# How to Get Out of a Rut, Pain and Boredom, and Knowing When to Quit

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 30 Oct 2024, 44 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/b2ohle5nyw7trl70r4re1nvc.mp3

Today, we’re diving deep into the subtle difference between a healthy routine and a rut. How can you tell if your daily grind is keeping you grounded… or just grinding you down? Next, we tackle the question of boredom: Why does it feel so unbearable, and could we actually be missing out on its hidden perks? Spoiler alert—boredom might just be the key to unlocking your most creative, inspired self. Finally, we confront one of life’s biggest dilemmas: When is it time to walk away, and when should you double down? Whether it’s a project that’s going nowhere or a relationship that feels like it’s on life support, we’ll give you insights on knowing when to quit and when to stick it out. Enjoy. Brilliant or Bullshit Paper: Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4330241/ CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 Introduction: Am I Becoming a Boring Person? • 00:01:11 When Does a Routine Become a Rut? • 00:02:53 The Alcohol Factor: Craving Novelty vs. Craving Stability • 00:03:41 Fear vs. Optimization: Defining the Difference • 00:04:22 The Immanuel Kant Paradox: Genius in Repetition • 00:07:07 The Four Stages of Life: From Mimicry to Legacy • 00:09:53 Marriage Problems and the Say Yes Strategy • 00:13:54 The Seasonality of Chaos: Flipping the Card Green • 00:16:44 Is It Brilliant or Bullshit: The Electric Shock Study • 00:18:11 Why Boredom Is Actually Painful • 00:24:18 Raw Dogging Flights: The New Machismo • 00:26:25 Boredom as Competitive Advantage • 00:27:44 Q and A: The Rules of Quitting—When to Quit and When to Grit • 00:28:54 The Momentum Test: Is Your Rock Going Uphill or Downhill? • 00:31:03 The Bukowski Exception: When Outliers Break the Rules • 00:31:46 Creative Pursuits vs. Professional Pursuits: Different Equations • 00:33:04 The Tim Ferriss Question: Where Does Failure Teach You Most? • 00:35:01 Relationships and the Rock Going Downhill • 00:37:14 Hard Work Redefined: When 12 Hours Feels Easier Than 4 • 00:39:25 The Grammy Winner Who Never Felt Burnt Out • 00:42:04 Grit Only Works in the Right Direction • 00:42:34 Wisdom of the Week: Escalators and the Art of Quitting ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

## Transcript

[0:00] Drew, I'm wondering if I'm becoming a boring person. Which is funny because I spent so many years of my life optimizing to be un-boring, to just optimizing my life to be as interesting as possible.
[0:16] But it's funny because lately I've really found a lot of peace in liberation and in things that are generally considered boring life practices. And it's weird because like there's a still a little piece of me, like the inner 20-year-old who's like, dude, you're so lame. Like, what do you – get out of the house. I think I'm going to do this too. Get out of the house. Go do something. But meanwhile, you know, I'm so happy. Like life is so calm.
[0:44] So I think that's the fuck of the week. We're going to talk about what is a routine? What is a rut? When are you avoiding life by sticking to your routines? And when are you embracing and celebrating life when you follow your routines? And this one gets personal for me too because it's like causing marriage problems. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, let's dig into that in a minute, in a minute. But yeah.
[1:11] It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Sum up, what are we talking about? Well, I'm very similar to you too, where as I've gotten older, I've found my little routines that I really like. Yeah. And recently it occurred to me, it was something like I hit like a five-day streak where I did the exact same thing five days in a row. Mm-hmm.
[1:37] And it's all actually fairly healthy. And I enjoyed those five days. But it was like the same thing, five days. Not the exact same thing, you know. But like I worked out at the same time. I worked the same hours. I went to bed at the same time, got up at the same time. And it was nice in a way. But then I thought, oh, God, is this...
[1:57] Is this all there is to life? Is this all there is to it? Is this a groundhog day, like a healthy groundhog day for me? Have I peaks? Yeah. Yeah. When does a routine become a rut? When do our healthy habits become actually kind of toxic habits? This is fucking with me because it is – I have long held the belief that a modest amount of chaos is optimal for one's life. Like you want a certain amount of –
[2:24] spontaneity and unexpectedness. Yet, man, I really like just doing the same thing every day. It's super weird. That's me too, yeah. It's super weird. I think novelty is amazing and awesome and I wanna seek it out, but then I also, like I said, five days in a row, I'll just sit there and do the exact same thing. Yeah, it is. That's what it is. It's a lot of effort. You have to expend a lot of energy. I, you know, there's so many angles I could attack this. This is a very new thing for me. I have to admit, a big part of it is since I quit drinking,
[2:53] So when I quit – Yeah, same. When I drank, I like – something about the interaction between alcohol and like the dopamine circuits or whatever, I just kind of had this unending craving for novelty. And since I stopped drinking, I don't have that anymore. And it –
[3:12] I actually kind of have the opposite of that. Like now when there's an opportunity to do something spontaneous or fun or cool, my immediate thought is like, well, what's the point of this? Like, is this gonna get me closer to my goals? Is this gonna help me grow in some ways? Which is fucking lame. Right, right. That's the official term. It's fucking lame. Yeah. So I have mixed feelings about it. I would define the difference between a routine and a rut.
[3:41] is a routine is something that you feel helps optimize your life and it invigorates your life. It adds meaning and purpose and efficiency to your life. A rut is when you are doing the same things over and over because you are afraid not to. So I think the defining element is fear and avoidance.
[4:04] You know, like where I'm at in life, I don't fear doing different things. Like there are plenty of times like I go on trips and do a bunch of stuff for work and still still go on vacations and do a crazy thing here or there. And I enjoy it. But I don't know. I don't crave it the way I used to. Yeah.
[4:22] Yeah. What about – I remember when you wrote that big piece about Immanuel Kant, right? And I didn't realize – I didn't know this, but Kant either never left the town he grew up in or only left it like once. Never left. And he basically did the same thing over and over and over again. And now he's one of the most famous philosophers of all time. Probably one of the 25 most influential humans on world history. Right.
[4:45] one of the most important philosophers ever, lived in the same town his entire life, had the exact same routine his entire adult life. His neighbors used to joke that they could set a clock to when he came and left his apartment. And despite living, I think he only lived like 25 kilometers away from the ocean, he never saw it his entire life. He saw no reason to. That is insane. Like that to me sounds like...
[5:13] I wasn't worth it. Right. Like for us, it probably was, but for him, I'm not sure. I don't know. I, I do think there's a fundamental value of novel experience, especially when you're young and you don't have many experiences. I think, I think I, you know, it's novelty is a diminishing returns curve. Like the older you get, the more experiences you have, the less impactful or insightful or useful each subsequent new experiences. Um,
[5:39] But when you're young and you haven't had many new experiences at all, they're super important and you should definitely seek out a lot of novelty in your life. So some of this I just feel like is just age. Yeah. Yeah. People get fucking boring when they get old. But in my case, some of it is the alcohol thing. And some of it, too, is the health thing. It's it's.
[5:59] So I realized at some point in the last couple of years that to like really maintain a healthy lifestyle, you have to be kind of rigid with your daily routines and your daily practices. I guess I just brainwashed myself into thinking I love it.
[6:16] Or something, I don't know. Because I guess the alternative wasn't amenable anymore. Right. Yeah, but I mean, when the routine is healthy, like I was saying, I have a fairly healthy routine that I stick to more or less. Yeah. When it's healthy, when it's – parts of it are at least invigorating for me. But also, like that week ended with that – those like five-day streak that I have, that week ended and I'm like –
[6:43] I don't remember that week very well. Like it's just kind of all a blur because it was all the same over and over and over again. Right, right. And they say that too about when you get older. Yes. That's one of the reasons like time seems to go faster is because you end up doing the same thing over and over again. I could see that. Yeah. I mean on the one hand – okay. So I wrote this article years ago called The Four Stages of Life. And it's still – it's one of my favorite things that I've ever written.
[7:07] And the four stages, the first one was mimesis or mimicry. Second one was exploration. Third one was commitment. And the fourth one was legacy. So stage one is...
[7:20] you just copy what other people do. It's how children learn. It's how we learn when we're young. It's like you watch other people do things. You see what they care about. You see what they're interested in. And you try to do what they do. You try to care about the things they care about. It's basically the way that you learn everything for the first time. At a certain point...
[7:39] You have to branch out and do things that the people around you aren't necessarily doing. You have to explore your own personal identity. You need to find your own interests, find your own passions, find the things that you care about or that you're good at that other people aren't because that's what differentiates you. And so that transition is kind of like the first big, meaningful project I think of most people's lives.
[8:06] And that leads you in the exploration. Exploration is about maximizing novelty. It's maximizing experience. It's figuring out what you like, what you dislike, who you want to spend time with, who you don't want to spend time with, what sort of pursuits you're good at, on and on and on. And I think most people spend their early adulthood in the exploration phase. But then-
[8:25] The next transition, the next big project is picking the few things to commit to. Picking the few things that are like, okay, these are like the three or four most important people or things in my life. And so I'm going to build my entire life around those things.
[8:40] And that leads you in the stage three, which is the commitment stage. And so it's funny. It's like I totally recognize going by my own framework. I've left the exploration phase, which is fun and exciting and sexy. And you get a bunch of really cool stories to the commitment phase, which is like –
[8:59] Groundhog Day, as you put it, a healthy Groundhog Day. And so it feels from like an emotional point of view, it can easily feel like a downgrade. But at the same time, when I really do an inventory on what I'm spending my time on day in, day out, it's like, man, I fought tooth and nail for years to figure out what I fucking care about. Yeah. And now I found it and I've managed, again, fought tooth and nail to build a life.
[9:27] where I can optimize for those things that I care about. And now I'm doing that. And then of course, being a fucking human, I'm sitting around being like, well, this is kind of boring, isn't it? Right, yeah. Just like always mildly dissatisfied, no matter what happens. You're always a six or a seven out of 10. Yeah, it's always something you can be optimizing, always something you can be working on, always more fun out there. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so how is this destroying your marriage, Mark?
[9:53] Okay. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's funny because – so my wife, she really loves novelty. And it's not even novelty. Like, it's not even like – it's definitely not chaos. Like, she loves –
[10:10] exploring new things. So she loves food, she loves architecture, she loves design. So like for her, going across town to a new restaurant and trying a new dish or looking at a new museum, like these things are like very meaningful for her. And back when I wasn't boring, I was always down to go do it with her, you know? But now that I'm in this new phase of life,
[10:37] I'm kind of like, I'm good. Like, I've been to a restaurant before. I don't need to go again. Right. Right.
[10:44] And so, yeah, basically she's just getting frustrated. She's like, what happened to you? Like you went – you aged like 20 years and two. She keeps joking. She's like, I didn't sign up for this. I signed up for the fun party guy. And I'm like, yeah, that guy was drunk. So I joke that it's ruining my marriage. But it's been a point of contention lately. Yeah. You know, she's like –
[11:12] She's been urging like, we need to get out. We need to do more things. And, uh.
[11:17] And my point of view has been like, we spent like 12 years doing all of the things. So like, why don't we just like slow down a little bit? So yeah, that's our current project. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a whole thing about growing together and your routines evolving with one another in there as well. But what would you say to somebody who is maybe stuck in a rut? Like, how do you inject chaos, good chaos into your life?
[11:47] Like, is there a, I mean, we've talked about travel a lot. That's a really good one. I think it also makes you appreciate your routines. I think when you leave, like, you know, you've been traveling, I've been traveling a little bit this year too. And that really makes you appreciate your healthy routines and gives you some perspective on that. Is there, are there any other ways to just inject some, some good chaos into your life?
[12:08] It's hard because, I mean, chaos by definition is kind of unexpected. Right. There's got to be. Like I imagine – But do you even want to get prescriptive with this for people? I don't know. Because chaos is different. We define that very differently. We do define that very differently. You and I would define it differently, I think. I do think there is value of intentionally breaking your routine periodically. Yeah.
[12:27] If anything, to just give you an appreciation for it. Yeah. And remind you of like, this is why I have this in my life. This is why this matters. But I imagine there are going to be some occasions where you're like, hmm, maybe I should change my routine. Like, I actually kind of like this, this new thing I tried or this new thing I did.
[12:44] You know, everybody, that's going to be different. You know, for some people, that's going to be changing out the coffee they have in the morning or, you know, waking up 30 minutes later. You know, crazy, you know, you get really wild and crazy. Other people, you know, it's going to be like, I'm going to go spend six months a year in Mexico and see how that works. Right. So it's mileage is going to vary quite a bit. But I do think it is important to consciously. Yeah.
[13:09] Spice things up. Yeah. And try different things. I'm also a big fan of like – it's funny. Like have you been to like a Brazilian steakhouse? Oh, yeah. Like the fogo de chão? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I fucking love that shit. All right. So Brazilian steakhouses for people who don't know.
[13:26] Brazilian steakhouses, the way it works is you just – they give you a card and there's one side is green and one side is red. And you just flip the side over to green and they just start bringing you random food. And like every time they walk up to the table, you just say yes or no. And if you say yes, they put it on your plate. And if you say no, they leave. And you could stay as long as you want. You can eat as much as you want. It's awesome. So my wife and I, we think of this as like flipping the card green in our lives of like, okay –
[13:54] We need a few months where we just say yes to everything. And we create that rule. It's like any invitation, any opportunity, any opening going on in the neighborhood or get together or neighborhood. So we're currently in a say yes to everything mode. Okay. I like that. And it's funny because it's just like a lot of unexpected stuff shows up. So I just got an invitation to join my neighborhood group.
[14:20] organization or whatever and like start attending neighborhood meetings to like i don't know do whatever people in california do complain about housing um so i'm gonna sign up and i'm gonna go to the meeting you know like there's a lot of sexy things but also a lot of like completely random and unsexy things right
[14:39] I like that idea. There's almost like a seasonality to it. Yes. I like that a lot better than like, oh, yeah, you should do this. You should, you know, like inject this type of chaos in your life or whatever. It's more of a seasonality type. I think Cal Newport, who we had on, he talks about the seasonalities of work. Yes. You could have a seasonality too of just your routines. Because what inevitably happens is you say yes to too many things and then you get overcommitted and then you start feeling burnt out and overwhelmed. And so that's when you flip the card back to red.
[15:07] which at a Brazilian steakhouse lets the waiters know, leave the table alone, don't bring anything over. And then you can like eat what's on your plate. And then when you're hungry again, you flip the card back to green. Yeah. That's another reason I think balance is a little bit of an illusion. Yeah. So you have to, there's times to be out of balance and times to seek balance. It's like a thermostat type thing. Yeah. Maybe that should be like the title of my next book. Life is a Brazilian steakhouse.
[15:34] And he said, the cover is you with a green, little green, like paddle. With a giant, like five pounds of steak on my plate. Yeah. Man, this is going to kill. Publishers are going to love this one. They're going to love it. Actually, you know what? The only time I've been to one, I was with you in Sao Paulo. Oh, shit. That was the only time I've been to a Fogo de Chão. That's right. That is right. And it was Thanksgiving.
[15:55] We were there on Thanksgiving Day. That's right. It was in Rio, actually. I was in Rio. That's what it was, yeah. Ate my weight in whatever meat they brought me on. Oh, yeah. That's how you do it. That's how you, like, fast for the day. Yeah. I didn't have breakfast. I think I went to run. Yeah, no breakfast, no nothing, you know, and then you show up, like, ready to fucking work. Yeah. And you put the hours in. You put the...
[16:18] put the pounds in. You got to get that $69.99 worth of beef, like at least two pounds of it. I was sweaty and greasy when I left. On that note, we're going to cut it to a message from our sponsors. We'll be right back with Is It Brilliant or Bullshit? All right, we're back.
[16:44] From our meat hangovers, what's on the docket for Brilliant or Bullshit this week? Well, we found a study. This study has been out for a while and some people might have heard of it. No, nobody's heard of it, Drew. Nobody reads this shit like you do. Yeah, I'm the only one nerding out like this. Well.
[16:59] It's a study about boredom, actually. Okay. So we were talking a little bit about boredom. But what they did basically is they took people and they just stuck them in a room and took their phone away from them, took everything away from them and said, you know, just sit there. Sounds horrible. Yeah. So they give them six to 15 minutes. And there was a series of studies. In the early studies, people were just like, this is torturous.
[17:20] I don't want to do this anymore. Six to 15 minutes. Six minutes and people couldn't handle it. Yes. Yes. And then they started giving them different tasks or options where they could do something if they wanted to. The most interesting finding though that they found is that there's a lot of people who will give themselves a shock rather than just sit there with their own thoughts. They would rather shock themselves. Electrical shock. Electrical shock. Yeah. A mild electrical shock. They would rather give themselves a mild electrical shock. Yeah.
[17:49] So unshockingly, two thirds of men. Of course. We shocked themselves. Only about 25% of women shocked themselves. So this is why women live longer. Yes. Yes. One of the many reasons. But it's really interesting because it just it shows just how averse we are to being bored. This study is almost 10 years old. So it's probably gotten worse since then. I like this.
[18:11] Just for two reasons. One is, and we'll talk about the boredom piece, but I also like it because it very much philosophically aligns with a lot of the Buddhist stuff that I've always talked about, which is the mind kind of craves pain. Even if you put people in a perfectly fine situation, the mind will start finding things wrong.
[18:31] wrong with it and find things to be upset about and get up, get attached to certain sensations or thoughts or feelings, um, that feel dissatisfying. And it's like this, to me, this is just like the most fundamental expression of that facet of human nature, which is like, well, there's nothing else to do. So I might as well just hurt myself because that will give me something to focus on and think about.
[18:56] and be upset about. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's, it's like, it's almost poetic in a way. I'm not surprised. I'm honestly, I'm honestly not surprised. I'm not either. I'm not either. Um, I, it's just, it, it speaks to just how, how,
[19:11] Is it, are we afraid of our thoughts? Are we, are we like, we don't want to stare at our own thoughts. Is that what it like? Are we just so afraid of what's inside our heads that we just don't want to face it either too? The instructions on some of these were to just, just sit there. Yeah. Just don't do anything.
[19:29] Uh, um, notice any thoughts that come up or whatever, and we'll ask you about them later, but don't do anything. And people were just like, no, I'm like, like my mind wanders. I want to think about other things. I want to fidget. I want to, you know, if you don't have your phone with you, you probably think about, I wish I had my phone with me. Sure. Like, is it, we're just so, so averse to being bored. I mean, a lot of, a lot of creative people will say boredom is like the, that's the playground of the creative, right? And we avoid a lot of that.
[19:56] Yeah, boredom is the mother of invention or something like that. It also makes me think, not having another thought related to the pain thing, which is they say this about people who commit suicide, that it's not – like if you think of like 9-11, like the people who jumped out of the towers. Mm-hmm.
[20:16] it's not that they weren't afraid of jumping out of the towers. It's that what was inside was so much more painful than the fear of falling. Right. That that became appealing by comparison on a much more micro scale. I wonder if this is sort of the same thing that like sitting alone with your own thoughts is so burdensome and painful that an electric shock feels appealing in comparison that it's like, well, that's less painful. So, um,
[20:47] What is it about our own thoughts that is like so burdensome? What is it, Mark? That's what I'm asking you. Do we really have...
[20:59] Is there just a fear of like what's underneath all of that in that lizard brain or is it? I don't know. I just think boredom is painful. Yeah. I do. And I think our tolerance for boredom is just probably all time low. I don't know, man. Like I, what this brings to mind is I remember I went on a number of meditation retreats in my early twenties when I lived in Boston. And I remember the first one, it was a single day. It was like 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or whatever.
[21:30] I got about halfway through that day. Like the back half of that day was so excruciating for me. I never, at the time I never really meditated for more than like 20 minutes maybe. Okay, and how old were you at this time? 21, maybe, 20, 21. So this is early to mid 2000s, yeah. Yeah, and it's, had a very modest experience of meditation and I signed up for this full day retreat. And so it was basically like nine hours nonstop silent.
[22:00] you basically walked in, took your shoes off, sat down, started meditating, and you weren't done until like nine or 10 hours later. They gave you no instruction or anything? They just- Very basic. Very, very basic. Okay. And- And you paid for this, I'm guessing. Like you just, you paid to just go sit and meditate? No, it was like donation. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. But my memory of that is that that afternoon was absolutely excruciating. Like I,
[22:28] desperately wanted to get up and leave so bad. It actually reached a point where I, I, I started like singing songs in my head because it was the only thing that could like kind of get me through it, which I realize is literally the opposite of meditation is like finding entertaining things to do in your mind. Um,
[22:48] But yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's, I do think this is for me, this is where meditation, the value of meditation kicks in because the meditation is the practice of learning to sit with stillness and nothingness and become comfortable with boredom.
[23:07] And I, I think that's gotta be a valuable skill. No, for sure. I, I think a lot of us too, we don't think of boredom as being painful. We just, we think of it as, oh my God, I'm bored. I'm uncomfortable. Right. We don't think of it as painful, but if you really stop and pay attention to the boredom, it's painful. It is painful. Yeah. It is painful. Um,
[23:26] Or a certain level of it that I think is actually pain. Like, and it's not pain specifically. I think it's more discomfort. It's just like, yeah, when I really think back to that retreat, like, it just felt like, you know how, like, when you're stuck in a shitty airplane economy seat and, like, no matter how you shift your weight or move your legs –
[23:49] it's uncomfortable. Like no matter how you sit, it's just like dissatisfying. It's kind of like that for hours and hours and hours and hours. So I don't know. Speaking of which, have you heard of this raw dogging flights? No, it's not what, it's not what it sounds like. Go on. Yeah. It is not sexual. So there's this movement like Gen Zers are doing this where they get on a flight and,
[24:19] They do no phone, no music, no TV, no movies, nothing. They just sit and like stare at the back of the seat in front of them for the entire flight. Okay. And they post on social media and they're like, I just raw dog a four-hour flight from Miami to New York or whatever. And it's like everybody gets really excited about it. And then there was like some guy who posted, he did like a nine-hour flight raw dog, like no sleep allowed at all. Oh, no sleep even.
[24:46] It's like, wow. It's like a little mini meditation retreat in the sky. Yeah. But anyway, it's becoming a thing. Okay. And it's, it like, it reminds me of this. It's almost like a macho thing. It's like, oh, I raw dog the six hour flight. Oh, I raw dog the red eye across the Atlantic. It's like, oh damn, dude, like you're fucking tough.
[25:06] I don't know. This is like, I feel like this is a world we're coming to where, where stimulation is so overabundant that like, uh, the new machismo status symbol is like, well, I can be bored longer than you. Yeah. You can't, I'll be bored longer than you. Like, that's like the new, like bicep. That's not so bad. I think I kind of like that. I don't know. I, I've heard of raw dogging life before where it's like, you don't do drugs, alcohol, like no caffeine and everything. You're just raw dog and life. I've never heard of Mormonism. Yeah.
[25:33] Yeah. Straight edgers and like all that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, uh, I do, I remember when wifi started to be get on planes, they started to add wifi to the planes and I thought, Oh, this is going to be amazing. And then it started happening. I'm like, Oh God, this was like one spot where I could just like try to sleep. Detach. Yeah. Yeah. So I love wifi on planes because it's good enough to actually get useful things done, but it's, it's still bad enough that like you can't get on a watch. I don't think it'll be,
[26:02] too much longer before it's all just starlink and this high speed i just like i hope they keep the connection bad because i'm so productive on flights i'm so productive well so is there is there some value you think then in raw dogging life uh in general you know purposely how do you is there a good way to leverage boredom i guess i think so i mean i i
[26:25] You've talked before about like writing, you know, where you're like, I sit down and, you know, if you turn off your Wi-Fi or whatever it is, and I have to sit here for two hours and the only thing I can do is either write or do nothing. Sure. I got two options. Yeah. And I've heard other writers talk about that too. So is it like using – leveraging that pain of the boredom to do something – For sure. That's not boring. For sure. But difficult. I also just think like –
[26:51] If you develop a tolerance for boredom, it's going to give you an advantage in so many areas of life. Like if you're willing to sit with hard thoughts longer than other people or have difficult conversations longer than other people or listen, like educate, you know, watch a lecture or read a educational manual or something longer than other people. Like it's just...
[27:14] We're entering a world where, you know, boredom tolerance is a form of pain tolerance. And it's any form of pain tolerance is going to give you advantages in life. So, yeah, I think this is just like a, it's a new dimension of that. Yeah, I think so too. All right. Speaking of boredom, here's a message from our sponsors. Yeah.
[27:44] It's Q and A time, Drew. It is Q and A time. What do the people want? Let's give the people what they want. What do they want? Adina from YouTube, she asks, please explain the rules of quitting. I like the way she puts it too. When to quit and when to grit. When to quit and when to grit. No, but this was actually a pretty common question or some variation of this question. Yeah, this comes up a lot. When do I give up? When do I stick it out? All the time. All different contexts too, whether it's a career path or a project you're working on, a relationship, you know. It's tough too because persistence is super important.
[28:14] But also not wasting time on something that's never going to work out is also really important. For sure. I have a couple of heuristics for this. One of them is I just think of as momentum. So if something is very hard and it's not really working –
[28:34] Do I still feel – do I feel like my progress – first of all, do I feel like progress is happening and do I feel like that progress is accelerating? So it's basically like the more time that I spend trying, do the failures get better? Yeah. Are the failures improving? If they're not, then to me that's kind of a sign of like –
[28:54] all right, this is probably not gonna work out. Whereas if they are, you know, so an example here is when I started my business, you know, I basically made no money for like a year, year and a half, but I was learning so much about marketing, sales, promotion, websites, e-commerce,
[29:15] Like my understanding of the business was growing at such a fast pace that I was like, you know, if I keep at this, it feels inevitable that something will eventually work. So I should just keep going. Like I had a lot of confidence that that was going to be the case. Whereas I've had other things in my life.
[29:35] Like music, for example. I was a good musician. I went to music school. I did decently in music school. But it was so clear to me that the best guys in music school were able to... First of all, they were just so far ahead of me. And the reality of the music industry is such that like, you know, the top 0.01% get 99% of the benefits. That I was like...
[30:03] I don't see how this is gonna work out for me in the long run. I'm either gonna have to work 10 times harder than that guy for the rest of my life,
[30:12] Uh, or I can just go do something else that other people have to work 10 times as hard as I do, you know? So, um, so yeah, I gave it up and honestly giving it up was one of the best things I ever did. Yeah. Um, does you, you talked about, you've talked about before too, like when you were building your business and I think it was not like you were living with a girlfriend at the time or something like that. Yeah.
[30:36] And you said, yeah, I'm not making a lot of money. Just like what you said. I'm not making a lot of money, but I'm learning a lot as I go. Not only are you learning, but you're like, this learning to me is very, very valuable. Yes. And like, I value this even if nobody else around me does. Is that, do you think that's a good indication too? It depends what. Well, because what I'm thinking about is there's some, there's like outlier examples of this. Sure. Where somebody...
[31:04] like should have given up you you think they should have given up at some point but they didn't they stuck it out you you've written a lot about charles bukowski before he didn't become sure really all that famous until he was in his 50s right um and even then it was kind of hit and miss and he was up and down and all over the place yeah there's other examples of that too i'm a really big fan of like it's always sunny in philadelphia love it the show right
[31:25] Rob McElhaney, the creator of that show, I mean, he should have gave up a long time before that. He wasn't getting roles in anything. And so he just decided to go make his own thing. And it turned out as always sunny in Philadelphia. Most people would have given up by that point. Sure. And should have probably given up by that point. What do those outliers teach you, if anything? Yeah.
[31:46] With creative pursuits, I think the equation is a little bit different. My argument with creative pursuits is that you should be doing what you would be doing for free anyway. Okay. Because that's what you're going to be best at. That's what you're going to be most passionate about. And that's probably what people are going to resonate with when they see your work.
[32:04] But I think there's also, you just have to be realistic that any creative industry or market, 99% of the benefits go to the top 0.1%, right? So, and there's just, in a certain amount of that too, there's a certain luck factor. Right, right. A timing factor that plays in as well. So I think if we're talking about creative pursuits, the equation changes a little bit. In professional pursuits, I think it's, you need to simply be really honest about
[32:34] your skill, talent, and what you're learning. And understanding when you are working in a pursuit that you don't necessarily have any natural advantages at, that you don't have any natural talent at, that's gonna be something that's hard to stick with in the long run. So this is one thing that Tim Ferriss talks about, is he often says that when he's faced with a difficult decision, he will pick the option where failure teaches him the most. Oh. And,
[33:04] So he will often try things that are a long shot, but the failure of that long shot will actually create a lot of second order benefits or teach him a lot of things or give him a lot of experiences that could be valuable in other areas of life. So that's a factor as well. Right. And that was true with my business of like because I was I remember having a conversation with my dad about it. You know, I.
[33:28] he was like, where's this going? And I was like, look, even if this doesn't go anywhere, I'm learning so many useful skills. I learned how to, I literally became a web designer because I was trying to put together a website for one of my businesses. And I did freelance web design for a number of years.
[33:45] So I learned web design. I learned copywriting. I learned Facebook ads and promotions. I learned all these skill sets that I probably could have gone and gotten a day job doing one of those things if the writing hadn't worked out. So that's another example of like, OK, even if this fails.
[34:08] I'm developing skills or there are like second order effects that are very beneficial. I was also building a network, right? Like let's say the blog never took off, but I had 500 really hardcore fans as readers. Of those 500 people, like I can probably find something, you know, I could probably ask that those 500 people like, Hey, I need a job or I want to work with somebody like anybody have an opportunity. So there's like,
[34:36] There's relationship capital that you can get. So again, I think it's how valuable is the process and how valuable is the failure? And if those two things are valuable, then yeah, keep going. And then there's also the momentum question. It's like, is it getting easier the more you do it or is it getting harder the more you do it? If it's getting harder, that's a sign. The momentum thing is very true, I think, when it comes to relationships. Yeah.
[35:01] I gave this analogy to a friend a couple of years ago and it inspired him to dump his girlfriend. I told him, I was like, please go on. Give us the secret. I told him, because him and his girlfriend were like fighting all the time. And I was like, look, I'm going to ask you a simple question. I was like,
[35:25] when you guys go through the fights and you like come to resolutions or compromises, I was like, does it feel like each subsequent fight, does it feel like you're pushing a rock up a hill or does it feel like you're pushing a rock down a hill? Like does each subsequent fight get easier because of the previous fights or is it getting harder because of the previous fights? And he said, it's getting harder. And I was like, okay, every relationship I've had that failed, it got harder. It was a rock going up a hill. Whereas...
[35:54] with my wife, it was a rock going down a hill. Every subsequent fight got easier because of the, the things we learned in the resolutions we came to and the compromises we came to in the previous ones. So the obstacles were still there, but they just, they were much more manageable. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. And it's you, there's a momentum to, to the obstacles. And I, I, I, I literally think it's a, it's a matter of like you are,
[36:24] You are building a skill set within the relationship. Like my wife and I have a Mark and Fernanda skill set that we've built together that makes us really good at fighting now because we've successfully fought and found resolutions and compromises so many times. Whereas other people, they don't build that skill set. They just kind of like –
[36:46] take turns suffering and the resentment builds and nothing actually gets better. Okay. All right. You also, too, the other day you brought up this point to me, and I think it's really interesting about hard work. Where does hard work come into this? Where does this like gritting it out when you really want something, when you think you want something, but you're not sure to keep going? Hard work, how do you define it? How do you think other people define it? And where does that fit into all of this?
[37:14] Hard work is, you know, you're expending a lot of time and energy. But what's funny is that your definition of a lot of time and energy is going to shift wildly based on your relationship with the activity. So I think the example I gave to you when we talked about this was like when I was in music school, I could feel myself falling behind.
[37:33] the other people in my program. And so I started practicing more. And I went from maybe practicing two to three hours a day to practicing like four to five hours a day. And in my mind, that was like a massive investment. And I was kind of mentally at the ceiling of my capacity
[37:54] to practice and improve on the instrument. So at the time, I thought, I'm working my ass off. This is like as much as I can give, and it's still not really working. Meanwhile, there are other people in the program who are practicing eight, 10, 12 hours a day. So in my head, that was hard work, and it wasn't working. I ended up quitting. When I got to writing,
[38:17] and especially when it came to blogging and the business around blogging, I would sit down and start working on something and I wouldn't even get up to like eat for like 10 hours. And then after that 10 hours, I would like come back and still have more energy to keep going. And I realized I'm like, oh, this is hard work. Like this is what actually like,
[38:40] it's not that it feels hard. Like it's the, the subjective experience of like what is difficult is often misguiding because it's like the, the actual quantity of energy and work that was going into it. Like 12 hours of writing felt easier to me than four hours of music. And so again, that's like, that's an indication I was in the wrong thing before. Right. Four hours feels like a lot of hard work. Yeah. You're probably in the wrong thing. Whereas if you're able to go 12 hours, you're,
[39:09] and still be kind of excited to keep going or have trouble falling asleep because you're still thinking about it, that's a sign that you're in the right thing. Right. So the other students in the music program who are, they were practicing six, eight, 10 hours a day. Did you ever talk to them about that? Yes.
[39:25] So there's a guy named Chris McQueen. He has a couple of Grammys now. He was like the top guy in my program. Okay. He was a guitarist in a band called Snarky Puppy. They're amazing. You should check them out. I remember I cornered him in the cafeteria one day, and I started talking to him, and I was really curious about his practicing music.
[39:47] his practice regimen. So I started asking him about like, you know, how much do you warm up? And like, how do you work on a song and all this stuff? And, uh, he was just giving me these blase answers. Just like, I don't know, dude, like I just kind of work on it. Like whatever. It's like typical shit of like anybody who's actually really good at something. They don't think a whole lot about how they do it. And so I remember I had this whole conversation with him and I was like, you know, I'm just going to kind of tell him what, what's going on with me. Cause I was thinking about dropping out at that point. And, uh,
[40:17] So I told him, I was like, look, man, I'm like, I'm practicing like four or five hours a day. I'm like starting to feel tendinitis in my left hand. I'm exhausted. I'm completely burnt out. I was like, what do you do when you feel like that? And he was like, I've never felt like that. And Mark walked out right there. He was like, all right, we're done. I was like, all right, I need to get the fuck out of here. This is not, you know, and it's, it's.
[40:47] He is a Grammy. Yeah. And I don't. Yeah. And that's why. That's a huge part of why. Right. Definitely. So, yeah, I think it's important to be realistic about those things. Right. Right. Yeah. What about for people who haven't found that thing? Maybe that's another question. I don't know. I mean, yeah, it is. That is kind of another podcast. But I don't know. Maybe that kind of comes back to the boredom thing. Yeah.
[41:13] like being able to stick with something through the boredom, through the friction. Like everything has some amount of friction. Everything like, even if you love something, you'll still wake up not really wanting to do it maybe 20% of the time. Right. And, but I don't know, you still go do it. Like there have been so many times where like I wake up and I'm like, ugh, I don't wanna write today. But then I force myself into the chair and I open the document and I write a couple sentences.
[41:43] And then by like the second paragraph, I'm like, oh yeah, this feels good. You know? And then it comes back. But I feel like if people don't have the, so this is where the grit comes in. If you don't have the grit to like put your ass in the chair on those off days, you don't rediscover the fun, you know? So grit is important too. Yeah. Yeah.
[42:04] Here's the final answer. All right. Quitting is important because it points you in the right direction. And then grit is only important once you've found the right direction. If you use grit and you're pointed in the wrong direction, it's just going to get you further off course. Oh, yeah. That's where the pain comes in. Yeah. The unnecessary pain. Yeah. That's when you start electrocuting yourself. As we all want to do. As we all wish we could. Yes. All right. What's the...
[42:34] Oh, the wisdom of the week. So I picked this one out. This is a very orthogonal thought, but I used to be a fan of the late Mitch Hedberg, the one-liner comedian. I like this quote. This quote's not going to sound wise, but I would like people to think of it in the context of like, quitting is never actually quitting. Quitting is simply making space for something else. So in those terms, Mitch Hedberg once said, I like an escalator because an escalator can never break. It just becomes stairs.
[43:04] that's a great dad joke yeah it is a great dad joke all right we'll be back next week uh be sure to subscribe follow the show leave a review um and if you want to submit one of your questions either leave it as a comment uh under this show on youtube or you can submit it to podcast at markmanson.net uh we will be back next week say goodbye drew goodbye drew drew
[43:33] The Subtle Art of Not Getting a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.

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