📚 10 Favorite Podcasts, Expectation Effect pt. 2, and more.

👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

• My 10 favorite podcasts of 2024.

• 10 Visuals that will inspire you to read more books in 2025.

• The 12 most popular podcasts of 2024 (according to you guys).

This week’s newsletter was made possible by Snipd.

I've recently started using Snipd as my default podcast player. It is an AI-powered app that helps you remember more from the podcasts you listen to.

It does that by automatically saving the best ideas you hear in podcasts, and letting you take notes on anything you want to remember simply by tapping your headphones.

You can also chat with episodes, see the best quotes, or browse all the books that were recommended on the podcast!

I reached out to the founder and he was kind enough to provide a special promo for you guys.

You can try Snipd FREE for 1 month here.

📚 Book Summary:

This week’s book is “The Expectation Effect” by David Robson.

I wrote about this book in a previous newsletter and people enjoyed it so much they asked for a part 2.

So, here are 3 more lessons from this fascinating psychology book:

📖

1) How To Stop Nocebo Effects

You’re probably familiar with placebo effects–a phenomenon where a person experiences improved health after receiving a fake treatment.

But there’s also a dark side to this called a nocebo effect–where a person experiences negative effects even if there is no actual medical intervention or treatment involved.

For example, in the previous newsletter, I told the story about Mr. A who decided to end his life by taking 29 pills of a new antidepressant.

He quickly regretted his decision and had his neighbor drive him to the hospital. But over the next 4 hours, his health continued to decline.

The doctors, however, couldn’t find any trace of toxins in his body. They then called the team from the clinical trial–who confirmed that Mr. A had never taken the active drug, but rather was given dummy pills.

After learning this information, Mr. A soon made a full recovery.

So here are a few tips to stop yourself from experiencing nocebo effects:

• Practice reframing side effects: If you are told there is a 10% chance of developing a negative side effect, reframe that and focus on the fact that 90% of patients had no side effects.

• If you do experience a side effect, try to ask whether it might be a sign of the drug’s healing action. Doing so will help neutralize your anxiety.

• Catch yourself if you find yourself “pain catastrophizing” or going into a negative spiral. Try to separate the actual pain from your negative thoughts and what you think will happen. Becoming aware of your rumination is the first step to stopping it.

📖

2) Lose Weight Faster With This One Trick

One Harvard study measured the health of hotel cleaners and split them randomly into two groups.

The first group was told that their daily work was a form of exercise and that it was actually burning a lot of calories.

Changing bed sheets for 15 minutes burned 40 calories, vacuuming for 15 minutes burned 50 calories, and cleaning the bathrooms burned 60 calories.

The second group of cleaners wasn’t told any of this information.

A month later, the scientists revisited the cleaners and found that despite reporting no alterations to their diet or physical activity outside of work, the cleaners in the first group lost about 2 pounds each and their blood pressure had dropped to a healthier level.

Meanwhile, the cleaners in the other group who had not received this information showed no difference in weight or blood pressure.

So just by reframing daily activities as exercise, you can boost the benefits of daily activities and improve your health.

So if you go about your day and find yourself:

• Making the bed

• Walking the dog

• Playing with kids

• Mowing the lawn

• Washing the dishes

• Trimming the shrubs

• Vacuuming the house

• Cleaning the windows

• Going grocery shopping

• Walking to and from work

• Carrying and returning packages

All of those little activities add up.

And by shifting your mindset and thinking of them as exercise, you can become healthier and even lose weight faster.

📖

3) Get Better Grades With This One Tip

In the late 2000s, psychologist Jeremy Jamieson had a hypothesis that how we frame anxiety was more important than getting rid of it.

His interest in anxiety emerged from his experience as a student-athlete.

He noticed that his teammates who got pumped up and excited before a game often played better than those who felt nervous or anxious before the game.

So, he recruited 60 students who were planning to take the GRE (a standardized test often required to enter graduate school) and gave them a practice exam.

However, before taking the exam, he provided half of the students with the following message:

The result?

The average score of the control group was 706, while those who had read the message scored 770.

That’s an incredible 9% improvement just by taking a minute to reframe anxiety as a performance enhancer instead of a detractor.

✅ Actionable Advice

1) One of the best ways to prevent a nocebo effect is to focus on the positive side of things:

• Instead of saying there’s a 10% chance of a negative side effect, say there’s a 90% chance of zero side effects.

2) Recognize that the activities you perform outside of your regular workouts (vacuuming, laundry, carrying groceries, etc) all count as exercise, and you’ll gain additional health benefits from them.

3) The next time you’re about to take a test or have a big meeting, reframe your nervousness as excitement, and you’ll perform better.

💎 Weekly Gem:

Podcast: Morgan Housel Podcast

Morgan is the bestselling author of “The Psychology of Money” and “Same As Ever”, but he also has an amazing podcast.

Each episode is super short (10-30 minutes), but packed with timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness.

Here’s one of my favorite episodes from him.

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Thank you for your support,

-Alex W.