Our comfortable world hurts our health. Join us and fight back.
What is Two Percent?
Through writing my bestselling books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, I’ve discovered that our modern, comfortable world is not set up to make us healthy.
It leads to mental and physical stagnation and all the diseases that cut down our lives: mental health problems, heart disease, metabolic issues, certain cancers, and so much more.
Fighting back against our modern wasteland requires embracing a bit of discomfort. A willingness to take on short-term challenges that lead to long-term returns.
That’s what this Substack is about: Useful, practical tactics to improve your health, fitness, mindset, longevity, and more.
I began publishing Two Percent three times each week in the Spring of 2023. Since then, readers of this newsletter have:
Lost a collective thousands of extra pounds.
Covered untold miles on foot—walking, rucking, running, and hiking.
Vastly improved health markers and fitness metrics that are critical for living a longer (lifespan) and better (healthspan) life.
Made big shifts in their mindset, allowing them to do things they once believed they couldn’t.
Spent more time outside with friends and family doing epic activities that improve their “one wild and precious life.”
Taken on epic outdoor challenges that irrevocably changed them for the better.
Made business and life decisions that gave them a huge return.
And much more …
That’s the tense of living we’re after.
It’s easier for all of us to stay in that tense when we have constant reminders of what that tense is, where we find it, and how we stay in it and milk it for all it’s worth.
So that’s what the Two Percent newsletter does. We publish three stories and accompanying audio versions of those stories each week. The goal is to:
Remind us what that tense of living is by covering breaking and time-tested information on health, performance, and mindset.
Show us the most efficient way to find that tense of living by making that information actionable no matter who you are.
Stay in that tense of living through community and a regular publishing schedule.
Our community is powerful. We’ve built the top Substack publication in the Health and Wellness category.
What Makes Two Percent Different
Two Percent offers the most practical, accurate, and useful health, performance, and mindset information online.
It’s a useful middle ground between dumbed down health clickbait from major media organizations and the impractical, soul-sucking protocols you hear on four-hour health podcasts.
We only offer the highest-impact information—tactics that works for real people in the real world. That is to say, you.
Our information comes from groundbreaking new science, but it also views topics from multiple lenses and leverages wisdom from real conversations with experts and cultures across disciplines. We’ve traveled over 100,000 miles around to get the information we release.
Our information is human. It accounts for tradeoffs and different perspectives and works for everyone—changing us all for the better.
Together we fight back against the downsides of our modern, comfortable world—and we get better for it.
Why Two Percent?
Living better starts with Two Percent. Our name comes from a study that changed my thinking about living well in the modern world.
2: That’s the percentage of people who take the stairs when they also have the option of taking an escalator.
The more I researched, the more I realized the figure applies far beyond the staircase. It turns out that only two percent of people will do the harder thing that has a greater long-term reward if there’s an easier option.
This applies to how we exercise, eat, work, create, and spend our time and attention.
Leveraging the Two Percent mindset, decades of research across fields shows, is the most powerful thing we can do for our performance, health, and wellbeing.
How to Join Two Percent
Since launching Two Percent in May of 2023, I’ve discovered just how powerful this project is.
Two Percent is a community—a community full of people who are smart, funny, kind, well-read, and dead set on betterment. We make each other think and live and experience life better.
Two Percent has helped people lose significant amounts of weight, overhaul their fitness, strengthen their mindset, and take on epic adventures that have changed them forever.
We offer three versions of this publication:
Free.
Paid Member.
Foundering Member.
I’ve heard from hundreds of Paid Members who tell me they are undoubtedly saving far more than Two Percent’s monthly cost.
Here’s what each subscription tier gets you:
Unpaid Subscription to Two Percent
A great but limited place to start
Full access to one of three+ Two Percent posts a week.
Full access to one of three+ Two Percent podcasts a week.
Access to the last three weeks of free posts.
Paid Member of Two Percent
Life-enhancing information that saves you far more time and money than its cost
Every Two Percent post and access to the full archive of Two Percent posts (three posts each week—all the good info, all the time).
Podcast/audio versions of every Two Percent post (great for people who like to consume information while driving, rucking, exercising, cooking, cleaning, etc).
Answers to your personal questions (killer Q&A posts … AMA).
Exclusive access to our HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE series (the most essential information for living better and longer today).
Free workouts (I use these to prepare for different adventures and live better).
Free, easy, and effective nutrition and health approaches (the no-BS stuff that actually works).
Access to the comments section (where connections and brilliant ideas spring to life).
Cost: $6.87/month or $68.70/year
(Again: You’ll save more time and money in the long run than the cost.)
Founding Member of Two Percent
For those who are all-in on living well
Everything in the “Paid” subscription above
Free Two Percent Hat (the perfect workout hat … $35 value)
Free access to the SUPERMEDIUM training program and any other e-materials I release ($209+ value)
Answers to your pressing questions (Your AMA questions go to the top, or I answer them personally)
Cost: $247/year
About Me:
I’m a New York Times Bestselling author, journalist, and professor who wrote the books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain.
My work explores how we can leverage modern science and evolutionary wisdom to perform better and live healthier and more meaningful lives.
I’ve been researching, writing about, and going to the ends of the earth to understand these topics for two decades. I’ve embedded myself in war zones, remote reaches of the Arctic, outposts in the Bolivian jungle, cutting edge labs around the world, and more. I’ve interviewed experts ranging from Nobelists to the world’s best athletes. I’ve pored over tens of thousands of studies and books.
My goal is and always has been to find the best practical ideas and advice you can leverage to improve your life today and for years to come.
My ideas have been adopted by NASA, NFL and MLB teams, US Special Forces units, Fortune-500 companies, top tier universities, multi-platinum-selling musicians, and millions of people worldwide.
I’ve talked about my ideas on places like the Good Morning America, CBS Saturday Morning News, The New York Times, NPR, Fox News Primetime, MSNBC, and some of the world’s biggest podcasts, like The Joe Rogan Experience.
One of my books is even, I was told by an inmate at Rikers Island, “the most popular book in prison.” Oddly enough, the same book is also a favorite of some of the largest church groups in the US.
This publication allows me to release the most fascinating, powerful, and actionable information and ideas I find. In real time.
I live on the edge of the desert with my wife and two dogs, Stockton and Conway. I love all dogs.
