Seek activities or beliefs that connect you to a purpose greater than your immediate self or desires. People who dedicate themselves to a higher ideal or service tend to report higher levels of happiness, even amidst hardship, as it provides meaning and purpose beyond individual impulses.
Infuse boredom back into your life by removing easy, effortless, hyper-stimulating escapes (like cell phones and TV) and allowing your mind to wander. Boredom signals that your current activity’s return on time is thin, prompting you to seek new, often productive activities, leading to calmness, increased observation, and better ideation.
Focus on eating minimally processed foods, ideally those with a single ingredient. Minimally processed foods are slower to eat, lead to spontaneous lower calorie intake, and help avoid the hyper-palatability that encourages overeating, potentially reducing the risk of obesity and related diseases.
To change habits requiring subtraction (e.g., eating less unhealthy food), focus on altering your environment, such as your pantry. This strategy helps manage the challenges of an incredibly palatable, calorie-dense, non-perishable, and cheap default food environment.
Learn and recognize the three components of the scarcity loop (opportunity, unpredictable rewards, quick repeatability) in various aspects of your life. This system can get people to do seemingly irrational behaviors and is exploited in areas like social media, gambling, and online shopping, helping you understand and potentially moderate these behaviors.
Periodically practice austerity or deprivation in certain areas of your life (e.g., food, material possessions, constant stimulation). Being deprived of something for a while is the best way to cultivate gratitude and appreciation for what you have, preventing normalization and fostering deeper enjoyment when it is available.
Consciously set aside time to be alone with yourself, engaging in solitude rather than merely experiencing loneliness. Solitude, though challenging, can lead to deeper self-knowledge, insight, and self-reliance, ultimately enabling you to function better in society and contribute to others.
Engage in activities that are not entirely comfortable, require focus, and immerse you fully in the present moment. Such experiences can be “life-giving” by forcing presence, awareness, and the exercise of your “will to live,” making your time feel more consequential and rewarding.
Evaluate purchases through the lens of “gear” (items that enable life-giving experiences or accomplish greater goals) rather than “stuff” (purchases to fulfill an impulse or for status). This mindset helps differentiate between meaningful acquisitions and impulse buys, potentially reducing clutter and fostering more purposeful consumption.
Regularly go to places or engage in activities without your phone. This practice forces you to confront boredom, observe your thoughts, and engage with your surroundings, fostering presence and reducing reliance on constant digital stimulation.
Intentionally go into new situations (e.g., restaurants, movies, parts of town) without prior research or expectations. This allows for an unadulterated, present-moment experience, fostering greater internal value and avoiding the mediation of information from others that can alter expectations and enjoyment.
When you truly want to understand something, put in more effort to acquire information, such as reading books or going to the source, rather than relying on quick online searches. Slower information acquisition leads to better recall and contextual understanding, as demonstrated by studies where book-based research yielded better comprehension than internet searches.
When seeking important information, aim to go directly to the primary source rather than relying on secondary or tertiary sources. This ensures greater accuracy and context, reducing the risk of misinformation or misunderstanding.
If information feels “too good” or “too tasty” (i.e., overly simplistic, highly emotional, or perfectly confirming your biases), use it as a sign to investigate further and seek out opposing viewpoints. Just as delicious fast food often lacks nutritional quality, seductive information often sacrifices truth and nuance for appeal.
When encountering information, especially short clips or soundbites, actively seek out the full context (e.g., watching the entire interview, reading the full article). Information taken out of context can be misleading or used to misrepresent, leading to incorrect conclusions and potentially harmful societal polarization.
Be mindful of snacking, as it was a concerted movement by the food industry to sell more food and is linked to the rise in obesity. Snacking, especially with ultra-processed foods, contributes to increased calorie intake due to the “three Vs” (value, variety, velocity) that make them fast and enjoyable to eat.
Consider trying a diet where every food has only one ingredient for a period to learn which foods make you feel full on fewer calories. This approach can lead to spontaneous weight loss and help you understand how different foods impact your satiety and overall well-being, even if not followed perfectly long-term.
Eat more slowly, especially when consuming processed foods. Speed of eating is a factor in overconsumption; processed foods are faster to eat, leading to higher calorie intake.
Be aware that highly palatable and enjoyable food can lead to overeating. Humans have a drive to eat more than they need, and modern food is engineered to be as delicious as possible, making it easy to consume in excess.
Allow yourself to experience true hunger before eating. Hunger makes food more enjoyable and can help you appreciate simpler, less palatable foods, potentially reducing overeating of hyper-palatable options.
Identify and address emotional reasons for eating, as 80% of eating today is driven by reasons other than true hunger. Eating for emotional reasons (like stress relief) provides short-term comfort but can lead to long-term problems like obesity.
When dealing with addictive behaviors, introduce predictability into the environment, timing, and dosage of the substance or behavior. Making the addictive element predictable removes the “game” and unpredictability that makes drugs (and other behaviors) so compelling and attractive, leading to lower addiction rates.
Encourage creativity by providing limited resources or by challenging yourself/others to create new things from existing resources. Studies show that facing scarce resources can lead to more creative problem-solving and greater rewards from the process.
For everyday questions of low consequence, try to make a decision or find the information within 60 seconds. This prevents wasting time on mundane decisions and acknowledges that not all information requires extensive research.
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