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Today we're talking with Neil Pasricha, author of the Happiness Equation Happiness kind of a buzz word. We hear it may be too much. We're going to talk today about not only some actual practical exercises and science behind becoming happier every day. But happiness is a learn herbal teachable skill and why you should never retire. And I know you're thinking I'm 25. I'm not thinking about retirement. The things we're gonna learn today are gonna help you play along for the rest of your life. So enjoy this one with Neil Pasricha. And this is the art of charm. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. And I'm here with producer Jason Happy Time. The Art of charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love and at work. We may not have all the answers,

but we definitely have all the questions. All right, here's Neal. So Neil, tell us what you do in one sentence.

And when I increased happiness levels and organizations through simple models.

Okay, happiness is a buzzword. It's trendy. Everybody's talking about it. I mean, even you said pre show there 75,000 books on Amazon alone with the word happiness in the title. So everybody's into the happiness thing. It's the latest thing. What's the deal? Why is happiness so trendy?

I know it's interesting, too, because you didn't quite say happiness fatigue, although I might go that foreign to say, like yet work we're kind of tired of. It's a nebulous term is something we've been scratching out for a while, But I think the reason is still so present is because we still aren't very at it. Turns out that the longest study ever done on happiness in society, which is Professor David Myers Hope, called University of Michigan, some another Michigan reference. He's been studying happiest in population since 1955 and it turns out that 20% of people declare themselves to be happy and has been the same number since the fifties that he's done this test every five years. So our wealth has gone up, access to technology has gone up. Our availability of food are mobility. Everything's increased, but our happiness is flat lines.

So part of it, I think, is that it's not that we haven't cracked yet. So off course, a gigantic industry full of all kinds of interesting characters has emerged. But part of the reason we're so interested is because we have partly been promised life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and where it's something we're still pursuing.

I mean, we've gone to the frickin moon. How come we haven't managed to figure out the happiness thing in all this

time? You know, I put forward a model that is controversial, but something really believe in. And I say that our species, homo SAPIENs, has been around for 300,000 years. And for 299,950 of them, you know, our brains. We're oriented to do three things which is look for problems, fine problems and solve problems. You know, the classic, you know, running away from the saber tooth. Tiger example is always out there.

But even the model of the world we've created for ourselves is oriented around problem finding. So you know, you get your blood test bath. If your mayor like scanning for the high cholesterol. If you get a math test back, you're like scanning for the three problems you got wrong. Everything we do is problems scanning. Our brains are oriented towards that because that's what's led to our survival. So I think we have to let ourselves off the hook for not being happy. We are oriented every day, toe look for problems. It's how we survive. And no wonder that happiness is being declared. I think generally accepted as an exercise, something you can work on, a muscle you can develop as opposed to something that we just are because we're not

so basically, it's elusive because we're looking for other things.

Yeah, exactly. Like you get up in the morning. I get up in the morning, you see something you find what's wrong with it is much easier to go through your day to find problems. If you think about the average person listening, who may be working, what do you given once 1/4? Once year, you're given a job evaluation. The whole point of it is to tell you the three things you've done wrong, and you scan quickly for those three things to see if you are going to be on a remedial plan or if you're gonna get like, a 2% raise. And everything we're doing is oriented around that problem finding. So that's why the percent of our thoughts we control the happy thoughts. It's a lot more difficult to develop that

I actually read the whole book and there's a lot of hand drawings in there, which I thought was kind of funny. I mean, maybe I just had a draft, but do you actually sketch out a lot of these little blocks that you use to create the exercises we're gonna discuss?

Yeah, exactly. So happy situations full of a bunch of hand drawings. They're all me drawing them with a Sharpie on computer printer paper, which is probably not the right kind of paper to be using. And it was a really fun idea when the publisher agreed to let me put hand drawings in the book, and it became a really annoying idea when they asked her revised versions of every drawing seven times. People like you have to having to redraw all these tables on courier them dance in New York. So yeah, those are all me drawing stuff by hand, partly because my wife and I well, we're thinking about happiness in our lives or success or time or whatever. We end up just sketching stuff out. It's just a nice way for us to think about things.

What got you interested in all this? I mean, you argue in the book that the happiness model we're taught from a young age is actually completely backward. Did you figure this out by hitting a wall or what?

Yeah, I mean, exactly like if people have heard of my stuff before, it's not for the happiness equation, right? It's for the Book of Awesome and $1000 on Things. And that's a project I started five years ago when my wife told me she didn't wanna be married to me anymore. And my best friend was on the verge of suicide and sadly, did end up taking his own life. So from that painful few years spawned a series of books around the observation of simple pleasures I'm most known for. Flipping to the cold side of the pillow or smelling bakery air or sitting astride relies on your way to work. That's kind of what my name has been associated with. But then so why? This will five years pass. I didn't write a thing. I started moving from the observation of awesome things toe like the application of one, like living again,

starting toe online date starting to say yes to going on Friday nights instead of staying home and writing every Friday night. And when I fell in love again to a woman named Leslie, and we ended up getting married, she told me she was pregnant on the flight home from our honeymoon. And when we landed at home in Toronto, I started writing a letter to this unborn child on what I thought was the most important thing I could tell him or her. Which is how do you actually live a happy life? So the happening situation, that book you have there is the letter I wrote to my son, and the origin of it is me trying desperately to say, OK, what's the manual, Jordan, or what's the action step you can take? And the 75,000 books I was looking at didn't show it to me. At least I couldn't find it, so I wrote a letter to help guide this new human in case anything ever happened to me. That's what got me into the happiness

world. Okay? And now why is everything backward? How are things backwards in your mind?

So my parents are immigrants, right? My mom's from Kenya and my dad's from India. They kind of beat a simple model into my head. As a child, it goes like this. It's like Neil, you do great work. Then you have a big success. Then you'll be happy. And that model is pretty well understood. You study hard to get good grades, You get into a great school. You work really hard to get promoted, you get more money and you're happy. But all the positives. I called you research by people who have been on your show before,

but also people that are well known in the field, like Sonya Lubomir ski at University of California, Sean Ache. Or, you know, all the research actually says no, that's wrong. It's the opposite. Instead, if you be happy first, if you invest in your happens at the beginning, then you get all kinds of positive outcomes. The great work follows your higher and productivity and creativity, etcetera. And then you have the big success. So we think we've got to start by working hard. Instead, we have to start by investing in our happiness. So

essentially, we have to be happy first. And then do we actually end up doing good workers of results or it just doesn't matter anymore? Because

we're happy? Well, yeah. I mean, that's the beautiful thing. That meta analysis that Dr Samuel but near ski put together shows that our productivity goes up 31%. When we're happy, we have 37% of higher sales were three times more creative Sean accorded a study that showed that were 40% more likely to get that promotion that we've been gunning for than people who aren't in a happier state. So yeah, happiest, actually, is worth the 20 minutes of investment. It takes a day because everything else you want to follow in your life technically will, because you're in a better place. And you know that to be true, right? Me and you think about work or really?

Yeah, the happy guys kind of the one you want on your team. It's the person that maybe pulls in a little extra. It's somebody that you enjoy presenting with or working with on a school project, whatever. But we know it to be true, and the signs suggest that is true. We are searching for so desperately we're not getting it yet. If you type in how to be into Google, the first drop down is happy. Number two is pretty. Number three is rich number for his model, and then how to be a real estate agent like that's what we want next. We want to be happy first, and so people are looking for it because it is so elusive. There's a classic quote by Hermann Hesse in Siddhartha,

where he says, What can I tell you? Except that perhaps you seek too much that as a result of your seeking, you cannot find. And in this book I tried desperately to prevent me from looking for happiness, but instead show them that is already inside them. Every single one of the secrets is an internally base, self driven exercise.

If it's already in there, how come we can't just think ourselves into a good mood whenever the hell

we want? You know, you sort of say, like, Oh, well, my body or my friend is an optimist. They always see things on the bright side. Actually, I don't think that's the case. I think that the glasses and 1/2 empty or full it's refillable, and you can't just wake up in the morning and flip a switch. So what we know now is that there are specific exercises you can do in just 20 minutes a day to train your brain to be happy. There things that your listeners are probably already familiar with, like meditation, writing down five gratitude journaling for 20 minutes, going on a brisk 20 minute walk. All of these little investments in yourself increase your happiness levels.

I think another thing that's exacerbating a lot of the happiness versus unhappiness is there's this sort of new wave of people that are constantly, in my opinion, probably lying about being happy all the time, and it creates this insecurity complex and those of us that are normal where we're like crap. But I'm not happy all the time. It's like the social media thing where everyone else's life looks amazing and your like minds full of ups and downs. I'm such a loser,

Totally agreed. Or and you know it's that classic Facebook news feed phenomenon where they actually have done studies that show when you block the news feeds of your friends. You may actually be happier because you're not exposing your director's cut life to their greatest hits. But that source of comparison is extended so far in this. You called it New Generation. Yeah. I mean, you can't be the best thing. You're in your school and be happy without anymore because there's someone better on YouTube, right? Yeah, You can't be the best writer in your class or your city or your town in the school paper because there's someone better and that is so detrimental to our happiness, the source of comparison, I actually say in the happiest equation, you know, think of it like you'll never be number one out of seven billion in the world at anything. Let that be a relief to you.

Be comfortable being number 2 to 7 billion because we all grew up thinking that geniuses air at the next level and it can become a huge problem. We start valuing the extrinsic motivators of stats or bestseller lists or John evaluations or salaries instead of valuing the intrinsic motivators we all have. What I'm trying to say is, Yeah, in that social media landscape, we are exposed and bombarded with so many extrinsic motivators, and they can really be huge detriments or happiness,

right? So basically, these extrinsic motivators, seeing other people achieve things, stats likes financial rewards, that type of thing. They block our other motivators. They get in the way of actual motivation.

Absolutely. There's an incredible science behind this. They've done studies like Dr Theresa Amobi. Lay is really famous for doing some studies at BRANDEIS University and Bustin University, where they've asked people, for example, to write poetry. And they tell one group of people, Write poetry. You'll love it. Poetry is beautiful. You have fun playing with words, and they tell the other group you could become a famous poet. You'll make a lot of money. You'll be judged may be given like a gift certificate afterwards. And when the compare the independent judges results of who produced better poems off courses you make, ask those.

Given the intrinsic reasons for doing it, the sort of you'll love it. It'll be great for you to have the word play. Those people perform way better, and it's amazing. But the conclusion of the study and there's number studies like this is that extrinsic motivators actually in your mind block you from seeing your own intrinsic motivators. So what I'm saying is, if you want to teach your sister how to play the piano because you love your sister, great. If your mom says, Well, yeah, I'll give you a free tickets of the movies if your teacher for half an hour suddenly you become frustrated, you're annoyed if he doesn't learn it and you're out of there in half an hour. So we have to be careful because there's extrinsic motivators everywhere in life. They're called report cards.

They're caught up. Evaluations there called for you and me people in, like creative landscapes, all kinds of bestseller list rankings or podcast rankings. Or, you know, all of those things bombard us and actually trick our minds into valuing that more than the reason we're doing something in the first place.

It makes perfect sense now that you explain it, but there's a part of me that's like, but I want to make a lot of money so that I'm comfortable because then I won't have the stress that goes along with not having. But at what point do we need to stop worrying about that? And then worry more about the quote unquote intrinsic motivators

Acknowledge? Oh, I see what you're saying. I am you. I am so in your mental place and shoes all the time. The book I've written is partly the advice and wisdom and studies I've learned, but also its advice to myself. That piece equation just hit number one up here. I'm in Canada on the best tireless and the international bestseller list. What am I thinking about this morning? I'm like, why is it not on the New York Times best seller list? Like, what am I missing for the nearest What do they need for me? You know, what do I have to say? Like it's like I have to catch myself.

I have to cash myself during because then I have to say, Wait a minute. I wrote a letter to my child. That's what I did. I wanted him to have something. If I'm gone or if you searching for happy and what did I do that. Yeah, I am. I proud of that. Yeah, and my wife is a really big grounding for May because she's, you know, nursing a baby home, looking at me like sideways, saying, like,

who cares about the New York Times best seller list or whatever it ISS and I can use the examples you've given I'm like, but I need money and it's about resources. And then I have to catch my brain because it turns out there are two wars happening in our head every day. And this is the problem you've got in Immig, Della in your brain firing cider flight adrenaline hormones saying I gotta have enough money to live. I'm going to die and live in a cardboard box if I don't nail it, you've got that happening, and you've got the culture of more surrounding us all where everyone else you look at the keeping up with the Joneses has something greater than you because they dio there is someone with a bigger book or podcast or marks at your school. You have to think to yourself, Then get above that voice in your head and say, OK, I've got in a Magdala the physiological element of my brain flashing me warning signs which may or may not be helpful. And I'm living in a culture where I can compare myself toe other people who have more than me all the time. Then I'm hoping that relieves you and could take a step. You know, for yourself

again. Yeah. I mean, the problem isn't that we have negative thoughts in our brain. The problem is, we think we're not supposed to have any of those.

Exactly, Exactly. You know, we wake up in the morning or we go through a day, and when we have a bad day, we blame ourselves for it. What I'm trying to stay in the happy situation is no. Let yourself off the hook. Remember that you're partially a victim of your own evolutionary biology and the culture that we live in and then take a big grass, take a step back and recall those things so that you can re value your intrinsic reasons for doing something. And if you do that and I've got three tests in the book on how to find what it is you love, we can talk about that separately. But if you then do that? Then I think that's a path to greater happiness. Because now you're doing what you love, not what you're told

to love greats. And when we get back, I want to hear about how evolution is causing all of us to be unhappy, or at least 80% of us. This is art of charm. Back with Neil Pasricha. I'm curious. How come evolution has just given us this crappy hand of Ugur throwback? How come it's given us this crapping hand of like, Hey, you should be unhappy because evolution because nature what's

going on there? Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, like it's really hard for us to perceive this, of course, but the earth has been around like billions of years. Animals which we are, we are animals have been around millions and millions and millions of years. And us Homo SAPIENs. We've been around like a speck of time, right? And yet today, over that speck of time, like if you put our existence on a calendar year like we only came to be in, like December 31st like 11.

52 PM or something like we just got here in the grand scheme of things, but yet were the most dominant mammal on the planet. So, like holy cow thes £3 piles of flesh hidden between our ears, these human brains, they turn out to be the most complex objects in the universe. And wow za. We can invent harpoons and spears and, like chase animals down and like start hunting and tribes and start growing empathy and trust and relationships and putting ostrich eggs out to like collecting rainwater when everyone else would tie because of the drought. My point is, our brains are awesome. They are super cool. You get one for free for 25,000 days, which is the average length of a life. You got one for free in your head. It's awesome.

But the problem with it is that it's so good is the world's highest cranked computer ever. That the way it's so good is always scanning for problems. You are always scanning everywhere for like, is there going to be something wrong? Is there gonna be a car coming out? Be careful up to protect my baby from this. Am I gonna get something wrong on a test that's gonna prevent me from being a doctor like that scanning machine is so powerful that it jolts us into this forward thinking, aggressive, ambitious brain that achieves so much. Wow, we build skyscrapers and iPhones and the Beatles and the Bible and, like, you know, your favorite movie and your favorite album like Wow, isn't that incredible? But in exchange for that incredible brain, you get something that unfortunately puts you in a state of unhappiness a lot because you're always looking for problems.

Yeah, basically, life back then and back then, is not so long ago it was basically this brutal existence. So our brain evolved to look out for things trying to kill, eat her, starve whatever get us sick. Not not this postmodern notion of you should just relax. Everything's taken care of.

Calm down. I know exactly You know, if you think about in terms of massive hierarchy of needs, a lot of us, I mean those fortunate enough to have the time to listen to a podcast, for example, like a lot of us are scratching at the top. You know, the self actualization. We don't really worry about our shelter too often unless you're on ramen noodles, a college or whatever, but like you don't worry about it that often. And so because we're scratching at the top of the hierarchy, Yeah, of course. It's going to be a drain to sort of get there. No wonder it's so difficult to be happy. Like we've got, everything was covered and our brains are programmed to find problems, right?

Cause lasting happiness. That was risky. We gotta be on our

toes. Yeah, I imagine you were happy when your lifespan was still 30 and it was the year, you know, like 10,000 PC. Like you would be chilling out, relaxing on cool. You know, to quote like this Fresh Birds theme song in an African savannah, like, 10 seconds before a giant Jaguar pounced on you. You know, in eight for dinner because you're chilling out on being blissed out happy. That was not going to pay off. And so yeah, exactly everything we do today, whether it's dropping a glass on the floor or like getting that something wrong on a mat tester. The guy in front of us doesn't go on a green light. It pisses us off the same way because our brains haven't evolved to think it's just not a big deal,

right? Yeah, of course. Instead of enjoying the fact that we've got a nice place to live, a bunch of friends, enough food to eat in a box in our kitchen that keeps it cool and fresh and unspoiled, we're on Web M d being like, Oh my God, I've got that Wait, no, I've got this to write were freaking out on the Internet looking for things that could potentially be wrong with us to worry about.

I know. And that's why they always say in the newspaper business. And if it bleeds, it leads you scan the headlines say, Of course, that's still the case, but it doesnt lead because the newspaper men are like, you know, these cynical oligarchs, like Desperate, like selling newspapers. It leads because that's what people buy. That's what they want to read. That's what we're oriented toe look for. We want to hear about the bombing because we're already convinced it's going to be terrible.

Yeah, I love this quote from your book that I think is from somebody else, but it's WebMD is like a choose your own adventure book where the ending is always cancer.

No, you laugh at it cause it's like, Yeah, it's so true every time I have, like a cough My wife, Leslie, laughs at me because I'm just like, Oh, you think it's pneumonia? You know, she's like, You're joking. She's like, You're the reason the emergency room get clogged up People like you

in the book. You mention there specific things that we can do, of course, to improve our happiness. But basically, even if everything in your job, your marital status, your relationships, health wealth, all that stuff that's 10% weaken reasonably predict 10% of your happiness, the rest of it has to do with the way your brain processes it. So it's like 90%. Correct me where I'm wrong, 90% how we react to a 10%. What happens? Can you explain that I'm not sure that that's clear. And if so, that's a huge revelation

in thinking. Yeah, I know it is interesting. It says 10% of your happiness is based on your circumstances. Okay, So what happens to you who wins the election? You know, I mean 50% is your genetic set point okay, and 40% are your intentional activities. The actual exercises and behaviors you do the walking, exercise, meditation, gratitude, writing random acts of kindness, whatever that you do to increase your happiness levels the point being that there are famous studies that show, you know, regardless of whether you win the lottery or suffer a car accident a year later, you revert back to the relative mean and you have a great deal of influence over how happy you are essentially, and it's commonly accepted these days. Happiness is a choice, and you have more effect on your happiness level than anything else.

What are some of these little exercises from the books of these little exercises that can help us become happier? I love the 20 minute replay and things like that kind of secretly

brilliant. Yeah, sure. Well, sometimes I say that organizations, I say take the 20 for 20 challenge, which means friend and one listening. Try to commit to doing one of these things for just 20 minutes a day. If you can do that for 20 days in a row, you've got a new habit. So let me give you three that people can choose from the 1st 1 is taking a brisk 20 minute nature walk a day. Professor Michael Babich and team in the American publishing American Second Somatic Society showed that these brisk walks actually outperform a test group on antidepressants and another test group doing both taking the antidepressants and doing the walking. My point is like there is power in the Fitbit, you know, like actually going and doing a brisk, energetic walk really increases your happiness levels if you do it for 20 minutes a day before work at lunch after class. Whatever it really does pay off in the long term,

that's the 1st 1 Choose that one or choose the 2nd 1 which is the 20 minute replay. You mentioned that already, but it's a very famous University of Texas study called How Do I Love Thee? Let me count the words that shows that if you journal for 20 minutes about one positive experience that happened during your day, you are happier. They did this on couples in relationships, and those journals were 50% more likely to stay together after three months, which is a really long relationship university. And it's funny. People sometimes ask me, like, Do I actually have to write it down? Or can I just think about it? No. You actually have to write it down because the way journaling works is your mind has no GPS signal in it. When you're journaling about something,

your minds thinks you're there again. If I stay Leah Jordan, Bobby Luncheon. We went out for sandwich. It was great. Like I relive the experience when I write about it, and if I read my own journal, I relive it 1/3 time, so you get a tripling effect on the positive thing that happened to you. That's exercise number two. Exercise number three I will give you is committing a random act of kindness a day. This is a famous studied at Stanford University that shows if you do five small, random acts of kindness over the course of a week, which is why I say one a day, then has a greater effect on your happiness level than any of the other studies I mentioned. So that means doing something nice for other people really does make you feel good about who you are. I'm the door holder opener. I'm the lunch buying generous man like I think I'm awesome and it helps me feel good, and it helps me feel happy.

Speaking of journals, tell us about the nuns. Because I found this fascinating. Because, of course, I'm reading all this research and the things in your book, and I'm still a little skeptical. And the nun thing kind of put me over because

of the evidence. Yeah, absolutely. Well, here's what I say. The people I say. Do you know that the average life span is 25,000 days? That's the average world life spent in days. You all have been here it like, OK, 72 years. But in days it hits you a little harder. And then if I said to you Hey, Jordan, if you could press a button, just literally press a button and have 3000 extra days, would you want that?

And most people say, Well, obviously, you know, I want to see more sunsets and have more ice cream and kiss my kids good night more often, so yeah, Well, how do you do that? Well, this is the nun study. University of Kentucky researchers found a bunch of cardboard boxes full of handwritten autobiographies written by nuns as they joined US convents throughout the 19 thirties and forties. Knowing nothing else about the nuns, they split them into piles based on their perceived happiness levels. I e. A nun who said, You know,

I'm looking forward with eager joy. You know, it had a blessed life that language or grammar, you know, spell. They're like, OK, that is a happy None. We don't know who this person is, but they're happier. Guess what The University of Kentucky researchers found these autobiographies in the year 2000. They could find out what happened to the nuns. Those who were in the happiest pile lived 10 extra years. Those your extra 3000 days right there with the press of a button. You just have to be happier at the outset. And how do you do that?

That's the problem. Well, we just talked about that. There were some of the exercises you can do. So part of what I was trying to do with this letter to my son is like, You can own your happiness. Here's the actual manual on how to actually do it, and the nun study is a great example of that. Plus all those extra years, as you may guess, are happier years. You're enjoy yourself through them,

all right. And it's something that we've seen from Dan Harris and John A Cough and yourself is that happiness, in part, is a learn herbal, teachable skill. And instead of exercises and mindsets and the nun study, we kind of see, look, the happy people don't necessarily have the best of everything they, quite frankly, make the best of everything is evidence by these journals that these nuns actually

kept. I know exactly is so true and, you know, why is the other thing? That's fine and I don't say too often, But nuns are actually turns out the perfect study group ever because they're the same gender. They were the same clothes. They live in the same building, beat the same food, none of them smoke or drink or have sex like you can't get a better control group than nuns. If you ever want to do a university study on any people about attitude deposit thinking like nuns happen to be perfect to study,

right? Same clothes, same house, same food, right? Exactly. Same habits, same set of prohibitions. Difference mindset, right? They have the same friggin schedule every day for the most part.

Exactly. I said this in front of an audience recently. You know that none of them smoke or drink or have sex ever. And a woman in the front row yelled, Oh, don't be so sure about that. And it was kind of funny because either she was a nun or new. Ah, 99? I don't know,

Jason says. Same habits, really bad pun. I just got it. But I'm chained. Limb shot, Jason. Same habits. What about folks that would love to do these happiness exercises but are busy achieving the business thing? That's another even more overused kind of buzzword. Everybody's busy people brag about being busy than the rest of us. Try to be less busy. I wish I had more hours in the day, was just wait till you have kids. I mean, business is kind of this demon that looms over all of us, and yet many of us wear it like a badge of honor.

I know I totally agree with you and first of all, confirmed that people are legitimately busy. You know, the average person these days gets 147 emails. That's the average. My mom gets 60 emails, so some people really get 300 Theorist person checks, their phone now 150 times a day every four minutes, if you can believe it. And my own primary research in the book shows that the average person makes about 300 decisions a day. So, of course, retired because decision making energy is a finite resource. When you run out of it, you can Onley replenish it by either sleeping more or having glucose, you know, which is why at the front of a supermarket after you're done choosing between 45 kinds of salsa,

20 kinds of eggs there's a whole bunch of candy bars like your mind knows it needs sugar to keep going. And so what do you do? How do you stop being busy? Well, I present a solution in the book called Creating Space. And to do that, I say you have to eliminate three things. You have to eliminate choice. You have to eliminate time, and you have to eliminate access super quick on each. How do you eliminate choice? You simply stop making so many decisions automating your route toe work. Okay, Like I started using ways, The app, it sends me down dark alleys and shortcuts.

Fine, but I don't think about how I'm going to get to work anymore. Double dinners, you know, just make twice as much for dinner. If you're taking a lunch the next day, then you don't have to think about what restaurant to eat at or who to go with every single day or where to eat things like that. What can you automate so that you have less choice? There's a fascinating study done by Daniel Gilbert at Harvard that calls it, You know, the magic of being totally stuck, and he shows that what we have less choice. We actually are happier, and I give an example of a restaurant here in my hometown of Toronto called Ruby Watch Co. Where there's no menu. Everyone eats the same appetizer,

the same entree, the same desert. It changes every day, but there's no menu, and people love it because they're not bogged down by having to make so many decisions. So that's the first thing eliminate choice. The second thing is eliminate time you've heard of Parkinson's law, probably, you know, for those of heaven, General North, Ko Parkinson wrote on article in The Economist in 1955. No one had ever heard of this guy, and the premise of the article was in the first sentence. It said work rises to fill the time available for its completion, right?

And so, of course, if you have a week to do the essay, everyone's Sunday at midnight the night before. And so this simple way to be less busy is to reduce the amount of time you have for all of your projects. And they give an example in the book of You know, a very famous tech entrepreneur who takes his entire team off site for one day and says, OK, we're gonna build a whole new website in one day. Forget meetings. Forget vacations. Forget schedules. I've got everyone here who can do this coders. Programmers lay out editing whatever. You're gonna do it today until we're done. And like when you eliminate time from your projects,

you actually get more done after you're done the project. So for anyone like in school, the way to relate to this is when the teacher says, Hey, you get an extra week at the last minute to do your homework and you've already done it. You feel low because you're like, No, I have another week to like, revisit all my answers or, like, revisit my essay. That's a knowing That's the beauty of reducing time and your project. The third and Final one is eliminating access. I counted up Jordan how many access points I had to myself at Walmart, and I worked there for a decade. Turns out I had voicemail had email.

I had text messaging, had the office instant messaging program. People could walk up to my desk, all these points of access and what I noticed was the CEO I was working for had one point of access. He didn't have a personal cellphone. He didn't have any social media accounts. He wouldn't answer email. No one knew his phone number. He just was in person on Lee and he got a lot more done. And I remember thinking like how my sending like 147 years, but getting less done. And the point is whenever we have to switch between access points If you're like the average person, you you check Twitter, then you're checking Facebook. Then you check maybe multiple email accounts. Your brain has to bookmark,

prioritizing switch between tasks. McKinsey estimates we actually spend 30% of her day switching between tasks instead of doing what Cal Newport calls deep work and focusing on one. So my point. How do you eliminate access? Like delete some of the social media accounts you don't use very often. If you have multiple emails, consolidate point your voicemail to your email. That's where I do. So my voicemail just says my email address over and over again and a dozen beep. You can't leave a message, so I know that if someone's gonna call me, they'll have to email me. And if you eliminate access going backwards and time going backwards and choice, I say you'll never be busy again. You'll have created space in your life

when we get back more from Neil about why you should never retire in air quotes. This is art of charm. All right, Neil, we talked before and in your book. This, I thought, was kind of a fascinating idea, because look, I'm 36 I can't really picture myself retiring. I would imagine everybody at age 36 is like I'm never going to retire. But you actually argue that we should not give us a little background on that and tell us why we shouldn't retire.

Sure, You know, I tell the story that a lot of you may be familiar with which is that my guidance counselor, who everybody loved in my high school and who loved all the students. He was forced to retire at age 65 mandatory retirement up here. And the next week he had a heart attack in tight, you know, and I think there's a reason Fortune magazine says that the two most dangerous years of our life are the year were born and the year we retire. And so you sort of think, Well, isn't retirement something I always want, you know, and I know your listeners all different ages. But like, yeah, I dream about, like,

this endless kind of golf playing, you know, sunset sealing time. And what I actually say is I went deep into the research on this for the book, and it turns out that retirement was invented. Okay? It was invented in 18 89 in Germany when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck just declared that if you're 65 or older and you need care from the state, they'll pay you a little bit of money to move out of the workforce. He had a huge youth unemployment issue and turns out the average lifespan with 67 so it was kind of easy for him to say. These days we've adopted that age 65 number, you know, in most of the Western world, and people live much longer, and they all want to retire away earlier. So it's like we got this untenable kind of situation where we can't pay for this retirement. But yet we're all aspiring towards up.

So in the research, it turns out, National Geographic did a study on Okinawa, Okinawa Bunch of islands in Japan, where the average life span it's seven years longer than in the U. S. Like that's a lot of years. It's like the nun study. You know why? What do they call retirement there? What did they think about the end of life? Here's the amazing thing. They don't even have a word for retirement. Like literally nothing in their language describes the concept of stopping work. Instead, they have a work called Icky Guy,

which is, Iike a i g a I in it roughly means the reason you get out of bed in the morning. And so what I argue for is having a purpose. And I think having a purpose is actually one of four s is you need in work, you need social stimulation. You need the structure of having a reason to get up. You need the stimulation of learning new things and you need that story or the a key guy. That something you're doing that's bigger than yourself, you know, like the high level mission you're part of. And so what I advocate in the happiness equation is No, no, no, you don't want to retire. Although I know it sounds dreamy to sort of think of yourself lying in hammocks, finally reading the pile of novels you've had collecting your whole life.

It ain't gonna happen because it reduces your happiness. Instead, you want the four s is social structure stimulations story. They will over deliver on your happiness. I, firstly feel like I will never retire. Always bidding meaningful work. It doesn't matter if it's for money or not. The point is, the four s is Dr Happiness, not retirement.

I think it's interesting that he was like, Yeah, we'll take care of you for the rest of your short, pitiful, lonely old life. And now it's like, Hey, you got another 20 years. Oops,

I know, I know. And it doesn't help that we first of all, made it mandatory. And then, you know, on top of that, we sort of created a culture and an industry, you know, around insurance, etcetera, that, you know you want to retire early. You know, you want to kind of get out of the workforce as soon as possible. That does that sound good for solving the world's biggest problems providing for your family, like paying for other people to do that Like it?

The whole thing is untenable, like it's just not gonna last anyway. So rather than listening to like newspaper articles for the next 30 years, spouting about how no pensions gonna actually be able to fund your existence like take it into your own hands and just decide today I'll never retire, always being something interesting

bright, and it doesn't mean that you can never leave General Motors, right? What we're talking about here is if you've set things up correctly, or at least if you aim to do so, What we've got is the ability to switch careers at a certain age when finances maybe aren't your primary concern. Financial security maybe isn't your primary concern or when just one career has run its course and gives you the benefits that you need to transition to something else that might be a little bit. I don't know easier on your lower back or have shorter hours. Or is more enjoyable or just a change of pace?

Totally. I think you put it really nicely with the G M example. You know, like I'm not saying that the guy that's about to punch, Oh, after 30 years, that meatpacking plant like Hey, buddy, like punching for 30 more. What I'm saying is you some natural, authentic tests in your life, like the Saturday morning test. What do you do on Saturday morning that you love the bench test? How can you immerse yourself in a new situation and the five people test one of you naturally surrounding yourself with people or media or other inputs that hint to you what you actually love doing. Don't quit the day job but rather complemented it with something you love. Those things you love are better for the world's, the better for your happiness and over time.

As you and I both know, being in that kind of the creative worlds like they do pay off longer term. But you've got to go headfirst into them today. I love the quote by a former editor of The Onion taught Hansen. I think his name is if I'm getting that right. Who was asked, How do I write jokes for money? And he wrote back, You do it for free for 10 years. And the point is, I'm not saying, Just do whatever and you'll get paid. I'm saying, Follow your heart. Find those four s is and it will lead it to longer term life satisfaction. In

the meantime, you might have a regular job, and that's okay.

Totally. Yeah, exactly. Hey for me, Like the Book of Awesome Hit number one in 2000 and 10. I quit Wal Mart in 2016 so I mean, I had five years, four books of full time log all that stuff while at the same time doing my quote unquote 9 to 5 office job because I was of the mindset. Yeah, that, like the creative side of my life. Until it becomes I can't ignore it, Then I don't want to ever stop doing my again quote unquote a job which I was learning a lot

from Neil Pasricha. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you want to tell the A L C family before we let you get on with it?

Just that I have re big respect for anyone that makes the ends. Like I think there's an end of podcast community, you know, people that are here right now with us and for me, you know, I'm at global happiness. That'll work. That's my new project, the Institute for Global Happiness. If for anyone that's interested in what we talked about today, it's tons of free resources. I'm at Neil like little happiness that are gonna love to keep the conversation going. Thanks

so much, Neil. Interesting stuff in the book, that happiness equation, of course, linked up in the show notes here. There's a lot of these little diagrams he's got called scribbles, which are how to deal with people on how to make decisions and these little quadrants that you can write out quite literally on a napkin in order to make decisions. And it's not just happiness and that type of thing. It's how to make decisions that might leave you happier. Long term. There's a lot here, and there was a lot of advice in here that's actually solid practical inaction because at first, of course, when they told us this book is about happiness, I rolled my eyes both figuratively and sort of literally at the same time, which was quite the feat of acrobatics.

But I enjoyed this one. And if you did, don't forget to thank Neil on. Twitter will have that in the show notes. Along with the book The Happiness Equation linked in the show notes. You can view the show notes on your phone by tapping our album arts in most mobile podcast players. Neil's also on Twitter, of course, will have my Twitter and his Twitter linked in there. So say how to both of us and tell us what she thought of this. Our sponsors are in the show notes or go to the art of charm dot com slash advertisers. And don't forget to join the art of charm. Challenge the Social Capital Challenge at the art of charm dot com slash challenge or text. Charmed. That's C H a R M e d. 233444 Challenges about networking,

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