đ ASB Partners Nuggets
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things Iâve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution (bold and italics are my own to highlight what I found particularly interesting)
As James explained on the podcast, a large amount of our behavior (40â50%) is automatic and habitual, and we are building habits all the time whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Forming good habits is an essential part of both my clinical practice and my approach to my own health and life. While our ultimate goal is to change behaviors, we have to start with forming habits. A series of small and easy changes can collectively make a very big difference.
The key to Jamesâs advice is to follow four âlawsâ to incorporate an action into your routine so that it becomes a habit: 1) Make it obvious; 2) Make it attractive; 3) Make it easy; and 4) Make it satisfying.
Self-recommending, here is the link, here is one excerpt:
People like to make fun of San Francisco for not drinking; well, that works pretty well for me. I enjoy board games and appreciate that itâs easier to find other players. I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. Itâs easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest. The Bay Area has converged on Asian-American modes of socializing (though it lacks the emphasis on food). I find it charming that a San Francisco home that is poorly furnished and strewn with pizza boxes could be owned by a billionaire who canât get around to setting up a bed for his mattress.
And:
One of the things I like about the finance industry is that it might be better at encouraging diverse opinions. Portfolio managers want to be right on average, but everyone is wrong three times a day before breakfast. So they relentlessly seek new information sources; consensus is rare, since there are always contrarians betting against the rest of the market. Tech cares less for dissent. Its movements are more herdlike, in which companies and startups chase one big technology at a time. Startups donât need dissent; they want workers who can grind until the network effects kick in. VCs donât like dissent, showing again and again that many have thin skins. That contributes to a culture I think of as Silicon Valleyâs soft Leninism. When political winds shift, most people fall in line, most prominently this year as many tech voices embraced the right.
Interesting throughout, plus Dan writes about the most memorable books he read in 2025.
Podcast/Videos
Feelings are evidence of happiness, and thatâs incredibly good news
A lot of people think that happiness is a feeling. Itâs quite incorrect.
There are many better technical definitions of happiness, but they produce a lot of feelings
Theyâre associated with a lot of emotions, which is limbic system activity (a part of the brain)
If you mistake these feelings for the underlying phenomenon of happiness, youâre going to be chasing it all over the place
Youâll be chasing ghosts: how I slept last night, what I ate for breakfast, if my spouse yelled at me this morning
If you mistake the feelings of happiness for the underlying phenomenon of happiness, you wind up being managed as opposed to having any prayer of managing your own happiness
For example, thereâs also no evidence that you can train any other species to appreciate spicy food, to ingest capsaicin
This is a really higher order phenomenon where we have aversive emotions
Other animals have aversive emotions, but we actually can dominate them through a process called metacognition where we experience the emotions not just in the limbic system of the brain but in the prefrontal cortex
This is the human difference is where this comes around
For example, if the dog wants the cookie, it eats the cookie
Dogs are limbic creatures
Limbic reaction versus making it metacognitive
Little kids are limbic, and when Arthurâs kids were little, theyâd be screaming over something, thereâs a piece of rice on their chair (whatever thing that bums them out), and youâre like, âUse your words.â
What youâre telling them to do is to experience the emotion in the prefrontal cortex of the brain where they can decide how to react
They can think about what their own emotions are
And when youâre doing that, then you can get in the cold plunge and say, âIt hurts so good.â
Thatâs what metacognition brings to you
Also, with metacognition you can say something like, âIâm really sad about this. What am I learning?â
Thatâs how you can be a far more evolved human being by becoming more and more metacognitive, using the techniques for doing so, which is a lot about what Arthurâs writing about these days
âThe money, power, pleasure, and fame that are supposed to bring you undying happiness are false promises.â â Arthur Brooks
Money, power, pleasure, and fame can be instrumental to getting what you want, but they canât intrinsically give you the satisfaction you desire
There is a competitive system to get into elective classes, and this one fills in 9 seconds
Thereâs hundreds of people on the waiting list for this class
On the first day he asks students âWhat is happiness?â
They say many thingsâ âItâs that feeling I get on Thanksgivingâ
Wrong. Happiness is not a feeling any more than your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of the turkey
The feeling of happiness is evidence of happiness
Happiness is measured in all sorts of ways, both complicated and simple
The 3 macronutrients of happiness are:
1 â enjoyment
2 â satisfaction
3 â purpose
Indirect ways to figure out how happy someone is
Arthur could ask your wife, âHow happy is Peter?â when Peterâs not there and he would probably get some very accurate information
Thereâs some tests, theyâre not very good, but you could answer a series of targeted questions when youâre under fMRI
But really the best way to do it, the most cost-effective and efficient way to do that is for you to anonymously answer a bunch of questions that are like this
Imagine all the people you know were the happiest person youâve ever met, really happy, is 10, and the most miserable SOB youâve ever met is a 1
All things considered at this period of your life, not this moment, this period of your life, all things considered, thinking of those people, whatâs your number?
That turns out to be incredibly accurate
Youâve got to have a large sample because some people answer it in a wonky way
And it has to be anonymous because if you answer this in front of your wife, youâll probably lie
People donât tell the truth in front of their spouses necessarily, in front of their friends, because they give answers that people want to hear
Based on these data, you find that the happiest people, they have three macronutrients in balance and abundance
Peter asks, âAre those responses normally distributed?â
Yes they are, but the mean is not 5, itâs more like 7.5
Thereâs a bias toward the top part of the scale
Normally happy is about 7-8
Most people over the course of their adult lives (early 20s to early 50s), theyâre between 7-9
Most of the executives that Arthur works with one-on-one who are 3âs, theyâre depressed
Theyâre actually suffering from clinical issues
Theyâre behind the line of scrimmage
Thereâs nobody whoâs like, âYeah, Iâm pretty normal. Iâm probably at the 40th percentile. That probably makes me a three and a half.â
40th percentile is probably a 5
They would like to be better, and they feel like theyâre not as good as they should be
Despite the fact that in the scale that looks like the middle of the scale, but itâs not the middle
The people who are in the upper end (8-9) and like Arthurâs wife (9.5), they tend to be really healthy, and healthy means they have balance and abundance across what Arthur often refers to as the âhappiness macronutrientsâ
Itâs very easy in this audience because everybody knows itâs protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and the best diets are those that have all of them in balance and abundance
You have to get your macros
Youâre not going to have 100% protein
The three happiness macronutrients are i) enjoyment, ii) satisfaction, and iii) meaning
Enjoyment: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 22:45, V: 22:02]
Enjoyment
Enjoyment seems straightforward â âI want to enjoy my life, get a lot of pleasureâ â but thatâs wrong
Pleasure is limbic
Enjoyment involves the prefrontal cortex
Enjoyment is a much more complex phenomenon than pleasure
Pleasure is a signal from the limbic system that says this thing that youâre doing will help you survive usually through caloric needs or passed on your genes through something like sex, nothing more
Itâs just like any positive emotion, it sends a signal saying, âDo more of this.â
Thatâs not the secret of happiness
Thatâs incredibly evanescent; itâs extremely temporary
And if you pursue pleasure, what youâll be doing is youâll be engaging systems in your brain
The dopamine system, for example, which is the anticipation of reward, the reward being pleasure
[This was the subject of episode #321 with Anna Lembke]
Youâll hit the lever, get the cookie; hit the lever, get the cookie
It will never last, and youâll become an addict
âPleasure seeking, I mean, the hippie phenomenon, the hippie motto of âif it feels good, do itâ is life ruining advice.ââ Arthur Brooks
If you only did what feels good, youâd never go into an ice bath
You wouldnât stay married
What you need for enjoyment: the source of pleasure, people, and memory
Thatâs where youâre engaging your prefrontal cortex
So Anheuser-Busch never runs ads for beer of a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12 pack
They never do that, right?
A lot of people use the product that way
Why donât they show that?
Because thatâs the pursuit of pleasure and thatâs dangerous; thatâs bad for you
Thatâs why Anheuser-Buschâs ads have 2 dudes or 10 dudes or a family cracking open a Bud and drinking it and laughing
Because in the ad they want you to associate the beer with happiness, which is enjoyment is the central factor, not the pleasure that the little bit of alcohol will bring you, and thatâs what we need to do (thatâs the strategy)
Satisfaction: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 30:45, V: 29:55]
What is satisfaction?
Satisfaction is the joy after struggle
If students cheat to get an A on an exam, thereâs no satisfaction
But if they actually struggle for it and they study for it, they get a ton of satisfaction when they get an A, because thatâs how weâre wired
So Mother Nature tantalizes you with the joy thatâs going to come after the struggle and then veils the knowledge that youâre not going to enjoy it forever
For example, people actually think, âIf I move to California, Iâm going to be happy for the rest of my life because of the sunshine.â
Arthur has the data: itâs a few months
The taxes are forever
Arthur sees this constantly with people
His students think theyâre going to be happier at 38 than 28, which is generally not true
Generally your happiness is lower at 38 than it is at 28, and lower at 48 than it was at
So people not figuring out Mother Natureâs cruel little hoax, they wind up on the hedonic treadmill of more, more, more, more, more, have more
Why are we fooled by this?
Weâre born to be fools when it comes to this satisfaction problem
The right mode, a model that better satisfies, that gives you more satisfaction that lasts is: haves divided by wants
All the things you have divided by all the things that you want
We need to manage our wants in this life, and in so doing, then satisfaction hangs around
Thatâs what the Dalai Lama always says, âYou shouldnât have what you want, you should want what you have.â
Sense of purpose: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 38:45, V: 37:53]
The third macronutrient (a sense of purpose, meaning) extends far beyond âworkâ
Arthur explains, âMeaning is the most important because itâs the protein. Youâll die.â
Theyâre the most miserable when they donât have a sense of meaning, but nobody knows exactly what it is
Philosophers and psychologists define meaning as a combination of 3 things: coherence, purpose, and significance
1 â Why are you alive?
You got to have an answer, your answer, a real answer
2 â For what are you willing to die today?
You flunk this quiz by saying, âI donât know.â
The traps that hijack our happiness (the 4 idols): money, power, pleasure, and fame
Fame
Arthur says that fame is a funny one because most people listening will think, âI donât want to be famous,â but they want to be admired by others and have some prestige
Thatâs localized fame
To be known and admired by the right people
Itâs exactly the same phenomenon philosophically and psychologically
Arthur wrote in The Atlantic a couple months ago about happiness and success, noting that the happiest people werenât necessarily the most successful
It looked at some data that suggest a little bit of sacrifice in happiness led to greater success
We can define success in different ways
Having a lifelong marriage, where youâre in love with your spouse â thatâs unbelievably successful
Believing you have found spiritual transcendence
Living for the good of other people
But thatâs NOT what weâre talking about
Weâre talking about worldly success, money, power, fame, the admiration of other people
People who are remarkably successful along those worldly metrics, theyâre making cost-benefit calculations systematically that are not in their own happiness favor, typically
Thatâs a success addiction, that is absolutely implicated in the dopamine system and that is like any other behavioral addiction that a lot of very worldly, successful people fall prey to (a lot of people listening to this)
You have to ask yourself, âIs this a pathology that Iâm actually feeding by actually trying to get this edge?â
Thereâs a lot of literature on workaholism
Workaholism is an ancillary addiction to success addiction
People work really, really hard; the payoff, the cookie that you get, the dopamine is just driving you to is:
The promotion
The raise, the dollar
The compliment
The adulation on social media
People that are going to be sacrificing their own happiness decisions for these success metrics
This is one of the reasons Arthur has done his work
Heâs not asking people to not be successful, ambitious, or not to work hard
Heâs asking them to dominate it, such that youâre not playing to your most innate drives, so that you can be successful and happy
This is a pretty small group of people, but they are there
Arthur writes in his book about the case of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived, who died surrounded by the people who loved him and who revered him
The reason is because he got on his second curve, he dedicated his work to other people
He didnât say, âForget it. Iâm not going to write anymore musicâ
He said, âIâm going to write music. And Iâm just going to detach myself from the ego of having this enormous audience of people who will say that Iâm the greatest composer ever, and Iâm going to do it for humanity and to glorify God and to refresh the soul of other people. And if itâs really successful in commercial terms, it is. And if it isnât, thatâs okay too.â
Arthur concludes
In other words, be really ambitious, but detach yourself from the worldly idols and think about how you can use your success in service of other people. And thatâs the hack, thatâs the work around, thatâs actually the glitch and the success on happiness matrix, is when you become âotherâ focused, you can be a success machine and also happy.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam