Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Steven Kotler: Master Your Flow with The Art of the Impossible (#165)

Starting point is 00:00:01 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Get out as quickly as possible. All right. I appreciate you, Stephen Kotler, today's guest on the Into the Impossible podcast, appropriate because it's awesome. New book is The Art of the Impossible. We're going to talk about so many things in an impossibly short amount of time. Stephen, you're a Cleveland boy, just like me.

Starting point is 00:00:26 At least I went to college, a Case Western, where it was discovered that the universe, does not need an ether, a supporting medium to propagate lightwaves. And it was thought to be impossible for millennia for life to travel through a vacuum without some kind of underlying medium. What do you make of the fact that there are these paradigms that need to be overthrown in order for our perceptions of reality to be shaken towards a common good, that we have to break through and really do the impossible? And there's so much resistance to it, even though on the other side,

Starting point is 00:01:01 side lies truth, lies true reality. Why are humans so resistant to achieving the art of the impossible? So I don't know if I have to answer exactly to that question. That's a hard question. I want to back off on that. Here's what I can tell you, you know, 30 years of sitting those, this has been my beat as a journalist, as an author, as a peak performance research, for those moments in time on the impossible weekend possible. And after 30 years of doing work, two things seem overwhelmingly clear. One is that we're all capable of so much more than we know. Two, is that, and this is the key point, human capability is invisible. Even potential is invisible, especially to ourselves. And it's invisible to ourselves for a lot of like, you know, really clear,

Starting point is 00:01:53 well-understood reasons at this point. For example, potential is an emergent property. We only can find out what we're capable of by using our skills to the utmost again and again and again over long stretches of time. And human development happens in like fits and starts, right? It's like punctuated equilibrium. So we can have long plateaus where it doesn't feel like anything is going on and then sudden bursts, blah, blah. So that's part of the problem. Another portion of the problem is, this is not my research. Adam Grant's contributed to a bunch of other people that worked on it. but you don't know, we don't know what we're going to be good at and what we're going to like until after we've done it, not before. And to the point of if you, if I were to LeBron James and said, Braun, let's say LeBron has never played badman before, right?

Starting point is 00:02:45 I don't know if he has, but let's say he's never play badman before. I say, Bron, do you want to play badman? Do you think you'll be good at it? Do you think you'll like it? this is one of the greatest athletes on the planet currently, and the research says he won't know if he'll like another physical skill that's like adjacent to basketball or if he'll be any good at it until he tries it. Like we really don't know what we're capable of. On top of that, we have all kinds of built in time horizons in the brain and limitation horizons that actually shape perspective a bit.

Starting point is 00:03:19 So it's a complicated answer, but there's a lot of biology there. And, um, and, um, development is sort of stacked this way. This is a principle in science known as the Bannister effect. You have to believe the impossible as possible before it becomes possible, right? It's because of very tight correlations between physiology and psychology. So there's a lot, there's a whole lot of stuff underneath this because we could spend an hour out of it. Yeah. Actually, yeah, I was going to bring up the Bannister effect in the cosmic microwave background research that I do. There's this little beach ball behind me. It was discovered in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson. And then immediately after it was discovered, this heroic feat of detecting this radiation pattern,

Starting point is 00:03:58 454 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, immediately afterwards, people verified it, and it was thought to be impossible for literally decades before. And then all of a sudden, there's a slew of confirmations, detections, and that is crucial to the scientific method. What was thought to be impossible, what was impossible is then later has to be replicated. In other words, it has to be done eminently possible in order for science to be verified, right? For sure, that's true. I mean, I think that's true anywhere, right? You see it in athletics.

Starting point is 00:04:30 They talk a lot about in action sports where people are routinely, you know, doing things that not only like look physically impossible, if they go wrong, you're going to die, right? So there's you don't, you've got to do the impossible and you got to get it right because there's moral consequences for error. But they talk a lot about how the first person through the door has one challenge. everybody else they know it's you know it's not possible for example in park skiing right this is freestyle skiing somebody just through the very first quad that's four flips um nobody thought it was possible and you can literally like you talk to him before it and then the minute it happened another banister effect right suddenly 11 other people through quads in the next like three weeks this was a feat that we thought was might have been like defied the laws of physics impossible.

Starting point is 00:05:25 We didn't actually think you could quite do it kind of stuff. So we see it all over the place. Talk about the different people. We've had one of your collaborators and friends, Peter Diamandis on the show in a past episode about a year ago at the book you guys wrote together, one of the many books you guys have written together. And talk about the difference in the type of impossible feats that he and you speak about and that he has done and you have done.

Starting point is 00:05:48 And your friend, Leonard Hamilton. Is there a similarity? between those types of impossible? So let me sort of give you an overview of my career, my work with Peter in the frame of the impossible because it's easy. So I have written 14 books. If you ignore the novels, 12 of them,

Starting point is 00:06:09 six of them are on technology and six are on peak performance. Why is this the case? My core subject is what does it take to do the impossible, right? Those moments in time. And I've done this in every domain imaginable. Whenever you see the impossible become possible, you tend to see the same two things.

Starting point is 00:06:24 You see people learning to harness and leverage disruptive, accelerating technology, right? And you see people learning to extend human capability. When these things come together, you get the impossible. People forget Laird is credited with the Millennium Wave, revolutionizing surfing, showing us how 50-foot waves were possible. But people don't remember as much as the wave runner that allowed him to, toe into those waves, didn't show up until the late 80s. This was a brand new technology, right?

Starting point is 00:06:59 Shane McComkey, who I read a lot out of Rise as Superman, who's legendary as maybe the most pioneering action sport athlete in history, is a skier. And he did things that nobody thought was possible. But he also invented a new kind of fat ski that for the first time ever absorbed way more shock. And where did you get the materials out of developments in the aerospace industry, which crept into surfing via Southern California connections and then into skiing through the game up the coast into Tao. Right? This is like, this is just technological developments. And there were whiz-bang materials that could make skis that, you know, worked in a variety of conditions. And they revolutionized sport. We don't talk about that much that much.

Starting point is 00:07:40 I do in my book, RISE is a Superman that really looks at this question. But you see, so you got to, if you're really interested in solving this. problem, you need to harness both sides, I think. Talk about one of these things that we authors, and you've written so many more books than I have, but I know one thing, my publisher wouldn't let me touch the cover of the book, but I always judge books by their cover. I know most people say not to do that. But what else you have to judge a book by other than the cover and the title? I love the title, the art of the impossible. Talk about the cover. Talk about the subtitle, a peak performance primer.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Well, so I, unlike you, am a nutbag about my covers. So I demand, and since I started, like I demand, I've designed most of my covers, including that one. I worked very heavily with the designer, though the designer found that image, though it was an image that we actually created the Float Research Collective originally. The image and why it's important is simply this. peak human performance, what does that mean? What does peak performance mean? What is it, right? We talk about peak performance you need it for the impossible to achieve. What is peak performance? Peak performance is nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us. And what this book really is, is we've known about, it focuses on cognitive peak performance,

Starting point is 00:09:04 but we know about all the different elements. We've heard about focus or grit or motivation or mindfulness or flow. I've written some of these. books, right? But what has happened in the past four or five years that this book does that I don't think it's been done before is we now know, and this shouldn't be surprising, especially than you. It's a system. Our biology is a system. It's designed to work in a certain way, in a certain order. And if you get the order right, the way it's designed to work, obviously you go farther, faster with a lot less fuss, right? This is not surprising anybody, but it's new. And so that's what this book does. Those are the science behind it. There was a second half to your question.

Starting point is 00:09:44 peak performance farmer. This is, so the art impossible is this big, huge title with a big promise. And it's legit. This is literally lessons learned from people who have accomplished the impossible for all of us significantly level out of our game. And if we're not going after capital I impossible, that which has never been done, it's a how to for how to go after small I impossible, that which we believe is impossible for ourselves. That said, science has an anti-hypossible. hyperbole tradition. They have a tradition of understatement. And this is a neuroscience-based book. I studied the neurobiology of peak human performance. And I do this, you know, at the Flohr Research Collective, we work in conjunction with scientists at UCLA at Stanford at USC at Imperial College, London.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Our team is psychology, PhD, psychologist and PhD neuroscientists. And that's what we focus on. and in science, especially if you're going to have a great, big, grandiose thing that comes before the colon, you better have something like humble and downstated and quiet. Like I always, I tried, this was, so this was an argument by marriage for a really long time. I grew up in a tradition of action sports where people are literally doing crazy shit, so everything's understated. And science, where people are exploring possible shit, so everything's always understated.

Starting point is 00:11:06 And that's how we roll in these communities. So, like, my idea of a compliment is there's a famous story about Wolfgang Pauley. Einstein gives this famous lecture, right? And afterwards, everyone in the auditorium, this is in Switzerland, this is after he's won his Nobel, everybody's speechless. The entire room is speechless. And Wolfgang Pauly is 19 years old. Erient is all get out.

Starting point is 00:11:31 And he pops to his feet and goes, you know, what Mr. Einstein said, it's not so stupid. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose Google Fi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now, that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore Google Fi Wireless plans today.

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Starting point is 00:12:38 And so for me, the height of a compliment is, oh, that's not so stupid, right? Because Wolfgang Pauley said it. And I discovered in marriage that if you don't know who Wolfgang Polly is, your wife will get very upset if you say things like, oh, that idea, it's not so stupid. When you mean, oh, that's freaking genius. But in this case, yeah, in this case, the peak performance, because it is a pre-performance private, that's what it is. It's a blueprint.

Starting point is 00:13:04 It's a how-to book. And it uses the neurobiology peak human performance to outline, hey, there are four categories of skill sets you need to perform at your best. If you're interested in Bosco, you're capitalized, small eye, or you just like you want to be a little more productive and work on Monday and maybe for your kids to be a little less annoying. The biology is the same, right? And there's four categories of that biology and that's what the book breaks down. And a peak performance primer is my like, first of all, it's my nod to scientists, especially like when the book goes. to Europe, right? And like, it's my like, hey, I understand what tradition I'm working in here. I've got my big fancy title because it helps sell it. But I'm also saying, hey, look, I get there's

Starting point is 00:13:46 this side of this story. And I need to be, you know, humble also because, you know, the real truth, as you know, in science is a peak performance primer for right now. Right. Because five years from now, 10 years from now, forget about it. Like, this is why we call it science. It's a living, evolving discussion and while the principles I'm writing about our foundational biology, our knowledge is how that biology is working is advancing exponentially. So to believe that like this is the end all be all, you know, it's the best I think we know as of today, but I think 10 years from now somebody else is going to like, you know, eat my lunch for me. Well, I want to talk about this small eye versus big eye and I kind of read the title as sort of in Audrey Hepburn's language,

Starting point is 00:14:28 her famous quote, nothing is impossible. The very word itself says, I'm possible, capital, I possible, right? So I want to ask you, in the context of the personal, the application, where the capital I and the way I took away from the book, you talk about metrics in the in the moment. And you say, how do I measure progress? How do you know to truly developing this particular habit? We're talking about ferocity in part one. And I'm thinking just in my putting on my hat of developing the microskills and interviewing on this podcast. And I'm going to betray that right now because I'm going to ask a long-winded question. But I've often wondered when I'm giving, when I'm doing an interview, how do I know I'm doing a good job? Because you don't know until after the fact

Starting point is 00:15:09 when it comes out, maybe the author will promote it, maybe they won't. Maybe the audience will give it thumbs up. Maybe they won't. By the way, please do share it. Please do give the thumbs up. But the bottom line is in the moment. How do I know I'm doing a good job? Are there ways that, are there tools, are there tactics that I can know and kind of use as metrics to a prize? Am I doing a good job in this particular set of microskills that we call podcasting or interviewing? me. So that's, I'm not asking you, by the way, to grade how I'm doing. Yeah, no, no. That is a massive question. But let me try to just, one, immediate feedback is crucial for performance, right? And in fields where feedback is more delayed, for example, the difference between surgeons and radiologists.

Starting point is 00:16:01 surgeons, immediate feedback. Patient either lives or dies, you know how you did. If there's blood in the cavity, the scalpel slept. Foundational rule of surgery, right? Radiologists, they look at a radiological scan, and maybe six months from now, they figure out, was the diagnosis of cancer real or not real that the patient liver die? But most of them never find out.

Starting point is 00:16:24 This is why, by the way, if you track surgical medical skills, almost every class of physician skills decline post-medical school except for surgeons it's because of real-time feedback. It tells us that in professions where there are, there's in my profession, writing,

Starting point is 00:16:40 to say that you have a publisher and an editor, it's a lie, right? You know this. Your editors don't edit. They show up twice in the book, read it, and give you overlying notes. That's not like, I have a guy who is on my cellist staff,

Starting point is 00:16:55 who's my editor. He reads everything I write after I write it twice a week because that's the feedback I need, right? So you have to, and when it comes to podcast and here's something weird, because there's a caveat here, and this is why I said I could talk forever. This comes out of educational research into flow. Quick definition for those who you who don't know what flow is, optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. That's the scientific definition. More specifically, it's any of those moments of rapt attention total absorption. We get so focused on what we're doing, extra awareness merges, our sense of self-diminishes,

Starting point is 00:17:31 time passes, strains. We get so sucked in and an hour goes by and we're like, what, what happened? Right. And throughout all aspects of performance, mental and physical, go through the roof. You can go to way more detail later, but that's the quick shorthand for flow. Here's something that we learned from education research. So flow tends to, flow states have triggers, preconditions that lead to more flow. One of the most important is the challenge skills balance. We get into flow the most, we pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge slightly exceeds their skill set. So think about educators, a teacher, your high school teacher, you're in flow in front of the class. Why are you in flow? Because you're not just teaching history. You're on the edge of your

Starting point is 00:18:09 knowledge telling about all the cool shit that you discovered, right? That's when teachers in flow. You have now lost every one of your students. So literally there's an overwhelming research that shows in education if you're not, if you don't know what you're doing, when the teachers in flow, oftentimes the students are not, and when the students are in flow, teachers not. So sometimes, right, and the other thing about peak performance, it is very tricky. And my answer, the short answer is self-awareness is important, but you also have to figure out where the signals mean. So you need a translation for the signals like the Arden Bosb, was something else. I'll give you another example. In peak performance, your emotions don't always mean what you think they mean. So let me give you a simple

Starting point is 00:18:48 example. Frustration for most people is a sign that they're moving in the wrong direction. But if you're interested in flow at the front of an end of every flow state, there is a struggle phase. More and more evidence is pointing to the fact that you may have to trigger the fight response, even for a millisecond to get into flow, right? This is why if you've ever made the classic, how to go to the hospital on a mountain bike error of I went out for a flowy bicycle ride, mountain biking is an aggressive sport. If you go out trying to be flowing, you're going to be risk averse. You're going to get bounced from the bike and you're going to end up in the hospital.

Starting point is 00:19:23 You have to attack the hill and then you drop into flow. And this is the case. We know this from science, right? You're going to have to battle the ideas around in your head. And like for me, I always say, if you haven't reversed my position once along the way completely, taking everything I thought was right and told me it was wrong, I haven't done science, right? That's not science yet.

Starting point is 00:19:48 Science is what happens once. I solve something, discover it, then get overturned, and then come back and fix it. Like, to me, that's like the game, right? Then I'm like, okay, I can trust this. Now I can dress this. Smart people have beat on this. It's not just me. That's right.

Starting point is 00:20:03 That's what Feynman said. Feynman said of science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Because if you just trust the experts, then we would never have gone from Newton to Einstein. Einstein said, oh, Newton's pretty smart. Let me just rest on Newton. Well, it's also, you hit it this a bunch in the beginning, and it's, you know, whatever we want to talk about the banister effect or all these big, big things. It's really a subtle thing. It's the reframing is so, so, so, so, so crucial to psychology, to pick performance, to innovation, to creativity.

Starting point is 00:20:35 Like, it is one of the most powerful cognitive tools we have, and it's how paradigm shifts occur. Right. That's the skill that leads to a paradigm shift, but it's also a skill that allows you to regulate your nervous system very quickly and, you know, see problems from multi-perspectable perspectives. That was not a true word. I think I just think I don't know. Neologism. Perspectives. Neologism is that. You say in the book, you say not going big is bad for you. What do you mean by that? All right. I'm going to have to, there's a little bit of background. We've got to cover before I can explain. So we talked earlier, peak performance assistance, getting your biology to work for you rather than against you.

Starting point is 00:21:19 So that biology, while vast, is limited. There's a set of motivational skills. There are a set of learning skills. There are creativity skills and there are flow skills. That's the suite. That's a cognitive suite. Think about it easily just to frame it for people. Motivation gets you to the peak performance game.

Starting point is 00:21:36 Learning allows you to continue to play. Creativity is how we steer. Flow is how we amplify. the results, right? That's the quick and dirty of the formula. All of these terms are catch-alls, right? Motivation is not one thing. It's compression. You're compressing, yeah. Right. So motivation is actually extrinsic motivation, intranic motivation, goal setting, and grit. We're going to focus, to answer your question, predominantly on intrinsic motivation. What research has showed is there are five major intrinsic motivators, curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. And they are literally designed

Starting point is 00:22:10 to come online in an order. Curiosity is designed to be cultivated into passion, which is designed to be turned into purpose. Once you know what your purpose is, what do you want? Freedom, the autonomy to pursue your purpose. And once you have the freedom to pursue your purpose, what do you need? Mastery, the skills to pursue it well. So inside of that, all of those autonomy, curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery, they also do double duty as flow triggers. When we're curious about shit, we pay more attention to it. our attention is more focused on it, we're more likely to get into flow, et cetera, et cetera. So there are eight major causes of depression, right?

Starting point is 00:22:51 But the point was we're designed to go big. We have a system. It's designed to help us achieve the impossible. That much is clear. Peak performance is everybody's birthright. And simply put, everybody can get into flow. Flow is how we do peak performance. It's universal.

Starting point is 00:23:05 Like anybody anywhere can get into flow. It's task unspecific. It is race unspecific. sex, class, on and on and on, it's ubiquitous in human, sexually ubiquitous in most mammals, and definitely all social mammals. Besides the point, the point here is we're designed to go big and not going big as bad for us. Why? Don't use any system the way it's been designed to use. Bad things happen. So there are, as I said, eight major causes of anxiety and depression. These are the anxiety and depression, by the way, are the largest epidemic in the world today, right?

Starting point is 00:23:42 And we are losing. Not only like one out of 10 people in the world is going to come down with a clinical diagnosis of anxiety or depression in the next year. And somebody kills themselves once every 12 seconds. So we're losing the fight. And it's the largest drain on public health coffers in the world. So big problem. What are the major causes of depression and anxiety? Two of them are the ones that everybody talks about and everybody thinks about and they're actually kind of bullshit.

Starting point is 00:24:11 We talk about genetics and trauma. I've got the wrong genes. I can't produce serotonin so I'm depressed or I'm anxious. Or this really bad thing happened to me and I can't get over it. Right. So I'm depressed and I'm anxious. And it turns out we know really well-established science. Depression and anxiety.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Genetics is only ever 50% of that equation. Lifestyle, history, all that. That's the other half, right? How we live, how we have lived and how we are going to live. that's the other habit. And trauma, the vast, fast, fast, vast majority of the time, trauma leads to post-traumatic growth. This is how we, like this is the world breaks everyone and afterwards many are stronger at the broken places, to quote Hemingway, right? We, bad shit happens. We get through it and we're better for it. This is that vast majority of

Starting point is 00:25:00 time. So what are the other six major causes of depression if those two aren't all that real? First, most important one, lack of meaningful work. What does that actually mean? What is it technically under the hood neurobiologically? It means work that I'm not curious about, that I'm not passionate about, that is not aligned my purpose or my strengths that I can't pursue the way I would wanna pursue, is I have no freedom.

Starting point is 00:25:23 And it doesn't offer me opportunities for mastery. I'm not getting better any skills that really matter to me. And to boot, it doesn't produce any flow. Second one, lack of meaningful values. Well, what does that mean? That is, I don't have passion, I don't have purpose, I don't have flow. And we can literally go on and on and on to the rest of them. We are designed to go big and we are designed to rise to our full capability and not trying to

Starting point is 00:25:50 rise to our full capability is bad for us. Yes. You talk in the book about flow being also kind of governed by a flywheel that also is intrinsically limited by the scarcity of resources, that resources from physics and even just from common sense are fundamentally intrinsically limited. I wonder, you know, I think about in the book, when I think about science as an infinite game on one hand, like you can't win science on the macro scale. Like you never come to the end of science. You know, science is John Archerbold Wheeler. The teacher of Richard Feynman used to say, you know, is a battle to increase the island

Starting point is 00:26:29 of knowledge, but the ocean of ignorance is infinite. So the coastline gets bigger, and the area of the island gets bigger, but you still have this infinite ocean out there. So I want to ask you, you can't win science. Did he discover the Schwartzschild radius? Say that one more time. Didn't Wheeler discover the Schwartzchild radius? He was influential in many fields.

Starting point is 00:26:49 Schwartzschild himself was a physicist who discovered the solution of the black hole before Einstein did in 19. But the Schwartzschild radius, right, is the right at the point that everything bends in. And I think Wheeler created the equation that governs it. I think Schwartzschilder coined the term black hole. He's one of the foremost exponents of that. But Schwarzschild was almost 50 years older than than yeah. We'll get to your theories on quantum electrodynamics in just a moment, Stephen. But I do want to ask you, in science, we have a series of finite games in that, you know, I want to win the Nobel Prize. I have only a certain amount of chances to get funding.

Starting point is 00:27:29 I got to get tenure. I got to support my graduate students. I have a payroll of a million dollars a year. Literally, I make no profit. I have only expenses. I have logistics. I have concrete. I got delivered to the South Pole or the Chile. I've got all these finite games. And I've got competition. I could get scooped. I could lose my Nobel prizes. Maybe I did the title of my book. Spoiler alert. But the point is, Stephen, we have all these finite games, scarcity of research. How do you get into a flow state when you're battling in an infinite game and a series of finite games? It's very unlike a lot of other pursuits like art. You know, no one's going to paint the Mona Lisa, scoop me on the Mona Lisa, which is an infinite game too. You can't win art. So how

Starting point is 00:28:08 What advice do you have? Maybe that would be my last question before I get to one final question that I ask all my guess. So how do you survive the finite games, the competition in the flow state when you have these scarcity of resources in the finite games to win the infinite game, if you will, of science? I want to start by saying I always tell people, and mind you, I work with some of the best athletes in the world. I would say if you want to see what real competition looks like, go to a neuroscience conference. like I was like you don't like you've never like honest to God I've said this professional football players I'm like you guys don't know you have no idea like the worst most vice besides a street gang fight the most violent place I've ever been to are like you know the society for neurosized

Starting point is 00:29:04 Stephen there are more people on the ISS right now floating around in space than there are one Nobel prizes in cosmology so I mean you're asking a question about you're asking a very very difficult question but the short answer is really about how do you stay in the challenge skills sweet spot? How do you process anxiety, right? And psychology has been really like this is where really simply the peak performance basics come into place. Science has said, hey, look, if you want to perform at your best in any conditions, especially competitive ones where there's going to be extra anxiety, right?

Starting point is 00:29:38 And you want to get into flow, anxiety will block flow because that challenge skills sweet spot is pretty thin. Too much anxiety will kick you out. out and then you can't get into flow. So how science is, look, there's three things you can do to fight anxiety. You can have a daily gratitude practice, a daily mindfulness practice, or do 20 to 40 minutes of regular exercise. And if you're doing it for cognitive or anxiety, you're basically looking for a nitric oxide

Starting point is 00:30:03 release, but how does that feel like when your lungs open up and your brain gets quiet, about 20 to 40 minutes into exercise, depending on how in shape you are, there's been a global releases nitric oxide in the brain and the body, it's pushed the stress storms out of your system. You've reset the nervous system. Five minutes of a gratitude practice will do the same thing. And 11 minutes for stress reduction of a meditative, focus, mindful respiration practice will do the same thing.

Starting point is 00:30:29 What we tell people with the flow research collective, under normal conditions, do one a day. If you're living in high stress conditions, do two. I would say if you're a scientist, you might want to think about three. Yes. Right. I really like I like I'm not joking. It really like I think it's one of the most competitive, difficult arenas to be in and not for everyone. And you know, it's it's it's it's no joke.

Starting point is 00:30:58 Journalism is another like it's the same thing. You can get scooped. It's the same like yeah. So it's this calder of like you've got this artistic creative background. What we're all doing is innovative, creative, but and craft base in a sense and what's built on top of. that is this incredibly cutthroat to the additive environment. Yeah. I mean, getting into the major league is almost impossible, right?

Starting point is 00:31:21 And getting into AAA baseball also, as I understand it, is almost as impossible. But getting a postdoc, which is the tier analogous to getting into AAA baseball, is almost trivial. I can do it, you know. But the point being, it's almost a total seller's market. Almost anybody who wants a postdoc, I have zero unemployment for any of my students, And they're all great, obviously, but the point being is we set up people in the academic ladder. And these are people who had a fight to get into college against the best and brightest in their high school, then college. They had to get into graduate school, get a postdoc, postdoc, get a fellowship, get a scholarship,

Starting point is 00:31:55 and at the apex, it's just like those, you know, competing against these gladiators and the best ones. And then there's no faculty job. Literally, in my field, there hasn't been a faculty job in experimental cosmic studies where you build telescopes and put them all around the world or in space. years, Stephen, and we set these people up. And it's, and it's cruel. What we're doing to these people is cruel. And I feel terrible. And I've limited the number. And it's like you're turning away people that are smarter than I am. And it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, there's something that I think is is even cooler than in the academic, or sorry, than the athletic realm that you describe. I know your time is so limited. I could talk to you for hours. Maybe we'll do a part two,

Starting point is 00:32:33 Steven, if you'll indulge me. I do want to ask you at least one of my thrilling three patented questions. I hope people will subscribe. And I hope that you will also, uh, uh, uh, tune into the episode. I did with Peter Diamandis, Stephen's friend. We talked about you as well in that episode. I'll put a link to it here in the YouTube link and then the show notes. I want to ask you our Sir Arthur C. Clark, I'm the co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination here at UC San Diego. We study creativity, imagination, all the things you talk about, priming one to get into that state in your wonderful new book, The Art of the Impossible. Available now, I'll put links in the show notes to buy it. I want to ask you, Arthur C. Clark,

Starting point is 00:33:11 have many delicious, delightful laws, one of which is any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. We opened the show with his voice from beyond the grave. Stephen, you talk about impossible. I got that. That was an impossible get. He reads that, says that wonderful statement. He says also, for every expert, Stephen, there's an equal and opposite expert, so beware of that. But his third law will appeal to you, as it does to me. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way. they pass them into the impossible. That's the origin of the name of this podcast.

Starting point is 00:33:46 I want to ask you, Steven, for advice to your former self. What mysterious aspect of your life perplexed you as a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, or maybe even younger, but makes sense to you? And what advice would you give to your former self to give you the courage to go into the impossible as you have done? Oh, I don't know. I never think about giving my former self advice because honestly, I got exactly where I wanted go, right? So I don't want to mess with anything. But if, you know, I like, that's an interesting

Starting point is 00:34:18 question. I, um, and somebody else has me, so the, the thing that would have been very helpful, because it's hard to know this when you're younger is that hard work works or hard, smart work works, right? And I have spent, I'll give you, I've spent 20 years asking most everybody I've met a simple question, which is tell me things in your life that happened. that really mattered, where they shifted your life and it massively impacted your performance on the other end. You know what I've never heard? Oh, there was this time I got lucky and I found a lottery ticket on this.

Starting point is 00:34:53 Like, it's, I had to work three jobs to put myself through night school so I could get into medical schools. Like, right? Those are the stories we tell. Right. And the truth about peak performance is very, like, there's a couple of difficulties with peak performance. One is that human potential is invisible.

Starting point is 00:35:11 The other is, if you really want to. to see what you're capable of, it works like compound interest, right? It's a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, and when five, two years, three years, four years, that's where it gets, starts to get really magnificent. It's exponential in its own way. And like almost any other exponentials, it's pretty invisible, right? We have a linear bias built into the brain. We don't, we're blind exponentials as the whole world discovered when COVID happened. And they were like, how can it be spreading so quickly? Well, welcome to exponentials. That's right. This is a little thing called BAL.

Starting point is 00:35:45 As you guys talk about in your D's and your five D's, one of which is Diamandas, but you should add a K in there. Stephen Kotler, thank you so much for going into the impossible and sharing the art of the impossible. You are impossibly delightful to talk to. I hope you'll come back on the show. We could talk for hours, as I said. We salute you and really just want to express our gratitude for all you do for the world

Starting point is 00:36:07 and the flow collective, and we'll put links into all your wonderful material, Much of which is free and available on the internet, but I do hope people will pick up this book. It's crucial for our times that we're living. Thank you, Stephen. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you, Brian.

Starting point is 00:36:20 That was very nice here. Appreciate you. Thank you. Bye, my friend. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thanks for listening to Ended the Impossible with Professor Brian Keating. Please support the show by rating, commenting, sharing, and leaving reviews. We appreciate hearing from you, and it really helps keep our universe expanding.

Starting point is 00:36:43 Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating. that's DR Brian Keating and join our premieres Tuesdays at 8 a.m. Pacific Time. Follow Brian on Twitter and Medium and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. For exclusive content,

Starting point is 00:36:58 visit Brian Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at Brian Keating.com. Into The Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California,

Starting point is 00:37:10 San Diego. Produced by Stuart Volko and Brian Keating. Ambition comes in all shapes sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank.

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Steven Kotler: Master Your Flow with The Art of the Impossible (#165)

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