[Ep. 392] Breaking Free from Scarcity with Michael Easter

Jessica 

Welcome, Michael to the more money Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on the show.

Michael 

Well, I’m excited to be here.

Jessica 

Thanks for having me. You’re so welcome. Yeah, when I found out about your book, and like this is definitely a book or an author that I need to have on the show talking about scarcity, a very popular topic in the personal finance world, obviously. But I think we don’t necessarily dive into where does that scarcity come from and how it can reveal itself and other parts of our lives. So I really enjoyed your book I like did a really like read the whole thing in two days, like obsessively, and it was incredible, just the journey that you went on, and all the different experiences that you did to kind of explain how scarcity exists. But before we kind of dive in, I know you know, you’ve there’s so many things that I think is really interesting about your background, I thought the first thing was like you live in Las Vegas, I thought was really interesting. Like, that’s an interesting place to like, write about this topic, but also, you know, you teach you how to share, like, how has living in Las Vegas maybe influenced the idea that you had for this book? Because I’m sure scarcity is all over Las Vegas, especially like the strip and the casinos. That’s kind of where I kind of go to I think.

Michael 

Yeah, yeah, totally. So I mean, I think that it is the perfect place to study the topic, because I genuinely think of like, when we think of scarcity, I just generally, very simply define it as like the feeling that we don’t have enough, right. And I think that everyone has that. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways and to the point of your podcast, like money is a huge thing, right? But Las Vegas is totally, totally built to fulfill this people’s cravings for these things they can’t get enough of right. It’s like, food, stuff. Money, right? There’s always this lingering promise that you could get you could leave town far richer than you came to came to it. And I think that the gambling industry in particular is a really interesting vehicle for looking at human behavior, and why we make the decisions we do and how like randomness and random rewards impact our decision. So I’d say when we were kind of coming up with the idea for the book, and when I say we, I mean, me and my editor, very much just I started noticing that Vegas is just the perfect place to study this. And so I did a lot of research into slot machines and how they work, and how they basically get people to repeat this behavior that is fun in the short term, but irrational in the long run, like the house always wins. And yet people play slot machines in particular, like at an insane rate.

Jessica 

I thought that part of the book was so interesting, because I didn’t know the history of slot machines and how they were never supposed to be the big moneymaker. And then just with a few tweaks, to encourage certain people’s behaviors, now they’re everywhere. You mentioned, this is true. I remember years ago going to Las Vegas, and there were slot machines in the airport. I’m like, that is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. And yeah, they’re like, everywhere, and people are there for hours. And they like, you know, have food around them. So they don’t have to leave their their spot. It’s crazy. And you mentioned like part of this has to do with the thing that you call the scarcity loop. Do you want to kind of share a little bit more about what the scarcity loop is? And how I mean, for me, I’m like, I think that’s the reason that I never go to casinos, I never gamble is because I’m like, I just feel like it is too dangerous and hard to get out of once you’re in that kind of repetition.

Michael 

So I make this observation that one slot machines are all over Las Vegas, two people play them around the clock. And when you look at the stat slot machines make more money than books, music, and movies combined. Wow, annually, like it’s just a crazy, huge industry. I mean, the slot machines in the airport in Las Vegas alone have made more than a billion dollars, my god so and so like I said before, it’s like everyone knows the house always wins, right? So I kind of make this observations like why would someone do that? You know, and because I’m a journalist, when I make an observation, that doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s like, I don’t just leave it there, I usually try and figure out what the heck is going on there. And so long story short, this takes me to this place on the edge of town in Las Vegas, that’s this, like brand new, fully working, cutting edge Casino. But it’s not totally open to the public. So it’s used entirely for Human Behavior Research. It’s like a casino laboratory. And it’s funded by casino companies, but also a bunch of big tech companies. And when I’m there, I talked to this guy who’s a slot machine designer. And if you want to understand how slot machine works, you have to understand this scarcity loop. So it’s like a three part behavior loop. And the three parts are one opportunity to unpredictable rewards and three quick repeatability. So to kind of unpack it, it’s like the first one opportunity, you have an opportunity to get something of value to unpredictable rewards, you know, you’ll get the thing of value at some point if you keep doing the behavior, but you don’t know how valuable it’s going to be. And you don’t know when you’re going to get the thing that is a value. And then three quick repeatability, you can immediately repeat the behavior. So you just go over and over and over. So in the case of a slot machine, it’s like you, you have the opportunity to win some money, but you don’t know which game is actually going to win it how big the winner is going to be anything like that. And then you can just play game after game after game. And so the reason why this is important, though, I mean, it’s like one thing that is in slot machines, and it’s powerful there. But that three part behavior loop when it sort of exploded in the 80s. And slot machines went from like these things that no one played to being everywhere, and kind of being the workhorses of casinos. A lot of other industries sort of looked at that and went, what the heck is going on there. Now that’s interesting. And so now you’re seeing that same three part behavior loop being put in all sorts of tech products. And it’s really embedded in our lives. I mean, this is what makes social media work. It’s what makes it makes sports gambling work. It’s in what’s what makes dating apps people get hooked on those. What makes Candy Crush and mobile games, such moneymakers, like it’s just all over our lives. And once you start to kind of see it. You can’t unsee it and you realize that this thing takes a ton of your time and attention and oftentimes money like it’s even in online shopping. No.

Jessica 

Well, I didn’t even say to and you mentioned and make reference to this in the book when it comes to you know, stock trading. And we saw a lot of these behaviors over the past couple years, especially over COVID A lot of these apps like Robin Hood, we have similar apps in Canada like well, simple trade they make there’s no friction it’s super easy to make an account put your money in and start trading. And there is that kind of loop is like you don’t know when you’re gonna make it big but you feel like it’s gonna come and sometimes you’ll make a lucky trade Then you’re gonna, and it’s easy, you just press that button, and then you can make another one or you can sell. And it’s just too easy to get stuck in there. And you kind of lose sight of why why are you doing this in the first place? Wasn’t it to save for retirement? Just get rich, quick. It’s it’s radical. But like you said, it’s one of those things where you see it in so many industries now. And yeah, even just mentioning social media is the same as like scrolling tick tock, or Instagram reels or what have you. And I get stuck in that loop to your it is that unpredictable reward, there’s a lot of crap on there. But sometimes there’s a funny video, and they’ll be like, Oh, I really liked that. Maybe I’ll find another one. And you keep on scrolling. And then you’re on there for three hours when you probably could have done something more efficient with your right.

Michael 

Right. So there’s really nothing better at capturing human attention. Yeah, than this. And to your point about finance out. Yeah, I think that removing trading fees was huge, because it increases the quick repeatability. Yeah. And then some of the apps were also using, basically stuff that was directly pulled from casinos, like spinning wheels for bonuses.

Jessica 

I guess calibration, you know, you made a trade, celebrate, and then it makes you feel good. Like you want to do it again. It’s crazy. Yeah,

Michael 

It’s so scary. Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s definitely unparalleled at getting people to make decisions that they sometimes might regret.

Jessica 

Yeah, often, often they regret. I know, obviously, when we’re thinking of scarcity, it’s it is a natural feeling. It comes from, you know, or ancestors. And it was to help us survive. But now we’re in a very, and you talked about this in your book, we’re in a very different situation, we have everything we need, or it’s very easy to get it. We don’t have to go hunt for our food, we don’t have to worry about predators killing us in our sleep, like we’re pretty safe and cozy. So why do you think besides the scarcity loop that a lot of these companies are using to make us feel like this? Is there any other thing that makes us feel like there’s never enough? Because I can’t even like, think of when did this start for me, but I feel like once I entered adulthood, I’ve always had this kind of scarcity, like there’s never enough. And even when you do have enough, you can’t recognize it. So you feel like, Oh, I thought that was enough. But actually, it’s not I need more.

Michael 

Yeah. Well, I mean, you have to ask, why do people? Why do most people focus on what they don’t have, rather than what they do have? Why are we such amazing consumers? And this is like everyone, right? And the answer is, I mean, it’s pretty simple. It’s just that, you know, humans evolved in these environments where everything we needed to survive, was scarce. And it was hard to find. So everything from food to stuff to information to status to XYZ, you name it. And so we evolved to sort of crave and overdo those things. But there was never enough of them, right. So if you had the opportunity, in the past, when you came upon food to eat more of it than you needed, that always made sense, if you had the opportunity to get more stuff in the form of tools, or whatever that would give you a survival advantage. Same with status, right? If if you had higher status, were above other people in your tribe, you would get out of like the crappy work, you’d probably get more food so you’d survive. So we still have these genes that basically tell us to like focus on what you don’t have, try and get more than you need. But now, the difference is that we’re in a world where we have an abundance of all the stuff that we’re sort of built to crave. And we don’t necessarily have good, like a good governor to see when we’ve had too much. So I mean, even just in the past, like 100 150 years, you just look at how much more of all these things on top we’re talking about have increased and it’s insane. It’s like, in the late 1800s, the average person had like three outfits, maybe? Yeah. Now the average person has 110. Yeah, the average house has anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 items. Right? I mean, food consumption has just dramatically risen. Oh, yeah. We now see more information in a single day than we used to see our entire lives in the 1400s. On and on and on. And so you see, like you put these creatures I humans that are just designed to like, get and consume and always be like, what more can I get and do and blah, blah, blah, in a world where it’s possible to do that, and you just start to see there some effects of that. Now, granted, like this is a good problem to have in the grand scheme of time and space, right? I’d rather be worried about counting calories because I’m worried about having too many then. I don’t have enough. Yeah, right. I’d rather have like, have to pick a coat rather than not have a coat right? But that doesn’t, but there’s still problems. Right. And so I think it’s like, as we’ve progressed as a society, it’s awesome. At the same time, there’s there’s going to be side effects that we’re going to have to deal with.

Jessica 

I think the big issue is we’re actually living in a world of abundance, but we don’t see it. And we don’t know when to stop. Like, there’s no stop. There’s no stopping, and especially, is the messages that you see a lot in the news on social media, even on TV that you don’t have enough because like, there’s people that have more, and they look like they’re happier, they’re more secure, you should want more. And so it’s even when we are in a place where like, oh, no, I think I’m good. Everything outside of you saying, Are you though? Maybe you’re not. And so it’s, how do we know when to stop this cycle. I know, one of the things I really enjoyed in your book, were some of the adventures that you went on, which seemed like the one that seemed like the worst to me was honestly living in a monastery, I know my husband would love he’s, he’s done silent retreats, he would love that life, I would not thrive in that situation. But I appreciate exactly what they were set out to do. It was all like their lifestyle was all about enoughness, we’ve got enough for taking care of each other. It was a beautiful thing. But it was like in this little bubble of the world that only exists in that situation, I want to kind of ask you, what was that experience? How long were you there for? What was that experience? Like? What did you learn?

Michael 

I was at the monastery for about a week. Yeah, so the whole reason I went there is, you know, we kind of live in one of the things that we want more of his happiness, right? And so like a lot of philosophers argue that everything we do is simply to eventually be happy. And I would say that today, we often think that happiness is going to be in the next purchase, it’s going to be like, Oh, once I have this amount of money in my retirement account, like, then I’ll be able to do that. And then I’ll be happy, right? So it’s this. But the thing is, is like once you get to that place, you realize like, okay, like things are basically about the same as they were.

Jessica 

Always disappointing. Yeah.

Michael 

And we often think that like having more is going to lead to happiness. So then I come across this research on these Benedictine monks. And it basically finds that they are significantly happier than the average person, on average. And so when you look at how they live, it’s like, totally the antithesis of what we would consider the American dream. It’s like, they have all these things, they do that we’re told, yeah, that will make you happy, that will make you miserable. So for example, they spend a lot of time and silence. They’re not super social, they do hard physical labor four hours a day, they have to go into the chapel and pray like eight times a day.

Jessica 

Really early, really early.

Michael 

Like 3:45 in the morning. They don’t eat a ton. They don’t really they don’t drink a lot. They don’t have cell phones. They don’t like they don’t have TVs they don’t like I mean, they’re literally living like it’s, you know, yeah, the year 1000 or whatever. But they’re happy. And so, you know, I, I see that. I’m like, Well, what the heck is up with that? So I yeah, go live with them for about a week. And I think my takeaway was that, you know, oftentimes, happiness is not a result of what we own. But rather, it’s kind of like a process. It’s a rolling average of our behaviors. And oftentimes, by trying to by focusing our attention on getting the next thing, doing the next thing, thinking that there’s some end game to happiness, that, that backfires that just like that’s a really good way to not be happy. And instead of these guys focusing on their happiness, they’re really just kind of focused on doing the next right thing that serving some higher good for them. So for them, it’s got its religion. But I think the average person can get that from all sorts of different things, so long as we get out of ourselves and are of service. And we also have to realize, like, what makes one person happy isn’t going to make another person happy. So like, I get really somewhat frustrated with stories that come out that are like, Oh, you need to do here are the five things you must do to be happy? It’s like, well, no, it doesn’t really work like that, like people are different. And actually, part of becoming quote unquote happy is having doing some self exploration and building some self awareness about like, what actually does make me happy and like, no, that’s not always easy. It’s oftentimes hard but you come out the other side of that a better, more useful, more interesting person.

Jessica 

And staying with that feeling of this is what makes me happy when you’re confronted with no, you’re wrong. Like that’s probably the hardest part is sticking to your guns being like no, this is because a lot of it is contrarian to most people. They’re like no doesn’t make any any sense. Why would you be happy? Living like a minimalist that would make me miserable? It’s like, yeah, that would make you miserable. That maybe it makes me happy.

Michael 

Right, exactly. And yeah, and I have like good friends that I’ve a friend who always battles me because I’m like, I’m like, I realize there’s a lot of people who need to be around others all the time to be happy. I’m totally opposite. I need like two people and my dog. And by the way, if I don’t have like, at least a week, where I’m totally alone, every year, I’m gonna go absolutely nuts. And like, that’s fine. It’s like fine that you want all these friends around you all the time. But like, you know, I need some alone time here.

Jessica 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I’m the same way. I’m for sure. The same way. The other crazy thing that you did that I think is like I don’t think I’d ever do in my life. But I love hearing people’s stories doing it as you went to the Amazon jungle. And honestly, I’ve been thinking about that section for so long, especially because you lost so much weight when you did their diet. I’m like, I should probably try that man. Trying it even getting started with like cutting out the sugar and just eating like, these people, I just literally haven’t been able to start it. I’ve been thinking about it every day. Like if I just ate like that, and continued you know, being active, I’m sure I you know, lose XYZ, you know, amount of pounds. But you want to kind of talk about like, how did that situation arise? I can’t imagine that’s very easy to set up, like, Hey, we’re gonna go to the jungle. And it’s gonna be like, Yeah, you’re not going to have anything with you and live like that for a little bit. How did that happen? And again, to what did you find out from living with these people who also seemed pretty happy with just the things that they had around them?

Michael 

Yeah. Well, here’s here. I have some good news for you, actually. So I have on my website, which is Easter miko.com. Do you have a meal plan for me? Who we know it’s a two week, jump on a diet challenge. So I’m going to walk you into it. It’ll kind of give you pointers. It’ll help you troubleshoot how to do it, because everyone faces the same issues when they do it. And so yeah, that’ll there’s your answer. You can try it.

Jessica 

Honestly, I’ve been thinking about like, you talked about like, especially with like the food, there are certain foods that are just so addictive, like Yeah, chips or something like I’ll just have one and then you just eat. And it’s just like, you don’t even thinking and it doesn’t even fill you up. It’s not giving you any nutrition, but you just can’t stop and like I don’t want to live like that anymore.

Michael 

Alright, so Okay, so to answer your question, my background is I’ve been health journalist like my entire career, and I was a prep professor for a while to try. So when you look at what kills people, it’s heart disease. Heart disease is the number one killer of people worldwide like full stop. The average person has basically a coin flips chance of dying of heart disease. Okay. When you look at what people worry about, it’s like home invasions. Yep. It’s like, you know, it’s cancers. A big one. terrorism’s a big one, car accidents, stuff like that. No one worries about heart disease. You look at what like people worry about, it’s like this tiny thing.

Jessica 

I never thought about it in my life. I’ll tell you, I’ve never thought about heart disease.

Michael 

And then when you look at what the media actually covers, in terms of causes of death, they don’t cover heart disease at all. So there’s this crazy mismatch of like, here’s this big, looming threat that’s all going to kill us. And like, by the way, no one cares, and like, no one’s covering it. So I kind of come across that data, which I think is really interesting. And then, like a year or two later, this study gets released and it basically finds this tribe in the Bolivian jungle, who do not die of heart disease, like no one dies of heart disease, not to mention heart disease, but they also have way lower rates of diseases like Alzheimer’s, which is a big killer of modern people. They don’t get a lot of same cancers we do etc, etc, etc. So I’m like, Okay, well, this is interesting. So I gotta go find out like why right. So I fly to La Paz, which is capital Bolivia and then we drive like 12 hours down these kind of cliffie dirt roads to this jumping off point of the jungle then we take this canoe like six hours up river and you know eventually the the guy who’s kind of like manning the canoes engine, he just like pulls over in the middle and everything looks the same. You’re just going through the jungle for six. It’s all the same. Yeah. I’m like, How do you know this is the spot?

Jessica 

Yeah, there’s no GPS here. How do you know?

Michael 

It’d be just as like, spot so we get out and he’s right. Like they’re the tribe is right. So they’re called the shamanic tribe. And I lived with him for a while and what The main reason they don’t seem to get a lot of the diseases that kill us goes back to what they eat. And so when you look at what they eat, it’s also interesting because at some point in a day, it’s going to offend one of our fad diets. Yeah. popular in the US at some point over the last 30 years and in Canada, too. So like, it’s not keto, it’s not paleo. It’s not low fat. It’s not low carb. It’s not vegan. It’s not I mean, just insert all these things, right. But the one commonality that all the food they eat has is that it’s just one ingredient. So they’re eating foods, you can think about it as they’re eating foods that are ingredients rather than, than foods that have ingredients. Yeah. So they’ll eat like, rice, white rice, they grow it, they make it themselves white rice, they’ll eat like potatoes, they hunt their own red meat. There’s this type of deer that lives in the Amazon, they eat a lot of fish that they catch themselves, they eat a lot of fruit, ate, not say, avocados, etc. They’re not eating dairy and stuff, because they don’t have cows. But yeah, it all goes back to that. And then the question is like, Okay, well, why is that food seemed to be healthy. And one of the reasons that the primary reasons seems to be simply that you can’t over consume it, like, so think about eating a potato that’s boiled versus potato chips, like an ounce of boiled potato has 50 calories. And an ounce of potato chips has like 300. And by the way, which one is way more delicious, and is more likely to lead you to like eat more and more of it. So there’s these, there’s this really interesting studies by the NIH where they basically lock people in the lab, and they have them for two weeks eat food that is like the tri beats, it’s unprocessed. And then they put them another two weeks, they these people have to eat really processed food. So scientists call it Ultra processed foods, they haven’t been Ultra processed versions of the same food. But everything is like matched, like for overall calories, they have access to for fat for protein for solve for all this stuff. And when people eat the diet, like the tribes, which is all this like unprocessed food, they just naturally eat 500 fewer calories a day and they lose weight. Whereas when they eat the ultra processed food, they do the opposite. And they gain weight. And it’s simply because Ultra processed food, which by the way is like 70% of our food supply. Now it has all these cues that lead us to eat more that is to say it’s much more delicious, right? There’s a much bigger variety. And it’s also much faster to eat. So a junk food executive, who I talked to basically said, If you want us if you want to sell junk food, to get people to buy junk food, it’s got to have three V’s, it’s got to have value, it’s got to have variety, and it’s got to have velocity. And so that’s just like the food version of the scarcity loop that we just laid out a minute ago, right, like the speed of eating is is a huge factor. And so when I when I got home from Bolivia, I decided to try the diet. Just try and eat like them for a week. It’s not easy. You can’t replicate it perfectly, but you can try. Yeah. And I mean, I yeah, I definitely lost weight I was an I was not trying to. And it actually became got to the point where I was like, I kind of want to stay at the weight I was at and so I had to eat more. And it just is so much food because food that is just one ingredient. It’s just way more filling, way more filling. But it’s also a lot healthier for you because it’s you know, you’re getting a ton of nutrients.

Jessica 

And so how hard was it to maintain that though, especially when you go to the grocery stores? 70% is like ultra processed food like what and again, you just like, you have to be that contrarian go against the grain because no one else is eating like that. Like was that I mean, I don’t know, if you’re still doing it. I assume not.

Michael 

I don’t do it 100%. But what I will say is that it definitely influenced me and that now most of my sort of go to meals fall into that where I’m just like, a few foods that have just one ingredient like rice, some vegetables and some lean meat or fish like that’s a that’s a go to for me. Now, I would say it’s harder at first. And there’s even all these things where if you go like, Okay, I’m gonna have potatoes and like meat and some vegetables. Well then like our next thing that we normally do is like, Alright, I’m gonna cover this in some like, sauce that’s like butter and blah, blah, blah, or like barbecue sauce, or like sour cream and blah. And it’s like, well, all those things just like enhance the flavor and add a ton of calories and like they don’t do that. So you kind of have there’s like definitely an adjustment period where you start to realize like, oh, I add so much stuff to this like food. Yeah, it’s just like natural. I need to learn how to like, make it taste good in a way that’s not adding a bajillion calories on the side.

Jessica 

Yeah. Which kind of goes back to a message in your book where it’s not about adding more sometimes it’s about taking something away. Now there’s an example of like, there was a experiment where it’s like build a bridge out of these things and most People added more blocks instead of taking them away to make it more efficient. And I think that’s a great representation of how we think about things we think more is more, less is less. But really, like even just thinking about, like the food example, if you’re really eating those Whole Foods, and you’re not putting a bunch of things on it, that will make it tastier, that will make you want to eat more your stomach will tell you when you’re done, you know, when you’ve had enough, because you literally just cannot eat anymore. But in other circumstances, we just do not have that. It’s not as easy to develop that kind of reflex of like, you’ve hit your point. You’re good, you’re done. But yeah, do you think it’s possible to to develop that when we’re just embedded in this society where it is like the, you know, the American dream, or the Canadian dream, it’s about, you know, starting your own business and wealth. And then there’s all these billionaires now, and it just seems like, that is what the we are all pushed to try to want to get into achieve, because that is what success and happiness is, even though all the data in the world shows actually, that’s not true. Is it possible to to live differently, I guess, in this world of abundance, where we feel like there’s never enough?

Michael 

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s like what, like, how are you? How are you measuring success, and a lot of people measure success and money. And if you measure success and money, you’re never gonna feel successful, because there’s always going to be someone else who has more money than you. And as you begin to sort of climb up the quote, unquote, economic spectrum, you’re just going to surround yourself with people who have about the same amount or a little more money than you. And that’s what you’re going to make comparisons to. So for example, people who live who are in the top 1% of wealth in the US, which I think is like 600,000 a year or something like that. When they pull these people, when scientists polled these people, they say they often feel poor, they often feel stretched, they often feel unhappy, and it’s like, okay, well, why the hell is that? And it’s because they live in neighborhoods with other one percenters. And so they see what these people are doing and what these people have. And it makes them feel like they don’t have enough, it makes them feel like they’re poor, right? It’s like when the neighbor pulls in with a new, whatever car and they’re like, Well, mine is two years old. How can you afford that like, and that just starts going through their mind, right? And so I think it’s like, the question is, how are you measuring this? And if you start measuring it by quality of life like that, that’s going to change your decisions, right? Like, plenty people could make more money if they work more. But like, Why the hell are you working in the first place? Oh, it’s so I can do XYZ. And that’s often at odds with adding more hours of work. And that’s like a hard balance toe, obviously. But that’s like got to be the fundamental, underlying question that you’re asking yourself. And I think that just kind of like big picture on people consuming and like craving and always wanting more is that I think, like, with the scarcity loop behaviors, there’s there’s, there’s three ways you can basically get out of behaviors like this. So the first is just becoming aware that this is happening. So this is called the observer effect. Once you observe a behavior, and you understand why it’s happening, it tends to just naturally change the behavior. So this messes up a lot of scientific studies, but it’s actually something that real people in the real world can use to do things they want to do, and less of things that hurt them. The second part is that you can change any of the three parts of the scarcity loop that we talked about. So one of the big ways is simply just finding ways to slow down a behavior. I’ll give the example of shopping because it’s a Monday podcast. It’s like, if you find yourself buying too much crap on Amazon, which I mean, just think about that for a minute. When we talk about the abundance thing, it’s like kidding,

Jessica 

it’s like you put something in your cart, and then there’s immediately, hey, here’s something else that you might like.

Michael 

And well, and even like, 15 years ago, if you decided you wanted something, you would have to drive down to the store to get it. And you’d have to walk the aisles, and you would have limited choices you’d have they’d have maybe like three of them. And there’s just this period of pause, right? There’s so many steps you have to do to be able to get that well now, it’s like, not only is it way easier to buy something because you can just go on Amazon from your phone. But also, we’re spending way more time on media and you’re getting ads that are hyper targeted to you because of phone based media. So like, you know, in the past it’s like if I opened up let’s say I’m getting my passing my time by reading a magazine and it’s like the Atlantic it’s like, well, who’s going to advertise with that like Ford? Maybe Rolex maybe like like there’s there’s only gonna be so many ads that really speak to me now when I go on in To grab, it’s like, oh my god, they’ve hyper targeted the products where I’m like, Oh, wow, that’s it. That’s, that’s great. Oh, wow, look at that product.

Jessica 

There’s so many times to me and my husband, I’ve mentioned something to each other. And then we’ll look at our phone and there’s an ad and you’re like, that is so dangerous. Like we just mentioned it, and they know and it’s being targeted. And then it will keep on targeting you until you probably do some sort of action. It’s It’s so difficult. And it’s like, you know, spending problems and overspending and getting into debt, those have been issues in personal finance for decades. But it’s just so much harder to be diligent with that now, compared to oh, there’s lots of TV, you know, ads on TV, well, now, there’s ads, literally everywhere you go in your pocket, you know, and it’s just impossible to get away from it feels like and that’s I think the hard part is like, if I can’t, how do I change these behaviors, if these, you know, things that are trying to trigger these behaviors are following me around?

Michael 

Totally. So the so the way to like kind of slow that down is before you want to make a purchase, like, figure out how you can insert pause and time. So a lot of times, I mean, just simply putting a item in the cart that you think you want and then being like, Hey, we got a 72 whole 72 hour holding period. Once you go back three days later, you’re often like, yeah, I don’t know why the hell I wanted that. Like you. I mean, there’s so that saved me so many things that I didn’t need, because I’m like, Why did I think I wanted a leather jacket? You know, like, I know. Yeah. And yeah, and then there’s, I mean, the book lays out, like how you can alter the three parts and all these different types of behavior. But then the third big picture thing is like, I think a lot of times, people fall into these sort of loop behaviors that are negative, simply because they don’t have stimulation elsewhere in their lives. Yeah, so there’s a bunch of research on animals. There’s also plenty of like anecdotal research on humans, that basically shows that when you don’t have other fulfilling things in your life, like we need a certain amount of stimulation. And it’s really easy to get stimulation, through binging social media, through gambling, through drugs and alcohol through buying too much crap. Whatever it is like that gives us stimulation. But if you can find a way to find an interesting hobby, or get stimulation from something else, that’s often going to be far more life giving and lead you into better health and wellness in the long run, and you’ll stop obsessing about these things that you didn’t even need. So finding some hobby that’s outside, maybe you get really into volunteering, maybe you I mean, there’s a million different things that you can do that aren’t like, more social media, more buying stuff, I’m gonna go to the bar, I’m gonna get like things that eventually hurt us. And that’s, you know, kind of like the happiness thing, that’s a journey for everyone, like, what’s gonna, what’s gonna do it for me isn’t going to do it for you isn’t going to do it for you, and vice versa. But there is something out there for people. And I think that that exploration is very worth it.

Jessica 

Yeah, and I think one thing that, you know, especially just like COVID really mess things up a lot like these things were issues before, and they really rattled people because it forced us to stay at home alone, not with much stimulation. And so we gravitated more to shopping and going on social media. And I feel like even though, you know, we’re kind of past that now we’re in 2024. A lot of us develop those behaviors. And it’s we’re not realizing you can go outside again, you can socialize, you can get a hobby that is outside of any thing that you see online, that is just pure joy that will take your mind away. And what I find is like when you are busy with hobbies or work that’s filling, you don’t think about shopping or spending money or buying the next thing, you’re you’re living your life and you’re doing what you want to do. But I think we we still have some work to do and kind of unprogrammed ourselves from some of those behaviors. We learned a few years ago that were like we thought we needed to survive.

Michael 

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I write about a lot of this stuff. I got a newsletter that I send out every few days a week. It’s called 2% with Michael Easter and we cover a lot of these things that seemed to be working for people and there’s like, you know, there’s a community and one thing that I’ve found is that it’s it’s different. There’s obviously commonalities, but people just need to find their thing and then once they do that can be like an awesome unlock.

Jessica 

No, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think to since you mentioned community, that’s even though like I’m an introvert, so I was like, you are too I like my alone time. Having those communities those people whether they are online or offline are so important and will make you kind of rethink some of those behaviors like maybe, you know, I mean, this Yeah, loop of thinking that I need to get this new thing because everyone seems to have it like, oh, man, like what was one for me Taylor’s With tickets, people were going crazy. And I’m like, I don’t even listen to her. Like, I had nothing against her. I just haven’t listened to her in years, but I was very close to buying tickets for whatever reason, because it was, you know, everywhere. And then I’m just like, or just talk to some friends, you know, get out of that get out of this weird vacuum that has nothing to do with anything, but it’s just making you want to buy something because you think it will fulfill something else. But yeah, I think that the really important message that I got from your book is, you know, we are in this world of enough and of abundance even too much. So we are not. So we need to recognize that, you know, our programming isn’t quite up to snuff. And we need to recognize why are we doing the things that we’re doing? Because we are on autopilot most of the time. And it’s like you said, one of the first steps is to recognize what is going on, and then making your own plan. And sometimes that’s difficult to fulfill, but it sounds like you’ve got it, you know, pretty figured out? You seem pretty happy.

Michael 

I mean, I think that it’s a constant battle for everyone. I definitely have days where I’m like, you know, get caught in like the trying to do more. Well, yeah, you’re human. Definitely have to have the conversation of like, okay, if you do that, that means you can’t do X, Y, Z, which are the whole reasons that you work in the first place. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So yeah, I mean, the book was definitely good for me to write that. I definitely learned a lot.

Jessica 

Yeah. So so yeah. And I know a lot of people will learn a lot by reading it. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. was such a pleasure having you on where can people find more about you some of your resources? And where can they grab a copy of your book?

Michael 

Yeah, go to Easter michael.com. And I have there’s that jump on a diet challenge there?

Jessica 

I’ll check it out.

Michael 

And then yeah, pretty much everything you need to know about me. There’s links to my newsletter, which goes out a few times a week and as a fun project. And yeah, I appreciate you having me on. This was fun.