Why Huberman and I are obsessed with this dorky habit
11 ways to make life more interesting—and see massive physical and mental health benefits.
Post summary
Humans evolved to forage.
In the past, foraging had a lot of friction: It happened outdoors, on the move, and was mentally and physically effortful.
But today, we’re foraging in ways that are more impoverished—less thought, less effort, more time alone in our heads, consuming mental chewing gum.
The good news: The world still offers us many ways to forage with friction. And if we try them out, we’ll be healthier, happier, and build a hell of a life.
Housekeeping
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Audio Version
You can find it at the bottom of this post.
The post
When I was recently on the Huberman Lab podcast, Andrew and I discussed the dorky habits that give us each a thrill.
For Andrew: “PubMed. It’s like the intellectual wilderness … the more time I can spend foraging for papers and connecting dots there, that’s where I get the raw materials (I use for the podcast).”
For me: “Foraging, yes. (For me) it’s the chase for information for a story or book. I travel for my work. I’ll start with a question, but what am I going to find in a place? I have to go out and search and talk to people. What am I going to find?”
Foraging. Whether we realize it or not, we spend so much of our lives doing it. Always have, always will.
The attraction to foraging is a deeply ingrained survival mechanism in all species that move.
Our ancestors survived by foraging the land for food: looking for animals to hunt and plants to gather.
It was an exciting, unpredictable game—much like gambling. We knew we’d find food, but not where or when. And while foraging, we were moving in nature, often with others.
Our common problem today is that technologies exploit our attraction to foraging to lure us into impoverished pastimes: social media use, online shopping, news binges, sports betting, and so much more.
This type of foraging traps us inside our homes and heads—motionless, often alone, without meaningful thinking. It’s frictionless.
As Andrew put it, “anytime we find ourselves in frictionless or low-friction foraging mode, we’re in trouble. Get out.”
Low-friction foraging requires little effort and doesn’t give us a meaningful return. Think: time wasted.
High-friction foraging takes more physical and/or mental effort but delivers real value. Think: time well-used.
Today, you’ll learn:
How our ancestors foraged—a playbook for understanding modern behavior.
How those evolutionary foraging strategies apply to our habits today.
How foraging is being co-opted by frictionless technology.
11 amazing ways to forage with friction—spending your time in ways that lead to a more physical and mental health and a life well-lived.
Let’s roll …
How we foraged
Here’s a brief playbook of how our ancestors foraged.
Step 1: Locate the “patch”
Although finding food was random, our ancestors also realized that certain areas of land gave us a higher likelihood of finding food. For example, berries in valleys with bushes, game animals near water sources.
Scientists call these resource-rich areas “patches.”
In the past, patches were literally outdoor areas we walked to with others and carefully analyzed for food.
Modern version: Today, we have an ever-expanding range of patches we can visit without effort.
Social media is a patch to forage for the next entertaining video.
Shopping websites are a patch to forage for a deal.
Sports betting apps are a patch to (probably not) win some money.
The Netflix feed is a patch to find something to watch1.
Step 2: Stick to a patch until it sucks
The marginal value theorem states that when the effort of getting food in one patch becomes greater than the effort of going to another patch, you move on.
Think of picking berries. Once you’ve picked the low-hanging fruit, you don’t work your butt off to get the berries up high. It’s more efficient to just move to another bush and pick its low-hanging fruit.
Modern version: We still act according to the marginal value theorem. When the effort it takes to explore any of our infinite modern patches becomes too great, we move onto a different patch.
For example, when we’ve watched so many Instagram reels that none of them make us laugh anymore, we move over to see what cultural depravity awaits us on Twitter or what bargains lie on Amazon.
Step 3: Follow cues to the next patch
Once we left a patch, we’d walk and actively look for cues that hinted at a new, rich patch.
For our ancestors, this might have been seeing a patch of trees in the distance. Or vultures circling in the distance, suggesting another animal had a kill.
Modern version: Online today, we still follow YouTube thumbnails, sale banners that hint at a bargain, or open another browser tab, which we hope will give us a higher return.
The modern problem
We all have a foraging itch and follow the same foraging framework our ancestors did. But now we have a myriad of dipshit ways to scratch the itch.
As I mentioned above, modern foraging often happens inside four walls, behind screens, alone, motionless, effortless—frictionless. It usually delivers us mental chewing gum that hurts us: Instagram posts we compare ourselves to, purchases we don’t need, chaotic news, and more.
This is radically different than the past, where foraging happened outdoors, in motion, with others—and with a whole lot of positive physical and mental friction.
So it’s not just that modern foraging is effortless and often chaotic, it’s also that it removes us from that which is good for us.
11 ways to forage with friction
There are still many ways to forage that enhance wellbeing.
Their friction is a feature, leading to deep rewards, motion, connection, effort—things that make us physically and mentally well and give us the rapture of being alive.
Here are 11 that I’ve come across in my research and observations. Think about your own habits—add any other examples of high-friction foraging in the comments section.