The comfort crisis, doing hard things, rucking, and more | Michael Easter, MA

All of human history that we have written down happens New Year's Eve, 11:59, starting 33 seconds in. That is all of recorded human history. That is how little time we've been here.

Anything that I'm writing about, you have to go through a short-term discomfort in order to improve. If you want to get fit, you're going to have to exercise harder than you are now if you're not. If you want to lose weight, you're probably going to be hungry at some point. If you want to improve your mental health... you might have to ask yourself some hard questions...

Now, when we feel this evolutionary discomfort of boredom, we have very easy, very effortless escapes from it. You just pull out your cell phone. We have the ultimate vehicle for stimulation and attention capture on our persons at all time. It has really put a big dent in boredom, and boredom does come with benefits.

This eventually gets me thinking about death ... We're all going to die. And if you think about that, you think about right now; we're just sitting here having a moment. Very soon, in the near future, you're going to be having a moment, and then all of a sudden, there won't be a moment anymore. That is an uncomfortable thought.

When you look at research on challenges in people's lives, the people who have the worst rates of mental health are the people who have had a ton of challenges, like an overwhelming amount of challenges and traumas. But on the opposite end of the spectrum are people who have no challenge in their life and no traumas. They have equally poor rates of mental health. So, it's kind of a U-shaped curve.

If you back up and look at how much time people spend engaged with digital media today, when I wrote the book, the average was 11 hours and 6 minutes. It's now past 12 hours.

As we experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually perceive this. We simply go out and look for other problems. We don't become more satisfied.

You look at research on alcoholics, and I think there was a group that tracked alcoholics [on] day one of the recovery for a year. And the people who still stuck around their normal friend group, only 15% of them were still sober after a year.

What is causing our stress? A lot of it is manufactured. No one causes your stress; you cause your stress.

When I was getting sober, the phrase I learned is rule 62: Don't take yourself so damn seriously.

...Rucking as a form of fitness, and I really started to really look at the research on it. It's really great for us because you're working your cardiovascular system, but you're also working your strength system to a degree. So, you're not going to get that with running or cycling, something that is a pure endurance act.

Boredom is an evolutionary discomfort that basically tells us, whatever you're doing with your time, the return on your time invested has worn thin.

That's what makes hunting compelling to me is that rather than becoming an observer of nature, you become a participant in it.

When I started to look at a lot of what kills us now, it's all things linked to pace and comfort.

As hard as rucking is with all that extra weight, it's still much easier on your knees then running.

I used to do a lot of fasting. I don't fast as much anymore, but one of the things I loved about fasting was how much I learned what I could do when I was hungry ... I remember the first time I tried to put myself through serious workouts during a 7-day fast. I mean, I thought I was going to die.