Learn: Pleasure vs pain, what we pay attention to, sleep debt vs sleep surplus

Read: 3 mins

Greetings from Brazil,

How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? 

Just one. But it’s going to be expensive, take a while, and the lightbulb must want to change. 

This newsletter is your personal guide to finding your own lighting. 

Here are 3 seeds to brighten your day. 

❤️ Pleasure vs Pain ❤️‍🩹

Everything we do is driven by our desire to seek pleasure or avoid pain. 

Sometimes both at once (scrolling social media while avoiding work). 

Understanding this truth lets us avoid common booby-traps of our minds. 

Here are 3 traps to watch out for:

Status Quo Bias 

• Tendency NOT to change, even against our best interest
• Ex: Not exploring new skills or career opportunities

Probability Neglect 

• Tendency to misjudge probabilities when making decisions
• Ex: Prioritizing short-term pleasure (tan) and ignoring long-term probability of skin cancer

Optimism Bias 

• Tendency to think we're less likely to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive ones
• Ex: negative event ("it won't happen to me!") or positive event ("I can do that in 5 minutes!")

Questions to ask to uncover these traps:

1. What pain am I avoiding/neglecting? 
2. What pleasure am I seeking? 

Check out my breakdown here. 

🗑️ Take out the Trash

Ever notice why we can have “sleep debt” but not a “sleep surplus”? 

Sleep is like taking out the trash. Each night we accumulate a build-up of junk. Then sleeping lets our brain and body reset, aka take out the trash. This is why we can’t have a surplus of sleep or "empty" more than what's in the bin. 

“When one sleeps, the brain reorganizes and recharges itself, and removes toxic waste byproducts which have accumulated throughout the day” per NIH.

Funny how often we benefit more from removing things, than adding them. 

• Sleep removes brain junk
• Writing removes creative junk 
• Exercise removes caloric junk 
• Focus removes distracting junk

🔍 Pay Attention

“For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: pay attention to what you pay attention to. That’s pretty much all the info you need.” — Amy Krouse Rosenthal

This hits. I’ve always paid attention to words and concepts (frameworks, psychology, rhymes, etc). So I’m giving myself more space to explore there. 

What are you paying attention to? 

Muito amor, 

Mitchell

Ps. Sinatra gets low