How to Not Die Alone - A Dating Experts Guide

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Hey friends how's it going? Welcome back to deep dive what you're about to hear is an interview that I did with Logan Yuri Logan is a behavioural scientist turned relationship therapist who has written a book called How to not die alone. This is an absolutely fantastic book that I made a video on a few months ago. And that video was called this book changed my love life and it's got over a million views to date. Logan is also the head of relationship science at the dating app hinge where she leads a team of researchers to help uncover what are the secrets behind finding and maintaining true love. In our conversation we discuss all things dating and relationships, including the concept of the friendzone doesn't exist doesn't exist. How does one break free of this proverbial friendzone we talk about how to apply insights from behavioural science to the world of dating how to optimise your dating profile and how to think a little bit more like a scientist. When it comes to dating. We talk about things like what makes the perfect date we talk about the concept of the secretary problem, the prom date versus the life partner and a bunch more exciting stuff. I had an absolute blast during the conversation. Initially, we had like a two hour slot where we recorded the remote interview that we had so much stuff to talk about that we chatted for another two hours afterwards as well. So I think this is probably the longest podcast interview that I have did. Anyway, links to all of Logan's stuff, including her book, How to not die alone are going to be in the show notes and the video description. Or if you'd rather not read it. Although you should you can check out my video summary of the book. But anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this conversation between me and Logan, Yuri. So hey, Logan, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you. Logan Ury 1:19 Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Ali Abdaal 1:21 Yeah, thanks for being on here. We managed, we connected because initially I mentioned your book, How to not die alone. It's very good. I mentioned it in my email newsletter. And somehow you clocked that I'd mentioned it and then you emailed me, which was pretty cool. And now here we are having a bit of a chat. Logan Ury 1:34 Oh that's great. Yes, it was my friend, Joe Garvie, who gets your newsletter who sent it my way. So thank you to Joe for connecting us. And I've been looking forward to this for a few months now. Ali Abdaal 1:43 Amazing. So I'd love to start like I have so many questions about dating and relationships and stuff. But I'm very curious about about kind of your background, like how did you get to the point where you know, work at hinge and you have a book about relationships? Like what was what was the story? Logan Ury 1:57 I've always been really interested in dating and relationships, as I think many people in general are. I definitely think part of it goes back to my parents getting divorced. And one of those seminal moments in childhood and adolescence where you think, okay, happily ever after, it's not something I can take for granted. And I think it planted this seed in my mind where I thought, this is something I really want. And I have to work for it. So from a young age, from my teens, I really thought this is something that I want to investigate more. It's mysterious to me, and it's not a given. Then I went to Harvard, and I studied psychology, and I had a secondary concentration and women gender and sexuality. And so I was able to understand things like gender dynamics, I did a large paper on pornography habits, I really just use it as an excuse to get into whatever topics were interesting to me. And then from there, I went on to work for Google, I had a couple of interesting jobs there. I ran the pornography team there, it was called the porn pod. This is my first job out of college, and it was running the ad campaigns or the online advertising for some porn companies and sex toy companies, which, honestly, it was just like a very quirky thing to talk about with my family during my first Thanksgiving home. But truly, my my job at Google got very interesting once I started to run this team called the irrational lab. And so are you familiar with the book? Predictably Irrational? Ali Abdaal 3:31 I've heard of it. I've heard a lot of people reference it, but I've never read it. What is what was the deal with the book? Logan Ury 3:36 Yeah, it's a great book worth having on your radar. So behavioural science is this entire field that looks at how people make decisions and why we so often act against our own rational, best interests. And so it might be something like, of course, we should all be saving for retirement. We agree on that. But why is it so hard to take a certain percentage of your income and put it towards savings, or we say we want to lose weight, but then we don't actually show up and exercise or eat healthier foods. And so there's this gap between who we want to be what we want to do and what we actually do. And this field investigates that gap that says, Why are we acting against our own best interests. And so I had the opportunity at Google to work with Dan, we ran this team together called the irrational lab where we really thought about the behaviour of people who work at Google the behaviour of Google users, the behaviour, the behaviour of Google advertisers, and it was just so interesting to apply this academic field to real world marketing, culture, other aspects of a company. And so that is an important moment in my development, because I later did that with dating and relationships. And so at that moment that I was running the irrational app, I was single, I was using dating apps, I was swiping and I thought, Okay, this is something very new. No one has done this before. And Nobody has swiped on 1000s of people and gone on eight dates a week. And it just felt like this new moment, I was surrounded by all these smart people at Google, but they were as lost as I was on dating. And so what I have done in the last majority of the last decade is basically take thoughts about dating and relationships, thoughts about behavioural science, and how we act against our own best interests and combine them. And so what I've been doing through one on one coaching through matchmaking, through writing the book through working at hinge is this whole field, where I'm saying, Actually, relationships are a series of decisions, and you can break them down, and you can make better decisions and get into a great relationship. Or you can repeat the same bad decisions and wind up in an unhappy relationship, or unhappily single. And so I really try to take this academic research backed approach that will help people get out of their own way, overcome their dating blind spots, and get into a relationship. Ali Abdaal 6:01 Oh, amazing. Okay, so I have so many questions on this. But I wonder if can we pretend like we're having a one on one coaching session? And I would love to do that. Amazing. So what's what's the sort of person that comes to you for like, is it like relationship therapy? Or like dating coaching? Like, how? How do I decide that? Hey, let me book a session with with Logan Ury. Logan Ury 6:22 Yeah, it's a great question. So I have worked with couples, I have one guy I've been working with for years where first he came to me when he was single, I was helping setting him up on dates. I was helping him after those dates, then he got into a relationship. And now I coach him individually and her individually and the two of them. And they just got married and are having a baby. And I'm seeing them next week. And so I've really gotten to be there for the entirety of their relationship. But most of my clients are people who are single, and send me an email that says something like, I like my life. I like myself. I like my job. I like how I show up to friends and family. I am an engaged person in the world, this one part of my life is not working. I don't know why. And I want to enlist your help to improve it. Ali Abdaal 7:10 Oh, interesting. Okay, so that sounds basically 100% like I was before I discovered your book. Interestingly, so when the this episode is probably going to come out in a couple of months, but I actually have a girlfriend now. And she was the one who recommended the book, because we went on our first date, like sometime in July. And she said that she's been reading this and I thought, okay, that's an interesting title. Let me read it as well. And now we're like together and we're applying a bunch of the principles that you talked about, like, kind of being intentional about like reviewing the relationship and asking that, that you've got this questionnaire like later on, we are asking some questions and stuff is already good. But up until then I was very much at that exact avatar of that person that you described, broadly happy with my life, life is good, relatively successful by kind of traditional metrics, but I can't seem to get into a relationship. And I offer I kind of felt that I'd been on a bunch of dates. But the thing I'd always be asking my friends afterwards is like, how do you really know if you like someone? I don't know. I don't know if like, I didn't really feel a spark. I was like, all this kind of stuff. So how, how do we go about like solving this problem? What's what sort of questions would you be asking? Logan Ury 8:24 Oh, I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that the book has been helpful. It's very meaningful to me. Usually, when I work with clients, the first session is really understanding who they are in context. And so sometimes people just want to come in. And within the first minute, tell me everything about dating, but there's this coaching exercise called wheel of life where I understand you know, what's going on in your career, what's going on in your family, friends, mental health, physical health. And that's helpful to me, because occasionally I have clients where a lot of stuff is going wrong. And I really try to help them, figure out those other things where I say, I think you should invest in a therapist first, and then come to talk to me. And so just understanding that dating is part of an integrated system. But let's say everything else really is working except for dating, then we dig in, we try to understand so one thing I would ask you early on is, what is your long term goal for dating right now? Ali Abdaal 9:19 Oh, okay. So I think I want to get married and have kids and get a dog and stuff. And when you're young, it's like, easy enough to just not be in relationship because life is good, and etc, etc, etc. But I kind of think that as like middle age approaches, in a way of relationship is a hedge against loneliness, to an extent. I'm not sure if that's like actually true, but I think it'd be cool to have a family and have kids and stuff and all of their studies. Well, a lot of the studies show that being in relationship and stuff contributes to meaning and happiness and fulfilment, etc. So it feels like even though for me, it is not like an urgent thing right now that I absolutely am desperate to find someone because I'm drooling. happy with myself in my life. I know that I probably should start looking given that this is a thing that I want further down the line. Logan Ury 10:05 Yeah, that answer really resonates with me because sometimes people hear the title of my book, How to not die alone. And they feel like it's a critique on being single. And if you are single, and it makes you happy and long term, you want to be single, that's totally fine. But I find that many people do want to find someone and the majority of people around the world do end up getting married. So this is obviously something that our culture is still investing in. And yeah, the research shows that our health happiness and overall life satisfaction hinges on the quality of our relationships. So it's a great idea to hedge against future loneliness, through through dating and finding someone. And I think, having gone through the pandemic, people who were single and spending a lot of solo time I heard from many of them, and they said things like, I wish I had invested in this before or I thought that love was just something that would happen for me. And now I'm going to more proactively go and get it. And so I do think we've just gone through this major traumatic moment as a culture. And it was the jolt to the system that many people needed to take a step back and say, I do care about this. And whatever psychologically has been holding me back from saying that out loud, I'm going to say it right now. And I need help and accountability and advice to make that happen. Ali Abdaal 11:22 Nice. So so that's my kind of long term thing. A hedge against future loneliness should probably take it seriously in the short term. Where Where do we go next? From there, we're gonna take a little break to introduce our new sponsor for this episode, which is fabulous. Fabulous is the number one self care app to help you build better habits and achieve your goals. And genuinely, it is probably the single nicest app that I've ever seen in terms of its design and its aesthetic, and the illustrations and the imagery. It's just an absolute joy to use. I'm using that personally for two main things. That's number one, Building Better routines. And number two, being a little bit more mindful, rather than kind of like frantic all the time. And so in terms of building better routines, the first thing we're working on is building a better morning routine. And so I've got these little like achievements that I have to do like drinking water first thing when I get up, figuring out a way to have a great breakfast in the morning, dance dance your way, which I have not yet unlocked. And the idea is that it sort of turns it into a game. So I need to take the box that I've drank water three days in a row, and then it will unlock Okay, cool. Once you build that habit, now let's think about the breakfast thing. So it's good in that it's based on behavioural science insights. And it's one step at a time. But the people that build habits using the app were more likely to stick to those habits, then a control group. And there's kind of two approaches that you can take if you're using the app number one is that if you already know what habits you want to build, you can use fabulous as a kind of beautifully designed habit tracker. And then you can just like take your little challenges, set your habits, and you can take them off as you go along. It'll send you notifications at the appropriate times of the day, when you need to do that particular habit or the alternative way of using the app is actually using their guided habit coaching methods, where they've got particular programmes that you can use to make yourself more effective like exercise, or coaching or deep work or meditation or ambience or yoga. And yeah, they've got this thing like sun salutations, intros and salutations. Like it just sort of really guides you step by step through whatever that thing is that you want to improve in your life. So if any of that sounds up your street, and you want to join me on this journey of building better habits with this like beautifully designed app, then head over to the fab.co forward slash deep dive, that's th e f ab.co, forward slash deep dive, or hit the link in the show notes or the video description. Wherever you're watching slash listening to this, and the first 100 people to use that link will get 25% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you very much fabulous for sponsoring this episode. Logan Ury 13:23 So in a coaching session, I would try to understand why you think you're single. And so before we would have met for the first time, I would have sent you some homework to do and one of them is to ask your closest friends and maybe family why they think you're single. And so the reason for this part of it is to there's this whole idea in behavioural science, that we have these blind spots, we have parts of our behaviour or ways of thinking that we don't have access to. And so if we only talk about what we know, I think we're missing this part. And so through my feedback through my pattern matching through asking your friends and family, why you're single things will come out. And so people often say to me, I thought everyone was going to say that it's because I don't dedicate enough time into dating but actually consistently, everyone said that I've unrealistic expectations, or everyone said that I'm too picky. And so even in that pre work, I think people get a lot out of it because our friends and family want to help us but there's not really that many moments in our society for people to pull you aside and say, Hey, Logan, by the way, I consistently see you making excuses about exercise. So I see you saying you're unhappy with your job, but you don't change it. But if you invite them into a safe moment and say I will not hold this against you. Why do you think I'm single? Ali Abdaal 14:42 Wow, okay, so I think if I had done this exercise, my friends would have said I have unrealistic expectations and I'm too picky. I guess this is the thing that you get. Logan Ury 14:51 Yeah, and of course there's a bias for what kind of person books time with an expensive dating coach. But yes, I do think that that's very common and the two picky things comes up a lot. So we would talk about that. And then I would go through your relationship history. And I would say, you know, have you been in a relationship before? And I don't know if you want to talk about this, like live on the podcast, but you know, have you been in a relationship before? How long have they lasted? Where have you met the person who tends to end it, I would just want to understand, kind of up until the moment that we're meeting what your relationships have been like in the past. And what I'm doing in the background is pattern matching. Okay? Do I hear him saying that he's putting effort in and it isn't working? Do I hear that the problem is he's not even going on dates at all? Do I believe his reasons for why things are working out? Or do I want to dig in more? And so I'm basically using like, hundreds of people I've spoken to in the past to say, like, what type of data are you and then figuring out a plan of action to help you based on you know, how you're showing up to me that day? Ali Abdaal 15:56 Okay. And so within this cohort of people who pay for an expensive Dating Coach, what are what are like the common the common problems that you see? And like, you know, in this world? Logan Ury 16:05 Sure. So in my book, I talk about the three dating tendencies. And that was based on the people I had been seeing in dating coaching or kind of friends and other people that I was meeting. And so that whole framework, which I know you talk about a lot in your video is based on unrealistic expectations. And so I saw the most of the Maximizer. And the maximizer is the person who has unrealistic expectations of their partner and I have a feeling based on you and your background that you're a maxima. Ali Abdaal 16:35 Yeah, very much. So when you were when I read that bit where it was discovered. I was like, damn, okay, I feel really pulled out right now. Logan Ury 16:42 Yes, totally. And so if you're listening right now, and you're not familiar with this maximizers, the person who says, you know, Life is one big research project, and I can research my way to the right answer. And there is a perfect pen, and there is a perfect microphone, and there's a perfect zoom setup. And if I just research my way to the right answer, I will win. And sometimes that works there is, you know, the best microphone. But with dating, there's no way to date, everyone, there's no reviews, humans are what we call experiential goods, you have to live them to know how they impact you. And what some person might like in a wine or a movie is different than what you might like. And the same thing is true with dating. And so you really have to get out there date different people and make a decision for yourself. There's no researching your way to the right person, eventually, you have to choose someone great, commit and build a relationship. Ali Abdaal 17:35 So on that note, that I was earlier today was listening to an episode of The Huberman lab podcast where he speaks to Dr. David Buss, I think is his name, who's a big kind of researcher in this field. And talking about, yes, there is an extent to which kind of mate value and dating preferences is subjective. But actually, there's a lot of stuff that across cultures is kind of true. And across the culture that we live in, where you can actually sort of rate someone in terms of their mate value and get a somewhat consistent result for an individual person across a bunch of people that you that you look at. So they would argue it's not quite as simple as you know, there's someone out there for everyone. And just as like, there are zillions of different combinations of wine that, you know, some people like different sorts of people like, to what extent does that side of it come into the equation here? Like in terms of the stuff guys look for and girls, and vice versa? Logan Ury 18:30 Yeah, so there's a tonne of interesting research in the academic field of relationship science, that studies things like attraction, or do opposites attract? Or if 1000s of people rated the attractiveness of certain people, would they all find a consensus? And generally the answer is yes. So I can make my point a little bit more nuanced, which is assuming that you're dating people who are a reasonable match for you, people with whom you have interesting conversations, people with whom you're attracted people who you could see a long term relationship. A lot of maximizers come to me when they're already dating in a pretty small pool of people, all of whom would make great partners. But instead of taking a step back and saying, of the last 10, people I went out with, there's actually a bunch of them in there that probably could work long term. And it's about me choosing investing and making a relationship. They think the fact that I don't feel 100% sure about anyone means that I need to keep looking. And so I think it's really about what's the premise? Well, first of all, I don't think there's any 100% sure about anything, especially with something as meaningful as getting to choose one person for the rest of your life, which is what many of us are going for, right? Even with the job. It's like, millennials, Gen Z, we think I'll stay in this job for 18 months. There's with dating, it's just this huge decision that we are making with so much cultural baggage. And so, of course, we want to make the right one but also it's very hard to be sure. So really, with maximizers, I Want to help them switch their mindset from, if I keep looking I'll find the perfect person to relationships are things that you build, not things that you discover. And so life is much more about having high standards, finding somebody or something that meets that standard. And then feeling good about the decision versus the Maximizer mindset of I'm obsessed with making the right decision. And I think that that's a recipe for unhappiness. Ali Abdaal 20:26 Well, I was quite familiar with this line of reasoning, because I had, I was big fan of Alain de baton stuff around like romanticism, and yeah, how soulmate stuff is a bit of a myth. And actually, one of his quotes that I really like is that compatibility is an achievement of marriage, it should not be its prerequisite. And so I kind of came across this stuff a few years ago, and I kind of like, maybe I was bullshitting myself, but I genuinely thought to myself that, hey, I recognise intellectually, that a bunch of the value of relationship comes from the amount of effort you invest into it, rather than pre existing compatibility and finding someone who ticks all of the proverbial boxes. And so I'd be going on these dates. And I'd be like, Ah, I'm not really feeling it. But I don't know, maybe I'm just being too much of a romantic maybe the whole feeling is a bit of a myth like, so. And this was the thing I would I would always ask my friends and never get any useful responses to is like, what is the bar? Like? How do you know you like someone, you know, to warrant investing into that relationship? And like, how, like, what are the questions I should be asking in my head about, like, you know, I'd be thinking do is this the sort of person that I would enjoy spending 16 hours in a row with if we're stuck in an elevator together? It's like, maybe that's a question. Is it? Someone I'd want to go on holiday with for an extended period of time? Yeah. What are your thoughts on this? Logan Ury 21:46 No, this is, this is great. And I think the more personal we can make it, actually, the more universal and easy to understand it is. And so why don't you tell me? What are some of the questions that you were asking that you felt weren't very fruitful? And then with the woman that you're dating now, what shifted so that you felt that you could see the potential, and you could invest in her? And so what was that shift? Like for you? Ali Abdaal 22:13 I think before the questions I was asking, were things like, Do I feel a spark, as it were? Which was always a bit like, vague, like, how do you define the spark? And it's like, you know, it's kind of like that question of asking, How do I know I'm in love with people like, oh, you kind of just Do you know, and when, you know, when? Yeah, that was a question. Another question was, am I looking forward to seeing this person? Would? And am I looking forward to seeing them again? Another question was, did I wish this date lasted longer? Another question was, can I imagine having dinner with this person 10,000 times in my life? Another question was, how well do I feel this person reflects on me when I introduced them to my friends and family. But a lot of these weren't like, conscious initially, it was just a, with a bunch of other people I'd dated, I just had a general feeling of like, I'm not really feeling it. But maybe, maybe I'm just being too picky. So for this for this current girl that I'm dating, it's really the thing of, I look forward to hanging out with her. And I have so rarely had that particular feeling of looking forward to seeing someone in a romantic context, that I'm like, Oh, hello, this is Dean. Is this what people mean, when they're like, you, kind of? Logan Ury 23:39 I love that. So it's interesting, you know, you shared earlier that you were introduced to my book around the time that you started dating her. And so your experience of evaluating her has been somewhat in the context of reading my book, right? And so it's hard to separate? What's her from? What's your mindset? And it's probably a bunch of things. And it's her mindset, right? She's actively choosing you. What I could say, in terms of people that I work with, is that I get a lot of messages that say, I used to focus on the spark. I used to focus on instinct, chemistry, and a feeling of I've known you for my whole life. And if that wasn't present, I thought, Okay, next, it's on to the date the following day, things like that. But instead, people are shifting away from I need to feel the spark to what can we build together? Or am I curious about you? Ali Abdaal 24:32 So one of the things that really resonated with me in the book was the idea of the secretary problem, and the whole explore versus exploit dilemma. And I had come across this before, but the way you framed it in terms of age was the thing that I'd like I'd never heard before. I was like, damn, because I always sort of thought like, how, how do I know what n is? How do I know how many people I would actually end up dating my life, therefore the whole thing is flawed. I wonder for the people who haven't heard about it. I wonder if you could give us an intro to the secretary problem and how that relates to this issue that some of us have been being a maximizer. Logan Ury 25:04 Absolutely, I would love to share that. And I'm glad to hear that it resonated with you. And I also want to give a shout out to the book algorithms to live by, which is how I was first exposed to this idea. So the Secretary problem is a line of mathematical inquiry. So it's sort of a math puzzle that asks, imagine if you are hiring, let's call it an admin. And there were 100 Possible candidates, so you know, how many candidates you have? And here's what's hard about it, you have to interview them one at a time. And after each one, you have to say yes or no, I want to hire you, or I don't. And so the question becomes, how many people should you interview before you choose someone, if you choose to early on, maybe there's tonnes of great candidates out there, you haven't been exposed to them? But if you choose too late, what if all the good candidates have passed you by? And so the mathematically correct answer here is that you interview the first third of candidates. So the first 33. And from there, you say, who was the single best candidate, that person now becomes your benchmark, the next time that you find a candidate who you like, as much or more than that person? You hire them? Because the 33% gave you a chance of what's a chance to see what's out there? Now, you know, and then you snag the next person who's on that level? So are you following me with that? Great. Alright, so how do we apply that to dating? Well, we don't know the total number of people you're going to date. And it's really going to vary, but let's say that we think about age. And let's just choose that. Let's say you in particular, you are going to be dating in earnest from ages 18 to 40. What do you do with that number? Well, you could say, well, what's 33% of that? And so mathematically, we know it would be at 26.1 years of age, that's when you've dated a third of the people who you could possibly date. And so you look at those first years of dating, and you say, who was that benchmark person? Who did I date, who I liked, as much or more than the other people. And now in the future, when you meet someone who you like, similar to your benchmark, that's the person you invest in? And when I say this to people, sometimes they say, oh, no, my ex was so great. should I contact her right now? And I say, No, no, it's more of a concept. It's the idea that you likely have already dated somebody who has be great. Most of us are past that. 26.1 years of age mark. And the idea is, it's not about keep searching and searching and not knowing it's about understanding that you've probably already dated somebody who'd be great. And the next time you meet someone where you have similar feelings, that's a chance to invest and build a relationship. Ali Abdaal 27:48 Yes, I just love that so much. Because like, this was the exact answer to the question that I've been having the problem I've been having for the last few years, which is that I felt that oh, maybe I just haven't dated enough people. Like, I didn't need that much when I was at university. But I, you know, had a bunch of female friends or like, all that kind of stuff. And I always thought that, okay, maybe when I'm 30, or something, that's when I will have dated enough to get that kind of sample size to then kind of know. But then when I saw 26, I was like, Oh, my God, okay, I'm already 27. Okay, let's see, I really start taking this thing seriously. I've done it. I've mentioned to a few friends. A bunch. There's a bunch of my friends are like not into the very much hesitated, and so they haven't really done the whole dating thing. Do you think that getting to like, is having female friends a sufficient like, sample for this sort of thing? Or do you think that it really does need to be actually going on dates, like first dates through an app like hinge or whatever, or even in real life, and God forbid, to gather the appropriate data points for this for this problem? Logan Ury 28:56 Great. So for people who aren't familiar with the framework, there's this idea of the hesitates, which is one of my three tendencies. And basically, these are people who aren't putting themselves out there. They're not going on dates. And their framework is all date when I'm ready, which might mean losing weight, getting a more impressive job having better stories to tell, and maybe a global pandemic is over. But there's always the dot, dot, dot all date when and my whole philosophy is no you need to be dating. There's two main reasons why one is you only get better at dating by dating. And two is you only figure out who you want to be with, but actually being with different people and seeing what side of you they bring out. And so I understand the crux of your question, which is, can't you get some of those Dating Skills by having female friends or can't you get some of the Who do I want to be with by having female friends? I would say it will help you it will help you develop empathy. It will help you understand what kind of conversations go well or how to be a better listener. I think it's part of a well rounded life. I do think that there's something unique about being in the room Romantic realm, I get so many questions from men and women who say, I'm always friendzone. So there might be and these are very gendered terms. But you know, there might be the woman who says, like, I'm super sporty, I grew up with brothers, I always played sports. I'm one of the guys. But then when I, you know, go in for the kiss, they're like, No, I see you as a sister or a friend. And same thing. There's the guy with tonnes of girlfriends, who is the person you call after a breakup, but not the person that you sleep with to get over the breakup, whatever it is. And so often people want to get out of the friendzone. And so what I would say is, in general, having friends is extremely important. It helps you be a well rounded person, it makes you happier, it's a way to meet new people. But there is something different about engaging with people on romantic and sexual terms that you do need to experience specifically through doing that. And so what is it like on a date to present yourself as not just one of many people who that person could be friends with, but as the one person who they might choose to invest in? And what does it mean, to experience a hard conversation with the one person who you're in a romantic relationship with? And so for those people, I would say, yes, and you should also be dating. Ali Abdaal 31:15 Got it. So, okay, so at this point, in our dating journey, we've had the consultation with you, we're like, Alright, cool, I'm going to be dating. I should probably, at that point, probably think and be thinking, okay, cool. I guess, you know, I guess I should make one of these accounts and one of these dating apps potentially, I've got to figure out my photos. But now I have to choose photos of me that look good. You know, I lost a few gains during the pandemic, maybe I should go to the gym for a few months. What are the what are the action steps that someone in that in that position would take? Logan Ury 31:46 Oh, I love this. Yes. Okay. So, you know, you and I have met very first session, I've heard why people think you're single. I've heard about your dating history. And now I'm going to give you some experiments to run. And so my whole thing is date, like a scientist. So date, like a scientist is have some hypotheses, test them, bring the data back to me, and we will try to understand what that means. And so maybe at the end of our first session, we said, we think you're a maximizer. We think that you have unrealistic expectations of partners. And we think that the next time that you go in a second day, and you don't want to go in a third, we're going to push you to go in the third because it's in that third that you will deepen the relationship and get to know this person versus rejecting them for something silly. If your issue was that you were hesitating and you weren't putting yourself out there, your next step would be getting a dating app, and trying to go on more dates. And so what's the point of a dating app profile? The point is to create a great first impression. And so your dating profile is almost like you walking into a bar and giving off a particular vibe. So if you're wearing a Game of Thrones t shirt, people are going to engage with you on that if you're wearing a tutu or a basketball jersey, people are going to engage with you in different ways. And so how do you want people to see you, and then respond to you, and so I can get into the weeds. But really, your dating app profile should tell a story, it should have variety, it should say, This is me when I'm with my family and friends. And this is what dating me would look like this is a full body shot of me. So you can see what I look like in the world. Here's a clear picture of my face, without filters, or sunglasses. So you know what I look like, here's me doing an activity that I love. And I want you to ask me questions about it. So you're really painting a picture, you want to have variety. You want to have clear photos that show us who you are. We don't want to be playing Where's Wally, and wondering which one you are in a different picture. And really, you're putting yourself out there so that somebody can see who you are, know what you look like. And most importantly, you're creating a hook that they can grab onto and then engage you in a conversation. Ali Abdaal 34:01 Okay, so dating apps. One of my core beliefs is that everyone who is single that I know should be on dating apps, and only about half of them are. And there's a few common objections that I get when I try and talk people into making accounts on dating apps. Can I just throw a few them? A few of them at you? I would love to hear? Absolutely. Okay, let's do. Dating apps are just for hookups what's going on there? Logan Ury 34:23 I work at hinge hinge is really about getting people off of the app and onto relationships. I know that sort of a tagline. But in the two years that I've been there, I've really found that to be true. We're obsessed with helping people go out on great dates. There are different dating apps that serve different purposes. But if you're someone who's really looking for relationship, a so are a lot of people on certain apps like hinge and be you should feel free to be upfront from the beginning about what you're looking for. So we just ran this fascinating experiment at hinge where we showed 12,000 different users for profiles. So Some of the profiles said they were looking for something generic, you know, kind, compassionate, adventurous, some of the profiles said, I am looking for a long term relationship. What we found is that if the person in the experiment was also looking for a long term relationship, they were much more likely 17% more likely to send the person who is looking for a relationship a message, because they're like, great, you've taken the guesswork out of this, I want something, you want something, I'll message you, if the person looking at the profile did not want a relationship, they were 10% less likely to send that person a message. And that actually saves you time on both ends, you get more messages from the kind of people you want to hear from, and fewer messages from the kind of person you don't. And so a lot of this is just being bold, being courageous, being upfront from the beginning, whether it's on your profile, or the first and second date, about what you in particular one to get out of this experience. Ali Abdaal 35:57 Love it. So objection number two is dating apps focus too much on the superficial. And as a sub point to that it's mostly guys that I speak to about this, guys are systematically, shall we say, shafted in the dating market, because, you know, there are so many more guys on this app than there are girls. And I've tried it a couple of times that I never get any matches. And then I look at one of my female friends, and they're getting freakin 100 matches a day like, oh, as a guy, dating apps are not for me. Logan Ury 36:26 There are issues where dating apps can reduce you to this two dimensional image that people are evaluating. And without a lot of context, they might immediately go for looked. One thing that Hans just released is these voice prompts. And this is a chance for people to be silly, they could do an impression of the favourite cartoon character, they could play with silly song that they've been writing, they could, you know, do a celebrity impression, whatever that is. And it's a chance to bring more authenticity to the profile. And so I'd say in general, I think the future of what we're going to be seeing with dating apps, is wanting more information, whether it's more video, more voice, more interactivity. So it's not just like, hey, here's a piece of paper with bio data on it that your mom showed you. And you have to say yes or no, I want to go on a date with this person. But really, it will feel more like, Oh, I've seen you on social media, I get a sense for how you move through the world, I get a sense for what you look like what your voice sounds like, I have an immediate response to who you are. And so I would say for those people, what can they do on their end to bring their more full self to the profile, and then also in their own behaviour on the app? How can they try to give more people a chance, because if we focus too much on height, or age, we're actually filtering out a lot of people who could make great potential partners. Ali Abdaal 37:47 On the note of what you put on a dating profile. So on my hinge profile about two years ago, one of the prompts was, I think, you know, the I like a perfect date night or something like that. And I said something like, singing a duet of, I see the light from tangled with you. So cute. And I showed this to a few friends, and a few a few girlfriends who by their admission had had a lot of success on apps like Tinder and hinge. And they said, bro, you can't be saying that, that signals that you are not very masculine. It signals you are insert homophobic slur here. That is not the kind of thing that women want in a man. So suppress that aspect of your personality on the dating app, and let it maybe come out. Preferably never. But like if you have to do it, like further down the line when they've gotten to know you already. What's What's your take on the suppressing the less masculine characteristics of myself on my on my dating profile? Logan Ury 38:51 I totally disagree with your friends. First of all, one exercise that people can do is think about the three messages that they want to get across on their profile. So let's say and I'm, you know, we're just getting to know each other, but let's say I wanted you want people to know that you're curious about the world, that you are intellectual and like having deep conversations and that you also have a silly side. So I might say to you, okay, if those are your and actually how close am I and why don't you tell me what your three things might have been? Ali Abdaal 39:27 I guess I never really thought of it as like, what are the three things I'm trying to get across? Logan Ury 39:31 Yeah, yeah, that's just as an exercise, maybe you can tell me you know, before you met the person that you're seeing now, if you were like, when somebody looks on my profile, and they give it 20 to 30 seconds, in an ideal world, they'd come away with three these three ideas about me and then we would reverse engineer a profile that shows those things. Ali Abdaal 39:50 Oh, that's interesting. Okay. So so immediately the thought in my head is that there is a difference between The way I'd want to come across authentically to people that I'm interested in being friends with, and the way I'd want to come across authentically, I won't want to come across to people that I'm interested in being romantic partners with and made. And I don't know, maybe I've just drunk the Kool Aid of this, like toxic masculinity stuff for too long. But I would be very hesitant about wanting to signal that I really enjoy singing Disney songs, even though that's true. I it's it's like stuff like that, that I would be. I would hesitate in saying that this is something that I I want to put forward because maybe doesn't create the create the right kind of image. Does that make sense? Logan Ury 40:32 I understand what you're saying. So I think what you're saying is, if it was just Who am I in the world, in a platonic setting, you might put the Disney thing in, in a romantic setting, you might not but before we go into the how to get it across, just and I know, this is not the easiest exercise, but just like for the romantic context, three things you'd want them to know about. And this could be something like family super important to me, it could be you know, you have a love for a certain football team, like just what are three things where you're like, I want to give off this message. Ali Abdaal 41:01 Okay, so, good question. Let's think about this. So one of them would be something like, I have quite a phrase, I'm quite keen on my own stuff. And I would like the sort of relationship where we're both like, we were both doing our own stuff, we have our own projects, and we come together to like, build each other up. But where one party is not like reliant on the other party for their happiness, or what's that effect? And at one point, I heard in my hinge prompt thing, I think the prompt was, the ideal relationship looks like.or.or, something like that? And my answer was, where we spend 90% of our time doing our own thing, and 10% of our time doing stuff together. And that was very very polarising. I showed that to like, all my female friends were like, Whoa, you sound like a sociopath What the hell is wrong with you? But I was like, Hey, this is you know, if someone wants to sign up to be in a relationship with me, this is probably something they should probably know where, but, and also 10%. That's like 2.4 hours a day. That's quite a lot of time. Do people in relationship spend more time together than that? People like? No, but it just makes you sound weird if you boil it down to a mathematical ratio. So that's one of them. I think another one would be, I would probably want to signal some level of social status slash success, slash prestige, whether that's the Cambridge University on the thing, whether it's the doctor on the thing, whether it's, at one point, I even had me holding up my million subscribers YouTube plaque as like one of the images, which again, was a bit polarised some friends were like, Oh, that's a bit weird. Why would you signal that? And other friends were like, Oh, if I saw that, I'd be like, Oh, my God, this person's interesting. They've got a million subscribers on YouTube. That's unusual. So I think I'd want to signal social status in that kind of sense. And I would want to signal something like, Yeah, sort of a playful, playful side. Maybe not Disney, maybe something else. Along those lines, maybe me having a big smile, with hanging out with friends or playing board games, or like being obsessed with Harry Potter, or, you know, that that side of things, potentially as a fourth option, like the music stuff, because I'm, I'm big into singing and piano and guitar and stuff, and I just love that shit. So I don't know, I think I would want to signal some of those some of those things. Logan Ury 43:14 That was great. And thank you for being honest, I feel like a lot of people wouldn't have said that second one, but would feel it people who make a lot of money might want to signal that they make a lot of money, and you'd have a nice lifestyle if you're with me. But I feel like people aren't always honest about that. So I appreciate that you said like social status is something you're proud of, and you'd want that person to know. So those three things all summarise them as the first one is you're looking for a relationship with a lot of independence, where you both bring a lot to the table, but you have separate and fulfilling lives. And then together, you also have a fulfilling life. But it's not codependent. The second one is, you've worked hard, you've been successful, and you feel like you bring that to the table. And then the third one is you also have a playful side, which comes out maybe through Harry Potter or playing games, or just spending time with family and friends or music. Great. So we would start with those three things. And then we would say how can we use your photos and your prompts and maybe your voice prompts on hinge to get that across. And so for the first picture, I would probably just say, a really high quality headshot of you. And maybe it's something that you have from your professional life with that camera that does, you know, the blurry background, and even that is kind of its, you know, subtly suggesting to us like you're sort of an important person. Then in one of your prompt responses. You can talk about, you know, started as a medical doctor or transition to being a YouTuber and a podcast and your favourite way to spend time is thinking about ideas and talking to interesting people, right? You could have something like that. But then you could have a hook in there, like, what's the last great book you've read? Or what's the last skill that you've developed? And so you are already signalling what matters to you but creating a conversation opener where the person can say, I really want to give you this This book recommendation, I really want to gauge with you about this idea or this podcast or this philosophy. Then for the status one, I think you could have, I think the million subscribers, one thing that would worry me is are you going to be attracting that type of person that really focuses on that, but I think that you can use conversations and first dates to filter that out. Basically, you don't want to have people that are just social climbers, and then the silliness one, I think that's super important, because people are gonna say, well, with those first two, how do I know that this person doesn't take themselves too seriously, which is a common thing that people want. And so you could have a video of you juggling poorly, and all the balls roll down. And it's just like, I like to choose me, I'd like to learn new things. But I'm not very good at this, or a video of you singing or something like that. And so that's a long winded way of saying, I actually think the Disney karaoke one is a really good idea. Because with the balance of the full profile, I am professional, I am successful, I have over a million YouTube subscribers, it is totally fine to be like, and also I have this side of myself that likes the movie Tangled and will sing with you. And so I think out of context, maybe somebody will say, Oh, women, like someone who's masculine and decisive and all this stuff. But that's not just one part of you, you're this whole person. And so I love that one. I think it's surprising. I think it's specific. I think it opens a conversation to say, I won't sing that with you. But I will sing a frozen song with you. And so I think it's much more about understanding how you want to be portrayed, versus trying to fit into a cultural context in which Disney could be seen as being a beta. Some of these ideas I just don't think are helpful. Ali Abdaal 46:44 Oh, oh, that's interesting. Okay, so what are the brute? Okay. There are some kind of somewhat universally attractive factors that goes look for and guys, and vice versa. And and one thing I've always been always been curious about is, to what extent do should me as a guy use the my knowledge of what the generalisation and the averages are, to shape my own dating profile? Plus or minus my own personality? Do you get what I mean? Logan Ury 47:20 Give me an example of something besides a Disney one that you may or may not include based on this so called strategy. Ali Abdaal 47:28 So the Disney one. So like, at one point, my hinge thing it was one of the prompts was, I'm really good at or I'm the best in the world out and I said Harry Potter trivia. So again, I one point I had a photo of me in my bedroom, but the feedback that some of my male friends had about that is that those like get pastel coloured posters you've got on the wall with love blue and white baby blue bedsheets maybe doesn't quite signal that you're a man who's got their life together. And it kind of looks more like a teenager's room rather than a successful man's room. Things like that, where it's like, I could choose to put that in there. But it maybe wouldn't signal the adult a masculine nurse, the confidence the successfulness of their will, what I'm a grown up person who is the good, the good electrical, that kind of vibes. Logan Ury 48:18 I'll start by saying, I do think that it depends on what you're looking for, and what the other person is looking for. So I have a close guy, friend who went on a date with this woman, they had known each other for several years, they were friends, but they were exploring being something more. And they went on this great date. And she went back to his apartment afterwards. And she said, your towels have holes in them, your bathroom is dirty, the sink is dirty, there's garbage overflowing from the trash can, you're not signalling to me that you're ready for a serious relationship, and I can't waste my time helping somebody grow up, and I don't want to continue seeing you romantically. And that story stuck in my mind, because he felt like he was ready for a long term relationship, but some of the actions about his life and how he was how he was, you know, keeping his space didn't portray that. And so yes, people are taking in lots of signals. I think that if you are unemployed or underemployed, people are going to judge you based on that. I think that hygiene and the way you keep your space, yes, people judge you on that. And so I'm not saying that that stuff doesn't matter. But in reading between the lines and what you're saying, I feel like you're investing a little too much time in the how will this be seen? And how does this one picture in a vacuum portray me and not enough time saying, I can paint a picture of myself on the profile, then very quickly, I'm going to get into a conversation. I'm going to ask good questions. I'm going to be interesting, I'm going to be attractive. I'm going to work hard to make that person feel seen and I believe in my own ability to create a relationship and so I hope you don't take this the wrong way. But I feel like some of what you're saying is a little bit of like what I see on Reddit from people who are trying to hyper optimise specific things. And I think trying to say like what a women want, and how do I become that and you know, this isn't masculine, because a pale poster would be that it's like, actually, maybe all the guys who have these so called masculine photos of holding up a dead fish. That's a huge turnoff. And that's a cliche. And people literally will swipe past that. And instead, if you're just a bold, curious person who says this is what I'm about, I'm a layered person with complexities, I bet you are two that is going to stand out that is going to be more unique, that is going to have more hooks. And so I think that while I also am an optimizer and I also like to have strategies and do things the right way, there's something about love in which it's two deeply complicated people who have to come together, choose each other and continue to choose each other. And I think for every moment that you're spending, thinking about the baby blue sheets and the pastel posters, you could be spending that either becoming a more interesting person, which I know that you spend a lot of time on, or contacting more people or going out on more dates, or actually learning by engaging, I think that the profiles matter. But at a certain point, it's less about optimising the individual pictures and more about learning and updating. And that's sort of the scientific method, right? It's not just ask a million friends what you think the outcome will be, but actually test it. So if you have that picture on there, and nobody comments on it for weeks, maybe it's taking the place of something that people could comment on it. So make your best case scenario profile, see how you do switch out your first photo, switch out your prompts. And your end goal is to create a dynamic story with variety, which with a lot of hooks that people are commenting on or liking or asking you questions about. Ali Abdaal 51:48 Amazing. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And after all of this, like experimentation, I I landed on a profile that had I showed it to my male friends two years ago, they would have been like, oh, it's not very masculine. I was like, You know what, it's fine. Like, that's not the vibe we're trying to go for here. We're trying to go for someone who would kind of appreciate what I mostly like, rather than a sort of false persona of what read it. And, you know, these are the books and websites tell me that girls would women women would potentially want. And that ended up working reasonably well. So that was good. Ding ding, ding. Logan Ury 52:20 Yeah, I love everything you said, I would write it down, and I would underline it and write, you're trying to portray who you are, and get one person who's interested in you, you are not trying to hack an entire gender, and figure out what the most number of people would like it's how do you get the person who you would most like to like you? Ali Abdaal 52:38 Nice. Okay, so we've got the profile where we've, we've asked for the few people, we've got hinge premium, because why not such a time saver. This is another thing. This is another hill that I dialled with, with a bunch of my friends, like why would you not like you're making decent money? You work at McKinsey, why would you not pay 17 quid every six months? Just beggars. Logan Ury 52:56 I think about that all the time, in terms of like, how much would you pay to find the love of your life? And for a lot of people, you know, depending on their pay scale, it's a lot of money. So why aren't you putting money behind that? Why aren't you, you know, investing in some good deed outfits, whether it's paying for a dating app, or even I have a friend who runs an incentive programme, where if you, it's actually through her dad, if you've set her up on five dates, either five dates with one person or five dates with different people some combination, he will send you this gift basket from nuts.com, which I just think is so funny and random. But why it works is psychologically it makes you feel like okay, this person's really serious about dating. She's willing to go out with whoever you set her up with. And there's an incentive. And so it makes me put in the extra effort to set her up. And so if anyone's listening and feels motivated, put your money where your mouth is, and offer an incentive to your friends to set you up. It might just make the difference between them saying yes, and I'm actually doing it. Ali Abdaal 53:54 yes, on that note, there was a blogger that I that I follow. His name is Tyler. And he was he was actually featured in the game back in the day. The book, Oh, wow. He was he was he was one of the people in the house. But he ended up growing out of that becoming like a personal development blogger type guy and building businesses and things. And I interviewed him on this on one of these live streams about two years ago, he had a thing that when he turned 30, he posted to his mailing list saying look, I'm serious about getting to know someone, if you introduce me to the person I end up in a long term relationship. I will I will long term relationship with I will help you tick off any item on your bucket list. He got a bunch of like inbound that way. And when I when I heard about that, that really resonated with me because it really was a case of put your money where your mouth isn't and take this seriously. But then I mentioned it to some people and they were like, That's a bit weird. It's dating shouldn't be so systematic and stuff like what the hell is wrong with you? I don't think you get if you get that like the whole like scientific approach to dating and stuff. Do you get that pushback that like, oh, it's supposed to be more natural than that. Logan Ury 54:57 First of all, I have chills from that story because it's so clever like I love that it was at the milestone of turning 30. I love those who is email us, I also think take something off your bucket list is just such an amazing prompt and probably better than money because it like helps you really sit and say like, what's my bucket list? And what's holding me back? And maybe even if you don't win that contest, or whatever, you still might make progress on it. But for the general question, yes, people ask me all the time. Why are you trying to apply research to something that's organic? And how can you bottle up love? So my response to them, it's actually the first paragraph of my book is that, yes, love is natural. And we're born knowing how to love. But Dating isn't dating in the modern sense was invented at the end of around 1890s. This is a relatively new concept in terms of the span of human history. And then dating on apps is around a decade old, with swiping and all of that being extremely new. And so part of it is just having humility around the fact that a lot of us are just making this up as we go along. This is not something that we know how to do. Second of all, in history, people would help you right, there was the matchmaker, or maybe your father would have you marry the person next door so that your parcels of land connected, or he would trade your hand in marriage for 10 camels, there was all these other people involved, it's actually a really new concept that you on your own define all of these characteristics of your life, including who you marry, and so people need help. Second of all, there is academic research on this. We talked about this. There's research on attraction research on do opposites attract research on what makes for a long term compatible relationship. Why wouldn't you look at that, if you were going to make a nutrition plan or a financial plan, you would look at the research, why is love something that has to defy logic and defy science? And so I'd say, this is something that you care about, and you want to find something great, and not get divorced? Why wouldn't you invest in knowing the information out there, it can only empower you and you can take the parts of it that are useful, and you can ignore the other parts. Ali Abdaal 57:02 Just like while we're on this, on this tangent, I wanted to ask like, what, what is the kind of broad brushstrokes of what the research says on what is attractive? And what are the qualities that make for a good long term partner? Can you met him? You mentioned there's research on both those. Logan Ury 57:18 So the people who I admire the most in this fields are the Gottman. So John and Julie Gottman, highly recommend people check out their stuff. And they've been doing research into the topic of love for over four decades. And they run this institute called the Gottman Institute, and some of their most interesting research happened in this space called the Love Lab. So what they would do is they had this apartment, sort of in a b&b that they would invite couples to come to, and this apartment was decked out in ways to monitor them. And yes, people knew that they were being monitored. And so it would have cameras and microphones. And it even had this thing under the chair called the jiggle ometer that would see how much your chair moved and maybe how anxious you were, it was testing your urine, there was tonnes of data being collected, what they would do is they'd have a couple there over the weekend. And they would observe them. And what they did is they had couples there for a period of time. And then six years later, they saw who are the couples that stayed together happily, what they called the relationship masters, and who are the couples who were unhappily together or had broken up. They call these the relationship disasters. And they did all this research to understand what were the behaviours that we saw in that first setting that might have helped predict who is going to thrive versus breakup. And so the most important thing that they found is this concept called bids. And a bid is a verbal or nonverbal chance to connect. So a very obvious bid might be me saying to you, hey, I had a hard day. Can we talk about it? I'm being very explicit that I want to talk to you. But it also might be me reading an email and sighing loudly. And I want you to say to me, what's wrong? And so it's this chance to connect, and then they measure, how does your partner respond? And there's three ways the partner can respond, turn towards you, asking a question, reaching out trying to engage turning away from you, that could be just ignoring you or turning against you just saying, Why are you making so much noise you know, that I'm trying to get work done. And so what they found is that, for the relationship masters, they turn to get they turn towards each other 86% of the time, so they're making a lot of bids, and they are accepting each other's bids, and the relationship disasters, they only turn towards each other 33% of the time. So you and I are talking about these very strategic things about like profile and masculinity and how you portray yourself but what the Goldmans would say is that the secret to a successful long term relationship is small things often having a habit of trying to connect with your partner and noticing when you're doing is trying to connect with you and taking that time to really invest in each other, turn away from distractions and really say, This is what's going on with me what's going on with you. And just, it's those daily habits and those daily moments, it's not the trip to Hawaii, or the, you know, exciting new sex toy. It's about constantly investigating each other. Ali Abdaal 1:00:21 Hmm. So this segues nicely into something else that I wanted to talk to you about. And that is the extent to which this unbid stuff is different when you're dating versus when you're in a relationship. And what I mean by that is that, you know, so a few, a few a few months ago, I was I was I was going on a few dates. And we were kind of chatting a bit via WhatsApp messages afterwards. And obviously, I turned to some of my female friends to help me respond to some of these messages as one does. And one of the points that I have feedback that I got from some people, and this was not everyone, but some people was that I was coming across as too keen, and my response rate was too fast. And she said that thing. And she asked you a question, and then you responded to it, but then you like overly elaborated on that response, which signals to her that you have nothing better to do with your time that you're begging for her attention. She you know, in the dating stage, she wants to feel as if she's doing some of the work of therefore you need to tone the hell down your response time and kind of be less like a begi about like, the way you're responding to her. This was some of my female friends. There were other female friends that were like, that's completely terrible advice. You're just having a normal conversation, like Screw all of that. What? What's the what's the solution here? Logan Ury 1:01:45 Okay, I am giggling and covering my face, because this is such a hot topic. But I could talk about for hours, everything you're saying I could talk about for hours, but I feel honoured to get the chance to bust some myths. Yes, so remember, right, I work with people one on one, I have the anecdotes, I have the stories, I also work at hinge, which means I have access to millions of data points around how this stuff works. We did this fascinating research on the topic of responsiveness. And what we found is that if somebody messages you and you respond within the hour, you have a much greater chance of having a long conversation and even going on a date. And so all of this nonsense around play games match how many hours she waited to respond, and then you do the same. None of that helps you get into a relationship with somebody who's a good communicator who talks authentically, who is somebody who you can be yourself with, all of that is a way to just maximise a game and you're not trying to play a game or win a game, you're trying to find a long term relationship. And so what I would say is, remember, you are talking to a bunch of people, she is talking to a bunch of people, right, it's a noisy bar with a lot of conversations, one of the best ways to stand out is to just engage in a conversation with her and try to make it a synchronous, so talking at the same time as possible. And so the data on this is very clear. Responsiveness on a dating app is a useful strategy because it helps you get into the conversation and stand out. And one thing that you can do strategically, is pretty early on, say something like, you know, I'm more into texting, can we transition to text and something about getting from the busy dating app inbox to the more personal texting or Snapchat inbox is that now you're in the place where her friends are, and you can help stand out. And so generally in that place, I would say, you want to be playful, and you want to play, but you don't want to play games. Ali Abdaal 1:03:45 I remember a few, probably probably earlier this year, I was on one of these apps. This was on mismatch actually, that I interviewed the founder of on this podcast in episode number two, if anyone's check it out. There was a girl whose profile I came across who I wasn't like, like I wasn't massively sold on the profile. I was just like, kind of lukewarm towards it. But one of the prompts that she said she she said, like, you know, what's one fact about me that will surprise you or something like that? And she said, I reply ridiculously fast to messages. I was like, Oh, okay. And then I commented on that being like, just testing or something, something, something like that. And she replied within like 10 seconds. And we ended up going on a date and actually having a great time. And like, you know, the spark was in there and, and all this and that but like we actually had a great conversation through through the app went on the date, I was like, wow, this person really stands out by actually being quick at responding to messages because otherwise it's like, you send a message, you wait 18 hours, nothing happens, you know, etc, etc. Like it was such a breath of fresh air. And I just never, I guess I guess in my head because as a guy in this scenario, I think guys are more sensitive to the girl will be turned off if you come across as too keen. I didn't quite they sort of put two and two together and think, you know, maybe if I quickly responding people would would vibe with me a bit better. Logan Ury 1:05:03 I want to make a meta point, because I think a lot of what you're bringing to me as questions are things that are like there's an old wives tale, or there's general cultural wisdom that you should do X. And many of my answers are no, I would advise doing why. And so I think we could go through all of those different ones. But I just want to make this as a general point, which is that if you were to start a YouTube channel, and all you did was study the most popular YouTube channels, you might just end up creating a copy of the most popular people done with worst lighting, worse audio equipment, worse guest and you are less good at interviewing, right? You're just doing a copy of something else, and you blend into the background. Maybe you want to do something different. Maybe you want to innovate, maybe you want to stand out. And I think that sometimes when we're looking at so many profiles, doing something surprising, creating that hook, showing your individuality is the best possible thing that you can do. Because if you see 10, dead fish pictures in a row, and then you see a guy who says I spend most of my day on the computer, because that is my job. But at night, I'd love to play a board game with you. That is different. And so for her, you know, you're talking about men don't want to seem like they are too available, so they shouldn't respond quickly. Well, women also want to don't want to seem like they're too needy. So in writing that she's really standing out. And I think it's it's not that there are no rules. But I think in general, these rules make us focus on the wrong thing, when the things that we should be focusing on are be the best person you can be. Invest in your communication skills, learn how to talk about hard topics, like sex, and conflict, treat the other person well. And when you know that you're not interested in somebody, break up with them in a kind, respectful and firm way and move on. I think if we worked on those foundational skills of human connection, and less time on Well, how long did she spend to respond to this message? And do I seem needy? I think that that's investing the wrong energy in the wrong place. Ali Abdaal 1:07:06 Yeah, and this is exactly the the stuff I tell kind of YouTubers as well. Stop focusing on the wrong things, focus on the stuff that's gonna move the needle, I actually making videos and slowly getting better over time. One of the things you talk about in the book is the idea of prom date versus life partner. And if I kind of paraphrase, there are different things that we're looking for in a prom date, where maybe we're focused on how attractive are they and how adventurous and risky and interesting Do they seem? Whereas there are different qualities that we look for in a life partner, which are more like in growth mindset, emotional maturity, the ability to fight well and communicate clearly, etc. How, when it comes to like, first and second dates, how would you go about sussing out the more deeper qualities, where in the context of a date where like everyone is kind of putting on their best behaviour, you would think Logan Ury 1:07:55 great. So yes, I love this concept. And I think that it's really important in people's personal development to make that shift from the prom date to the life partner. And unfortunately, some people just think, oh, that happens with time. But no, I think you really have to make a concerted effort to say like, Yeah, that guy is really hot. And it'd be fun to sleep with him. But he's actually not that reliable. I don't know if he'll show up when he says you will, I'm constantly worried about him letting me down. And actually what I'm experiencing isn't chemistry, it's anxiety. And so that's the prom date. And now I'm going to reject that person and move towards a life partner. And so for anyone listening or watching, I would say, if you consistently find yourself with prom dates, I want you to focus on the life partner, in terms of how to find these people early on. I think you can do it as early as the profile, the messaging and first dates, and it's really about coming up with some questions that help you elicit certain responses. And so something about the growth mindset is, People with a growth mindset feel like they can try new skills safely. And even if they're bad at them, that's totally fine. Because life is about getting better, as opposed to somebody with a fixed mindset who says, You're born with these skills, and you can improve them. So a question I've been encouraging people to ask over the last two years, while we've been in the pandemic is something like, what something that you were bad at, that you've gotten better at? Or have you invested any time especially during lockdown in working on any skills? And you know, you can iterate that on that and make it sound more casual? But just understanding is this the kind of person who says, I have a lot of alone time I'm gonna learn to speak Spanish? Or did they just spend more time playing video games, right? Like, what is this person's orientation toward growth? In terms of loyalty, a really important quality. You can ask these people you know, do you have friends from different stages of your life? Or what is the best gift you've ever given? There's chances where you say, this is the quality and the person I'm looking for. This is the question that strategically helps me understand if they have that. And then I'm actually going to Listen to their answer and see how it jives with me. And not just say, well, actually all their answers were terrible, but they're so hot. I'm going to ignore it. No, no, no, that's a prompt a thing. Yeah. Listen to their answers and say, Is this the kind of person that I want to keep getting to know? Or do I want to find someone who's more aligned with the qualities I'm looking for? Ali Abdaal 1:10:18 Hmm, yeah, one of the one of the things that I accidentally did this was before I read the book is that on this with, with this girl who I'm I'm now like, I guess in relationship with left field, this still feels weird to say, on our second day, we went to play Top Golf, which is like this cross between 10 pin bowling and a golf driver's driving range. And neither of us had ever played golf before. And so I messaged her being like, Hey, do you want to try this whole thing, and she was like, I mean, I've never played golf before I was like, mini, let's just give it a go. She was totally up for it. And that was one of the things that really stood out where it was like, she was totally cool with actually trying out this new thing, being okay with looking like a bit of an idiot playing both of us playing the sport that we never played before. And so I really liked that as a thing. And then I read the growth mindset stuff in the book, I was like, Oh, I kind of accidentally kind of selected for that particular quality, which was kind of nice. Logan Ury 1:11:07 I, I love that story so much. I think there's so much to that. First of all, you were brave and suggesting something that you weren't good at, there might be somebody out there who says, Oh, I only take people on dates to things I'm really good at so that I look good in a certain light. Oh, what you were showing is that you're fun and spontaneous and willing to try new things and be bad at them. And she was also willing to do that. So I think that's a great idea. I talked before about dating, like a scientist, part of dating, like a scientist is having a hypothesis, testing it, and then looking at the data. And so a big thing that people have been asking me in the last year or so is I want to ask people if we can do a phone call or a video date before we meet up. But some people will be turned off by that. I think using what you said, Hey, on a scale of this is scary, too. I'm interested, how open are you to having a phone call or video call? That could be a cool way of doing it. But I also think just asking and seeing how the person responds, gives you a lot of data. So maybe somebody says, A video call, what are you screening me for a job? That's weird? No, or they say, I haven't done that before. But I'm open to it. And so it's each moment is a chance to see you're putting out some sort of stimulus and you're seeing how they're responding to it. And that gives you a lot of information. And so do the bold thing, ask the question and see if they can roll with it? Or are they so traditional, and so tied to certain norms, that that freaks them out? Well, if you don't like that, then that's maybe not the kind of person you want to be with. Ali Abdaal 1:12:37 Plus, one of the things that you talk about is the sort of refer activity reflecting on a date when you get back from it. And I wanted to ask like, to what extent like what are the sorts of questions that we should be asking when we get back from dates? And to what extent is like, a sort of checklist approach to this a good idea, because we talked about things like growth mindset and emotional maturity and ability to communicate. Is that the sort of thing like similar to how like if you're hiring someone for a job, you want to have like a scorecard and you want to be able to evaluate each candidate against a scorecard? Is this the sort of person who would be able to do x? To what extent is that like a decent approach when it comes to dating and reflecting on data afterwards? Logan Ury 1:13:16 In general, I think that having a checklist is not helpful, because often what's on that checklist is the wrong stuff. It's the height, income perceived success, do we have the same hobbies? I think a lot of times that checklist is based on what we think matters in long term relationships, which the research shows us doesn't matter in long term relationships. So as a concept, I would say, throw out your checklist, be willing to date someone who's not your type, it is very possible that the person you end up with the person who makes you happy as long term is not the person you thought you would be. With. That being said, in my book, I offer this exercise called the post eight, eight, the post eight eight is based on research on gratitude journals. So there's amazing research for many people, including Sean a core of Harvard that says, if at the end of the day, you have to write down three things that you're grateful for, your brain will actually be looking for them throughout the day. So if you're running to make the bus and you make it maybe five minutes later, you forget about it. But if you know that at that night, you have to write it down, then you're going to notice it more. So what we do at the end impacts what we look for throughout so the posts eight eight is the same idea. I've taken what I believe in what the research shows matters. For evaluating a date. I've turned it into these list of eight questions, things like how did I feel in my body around this person? Do I feel curious about this person? What side of me Did this person bring out? And then throughout the date, you aren't looking at their height and their job, you're paying attention to those things. And at the end of the date, you ask yourself the post eight eight to decide, do I want to see this person again? And so it is a version of a check but it's a checklist designed to help you focus on what matters not what doesn't. Ali Abdaal 1:15:04 Nice. And I wonder if you can give some examples of like, what are some of the questions in the post? Eight, eight? Logan Ury 1:15:09 Sure. So from all the research that I've done, and even the coaching I've done since my book has come out this one of what side of me Did this person bring out is huge, because it helps you understand great on paper brings out a bad side of me, I don't want to see them again, that's a really helpful insight. Another one is this idea of do they energise me? Or de energise? Me? So, there's an activity called a penthouse in a basement person, you think in your life, not even in a romantic setting? Who is my penthouse person who, when I'm with them? Do they bring my energy up? Do I feel creative? Do I feel inspired? So for you, who's your penthouse person Ali Abdaal 1:15:47 is my penthouse person, I can think of a few university friends. I think my brother is one of my penthouse people, which is why we kind of decided to start a podcast together. My current house mate has a penthouse person, definitely. Logan Ury 1:15:58 I love that. Yeah. So you have this penthouse person, that's another helpful benchmark. And you have a basement person, somebody who makes you feel depressed, down, de energised. And so just asking this question, did I feel more energised or less energised after the date helps you understand where that person falls and helps you get closer to finding a penthouse person because of course, the person you end up with in a romantic relationship, you want them to bring out that inspired, capable, creative part of you. And so it's really helping you understand what stuff matters, what stuff to pay attention to. And it ignores things like, did I think they have an impressive job? And do we have enough hobbies and comments, stuff that people think matters, but really doesn't? Ali Abdaal 1:16:41 Nice. is one of the things that you talk about in the book is to always go on the second date. What's the what's the deal with that? Logan Ury 1:16:50 Yes, so there's a whole idea in behavioural science of defaults. And so whatever we create as a default sticks with us, so if a hamburger place has fries is the default, most people will stick with that and get the fries. If a hamburger place has a salad as a default, most people will stick with that, in general, we stick with what the default is, and these rules of thumbs. The next thing is that in dating, I think we put too much pressure on the first date. Some of the best people I know do not perform well on first dates, they are awkward, they are not comfortable. They are not good at small talk, they're more introverted, this is harder for them. But these are people who would make great long term partners. And so how can we actually take the pressure off the first date and say, first dates are almost a warm up round? It's? Do I like the sound of your voice? Am I attracted to you Do we have something to talk about, and I'm going to assume that we're going to go on the second date pending that nothing crazy or terrible or unsafe happens on the first date. And that way, if you go in assuming you'll go on the second date, you're giving people more of a shot. And it's easier to find those diamond in a rough people who get better over time. And one of the things I talk about throughout the book is this idea of fuck the spark go after the slow burn. The spark is somebody who gives you instant chemistry, they make you feel so attracted to them, like you've known them for a million years. But honestly, a lot of Sparky, people are charismatic, but also narcissistic, they're focused on getting you to fall for them. But they're not actually asking themselves if they like you. The spark is something that you can chase that burns, that burns out quickly. Instead, you want to find this slow burn someone who you like more and more over time, your appreciation for them grows. And those are really the people to go after. And so some of my friends who are in the best relationships that I admire, they had terrible first dates, but either because I told them to go on a second date, or their mom told them to go on a second date, they gave that person more of a chance. And so you will find some great people if you make the second date the default. Ali Abdaal 1:18:55 I really like that. Yeah, like having having that as a default, meaning that if something disastrous happens on the first day, it's not like we're saying that, Oh my God, you have to go on a second day. And it's contractually binding, but more like, hey, it's a default. And that actually probably would change your behaviour on the first day as well. Because now you know, it's not so big a deal being on the first because by default, if they're, you know, if they consent, so you'd want to go to second as well. Logan Ury 1:19:16 Totally. And there's this concept I talked about, about the evaluative versus the experiential mindset. So the evaluative mindset is, are you good enough for me? Where did you go to uni? What are your table manners? I'm constantly judging you against this rubric in my head and saying, Are you good enough? The experiential mindset is, I'm going to be in the moment with you, I am going to be looking at cues for how I feel and if I'm having fun and am I laughing, but I'm not judging you. I think we just do so much better when we are in the moment having fun, letting time pass, versus when we are constantly evaluating someone and even what you said before about having a job description and measuring somebody against this. I feel like as a culture, one of the biggest mistakes that we're making is we're saying, let's take what works at work. And let's apply that to dating. And that's a mistake. This is a date, this is not a job interview, if you are showing up with a corporate mindset, and a spreadsheet, and you're giving me 15 minutes to give your investor pitch, you're going to go on 100 dates, it's not going to work out, because that is not what leads to connection. And so yes, it's great that you are killing it at your job. But if you are applying all of what you do at your job to dating, you're probably not having the connection that you're looking for, Ali Abdaal 1:20:28 oh, this is so interesting, experiential versus evaluative. So this really resonated with me, because an earlier earlier this year, earlier this year, when I was like actually actively dating, one of my female friends would always ask, you know, how was it? And I'd be like, yeah, that's pretty good. You know, we had a good time we vibed I think we get on. And then she was like, no, like, I and this was okay, what do you what do you like about her? I was like, Oh, I don't know. I mean, I guess we vibed and we got on the way it was, it was good time. And she was like, hang on, mate, you're doing this all wrong, you want to be going in with, in a way a checklist of these are the qualities I'm looking for, you want to design questions that that sort of suss it out. And you want to be in a way treating this like a job interview, so that when you when someone asks you what you like in the person, you're actually able to talk about it. I was like, what this this seems weird. Like, if you asked me what I like about my friends, I'd be like, I mean, I probably can't list off a checklist of things. And this friend was saying, oh, that's just because you're not like emotionally mature enough. Yet. Once you become more emotionally mature, then you will be able to know what it is you'd like about someone and be able to articulate it, rather than saying, Oh, we vibed what's, uh, what's what's, what's going on there? Any thoughts? Logan Ury 1:21:38 I'm laughing because I almost feel like I'm saying some things that are in conflict. But in my mind, they're clear, but we should probably go through them and clear them up. And so for example, when I walked you through that exercise about what are the three things you want to communicate? To me, that's just saying like, this is like your one shot to have a billboard about you. And I do think you should be strategic. But then in other ways, I said, I don't think you should optimise the colour of the posters on your background. And so it's like you want to invest, you want to put your best foot forward, but you don't want to spend too much time right in that last 20%, you want to focus on the 80% that matters. And so for this situation, I could see somebody listening or watching and being confused and saying, well, she's saying you have a checklist, but it's a post eight, eight, it's not a checklist about that person's qualities. What I would say for this topic, and for what your friend said, is that so often people come to me and they say, Logan, I know exactly what I want, I just need your help finding that person, then they go through this list of he must be over six feet tall, he must make at least six figures. He must love travel, he must have parents who are not divorced. And they go on and on and on with this list. And unfortunately, the older people get when maybe they should becoming more flexible, because the pool is smaller, the list gets longer. And they say, Well, I've waited this long, he better be perfect. And that's not a good strategy. How I think about it, is this so called type of yours, these qualities that you're so sure that you need? How has that been working out for you? Maybe you've dated plenty of people with that, and it hasn't worked out? Because what you think you want is not what's actually going to make you happy long term. And so my husband is a five foot eight, redheaded vegan engineer, do you think that if I made a checklist, those would be all the things on my list? No, that wouldn't have been on my list. But he is brilliant. He is hilarious. He understands me better than I understand myself. We have the most fun together, we see the world in a similar way. I couldn't have made a list to find my husband. But when I started hanging out with him, and I saw the side of me, he brought out and I found myself thinking about him all the time. And we had the best jokes and the best conversations, I realised this was a good match for me. And so take your checklist, take your so called type, rip it up, be willing to say I'm going to date different types of people and see what side of me they bring out. So be strict about how you want your partner to make you feel and the life you want and be flexible about how they show up in the world and what qualities they have. Ali Abdaal 1:24:10 Is it reasonable to go on a date and not really be able to articulate what you liked about someone? And instead just that you vibed? Or is that just? Logan Ury 1:24:20 I love that. I mean, I think you really nailed this question when you said, I couldn't tell you everything about my friends that I like. I think if I'm I mean, I have a lot of close friends. And I think if I think about them what I might say something like, I don't have to censor myself, I can say exactly how I feel I can be petty I can be unkind, I can be selfish, I can be self absorbed. And I can just say this is what's going on with me Give me space to vent and they will hold that space for me and it will be totally fine. Thinking about people who I don't vibe with as much and it's because they think that they're judging me or I feel like they want something from me or our relationship isn't balanced. And so it's really humans are complicated if humans were less complicated If there would have already been an algorithm that perfectly predicts from day one who out of the millions of people in your country or city you should date, the reason that doesn't exist is because we have years of habits, years of trauma, we have different characteristics, we have different personality traits. And so the only way to know if you're a good match with someone is to spend time with them and see how you feel around them. Can you imagine bringing them into your home and, and building a life with them. And so you don't have to be able to articulate? She said this thing, which implies this thing, which goes against my list, you could just say, I could imagine myself talking to her for hours, or I found that my brain was making interesting connections. And I felt energised from our conversation. Ali Abdaal 1:25:45 Nice. I really like that. I feel I feel partially vindicated in these conversations. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, Logan Ury 1:25:51 I feel like I'm Yeah, I feel like I'm judging your friends. But I kind of am because I feel like your friends are bringing a lot of cultural baggage to you saying, here's the rule, and you're breaking it. And what if I said to you, there's no rule, the number one thing is be a good person and pay attention. Ali Abdaal 1:26:07 Speaking of rules, there was another friend who I have not talked about yet, who I'd been on a but I had been on a first date with someone. And I was very concerned about the whole first kiss situation. And like, when When do you go for the first kiss? And I brought this up on a group holiday with some friends. I'm just like, Yeah, I don't really know. Like, you know, I guess when the moments right, but like, and I one of my friends said, no, no. In my experience, if we haven't kissed by the third date, then it's a no go. That's a massive red flag. And then suddenly, I was like, Oh, shit. Like, there's, there's a three date rule. And I even went through the motions. Like, it's sort of rehearsing this with some of my friends to be like, Okay, if we're sitting by a park bench, and we're sitting on the bench, then then how do I, how do I go? For the first case, if we're sitting in the car? How do we go like, all of this kind of stuff? And describing it now, and for someone listening to this, it probably seems really bizarre. But there is I feel like there is some element of truth, where it's like, if well, you know, having having pulled a handful of female friends about this, they do say that, Oh, well, if he hasn't made a move by at least but uh, you know, by the third date, it kind of suggests that he's not really, either he's not really into me, or he's just not that confident. And therefore it's, it's a no for me, how do we approach this three date rule situation when it comes to the first case? And I guess the broader question is a more meta question about rules and regulations when it comes to dating. Logan Ury 1:27:31 So this is a question I get a lot. And I wouldn't say that I necessarily have a rule on it, I would just say it's really hard. Especially it became hard after 2017 with the me to era, because there was a lot of feelings of, I want to be bold, but I don't want to be creepy. I want her to know, I'm interested, I don't want to ask for permission in a way that seems weak. And so I just want to acknowledge that for everyone. I think this is really hard. Then you add into it a pandemic were being in someone's face, breathing on them, sharing a kiss with them is actually potentially putting them in danger. This is just become a very difficult conversation. And so my advice for my clients is that there is a sexy and confident way to say Can I kiss you? And so part of it starts with body language. Yeah. What did you say? Ali Abdaal 1:28:23 What is that way? Logan Ury 1:28:25 I think that it's first of all, I think that there's body language, I think you can see, you know, if you're close to someone, do they seem to be leaning into you? If you touch their arm? Do they seem to like it, you know, you can whisper in their ear. I think that there are some subtle flirtatious things that you can do to say, you know, I'm going to get closer to your space and seeing if you respond well, the pandemic does complicate a lot of this, because I think some people would be like, I don't want you to be anywhere near me. But what I would say is that, at the end of the day, you could say something like, I really want to kiss you. How would you feel about that? Or, you know, what are your thoughts on kissing on the first date? Or just something where it's like, Ali Abdaal 1:29:07 oh, the second one was exactly what I said. I said, Oh, really? How would you feel about kissing on the second date? Logan Ury 1:29:12 Yeah, I love that. Yeah, maybe I'm inspired by your earlier thing that I really liked about saying, you know, what are your thoughts on this? I think it's a clever way of basically getting at someone's thoughts, but you're obviously saying, Can I kiss you? And so I think the number one message I want people to take from this is, in general, asking for consent is the right thing to do. And there's a way to do it that's both confident and sexy and doesn't ruin the moment. And it's up to you to experiment with different phrases that feel right for you. But you should neither assume that somebody wants to kiss you or assume that somebody doesn't want to kiss you. The best approach here is to actively find a way to let them know that you're interested in doing that and seeing what they think. Ali Abdaal 1:29:56 One of the things that I wanted to talk about in this video that's coming up is, what are the things that make for a good or bad date? In your experience, Logan Ury 1:30:06 I have some tips that help people create great dates, dates that lead to connection. So the first tip is that the date doesn't just start when you show up, the date actually starts hours before when you get into the mindset. So my version of an old quote is whether you think the date will go poorly, or you think the date will go, Well, you're right. And so what that means is that your mindset matters. So if you're transitioning from a hard day at work, where your boss was yelling at you, and going straight into a date, you're not going to bring an excitable present part of yourself, you're going to bring a stressed part. So I want you to proactively take time between work or whatever else you're doing and the date and getting into a mindset that might be spraying yourself with perfume, because you're turned on by scents. It might be listening to a pump up playlist to get your energy going, it might be working out, what are the things that you can do to cultivate the right mindset for a date. The next thing is, what are you actually doing on the date? So many dates? Are these job interviews where I sit across from you and I say, What did you study? And why? And how many siblings do you have? And what's your five year planning? You know what, who cares? That doesn't really affect our ability to be in a relationship together, it's dry, it's boring, coffee dates that feel a job interviews all feed into the same? Why can't we do an activity together? Why can't we meet up in a park and run around and try to pet five dogs? Why can't we go to a street with a lot of dumpling places and create our own dumpling tour and figure out our best one? Why can't we have an experience together where we're doing something we're having fun. Even if we don't have a connection, at least we had a fun experience together and it takes the pressure off. So designing a date with a lot of fun and playfulness. Another thing is really listening. So often we have our cell phones out. And there's great research that shows that a conversation is much less deep and much less empathetic when our phone is out. Because what happens is I think as soon as your phone blinks, you're going to check it. And I might be in the middle of something deep and personal. And I don't want that to happen. So I'm just not even going to go there. So put your phone away, turn it off, put it under the table, ask questions that help you connect, versus just waiting for your turn to talk. So there's this concept called a shift versus support response. A shift response is when you say something like I'm going to adopt a golden doodle puppy, and I shift the attention back to me and I say, Oh, I've always wanted a puppy. But I don't have a puppy because of my job of support responses. I say, Why do you want a dog? Have you ever had a dog before? How did you choose that breed, it helps you go deeper into your story. Support responses are really great for a date. Because in the end, people care about how you make them feel. And what people what makes people feel good is when you make them feel interesting versus you being interesting. So it's much less about sharing stories that make us seem cool and much more about asking them questions that make them feel important. And then my last tip is end on a high note. There's amazing research from the behavioural economist, Daniel Kahneman, which found that when people are getting colon asked cuppies, they'd actually rather get a colonoscopy that slightly longer, but ends in a less painful way. Because we disproportionately remember things based on how they add. So even if you have a mediocre date, you can save it by ending on a high note, you can ask someone for a kiss and give them the great kiss. You can order dessert, you can give them a meaningful compliment, you can show them a surprise mural that they've never seen before. And so really think about how can I end this date in a meaningful and fun and memorable way? Ali Abdaal 1:33:42 Nice. There's a great stuff. Earlier today, I posted on Instagram and on Twitter, basically saying I was interviewing you and we got a bunch of questions in from random people in the audience. So that's all right. Can I chuck some of these at you? So let's start with the the girlfriend ones, because obviously you need to prioritise her. I love it. She says, Oh, okay. He's got three actually. Okay, the first one? What are your top tips for becoming a better life partner to someone else? Logan Ury 1:34:13 I love this question. And it's something that I've been thinking about a lot. I don't know exactly if I'll write a second book, or what would it be about but this is one of the main things that I'm considering. So my first book, in many ways is about how to choose the right person. And there's almost an implication that, okay, there's all these people you can get whoever you want, and how do you choose among them. But the truth is, many of us are not necessarily who we want to be, or we wouldn't even necessarily be good partners right now. And so I think what needs to go along with that is how to be a good partner. And so, in the book in the chapter called go for the life partner, not the prom date. I talked about this idea of loyalty and how you want to find somebody Who's with you for the ups and the downs? And in that chapter, I quote, my sister's speech, or No, I quote, yeah. And that chapter, I quote this article from about a decade ago that my sister loves, which is from this woman who's an oncologist, so she's a cancer doctor. And she's talking about how her friends say, I want to find a guy who loves long walks in the beach. And I want to find a guy who loves dogs as much as I do. And what she says from being an oncologist is, you want to find a guy who will hold your purse. And what she means by that is that she sees different husbands in the cancer treatment board, some who kind of hold the Fit metaphysic, the metaphorical and literal person some who don't, that you want to find this guy who's going to be there with you. And I quote that in there. So after writing the book, but before it came out, my then fiance now husband was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. And so what's been happening for me is all of these things in the book that I talked about what you should look for in somebody else, I am now having to be that partner. So my husband went through three extremely invasive surgeries, including a button, below the knee, leg amputation, a knee replacement, like really major surgeries, and I have literally been the person holding the purse, or in his case, his backpack or his fanny pack. And so what really resonates with me about your girlfriend's question is that we spend so much time thinking, How do I choose, but we should probably be spending as much or more time saying, How can I be the person that gets chosen? So anyway, just wanted to start with that preamble of why this is so relevant to me. Ali Abdaal 1:36:48 It really comes down to kind of being being there for the person. Logan Ury 1:36:52 Yeah, so that was just one example. But I would say how to be a better life partner. So some of it is just knowing yourself and knowing your stuff. So what keeps you in the safe zone where you're happy? You're confident I like this word that I invented, called confident, it's when you're calm and confident. How do you stay in your confident mode? And what are your triggers? So for some people, let's say they're anxiously attached, their trigger is when their partner is travelling and isn't in touch, they get upset, and they move into the danger zone. So what I would recommend to that person is know your triggers, know what you need and learn how to ask for it. So really, part one is going deep inside yourself, and knowing yourself and doing the work. Another thing is learning how to have card conversation. So sometimes people say to me, Oh, I met this guy we're getting along so well, we never fight. That's not something that I think you need to optimise for lots of very happy couples fight fighting is about being passionate. My mother in law, who's a therapist says, When couples tell me they don't fight, I also say Do you not have sex? Because for her in her mind, those things go along. It's about having friction and working through stuff. So learning how to have hard conversations, learning how to say things like, I'm sure you're familiar with nonviolent communication. Ali Abdaal 1:38:05 Oh I'm reading that at a moment. Logan Ury 1:38:08 I love NVC. I use it all the time. So for people who aren't familiar with it, it's a framework for expressing yourself in a way that helps you get heard and helps you kind of speak in a way that really expresses what's going on for you. So the format is, when you insert a specific thing that happened, I felt, and you have to use an emotion word. So it can't be something that's judging them like I felt left behind, it would be something like I felt sad, I felt enraged, I felt depressed, whatever it was, because of my need for blank. So you explain to them why this matter. So recently, I had this in a work conversation where I said, when I wasn't part of that decision making, it made me feel sad because of my need for inclusion. And then you say in the future, I request that you blank, and you say a specific requests that they can agree to or talk to you about. And so just learning things like that, like how to communicate how to stand up for yourself how to have boundaries, all of that is super important. Another one is what we talked about earlier around bid, so making bids to connect with your partner and turning towards their bid. So if you are working really hard, and your partner clearly wants to talk, do you make a choice to close down your laptop and talk? Or do you say not now I'm in the middle of editing and I'm in a flow state? Or maybe you can just say I'd love to hear that story? Can we talk in 20 minutes and so these small decisions that you're making, and I think another one that we haven't talked about that much is sex. Dan Savage has this concept of GGG This is his secrets to good sex, so it's good, which means being skillful. How can you develop your sexual skills, giving How can you be generous in bed and game? How can you be willing to experiment or give your partner what they want, within reason and so I would also invest in learning how your body works, how somebody else Body Works asking for what they want giving feedback, because while some very happy relationships don't have great sex lives for many people that does matter, and how can you take your own sex life into your own hands? Ali Abdaal 1:40:18 Oh, any recommended resources on that front. Logan Ury 1:40:22 So there's a lot of great books that help women understand their bodies more. There's a lot of great women books that focus on pleasure. There's a book called she comes first. There's a book called, calm as you are. There's a wonderful book that is maybe on people's radars called mating in captivity. And that's about the tension that many people feel between wanting to feel comfortable and safe, but also wanting to feel adventure and excitement. And how you know, the mating captivity is such a clever title, because it's like, how do you keep the sexual spark going in a long term relationship, which is genuinely something for someone because there is part of sex and lust that has to do with novelty. When you've been with someone for a while novelty fades? And so what can you do to really engage in that? Oh, one other resources. A friend of mine started a company called Dipsy, which is a erotic audio storytelling. So it's not like listening to porn, it's listening to a sexy story. And why I love that is the whole idea is that you're investing in your imagination, you're closing your eyes, you're seeing this visual, you're imagining these two people meet, the tension is building up. And I do feel like we live in a very visual porn addicted world, where people have lost some of that imagination. And if you can actually remove some of the visual, and focus on your imagination, your desire, explore your kinks, that is only going to help you when it comes to having sex with other people and having good sex. Ali Abdaal 1:41:58 Amazing. Logan Ury 1:42:00 Are you blushing? Ali Abdaal 1:42:04 This is great. I love this. Got the new books to add to my that's my Kindle library. Okay, so next question. It seems that understanding how to find and create a great relationships is a key life skill. Do you think this life skill should be better taught to children, teenagers, young people, and if so how? Logan Ury 1:42:22 I think all the time about the fact that we should be teaching people more life skills in school. So this is everything from how to save money for the future, why you should pay off your highest interest loans first, to nutrition, exercise, maintaining good relationships, I really feel like if you look at what makes a happy, meaningful life, it is not algebra, and it is not grammar. And those things matter. And you know, I'm a nerd, I went to Harvard, I care about all that stuff. But when I actually think about the things that I learned in college, that impact me, it's things like how to speak in a way that's persuasive, how to get your point across how to work with others, how to be a leader, a lot of these soft skills really impact the bottom line. And so I absolutely think that we should be teaching people from middle school high school on about healthy relationships, because you can think about your relationship history as a garden. And so throughout your life, you're planting these seeds, and then those seeds develop later. And so even if you're 20 years from a traumatic incident, there was something that happened that is now part of your garden. And so if from a younger age, we can help people say, this is how to say yes, this is how to say no, this is how to ask for consent. This is how to explore your own body. This is what emotional manipulation looks like. This is the difference between secure and avoidant and anxious attachment. And so I think we would help people save a lot of heartbreak and a lot of pain, some of which is necessary, but not all of it is by teaching them these skills earlier. Ali Abdaal 1:44:07 Hmm. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm semi trying to do on this YouTube channel, on my YouTube channel wishes that less from a perspective of, I know what I'm talking about. And therefore I'm teaching you these life skills and more from a perspective of, I have no idea. Therefore, let me talk to people who are experts on things like relationships and love and health and wealth and things like that. And let's kind of learn together and be sort of students together in this on this journey. Logan Ury 1:44:31 Yeah, I'm so happy that you're doing that. And it also reminds me of a course of the school of life and I had the opportunity to go to a school of life conference. I was just so inspired by some of the ideas that were shared. There was an exercise that helped people have better conversations, where you got to choose the superficial or the deep and it was just so fun to see a concept come to life through videos and exercises and breakout rooms and I was like, Yes, this is what we need to be learning. Ali Abdaal 1:45:00 Love it. Final question from my girlfriend who shall remain unnamed. In the book, you talk about how much we all change over the course of our lifetime? What are your top practical tips on being able to grow together in a relationship over time? Logan Ury 1:45:13 There's wonderful research from Dan Gilbert of Harvard called The End of History illusion, this idea that we stop changing. And so how he experimented with this is he asked people of different ages, how much did you change in the last 10 years? How much do you expect to change in the next 10 years, and people inevitably said, I changed so much from 20 to 30, I changed so much from 40 to 50, I'm already I become who I'm going to be, I'm not going to change. And that is incorrect. We are all constantly changing. And so if you think about marriage, and monogamy and long term relationships, there is something a little bit irrational and ridiculous about it, I'm going to choose a partner at 27 that I expect to find interesting and attractive and warm at age 77. Like they do you know what I mean, there is something sort of irrational about it. But there are ways to build relationships that lasts. And so one of them is just understanding that relationships are going to go through ups and downs. And so in the book, I talk about this idea of a relationship contract or relationship Charter, which is something that you put together with your partner, and you say, here's what matters to me, here's what I'm about, here's where I want your support, here's how I want the relationship to be. And you can check in on it from time to time, and you should choose this date in advance, you could say, six months from now let's check in or six years from now let's check in, it helps make sure that you're staying on track. It also provides this space for you to say what's working and what's not. And so I think a lot of the questions that I get from people in relationships are things like, my partner's constantly doing X, maybe I should just accept it. How do I know when something's worth bringing up or not. And my feeling is that resentment is so toxic, there's this thing, resentment is poison that you give yourself. And I really agree with that. So a bet the best way to avoid resentment is bringing things up as they happen. So instead of saying over the last six months, every single weekend, I've asked you to do the dishes and you haven't done it and I'm going to go crazy. It's after this happens a few times say, Hey, I've noticed that I am doing the dishes a lot of the time, maybe I'm missing when you do them. I know you do a lot of other stuff around the house. But next time that you see the dishes need to be done, will you just proactively try to do them or you know, you can use nonviolent communication, but really addressing problems as they come up. planning for the future, knowing that change is inevitable, and creating space for you and your partner to talk about what the relationship was what it is now and where it's going. Ali Abdaal 1:47:45 Nice. Yeah, one thing that we do, which we we kind of started from inspiration from the book is like a every few weeks relationship review type thing, a series of 12 questions, some of which are from the book, some of which, which is made up as genuinely really helpful. Just like specifically ask questions like the first few are I kind of what's what's going well, like? What did I do this week that made you feel loved or appreciated? And vice versa, stuff like that? And then later on, it gets to, you know, is there anything that I did that kind of made you feel not great or sad or annoyed in any way? What can I do differently? And it's actually been really useful. And every time I've mentioned this to friends who are in relationships, they're like, Deb, I thought that was a little bit weird when I first heard about it, but actually, I wish I could have these conversations on a somewhat regular basis with my partner, because it seems to me, it's the sort of thing where otherwise it just tends not to come up and stuff can I guess, fester for a long time? Logan Ury 1:48:35 Yeah. And honestly, I feel like that's one of the main themes that's emerging from our conversation today is things that seem initially weird or forest or cheesy, really work. And it's like the same way that if you are going to the gym a lot, you might write down what your exercises are, and check out your gains and look back from a year ago and say, I'm much stronger and I can do this many more reps, why can't we apply rigour to our relationships? And so why it's great to build a habit around it is that neither you nor your girlfriend needs to say, sorry to nag you, but I really want to talk about this. It's like no, no, it's built in. And so the calendar, the DT, the recurring event holds that space for you. And neither of you has to nag the other one. It's just like every three weeks we have this check in. Ali Abdaal 1:49:20 Yeah. How are things with your husband now? Logan Ury 1:49:24 Yeah, my husband, thank you for asking. My husband's doing really well. He wrapped up treatment a few months ago. He's rebuilding his strength. He just got back into the climbing gym. That was a big, emotional milestone for him. He has more energy, his beautiful red hair is coming back. Yeah, he's doing well. And it's been just super interesting. We've been together for seven years and just to see a person who you know, so well go through something like this and then also to see how He's changed because in general, I feel like you shouldn't assume that. You know, sometimes people say To me, like, I like this guy, but he's, he's not really this Do you think he'll change? And I'm like, No, I don't think you should bank on that. But I actually have felt with my husband like he's in many ways a new person. Ali Abdaal 1:50:12 Any, any any ways in particular that come to mind? Logan Ury 1:50:16 Yeah, with his parents, he's just much more patient, I've noticed that he just has more patience for, you know, physical disabilities, for people who get tired more easily. There's just all these ways in which like, he's a very smart, very athletic, talented person. So prior to this adversity, many things in life had come very easily to him. And I think just having to work harder to move around in the world, having less energy going through chemotherapy, all of this stuff has just given him so much compassion for other people's struggles. And so what I find is, sometimes people will want to say to him, Oh, this thing happened, but it's so small compared to what happened to you, I won't burden you with it. And he says, no, no, the opposite is true. I have so much space and compassion for whatever you're going through more than I did before I had experienced this myself. Ali Abdaal 1:51:10 Well, very interesting. And has that kind of manifested in your relationship as well? Logan Ury 1:51:15 Yeah, I think our relationship is completely different. I really feel like we are, I think I'm a different partner, I have had to be way more responsible. There's a part of me that sort of likes to be well, I don't know, it depends on the scenario. But there's a part of me that likes to be the more fun loving one. But like, prior to his diagnosis, I hadn't really liked driving, and I hadn't driven in about 10 years, it just wasn't a super comfortable driver. And when he was diagnosed, he was like, we're getting a car and you have to learn how to drive again, like you're going to need to drive me to and from chemo, there's going to be emergencies, which there were, you have to learn how to drive. And I just did it, I had to figure it out. And now I'm an extremely confident driver. And it was just one of those things where like, I had to step up. He also was somebody who wasn't good at asking for help. He's talented, he's independent, there were moments where he really needed help. And I had to pay attention to his cues. And he had to be willing to ask for help. So for example, there was a really dark moment where, you know, everything that could go wrong went wrong, and things were really scary. And there was just all these signs that things were going poorly and I was supposed to go see my friends and family the next day. And this was a trip I had planned for a long time. And I kept saying to me a cancelled you want me to cancel? And he said, No, no, no. And then finally I said, this is ridiculous. I am cancelling I can't leave. And then he was like a hub. So relieved, you're staying. And I was like, I wish you could have said to me, please stay. And then we talked about can we have a code word for that. And we just went through so many intense emotions around, you know, two people are in a dynamic, then a drastic train bulldozes and careens into and now you have to redefine your dynamic. But I think that we've done that in a really healthy way. And any questions that we might have around? Are you in it for the long term? Can I trust you? Are you going to hold my purse in the cancer ward? I feel like we've definitely answered and so we're we're truly all in and there's just such deeper trust than there ever was before. Ali Abdaal 1:53:18 Yeah, yeah. It really sounds like you kind of both grown through the experience. And I guess you wouldn't kind of wish it on anyone else. But with all these kind of traumatic experiences. That's kind of the seems to be the silver lining. Logan Ury 1:53:31 Yeah, there's a wonderful book called Stumbling on Happiness that by Dan Gilbert, who are you familiar with that book? Yes. Ali Abdaal 1:53:37 Yeah, I read it a few years ago. Yeah, yeah. What's the key message? Logan Ury 1:53:42 There's a bunch of things and Stumbling on Happiness around what we think will make us happy versus what does make us happy. One of the key things is, is that we all adapt to our surroundings. So you think being really rich will make you happy. But actually, you just get used to having that amount of money. And so when you ask people, How much will your life change if you win the lottery versus how much will your life change if you become a quadriplegic? In both situations, people overestimate the impact because the truth is, after about a year or so you sort of adapt to your circumstances. And so when all of this happened with my husband, I emailed Dan Gilbert, who I know a little bit through Harvard and some other research in my book, and I said, you know, this is what's going on everything and somebody on happiness has made me feel better. And he wrote back and he said, I'm paraphrasing, but as crazy as this sounds, when you're talking about this with your, with your grandchildren decades from now, you might very well say this is the best thing that ever happened to me, because it will just put so many things in perspective, it will help you grow. And so no, I wouldn't wish this rare form of blood cancer on anyone but I do think that my husband is a more patient, grounded, empathetic, loving person and in many ways this experience really helped him rise to the occasion and change for the better. Ali Abdaal 1:55:04 Well, thank you for being so like open and talking about this, this, it can't be an easy thing to discuss, I guess. Logan Ury 1:55:10 It's not, but it's also just happening right now. So I'm an external processor. So even just being able to share it with you and kind of see how I feel now versus how I felt six months ago, it's a helpful. It's a helpful exercise and checking in with myself. Ali Abdaal 1:55:26 Oh, excellent. We've got a sort of, I guess, on a somewhat related note, a few questions from from Instagram, or NC snapshot something? Are humans designed to be monogamous? Logan Ury 1:55:39 Ooh, this is a loaded question. So there. I am not an expert on this topic. But I can lead you towards some interesting resources. So there's a book called sex at dawn, that argues that we are not meant to be monogamous. There is a biological anthropologist named Helen Fisher, who I really admire, and I interviewed for the book, and she has some issues with sex at dawn, I would encourage people to look into her work to look into his work to really understand kind of the evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology perspective on this and for people that come to their own conclusions. That being said, I feel like anyone who's trying to disrupt relationships, I really admire that I think that we have this one size fits all toaster model of relationships, where if you think about a toaster, you buy it at the store, you plug it in, and at best, you hope it doesn't break. You never expect it will get better. Yeah. Why can't we think about relationships, more like an iPhone, where their software and you can constantly be updating the software and you can be getting more out? So you can be deleting apps. And it's something that going back to what we said The End of History illusion, how can you adapt and grow as the relationship adapts and grows. And so I would say I have lots of friends that are in ethical, non monogamy relationships, who float in and out of them who have found that this is something that they love to think about and talk about. And so I personally believe that there is a lot of space to explore different relationship structures. Ali Abdaal 1:57:18 That's a real underscore fi says, Do you think that a person who loves you must accept you exactly as you are? Logan Ury 1:57:26 I think about this question a lot. Because one thing that people ask me is, do you need to be a whole person before you can date? Or can somebody complete you? And I feel like these questions are all kind of circling the same thing, which is, should you be with someone who loves you for who you are? Or should you be with somebody who sees the potential in you? Are you complete without them? Are you complete with them? I think there's a lot of ideas in here. And so I would say as a baseline, acceptance is a huge part of relationships. Because if you get into a relationship expecting somebody will change, I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A few examples of this I've seen are relationships where somebody is much older and somebody is much younger, and the older person takes on a mentor capacity and is constantly trying to help that person become better. I think that creates a power imbalance that can be really hard to maintain over time. And what happens when that younger person says I want to be your equal, I don't want to be mentored anymore, that can change the dynamic. Another example I've seen is when people are looking for a project and not a partner, so they say, Oh, this guy is unemployed and not ambitious, but he's so talented. I'm going to help him get his act together. It's like, don't you want to be with someone where the two of you can run together? Not where you're dragging somebody behind you. And so in general, I would say it's okay if somebody can see the best in you and try to help you self actualize and become a better person. But that should come from a basis of acceptance where even if nothing changes, they'll still be very happy to be with you. Ali Abdaal 1:59:02 I am Ray J report says, I have a crush on my best friend. But I feel if I confessed it to her it will ruin everything. Do you have any advice on this? Logan Ury 1:59:13 My husband and I met when we were in college when we were undergrads. And we know this because we became Facebook friends that day. We didn't meet again for seven years until we were both working at Google and he came up to me by the shuttle stop and said Hey, didn't you used to date so and so and didn't you go here for college? We then spent a year being friends he was tutoring me in our a certain coding language. And after that, I developed a crush on him. I was working with a dating coach who helped me see his potential and finally I helped shift from friends to more by saying, I don't have plans on Friday night you should ask me out. And so I feel like I am living proof that friends can make the best partners and some times the most eligible single person around us is hiding in plain sight, we just have to identify it and then take the leap. That being said, there is a huge risk here, you can make someone uncomfortable, you can grow in a friendship. So, a couple ways to do this. One is, I don't drink. I'm not that into drinking, but you could get drunk with someone and say, crazy idea. Have you ever thought about us being together? Or my mom always asked, Were you dating so and so you'd be such a good match? What do you think about that, so you can kind of tiptoe into the conversation. And then I think you should also just make it very safe for them to say, I don't feel that way about you. And so I think it's worth bringing it up. But create a space where the person can turn you down without putting the friendship at risk. Ali Abdaal 2:00:49 Makes a lot of sense. subete subby Ahmed says how do you detach yourself from a person after a breakup, Logan Ury 2:00:57 breakups are so hard? There's all this research that shows that when we are going through a breakup, our bodies are actually experiencing withdrawal the same way that we would be if we had been addicted to drugs. So the nucleus accumbens, a part of our brain lights up in the same place from love withdrawal as it does from drug with. So if you're feeling an intense amount of attachment and pain and trauma, that is completely normal, a few things that you can do to get over a breakup. One of them is you can focus on the negatives of the relationship. So there's an experiment where they had people journal about what are all the reasons why the relationship was bad, that can help you really focus on the reasons why you're lucky to be out of it, instead of looking back at the looking back at it with Rose coloured glasses. Another journaling exercise you can do is write all the reasons why the breakup is good, what are the ways that it will help you? What are the ways that you can move forward, you can also engage in what's known as rediscover yourself activities. So those are things that imagine you were dating someone and they didn't like jobs, or they didn't like going to the beach, or they didn't like visiting your parents for the holidays. So what are all the things that you can do now that your partner didn't want you to do and reinvesting in those activities helps you discover yourself, your own identity and things like that. Another thing is, there's a concept about making meaning and I imagine you've read Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. Yeah, great book. Yeah. So a lot of the concepts in there are about the fact that it's not that time heals all wounds. It's that meaning heals all wounds, and how can you make meaning of something? So how can you sit there with your journal with your therapist with your friend and say, This is what I learned, this is what happened, here's what I'm going to do moving forward. And it's in that moment of saying, I'm going to do this next time, or I'm gonna incorporate this into it, that you feel that you've grown, that you create a narrative that this was an okay thing that happened, it wasn't a waste, it was a learning opportunity. And in that making, meaning you feel empowered to move forward and do you know, find a better relationship the next time. Ali Abdaal 2:03:09 So quickfire Question number one, what advice would you give to your younger self? Logan Ury 2:03:15 I would say to my younger self, find places where you feel like you belong, because you will be at your happiest and most confident, when you feel like you Ali Abdaal 2:03:26 have when you feel like you belong, who has had the biggest influence on your career. Logan Ury 2:03:29 The person who's had the biggest influence in my career is Dan Ariely. I talked about his book predictably irrational, not only did the opportunity to work with him at Google, allow me to write my book, which is applying behavioural science to dating but he just really changed my entire perspective on how to live. So for example, Dan is extremely into mentorship. If he meets a college student who has a question about the way the world works, Dan will go out of his way to respond to that email, send them a voice note, engage. Anytime I've asked Dan for help. He goes above and beyond he just his true nature is to be extremely generous and think I am lucky, I have a lot of opportunities. How can I help other people do that? Another thing that Dan does is he lives experimentally. So he might say, Okay, I want to eat healthy, I'm going to make a rule that I don't eat bread, how does that impact my life? Okay, I'm going to make a rule that I go running every day. So he's constantly thinking about how he wants to live, how he wants to show up in the world, and running experiments. And so that's really impacted the way that I live because things like moving into a commune was not on my bucket list. It was not on my husband's bucket list, but I'm willing to give things a try and see how they sit with me. Because I understand that we don't necessarily always know what stimuli will make us happy and so it's worthwhile to test that Ali Abdaal 2:04:53 sick. Yeah, he said he's only a great guy. I think I'd read a few kind of blog posts summaries of predictably irrational by To read the book and then email him for an interview, that'll be fun. What is what is one tip for someone looking for success? Logan Ury 2:05:07 One tip for somebody looking for success is to lean into your strength, I think people spent a long time trying to become well rounded. And I have found that that doesn't necessarily work. So for me, I'm not particularly quantitative, it takes me a longer time to do data analysis to understand a graph, something like that, right? That's just not necessarily like my strength, but I have some really spiky things around pattern recognition, communication, persuasion, making people feel comfortable. And so I mentioned before that I met my now husband, because he was teaching me this coding language are, well, you know what I didn't learn AR, but I did get a husband out of it. And so I don't spend my days trying to get better at the things I'm bad at. I try to get I spend my days trying to become best in class at the things that I'm really good at. And then I supplement the things I'm bad at by paying people or asking friends, or crowdsourcing and so lean into your genius zone. Ali Abdaal 2:06:06 Awesome. What is the first, what does the first and last hour of your day look like? Logan Ury 2:06:13 I wish I were more disciplined with how I spend my time, I'm working extremely hard. And I do feel like I am firing on all cylinders, but I could be a little bit more discipline. So the first hour of my day, unfortunately, is probably doing some scrolling, checking some messages, sort of looking at the inbox, I wish that weren't the case. Then I listened to the New York Times podcast, the daily, I make coffee. And then because I live on the west coast, but I work for hinge which is east coast, I'm basically jumping into work right away. I do know that I am an extreme morning person. And I'm most creative, basically anytime before noon. So I try to carve off a few hours in the morning to do what I call creator work. So writing, brainstorming, generating ideas dealing with messages that I've been avoiding. But you know, sometimes things can get in that way. But yeah, and then in terms of the last hour of my day, probably talking to my husband and then reading nonsense articles on my phone until I fall asleep. But Ali Abdaal 2:07:14 what material item under around about $100 Could you not live without, Logan Ury 2:07:20 I have a portable phone charger that I've been carrying around for a long time. And I know it sounds silly, and I should probably be less addicted to my phone. But there's just something about having this portable phone charger with five charges on it where I'm like, I can leave for the day and go on adventures and do everything I want to do and know that I can charge my phone and I never want to be that person who's you know, going into a Starbucks and trying to find a cord and, and doing this and that. So yes, I really love my portable phone charger. Ali Abdaal 2:07:47 Nice. What is a book that you would recommend to anyone other than your own? Logan Ury 2:07:52 There's a wonderful book called far from the tree by Andrew Solomon. And when my husband and I first started dating, I came up with this idea of a soul abyss. And a syllabus was a syllabus of books that help somebody understand your soul. So we each gave each other a few books to have the other person read. And one of mine was far from the tree. So far from the tree is about 12 chapters, each about an extraordinary childhood. Have you read it? Ali Abdaal 2:08:21 Or? No, I've just bought it on Kindle. So I'll start reading it. Okay, great. Logan Ury 2:08:25 So basically one chapter is, you know, children who are deaf. Another one is children who are the result of rape. Another one is children who are criminals, children, who are prodigies children who have schizophrenia, children who have autism, and they're basically exploring what is childhood like for them? What is the experience of being a parent, and it's really about understanding sort of extraordinary ways of, you know, having children. And I think it just creates so much empathy for the fact that there's a lot of different ways of being. And in the book, Andrew Solomon talks about this idea where, imagine that you think you're going on holiday to France, and you get on the plane and you think you're going to France and it lands and they say Welcome to Holland. Holland is a perfectly great country that somebody would be lucky to visit, but it's not what you expected. But you have to embrace Holland. And so with everything that happened with my husband, sometimes we would turn to each other and say Welcome to Holland. And it means this is where you are, this is the reality, make the most of it. Ali Abdaal 2:09:29 That's really cool. I will I'll check the bucket if you lost everything. So let's say you get cancelled, you lose a job book get boycotted everywhere. What would you do? Career wise and life wise? Logan Ury 2:09:43 This is a fear of mine. I mean, I think, existing in the public space who's saying things off the cuff, who does a lot of interviews, like I worry about this all the time, and I do feel like there's, you know, probably 20% of my brain that's monitoring what I'm saying and trying to be media savvy. I would say definitely on my mind, I think if this were to happen, I would just really invest in my friendships and relationships. And I would say, my life in the public persona, my life in the public sphere is over, or it's going to be over for a while. But what actually matters is things like mental health, physical health, spending time in nature, helping people. And so even if I were cancelled, that doesn't mean that I can't help people with their love lives, it doesn't mean that I can't come up with interesting theories and frameworks. And so I would say, it's a fear of mine. And I hope it doesn't happen. But I do think it would be a helpful opportunity to really go deep with myself and the people that matter most to me. Ali Abdaal 2:10:43 First, that's really good that this is something that I think about in the shower as well, like, what am I doing? Logan Ury 2:10:48 What do you think? What do you what's your answer to that? Ali Abdaal 2:10:52 I, I kind of think that I would, again, not do the public thing, but and I'd figure out a way, you know, also the whole friends and family thing, they're probably they probably understand and still be friends with me, I'd probably figure out a way of building some sort of Internet content type business that was anonymous or pseudonymous. So there's a bunch of interesting YouTube channels that explore really cool topics, but you don't know who's behind them, because it's just a voiceover. So I'd be able to kind of exercise my love of like reading, writing and teaching just not with my name plastered over the internet. That's, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. What what quote, or mantra do you live by? Logan Ury 2:11:35 So before we talked about Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and he has this quote, between stimulus and response, there's a space in that space is our power to choose our response in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So for me, this is something I think about all the time is how can I actually take that gap between something happen, something happening and respond instead of reacting. And so I am a sensitive person, certain things that happened to me I can get really upset or frustrated, or anxious or enraged, or whatever. And so I really try to create that gap for myself where I say, Hmm, my mom gave my sister this purse that she's had for years that I really would have wanted, and I feel left out and I feel mad at my mom, and I want to send my mom an angry text about it. You know what, my mom didn't mean anything by it, my sister probably asked, and my mom didn't know and it was no big deal. I'm going to sleep on it, I'm going to take space. And so I really have been trying to become a person who responds rather than react. And Viktor Frankl who's a hero of mine and a hero of many people has helped me understand the power of taking that beat taking that space. Ali Abdaal 2:12:48 Fantastic. And final question, journey or destination. Journey. Nice. Everyone says, I love it. Logan Ury 2:12:56 Okay, how about this, I used to be really into adventure. And I used to spend a lot of time travelling and going to different places and trying to work from different countries. And then I realised it's so much more about the people that you're with. So my answer, which is not your question is community over adventure. Ali Abdaal 2:13:14 Nice. That's really good. Um, there was a this is there's this artist who does these, like really famous cartoons, where it's like, the one of the questions that he he writes, is that, you know, it's like a child asking a mentor, like an elephant or something. You know, is it what, what's more important, the journey or the destination? And the elephant replies the company? Logan Ury 2:13:40 Exactly, yeah, yeah, that's exactly how I feel great. I'm gonna remember that Ali Abdaal 2:13:46 fantastic place. Leave this Logan, thank you so much. Everyone, check out the book links in all the things. Anything else that you'd like to share with the audience before we before we part ways? Logan Ury 2:13:55 Absolutely. Yeah. So I have this quiz on my website, Logan yurei.com/quiz, where people can figure out their three dating tendencies. I also am starting to teach classes where people can learn alongside me and other people in a similar dating situations. All that's on my website. And then people can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Logan, Yuri. Ali Abdaal 2:14:17 Fantastic, Logan, thank you so much. This has been such a joy. I've learned so much. And the way that you're so open and honest about everything is just really, really inspiring. Thank you. Thank you so much. Logan Ury 2:14:25 Thank you for having me. I was looking forward to this and the definitely lived up to my expectations. Ali Abdaal 2:14:30 Fantastic. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform and do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that'd be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you don't already and I'll see you next time bye bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai