¶ Intro / Opening
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Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have some ambitious plan for meaningful or productive things that you want to accomplish. But then your phone enters the scene, and the next thing you know, the day is over, lost in a blur of digital slop. So I've been interested recently in a potentially powerful strategy for pushing back on this distraction monster.
Becoming a more disciplined person. All right. Now let me be more specific about my hypothesis here. Here's what I think is true. If you can cultivate a standout, disciplined pursuit in your life, something hard that you can come back to again and again. Then this specific discipline will rewire your brain in a general way so that resisting distractions becomes massively easier. Now, this idea is super compelling to me.
But is it accurate? And if it is, how do you actually maximize your chances of succeeding with putting it into practice? Well, these seem like the perfect questions to ask. in a Monday advice episode of this show. So that is what we're gonna do today. Now here's my plan to help me find answers. I'm gonna be joined by my good friend and friend of the show, Brad Stolberg. Brad has an excellent chapter
in his most recent New York Times best selling book, The Way of Excellence, that talks exactly about cultivating discipline in this way. So I'm gonna have Brad on the show. I'm gonna ask him three things that I want his help with. One How do you choose the right type of disciplined pursuit? Two, how do you stick with it in a way that is going to be sustainable and turn you more generally into a disciplined person? And three, what benefit should you expect?
from putting this plan to become more disciplined into action. Now this third point is clear. Uh I mean is critical. Uh when I went into this conversation with Brad, I was thinking the real benefit I care about doing something hard is being less distractable. But Brad convinced me that the real rewards actually go much deeper than just less distractability. All right, so if you're tired of your attention being hijacked by your devices and want more meaningful days, then this episode is for you.
¶ Do I Need More Discipline? (w/ Brad Stulberg)
As always, I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world. And we'll get started right after the music.
🎵 Music
All right, Brad, uh, welcome back to the show. Um, last time you were here, your book, The Way of Excellence, was just about to come out. Since then it has come out and was a New York Times bestseller. So I'll pass on my congratulations about that.
Thanks. Top of the mountain is uh it's it's narrow. Not a lot of time up there, but it was fun. It was a good night. I didn't get a
Times best selling author.
I I didn't get a sash.
Um well I'm not surprised. Uh, you know, it's a great book. Um, and we're gonna pull from a different part of the book today because I think it's relevant to what we talk about here on the show. In particular, you have a chapter in there that people really like about discipline. And we were chatting and we were making this connection between discipline as a
potential response or cure for one of the issues we talk a lot a lot on this show, which is that sense of distraction overcoming your life, su sucking the energy out of your life, making you feel like you uh I think your phrase is What is it? Restless exhaustion? That's right. Restless exhaustion. Um so this idea of disciplines being the cure is something I want to get into. Um
So we're gonna get into the ideas from that chapter. We're gonna get into like a nuts and bolts advice for how to actually use discipline as a cure for distraction. But let's start I wanna start with your story um because I think discipline has played a really interesting role. um in your life. So I want to sort of rewind back. You're leaving high school as an athlete, heading off to college. Talk about the role of sort of disciplined physical activity in your in your early life.
Well, growing up I I played sports. I played basketball and football at a pretty high level and uh it was good enough to play at maybe small division one schools or or most division two, division three schools.
said basketball and football.
Football was the sport that I was gonna go play in college.
What was your position?
played slot receiver, tight end and then uh outside linebacker.
Oh interesting. Okay. So you're you were fast and kinda tall. Yes.
And um I'm still kind of tall. I'm not as fast. But uh so I I I ended up deciding to go to University of Michigan for a a whole number of reasons that we don't have to get into. I was not good enough to play football at University of Michigan. So this thing that gave my life a ton of structure. um in discipline went away. And then in in college, I dabbled in endurance sports. I started running. I was generally active
But I never had like a pursuit that I was trying to get good at that really required discipline. I call it a hobby. Yeah. And then after college I got more and more into running and then
What did you do after college? So what's the professional context now?
And as a McKinsey recruiter said, that we recruit smart, insecure people that don't know what they want to do, they make great consultants.
this I found it recently that I had written a humor column in college and the whole premise of the c the column I found this recently was Uh no one actually knew what a consultant did. Yet it seemed to be what everyone was like interviewing to go do. And the whole column, the whole premise was like one of us is going to figure out one day like what this job actually means. But they're great at recruiting from elite schools. Like just trust us. All you need to know.
It's hard. And you get a high five and a gold star if you get the job. And we're like, well, sign me up, buddy. I'm into it.
Yeah, so I I went to do that, um and I got more and more into running and I don't think that this was coincidental. Because as a consultant, whether or not you do a good job is very subjective. Right. You've got the opinion of the partner that you're working for, you've got the opinion of clients.
Generally, the things that you're recommending and the studies that you're working on can be multi-year transformations. So you don't get an objective, concrete sense of I put in work and here was the result. Which is the total opposite of running. In running, you train, especially if you're new, and you either get faster or you don't. So I caught the running bug, I got hooked on running, I completely transformed my body to become more of a runner. So
You you had all the the mass and muscles of being like a
Two hundred five I was two hundred five pounds uh when I graduated high school and in throughout some of college. And then as I got into running, I got down to a hundred sixty pounds. Yeah. Um so it was it was I got pretty serious about it and I got pretty good. I was never great.
Um What distances are we talking?
I started with half marathons, then I ran marathons, then I did half Ironmans, and then eventually I did an Iron Man trathlon. My goal was to qualify for Kona, which is the world championships, and I came up just short.
Ah, okay. With like rich roll.
Yes, exactly.
Exercise.
Um but I was always uh there's so there's two things about that. The first is I was always fighting against my body. Uh my genetics are clearly those of a football player. There's a reason that I didn't run cross country in high school and I played football. It's because I was better at football. So I was I was getting injured. I was top heavy.
Your your your podcast co host and our common friend Steve Magnus, that's the build of a runner. Correct. You see this guy like, Oh, I get it. You're a long distance runner. Yeah. You see you and I, you don't think prefontaine.
Exactly. Well said. So I was fighting against my body and then also um i as I got older I was fighting against my life. Because the amount of time it took to get better at long course triathlon, and forget the fact that I was always injured, so now I gotta do physical therapy and all this other stuff, but just the training. Once you're pretty good to get better, it requires a ton of training, 15, 20 hours a week.
And uh I realized that that that didn't fit my life. And and then when we had our first child when I was thirty, it became very clear that I was not gonna be able to pursue trying to be a world class writer. at the same time that I wanted to be a really good father and a husband and also continue to get better at triathlon.
So then I entered uh kind of like the dark night of my athletic soul. Yeah. Where I decided that I'm not gonna be an endurance athlete anymore. This had always been a huge part of my life. Now I've got uh a baby at home. Uh I'm still relatively early in my career, right, at age 30. Um, and this thing that had been this anchor in my life was just suddenly gone.
Yeah. What did you feel What did you feel when that disciplined pursuit was gone? How does that subjectively uh show up in like how you actually feel day to day? Like what what was the differences that later on you went look back or like, oh, this is what changed when that left my life?
I felt more frenetic. I felt more distracted. Um, I felt less settled and less situated both in myself and in the world. Even though again, I'm a writer, I'm not an athlete. Running should have nothing to do with writing, swimming, biking, nothing to do with writing.
Um, but that that anchor and that disciplined pursuit in my day, what I later learned about myself and I think applies more broadly is it had all these carryover effects to other elements of my life. Um that that that then that became a huge vacuum.
What about stress and anxiety? Like something I recognize, like when I was in graduate school, I was doing graduate school stuff and writing books. And one of like the hidden advantages I realized about that is that um it gave me if something was going poorly, I could Focus on the other thing and still feel good and like there's momentum. If I was struggling with my academic research.
I could be like, okay, you know what? I'm just putting in the time there, but what I'm gonna daydream about and get excited about is my books. Or if the books were doing poorly, I might be like, No, no, I'm like doing well um in the research. So I I mean, was it serving? Do you think like your athletic pursuits was serving as a sort of
Counterbalance to the other stuff that was going on professionally in your life that gave you a way to sort of even out the ups and downs, the anxieties, the stresses. And did it change when that went away?
Great point, a hundred percent is the answer. Uh it was like another room in my identity house. So if the only room in your professional identity house is is writer and then you've got a family room, we don't really make concrete progress in family.
But in writing, like if shit hits the fan, if I'm lost, if I'm stuck, if I have a piece that flops or or worse, a book that doesn't do as well as I thought, you could feel a real sense of like stagnation. Yeah. And then it's nice to be able to double down as an athlete and say, Well, I'm getting better. I I still get mastery.
So essentially if it feels we know that it feels really good to be making progress and to be on a path of mastery. And if you have more than one area of your life where you can do that, you diversify your mastery portfolio.
And then what about the physical piece in terms of like burning energy, the energy you have or don't have? How did that change for you when you didn't have I mean, it must have been when you're training that much. I mean, you're talking about like hundreds and hundreds of calories of uh athletic endeavor most days. So that's also probably just your physiology felt different.
I I'd say that it felt different. I still remained really active. Like I'd take walks, you know, when you have a baby, it's very easy to put them in the the ergo carrier and you're constantly walking while they're sleeping. Um I I I think that there was less of that because toward the end of my career as an endurance athlete, I I felt like I was fighting against my body um to continue to try to stay that size and get better so much that it became like cognitively very draining. Yeah.
So part of it was diet, part of it was just constant exercise.
Kind of exercise and always being injured. Yeah. Um in in in in that that ultimately became the thing. Like I it just you know, in my height, five eleven. Being 165 pounds actually makes you a fairly heavy endurance athlete. For me, I felt like I was always starving myself. I was never eating enough just to get to 170 pounds. So I you're looking at me now. This is how my body wants to be. It didn't want to be that.
Yeah, I used to I'm I'm six two and used to row at one sixty five and it's it's brutal. It's brutal. Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of uh cutting weight to went into that. Yeah, and injuries too, right? Because people with our builds if we run too much it things go. Like we're not our knees can't handle it. I can't whatever. Okay. So here's what here's where we now get relevant um for the existing audience. I'm very interested then in so you stop that your career's going good places
You have kids.
You're not doing the endurance athletes. At some point, you make a like very deliberate decision of like, I need non-instrumental discipline back in my life, but I need to be strategic about how I do that. So what's the story that leads you to the thing you're doing now? as a source of I'm I'm looking at moving suspense in the audience. They don't know they don't know what it's gonna be. It's uh spoiler alert, it's crocheting. Uh.
Crochet. No, but I did get an abonsai, um, which is kind of close to crochet.
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Alright so so CEO, my son is born and I remember that I I just needed something physically active. I mentioned I did a lot of walking, but I need something physically active. So we at the time we lived in Oakland, we lived right across from the YMCA. So I started going to the gym and just throwing around weights. And um the only time I ever trained in the weight room was always very instrumental. I trained to be good at football. Like I never trained to train, I trained to be good at football.
And then in the weight room it felt great. I felt like I was back in high school. Like it it my body just immediately responds to this kind of training. It's it's clear that, you know, we talk a lot about nurture your nature. Yeah. My nature is built for that sort of thing. So I started getting pretty good at it. I started getting stronger. I started putting on muscle. And I realized that which never occurred to me back then that I could actually.
train in the weight room without football. Like training could be an end in and of itself. Strength training could be an end in and of itself.
Like just wanting to have gains on what you're able to lift, for example.
Yeah, picking a couple lifts and saying, This is what I currently do. I'm gonna work on the skill, I'm gonna show up consistently and I'm gonna get stronger.
So what did this look like in the Oakland days? You would just how long, how many days a week? It was just hey, I have a little bit of downtime, hey Caitlin, I'm gonna run across the street.
Yeah, just feel good. That was I'd say that was the first the first year or the first at least nine months of this. Uh it was a hobby. Yeah. I'm just gonna I'm gonna go throw around some weights. And I knew enough from football. I'm gonna do two days a week lower body, two days a week upper body, but not not a lot of thoughtfulness went into it.
And and then once Theo got a little bit older, he starts sleeping a little bit better, I have a little bit more time and cognitive bandwidth, I say, you know, I'd actually like to have a goal here.
Yeah.
Um and that's when I discovered powerlifting.
And how did you discover it?
I didn't even know powerlifting was a sport. There were some guys at the YMCA and they're always doing squat, bench press, deadlift.
Is that what it is, by the way? Maybe you should clarify this for the audience. When you hear powerlifting is like what happens in a powerlifting competition.
In a powerlifting meet you have three movements you have the squat And then you have the bench press, and then you have the deadlift. There's also something called a push-pull meet, which is what I ended up doing, which is just the deadlift and the bench press. And a push-pull meet, the benefit of this is it takes half a day instead of a whole day.
Thank you.
Yeah, I don't love squatting. I still squat because you have to squat to deadlift strong, but I don't like something about having six hundred pounds in my back and uh that's a little scary.
And deadlift is literally the the weight is on the ground and you just you pick it up, you stand up and it's at your waist.
You lock yeah, the the the point of a deadlift is it's at a dead stop on the ground and you need to lock it out to your waist. It is by far my favorite movement. It is a whole body movement. Uh it's kind of the the the pinnacle of of total strength. Yeah.
Yeah, okay. And that's that's the one is that the one where people can if you just look at raw weight numbers for like weightlifting things, that's the thing where the numbers are the highest. That's like the because you're doing the the least Motion with it.
Uh some people squat more than they deadlift, some people deadlift more than they squat. Uh but yeah, the you can get a pretty big number on your deadlift.
All right, so here you are. You're in Oakland. You're you're done with McKenzie and working for Kaiser at this point, or you're doing the coaching, or what's what's uh
Yeah, so I I've I've taken a job at an internal consulting group within Kaiser, which is a big healthcare system. and I'm still fifty percent Kaiser. So I'm getting health benefits through Kaiser. I had a really great boss and now my writing career is starting to look good. So I'm fifty percent writer and I'm slowly realizing that uh Kaiser is not gonna pay me at twenty percent. I think I just need to be a writer.
Yeah. If you want to do more riding, you're thinking you're making that move. So that's the time when you start taking the powerlifting more seriously. You s you you met some guys at the gym that were doing it. You learned about it. Now you had a number that you're gonna try to increase. All right. So then how did it develop into what role it plays for you today.
I I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the the very concrete objective progress. where you put in work and you either get better or not. Uh I fell in love with how it makes me feel. So like the feeling of putting yourself through a hard workout in an undistracted way, uh, became an enormous anchor in my day.
And I fell in love with the gains because when you get serious about something and and we should talk about this, like you actually you do get better every single day for a a time and that feels really good. Um, and then uh about six and a half years ago, my family decided that as a part of just going all in on writing, we're gonna move to Asheville from from Northern California.
And I'd already written the book Peak Performance with Steve. Um, I was becoming kind of known as is an is an expert on performance. And there's all this BS out there when it comes to training.
And I found a gym in Asheville and I I remember looking when we decided we're gonna move to Asheville. I wonder what the training scene's like and there was this gym that just seemed phenomenal. Like they really knew what they were doing. So even before I moved to Asheville, I reached out to the gym, I got a coach. And we said, All right, we're gonna try to get your deadlift and bench press and squat as strong as possible.
Sisak at this place?
Exactly.
This is our common.
Common coach, I hope Kel up with Zack. That's why Kel's looking so strong.
Between Brad and I, we average uh actually the average would I was gonna say we average on the deadlift would be a very embarrassing number. I'd say we between the two of us we can max out.
Combined that is probably quite good.
Yes, our combined deadlift is what's your deadlift?
Uh five thirty.
Our combined deadlift is over six hundred pounds.
There you go. I'd love to get to 600. Um, so yeah, so I start training, I I start getting coached by Zach, and at this point, um It uh powerlifting I'm an athlete again. So weightlifting and powerlifting shifts from a hobby and something I do to a part of my identity. And I don't say I'm a power lifter, but I'm I'm an athlete again. And what that means for me is not that I'm gonna win medals because I'm not.
But you do compete.
Well I I did I I've done a few competitions.
Yeah, but that's something, right? That that changes something, right? Yeah.
I think so but I think it's more just saying that that I care about this. I'm gonna set a goal and I'm gonna hold myself accountable to it. And um this is no longer just something that I do. This is something that I do deliberately, with intention, and with with a kind of discipline. A discipline to show up, a discipline to be consistent, a discipline to care. Um, that to me is the shift from I lift weights to I am an athlete.
Okay. So then before we get into how uh our my audience can think about having a discipline anchored their life. I want to sort of more fully explore what comes out of this, right? So like a common objection would be, um, but Brad, that takes up a lot of time, which you could be
hustling even more. Like that could be time that you could be maybe you could write books faster, or that's, you know, time you could be bit building more social posts, or you could be doing whatever. So how do you understand the balance of time required by a non-instrumental disciplined pursuit and the the benefits you get. Like what would your life be like if you if you took this completely out of your life and just repurposed the the time you spend on this just for work?
Well remember, I'm coming from seventeen to twenty hours a week training as an endurance athlete to in the gym. I'm in the gym four days a week, uh for maybe an hour and a half at most two hours a day.
That's yeah, see the rest of us were like, that's a lot of time. So you're saying to you, you're like, Oh, I'm I'm basically barely training.
Yeah, my reference point was was much higher. Um, I could give you a nice buttoned up answer about how it's a no-brainer and powerlifting makes me better at everything else in my life, and I think there's a lot of truth, but you know that I call you once a month and I'm like, would I be a better author if I just stopped training so hard and all I did was take long walks? So like there's a real tension. Um, what I would say is it's a trade off.
And I I I've come to believe that, yeah, it does take time, it takes effort, it takes energy, but the benefit of having this disciplined pursuit in my life carries over everywhere else. Where one, it's a net benefit. Number two, I enjoy it and I get a kind of satisfaction out of it that I don't get anywhere else.
Um and number three, it it it gives me an area of life like you were saying earlier, where if I'm in a little bit of a rudder, I'm stagnating somewhere else, I can try to focus and make progress, uh make progress there.
Did you notice any differences like when you you had a a a surgery on your leg a few years ago, which I assume took you out of training for a little while? I was gonna ask if you noticed any differences in that period where you couldn't be training, but also you're in recovery, so it was it was not a
But I was st but I was still training and this is where Zach is a really good coach because like the benefit of training isn't just getting under a barbell, the benefit is the disciplined pursuit in your life. So we just designed all kinds of workouts that I could do with crutches. So it was a lot of upper body on the skierg, it was bench pressing, it was pull-ups, and then there was the rehab for for my leg.
Yeah. Okay. And then from the outside I see uh the powerlifting time you do, which to me is a lot of time. Uh it slows you It slows you down in a good way. So I want to run this theory by you, right? So it so it means when you're thinking about your professional pursuits, it puts a little bit of a governor on like the freneticism or speed with which you can move forward because it's like, well
the work is a part of my life. This is another part of my life. It it feels like it keeps you in this mindset of like what is my ideal lifestyle and moving forward. I think it's beneficial. I think Without that governor, if you just had a lot of time and you wanted to fill that time with everything has to be filled for my writing career, I mean
you could have like a killer TikTok channel on which you use dance to sell supplements or something like that. Right. Like I mean, I it I see from the outside, but I want to get your take on that, the sort of pacing it instills on your professional life, like slow and steady. I'm working on this idea. It becomes a book, I'm working on that idea, is like actually from a slow productivity standpoint better.
I think we're practicing what we preach, even though sometimes it can be hard. I think if my goal was pure growth, and if I define growth is book sales, people who subscribe to my Instagram and Substack, then this would not be a good part of my life. Like it would be detracting from growth. However, my goal is not growth. My goal is to do good work and to live uh a life of excellence and a deep life, to use both of our terms. And insofar that that's my goal, having this governor
is really helpful one hundred percent. It prevents against obsession and burnout. And even though the the volume and the velocity of my writing work isn't as high because of this, I think the quality is higher. Because even though it is quote unquote stressful to train that hard, it's a different kind of stress than the cognitive stress of writing. So it gives my brain a chance to rest. And it gives me cool shit to write about. Like the the the weight room is a a microcosm for life.
You face fears, you're vulnerable, you make progress, you get you have to show resiliency, you have to overcome setbacks, you're doing it with other people. You don't feel like doing it all the time. Like these are these are all things that that lead to excellence in anything.
Yeah. Okay. So then let's let's make this a general strategy then for people ri large. So generalizing beyond like the particular thing you do. So how do we actually generalize this discipline habit. So what what what are we looking for? If I'm an individual that says I want to have a discipline anchor so that all these benefits that Brad has, I have this sort of it it evens out my life. It gives me perspective. It's it it
um, uh prevents one part of my life from spiraling out of control. It it it it my anxiety goes down. My the various benefits. What are we looking at if I'm just listening to this show right now? What am I looking at to try to do?
The first thing that I would say is you should find a pursuit that you can do at the level you want to do it that fits into the rest of your life. So what I mean by that is if I wanted to keep training in triathlon. I don't have 20 hours. All of it's going to happen is I'm going to stress myself out because I'm going to feel like I'm never training close to my potential. Yeah. It's taking away time from these other things. So like what's the point here?
So you have to right size what you're doing. So for me, mastery and getting better and trying to be the best is really important. To be my best, I should say, is really important. I know that in in weightlifting Could I train more than eight hours a week? Of course, but the returns would be so diminishing that I actually feel like training eight hours a week hard is about like the max that I can do.
And I can still be a really present father. I can still coach my son's baseball and basketball team, my daughter's soccer team. I can still write really well. So it has to fit. your life. I think a huge trap is people get really inspired and they're like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna train for a marathon or um, you know, the triathlon or I'm gonna start a a coffee shop.
And then you realize that that's a twenty hour a week project and I don't have those hours and then it just causes more stress. Yeah.
Okay. So you need a realistic target. What should you be looking for in the actual activity? That it should be challenging, there's growth, and it's not Directly connected to what, like your compensation for your job. What what's the properties we're looking at for what makes a pursuit a good Discipline anchor.
I'm gonna make it really simple and then we can elaborate. Meaningful struggle.
So it has to have struggle. And and and we okay so we've talked about this before. So what What makes a struggle meaningful? I think people, not to reuse the word, struggle with that concept, right? Because like why is weightlifting meaningful, right? It's not it because people think, oh, that means what I I need to be lifting.
Or or doing it for charity.
Or doing it for charity or something. So what do you mean by meaningful here?
You are doing it because the qualities that you are learning from doing it, you feel. are making you either a better person or better at other parts of your life. If I was just powerlifting because I wanted big muscles and I wanted to be able to talk about how much I deadlifted, that would be very empty. That would not be meaningful.
I am doing it because I feel that through the struggle and through the challenge, it actually helps shape me and helped shape my character into the kind of person that I want to be.
I've heard this about men before. Um, like if you if you talk to like I have a friend who's like a jujitsu black belt, or you talk to people who are like professional fighters, they'll they'll often tell you, like, hey, for men, um, there's this other nice thing that happens is that it it target it it uh aims and burns off and uses your testosterone and your aggression in a way that they be they're like pretty they become really nice guys. Like the nicest guys you're gonna meet is gonna be
uh like a a jujitsu black belt or whatever because they've sort of burnt off that aggression. They're not twitchy and anxious and like flying off the handle or whatever. So there's probably another thing there is like it helps you show up as a dad. And show up as a husband better perhaps because like you probably have a lot of
testosterone energy, et cetera. And it needs somewhere to go. Um if it otherwise you're you could be a little bit do you do you buy that? I've heard that from fighters a lot. It's like fighters are nice.
I I think fighters are nice, but I don't think that's necessarily the reason. All right, listen, we're all on a bell curve. So I don't know my natural testosterone. I've never had it measured. I don't know if it's high, low, somewhere in between Um, for some people that's probably true. I think what's actually going on though is a little bit more nuanced and to me more interesting, which is that if you train for fighting and you do it really hard, it softens you.
Because you realize how freaking hard it is to step into the arena and try to kick someone else's ass or to get your ass kicked. Yeah. And that makes you a softer person. I think the people that go around all machismo and are assholes, part of the reason is they've actually never done anything meaningfully hard in their life. I think when you do something that's meaningfully hard, it softens you and makes you kinder. It's like this paradox of becoming a humble badass.
It's funny if you if you ever hear like Joe Rogan on his podcast talk about fighting'cause he was a kickboxer and a fighter for a long time. He hates it so much and he's so obsessed with like I don't think you realize how easy it is to injure your head. Like he's just terrified by all fights. Like he's you could fall and hit your head, like you could die, you get brain damage or whatever. So it's funny. Yeah, the more someone fights, you're right, the more like fighting's terrible.
Yeah, well I think doing I think doing something really hard and with integrity makes you a more compassionate person. I truly believe that because you see how freaking hard it is to give something you're all and to try to get better and to fail along the way and then you get kinder.
And you're probably not as tuned in in every conversation about like I need to prove myself. I need to like make sure that people know that like I'm an impressive person and then you're kind of bragging.
It's a quiet it's a quiet discipline. In the book I talk about the difference between um like performative discipline and real discipline. And performative discipline is you're pounding your chest, you're giving a hype speech, you require a parade to tell everyone how disciplined you are.
That's not discipline. Discipline is showing up at the gym when no one else is watching and doing the workout and then going home and not needing to tell everyone about it and showing up for your family or your job or whatever whatever else you have to do. Like that's actual discipline. Yeah.
Like how I always thought about writing, like when I started, was I was like, okay, uh step one, write for 10 years. Step two, put your head up and say, hey. Can I do something interesting yet? It's just like the long, sort of unromantic, it's not a slog, but it's time consuming.
I think back to the initial premise about discipline versus distraction, I think if you actually commit to something like that, it simplifies life. in like the best of ways, because you're not so worried about the constant velocity and freneticism in the latest trend. You just have your thing and you go do it. So what's so great about powerlifting is you've got all these bros talking about optimizing this and supplements and protocols and new ways to train. And it's like
No, like I'm just gonna show up at the gym and work these lifts and do it with a good coach and a good community of people, and I don't have to pay attention to any of that. Yeah. And in in the it's that is so freeing to not have to pay attention to any of that. It's like it's it's calming.
So going back then to the the first point, choose something that actually fits within your life. How do we navigate the tension between, okay, maybe very little fits in my life right now. And actually what I need to do is actually free up some more time, like make some sacrifices versus this would require
too many sacrifices, right? So so I assume in s some people's lives, like actually you should give some things up. Yes. So that you can have a disciplined pursuit. But also if it's I need to train twenty hours a week. That's giving up too much. So how do we what's that tension between you should sacrifice on behalf of your disciplined pursuit, but it it shouldn't be unrealistic sacrifice? Is that the right way to think about it?
That is the right way to think about it. Um and and and I think that it's obviously going to differ based on an individual circumstances. There are some people, I want to couch this, that probably truly don't have an hour a day for a discipline pursuit. If you are in medical residency or in a fellowship as a transplant surgeon, if you just had twins.
Um, if you are somebody that is uh working two jobs just to pay rent and and make ends meet, then you probably don't have an hour in your day. And this just might not be the advice for you at this season of life.
However, if you don't fall into one of those small categories, I think a lot of people think they don't have an hour a day. Yeah. But if you were to um take social media off your phone, Or if you were to not be so neurotic about studying that, you know, 11th hour and say that 10's probably enough and maybe the 11th hour actually has a negative return, then you would get that hour back a day.
So I think part of discipline is actually making it the hour. Now there's a big difference between an hour and three hours, but I think most people can find an hour a day or an hour five days a week. And I think that most crafts, if you actually show up with with deep focus for that hour, you can get pretty dang good. Yeah.
And we're talking, and just to be clear, this is not physical is one category. Doesn't have to be physical, right? So it could be it could be an intellectual.
Watercolor, woodwork, um get into gardening, bonsai trees. Um you you joked about crocheting, but like quilting. Um make art, make music, learn, learn guitar. Like the the physical stuff, sure. If you're a dude that played football and maybe your testosterone hypothesis, like it has these um these other kind of benefits. But I really just think like I'm inclined
for power sports. Some people are inclined to grow orchids. Great, grow an orchid. Like it doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that you care about it, you show up with deliberate intention. It's a long game that you're playing and you realize that to get really good, this isn't like I'm gonna do thirty days at thirty minutes a day and then be great. This is like I'm gonna do this for thirty months and maybe thirty years.
All right, so let's get into the traps then. So we were talking about this a little bit offline. We were able to come up with a f several ideas
you were telling me of these are the things that trip people up after they commit to what you just said. After like, you know what, you're right. I want a discipline pursuit and anchor. It's gonna anchor out my life. I'm gonna be less like distracted and restless. It's gonna I'm gonna f it's gonna fit into my life. I'll sacrifice not too much. All the things we talked about. All right, so we have some traps, right? What's the what's the first one that's gonna trip a lot of people up?
I think the first trap is the hobby trap.
Okay.
Which is that you're you're doing it and you like it. But it's just kind of a hobby. And there's not that intentionality. Maybe there's not a goal associated with it. And there's nothing wrong. I think most things start this way. This is how my my pursuit of really powerlifting and strength training seriously began.
But you can also get stuck in that hobby phase. And I think the challenge with that is then things always come up. And when things come up, you just don't do it because that's just a hobby.
So it's a hobby if you're not what? If you don't have a particular difficult goal you're working towards, you're just sort of like putting aside time and doing it.
Yeah, I think it's a hobby if you if it's it's it's a little bit about the goal that you're working towards, but I also think about it's where it fits into your life. So I think a hobby you have a much easier time not showing up for or letting go. I think a disciplined practice. Part of what makes it a disciplined practice is that you actually say, No, this is important to me. I'm gonna do it and even if that means letting other things go.
If you're like I try to get to the gym three days a week because exercise is good for me and I it's it's I like lifting weights or whatever, that's very different than these three times a week, I'm meeting a trainer at the gym because we're trying to get my deadlift. up by twenty percent. So you have like set times you have to be there, set goals you're you're moving towards, not just I try to put aside time for this on a regular basis.
Yeah, I I I I often think about it like there's exercise, there's training, and then there's training hard. Okay. Exercise is what you first described. Training is when you're like, no, I'm training. Like this matters and I'm gonna do it and it's gonna be important to me. And then training hard's a whole other thing.
Um and then all right, so what is is training hard do we need to get there or is that
I don't think we need to get there. I think if you get there, you'll get there. Yeah. And that's probably true in any pursuit. Training hard goes from, you know, now it's this discipline practice to uh I I I used to think that there was easy, medium, and hard.
And this is true in anything. And now I realize that there's easy, medium in ten different gradations of hard. There's nine, nine point one, nine point two, nine point three, nine point four, and all those have a different feel. And when you talk to anyone that's on the path of mastery. They they they feel this in their own craft too.
Alright, so we have the first trap is the hobby trap where I do it when I can. It's fun, but it's not set schedule towards set goals. All right. What else do we have to worry about?
about. But but just to be clear, most most disciplined pursuits start as hobbies. Yeah. So it's actually good to have hobbies, but at a certain point, if you really like it but you're still feeling kind of distracted and frantic frenetic, you might want to take that hobby and turn it into a discipline practice.
Is what you're looking for is like, Hey, I have this thing I like to do in my life and maybe you're looking for, Oh, I don't like it when I miss it or I'm always happier when I'm doing it. Like that's the that's the measure of like, Oh, this is something that I might turn into a more disciplined scene.
Yeah, yeah. Or or I'm a better person when I do it. So maybe I don't even enjoy doing like I shouldn't say I don't enjoy doing it, but like th training every day is still like hard. Like I don't wake up stoked to train, but once I've trained, I'm like, Whoo, I'm glad I did it. It makes me better.
Okay. All right. So let's move on. Then what's another trap do we have to worry about?
Alright, the other trap is one of my favorite. It's the one percent better everyday trap. Yeah. So this term was popularized, I believe, by James Clare in his book Atomic Habits. And it is a great mindset. And I completely agree with James on this. So get one percent better every day means consistency over intensity, which I literally have a chapter about in my book. So I agree. And it means that you don't have to hit home runs.
You don't have to be a hero. You don't have to train till you puke. You just need to show up and get a little bit better every day. And as a mindset, I could not agree more. The problem is when you are new to something and you have that mindset, you actually do get 1% better every day.
Yeah.
And that is a really strong gratifying source of motivation. Now what happens, and this happens in every single pursuit, and it's generally after anywhere from nine months to two years. You stop getting one percent better every day. And you have these plateaus.
In the honeymoon phase of progress is over, and if the only thing that was bringing you back to the gym or back to the garden or back to the studio was the fact that you were making concrete progress, observable progress, then you're gonna quit.
And so many people quit once they stop getting one percent better every day. So the way that I've come to think about it is one percent better every day works for the first nine months to two years of a discipline pursuit, but then you kinda have to get rid of that altogether.
Interesting. But then why I mean just from an athletic training perspective, just to like put on that type of uh lens, what's the goal when you get to that plateau period, why do you keep like what would happen? Why do you keep training? Is the idea like eventually Now it's just slower gains or you're gonna lose gains or now you have to start finding like much more. Like what happens if you're like you're an athlete, what happens when you hit that plateau? What are you trying to do?
things happen. The actual reward is that you showed up and did the work work out. It's purely intrinsic.
Why?
Exerted discipline.
But why do you need to show up and do the work? Like if I'm just an athlete, because otherwise you're gonna start losing.
Oh yeah. Well one you're gonna start losing. Two, it's uh it's a part of your life. Yeah. Three, you train at that point not just to put more weight on the bar or to to make the table, you know, more elegant or or to grow the orchid more beautiful. You do it because it's like this process of like discovery about the craft and self discovery and curiosity. Um, I think that that's how I like to think of it is that
the motivation has to shift from one percent better every day to curiosity. Yeah. And and you see this in in in in there's this great quote from Kobe Bryant. And whatever you think about his off court life where he had all kinds of struggles on the court, he's one of the best players to ever play basketball.
And before his tragic death he was asked, Are you the kind of player that plays not to lose, or are you the kind of player that plays to win? And Kobe Bryant said, I'm neither. I play to figure things out, I play to learn something.
So you're still looking for progress, but it's
Different. Different. It's felt. It's not as observable.
Um like in power give me an example if you're
I'll give you a green example. Well forget my own lifting. Let's talk about uh an actual world class power lifter. Um Lane Norton, who I spent a lot of time talking to for the book, he uh is the the world champion deadlifter for his weight and age category. And Lane Norton, it took him eight years to move his deadlift from 716 pounds to 723 pounds.
And can I just say for the record, combined, Lane Norton and I can combine deadlift over seven hundred fifty pounds.
So L Lane Lane got less than one percent better every year.
Wait, so say it again. Seven years.
Eight years to gain seven pounds. Yeah. So what kept Lane going back, it's exactly what I said. He's just like this this is a part of my life. Exerting the muscle of discipline and showing up, that is the reward. The work itself is the reward.
Bye.
Endlessly curious, if I make this little tweak that would be imperceptible to anyone but me. Like this could be instead of having half a percent of weight on my pinky toe when I'm pushing the floor at the start of a lift, I'm gonna put three quarters of a percent of my weight on my pinky toe.
Like what would that feel like? What am I gonna get out of this? So you're running all these little experiments, and it's the little experiments in the feedback loops that you're getting from those experiments that are every bit is addictive is adding weight to the box.
So it becomes a more nuanced side type of progress. And it might be like the same metric that you were getting better at automatically by just training. Now you have to do a lot more thinking creativity to make it better. But it could be other things as well, like, okay, actually, um
I can make my training sessions much better or something like this, right? Like, oh, it's it's less injury prone or less exhausting if I'm smarter about how I do it. Uh like so if you're learning guitar, for example, there's probably a period where you're just
I am getting better at guitar every week and I can play more songs or whatever. And then at some point you get to a place where you've mastered all those techniques and now you might just be like, Hey, there's like a particular picking technique.
And if I could really master this, it's a little subtle, but it'll allow me to do like this little thing or something. That might take six months, but you gotta learn to make that be just as exciting as it was when you were six months into guitar playing and you're like, oh, I can play the F chord really well now, which like opened up a bunch of songs.
Yes, and that endless curiosity becomes like the ultimate uh fuel for motivation. And you can have this professionally too. One of my best friends is um a a really well trained and fine uh emergency medicine doctor. And he talks about how now he's not chasing better outcomes. What he's chasing is like the feel of a better, like he calls it being more efficient, but efficient isn't even spending less time with a patient.
Efficient is quickly sizing up what the patient's real problem is, getting to a diagnosis and doing in a way that like feels really good. Yeah. But the the the outcome on the quality board at the hospital is gonna be the same. Yeah. Um but if he doesn't have that feel, then he could very easily get bored on this plateau. But instead it becomes much more intrinsic, much more curiosity driven.
I mean, this is just mastery, right? So like mastery goes through phases and when you get to these like the levels you actually call mastery, you have like a huge acquired body of knowledge and technique and skill, and now you're kind of perfecting its application.
Yes. And I think that that is one of the most like it's for me that is one of the most motivating things about mastering in any craft is when you start to combine thinking and feeling. And sometimes you think your way to the right answer, sometimes you feel your way to the right answer. And it goes from being cerebral to like a nervous system thing. My sense is even you with writing and you are and I say even you because you are so skilled.
But you are you are so intellectual and cerebral. My guess is that oftentimes when you have a great turn of phrase, you know it in your body before you know it in your mind.
Oh yeah, and I do exactly what you're talking about with writing. Like writing for me now, especially when I'm doing like journalism, especially like New Yorker stuff, which is like really refined. is I'm constantly now thinking about that like little tweak, trying something I hadn't been able to do before, doing something a little bit more interesting with the rhythm or the structure of the article. I'm gonna go A, B
C than A B A and like can I make that structure work? Like trying to pull a thread through and it becomes the really small things. But when we are when you're first writing it's the really big things. Like I I still remember the first book I wrote. the manuscript I got back from my my uh my original editor, Anne Campbell. Shout out to Anne. And this is back when they would copy edit things with pencils or whatever. She's like, this is really good. Um
you don't use any contractions anywhere. You should use more contractions. I think it's a little bit unnatural that you always say do not and cannot. And I just in my mind was like, that's not formal. That that's not sufficiently formal writing or whatever. So like early on, Man, there's big gains. It was they were like, Don't start every sentence with the word so
And use contractions, right? Like huge gains. And now I'm kind of in the weeds of uh uh can I pull this thread and weave it around this one in this way, which I saw like such and such writer do. I wonder if I can pull that off. And no one would even No one notices, but like for me, it's pretty exciting.
That's it. And you never get that in a hobby. So like if we if we do this linearly, you go from a hobby to a disciplined practice. And then you get those one percent better hell, fifty percent better, you know, twenty percent better, five percent better. And then eventually you can't be addicted to the observable gains. And then you start to feel these other more intrinsic curiosity driven gains. Um and that's your motivation and your fuel to come back.
All right, are we missing any other traps or do we get'em all?
I think there's I think there's one other trap. Well there's two. There's the eyes bigger than your stomach trap, which we kinda already talked about, which is Uh I'm gonna go from running a five K to an ultra marathon even though I've got a stressful job, three kids at home and there's no trails near my house. Yeah. Like you're just it's you're gonna burn yourself out. It's never gonna last.
I think I have an example like that in the new manuscript I'm working on. Um where it was a someone who wanted the to surf, right? And that living in San Diego, which is like people surf there. And the idea was she was like, um, I did it. This seems like really meaningful to me, right? But the reality was you don't live particularly close to the ocean, right? Um surfing's really hard.
It's really hard to pick up like later in life. Like you really have to be doing it all the time. You don't have the ability to do it all the time. It's actually those those lineups are also kind of stressful because all the locals are there. This just doesn't make sense, even though on paper you're like, wouldn't that be great if I was a surfer? And then I think in that example, um
What ended up happening was she realized and this is actually hypothetical, but I was like making a point in the book. that like, well, you know what? There's like a group of people who ride they like mountain bike. We do have trails right near me. And they kind of that we go on rides and I sort of can go on rides with them over time. And then they do we do trips every once in a while.
And like it was much more tractable. And it still got to the same place of like I wanna be outside in nature doing something physical. But the first idea, it just didn't make sense. It would just take way more time than you had, way more skill than you could build. So so I guess that's the part of the eyes are bigger than the stomach. Just because you want something to be true doesn't mean that that's like the right pursuit for you. Yeah.
It's gotta fit your lifestyle and you might have to make some changes, right? Like it's a struggle, but the changes can't be drastic. You can't um I mean, I guess you could unhave kids. That's called leaving your kids, but we're not recommending that. That's not that's not the deep life or excellence.
No, it's your next book. Drop the dead weight. A plan for the yeah.
Deadlift more. Yeah, no, we're not going to do that. Um, all right. The last trap that that we haven't touched on at all is what I call the uh the optimization trap. Which is when you think that discipline means rote optimization. So controlling everything that you eat. um staying up on all the latest protocols and hacks and fads. And what ends up happening is you're chasing all of these bright and shiny objects, but so often this is just like performance art. Masquerading is is actual progress.
where you'd be better off to ignore ninety nine point nine nine percent of that stuff. In discipline means focusing on the main things. You know, in pr in performance talk we say don't major in the minors. Keep the main things the main things. So if you want to get good at deadlifting, you gotta deadlift a lot of weight. Um sure, do you have to eat enough and sleep? Yes.
But optimizing your nutrition, optimizing your sleep, optimizing your breathing, you could spend all of your time and energy worried about that and not deadlift any more pounds than you were, because what actually matters for a deadlift is showing up at the gym three to four days a week and training hard.
And this probably comes partially from we see this focus on like pseudo productivity in the world of work increasingly. So it's just the mindset you have where you're like, oh, the key is in this new pursuit I want to do, because I've learned this from like knowledge work.
Is like always be doing things, like new ideas, trying things, lots of action. I have all these tips. I'm doing it. I'm checking this off. I'm taping over my mouth. I'm putting my face in cold water. Like I'm doing all these different things because in the world visible activity is sort of roughly associated with usefulness. But in the world of disciplined pursuits, there is no boss to say, wow, you really answer those proverbial emails fast. You must be productive. The boss is
The weight.
Yep. And it doesn't really care that you taped up your mouth or whatever it is or took alpha quick or something like that. It's how many times have you lifted me and is your like is your muscles wired in a way to lift this now? It's just moving weight.
Yep. It takes a lot of discipline to get in there and move the weight. And it also takes discipline not to have every bright and shiny object distract you. And it's not to say there's not a time and a place for like innovation in in tweaking your technique. But I think that a time and a place means maybe once a year you try something a little bit new. It doesn't mean that every single time such and such fitness longevity influencer releases a new podcast, you totally change your approach.
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That's a$72 value, yours free, only while supplies last. Go to drinkag1.com. That's drinkag and the number one dot com slash deep. All right, let's get back. to the show. I have this term for this sometimes that's relevant, what I call checklist productivity, which there is a a real attraction to um making progress on something by doing a bunch of steps that if you look at any individual step, like you know for sure you'll be able to do it. Like nothing is
Nothing is just like do this for a year, uh, put yourself out there. It's like, no, I learned this information and I can do all these things. Set an alarm, take this supplement, you know, uh make sure I get this much sunlight, like everything on that list. is doable and you're like, I'm gonna get a sense of progress out of like checking a lot of things off of that list. And and almost always checklist productivity for like almost anything that's hard and valuable.
Doesn't really do much. Right. And so, like, I don't know the world of fitness optimization as well as you do, because you and your podcast like talk about it. a lot. But I was thinking about it. Like, you know what? I I do see this a lot, like in the writing world. There's a lot of checklist productivity for people that want to be in writers. So like I really want to focus on optimizing my substack. I really want to focus on like
Using AI to build a custom idea management system that helps me more quickly make connections between different concepts. I really want to focus on the workflow I use for having like the right social channels that stuff. And that's all stuff that nothing in there is like competitive or requires long scale acquisition. And that is a lot more satisfying.
then you gotta put pin to a blank page and push past that stage where your mind wants to resist and build the best thing possible and then have someone tell you later what's bad about it and then get 1% better the next time until that stops happening and then you have to get more creative. So I I get it now.
That just clicked for you, I can tell. And then you're you're a hundred percent right.'Cause it is a lot easier. to do checklist productivity. Like anyone can optimize themselves to death and burn themselves out by trying to micromanage and control every single part of their day. What's actually a lot harder is identifying what really matters. showing up, doing what really matters, committing to it, doing it for over a year, doing it through plateaus.
and coming back again and again. And and that's what's actually gonna not only make you better, but that's what leads to satisfaction. There's some fascinating research um that that has recently been published that shows that Perfectionism, which is very close to like row optimization, it actually leads to uh decreased performance, not increased performance. So it's not even neutral. It makes you worse. And the researchers say there's two mechanisms for this. The first is it's exhausting.
Because once you open up Pandora's box to optimization, your checklist can grow to infinity. Yeah. And the second is that it's kind of lonely. Because it's all about what can I do. So now I have to write this certain way. Well, I can't go to the coffee shop to write, or I can't have a glass of wine with my my significant other because that's not a part of my optimal diet plan. And it just contracts your life more and more and more.
Um in and we know that when we're tired and lonely we don't perform well.
All right, so let's go back to benefits then because this brings me to another benefit. I really want to try to hammer this home. I because I want people to understand like what we're what we're selling here basically. Does Because it seems to me when you have real a real disciplined pursuit in your life and doing all the things the way you talked about it.
A lot of that optimization stuff that you might have elsewhere in life, that desire goes down because that desire of like I have all of these like very careful rules and checklists, it's all just trying to scratch the itch of like I'm efficacious.
Deserting agency.
exerting agency, look, look, I'm able to like do voluntary things that are hard or whatever, but they're i they're fake hard things that aren't really lean you much. But if you have an actual thing you're doing, like, no, no, I'm I've been working really hard on this.
Then you don't really feel that urge anymore of, like, oh, I better have like 17, you know, my aura ring to make sure that my steps are done and just the right sunlight hours or whatever. You're like, I'm already scratching that itch. of being efficacious and agency. Um, so I'm just gonna have the glass of wine with my wife because, you know, I'm happy and I had a hard day.
That's it, a hundred percent. I couldn't say better myself. Like that that is a huge value of of a disciplined pursuit. Like it is grounding. It helps you immediately uh uh uh not waste time on all the exhausting distractions, it's focusing And you get to exert agency in an increasingly chaotic world which has its own intrinsic benefits.
Do you think this helps with technology? So to go back to our original premise, like a lot of my listeners feel like they're losing more of their life. to um screens in a way that's like not adding. It makes them stressed and it if it numbs them, but in a way that like you feel worse about it afterwards. Does it help? Like, do you think the fact that like you are getting after something like this on a regular basis makes the allure of the numbing or these other things less appealing?
I don't know. is the honest answer. I can tell you that the hour to an hour and a half that I'm training, I'm not looking at my phone. So at the very least, you're building an hour, an additional hour into your day. of a non-alienated pursuit where you can get really close to the craft that you're working on and that in and of itself is valuable. Whether or not I would use my phone more the rest of the day if I didn't train.
I I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, maybe insofar as like I'm doing something real. And that's another value. Yeah. Like everything on the phone is like digital, it's ephemeral, it's quasi-real or pseudo-real. It's real on the internet. But it is not as real as picking up a weight because you're either going to make the lift or you're not. The the the orchid that you're growing, you're either going to get the flower or you're not.
uh the table that you're making, it's either gonna stand or not. In the garden, like the that tree is either gonna die or it's not. Um that is something that is so real and maybe when you have the satisfaction of doing something that is that real Some of the like ephemeral internet pseudo reel, it it loses its edge because like you know it's not as good as is the actual thing.
What about your ambitions in other parts of life? Is this another benefit where if you have something like this going on? um outside your professional life. And now maybe like the the the move you and Caitlin made when you moved to Asheville and you sort of redesigned your life. Um do you have more confidence, more ambition if you're like, oh, I'm used to pursuing hard things, doing the work.
I believe in myself. I can make change happens. Now you have like a professional opportunity of like, I'm gonna leave this job. I'm gonna change this here. I'm gonna make some sort of significant like whatever leap. Does it open up more possibilities in other parts of your life?
I think so. I think it gives you I mean Matt Crawford has written so well about this, it gives you a sense of self reliance. um that that that is hard to come by, which is I can take on a challenge, I can start as not being very good, I can put in work that I can trace back to myself. I can get better. I can ride out plateaus. I can face my fears uh that I might fail. And I can keep showing up and doing it. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So then final question. I feel like I need a better discipline. You gotta help me here, Brad. I'm thinking about it because I writing is like my main career now, right? It's not it's not an aside. Um I have some things I do as hobbies. Maybe I should be turning one of those into a discipline anchor.
I mean I would love that. I I think you should try to deadlift more.
Yeah, you think it should be you think it should be weights.
Well, I don't know. I mean you're already doing it. It you're so you're already putting time into it. It is extremely um concrete. And your your training age, you're a good rower, but your training age for like true strength training is still very young, which just means that you actually will get those one percent gains for a while, which is fun at the start. Um so I think that that's a good option. I'm I
I'm curious what else. So I I recently started it's it's so funny, I uh my friends joke that I sort a YouTube channel that's all about deadlifting and bonsai trees. So I I've mentioned bonsai trees a few times. I recently got into bonsai. Right. And this might be Half eyes bigger than your stomach, half eyes not. The half eyes bigger than your stomach is I thought that I'd like go to the Bonsai Society monthly meetings and like help people repot their plants and like really get good at it.
And I just don't have time because turns out to get really good at bonsai takes a shit ton of time. But it's only half eyes bigger than your stomach because I've now had bonsai trees for a winter and they're all alive. They all came back to life. So like I'm doing enough. Um but that still is like hobby, not really discipline pursuit. And the reason is because I my discipline pursuit is strength training.
I have my craft and I have my family. There's not enough room in my life. Yeah. So I think you got to pick the one thing that you actually like really want to do if you're going to do this because your life is already pretty full.
Yeah. Yeah. Well our our common trainer has been uh because I told him I was like, okay, we need to add now. I need that some sort of goals because later I I want to be training for something I don't know what. Yeah. So we we just started adding you'll appreciate this what Zach calls indicators. Let's have a couple indicators.
PIs he calls them.
And like let's just have a few the just get better at. And really it's just about the exercise of all right, I had a sort of fitness goal and we did some specific training for a goal to get better. I to me that's just a mindset
shift. I now ultimately I don't know if it's going to be fitness will be in my discipline anchor. I want to have something I'm training for that involves being outside. I don't know exactly what it is, but I really like that idea. But I was like, let me just get used to like let's go after some indicators for like six months and just get better at'em.
just uh that's just like practice for like while I'm trying to figure out what to do. But I also have other interests like my super elaborate uh Halloween Animatronic displays. I just bought a bunch more equipment. So maybe that's where I need to make my graduation into disciplination.
I'll tell you what, you'll get more status that way. Nobody in Asheville cares what I deadlift, but there's a house on Vermont that is the best Halloween house, and everyone knows that house, and they talk about it all year long.
It does it it you're more known, but probably lowers your status as like a reasonable human being because you're the guy who's building really elaborate it it doesn't exactly make people be like, Hey, if we go to war, that's my leader.
Fair.
Yeah. All right. That's good. So I need to I need to think about this uh a little bit more hardly. But I've been convinced, right? Like reading your book, talking to you about this, like this is really important. I think it's important for my audience to think about this is like a really good buffer against almost all the issues I talk about, whether it's the overload and pseudo productivity in work.
Whether it's the addiction and digital diversion that's trying to numbing out your life outside of work, whether it's falling into rabbit holes of outrage and anxiety down, you know, on Twitter or something like Yeah.
You need the discipline. You know, it's it's it is it is a big part of why I wrote the book is like the pursuit of excellence is just this fundamental human need. And I think that people sometimes confuse an excellent result. or a standard that is set by a lineage and a craft and and has very objective measures. Like I am not an excellent power lifter by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm pursuing excellence. Yeah. And I can still get all the benefits of the pursuits
even if I'm never gonna win a gold medal. And, you know, perhaps the foremost benefit, I think there's a reason that people keep coming back to this chapter, is when you have a disciplined practice in your life. You feel grounded and it has all these spillover benefits. Um, and yes, you're sacrificing, but that's part of what allows the benefits. If you weren't sacrificing, then it wouldn't be as meaningful.
You don't take your b your mind doesn't take it seriously. Like that maybe that's like another like a little trap to throw in there. If there's not something you've had to say no to or a little bit of difficulty involved in what you're doing, it's not really a discipline, it's uh recreation.
Yeah, and you see this and not to like take this metaphor too far, we could talk about this topic forever, it's like dating. It's like the kind of nonchalant like I'm never gonna commit to anyone. Well, okay, but then like you're never gonna get the value of a committed relationship. And we often think about dating in relationships
In terms of people, but you can also have a relationship with a craft. Yeah. And in order to get intimate with one craft, you're gonna actually have to say no to some others. Yeah.
But th this makes us feel like you're doing bad things with weights.
Only you, Cal.
We need more of those hand sanitizer wipes.
Oh God, Cal, Cal, Cal. Didn't think we'd end up here.
I don't know.
Some weird things happen in my gym. I don't think it's me though.
Yeah, powerlifters have their own their own world. Let's uh let's get there. Um all right, this is this is great, Brad. I I really appreciate it. Okay, so um I mean everyone everyone knows you now. Like you're on you're on the show all the time, but the book is the way of excellence. Um check out our last episode we did as well about whether or not the internet is undermining ambition, which generated a lot of feedback, like people really interested as well. Check out the book and the podcast.
Excellence actually, which is like all about this stuff. It's it's Brad along with Steve Magnus um and Clay Skipper and they they get in all these type of issues. So always a always a pleasure to um have you here, Brad. Um let's go lift some weights.
Thanks, Cal.
All right, Jesse, there we go. That was My conversation With Brad Stolberg. Uh, you weren't around that day, so you missed out getting to say hi to Brad, but we could have we could have trained together. I know.
I know. I want him to give me deadlifting tips.
I was thinking here's how it would go down. He would try to one up you by deadlifting some crazy amount of weight and then you'd be like, Hey man, ten K on the rower, let's go and then you'd get the upper hand again.
I mean he can definitely deadlift a lot more than I can.
Yeah, but you can outlast'em on the erg. And when society crumbles and we're all being chased by the zombies, that ability to row to freedom, that's the one that's really gonna last. Uh but that was a good yo, hey, look, I am thinking about it. You have good you're good with this, Jesse. You have like hard things you work on, completely optional.
Do you find this sort of similar effect like in the like the training you do or the sports you play that being disciplined in those specific areas helps you in general in other areas of your life just feel, I don't know, more autonomous or in control or less distractible?
yeah for sure
Yeah. So I gotta do more of that. All right. When I come back I'm gonna be in Massive shape. I'll be swole and disciplined. Uh good discussion. Always happy to have Brad on the show. Um okay, so you've heard from me. Um now we want to hear from you, as is our tradition on these Monday advice episodes.
¶ Dealing with abundance of choice in media
After we tackle our main question, we open the show's inbox to get some more direct feedback from you, the listeners and watchers. Now remember, if you have a question or a case study or something you think I might find interesting, you can send it to us. at podcast at calnewport dot com. All right, Jesse, uh what do we got this week?
All right, our first message is from Kathleen. It isn't a question, but instead a suggestion for our audience.
All right, I like suggestions. We get some advice from an audience member here. Kathleen says I recently listened to Deep Questions episode three ninety four. In it you mentioned the struggle people have with the abundance of choice in media, and I wanted to share what my husband and I are doing this year to avoid that struggle. We call it monthly movie motif. We came up with 12 movie motifs or themes. Every month we choose one and watch three to five movies that fit the theme.
Our motifs include things like favorite book, westerns, and historical people. Last month was martial arts, or as my husband called it. Martial art. There's a note here that says uh we have since been divorced.
Okay. They must watch it in March.
Uh be weird otherwise. It'd be funny if it was like last month, uh as my now ex-husband called it, martial arts. Um, we brainstormed themed movies and then narrowed down by personal importance and availability. It's been fun seeking out movies that would not have been on my watch list otherwise. We don't feel overwhelmed by our options and we're less influenced by the algorithm.
I'm passing this along in case other people find it helpful. I appreciate what you do. Your books have improved my life greatly. That's a great idea. Um I do like any system when it comes to movies or books that gets you reading things that Isn't just at the top of your list is like, oh my God, I'm so excited to see this. I I call this Netflix syndrome. I think it really is an issue in the streaming era.
Where on demand you can get almost anything is that now you set your standards towards I don't want to watch something unless like I'm very excited about this very specific thing that's that's solving like exactly a entertainment craving I have right now. And then people get paralyzed because n Oh, I can't find something that fits that impossible criteria.
And with a library of entertainment that, you know, would have exploded the head of like a young Steven Spielberg, you can't find anything you want to watch. So having another thing That forces you to watch interesting things based on criteria beyond just like what is my favorite thing. I think it's a good idea. I did this with uh Ebert's, Roger Ebert.
It's a collection. It's like the hundred greatest movies. And it's a hundred of his uh long form reviews of like his hundred favorite movies. And I just started going through those and well, just wanted to check off as many as possible. I don't know, maybe like twenty, twenty-five. But it it does get I mean a lot of them I had seen before, but I I probably saw at least twenty movies I hadn't seen before. And y you watch stuff that you wouldn't otherwise watch. Like that's when I first watched.
uh, you know, Bonnie and Clyde. Critically important movie, but you might it might not otherwise be on your radar. Like that's when I watched uh five easy pieces. That's when I watched uh you know Fritz Lang's movie M. Uh you wouldn't otherwise Your algorithm, your personal algorithm of like what is the thing I want to watch most right now, wouldn't have selected them. But I remember those movies.
way more than the like, oh, this is the perfect show I can't wait to watch. Yeah. On a streaming service. But I think you could do this with books as well. Uh, trips, restaurants.
My wife and I did this during the pandemic, like right as the restaurant started opening again, and it's pretty easy to get reservations, we had this we're like, let's go to as many of the Michelin starred restaurants in Washington DC as possible. And again, it puts you to places that you might not have otherwise thought about when you're just like, hey, where do we want to go to dinner?
Isn't it kinda crazy that the Michelin name is after the tire and how they did that to promote stuff?
And that you have these.
Now it's like such a normal thing.
Yeah. And it's like these super snooty chefs that are, you know, injecting s essence of sea foam into bubbles of gelatin, trying to get the tire stars. We want the tire company's stars. Yeah, it's it's It's crazy. It'd be like I don't know, being at like the Met Gala where you have uh all of these, you know, fashion designers and the the the outrageous like outfits or whatever. And you're like, Well what I'm really hoping to do is to get like Two thumbs up from McDonald's.
¶ Using typewriters for first drafts
Yeah.
Like it's it's kinda random. I hope I can get in Jiffy Lube's book of great fashion. this year. But I guess you get used to things. Alright, what else do we got?
Ah our next message is a reaction to last week's interview with author Amy Timberlake.
Amy Turbelik's an award winning Chun's author who uses a a typewriter and we use that discussion to get in this idea of
Sometimes downgrading your technology actually upgrades your results. More friction, less options might not make you faster, but might make you better. All right. So Elliot wanted to share his own story of simpler technology. All right, Elliot said I had to stop listening to the podcast this morning when Cal started talking typewriters right off the bat so I could share my thoughts without being influenced by the discussion.
I'm an attorney. Yeah, he was worried by the way that he wanted to say something pro typewriter and he was worried as the interview goes on that Amy Timberlake would be like, My typewriter killed my husband. And that it would be really inappropriate for Elliot to be really pro typewriter. All right. Elliot goes on to say I'm an attorney handling mostly complex commercial litigation. For many years, I have been a mechanical typewriter hobbyist.
About ten years ago I started integrating typewriters into my workflow. In the AI addendum episodes, Cal has recently been talking about the importance of staring down a blank page and getting words on it from one's own brain. This is what I use a typewriter for.
As often as I can, I write a first draft of any brief or memo on my mechanical typewriter. I love that I'm away from any screens except my Remarkable, which has my research files organized on it. It helps me to focus my thoughts and power through the hard spots where it would be tempting on a computer to click over to something more distracting. I also find that as I retype the document into the computer, almost every sentence is improved. It is a built in step of revising and editing
In other words, I would encourage anyone who thinks and writes for a living to consider typing a typewriter trying a typewriter for first drafts. I recommend a nineteen fifty Smith Corona. They are ergonomic, easy to type on, and widely available. So I looked this up, Jesse. Yo vintage nineteen fifty Smith Coronis. It just a variety of prices.
And I'm imagining the cheaper side the cheaper side's like between one and two hundred dollars. Now I assume these are probably like non functional or barely functional. Because on the upper end for the same typewriters, it's more like$1,000 to like$1,300. So I bet, I don't know for sure, but I bet that gap is between like a refurbished typewriter that's gonna work and a vintage typewriter, but it might not actually type.
Amy, you said something about like replacing the pads. I don't know what that means. Um, it does look like people are manufacturing ribbons for those though. So you can still buy new ribbon uh for your old typewriter. Maybe we'll have to try this out.
Typewriters.
I like to use the remarkable as well. I still really like my remarkable.
I was gonna ask that, you still use it?
I use it. I like it. Yeah, they gave me a new one and then the newer one, the paper pro or something pro is really good. Yeah. I mean I really love the writing surface.
¶ Success with "information walkabout"
It has colors now. Um I'm a yeah, I'm a remarkable fan and I and I love the feel of the writing. I mean, it's kind of ridiculously expensive. But I like mine. All right. Do we have another message?
Yeah, we do. Our next message is from Andrew, who tells us about a success with what he calls an information walkabout.
That's interesting. All right, let's see what Andrew has to say here. At the beginning of twenty twenty five, I went on an information walkabout where I systematically extracted myself from compulsive phone usage. In the end, I got a light phone two.
A small E Inc dump phone. It does text and calls and that's it. I still have my old smartphone, which is like a household tablet now, kept in the attic office for indulgences. It remains completely necessary for certain digital tickets to live events. I also still have a work smartphone
which is mostly necessary for authentication of other work applications. My family teases me that I tried to get rid of my phone, and now I have three. They are a bit like Voldemort's horcruxes. I've divided the multitude of tasks usually present on a single device into three Weakening the pull of the digital world. I'm not sure if that metaphor completely tracks there, but okay. On top of this, I bought a desktop computer, so digital consumption is spatially confined to the attic office.
It has been a resounding success. I highly recommend it. The distribution of three phones in remote places in the house greatly reduces impulsive consumption. However, when they are around, old habits return, so you have to remain vigilant. All right, I like that story. Uh again, it goes to this idea we talked about in last week's episode, which is we don't we don't know what we mean when we say productivity.
The technology industry has convinced us that productivity has to do with speed, reduced friction, and options. I again I I I've argued this before. This is essentially the definition of what productivity means to a computer processor.
How quickly can it process through instructions? And how do you make sure that the the amount of different instructions that are available are as much as possible as you can get the most out of the processor? This doesn't translate well over to cognitive human activities. That's just the reality of it.
Our bottleneck on almost anything important we do is not friction in the moment. It's not having more options. It tends to be our cognitive context, actually getting our brain to cooperate doing something abstract. So we see things like this.
come up time and again. You look at a setup and say, well, that's more complicated. That's going to increase more friction. That is not giving you any capabilities you couldn't already just do by having one powerful phone. Why can't you just moderate the way you use that phone? But that is a uh cognitive blind way of thinking about productivity. Productivity while ignoring the reality of the human brain. And the bottleneck again is often can I muster
¶ What I've been doing
and sustain focus on the thing that's most important. And sometimes having more friction and less options is the way to actually open that bottleneck and get better work done. So I appreciate what was this Andrew? I appreciate that case study. All right. Before we go for today, uh, as I like to do at the end of Monday episodes is to check in briefly at how things are going here. With me and the Deep Work HQ. Jesse My Sabatical is looming. Semester ends in a couple weeks.
My number one project on the top of the queue for my sabbatical is finishing this upgrade of the HQ. So we got all the s I moved all the stuff here in boxes. So I think that's a good first step. Then there's just a small detail of actually opening the boxes and installing everything. This is my second.
Yeah, that first one was how many years ago?
Um well it would have been seven.
Every seven years.
Yeah.
I didn't realize I was ever.
Yeah, so they actually borrow the the sabbatical borrows the timing from the Bible. So this is from I don't know, Leviticus or Exodus. Um You in the academic setting it's typically six years of service earns a sabbatical. So after six years worth of so twelve semesters.
of teaching. Um, so it's to really you have to count the semesters because you might have leave in there for other things or like, you know, m maternity or paternity leave or whatever. So obviously that doesn't count, but it's like twelve semesters of working earns you a semester at Georgetown at least a semester sabbatical at full pay or a two semester sabbatical at half pay. And so I'm doing the two semester sabbatical at half pay so I can take off the full year.
But step number one, renovate the office. Step number two, I am working on a new book. Once I'm I'm almost done with the deep life edits, and then I'm going to switch right away into research for my next book. Which I'll talk about more later. Um I'm also uh bringing more of my technocriticism and digital theory uh into the academic realm as well. So I'm gonna be working on some in addition to like my normal public facing writing.
have some papers in the docket for various sort of academic or academic adjacent Uh venue. So a lot of thinking, a lot of writing.
Like the real technical stuff you're doing or more the
No um So not like my technical computer science, but my my digital criticism. So like the the um academic versions of some of the theories and ideas we might talk about like on the show or on the page of the New Yorker, I'm also gonna do some uh academic audience work.
¶ What I've been reading
as well. So a lot of thinking, a lot of writing. I'm really looking forward to it. And a lot of NBA jam.
Yeah.
jump in, play a game. We're gonna get good at that. I'm gonna master that game. All right. Uh what have I been reading? I finished Michael Pollins' new book about consciousness. Interesting. It's a hard topic. You know? Uh a lot of times in his books, he can really
himself get into what's going on. It's, you know, his last book. You really hear about his encounters with psychedelics, you know, Omnivore's Dilemma. He goes on these four different missions to try to understand a relationship to food.
Can't really do any of that with consciousness and it's a really complicated field. So I think it was a really good book. It was really hard to try to organize all these different thoughts. And I I really like his sort of pro human stance too. He's not very impressed by attempts at uh AI consciousness and
why people, engineers who think that they're getting consciousness in AI are far, far off the mark. So I really appreciate that as well. Um, but there's less for him to do personally. And the scientists weren't interesting. This this is really a problem, I think, with scientists. But he had to end up in that place where he visits a lot of scientists. Clearly the conversations weren't that quotable.
And they you do that thing where you make the scientists is uh in your writing into like sages. You're like, and as I left, he turned and said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like why statement or whatever. As opposed to like some books where like
The scientists have an interesting arc and story themselves, and you can kind of get into their lives and the complexity of what they're working on. Kind of like he got into the farmer Joel Salatin and Omnivore's Dilemma. Not really the case here. I think the scientists were like cardboard cutouts to deliver the research and then they he would just
It was always like as he walked away, with a wink, they said whatever, the sort of sage gnomic Yoda style treatment of the scientists, which was okay. But anyways, uh worth reading. I've been thinking a lot about AI consciousness, so I'm glad I read it.
Follow up from last week, did you read the Altman article?
Haven't read it yet. Yeah, all right. This is for people who don't know, this is Ronan Farrow's and Andrew Marent's uh long article. About Sam Altman, who I didn't realize. I listened to them on Ed Zitron's podcast. So Ed Zitron interviewed uh Ronan and Andrew. And what I didn't realize, because I haven't read it yet, is like Sam Altman cooperated. Like he did a lot of interviews with him. Wasn't a nice article though, right?
Um
Yeah maybe not, but I think that's a good thing. Uh, interest I'd be interested in your take once you read it. I mean, the one thing I he's really rich, huh?
I guess on paper.
'Cause he uh but I think he has like investments in a bunch of other stuff that he's done like from Y Combinator all over the years and he has like a twenty five million dollar car.
You can buy a twenty five million dollar car.
And he has like a two million dollar car.
I didn't know you could buy it. I I guess I could imagine a two million dollar car. Twenty five million dollar car. Is it it's basically just covered in diamonds?
I don't know. Yeah, I think I read it right, but it was like he had a two million dollar car and a twenty million dollar
car it's a Toyota Prius on which on the roof encased in plastic is a uh a minor work from Michelangelo. So that's why the car is worth twenty five million dollars. It's just a flex. Um so I guess the point of that article was really to try to get at what actually happened during that period where he got f kicked off, fired by the board, and then he came back. Like what were the because I guess I didn't realize that that was basically a mystery. Like there was very little
was said in public about why he was pushed out and like why he came back. So I guess that's that's really what they were trying to figure out.
Gave a lot of the history too with like Paul Graham and Y Combinator and what he did before and yeah that sort of thing. His first failed or I don't know if it was failed, but his first venture in like the social media company that he had before he like led Y Combinator and stuff.
It kinda s not that he stumbled into open AI, but it was like a non profit that his other rich tech friends were like putting money into, right? And he was like
Well he he and Elon were talking a lot in the beginning. Now I think they hate each other.
Hey, but it was like, Hey, l it wasn't considered I don't know, I get this sense that unlike the hard charging tech CEOs, this was like this isn't a for profit company originally. It's like, Oh, we should We're worried about AI, we're rationalists, we're on the West Coast, we're we're influenced by these type of thinkers. Let's like have this nonprofit that like Elon and other people are gonna put a lot of money into, like, oh Sam, you can you can run this thing, right? It wasn't
ca they weren't thinking of this as like this is gonna be a a hundred billion dollar business or whatever. If right. So it's not like in a lot of these stories, you get like the hard charging CEO who starts from scratch, this huge thing and is super ambitious and grows it really big. Where this was like, Oh, you could be in charge of this sleepy nonprofit and then they scale up GPT two and like, oh my God, look at what this thing can do. And they weren't ready for what happened after that.
Um, it talks about how in the beginning he recruited a bunch of employees due to the safety aspect, you know. Yeah. Even though they weren't gonna get paid as much as, you know, from Google and
Yeah, they laugh.
Other places.
Yeah. And then they got upset. Yeah. I mean Dario Amade was one of his employees.
Yeah, he's mentioned a lot.
Yeah.
And his wife.
All right. Well I'm gonna I I'm gonna read it. Um I'm trying to visit the New Yorker building coming up in a New York trip, so But if I run into Andrew or Ronin in the hallway, I need to have read the article, so All right, I'm on the I'll read on the train there. That'd be perfect. All right, well, that's all the time we have for today. Uh we have a AI reality check episode probably coming on Thursday, so stay tuned for that. And we'll be back with another Monday advice.
follows. As always.