1753: [Part 1] Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards by Mark Manson on Emotional Self-Control

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Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German-engineered for all. Welcome to one of the only podcasts in the world where blogs are narrated to you for free with permission from the authors and award-winning podcasts thanks to you. And today I have a bit of a longer post I'll read the first half today and then finish the rest for you tomorrow.

So with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. Why the best things in life are all backwards, part one by Mark Manson of MarkManson.net. There's a part of Navy SEAL training called Drown Proving where they bind your hands behind your back, tie your feet together and dump you into 9-foot deep pool. Your job is to survive for 5 minutes.

Like most of SEAL training, the vast majority of cadets who attempt Drown Proving fail. Upon being tossed into the water, many of them panic and scream to be lifted back out. Some struggle until they slip underwater where they proceed to lose consciousness and have to be fished out and resuscitated. Over the years, a number of trainees have even died during the exercise.

But some people make it, and they do so because they understand two counterintuitive lessons. The first lesson of Drown Proving is paradoxical. The more you struggle to keep your head above water, the more likely you are to sink. With your arms and legs bound, it's impossible to maintain yourself at the surface for the full 5 minutes.

Even worse, your limited attempts to keep your body afloat will only cause you to sink faster. The trick to Drown Proving is to actually let yourself sink to the bottom of the pool. From there, you lightly push yourself off the pool floor and let your momentum carry you back to the surface. Once there, you can grab a quick breath of air and start the whole process over again.

Strangely, surviving Drown Proving requires no superhuman strength or endurance. It doesn't even require that you know how to swim. On the contrary, it requires the ability to not swim. Instead of resisting the physics that would normally kill you, you must surrender to them and use them to save your own life.

The second lesson of Drown Proving is a bit more obvious but also paradoxical. The more you panic, the more oxygen you will burn and the more likely you are to fall unconscious and drown. In a sick and twisted way, the exercise turns your survival instinct against you. The more intense you desire to breathe, the less you'll be able to breathe.

The more intense you are will to live, the greater the chance you will die. More than a test of physical will, Drown Proving is a test of each cadet's emotional self-control in situations of extreme danger. Can you control his own impulses? Can you relax in the face of potential death?

Can you willingly risk his life and the service of some higher value or goal? These skills are far more important than any cadet's ability to swim. They're more important than his resilience, his physical toughness, or his ambition. They're more important than how smart he is, what school he went to, or how good he looks in a crisp Italian suit.

The skill, the ability to let go of control when one wants it most, is one of the most important skills anyone can develop, and not just for seal training, for life. Most people assume the relationship between effort and reward is one-to-one. We think that working twice as long will produce twice the results, that caring about a relationship twice as much will make everyone feel twice as loved, that yelling your point twice as loud will make you twice as right. The assumption here is that most of life exists on a linear curve, that there's a one-to-one ratio between effort and reward with everything.

Allow me to inform you, as someone who just tried drinking twice the normal amount of Red Bull so he could finish editing this thing, this is almost never true. Most of the world does not exist on a linear curve. Linear relationships only exist for mindless, wrote, repetitive tasks, driving a car or filling out reams of paperwork, cleaning the bathroom, etc. In all these cases, doing something for two hours will double the output of doing it for one hour, less simply because they require no thought or ingenuity.

Most activities in life do not operate along the linear effort and reward curve, because most activities in life are not basic, nor mindless. Most activities are complex, mentally and emotionally taxing, and require adaptation. Therefore most activities produce a diminishing returns curve. Diminishing returns means that the more you experience something, the less rewarding it becomes.

The classic example is money. The difference between earning $20,000 and $40,000 is huge, and life-changing. The difference between earning $120,000 and $140,000 means your car has slightly nicer seat heaters. The difference between earning $127,000 and $127,000,000 is basically a rounding error on your tax return.

The concept of diminishing returns applies to most experiences that are complex and novel. The number of showers you take in a day, the number of chicken wings you inhale during happy hour, the number of trips home to visit your mother in a year. These are all experiences that start out highly valuable at first, but then diminish in value the more frequently you do them. Sorry, Mom.

Another example, studies on work productivity show that we're really only productive for the first four to five hours of each day. Everything after that suffers severe diminished returns to the point where the difference between working for 12 hours and 16 hours is basically nothing, not counting sleep deprivation. Friendships operate on diminishing returns curve. Having one friend is vital.

Having two is clearly better than one, but having 10 instead of nine changes little in your life and having 21 instead of 20 just makes remembering people's names that much more difficult. That's diminishing returns. As does eating, sleeping, drinking alcohol, working out at the gym, reading books, taking vacations, hiring employees, consuming caffeine, saving for retirement, scheduling business meetings, studying for an exam, staying up late to play video games, the examples are endless. I'll give back less the more you do them, the more you try, the more you have.

I'll operate on a diminishing returns curve. But there's another curve from one that you've probably never seen or heard of before, and that's largely because I make a lot of this stuff. Remember about that in tomorrow's episode. You just listen to part one of the post titled Why the Best Things in Life are All Backwards by Mark Manson of Mark Manson.net.

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It's just $199. And head to superpower.com and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off. Your membership. If they get a mark, I love that he brought up the classic diminishing returns example.

I think it's taught in economics, but the first time it really sank in for me was when I was getting my MBA. A random class had us read the book, Your Money or Your Life, which is a massive favorite amongst personal finance enthusiasts. That book is mentioned pretty often on our podcast, Optimal Finance Daily. But anyway, when I read that book, it made more sense to me at that time that the more money we have, yeah, there's a point where it's a gain in happiness or satisfaction.

But to take to the extreme, if you're a multi-billionaire, another million really doesn't do anything, possibly has adverse effects. It might not seem like it's us, but the different problems that arise at a certain level of wealth can have massive impacts on our wellbeing. That's probably why something like half of lottery winners lose their money. Same with things.

The more things we have, yeah, that's happiness in the beginning, but you reach a certain point where more things just add chaos and clutter. It's not fun anymore. And as Mark mentioned, this is the case for many, many things in life, so we'll see what he has to say tomorrow about this other curve. But I should do it for today.

Thank you for being here and listening every day. And I'll be back tomorrow to finish up this post where we're off to my life. I'll wait.