Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing that's just feeding your greed, oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.
You're listening to the Minimalist podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and T .K.
Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.
Yes, thank you, Malabama.
Hello, everybody. Joining us in the studio today to help us think less about overthinking is our returning champion, Amanda Montel.
Amanda is a writer, linguist, and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult.
She is also the author of a new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking.
Coming up on this Free Public Minimal episode, a caller has a question about habits that might help her avoid information clutter.
And we've got a lightning round question about the sneaky ways that overthinking affects our everyday lives.
That's followed by our Right Here Right Now segment and a listener tip.
you could check out the maximal edition of episode 460.
That's the full two hour episode where we answer three times as many questions and we dive deep into several simple living segments.
That private podcast is out right now at patreon .com slash the minimalist. Your support keeps our podcast, 100 % advertisement free because sing along at home, y 'all.
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Let's start with our callers.
If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you.
Our phone number is 4 -06 -219 -7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to podcast at TheMinimalists .com.
Our first question today is from Amy.
Hey, guys. This is Amy from South Carolina.
I am a Patreon subscriber, and I had a quick question for y 'all.
I decided to join you on your social media fast for the rest of the year, and I pretty much have realized that I struggle with like information almost addiction I'm it I don't know another word for it because it honestly does remind me of when I used to smoke cigarettes and how I just wanted more constantly and it was all I could think about and I feel that I am the same way with information I'm just looking for searching for it I just had gotten so conditioned to looking on my hopping on social media, watching YouTube, and plugging in a podcast, and just consuming, consuming, consuming information all
day long. And as I've been trying to just practice sitting with myself, I think I realized how much I've been influenced, my own opinions, worldview judgments, and really being influenced from those different platforms. So I was curious for you guys if you could tell me some of your best practices around information and what you're consuming when you stop.
Just habits that you have, I know you guys have to read a lot of books and you interview a lot of great people on your show, but you're having a lot of info coming your way as well.
So I know you're having to sift through it.
I just want to be able to you know, know my own mind and take time for it.
And yet I just am struggling.
So I would love to hear your best practices, thanks y 'all.
Now, Amanda, before we dive deep into Amy's question, I thought this was the perfect question to start page one with, by the way.
No kidding. Because we're all going through some version of this, right?
The information addiction.
I remember back on tour, one of our book tours, I was in Minnesota, Nicodemus, and I were.
And I was, it was wintertime and I was walking in front of this corporate building and I saw several people out front cigarette in hand, phone in the same hand scrolling.
And I looked over at Nicodemus and I said, I think scrolling is the new smoking.
Because I wasn't judging them.
I was seeing my own addictions in those people.
We don't know what we're addicted to until we find ourselves steeped in that addiction.
Now we usually save this for page three of the podcast. We do this little segment called More About Less.
And I want to introduce folks to your new book.
So I thought what we could do is maybe have you read, because this segment is usually a, we read something as a jump off point for discussion.
And I'd like to read this as a jump off point for a discussion about Amy's question.
This is from the introduction to your book which is called, Make It Make Sense Again.
Would you be willing to read that for us?
First of all, I have to say that that caller articulated a very common pain so well and I couldn't possibly relate to it more.
So just want to preface by saying that and this book was really an act of reckoning with some of the very same problems she named.
so, um, yeah. This is how this book begins.
The attempts I made to get out of my own head were sundry and full of nonsense.
I visited a petting zoo for adults.
I tried learning to meditate from a British computer voice.
I stocked up on an unregulated nutrition powder called brain dust. My brain felt like dust. In the last few weeks, Dread for No Reason became one of my most frequent Google searches as if the act of typing my feelings to a robot would make them go away.
I gorged myself on podcasts about women who'd snapped, at once repulsed and tantalized by those who wore their madness on their sleeves.
How good it must feel to snap, I thought.
My most cinematic attempt at mental rehab involved picking our herbs on a farm in Sicily under a light pollution -free sky.
At nightier, the stars are so close they could fly into your mouth." The herb farber told me, sending my heart to my throat.
With varying degrees of success, I was doing everything I could think of to defect from the state of overwhelm and consumption that had become my life in the roaring 2020s.
Anything to gain some perspective on the mental health exigency I'd been experiencing and trying to rationalize for the better part of a decade.
Every generation has its own brand of crisis.
Those of the 1960s and 70s were about gaining freedom from physical tyrannies, equal rights, and opportunities to vote, learn, work, mobilize.
They were crises of the body.
But as the century turned, so did our struggles inward. Paradoxically, the more collective progress we made, the more individual malaise we felt—discourse about our mental un -wellness crescendoed.
In 2017, Scientific American declared that the nation's mental health had declined since the 1990s and that suicide rates were at a 30 -year -high.
Four years later a CDC survey found that 42 % of young people felt so sad or hopeless in the last two weeks they couldn't go about their normal days.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that between 2020 and 2021 crisis calls to their lifeline were up 251%.
We're living in what they call the Information Age.
But life only seems to be making less sense.
We're isolated, listless, burnt out on screens, cutting loved ones out like tumors in the spirit of boundaries, failing to understand other people's choices or even our own.
The machine is malfunctioning, and we're trying to think our way out of it.
In 1961, Marxist philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote, Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.
Our mission, it seems, has to do with the mind.
Oh, Amanda Montel! Oh, wow.
So the reason I wanted to start with that is to tell Amy she's not alone.
Certainly not, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, this book was really predicated on a fundamental question thesis, and I named it in that excerpt, it's why, despite living in the information age, does life only seem to be making less sense?
Why do I feel like I'm in fight or flight When I check my email and notice a curt message from a professional superior.
Why are cycles of celebrity worship and dethronement only becoming more extreme?
Why have ideas surrounding manifestation and living your best life and making the most of yourself turned almost conspiratorial in ideology and attitude?
There were so many questions that I had about sort of mysterious irrationalities plaguing the broader zeitgeist and my own life, and I really was fascinated to explore this clash between our innate human mysticisms and imperfect decision making strategies and the overwhelm of this time.
I think maybe we should get to the heart of Amy's question, which is essentially, are there any habits that will help me avoid being overwhelmed by all of this information clutter?
because it is that information clutter that is, if not causing, at least contributing to this epidemic of overthinking.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to preface by saying, this is not a self -help book and I am not a psychologist, but I was fortunate enough to speak to many brilliant scholars of mental health and decision -making, behavioral scientists, psychologists, folklorists, so many fascinating minds who had thoughts to contribute and who had done studies that do you offer some evidence -based empirical advice for how to deal with all of this overthinking and this overwhelm, those sort of addictive feelings that are actually not a metaphor.
When you experience withdrawal from social media, there are actual dopamine deficits going on.
And one of the really disheartening but also motivating stats that I found while researching this book was that the constant stream of teeny tiny dopamine hits that you get while scrolling actually diminish your ability to appreciate novelty and beauty in the real world.
So it's like when you're constantly scrolling through the next hit of a friend's engagement announcement or an influencer's vacation.
Then when you actually look up from your phone and you see a real life view or flower or hummingbird, verd. I don't know, I'm naming really sort of like trippy examples.
Well, trippy, natural.
I don't know. You appreciate them less because your actual neurochemicals have been screwed with because of your phone.
So I did come across a few really helpful little nuggets of evidence based wisdom, including tapping into a feeling of awe.
Awe is different from Joy or happiness?
It's the sort of humbling wonder that you experience when you're Confronting phenomena that are big and mysterious and beyond your comprehension outside of yourself So there's a social scientist named Dr. Keltner who's written a beautiful book about on done a lot of research on the subject I think it's funny.
I I read a study of his early on in my research process for this book where he defined ah with some physical cues, including standing, head tilted slightly upward, jaw slightly dropped, maybe you make a sound like, whoa!
I'm like, science is so silly sometimes.
But you gotta break it down for an overthinker, you gotta break it down.
And I found awe to be really important for me as someone who is constantly under the impression that I can think my way out of a bodily problem.
you know, like I'll encounter some interpersonal issue or I will even make up some conflict that I'm experiencing with someone from my past or a social media hate or whatever it is.
And I will constantly turn that thought over in my mind a hundred times, hoping that if I can somehow narrow down the perfect distillation of logic, then I will feel better in my bones in my meat suit and it just doesn't work.
And I've learned from folks like Emilia Nagoski, who is the coauthor of a brilliant book about burnout, that you often have to separate the stress from the stressor.
We are living such a disembodied existence so much of the time now, when so many of our problems are no longer the sort of like physical run away from the predator type problems that our brains and bodies evolved for.
So, that is part of the reason why a hate comment on social media a really stressful headline can trigger the sense in your body that you are running away from a lion or, you know, another kind of predator, because for the longest time in human history, like, those were the threats that we needed to address and contend with.
So I often feel that way when engaging too much on social media, awe takes my body out of that experience.
So whether that means engaging in a group, you know, dance or singing ritual or looking up at a mountainscape, and these things sound so similar, so, so simple and like back to basics.
And it's not as if gazing up at a deciduous tree will suddenly, like, solve all your problems, but being able being able to get outside of that cycle of overthinking or yeah, that you think you can intellectualize your way out of suffering.
Being able to get outside of yourself into a sort of flow state can really provide a much needed moment of clarity.
TK, I heard Amy talking about consuming, consuming, consuming, and it felt like an addiction, but she felt like she needed more, more, more, which is one of the telltale signs of an addiction.
I'm wondering if you were counseling Amy and she was trying to look for, as she said, some best practices to maybe avoid some of this information clutter.
What would you tell her?
I mean, just sticking with the metaphor that she uses.
I mean, with any form of consumption, there are a few things that are possible, you know, gluttony as possible, being undernourished as possible.
And so think about it in terms of eating, you know, like you're hungry.
Do you just eat whatever is sitting in front of you?
Do you just eat whatever tastes good without considering anything else?
You usually think about other things like the body's need for energy.
you think about your goals, your constraints, your history of certain things, not reacting to your body very well, and you make decisions based on that, and we have to do the same with our content because one of the things that she talked about was there are certain things that I consume, and it makes me feel a certain kind of way.
You gotta pay attention to those cues.
But I like this point that Amanda makes about awe because awe is something that you can't really create the space for without a sense of play, without taking the risk of wasting your time and venturing out into the realm of the unfamiliar.
If you're too pragmatic about things, all is very hard to come by.
And so I think about George Lakoff, a metaphor as we live by and how he talks about the metaphors that we use in our speech. They reflect the way we think about things and those metaphors shape and structure experience itself.
So his infamous example of this is when we argue or we talk about arguments, we use the metaphor of like battles, so she knocked down every point.
I defended my position.
We use all these battle -based metaphors and he says, so how does an argument feel when you pay attention, when you're having one, how does it feel?
Kind of feels like a struggle for power, kind of feels like we're fighting.
So what if we played around with different metaphors?
An argument as dance, right?
How might that change the experience.
And when I hear it speak - I pop off George Linkoff referencing, speaking my language.
Give me a pound, I love Linkoff.
But I think about this content consumption.
This is a new way of speaking that didn't quite exist 15, 20 years ago.
It's like come along with the internet, but what if instead of speaking of content consumption and thinking of it in that way, which sounds very impersonal, very robotic, I must consume all of the content.
What if we thought about it in terms of interacting with ideas, engaging the experiences of other people?
I mean, when I'm reading a book, that's what I'm doing.
This is not in person at all.
fewer things are more personal than a book.
A human being wrote down their thoughts and their feelings and their experiences.
I'm engaging the experiences of other minds.
I am interacting with ideas.
And that creates the space for playfulness where it's not all just about, let me get through as many podcasts as possible so that I can check the box and I can be really smart and I can be really productive in my job.
And I can win. Yeah, I like that.
Yeah, that spirit of competition now embedded in the social media, even though it hasn't always been.
And I was talking to Professor Sean about this recently and the algorithm has changed something fundamental about our relationship with social media.
And you touch on that a bit here in the book, which I'd love for you to read this section as well because as you know, The Minimalist left social media earlier this year.
We had our most successful year on social media ever last year.
Thanks in good part to Professor Sean and Danny Unknown, who are both here in the studio right now and we reached a lot of people, but the question is that's a lot of width, but what is the depth of that experience?
Because if you reach half a billion people, all of those are eight tenths of a second, it's one quick scroll.
And the algorithm often what it does is it injects things into our feed that feel a lot more like battle or war, or this is something I should argue with, or this is something I should argue for, I should take a stance and you even talk about that in the book as well.
So I selected this part from, you have a chapter in here called the Shit -Talking Hypothesis.
And I have some lines underlined here if you'd be willing to read those for us.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so this chapter talks about a cognitive bias called zero -sum bias, which probably rings a bell to many listeners.
It's the idea that another person's game inherently means your loss, and it stems from many generations of stiff resource competition in our species when another person's access to mates or food really might threaten your access to those same things.
and we're now mapping those same instincts onto potentially limitless and really abstract resources and currencies like clout, beauty, coolness, success, and on social media for young women in particular, but for almost everybody who uses these platforms that is setting us up for psychological failure.
So here's an excerpt from that chapter.
By 2017, Instagram was not just sunsets and brunch porn, but an infinite Potemkin village of exotic vacations, trendy unrepeated outfits, and skin, the texture of iPhone screens.
Every hour, my algorithm introduced me to a new set of accounts I didn't know existed to compare myself to.
Despairingly, I felt in my bones that another Beauty Editor's blonde only made me bruneter.
That each influencer's follower count personally rendered me irrelevant.
There was a limited quantity of light in the universe, I was sure.
and merely learning that someone else was burning bright dimmed me.
This kind of scarcity -minded sorrow is rooted in zero sum bias.
The false intuition that another party's gain directly means your loss.
Zero sum bias tells us that if another person is succeeding, then you must be failing.
Mm. VK, can you expand a bit on zero sum bias?
Oh, man. That there's a limited pie of wealth in the world.
and for you to get some, that reduces the amount that will now be available to me.
And it's based on a way of seeing things that places wealth in the realm of what already exists rather than the creation of value which is a potential that we all have. I like to think of wealth as the symbolic representation of our capacity to create value.
So for instance, how much is this worth?
Well, for me, it's worth a lot.
He's holding up a coffee mug - I'm holding up a coffee.
Yeah, for all that, I'm holding up a cup for everyone who's listening except us.
I'm holding up this coffee mug, how much is this worth?
Well, it's worth a ton to me, right?
But it's worth whatever you're willing to give up for it, but not only that, this is worth more than just how we can measure it in terms of money or in terms of exchange, it's also based on what I do with it, how I might use this, the value of this can increase beyond what I paid for it, if I find some creative use for it that brings me more joy.
When you think about wealth in terms of creativity, It allows you to look at other people's success as something that actually creates more resources for you.
So let's take for instance, I didn't create the iPhone.
I didn't create the internet.
I didn't create the automobile.
Is there less wealth available for me now or more?
You could argue there's more, because now the means through which I can express my creative potentiality has expanded.
I can use the automobile and the internet and the iPhone to express my ideas and connect with other people in new ways.
And so that's a different way of seeing wealth that I really like, but I want to hear Amanda talk about this, like we see this happening and we all kind of laugh when you read that because we've all felt that way at some point.
You can explain it logically as much as you want, but at the end of the day, when you're hoping for something good to happen to you and your buddy is like, this happened to me.
It's kind of like, oh, I'm happy for you in theory.
I'm smart enough to know that's what I should say, and I want to feel that way.
But it does kind of feel like something's taken away from me.
In your body, it feels like you're in the Neolithic period and someone else got the girl.
And now your procreation potential has been minimized.
That's how that feels for sure.
Yeah, I mean, I write in this book about how in this sort of fanciful bid to elevate my value when faced with, I don't know, a social media account of, like, an author who I didn't know about yesterday, but now that she's been served to me in my algorithm, it feels like I need to somehow figure out how she is beating me and how I can actually beat her and I do this mental gymnastics and it's so unhealthy.
And I talk about how, like, in this sort of fanciful bid to, you know, out -do these people who I would come across on my social media, I would, like, talk shit about them.
I would like go down a rabbit hole investigating their acolytes or certain facts from their biography that I could orient myself around.
Okay, like, okay yeah, she went to Yale but like, you know, I speak Italian, you know?
Like, it was totally humiliating, shameful mental contortionism that is so unnecessary and that in part is constructed by patriarchal society.
You know, we really do live in a culture that makes opportunity feel less plentiful for some individuals rather than others.
And so, you know, I often would feel like, I mean, I've seen examples my whole life that there really are like fewer spots for women to have success and to be listened to.
And so if I noticed another woman being listened to, I'm like, oh, well that, you know, what can I do about that?
And then you feel shameful because you're like, well, But why do I deserve to be listened to anyway?" And so there's just this self -esteem nightmare going on and there's research to suggest that young women in particular do more upward social comparison and downward identification.
So when a teenage girl scrolls through her social media feed perceiving nearly limitless identities to compare herself to, which is not what her mind developed for, she will only clock those she perceives as superior and she'll totally discard those who she perceives as equals or inferior in social value in some way, and that is just catastrophic for your self -esteem.
And so something that I've really done to overcome some of these zero sum intuitions that don't serve me or anyone, and this is something that I can say with confidence, I really have sort of gotten pretty good at ever since discovering this bias and how it that affects me has to do with something that Aminah Tussaud and Anne Friedman, two writers and besties proposed in 2013 in this viral article published in The Cut.
It's called Shine Theory.
And it sounds kind of corny, but it really works.
It's this idea that like, you know, another person's light does not dim you.
I'm not a physicist, but my understanding of light is that when you turn on two lamps, the room will, in theory, get brighter, you know?
So, another person's light can actually illuminate you as well.
They have a great quote in that piece, that's along the lines of, you know, if Kelly Rowland understands that beyond, her proximity to Beyonce actually makes her better and cooler and more beautiful and more talented and not less than there's hope for the rest of us.
So now instead of, you know, clocking someone online who I feel like is threatening to me and immediately going down that horrible rabbit hole that feels like shit, I might actually slide into her DMs and, you know, express a sincere sentiment of congratulations about her new book and if we're going to be in the same city, offer to get coffee.
And it's not insincere, you know, like I'm truly trying to make a connection rather than an enemy or a nemesis and especially if that enemy or nemesis is only in your mind.
It's like a parasocial relationship for the worse.
and oftentimes the person will either respond and be like, oh my God, like thank you so much, like so hard out here.
I feel so lonely, you know, as a writer, like thank you for saying that.
And genuinely I've made a couple very dear friends using this method.
So yeah, zero sum bias is so powerful, so destructive and yet like totally illusory.
What's paradoxical about that is when you live that way, it creates the sense that you are wealthier.
Like you're better off because of that.
And you're wealthier with friendship and with connection and you feel better about yourself, I love that.
And that wealth is not from a place of more acquisition necessarily.
In fact, what you're talking about in a way is the antidote to the consumerist mindset of I need more, more followers, more money, more success, more accolades, more notches on this resume, whatever it might be.
because consumerism is that ideology that more will make me better.
Now on this show, we often talk about that with respect to material possessions because you can see that physically, but there's so many other areas in which we strive for more and that more isn't making us better.
It's not making us happier.
In fact, it's doing the opposite.
It's making us more miserable.
Amy, I'd love to send you a copy of The Age of Magical Overthinking.
And also if you'd like some more insights, some more counseling, TK is not doing clutter counseling.
So not just physical clutter, but emotional clutter, relationship clutter, spiritual clutter, what information clutter that Amy's dealing with.
You can head on over to theminimalists .com, click on Counseling at the top and book an appointment with T .K.
Coleman. Malabama, before we get back to our callers, let me know what time is it?
You know what time it is.
It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chats, question of the week.
Now, Amanda, I'm not sure if you remember this, but during the lightning round, we each have 60 seconds to answer these questions with a short, shareable minimal maximum, I'm a little Pithy answer.
You're so good at the pithy ax, axons, axioms, aphorisms, maxims, whatever you want to call them.
I am so bad at this.
Hey, that was nice.
She was like axiom aphorism, maxim.
Apophim. Yeah, we can keep throwing them out there.
Platitude. OK. Yeah, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
You have a bit of an allergy to platitudes I found, but I really embrace them if, because they're but really difficult to do.
And so when I see the average person try to put up some sort of pithy thing on X or Twitter or whatever, I haven't seen that all year, but you know what I mean?
And what happens is like, it is something that is either a tautology or it is, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that it's not that deep.
But when I hear TK say something profound, I can sort of double click on it and see what he, what he means.
I will fuck with a platitude if it finds me in a vulnerable moment.
Listen, oh my God. There was a platitude that found me at just the perfect moment a few years ago.
It lives rent free in my head.
It's, um, worrying is praying for what you don't want.
Hey, that's mine. Wait, you say that, too?
Did you say that, you coined that?
But you say all of them.
Like the custodian of aphorisms, axioms, and platitudes.
That's okay, I don't need to hold on to it.
It's the world now.
See, that's the zerosum.
That's the zero -sum bias.
He's like, that's my maximum.
But you all can have it, and it's no longer mine.
I like it. Now, here's the thing.
What we do is we put the minimal maxims in the show notes you can find those over at theminimalists .com slash podcast and every minimal maximum ever over at minimalmaxims .com.
We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free.
If you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists .email, we'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity.
Malabam what is the question of the week, week this week.
In our current age of unlimited information, how has overthinking affected you?
Ooh, so TK, before we get to some pithy answers here, let's see here how some of our listeners answered this question.
Susan said, overthinking causes me to spend too much time planning and not enough time doing, especially when I'm planning a vacation.
So how does overplanning prevent us from actually executing our plans is maybe a question that we have here?
Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, well, there's a certain amount of planning that I think is beneficial.
However, at a certain point it bridges into fantasy, you know?
Like, there is a diminishing marginal return sort of situation where past a certain point you are kind of just entering into the realm of delulu thinking about like, okay, and at this moment, I am going to experience a swell of gratitude for the oyster plate that I've just consumed, you know, and I can get into this over romanticization of my life and that sets up, you know, your high expectations for potentially disappointing reality.
And yeah, I think those of us who live in our heads, it can sometimes when it when it does work out, it really encourages you to continue with that delulu because I don't I can be too much of a planner shocker, I know, it's like, I'm going to wear this and I'm going to act like this.
And when it all does come together, you're like, I really am the main character in a hero's journey.
But at a certain point, that is not healthy and life will let you down and chaos theory, et cetera.
So, yeah, there is a constant push -pull of expectations and spontaneity and I have certainly not mastered it, and that was definitely longer than 60 seconds.
I'm out of the goal though.
In the book, you actually quoted Peter Drucker, efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things.
Yeah, yeah, there's nothing less efficient than doing something that should not be done at all.
And then planning for it on top of that.
What about Ellison?
What did Ellison have to say?
Overthinking affects me most when it comes to being creative.
I'll spend hours on Pinterest finding ideas of what I can create and then never actually make anything.
That's relatable. Well, so we'll talk about, this is similar to the planning side of things.
I often tell my writing students that research isn't writing and not because research isn't an important part of writing, but we can get so bogged down.
I'm just doing research for this book pretending as though I am writing.
It's two separate sides of the process.
Writing is the computation.
it's the getting the words onto the page and that might require some research. I just tend to delineate the two.
I just had a really brilliant guest on my magical over thinkers podcast which is a little podcast that I created after I finished writing this book because I was so grief stricken after I had to finish this book.
I wanted to continue writing it forever.
I was like, I'll just podcast about it.
Anyhoo, we did an episode of that show about social media comparison and I had on a psychotherapist named Britt Frank And she talked about how when you talk too much about a creative project or another kind of professional goal that you have without actually taking steps to execute it, you trick your brain into thinking you've already done it.
Like the fantasizing about it is this illusion that you're already doing the thing and that can prevent you from doing the damn thing.
That's happened to me quite a bit.
I've pitched different movies to Netflix and other networks or, and I feel like I'm doing something, but it's actually not doing anything to become complete.
We're not actually creating the film and it's a necessary part of doing these things.
But it tricks my brain and say, oh yeah, I'm really, wait a minute.
I look back, it's like, oh yeah, that didn't come to fruition.
That didn't come to fruition.
Now, ultimately, something does come to fruition because of, part of that is the planning, part of it is the research, but really it has to do with the work.
In fact, TK, you had this minimal maxim here.
He said, overthinking dolls, the wisdom found in action.
If your thoughts stop your feet, you're not really thinking.
Tell me about that.
Because we don't just think with our minds.
We also think with our bodies, we think with our hearts.
And so if you're only thinking about things in terms of analyzing pros and cons and engaging in discursive logic, then you're not experimenting with the idea, you're not exploring the idea, you're not engaging in reality, you're not taking risks.
and that's how you learn by getting feedback from the world in the form of action and whoa, I didn't know that was happening, that would happen in the form of poking the box as Seth Godin says and go, oh, that's interesting.
I mean, it's like the saying goes, if you know what's going to happen next, it's not discovery.
And if there's no discovery involved, then you're not thinking.
It's so true, it really squashes optimism too, to like take too many steps to over plan and overthink and you need optimism to take risks in your work and to collaborate, like so many.
I'm now writing fiction, actually, and it has been, you know, genre pivot.
But it's like, it's important to stay fresh and to stay dreamy and enjoy life.
But yeah, I mean, if I outline too meticulously, and that is my instinct to outline pretty meticulously, especially coming from nonfiction, you actually have to do that in order to sell a book.
But if I outline this novel too meticulously, it will totally eliminate the space for that weird, magical thing that I don't even know if anyone knows what that is when you are like writing or engaging in another kind of artistic practice, you enter Czechoslovakia's flow states, you know, and I don't know some kind of alchemy occurs in the brain where you're like noticing the world around you, you're combining a bunch of different references and memories that are in your head and you like come up with something where you don't even know how you thought of that.
And that spontaneity, that alchemy, that magic, whatever you want to call it can't happen if you're overthinking the process or over discussing the process with other people.
Can I please give a shout out to her, not just a reference, but the way she landed the word. I've tried to quote him before and I just gave up.
Mahaly Chicksemihy?
Is that how you say it?
She's a linguist. Chicksemihy.
She killed that. Thank you.
Oh, yeah. Let's do one more from Noor.
In some moments, I can see the multitude of different lives I could live.
I imagine that I'm looking at three or four different mountains, eager to climb one or all of them, but get stuck trying to decide which to tackle first. Overthinking suppresses my intuition and creates an existence composed of thick brain fog.
The brain fog of existence, which is, that's like a title for us.
That's the pithyaxium version, you know?
Yeah, but also this is a theme that I addressed in the book a little bit.
It's choozers paradox, you know?
Like there are near limitless options for directions that our life could go in now compared to even 20 years ago, but certainly 200 ,000 years ago, you know?
And that is beautiful and freeing and I wouldn't have it any other way.
And yet we're not wired to handle that expertly.
And so yeah, if you're constantly bogged down by overthinking, like, should I pursue fiction or nonfiction?
Should I go back to grad school or not?
Should I dye my hair blue or teal?
You know, like, it can, yeah, it can really stop you.
And that's such a relatable process.
Yes. TK, tell me, does this overthinking or maybe just too much imagination and suppress our natural intuition?
I think it does. It's funny because I have a tough time with overthinking.
I know what it means, but I'm not so sure if I believe there is such a thing because every instance of thinking that has been done well tends to lead to action.
Whereas when I see what people call overthinking, it sounds to me just like bad logic.
It sounds like irrationality.
it sounds like self -defeating thought.
And it's usually based on some presuppositions, like the more time I spend thinking, the more successful my project will be, that there is no cost to thinking about this for 10 hours versus thinking about this for one hour.
There are always fallacies present with overthinking that makes me think it's ultimately reducible to irrational, illogical, fallacious, self -defeating thinking.
A hundred percent. I mean, this is why I call this concept magical overthinking because it's this exact collision between the imperfect but historically good enough decision -making processes that always served us, these cognitive biases, these psychological shortcuts that we developed for survival purposes in the information age.
Like these two phenomena have an inherent mentos and diet Coke, like explosive quality, right?
Yeah, it's good. Yeah, but it's true.
Like we are not we are not perfectly rational beings, you know, like I learned from one of the first behavioral economists I spoke to for this book a guy named sickle cross of that we are what is called resource rational We make the best of our limited time and memory storage and cognitive resources and for most of human history That's served us perfectly.
Well, it, you know allowed us to survive to reproductive age, you know And now that a lot of those survival threats are no longer the same sort of concern.
Most of us are not being chased by saber -toothed tigers on the daily.
We are still unconsciously relying on our ancestors, clever cheats for decision -making.
And yeah, that produces a lot of bad logic in the face of contemporary problems. And magical thinking is an age -old human quirk And it can be really beautiful.
In times of grief or overwhelm, we tend to think in a more sort of mystical way as a coping mechanism, and that's not inherently bad.
But combined with the information age, it can cause quite the disturbance.
How about you listeners, how has overthinking affected you?
Let us know in the comments.
Okay, give me something pithy, TK.
In our current age of unlimited information, And how has overthinking affected you?
Pithy would be an excess of information creates a shortage of insight.
And by excess here, I don't mean the total amount of information that exists in the universe, but that which is beyond what you can healthfully process and act on.
And you can know when you've gone past that point because you're not able to process without that sense of confusion that comes from overdoing it.
Or you find yourself stuck in analysis paralysis where you can't engage reality with those ideas.
The reason that creates a shortage of insight is because the best kinds of insights come from trying to use your ideas and use them not necessarily in a tangible way like a tool, but you create with them, whether that's an internal state or some external result that you want to produce.
If you're not trying to do that, if you're not taking ideas and immersing yourself in the creative process with all the risk and perils that that involves, then your thinking is incomplete and your insights are gonna come short.
Yeah, I'm thinking about a question that I'll just paraphrase.
It Faye asked, in the question of the week chat over on Patreon, basically, how does suffering lead to understanding?
Now I think about suffering in sort of two ways.
One is this ceaseless rumination sort of suffering, the unnecessary suffering, I think Freud would have called it unnecessary suffering versus just necessary suffering, the suffering that leads to insight or wisdom.
that is part of the human experience that we can't get rid of but overthinking is the wellspring of unnecessary suffering.
So there's my pithy answer for you.
Yeah, I like that. Because what happens is when we overthink we're really talking about is worry or contemplation or what's the word?
Rumination, panic. Yes, connotation, like to delay one's thinking, delay progress by thinking, right?
And so what we often do is we ruminate because we're worried about what might happen, but that rumination actually creates more worry.
And so then we're therefore praying for something bad to happen in the future.
Yeah, and I mean like the sort of more anatomical logic behind that worrying is praying for what you don't want thing, has to do with how Freud's catharsis theory was dispelled.
Like there's no evidence to suggest that doing a thing more will make you wanna do that thing less.
Like I have a little comparison in the book where I say like snorting a bunch of cocaine never made anyone wanna snort less cocaine.
So like ruminating about an idea will certainly not make that idea go away.
It's just gonna help you practice ruminating about that idea.
it's going to create a multi -lane highway out of the neurological pathways directing you toward that thought.
So, yeah, that's another way that awe and getting, this isn't like a perfect analogy, but getting into your body and out of your mind, even though the mind and body are the same thing, which is something important that I need to remind myself of, but yeah, getting into your body and out of your mind will stop that creation of that multi -lane highway.
And that is the metaphor there of getting out of your mind, the sort of active mind, the mentation that happens when we are overthinking, right?
Is then maybe avoided by meditation or, you know, some sort of practice where we are focusing on the here and now not the past or some hypothetical future.
All right, that's the end of page one where we're just getting started.
We still have a super abundance of colors to talk to, but first real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. You know, Amanda, this is the fifth collaboration between Amanda Montel and the minimalist. We had you on the podcast with your last book, Cultish, right?
And then we had you, well, we just filmed something and we're back to, we have a film coming out ideally next year called The Big Simple.
And so we interviewed you for that a few years ago and it's still not out, but you're really gonna enjoy this film.
In fact, next month I'm spending 17 days straight finishing filming.
And so we worked on that.
We were on your podcast. Nicodemus and I came out to the Valley.
The cult of minimalism?
Yes, indeed. We talked about the cult of minimalism.
I do, on page 3, want to talk to you a bit more about some of the cult stuff as well.
Sure, always. And then we have you back here on the podcast today.
And then we did the live event.
That's exactly it. So you did our first Sunday symposium, which is a monthly event we are now doing in Los Angeles.
Now we brought Amanda in to make sure we weren't starting a cult.
That was my first one.
I know, I'm not really cold insurance.
I'm like pretty bad cold insurance though because like I love the energy of a live event, you know what I mean?
Like who knows what's gonna happen.
Well, I did hear this term that a religion is a successful cult, a cult is a failed religion.
Now, I don't agree with that terminology at all.
I'd love to talk about that a bit as well.
but we did bring her to the event because in a way, we're sort of anti -cult.
I heard Dr. Taraban, our last guest talk about this, being anti -cult with respect to your relationships, having a door that's really difficult to get in, but it is really easy to leave because cults are sort of the opposite of that.
It's really easy to get into a cult.
It can be. But it's difficult to leave quite often.
Uh -huh, uh -huh. Well, I mean, there are always exceptions, which is my whole shtick.
Like this is such a nebulous subject matter.
But yes, yes. And so you can come out to our call, I mean, to our live events.
We call them Sunday Symposium.
Making fun of yourself is a sign, is a green flag.
Green flag. Oh nice, okay.
Well the next one is September 29th.
There are free tickets available at sundatesymposium .com.
It's limited to less than 200 seats.
So come on in, grab your tickets now.
sundatesymposium .com here in Los Angeles.
We'd love to see you there.
What else you got for us?
Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.
Hello, this is Victoria in Australia, and I'm calling with a listener tip.
I've always had a lot of trouble getting rid of books.
They have a lot of identity attachment for me, but recently I've made a rule, which has really helped me, and that is if I can't remember the details, any details about the book, then it has to go.
This has helped me get rid of a lot of novels where I couldn't really remember what the story was.
And another one that has helped me recently is if I can't answer the question, what is so great about this book, then I can give it away.
I found myself only being able to answer that question with some vague story.
And that's not good enough.
So I was able to give them away.
Also, as a bonus for Joshua, who mentioned something about the Australian accents putting three syllables in, and are in no challenge accepted.
Oh Victoria, thank you so much for that lovely comment.
For anyone else who has a list or tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, leave a comment on Patreon or YouTube or better yet, send a voice memo to podcast at theminimalists .com so we can feature your voice on the show.
All right, you don't want to miss this.
That's only the first 37 % of episode 460.
We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Amanda Montel, which includes answers to a bunch more questions, questions like, how does overthinking create unrealistic expectations that make us miserable?
When does minimalism turn into a selfish pursuit?
Who is exploited the most by the different flavors of consumerism.
We'll also discuss overconfidence bias, the halo effect, thought terminating cliches and a million more questions, and simple living segments.
Over on The Minimalist Private Podcast, we also have a lovely home tour of our listeners this week.
Visit patreon .com slash TheMinimalist or click the link down in the description to subscribe and get your personal link so that our weekly maximal episodes play in your favorite podcast app.
You'll also gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way the back to episode 001.
By the way, Patreon is now offering free trials.
So if you'd like to test drive our private podcast, you can join for seven days for free.
Big thanks to Amanda Montel for joining us today.
You can check out her new book.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
Also her podcast, Sounds Like A Cult, and also Magical Overthinkers, a little side podcast she did to support the book.
We'll put links to those in the show notes as well.
And that is our minimal episode for today.
Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space.
on behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malabama, Post Production Peter, Speyer Jeff, and Speyer Dave. We've got A B over here, well somewhere, and Savvy D is here.
Oh, and the studio audience as well.
Professor Shawn is in the studio.
Danny Unknown, we have Rachel here.
And Brittany High is on the couch. We have a full studio audience today.
Give it up for the studio audience, y 'all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name's Joshua Fields Milburn.
If you leave here with just one message, let it be this.
Love people and use things because the opposite never works.
Thanks for listening y 'all.
We'll see you next time.
Peace. Every little thing you think that you need.
Every little thing you think that you need.
Every little thing that's just feeding your greed.
Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.
you
