you.
3- Carefully listen to what they have to say. Listen, as Stephen R. Covey says, “with the goal to understand, not to be understood.”
4- Continue listening until you can honestly say “I now understand why you believe that.” 

That’s it, it’s that simple. This doesn’t guarantee you won’t do the thing you want to do… but that’s not the point. The point is to carefully and thoughtfully analyze the pros and cons of a decision so you can make it in an unbiased way. And the Confirmation Bias Prevention Program is a great step in that direction.

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

Worry is a terrible financial strategy. 

But I have a confession to make: for a very long time, it was the only one I knew. 

For example, each time I wrote a column for The New York Times, I was worried my editor would say “Sorry, Carl, this just isn’t very good, I’m afraid that is the end of the Sketch Guy.” And then I would have to crawl under a rock, never to be heard from again. 

I would bring my worries to my business partner (a.k.a. wife). I would go on and on about, “What are we going to do if this happens?!” And when she seemed totally calm, I would say, “Aren’t you worried?!” 

Because she’s generally unflappable, she would say, “I could be, if you want me to be, but I don’t see how it would help.” 

It might feel like worrying helps. But as Shantideva put it, “If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you can’t solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” 

Worrying endlessly about something that may or may not happen in the future doesn’t help. But making a plan for what to do if that thing comes to pass does. 

So now, when I catch myself starting to worry—which is often—I try to sit down and make a plan. And then I take that plan, file it away, and stop thinking about it. 

That’s it. I don’t need to worry about that scenario anymore, because I have a plan. 

So next time you find yourself in one of those cycles of worry, remember what Shantideva said. Action is a strategy, worry is not. So make a plan, put it away for safekeeping, and get back to work.

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

Living in Park City, Utah, I have often found myself feeling hopefully inadequate. It seems like everyone there is a top athlete of some sort. From mountain biking to running to climbing and skiing, you just know that everyone you see in the local grocery store is elite at something.

And then, there’s me. Competent, sure. Competitive, to a degree. But not a pro. And while everyone is super-encouraging, it’s hard not to get a bit overwhelmed by how much better everyone else is. And we all know what immediately follows a feeling of hopeless inadequacy: envy.

Of course, envy is not confined to the ski slopes. Now that we all spend countless hours on social media, it seeps into seemingly every aspect of our lives. And nowhere does envy raise its ugly head more than with money. 

When I think about envy, more than Park City, I think back to an op-ed I read in The New York Times way back in 2014 that opened with this line: “In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough.”

Stop and think for a minute about the envy behind this statement. Something good happened to this guy, but in his mind, it wasn’t good enough because he knew there were other people who received more. Who gets a $3.6 million bonus and gets angry about it? 

Well, probably the kind of person who compares themselves to anyone who seems to have more than they do. AKA, all of us.

It’s easy to get angry at the Wall Street bro and ignore how we are guilty of the same exact feelings of envy. But just look at how we engage on social media. We’re constantly focused on making it look like we have a better life than everyone else. But even as we take our own pictures and apply filters to our world, we’re flipping through other people’s photo streams and feeling envious about what we see. It’s a hard cycle to break.

The interesting thing about that op-ed is that it didn’t finish the way I expected it to. The ex-trader eventually realized that his envy and addiction to wealth were hurting him, and he left his job. The decision didn’t come easily. He feared walking away from the life he knew (and the seven-figure bonuses). But luckily, he found a way to break the cycle of envy and discovered what actually made him happy. And it turned out it had very little to do with what the guy next to him earned as a bonus.

In fact, it turned out that, for him, it had everything to do with learning how to believe that he had “enough.” On Wall Street, the idea of “enough” simply didn’t exist. It was like a fairy tale or a story for children. Again, this isn’t just the case on Wall Street. The experience of feeling like you never have “enough” describes social media to a T. You know this is true. As you endlessly doom scroll, how often do you see a picture and think:  “If I only had a little more money… If I only had a better body… If I only was better at [Insert Extreme Sport Here]…”? 

Let’s say all those things happened. Then what? 

There will always be something else we don’t have that someone else does, and our envy becomes a trigger for all the bad behavior we’re supposedly trying to avoid. 

After all, it’s really hard to focus on saving as much as we can and sticking with our financial plan if doing so gets in the way of having what we think we want right now.

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

I have a secret for you. This secret will allow you to double your income in 18 months for only five more hours of work per week. Do you want to know the secret?

If you answered “yes,” I want to give you an opportunity to double down: Triple your income in 18 months for just 10 more hours per week! Interested?

What about quadruple for 15? Quintuple for 20?

At what point would you answer “No”?

All of this points to one bigger question: How much is enough?

To be clear, I understand that for most people, doubling your income would probably provide plenty of extra breathing room for you and your loved ones. There’s a lot of research out there that suggests that money can, in fact, buy you happiness. But only to a certain point. Beyond that point, it actually seems to make people sadder, more depressed, and more anxious. 

The question is, what’s that precise point? 

You can read all kinds of scholarly articles that try to answer that question. One study might peg it at $72,000/yr, another at $112,000, another at $94,685 and 32 cents. 

Or, you could also answer that question for yourself by getting clear about your values and goals. 

How many hours do you want to work each week? How much do you spend on your monthly bills? When do you want to retire? Do you want to have kids? How many? Do you want to send them to college? What kind of college? Are you happy with the public schools where you live? 

My wife and I often talk in specific detail about how much money we need to be happy. Most of the time, we realize that we are incredibly fortunate to be able to pay the bills, save for our children’s education, and do most of the things we really want to do. In other words, we have enough.

Of course, this is a process. And the more I explore it, the less sure I am at the ability to arrive at a destination. You can and should expect to need to recalibrate your definition of “enough” again and again.

Now, that doesn’t mean we never crave more. We’re human, after all. 

The narrow point of this discussion is just to encourage you to take a step back when you find yourself wanting more, and think about where that desire is based. 

Is it an actual reflection of your values and your current reality? Or is it just the More More More monster knocking at the door again?

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

In 2017, I remember being tired. Really tired. And I remember being tired of being tired. In fact, it felt like I’d been tired ever since I read Andrew Grove’s book “Only the Paranoid Survive” back in the early 2000s.

That book was the beginning of a sea change in my thinking about work, business, hustling, and survival itself—so much so that I’d been working like a fanatic ever since.

Up at five in the morning? Tried it! Daily workouts? Yep. Paleo, bulletproof, gluten-free, cold showers? Check. Build a business, start a side hustle, dominate Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook? Yeah, all that too! Make my family a priority? Of course. Serve in my community? Definitely.

For 5,478 days, I’d been hitting repeat. And it just about killed me.

I know I’m not alone. 

It feels like we’ve been in the “Crush It Age.” Every time you turn around, somebody is crushing something. Gary Vaynerchuk became the Godfather of this Age. He wrote a book on it, in fact. According to him, people “need to work harder. And faster. There’s really nothing else to it. I’m exhausted every day, but I’m making all sorts of things happen in my 18 hours.”

And he added, “And I’m prioritizing what’s important and what’s not.”

So, there we have it. We can add “exhausted” to words like “cynical” and “busy” that we wear as badges of honor. As crazy as it sounds, I have to admit to having believed it. 

Some dark corner of my mind used to whisper to me: “This is all true, Carl. If you don’t keep hustling, you’ll end up falling behind, and no one will listen to you. Ever. Again. Then, you’ll just be another failure, left to crawl under a rock, cold and alone to die!”

But then, I appointed myself King of Permission Granting. And my first act as king was to grant myself—and everyone else—permission to declare the Crush It Age finished. 

…

So, what comes next?

The Age of Work Hard, Rest Hard.

In this Age, we’re still hustling. But we’re also resting. In fact, we’re trying to be as good at resting as we are at crushing things.

We’re becoming pros at turning off social media, getting great sleep, working less, and living more.

We’re making being rested cool. So that when people ask how you’re doing, you can say, “Sit down. Let’s talk about it for a minute, because I have time for you, my friend.” At a minimum, you should be able to answer, “Rested, and how are you?”

I know this sounds like crazy talk, but we can do it. Let’s make it a priority to be human again—to work hard and rest hard without buying into the idea that we’ll fail at life if we rest.

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

How do we know that what we think is what we really think, and not just what someone else wants us to think? Let that thought percolate for a minute.    

It turns out that it doesn’t take much to make us think something we didn’t previously. Our minds are biased to work against us. It’s often referred to as “confirmation bias.” 

It almost seems like a magic trick, but it’s really our brains searching for a way to end uncertainty. There are so many things we don’t know. Sometimes the knowledge just isn’t available yet. But many times, we’re looking for a shortcut. 

If we can find some evidence that supports our theory, we can stop thinking about it. For instance, there are plenty of people trying to sell investors on “guaranteed” stock-picking strategies. They sound great in theory. To make them look even more attractive, the inventors of these strategies present evidence that makes them look like can’t-lose propositions. 

Oddly enough, the evidence is usually cherry-picked. We rationalize their story, telling ourselves we can ignore the supposed outliers and that it really does work — most of the time. As a result, we latch on to the good stuff and run with it. We barely stop to think before signing up to learn more about their amazing stock-picking strategy, all for three easy payments of $39.99. After all, it’s guaranteed. 

It happens in smaller ways, too. We tell ourselves we can’t possibly save money every month. To back up this theory, we look only at the total left in the checkbook on the last day of the month. Clearly, we can’t save more. But in the process, we skip over all the line entries for unplanned purchases of things that easily fall into the “want” category. Of course, it doesn’t matter. We’ve already “confirmed” our theory. We have no more money to save. 

Ultimately, confirmation bias is about telling ourselves a really good story. I don’t blame people at all for preferring the story they’ve managed to tell themselves. But if we’re at all serious about making smarter decisions, we need to practice storytelling less and playing devil’s advocate more. 

Because, as the old saying goes, the truth will set us free. Of course, we may very well discover our theory is correct, but it’s just as likely that we’ll discover our theory has some holes in it.

Confirmation bias is super hard to deal with, and it is critical that we are at least aware of our own tendency to fall prey to it.

In 2015, Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, made an announcement that shocked just about everyone. He set a new, minimum salary of $70,000 for his employees. Sounds fantastic, right? It turns out that not everyone loved the idea.

The New York Times recently published a piece that reviews some of the fallout afterwards, including a handful of customers leaving the business:

Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.

Within weeks of the announcement, the company co-founder (also the CEO’s brother) filed a lawsuit. Clearly, there’s a lot happening with this change, and we’re only three months into this experiment. But I keep coming back to Dan Price’s catalyst for making this change.

After reading a study about happiness, Price decided to test one of the findings. Emotional well-being improves as income goes up, but appears to max out at around $75,000. By setting a minimum salary of $70,000, Price believes he can make a difference in the lives of his employees. And he probably can, but it got me thinking about how we define what qualifies as “enough.”

What would change in your life if your boss suddenly announced you’d make a minimum of $70,000/year? Would that be enough, or would you still worry about money?

Maybe you already make more than $70,000. If you’re already there and it’s not enough, at what income would you have enough?

This question of what qualifies as enough keeps nagging at me as I wonder if we’re asking the right questions about how much money we need to be happy.

Yes, we need to pay our rent or our mortgage. Yes, we need to pay our power bill and put food on the table. There are many things we need to pay for that make life easier and/or better. But once those needs are met, then what?

Over the next week, take some time to figure out your baseline. What qualifies as “enough” to live your life comfortably?

Just so we’re clear, this baseline will be different for everyone. What feels good to you may be completely different from your neighbor. Also, I’m not looking for people to abandon their homes or leave behind the things they really enjoy. But I am challenging you to get specific.

Does everything you buy add something to your life? Or does it just make you worry about the money you spent?

I’d love to know what you find out. Shoot me an email at hello@behaviorgap.com if you feel like sharing.

What if we don’t really need what we think we need? This question came to mind as I read about Professor Jeff Wilson and The Dumpster Project. A dean at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, Wilson embarked on an experiment to see if it was possible to live in a 36-square-foot dumpster.

Over time, he’s gone from sleeping on cardboard mats to adding custom touches like a sliding roof and an air conditioner. He sums up his sustainability experiment this way:

“The big hypothesis we’re trying to test here is, can you have a pretty darn good life on much, much less?” He paused. “This is obviously an outlier experiment. But so far, I have, I’d say. A better life than I had before.”

I’ve shared before the idea of living a more minimalist life, but some of those stories have focused on the concept of a number. What’s the smallest number of items I can own? Professor Wilson’s story made me refocus on the idea of what items do we really need?

What makes this perspective so interesting is that the answer varies by individual. It’s incredibly personal and, I believe, an incredibly powerful process.

The goal isn’t to get down to a number, but to better understand why we have what we have in our lives. In many ways, it goes back to the idea of buying good, quality items and owning them for a long time. If you aren’t buying everything you see in the store, it becomes much more realistic to buy durable items that we really value and would otherwise be “too expensive.”

A friend of mine recently moved into a new home. It’s a larger place than she was in before, and because she’s not married and doesn’t have kids, people keep asking, “What do you need all that space for?” It turns out that for her, it was about location. Homes rarely come up for sale in the area she wanted to live.

As a result, she jumped at the chance to buy the home, despite the greater square footage. It means more time spent cleaning, but now, she literally steps out the door and she’s in nature. She’s exactly where she wants to be.

However, because she knows it’s a real risk that she’ll fill up the house if she’s not careful, she’s adopted a one in, one out rule. For everything new she wants to bring into the house, something old needs to go out. Some of you probably follow this rule too, and like Professor Wilson’s experiment, it goes back to this idea of thoughtful consumption.

What do we really need? Are we buying things thoughtfully or carelessly? I believe our willingness to look at our buying behavior can have a huge impact on whether we reach the goals that we say matter most to us. If we get busy filling up our lives with things we don’t need, it’s easy to get distracted. So this weekend, I have a challenge for you.

Take a look at your possessions and identify three things you consider necessities in your life. Then, take a look around at the rest of your stuff. If you had to give up everything else you own to keep those three items, could you? Or does something else start to look more important?

By the end of this experiment, you’ll have a much better idea of how to answer the question, “What do I really need?”

Let’s start with a story from Jon Muth’s book “Zen Shorts:”

Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle.

The younger monk noticed the woman, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the older monk; she just shoved him out of the way and departed.

As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then, she didn’t even thank you!”

“I set the woman down hours ago,” the older monk replied. “Why are you still carrying her?”

There is an actual cost to holding onto things we should let go of. It can come in the form of anger, frustration, resentment, or something even worse. The question is, can you really afford to keep paying the bill?

The faster we learn to drop our emotional dead weight, the more room we create for something better. I’m talking about everything from stewing about the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning to still refusing to forgive an old friend for an event 20 years ago.

We have only so much bandwidth. We have only so much time. We only have so much energy. Do we really want to invest any of our precious resources — financial or otherwise — into something that will return nothing but misery?

My question for you is, “What’s one thing you can set down this week?”

Go ahead and pick something. A fight with your spouse, something a politician said, your team losing the big game. Pick it, drop it, and then pause. For just a moment, simply pause and savor what it feels like to no longer carry that burden and pay that price.

Then, I want you to invest that “extra” into something more productive. If it’s extra time, go for a walk. If it’s extra peace, take five deep breaths. If it’s extra money, because you decided to just pay the stupid traffic ticket instead of letting it sit on your desk accruing late fees, then take that extra money and invest it in something that makes you happy.

Play with your kids. Take a nap. Just do something that makes you feel the opposite of how you felt before you let go. I can guarantee you, this is one investment you’ll never regret.

And then, after you’re done with all that, send me an email. If you’re willing to share, I’d love to know what you decided to let go. Email me at hello@behaviorgap.com. Last week’s emails were amazing, and I’m looking forward to reading more.

This column, titled The Cost of Holding On, originally appeared in The New York Times on April 25, 2016.

I was in the airport when I found out that the mother of one of my best friends had just died quite suddenly. She was at dinner with a friend, felt sick, and was dead within a few hours.

I learned this through a message from my mom, who heard about it on the local news.

I called my friend. Imagine this scene for a second: There I am in Terminal 2 of the San Diego airport, calling someone whose mother had just died.

He answered. He was crushed. We cried.

His mom was one of the few people who always saw past my stupid behavior in high school. She always loved and accepted me, despite my being quite unlovable at the time. She gently influenced me to be better by not trying to influence me at all.

She was amazing.

My friend knew that better than anyone. He told me about her last moments in the hospital. He told me about begging the doctor to do more.

Life. Is. Heavy. And then I boarded a plane.

I thought about everyone else on the plane. I wondered if the airline employee scanning my boarding pass could see that I had been crying. Were my eyes red? Swollen? I wondered if there would be room for my bag in the overhead bin. If the person next to me would be nice.

In that moment, I couldn’t help but think about how odd the situation felt. All around me were strangers. I knew no one. And as far as I knew, no one had any idea what I was dealing with.

I thought about the airline employee who had just checked my boarding pass, the man sitting next to me, the woman across the aisle. Did they have a sick child or a friend in the hospital? Were they on that plane in a race against time? What about the person who had been yelling at the gate agent or, for that matter, those who were yelling on Twitter while I checked it standing in line?

As I turned away and stared at the Pacific Ocean through the little window from my seat on the plane, I was left with a bunch of grief and two big questions.

What burdens are all the people on this plane carrying? And how would I treat them differently if I knew?

This column, titled Ask Yourself This: What Burdens Is That Other Person Carrying?, originally appeared in The New York Times on July 2, 2018.