17 Dec 2025 · 0 min
Brian Johnson explains how the mind generates 60,000 thoughts daily, 95% of them repeats and 80% negative. He calls these automatic negative thoughts ANTs, a term from Daniel Amend, and uses the drunk monkey metaphor to describe how our minds wander into repetitive, destructive patterns.
About 60,000 thoughts per day.
95%.
80%.
Daniel Amend.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson More Wisdom in Less Time this is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.
Crazy little drunk monkeys and ants. In Buddhism, they like to say that our minds are like monkeys. They swinging from thought to thought to thought. Only the monkey in our mind is drunk. Swinging from thought to thought to thought. Then our little drunk monkey is stung by a scorpion. D'oh. That's not all though. Take that drunk little poisoned monkey and make him crazy. That is how our minds tend to be. Psychologists actually have a way to describe this as well. Apparently somebody figured out how to count all those monkey swings and came up with a stat that we average about 60,000 thoughts per day. Wow. Get this 95% of those are the same thoughts from day to day to day. Yikes. And 80% of those thoughts are negative. Yowsers. Daniel Amend calls them automatic negative thoughts. Ants for short. Whether we see our minds as filled with crazy little drunk monkeys or equally crazy little drunk ants, let's tame and sober em up.
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