Brian Gubernick explores Michael Easter's "comfort crisis": modern conveniences like climate control and processed food have eliminated physical challenges our ancestors faced, leading to sedentary lifestyles and rising obesity and heart disease. He argues we should deliberately seek discomfort through movement, temperature exposure, and skipping escalators to build resilience and improve health.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Better at business, better at health, better at relationships, and better at life. Today I want to talk about The comfort crisis. What the heck do I mean when I say comfort crisis? There's a great book I recently read by an author named Michael Easter. And this book by the title Comfort Crisis, what he talks about is how the world has become incredibly comfortable. And, and what he's really referring to is the fact that we live in a world where everything's easily accessible. We don't really have to work nearly as hard as we once did to survive. It's crazy to think, but most of us actually live at 72 degrees all the time. The only time we experience weather is when we walk 2 minutes outside our door to get into our car. 93% of our time is actually spent indoors today. And cities like the one in which I live, Phoenix, wouldn't even exist without the comfort known as air conditioning. Food is easily accessible. We really do not go hungry at all, right? All of it is available to us. Much of it is processed, but the bottom line is it's literally right there. If you compare that to our ancestors, They might go hours, days, even weeks without consuming food. Why? Because they had to hunt it. They had to find it. They had to harvest it. And then depending on the seasons of year, it might make it really difficult altogether to get food. The idea around comfort extends well beyond just our, in our living conditions and food. How about the simple fact that we sit in these ergonomic chairs at work? Or we have everything at the tips of our fingers via the internet. There are so many things we could go on and on and on about. I think though, for our audience today, you're all aware about the comforts that we experience, that we're so fortunate to have, but I want you to recognize that these comforts for the human, for human beings, while great, these comforts help us extend our life, there are actually downsides to this as well. We are no longer uncomfortable. We no longer have to worry about food and these difficult challenges and overcoming these things. So what are some of the most common discomforts that people have eliminated from their lives? A century ago, to live was essentially to have to put effort into life. Most jobs a century ago, 85% of them required manual labor. Today, I think less than 10% do. Our lives have been engineered and moving is now really uncomfortable. I mean, if you think about it, like we go to exercise to be uncomfortable for that half hour or hour. Whereas, you know, 100 years ago, all day would be defined as uncomfortable. I think we were conditioned, humans were conditioned to live a life that way, and so they didn't really define it as uncomfortable. But if we went back in time, Everything would seem really, really hard. It would seem really uncomfortable. In other words, everything was exercise. We've evolved, just call it what it is, we've evolved to be as lazy as possible. It's us saving energy. And it's cool and it's great. And it's some of the amazing things that have been developed over the years, but it does come with consequence. We even have things that eliminate boredom. As humans evolved, boredom was a cue that told us we weren't getting a high enough return to the time we were investing in inactivity and to go do something else. Nowadays, anytime we're bored, we just pull out our phone because it's easy, because it's a comfortable escape from boredom, right? Many of us, just a couple decades ago, like, the idea of being bored was like, yeah, go deal with it, you're bored. It's a great thing for you. Go have some time. Again, today if I look at my own kids, they pull out their phones. So what do we do? What do we do? You know, I did an episode probably a month or so ago about doing hard things. And I think this is kind of doubling down on that message. I'm wondering, how do we introduce more uncomfortable scenarios in our world? How do we not necessarily get back to being Neanderthals, or getting back to even 100 years ago when the world was dramatically different, But how do we, you know, maybe experience some harder physical exertion? Maybe how do we get out of the chair in our office? How do we maybe have a little bit more hunger, or I should say, maybe lack of desire to grab for processed foods? These are the things I'm talking about. And so the focus today, and this is a rather short episode I think, I just want to get you thinking. About all the comforts we have, and while they're great, what damage they may be doing to you. Think about just your day in the office, right? Now, many of us, you know, maybe we decided one day we're gonna stop sitting and we're gonna get a stand-up desk, but recognize standing at a stand-up desk, as great as that may be in comparison to a chair, it's nothing compared to the constant physical movement that those in the US had to do 100 to 200 years ago, and those in many countries across the nation still do today. Lack of movement does what? Leads to unhealthy things within our body. Maybe weight gain, maybe muscle loss, maybe tightening of muscle. The list goes on and on and on. It's no secret that today we're seeing certain diseases rise. Yes, we have ways to treat them in methods that were never, but never before existed, sure. But obesity and heart disease and certain cancers, I mean, many of these things are on the rise, and why is that? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that we are so comfortable. Same goes with our food, right? Like, this is not an episode about your nutrition or your diet, but the truth of the matter is, with food so accessible, never having to go hungry, it's really easy to grab for things that are less than ideal. 100 years ago, 200 years ago, those things were not accessible. Our food is leading to what? 60+ percent of the US population being obese. I think a lot of this has to do with the degree of comfort that exists in the world. So the focusing question for you today, what can you introduce or reintroduce into your world that creates some degree of uncomfort, that makes you have to move, that makes you maybe a little bit more hungrier, makes you have to deal with heat, or requires you to exert a little bit more energy. I just looked at a picture earlier today where an entrance into the gym had an escalator, and 98% of the people were riding the escalator up to the gym, the other 2% were walking the steps. That sounds pretty crazy, but that's a good summation, like that's a good analogy for the world in which we live. People taking an escalator into a gym as opposed to taking the steps. Focusing question, what can you do today to introduce some more uncomfort into your world? In doing so, in overcoming these old challenges, these challenges of yesteryear, but overcoming them today, how might it shape you? How might it change you a little bit? If you introduced more uncomfort on a daily basis, what could that do for your world? Would it make the comforts that you have that much better? Would you be that much more appreciative? I don't know, but I think it's something to consider. That's all we have for today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better, so let's get after it.
