Last year I spent a month without a phone.

It. Was. Amazing.

Here’s how the experience went:

Day 1: Sadness. Breaking a phone is a bummer.

Day 2 – 5: Jitters. I reached for my non-existent phone hundreds of times during this period. When it’s no longer there, you realize how often you use it distract yourself.

Day 6 – 14: Full detox. It’s amazing how much more time time you get back when you don’t have your phone.

Day 14 – 30: Bliss. I started living in the moment again.

Day 31: Relapse. I couldn’t get by without 2-factor authentication or navigation.

Phones & Dopamine

While phones aren’t all bad, having a tiny computer in your pocket 24/7 can reduce your happiness. That’s because using your phone can provide small dopamine hits, which leads into a 3-stage negative feedback loop.

Stage 1: Your realize phones are awesome! Maybe it’s a positive email. Likes on your photo. A fun mobile game. Whatever it is, your brain loves it.

Stage 2: Your brain automatically seeks the same reward. However, it’s not always there. It a psychology conditioning quite similar to slot machines, where you pull the lever (i.e. take out your phone) MORE often when the outcome is random.

Stage 3: You enter a negative feedback cycle. Using your phone for long periods of time makes you unhappier. To combat this you begin to seek small dopamine rewards to balance it out.

Try to spend half the day without your phone and count how many times you instinctively reach for it. The number will probably be higher than you think.

In the field of economics there is a widely known concept known as the utility equation. Created by Daniel Bernoulli, it states that people will keep on making decisions as long as it increases their utility (a.k.a. you receive personal satisfaction and/or the decision provides some type of benefit).

For example, let’s say you have a plate of cookies in front of you and you’re fairly hungry. Not starving, but you’re hungry.

When you eat the 1st cookie, it’s one of the best things you’ve ever tasted in the world. You gain lots of utility.

When you eat the 2nd cookie, it’s pretty great, but it’s just not as good as the first one. You gain some utility, but not as much.

You continue eating cookies until you finally get to the point where you don’t want any more. Maybe you’re full, maybe you want to avoid the extra calories. Whatever the reason is, you absolutely do not want another single cookie.

Graphically, your experience would look something like this:

Right around cookie #10 you don’t care anymore. You could eat it, you could not, But after cookie #10, that is it. You absolutely do not want to eat any more cookies.

This equation is pretty straightforward since, at a clear point in time, you know for certain that you won’t gain anything by eating anymore. So you stop. You stop because there’s an immediate link between the benefit (or lack thereof) of eating another cookie.

However, this isn’t so straightforward for other things in life, such as worrying. When you begin to worry, there isn’t a direct link between you worrying and the benefit you get from worrying.

Worry exists for really only one reason: To make your brain focus on a specific task. It might be about the test you have coming up, the important in-person interview, or a public speech you’re being forced to give at a wedding.

Regardless of what you’re brain is demanding you concentrate on, you only get so much benefit from spending your precious time thinking about it. Graphically, it looks something like this:

Notice the steep drop off after the initial stages of worry. This happens because there is only one thing to be gained from worrying, and that is for you to concentrate on the root cause of the worry, a.k.a. “The Peak Of Realization”. At this peak, your brain has done its job and directed its attention to what you need to focus on (even if you can only address the problem at a later point in time).

After you pass this peak, you’ll very quickly enter “The Trough Of Worry”. In the Trough Of Worry, you gain nothing by continuing to think about the problem. In fact, you’ll likely lose something, whether it be time, sleep, or your hair.

Over worrying exists because you either can’t, or won’t take action. Therefore when you realize you are over worrying, you should ask yourself two questions (if it helps, say it out loud):

1. Is there anything I can do to fix this?
2. If not, then why am I worrying about it?

These two questions will help reset your mind and have it focus on what you can control, and what you can’t control. They allow you to take a step back and rationally think about the problem.

While this is a drastic oversimplification of the concept of worry, this is the best mental model I have found to put my mind at ease when I find myself over worrying. Snapping yourself back to normal may not always be easy, but if you ask yourself the two questions above, it will at least help make a difference.

All of us have a dream of who we will one day be.

Once we have that prestigious career, receive that graduate degree, make it as that famous artist, or win a gold medal.

The problem with that dream though is that it focuses on the outcome:

1. Prestigious Career: A prestigious title, high salary, and everything else that comes with being the boss.
2. Graduate Degree: An achievement and knowledge that separates you from the rest of the pack.
3. Famous Artist: Fame and money.
4. Gold Medal: Knowing that you are #1 in the world at something.

An outcome is just a snapshot in time though. 

What you’re actually signing up for is the day-to-day grind it takes to get to that achievement.

1. Prestigious Career: Late nights and weekends spent grinding on the corporate ladder
2. Graduate Degree: Late nights studying and student debt
3. Famous Artist: Years of failure, rejections, no money, and no guarantee of success.
4. Gold Medal: 4 years of commitment to nothing but your chosen sport.

Every single choice in life you make has a downside so you’re really not picking what outcome you want, but more what you want your day-to-day to be.

It’s much easier to commit to something if you just dream of the outcome, but you’re more likely succeed if you approach decisions as a commitment to a specific day-to-day grind. The grind is guaranteed to be there, but the outcome is not.

Test The Waters

Once you understand that you’re signing up for the day-to-day commitment, it’s much easier to test out what a certain life path or dream will require by simply doing it.

When I first had the idea for creating this blog, I began writing sporadically after work everyday. About issues I was facing, about discoveries I’d read in other books, or just to distract myself from whatever was currently top of mind.

Through that process, I learned that writing was something that I really enjoyed doing. 

So much so that I was happy to spend my time outside work doing it. This experience gave me confidence that when I launched this blog I would be able to achieve my goal of becoming a write not because it was a dream, but because I enjoyed (or at least didn’t hate) the day-to-day activity of it.

This tactic can be used in most other areas throughout your life.

Want to make a jump in your career? 

Start by publishing a newsletter in the industry or position you want to move into. Solidify yourself as an expert.

Want to become a famous artist?

Commit to practicing and putting out songs on a clear schedule.

Want to become a writer?

Put out articles on a consistent schedule.

Consistency

This approach will teach you immediately what day-to-day grind you are signing up for.

Increase Your Failure Speed

One of the best parts of this strategy is it will help you quickly identify what you don’t enjoy doing. The faster you discover what you don’t enjoy, the sooner you can spend time exploring more options so you can find something .

This experimental creation phase is where you should be allocating the majority of your time early on in your life.

The key to discovering where you’ll succeed in life isn’t about discovering what you want or your passion, it’s discovering what type of daily grind and pain you can take. For most, it tends to be where you constantly allocate your free time when nobody else is watching.

For me, I realized that this was reading about self-improvement. It was where my mind constantly wandered so beginning to write about it made sense. To get here I pursued dozens of incorrect paths in life, but that is all part of the journey.

The Bottom Line

When in doubt, just try something new. It doesn’t need to be out of your comfort zone and it doesn’t require a huge life leap. The more you experiment, the closer you’ll be to finding something that you love.

You’ll never know where you will end up.

On the evening of September 26, 1983, it was a night like any other for Stanislav Petrov.

A lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense, Petrov had been assigned to a bunker command center near Moscow.

This bunker was not like other command centers in Moscow though because, unlike the rest, it housed Russia’s most important Cold War asset: Oko, the nuclear missile warning system. 

Petrov was on duty watching the system’s satellite feeds when, shortly after midnight, the early warning system reported a missile launched from the United States immediately followed by four more… all aimed at the USSR. Monitoring for this exact event was why Oko had been created, so that Russia would be prepared for any escalation in the Cold War by the United States.

Soviet Military Protocol required Petrov to report the incident up the chain of the command so a retaliatory launch could be triggered. This strategy of mutually assured destruction was the only defense Russia thought it had against the United States. 

Petrov did the unthinkable though, and directly disobeyed protocol.

He did so because not only did he not believe that the Americans would start a war with five missiles, but he didn’t believe that they would start a war at all. Petrov was correct, and the missile “alerts” were eventually determined to be caused by a malfunction from the satellite picking up a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds.

In that moment, Stanislav Petrov gave the entire United States the benefit of the doubt because the only other option was war and for that choice he will go down in history as a hero.

What is the Benefit of the Doubt?

The benefit of the doubt is assuming that somebody is telling the truth when they might otherwise be lying.

This is a common occurrence when somebody you know provides you an excuse that you have no way to confirm.

1. I was late because there was traffic!
2. I couldn’t make it to dinner because I had to work.
3. I’m sick so I can’t make it out of the house today.

In these situations, it’s easy to give the benefit of the doubt. You’re dealing with people you know. You’ve had many conversations, shared experiences, and developed trust over a period of time. Of course if this person has a history of lying, then that would be different (but you should be trying to avoid relationships with lying in general).

Giving the benefit of the doubt to people you know is easy. Giving it to people you don’t is hard.

What’s The Downside

A few years ago a man came up to me at a rest stop when I was filling up my car. 

He was in a rush, told me an incredibly detailed story that involved a broken down car, a state trooper, two towing companies, and finished it by asking for $19 so he could pay for the cheaper towing option (or else the State Trooper would tow it and charge him much more).

My immediate thought was “How do I know if this guy is telling the truth?”.

Then, after 15 seconds of thinking about it, I realized I couldn’t figure out if he was with 100% certainty.

What I was certain of though, is that I have been in similar situations before.

I’ve been out of my element, without access to a phone, to cash, or to friends and I have had to beg for help.

So I gave him $20.

The downside? I got scammed out of some cash.

The upside? I got somebody out of a tough situation.

If this situation repeated itself 100 times, I’m sure a I’d get scammed a few times. Maybe 10, maybe even 50.

Even if I got scammed 50 times out of 100, and ended up helping only half of the time, I’d would rather be the person who helps, rather than someone who assumes the worst and acts as a bystander.

The Benefit to You

If you start giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, it will immediately change the way you interact with the world, and your mindset, for the better.

Think about the many day-to-day interactions you have with people that you don’t know.

The stressed out barista who messes up your order at your local coffee shop…

The homeless man who you pass by who is asking for food or money…

The attendee who showed up late to your meeting…

If you give them the benefit of the doubt, not only will they be better off, YOU will be better off. Your internal thoughts will become more positive, you will be happier as a person, and people around you will notice.

Always giving the benefit of the doubt is, without a doubt, the best way to live.