FOMO Desconstucted: The Optimizer’s Survival Guide to the Age of Overwhelm

November 28, 2019

“Want to join me for a hike today, Brian?”

A seemingly innocuous question from a pretty good friend who is a walking Pretty Good Joke Book. I truly wish the answer was as simple as the question seems.

The opportunity cost of every action and decision can drive an optimizer mad if left unchecked. Any given day yields some internal dialogue to the effect of:

You should get in nature and spend time with a friend, but no you shouldn’t because you did both yesterday and need time to catch up on life and success.
Have I over-rotated toward enjoying the present at the expense of progressing my future and goals? Am I in balance? Is it inherently impossible to be in balance if you constantly worry about being in balance?
I need to spend some time alone to upgrade my health by meditating, stretching, working out, walking, etc. But wouldn’t spending time in nature on a hike with a friend be better for my health anyway?
I should probably work on growing my business; lately I’ve been saying I want to be successful more than I act toward that end.
You could try to be a better guy, but to understand a Gemini, Angel, devil, it’s both him and I
I really need to finish my book. On second thought, who am I kidding, I’ll still be dealing with my same problems after finishing it. What’s the rush?
I didn’t call my cousin back and I told him I would this weekend. Should that take precedence over hiking with my buddy from the gym? Fortunately, I can apply my pricey Economics degree here to shed some light:
- (better/closer/family friend)x(less personal of a communication medium) greater or less than (less good friend)*(more personal communication medium/in person)?
What’s my true north? Maybe I should just make Sunday’s a zero decision or plan day since I seem incapable of answering the simplest of questions at the end of the week.
What’s the over-under on the number of bullet points here until I look like a crazy person. Fairly confident I am within spitting distance.
If I decline his invite, will he stop inviting me to future events? (probability of decreased invites)*(degree to which I care)=FOMO level

Abundance has its downsides. Entire books have been written on the paradox of choice and how more choices and decisions inundates us to the point of decision fatigue and in my case, Sunday Funday utter collapse.

Hell, as I am writing this I am in the kitchen with my family for Thanksgiving because I have the simultaneous fear of not finishing a post this week and of not spending enough time with my family. Both will suffer accordingly; something about trying to catch two rabbits you catch none.

Enough diatribe asides, let’s get to the guide part. Make one decision that solves an infinite number of others. For example, decide and set Sunday as your day to regroup and catch up on what you deem most important: reading, writing, stretching, etc. or what I’ve coined A & A – Align and Admin. If there is an earth-shatteringly good reason to break your Sunday ritual, so be it, but have it be a true anomaly.

The second piece is a bit harder to implement. If you’re feeling too exhausted or have too many variables on the table to run the optimizer mental algorithm, tap into your intuition/subconscious and make the decision you “know” you want to make. It’s usually what you know you want to do but are too afraid to voice it for fear of how others will perceive it. Respectful but honest communication is your new vehicle. If you try to please everyone you will both fail and destroy yourself in the process.

“Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism

P.S. As a third bonus that I don’t expect to be followed by most, try eliminating every phone app you really don’t need. In my case, Instagram and all dating apps. I can no longer relapse to these intermittently throughout the day. Find a new default. Pick up a book. Call a friend. Better yet, see one. Work on yourself harder than most.

A drawing of the three circles in which things are being worked.

10 Non-Obvious Things You’ve Been Sold That You Don’t Actually Need (As Much) & Doing the Opposite to Find the Optimal

November 18, 2019

Besides all the obvious ones like sugar, negative people, phone notifications, etc. listed below are some that you may have not considered or taken steps to reduce usage.

Toilet paper: bidet is the WAY
Shampoo: try the “no-poo” strategy or much less frequent use. Your hair oil glands and production will adapt instead of being on a constant treadmill of over-production when you strip all the oils away by shampooing. If you research the history of shampoo, only recently did it even exist. It quickly converted from once a week to once a day as the ideal prescribed frequency. Where else has marketing mastered their game of creating a need that didn’t exist and then filling it? Answer: almost everywhere.
Face wash: similar to shampoo in reasoning. Additionally the less you touch your face the better for acne reduction.
Chairs: use the floor with pillows to sit on for cross-legged or lie face down with a pillow under your hips to invert the normal hunched over desk position.
Meat: a plant-based diet with the occasional high-quality meat or seafood is far healthier for most people
Dating apps: go do activities you’d normally do or enjoy and develop social skills. I read a whole Medium post on a programmer who hacked the dating apps and created a bot that lined up hundreds of dates for him and he still didn’t prevail. The bottom line is that dating apps are the lowest status way to meet people. Elevate yourself.
People: just kidding…I tried eliminating this one when I started working from home devoid of co-workers and I ended up a lonely mess.
Paper towels: just use a few regular towels and wash them
Brand-name products: for example, I just bought generic version Nutribullet cups for half the price. They work just fine. Search “generic” on Amazon.
Box springs: get a good mattress foundation bed frame and plop that mattress on. You go girl. Get bed risers if that’s your excuse.

Consider how much of your life and behavior is actively shaped by your environment, or more specifically, companies and their agendas to increase profit. Now consider how much you are being influenced without your conscious awareness. You’d have to retrace your entire life and everything you’ve done, bought or believed.

In an amusing revolt to this dilemma, it can be quite insightful to do the opposite of whatever you’ve been doing to test the needs and benefits of your previous habits. You can always return to your old ways or recalibrate to find the optimal balance.

If you’ve been eating heavy paleo and high meat/protein diets, try eating no meat for a month and watch your body rapidly lose pounds of inflammation and bloatedness you never even knew you had.

If you’ve been overly nice and biting your tongue with friends, coworkers, roommates, or otherwise try being brutally but respectfully honest and watch the dormant or lingering issues get resolved expeditiously. Lean into uncomfortable conversations; your success in life is tied to it. One step backward, two steps forward.

If you’ve always controlled your day and managed your schedule on an hour-by-hour basis, try letting go and seizing opportunities that present themselves. You just might meet someone you were meant to meet and have the conversation that you would’ve killed to have. Let yourself expand. Control is an illusion ultimately; your most unfortunate events in life won’t be what you’ve been worrying about and your greatest fortunes will come most unexpectedly, so long as you are able to receive them.

A handwritten diagram of facebook photo review process.

What Happens After You Look Through All Your Facebook Photos

November 7, 2019

When was the last time you went through every single photo in your Facebook profile? I did recently and the results were a bit unnerving.

By and large, as is oft the case with social media, the photos expressed pure joy and happiness. Contrast this with my actual emotional state at the time of each photo, and you get quite the yin-yang. Take for example the high school photo of a gang of my friends playing baseball together. The veneer-level is a bunch of young kids playing a sport they love with the people they like, but it was plagued by the ugliest emotion of all, jealousy, over the fact I was never the best player among my friends.

Though I had a touch of nostalgia and romanticism reviewing my past experiences published for the world to see, I mostly felt disappointed that I wasn’t able to enjoy each positive experience to its fullest extent, shrouded by a cloud of insecurities and needless worries. With selfies like these, who needs enemies?

“The good times” were actually that good, if only we were able to appreciate and enjoy them as such in the moment. I won’t derail this post about Buddhism and mindfulness, but it’s all too clear we truly only have the present moment (although you can always use the present moment to look back at the past in any light you like, positive or negative – it’s all so confusing isn’t it).

The value of this exercise is to inevitably realize that you have a choice to ensure you don’t keep making the same mistakes. What can you do to ensure you live in full gratification of your present life so that when you look back at your photos you don’t have all the asterisks of:

“I didn’t realize how good I had it.”

“I wish I was there to enjoy it versus being trapped in my head.”

“I mastered discontent for the last 10 years, hopefully, the next 10 will be different.”

We only get one high school experience. One college experience. Only so many weddings and birthday celebrations. A bagful of parties and events worth sharing. There is a finite cap on how many events we get in life (although the longevity anti-aging pundits are attempting to push that envelope). The variable is how we choose to emotionally engage all the while. The Facebook photo review is a call to arms to dedicate the rest of life to not be like Mark Twain; know fewer troubles and experience more bliss (woefully easier said than done, but awareness and intention is step one).

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
-Mark Twain

Why I Am Going Vegan(-ish) After Watching The Game Changers Documentary

October 29, 2019

I have to finish out my grass-fed butter and collagen and organ meat supplements and fish oils and meat-filled meal deliveries, but besides that I am now 100% vegan.

It’s quite a compelling documentary, taking Netflix by storm as of the time of this writing. It’s amazing how convincing these documentaries are when they simply flash a few athletic and jacked phenoms working out. Who needs science and peer-reviewed studies anyway. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Just so I can pretend that I’m smart and scrupulous when it comes to my dietary and hopefully life decisions, let the record show that I am not going vegan because I am convinced of the scientifically-validated material the documentary presented (which was limited) but rather because I am so fed up with conflicting dietary advice, shills and ‘studies’ that I will be using my own experience and personal changes as my source of truth for this experiment. I predict that this will have been the best we can do as it becomes increasingly apparent that the ideal diet is highly personalized based on a variety of factors (genes, epigenetics, upbringing, etc.).

The other benefit is the novelty bump; I love nothing more than (re-)buying pounds of flaxseed (after throwing away my old bag after discovering their ostensible “estrogenic properties” – I can withstand nearly anything but man boobs isn’t one of them), chia, and hemp seeds off of Amazon and all kinds of other vegan goodies to transform my life. As an optimizer the hope of a new experiment tending to all my dreams and woes is gripping. What if I truly have been doing it wrong the whole time? It’s worth it to find out. The “meat-detox” alone is sufficient.

The Game Changers documentary promised me more energy, stamina, recovery, less murky blood, more sleep erections, need I go on? I am ready, vegan gods, bring it on. Bless me with your healing powers.

I am interested to see how my body composition changes, as my close friends that have gone vegan/plant-based have reliably lost a layer of bloatedness/inflammation to where their face became gaunt. I’ve always been a husky bear (formally known as an easy gainer in the meathead bodybuilding world) so let’s see what kind of lean and meanness unfolds. Also because I am not going into this experiment due to hard science, I won’t be using hard science to measure my progress. Instead, I’ll simply be comparing my weight and body composition over time and use the whites in my eyes as a barometer for my overall inflammation (didn’t see that one coming did you).

Wish me luck. If I have any material progress or health upgrades with this I’ll be doing a follow-up post and/or Insta-model channel addition.

Thank god my roommate has a Vitamix.

A handwritten diagram of the writing process.

Confessions of an Aspiring Writer: The Struggle is Real

October 22, 2019

I should really get into a regular writing and posting schedule, but I have my brother coming this weekend so maybe next week.

Okay maybe just get something on paper to start. Actually no, I’d rather block off a bunch of time so I can knock out a full post at least, maybe two if I’m in the zone. Wait is this just another excuse to procrastinate or is this a valid reason to optimize my writing output?

Finally got a good night’s sleep, so let’s try this morning. I refuse to write when I am on a suboptimal night’s sleep, not because I’m lazy but because I care about only producing the highest quality that I’m capable of.

Why did I move next to a construction zone? Noise is the real reason this is difficult. Too many distractions. No, put on headphones and get past that. My back hurts…

Resist the urge to check your phone. You will never get into “flow state” if you do that. The Rise of the Super Struggling Writer.

What’s the best position to write in anyway? Lying down is comfortable but awkward to type. Sitting is the new smoking. What’s a guy ought to do?

Your writing lately hasn’t been that funny. We need more cow bell, Brian. And you can’t call it writer’s block because that implies 1) that you’re a writer, and 2) you were ever unblocked. If you want to write half-baked informational/self-improvement articles you need to layer in the quirks. To do that, I need to find my most creative/theta-brain wave time. Mornings seem good but after my morning routine and coffee (which feels non-negotiable currently), I’m in the wrong brain wave (alpha) to write. You don’t understand brainwaves that well so you shouldn’t use it as an excuse. Okay fine.

Nighttime seems like a good time to write, particularly because it’s not now. Let’s do that and tap into your creativity just before your brain drifts off to sleep. The issue is Netflix and Chill mode seeps over after a day of work and working out, so maybe another night is better.

Coffee shops are a sexy place to write. The image of writing in a coffee shop seems appealing, but I can’t handle the noise, constant movement and distractions. I’ll write at home, less commute time anyway and a better chair. I have to go to the bathroom…

Don’t beat yourself up. Think of it this way, even though you didn’t do it today, as long as you stay on a somewhat regular schedule, you’ll be solid. Hell, even 1 post a month, that’s 12 posts a year, and if I keep that up for 157 years, that’s enough to really make a dent in the world and really master the craft!

A graph with an arrow pointing to the right.

The Life Success Skill You Probably Aren’t Developing Enough: Difficult Conversations, Saying No, and Setting Boundaries

September 29, 2019

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
Tim Ferriss

That basically summarizes it but if you care for my half-baked attempt to unpack that quote, press on. Most of us “know” (speaking of, I hate when people say “air quotes” on a podcast) what we need to do but avoid or delay doing so. It’s never fun or easy to have an uncomfortable conversation that needs to happen. What happens when your friends want to walk aimlessly up and down a Sunday street festival reminding themselves of how fun it is every block, and all you want to do is Netflix and chill? What happens when they double-down and ask you why you’re leaving or where you going and you say: home(a seemingly lame reason to ditch your friends)?

The look on their disappointed faces is almost enough for you to crumble and submit to their wishes over yours, but instead you remain strong and chow down on Succession Season 2 and cherish every second of your solitude. This is just a silly micro-example of something you are confronted with multiple times a day, excluding the truly bigger, more difficult conversations like breaking up with someone, quitting your job, etc.

The only things that stand between you and where you want to be are a decision and the necessary conversations. If we lose that simplicity, we are wasting our years away only to look back wondering how we went astray. Take agency over your own life and direction.

“I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
Herbert Bayard Swope

A little trick I use is to make a game out of it. Lean into the temporary pain. Similar to how I view taking cold showers/plunges, I welcome and thank it for pulling me closer to where I want to be: a healthier, better version of myself. Each conversation that sucks (when handled appropriately, of course) is one more step toward your truer, more aligned self. Make it your sport. And if still need more motivation, always remember:

“Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism

10 Non-Obvious Things You’ve Been Sold That You Don’t Actually Need (As Much) & Doing the Opposite to Find the Optimal

What Happens After You Look Through All Your Facebook Photos

Why I Am Going Vegan(-ish) After Watching The Game Changers Documentary

Confessions of an Aspiring Writer: The Struggle is Real

The Life Success Skill You Probably Aren’t Developing Enough: Difficult Conversations, Saying No, and Setting Boundaries

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Brian Comstock

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