The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 108: Steven Kotler – Your Flow State: What Is It? How To Get There…

Starting point is 00:00:00 In any big project, especially a book, you're going to have massive fights. You're going to scream at each other like you can't believe. And you have to be able to lose your mind and then two seconds later, get back to work, not care. You don't take it personally. You just had to get it out and now it's back to work and how do we solve this problem? And both of us are really good at that. We can get really, really, really, really angry and then go back to normal really, really, really fast, which I found very, very useful for us.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, remember episode number 97 with Alejandro Cheneen. He is the CEO of Ma and Bao. We both promise to continue our dialogue as we both progress. rest on our journeys, and we certainly have, just as I have, with the great people at

Starting point is 00:01:12 Mizan and Maine. And Alejandro and his company have decided to sponsor the Learning Leader Show. This episode is brought to you by Motten Bow. I told the story on that episode of why I absolutely love their ridiculously comfortable, handcrafted premium jeans. Also, no ugly back pocket embroidery or weird stitching, just simple, elegant, great-looking jeans. And Mottenbao has a free try-on program. You get two sizes to try at home with every purchase. Keep the one that fits and send the other one back for free. These jeans are already priced undermarket because they cut out all the retail markups.

Starting point is 00:01:53 But the deal is even better when you go to Motenbau.com and use promo code Ryan Hawk for 20% off. That's M-O-T-T-A-N-D-B-O-W.com promo code Ryan.com. Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. So excited about tonight's featured leaders with the extremely intelligent Stephen Kotler. Stephen is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the co-founder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project.

Starting point is 00:02:31 He's one of the world's leading experts on ultimate human performance. His book, Bold, was called a visionary roadmap for change by your world. President Bill Clinton and spent many weeks atop both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller list. This was a fascinating conversation, a few of the things we got into. We discussed getting into a state of flow, which is your optimal state of consciousness, the triggers how to get to that state more often. And then to focus on execution, the key traits that lead to high levels of executing on ideas. And then actually after we stopped recording, Stephen wanted to continue the conversation. And he asked me to press record again. It's the first time I've ever done this.

Starting point is 00:03:16 So I did. And he wanted to ask me questions specifically around getting into states of flow as a quarterback and how I prepared to do that. And that also led to more conversations around getting into states of flow as far as a public speaker preparing for a keynote. Again, I love this one with Stephen. Stephen so excited to have you here on a learning leader show. Got a quick question around sustained excellence and high achievers. And I'm curious, you studied and spent time around people who have done a great job of sustaining excellence over an extended period of time. And I'm curious, what are some of the common characteristics that those people all seem

Starting point is 00:04:07 to share? It's an interesting question. You know, everywhere I look, so, you know, I spent a long time kind of covering action sports and how athletes were able to kind of push the limits of kinesthetic possibility. And I sort of did the same thing in entrepreneurship, looking at kind of global world-changing leaders, you know, people taking on grand challenges. And same thing with technology. I, you know, I spent a lot of time covering as a reporter and in my book Tomorrowland,

Starting point is 00:04:41 the people who turned science fiction into science fact who literally invented the future. And the thing, it's a couple of things it seems to unite them. But first and foremost, they're ferocious about forward progress. They're just ferocious. And it's not, there's nothing mild about how they attack life. It's constant. It's full steam ahead. It's always on.

Starting point is 00:05:05 And I've seen this, you know, across the words. And I'm not that this is very surprising. But the level of the commitment is what always amazes me. The day to day get up and, you know, chop wood, carry water kind of stuff. They're ferocious about that as well. That's what's so impressive. And the other thing, and you know, when this comes out of my research into flow, right, into the optimal state of performance, everybody I've ever met who's super successful, either consciously or unconsciously, has created a life that maximizes the amount of time they get to spend in flow.

Starting point is 00:05:39 So I think those are the two characteristics. I think they're probably linked together as well. But that's what I've seen. Who are some of the people that first come to mind when you think of sustained excellence? once. Well, so let me, a couple people

Starting point is 00:05:55 really stay are at the forefront of my mind. One is a guy named you Hare. Have you heard you's name?

Starting point is 00:06:00 I haven't. So he's now a professor at MIT, but I'll kind of walk you back to the start of his story. He was a phenomenal child mountain climber.

Starting point is 00:06:10 They called him boy wonder. I think by the time he was 10, he had scaled some ridiculous number of, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:17 14,000 foot peaks. in America. And by the time he was 16, 17, he was kind of a renowned ice climber and rock climber. And he was in a mountaineering accident on Mount Washington with a friend of his. They got lost. They got arrogant. They got caught in a storm. They got lost. They were out in the woods for three days. Both of them ended up very, very severely frost and losing limbs in the hospital and that sort of thing. But along the way, they had, when they were looking for them, they had put out a search rescue team and two of the rescuers had died and you hair really that tragedy really weighed on him the fact that like he had you know first rule of climbing and mountain nearing as be responsible for yourself

Starting point is 00:07:01 and he had sort of violated that rule and other people had died and he carried that way and the other thing about him is he was so tied to climb it was like in his soul he needed to do it so even when he was hospital he woke up he has both of his legs are amputated below the knee basically at the ankle and he's already within a couple of days like trying to do pull-ups and push-ups on the window sill just to like train for climbing. And after, you know, a very short rehab, he goes back to climb and, you know, he's got no limbs and he starts climbing. He doesn't know, you know, it's even going to be possible on this prosthetic limbs that he's got. And he gets a few feet off the ground and starts to realize that holy crap, he actually can climb better as a paraplegic than he, could before. And he ends up becoming one of the world's best paraplegic athletes, right?

Starting point is 00:07:55 Even that's not enough. As he's doing this, he starts making customized tools for his climbing feet. So instead of having a prosthetic limb, he's got special beveled tools that go into cracks and lock off and do that kinds of cool stuff. And he starts to realize people aren't disabled. Technology is disabled. He goes back to college and he basically becomes. a bionicist and to pay back the debt he felt he owed to society, he ends up creating the world's first bionic limbs, the world's first bionic ankle that was ever created. He's a leader in the field. And so from like the time he was a little kid being ferocious about climbing to an adult

Starting point is 00:08:35 now at the leader of the field of bionics, that's one example. Wow. Incredible example, inspiring story. I think for a lot of people who, especially when an accident happens, it's really about how we respond, and he respond, as you put it with a ferociousness that is hardly ever seen. So, Stephen, I want to take a step back and dig in now to you and your story and to how you've gotten to the place where you currently are,

Starting point is 00:09:06 because there is a lot here to get to, and whether it's best-selling author, award-winning journalist, a number of things that you do. And I'm really excited to talk to some of these states, flow but but talk to me when when somebody comes up to you and says stephen what do you do how do you respond i tell people i'm an author and i'm the director of research at the flow genome project and we study ultimate human performance okay so on a day-to-day basis what do you do well on a day-to-day basis my wife and i also run an animal sanctuary the mountains of northern new mexico as you probably

Starting point is 00:09:40 know and we do hospice care and special needs care for really really sick dogs so a lot A lot of what we are is sort of a skunk works for canine elder care. But my, you know, what do I do on a day-to-day basis? I get up at 3.34 o'clock in the morning. I write till about 8 a.m. I usually have an hour-long editing session. I hike the dogs. I come back.

Starting point is 00:10:01 I do another, you know, five, six, seven hours of work. I work out. Come back, do some work with the dogs and usually collapse. And when I'm not doing that, I'm either traveling or I'm throwing myself down mountains at high speeds. You wake up at 3.30 in the morning? Yeah, I'm an extreme lark. What time do you go to bed?

Starting point is 00:10:24 Yeah, well, it depends. And it depends if you ask me or my wife. But I'll tell you I go to bed around nine if I'm lucky. If I can stay up that late. It's not this way when I'm traveling. But when you live in the middle of nowhere, you really do get on the solar cycle. And I had always, you know, when I was coming up as a journalist,

Starting point is 00:10:43 and I was really, you know, I was young, I was hungry, I was poor. I was living in San Francisco and I was working for a bunch of editors who were also young and hungry and poor. And they lived in New York. So they would get into their office early and start calling me when they got in. So like at 8.30, which was 6.30 my time. And I was trying to be a writer. And I knew that if I didn't write my books before they called, there was no chance it was going to get done because I was so poor that whatever they said they needed, I was going to do.

Starting point is 00:11:11 It didn't matter. I said yes to everything. Yeah. So I started getting up earlier and earlier and earlier just so I could get in kind of work sessions before their calls. And one of the things I've discovered, especially as a writer, is there's, if you get up that early, it's non-time. It doesn't belong to anybody. And it, hey, the phone stays off. Nobody emails.

Starting point is 00:11:32 It's, you know, uninterrupted concentration. My office is actually at the back end of our field. So it's a distance from our house so that it's absolutely quiet. dogs aren't awake and it just allows me to really really focus and it also allows me to sort of not care the time is passing in the middle of the day if I have to take an hour to work on a sentence I'm going to be pissed off and I'm going to resent it but at 3.30 in the morning I don't mind. Do you wake up without an alarm that early or is it or is an alarm still needed?

Starting point is 00:12:05 Oh no I don't I've never used an alarm in my entire life. That's incredible. So I'm curious because one of the things, so I have a big morning. routine as well, not at 3.30, but it's still pretty early and it involves writing, a little bit of reading, and working out. I'm fascinated by that I found it's something that is in common with so many people who have achieved world-class levels of some type of performance. In your case, certainly as a writer in other areas as well, and it's no surprise that you're spending four hours every morning on this craft.

Starting point is 00:12:41 It's not, and I did not know your morning routine prior to this conversation, but it's no surprise. So what is your process like for then when you write at 4 in the morning? Because I'd love to just to feel it, to visualize what it looks like when a world-class writer like yourself gets up that early and gets over to your office, which is away from everything, and can really get into, as Cal Newport would say, deep work. I love to learn more about that. So if you want to learn more about my process, we actually have to start the day before.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Perfect. And what I mean by that is years ago, I heard an interview with Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, and he was talking about, I'm very fascinated by what I call long-haul creativity, which is not what does it take to be more creative in the moment right now, but what does it actually take to be creative over a lifetime? And the skills are very, very different. And Garcia Marcos was, if you don't know who he is, he's a phenomenal, phenomenal author wrote 100 Years of Solitude, among other great books.

Starting point is 00:13:41 I think 100 years of solitude may be the only perfect novel I've ever read. It's an astounding book. Anyways, he was talking about how the thing that's most important to him is momentum. Momentum matters most. So what he tends to do is he stops writing at about the time he's most excited. And I've learned this is critical. And there's kind of interesting neurobiology underneath that. I can explain that to you if you're curious.

Starting point is 00:14:05 But I basically try to finish my previous day's writing session at a place where I feel confident. I'm excited. I'm interested in what I'm doing. And so what happens is when I wake up, the first thing I do, and I really try to be at my desk in writing within five minutes of being awake. And I start by reviewing what I wrote yesterday. Whatever I wrote yesterday, I start kind of at the beginning of it and just read through it. And usually, if I was doing my job the day before, yes, there are going to be errors. There's going to be editing stuff.

Starting point is 00:14:38 But I'll catch the momentum again. I'll catch the excitement I felt the day before. That will drive focus and sort of lessen some of the pressure to kind of invent out of nowhere. And then usually depends on where I am in a book or what, you know, earlier in the book, it's last, later in the book, it stretches out. But what I've discovered is that for me, a decent writing session, is 500 words and a really good one is 750 to a thousand. So I usually, depending on where I'm in the book, I have a goal, 500 to 600 words. And you know, I aim for that and again, try to quit what I'm most excited and I'm in that

Starting point is 00:15:16 vicinity. And that's usually, you know, that's my writing process. But it always starts with the editing and with what I did the day before. And it's a limited number. I'm a big fan, you know, we'll get into flow later, but one of flows triggers, right, preconditions that lead to more flow. is clear goals. And clear goals are usually very chunked down short goals, right? You're not talking about huge. I want to save the world passion driven big goals. These are just chunks, little bits of

Starting point is 00:15:45 work, something that's really in spitting distance. And I want to, you know, push slightly so like I can do 350 words on pretty much anything at any time without really much sweat. But 500 words, That requires, it's actually like a shift in subject matter usually in how I write. So it requires thinking through a transition and into a new subject usually. And that's usually tricky. So I try to push myself outside my comfort zone a little bit, make myself stretch every day a little bit, but have a really clear bite-sized goal. Is your research process then completely separate?

Starting point is 00:16:22 And then when you write, it's just spitting out your thoughts or do you weave in the research at the same time using something like Scrivener or another? tool that's helpful. So I, well, most of my research is done before. And usually I discover, for example, if my writing, when I go back to it and I read it back, if it reads as arrogant, meaning there's really fancy, fancy language in there, oftentimes that's a sign that I haven't done enough research. I'm using really fancy language to cover the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Starting point is 00:16:57 And oftentimes, I don't realize I haven't done enough research until I notice that my language sounds arrogant. So I like to get all my research done ahead of time. I always like to know what are my starts, what are my endings. Those are really in terms of sections and chapters and everything else, really, really critical to me. And when I get in the middle, if I'm having problems and I'm noticing that the writing is arrogant, You know, my writing is boring or confusing. It's usually because I don't know my starts or my endings. If it's arrogant, it's because I don't know the middle.

Starting point is 00:17:30 I haven't done enough research. So I've got pretty good feedback cues worked out for knowing when I need more research. But I don't tend to do it as I go along only because it hasn't usually, unless it's just a quick tidbit, it hasn't been integrated enough in my brain. So what will happen is I'll get excited about the research and I'll probably spend, you know, five, six paragraphs on it when it should have been a paragraph. So I find it's better to give myself a little bit of time to integrate that information in my brain, just like let my pad of recognition chew on it, system chew on it a bit.

Starting point is 00:18:06 Gotcha. Okay. We mentioned flow a little bit, and I'd love to talk about flow and peak performance with you, because for people who have not read your work or heard of you yet, let's start there right at that word flow, and you describe somebody, someone was like, flow, what are they talking about? What does he mean? How do you define that?

Starting point is 00:18:29 So technically, flow is defined as an optimal state of consciousness. It's a state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. And more specifically, it refers to those moments of rapt attention and total absorption, where you get so focused on the task at hand that everything else pretty much disappears. So you sense of self vanishes, time dilates, which is a fancy way. of saying it passes strangely. Sometimes it'll slow down. You get a freeze frame effect from your name.

Starting point is 00:18:57 And you've been a car crash. More frequently it speeds up and five hours pass by in five minutes. And throughout all aspects of performance, both mental and physical, go through the roof. So this is something that you obviously have a massive amount of work from a flow perspective. And the first question that immediately comes to mind when you start learning about flow, is what can I do to get into that state more often? Well, there's two bits of information that we've found most helpful. The first thing you need to know is that flow states have triggers.

Starting point is 00:19:40 These are preconditions that lead to more flow. As of right now, we've actually discovered 18 of these. And we can get into details in a second. But the first thing to know is that flow follows focus. The state can only show up when all of the... of our attention is focused in the right here, right now, right, in the present moment. So what these triggers really do is there's simply ways of driving attention into the now. So I'll give you a couple examples, just so one I mentioned earlier, clear goals. Why is clear goals

Starting point is 00:20:15 a flow trigger? Well, if you know what the task is at hand, if you know what you're doing and you know what you have to do next, your brain doesn't wander. You don't. You don't. Your attention doesn't leave the present moment. It can stay focused on what you're doing because you know what you're doing and you know where you're going next. And when goals get murky, when they get unclear, our attention tends to pull out of the present moment. Another one, and this is sort of, you know, the classic, it's called the golden rule of flow. It's the classic flow trigger. It's known as the challenge skills ratio.

Starting point is 00:20:50 And the idea here is that flow follows focus, right? So we pay the most attention to the present moment when the challenge of the task at hand slightly exceeds our skill set. So you want to stretch, but not snap. If I were to explain it emotionally, I would say that flow exists near but not on the midpoint between boredom and anxiety. So boredom is, whoa, not enough stimulation. I'm just not paying any attention here. I can't focus. Anxiety is, whoa, way too much stimulation.

Starting point is 00:21:22 I'm paying too much attention. In between is this sweet spot, what they call the flow channel. And it's interesting. A couple years ago, a psychologist named Mihai Chixenemai, sort of known as the godfather of flow, sat down with a Google mathematician, and they tried to figure out what's the exact gradient difference between challenge and skills. And they came up with a number at being a 4% difference. And we took this number into the Flow genome project and ran a bunch of experiments on it.

Starting point is 00:21:49 We're still running more, but it seems to be pretty consistent. and it seems to be pretty consistent, whether we're applying it to athletes or writers or computer programmers or comics or anybody else who's chasing flow. And what's interesting about that 4% number is it sounds like almost nothing, right? But it's just past your comfort zone. It's the point at which you start to become uncomfortable. So what's interesting is type A types, really hard chargers, they're going to blow by 4% without even no. noticing. They're going to take on challenges that are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% greater than their current skill level. And as a result, they're going to end up locking themselves out of the

Starting point is 00:22:33 very state they need to tackle those challenges. Type B people, little softer, little gentler, they have problems here because you're outside your comfort zone. And it's uncomfortable. You have to be willing to push yourself. So they tend to quit before they actually have pushed hard enough. But if you can stay in the middle, 4%, it's where the magic happens. Interestingly, one other additional thing that I just like to mention is what you see in really top performers, when we talked earlier about ferocity, what you really see is it's not just 4% every now and again. It's every day, day, day, week after week, year after year for a career. 4% plus 4% plus 4% plus 4% plus 4%. That is essentially how you baby step your way to doing that.

Starting point is 00:23:20 impossible. When I think of clear goals and getting into flow, we've probably all seen those quadrants, and I've mentioned this before, but I think of urgent but not important quadrant, and the important but not urgent quadrant. And to me, I think to get great work done to, regardless of what type of work, or if you're writing, thinking, trying to create, you must blow. lock out time in your day that is important but not urgent and most people a lot of people listening and I've gotten a lot of emails from people about this where they spend a big chunk of their day

Starting point is 00:24:02 in the urgent but not important space and this is why nothing ever really gets done for those people and they're frustrated about it how does flow relate to that so you know this sort of wraps everything up. This isn't a flow trigger, but it wraps everything we've been talking about up to this point. Flow requires massive amounts of focus, all your attention focused on the present moment. So if you're doing urgent but not important tasks, you've checked your email. You've been playing around on Facebook and on Twitter or answering phone calls or things along those lines. You're not really staying on task. You're just doing what's first in front of you. And you know that doesn't work. It doesn't work for.

Starting point is 00:24:47 anybody. People who are really, really top performers, they make a list of what they're going to do in the day and they attack that list and they keep, as a general rule, the phones off, the office door closed, everything isolated for a period of time. You know, we know from flow research that 90 minutes is basically a minimum block of time that you need for flow. Tim Ferriss says, if you're doing anything really, really, really creative, you want to keep a maker schedule And he thinks really creative tasks require about four-hour blocks. And I obviously tend to agree with him completely because that's the block I use as well. But you need those big periods of uninterrupted concentration so you can focus on what's important but not's urgent.

Starting point is 00:25:31 What do you mean by four-hour blocks? So if you're saying, okay, this one task is that why you wake up with 330 and finish roughly around eight? Well, what Tim means by that is, you know, for example, in Montessori education, Montessori education has been shown to be a very, very high flow environment. It's basically learning through doing and engaging in multiple sensory, like all that type of learning for kids. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And the multiple sensory deep embodiment, right, when you're paying attention to multiple sensory streams at once, that's another flow trigger. So when you're learning through doing, right, don't just read about the windmill go out and build one. You're engaging multiple senses. It grabs hold of your attention, drives into now, produces more flow.

Starting point is 00:26:16 They often talk about Montessori education as embodied education for this reason. And embodiment is a flow trigger. So it's one of the reasons Montessori education is actually a very high flow environment. Another is they have these 90 to 120 minute blocks of kind of self-directed learning. Go work on whatever you're super interested in for 90 minutes and learn how to. focus for that period of time. What Tim says is that if you're doing any really hard kind of creative problem solving, anything really technical, 90 minutes is too short. You're going to need about four hours to really get to the point where you're going to start making a breakthrough.

Starting point is 00:26:54 And I tend to agree. What do you think about meditation? Flow follows focus. So anything that trains focus drives flow. So really, really critical. I, you know, with the Flow genome project, we like the Navy SEALs box breathing because it's really, if you're not familiar with the technique, it's just a very, it's got a lot of things going on, so it keeps you your mind pretty busy. It's an easy style of meditation for people who don't like to meditate or aren't very good at it. We also, on the Flow geneal project, if you go to our website, we have a different kind of focusing meditation that's free that anybody can try out. That's a little easier as well. So we, you know, meditation. is really really useful. We're not the best at it. And, you know, it's useful for a lot of different, a lot of different ways. But it's, you know, all it is, is just a deep period of focus. And, you know, is it more helpful for me to go skiing or meditate? I'm going to pay more attention if I'm skiing at 35 miles an hour through the trees than if I'm falling my breath. So, you know, sometimes meditation works for me. Other times, you know, I need to help be empty a little bit.

Starting point is 00:28:04 Let's get practical some more. So let's say this is the first time somebody's heard about this that's listening and their interest is really peaked now. They're saying, I got it into flow. I've got to find my way to get there. What are some other triggers that you could give to an everyday person who's hearing this for the first time? Well, before we even go into other triggers, if you're curious about this stuff, you go to the Flow genome project website, flowgenomeproject.com. There is a free flow diagnostic on the website. So anybody can take it.

Starting point is 00:28:38 And it basically is a tracheology. It says if you're this kind of person, you're likely to find flow in this particular direction. So go hunt there. So it gives you a directional analysis. Other flow triggers to talk about. So we've been talking about the clear goals, the challenge skills, those are flow psychological triggers. There are also environmental triggers. We just talked about one of those deep.

Starting point is 00:29:03 bodyman is an environmental figure. Another one is high consequences. Low follows focus. Consequences catch your attention. So obviously with athletes and there's physical consequences involved, that's fantastic. But a lot of people don't want to risk their butts for more flow. There's good news here because you don't actually, you need risk for flow, but it doesn't have to be physical risk. You can hack that by using intellectual risk or creative risk. Social risk works really, really, really well. Turns out your brain can't tell the difference between social fear and physical fear. They're processed by the exact same structures in the brain.

Starting point is 00:29:40 So this is, by the way, why fear of public speaking is the number one fear in the world and saying, like, not getting eaten by a grizzly bear, which is what you think it would be. So risk is really, really, really powerful. By the way, that's, you know, we see this organizationally when Silicon Valley, you know, companies that have that Silicon Valley fail early fail forward motto you think that's always about kind of like agile software and product development and on a certain level it is but what's great about that motto is it creates space for risk right if you're going to take risk you're going to fail so you need to create an organization that has space for failure if you're going to create an

Starting point is 00:30:20 organization that can harness flow by the way if people want to learn more about this too your book the rise a Superman, you know, you talk about decoding the science of ultimate human performance and the state of flow. I mean, this is, it fascinates me because, like, I'm, I'm always striving to find ways to be better at spending more time with deep work, focused, not urgent work, because I think that's when I produce my best stuff. And when I research for these, for these episodes like this one, like, I'm trying to get into that state of flow, which is a really met a feeling here, especially with your team, because I've known your work for quite some

Starting point is 00:30:58 time and to actually be preparing to talk to you about it was interesting to say the least, but I think it's for people who, because everyone's always running around all crazy and not taking the time to try and hack and think of ways

Starting point is 00:31:14 to do a better job at this. If we did, as you mentioned, I think, the average person is it 70, 71% of people out there now are not engaged in their daily work. It's worse, actually. That was the number that was true when I wrote Rise as Superman.

Starting point is 00:31:33 Yeah. Numbers now up to 83% of American workers at the Gallup survey are disengaged or actively disengaged on the job. And actively disengaged is my absolute favorite euphemism. It means I hate what I do so much. I'm going to go out of my way to sabotage my company. That's insane. I mean, that means there's some.

Starting point is 00:31:54 there's that's just an incredible number that one when you wrote it initially and then two that it's since grown it's grown yeah I know it's amazing what do you why do you think that is I mean because we talk about abundance the future is better than you think and then we hear that the future like as it's happened over the last couple of years from a engagement standpoint is getting worse well it's a sort of big metaphysical sociological question that I'm definitely not qualified to answer at fall, but I'll do it anyways. Okay. Good. Right. You know, I think it's a lot of things. One of the things I think that's going on,

Starting point is 00:32:33 I think there's two kind of opposing forces. One, it's a really hard work climate right now. It's hard to get a job. It's hard to find a job. And it's really hard to find a job doing what you love. Really is. So most people compromise. They take a job. They take a job. that sort of fits 50% of them and they hope they're going to grow into the other 50%. And it doesn't take much for that stuff to compound over time and for you to be very, very unfulfilled. Now, I will say that I, you know, I also, the other half of this is I think we've heard so much talk over the past few decades about things like passion and purpose and those sorts

Starting point is 00:33:18 of things that I think people get impatient with. themselves and their careers and their lives if they're not you know if they're 25 27 and they're not doing exactly what they love forgetting that like creating a life where you get to do exactly what you love where you're most passionate about that is the that's the goal that's the actual art right when they talk about your life is your art that's what it looks like right figure out a way so you can make the largest contributions and do what you love and it's a life long project. It's not, you're not going to have it solved by the time you're 25, 27. I'm 48. It took me, you know, 40 some years to even start to figure this out and really move in that direction

Starting point is 00:34:06 seriously. And there were a lot of years where I had to be very, very creative inside of other people's boxes. And, you know, I owe most of my success to what I learned being inside, you know, other people's boxes and being, you know, having limits all around me and not being able to pursue exactly what I dreamed of, right? So I, you know, I think those limits are really, really beneficial. I think there's a lack of tolerance for that in culture today. And I also think it's hard to get the job you want to get. And I think it's always been hard to do that. I think it's harder now. What do you think is the biggest mistake young managers and companies make, young leaders, people who maybe get promoted quickly and they're on kind of that fast track.

Starting point is 00:34:52 What's the biggest mistake they make today? So interestingly, I don't know if it's the biggest mistake, but it's a problem that I see over and over and over again when I talk to people who are in and around the age of 30. And that's very, very successful people. And usually what happens in whatever field you're in is you get known or famous or whatever in your 20s, if you're successful, you get known for doing something that is usually uniquely you. I'll give you an example. I came up as a writer and I, as a journalist and I got to work, it took me 10 years, but I finally ended up on staff at GQ where I got to work under Art Cooper,

Starting point is 00:35:38 who was one of the great lions of 20th century journalism and was phenomenal. And art was a really big fan of mine. And he used to say, whenever I would try to write a story in a different style than the style that he had sort of fallen in love with, he'd call me and he'd be like, ah, this is, this is good. This is really, really, really, really good. But where's that Stephen Kotler thing? And then I left GQ and sort of moved over to another magazine that'll remain nameless. And I actually, I'll tell you the story. I'll tell you the full story. It was Wired vaccine. My first story for Wired, and you have to understand that in between Wired and GQ, I got

Starting point is 00:36:18 very, very sick. I spent three years in bed with Lyme disease. That's sort of how the flow research began for me. But when I came out on the other end of it, I had bankrupted myself trying to, you know, cure my Lyme disease. And I lost that job at GQ because I was so sick. And I really needed work. And, you know, a friend was working at Wired.

Starting point is 00:36:39 He brought me in. Sent gave me this great story. He sent me down to the Everglades. I did three months of reporting. I was in the swamp for a really long time. Worked really hard. Wrote this giant article. Turned it in.

Starting point is 00:36:52 And can I swear on your podcast? Go ahead. Okay. Turned it in. And he called me up. He said, Stephen, there's just one thing I don't understand. And I'm sitting there. And I'm thinking, oh, that's fucking great.

Starting point is 00:37:03 I kicked ass, right? Only one thing wrong with this story. And I was like, sure, man. What don't you get? And he said, well, every motherfucking word you wrote. and I realized that moment in time that they could give a shit about that Stephen Kotler thing the very thing that got me there

Starting point is 00:37:21 and they wanted the best wired story I could write and that's not unusual for anybody who kind of levels up that's what happens as you level up you get to a certain level on your own success and then you have other masters and a lot of people crumble under those other masters. It feels restrictive. They feel angry. Their ego is hurt and their ego is

Starting point is 00:37:48 what usually got them there in the first place. And they can't deal. And a lot of people burn out there. I always say with creatives, there's two tasks. The first task is figuring out how to survive the 10 years of absolute poverty it's going to take to actually make a name for yourself. And then the next challenge is surviving the next 10 years, when after you've made your name for yourself, when you have to basically be somebody else's bitch. And that's just how it usually goes with creative careers. And more and more, because creativity is showing up more and more in kind of every field is critical, that's just how it goes in careers.

Starting point is 00:38:27 One of the other, I think, keys to people who have sustained excellence and have achieved big things is they've done a good job of surrounding themselves with other really peak performers and you have co-written a few of your books with Peter Diamandis who's pretty famous. How did you and Peter come to know each other and work together and write these books together? Peter and I actually go very far back and I met him right when the, my beat, as a journalist, one of them was the transformation of science fiction and science facts. So I had, you know, a big list of sci-fi things that were becoming sci-fact and private spaceships were on that list and Peter was the guy and I met him really early on and the XPRIZE

Starting point is 00:39:13 wasn't anything at that point. It was, I mean, it was barely an idea and, you know, he loved the article I wrote. It was one of the first major articles anybody had written on the X Prize and he just, we stayed in touch. We tried to do work on a book together almost 15 years ago and it didn't quite come to fruition. And we sort of, we didn't really go our separate ways because we We have really close friends in common, but we didn't really stay in touch. I was working on a bunch of, I had just finished a small furry fur, which in my book about the relationship between humans and animals. And I was working on a lot of environmental stuff. And I was looking very specifically at could you use technology, some of the kind of the accelerating technology that I was seeing in my kind of sci-fi research to solve huge environmental crises.

Starting point is 00:40:04 So the biodiversity of the sixth grade extinction, could this technology help kind of save plants and animals? Could it increase food production, those sort of things? Peter had been looking at kind of the other side of the coin. He'd been looking at technology and how it could help humans, right? Peter likes humans a lot. I like animals a lot. It's a general rule. And we had kind of split it.

Starting point is 00:40:27 So, you know, one day it was really funny because Peter called me up one day. He's like, Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, I've got this crazy idea for a book. I think we can finally work together. And he lays it out, and I just started laughing because I literally had the other half of the book on a napkin taped to my computer in front of me. And I said, Peter, you're not going to believe this. I have the other half of your book. It's sitting right in front of me. And that's where abundance came from.

Starting point is 00:40:49 Wow. So what's that process like writing a book with somebody who is, I assume you guys weren't sitting next to each other in a room when you wrote it? It was probably sending chapters back and forth to each other? it uh we did bowl well we would we would i i'd usually come into l a once every three months and we you know have two or three or four day marathon work sessions but we were on the phone you know three four hours a day my wife took took to calling peter my other wife and i think peter's uh peter's wife actually took to calling him the same thing so just massive amounts of work and you know one of things that that that is really true about people asked a lot about you know we're

Starting point is 00:41:32 you with Peter and I and I and I we loved it. We worked really really well together. We have a really good time. One of the things that really key to our relationship, uh, that I think is really important is in any big project, especially a book, you're going to have massive fights. You're going to scream at each other like you can't believe and you have to be able to lose your mind and then two seconds later get back to work, not care. You don't take it personally. You just had to get it out. and now it's back to work and how do we solve this problem. And both of us are really good at that. We can get really, really, really, really angry and then go back to normal really, really,

Starting point is 00:42:11 fast, which I found very, very useful for us. Really? Like, what's something, an example of a time you would fight with each other or disagree? I mean, we would disagree over everything, I mean, over a lot of stuff. I mean, you know, there's massive amounts of research in there, and we really, you know, one of the things I'm really proud about of abundance in it, and I don't know the actual numbers, but I don't know how many kind of you could call them, I guess, predictions about the future, right?

Starting point is 00:42:39 What's coming true? With the exception of one thing, our timetable for biofuels, we were right about everything else. But one of the reasons we were right about everything else is we hammered on those ideas back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, there were things that were really important to me that I wanted in the book that Peter didn't get. It wasn't his thing or, you know, he didn't understand why. And same, same thing. So we went back and forth a lot and, you know, beat on stuff.

Starting point is 00:43:12 You know, we're both very bullheaded people who like to be right and like to know how things, you know, have things done a certain way. And you're just going to clash. It's just that's the nature of collaboration. You know, let me come at this from a different. angle for a second. One of the things at the flow genome project, we like to hire X action and adventure sport athletes if we can. We like to work with them a lot. And one of the reasons is one of the things I, first of all, I don't, ideas don't really matter to me. I think ideas are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got lots of good ones. I care about execution. And with action and adventure sport athletes,

Starting point is 00:43:51 they learn to execute because if they don't, they're going to die in the backcountry. But More importantly, with action adventure sport athletes, the crazier stuff gets, the calmer they get. Because if you lose your mind when stuff's going wrong in the mountains in the ocean, you're going to die. So they train to move in the other direction. So, you know, one of the things that I like look for in collaborators, I don't care how, you know, hot your temper is going to go for a second. but what I want you to do is get really calm and deal with the problem at hand rather than attach to your emotions. I love it. Great leaders I've found are so measured when times are toughest.

Starting point is 00:44:37 That's why, I mean, I played the position of quarterback. I thought it's, I think it's taught me so much of how to deal with a bunch of collisions hanging like all over you, people running after you, having to stand in a pocket, scan the field, see. what the safeties are doing, find the right read, and then execute the throw. Actually, what some people think the only thing a quarterback does is throw, but all the things leading up to it. And I think that's helped me so much in any type of work that I've done since playing football was the fact of having to stand in there, play after play after play and doing it since I was in second grade through college and through playing in the arena football league where it's even

Starting point is 00:45:17 a hyper speed. And so I can see what you're talking about. of wanting to hire those types of people to be around you because when stuff starts going bad as it inevitably will you want people who can be calm, composed, measured, not emotional, and then can make decisions and they're decisive because if not, then as you mentioned, some of these extreme athletes, they're dead if they're not. So I can see why that's such a valuable trait to have for people to work with you. Yeah. I really appreciate this, Steve, and it's been eye-opening for me. I love learning about flow and I know I'm going to have even more questions for you in the future. I do have just one more for you though right now before we take off and that's around.

Starting point is 00:46:02 I mentioned to you a little bit before we recorded about the fact of why this show takes place and the purpose of it for me and for the listeners and the feedback that I get. And it's all about leadership and striving to get better day after day after day and only measuring yourself against your previous self and trying to improve upon that. I'm curious when you hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that pops into your mind? A sense of humor. Really?

Starting point is 00:46:35 Tell me more. I'm not saying that I see it all the time, but I am saying that it's, you know, it's hard for everybody, right? It doesn't, I mean, that's the funny thing about life is wherever you're at. I've been super, super, super rich, I've been super, super poor. I've been really, really healthy and top athlete. I've been really, really sick for years at a time. And, you know, that's just the way it goes kind of for everybody.

Starting point is 00:47:06 It goes up and down. And if you just can't step back and laugh at it, it's just going to kick your ass too much. It's just too hard. I love that answer, man. And it was like definitely not what I was expecting. So it was really good. and it's sometimes it's you just have to Joey Coleman told me you got to be gentle on yourself

Starting point is 00:47:27 I got to be gentle sometimes and not just be all about kind of crushing yourself so I really appreciate that answer Stephen where would you send everybody to learn more about you and your work online? Absolutely Stephen Kotler.com so S-T-E-B-E-N-K-L-E-R dot com and the flow genome project.com those two sites and on Twitter, Stephen underscore

Starting point is 00:47:53 Kotler. Perfect. Thanks again for being here, man. I really appreciate it. I loved it. I want to keep talking with you and keep this dialogue going as we both progress because there's so much here and we just scratched the surface, man. So thanks so much. Ryan, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks. I just don't, like in terms of information process and for all the reasons that you listed five

Starting point is 00:48:13 minutes ago, right? I just, it doesn't strike me as possible. so I would assume that anybody who's had a career, you know, even as spectacularly as yours, is just great at this. I think the best ones are. And I was curious, I was going to get into this, but I know we were run out of time. But my, I have 20 minutes, man. You're welcome to turn the recorder back. Okay, okay. Well, I'll just, I'll just click recording.

Starting point is 00:48:38 We could edit some things together. But I'm curious when it comes to, for me, the way to get into flow as a, okay. quarterback, it all stemmed from my preparation leading up to the game, both physical and mental. And I know the best ones in the world, certainly ones that play at a much higher level than me, were the best at that. So they had a keen understanding of what the defense was going to do. You never know for sure, but you have a good understanding of what they've done in the past against certain looks. And so for me, it starts, just like you mentioned how your day starts the night before, For me, it starts the instant the previous play is over.

Starting point is 00:49:21 We're looking at potential substitutions. If we make subs, how do they sub, right? And then what is my coach calling? Do I feel like my coach has a good grass that week? There's so many things that go into it. I played for so many different coaches that I trusted others more than others, just like anybody else, right? Some coaches are better than others, just like any profession.

Starting point is 00:49:42 Certain people are better than others. And so that helped with my preparation and my confidence, too. And so when it comes to flow and getting into that state, some of the triggers for me were my prep, my coach, what happened on the play before? What are our individual matchups? So do they have a great right defensive end who I think is more athletic than my left tackle? Bad deal, if that's the case. Yeah, clearly. Because if they can get to me without having to blitz, we're in.

Starting point is 00:50:11 Two words, right, Lawrence Taylor. Yes, exactly. We're in trouble if they can just rush the regular four or five days. guys and they can get to me without having to blitz because if they have to blitz, then they're not going to be able to cover all of my receivers and I can find the open man quickly and hit him or what we'd call throw hot, meaning the guy sees a site adjustment and he gets open and I hit him with the ball. But if they can get to me without that, then we're in trouble. So we have to have a guy, a great receiver, hopefully have a good matchup against a defender. And so there's just so many

Starting point is 00:50:41 different things that go into it in order to get into that flow where there are definitely games and some of my films out there you can see where I absolutely never got there and never did but then there were other games where it just felt like for whatever reason the guys that I was it just just worked you know what I mean like it just was there like every the guy that I thought should be open was when I was going to execute the throw I let him perfectly because you know if let's do you throw a deep pass 60 yards down the field the amount of timing and kind of the muscle memory it takes, I think, to complete that pass. I mean, even if there's no defense there, people sometimes still struggle to complete those

Starting point is 00:51:23 long passes. It just takes a ton of preparation. So for me, I'd say a big way to get into that flow was to be overly prepared more than anything. And that also helped with nerves. I think that... Yeah, so two things are really interesting here about what you're saying. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:41 flow is what happens when we automatize a process, right? It's not, it doesn't happen when we're learning. It's what happens when we take, you know, every single, you know, you drop back on a given play. You know, as you said, there's seven or eight different things you've got to do. You've got to read the safeties. You have, you've got to think about what your coach is doing. You've got to see how the linebackers are stacked, et cetera, et cetera, right? All those are separate individual things.

Starting point is 00:52:07 You didn't learn how to read the safeties at the same time. you learn how to throw the deep ball, but in a given play, you've got to do them all together, right? So flow is what happens when all that prep chunks together, all those chunks of information come together for the first time. When you get that, you get massive amounts of pattern recognition, which is what releases dopamine, which is one of the reasons flow feels so good. Dopamine is a very powerful focusing chemical, but it's also a big feel-good drug and it shows up when there's pattern recognition.

Starting point is 00:52:36 You can't get pattern recognition until you have the ideas in your head. already, right? That's why same reason I like to do my research ahead of time, not while I'm writing. Same exact concept here, just, you know, different, different playing fields. The other thing, you know, that you talked about that I think is so, so, so critical is when you say it helped your confidence, it kept you in that challenge skills sweet spot, right? Not enough prep. You're seeing a look you've never seen before. And suddenly, there's too much anxiety at a neurobiolone, logical level, there's literally too much norapinephrine, one of the chemicals that shows up with anxiety, and it will block your move into flow.

Starting point is 00:53:18 Do you work with any quarterbacks or sports teams? I don't work with any quarterbacks or sports. Well, we work with a lot of athletes through the flow genealbriot. Usually, mainly like the extreme athletes, though. Right. But lately, I have been working with a lot of different coaches. A lot of different coaches have been reaching out, which is, by the way, really, really fun because I've gotten to see like, you know, in the past year, I've talked to everyone from

Starting point is 00:53:44 like college football coaches through the guy who runs the U.S. wrestling team. And what's really amazingly interesting to me, and, you know, not that this should be surprising because I've worked, you know, we've trained thousands of people in every walk alike you could possibly imagine, but it still, you know, amazes me how, you know, it's the same process, right? It's, it's neurobiology. So what works in wrestling is kind of going to work in football, is kind of going to work in track. You know, it's interesting. There's a lot of, there's a lot of overlap and similarities. I also find with teams, you know this from football, right? There is nothing more conservative than a football coach. They are really scared to introduce anything new. So one of the

Starting point is 00:54:30 most effective things I found in dealing with football coaches is I'm less interested in their players. I will work with the coaches themselves, getting them into flow more often. It will bleed down to the players. But if your coaches are in flow more often, they're processing more data. Like McKinsey did a 10-year study of top executives in flow. And let's call the football coach top executive because they clearly are. They found that top executives are 500% more productive in flow than how to flow. So if that's your productivity level in flow, you certainly want your coach in flow.

Starting point is 00:55:03 Yeah, especially the play callers. It's so important that they, they, because I've played for great play callers and I've played for really bad ones. And it is a really tough go out. I mean, as a coach, your job is to put your players in the best possible position to be successful. And I've had coaches lift me up and I've had coaches that probably didn't. And that's a big thing. You mentioned earlier, and the only reason to bring this up is because I have a big talk coming up. And I was actually, as I was driving home tonight, I was thinking.

Starting point is 00:55:33 thinking about it and I was, I don't like using this word, but I was getting kind of nervous. All right. So you want to know how I prepare for my talks? Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. I speak all the time and you're going to laugh, but you're going to get it immediately. All right. So here's what I do. It takes me a couple of days. I write the talk, you know. So what do you mean?

Starting point is 00:55:55 Even if it's a talk that I've given before, I'm going to tune it up for however I'm giving it to, make it, customize it, right? Right. When you write it, you mean you sit down and write it, handwrite it? Yeah, I actually like to write out my full talk. That's funny. I do too. I actually have to write it and I write it. I like to be close to the day at the time of the speech.

Starting point is 00:56:14 And it's for some reason I learn by writing. Yeah, I learned by writing too. So, hey, I have to do that. Then I, I, usually my first practice section, I will, you know, I'll run through it quickly. I'll run through it once myself to make sure the timing is right. It's going to come in, you know, where it's supposed to be. Then I will call my assistant. I'll do this entire speech on the phone for him.

Starting point is 00:56:39 Then I will hike the dogs. And so my hikes, we live in the back of the area, it's sand. And when I leave my house, it is uphill for, you know, as far as I go. So it's uphill on the way out. And I try to give my speech while I'm hiking out with the dogs. Because if I can give a speech while I'm out of breath, hiking uphill through sand, trying to keep up with a pack of dogs, I can give it any time. And then if it's a speech that I'm really worried about, that's usually the end of it.

Starting point is 00:57:10 But if it's a speech that's really important or that, as you said, I'm nervous, I will, I'll do my entire day. So I'll get up at 3 a.m. I'll go through the entire day and I will do a really hard workout at the end of the day. And then after that workout, before I eat, I will give my speech, which is massive conditions. duress. I'm exhausted. I've got no food in my system. I've just worked out. And if I can give my speech then, it doesn't matter what happens on stage. I can handle it. So I'm really, really, really crazy about prep. You know, it's funny. My partner in the Flow genome project, our CEO, Jamie Wheel, is almost the exact opposite. This guy can, you know, he can have five, six ideas. All he needs to do is build a PowerPoint and just have sort of a general gist of what he's

Starting point is 00:57:58 going to talk to and he's going to get up on stage and it's going to sound gorgeous. And that's, I, like, I'm great on stage, but I work to be great on stage. Interesting. Do you use visuals, PowerPoints, things like that? It depends. I like, I like to be able to do a speech totally off book because I've been in so many situations where things have not worked for a point of various things. I want to be able to give a speech cold if I can.

Starting point is 00:58:26 I also, you know, I like my speeches to be filled with stories. I don't want people to have to listen to fact after fact after fact after fact. I want compelling stories. So it's usually anchored by a series of stories, so that makes it a little bit easier. Yeah, I was going to say, I think the best that I've studied, I've studied this a lot, as I'm doing more of it now, are almost magical at weaving in stories and research and facts and it's just kind of going, you know what I'm saying? and write through all of it so that it just weaves together and some of the best ones.

Starting point is 00:59:05 It's like I'm a big fan of Adam Grant too, the way he writes. And Shane Snow and Smartcuts, they both do that as well, where they weave these things together, like almost interchangeably. And as a writer, I'm trying hard to do that and just certainly not there yet. But it's a great thing to strive for, for me at least. you know I started caring about speaking tell you a funny story

Starting point is 00:59:32 yeah very first public speech I ever gave my first novel comes out it takes me 11 years to write this book enormous travail 17 publishers say no it becomes a surprise bestseller and I get a surprise book tour

Starting point is 00:59:46 and the first stop on the book tour is Cleveland Ohio where I grew up and I've got this fantastic Jewish mother who does what every fantastic Jewish mother does for her son. She's just a publicity machine. And I show up in Cleveland, and it's a blizzard. It's Cleveland in the winter, and like there's a foot and a half of snow on the ground.

Starting point is 01:00:09 And I show up at this borders, and there's 200 people. And they've driven through a freaking blizzard to be with me. And I start reading, and I'm, you know, reading my book, doing what I think a book reading is supposed to do. And I look up about five, seven, ten minutes in. and I realize they are bored to tears. They could care less. And all of a sudden it dawns on me, right?

Starting point is 01:00:34 Mid reading, I'm like, A, these people drove through a blizzard at the request of my mother. And I'm paying them back by boring them. Like, that just sucks on my behalf. And, you know, and B, it dawned on me that, like, no wonder book readings aren't crowded for authors. Right? No wonder so many authors are struggling. This is actually a part of the job. It's part of you've got to do this. And if I'm going to do something, I'm going to be great at it. I'm not going to do something. And especially if I have to do something in public, I'm definitely not going to be bad at it. So I, you know, from that moment. And, you know, I'm sure you've learned this the hard way. Public speaking is different from talking on a podcast. It's actually different from doing a radio interview. It's different from doing a television interview. Is different from making a presentation, you know, a video teaching, a teaching video, excuse me. They're all different pace. They're all actually different, totally different skills.

Starting point is 01:01:34 And being a writer these days actually requires me to be excellent in all of them. Yeah. That's a great story. How do you tweak then a book signing or something at a bookstore now as opposed to doing an actual reading? Well, okay. So A, nobody sends authors on book tours anymore. It just doesn't happen. When a small furry prayer came out,

Starting point is 01:02:01 we actually believe small furry prayer was the last time any publisher sent anybody on a giant book tour. And I went on it. It was like 50 cities. And it was just a belief that animal lovers were like the last population who were going to come out to see an author. And it was, they were right. But I think it was the last time anybody actually tried a major book tour. You know, now the speaker circuit has explored. loaded. So why would I show up at a bookstore where maybe five people are going to show up if they booked it wrong or there's a traffic jam or whatever versus, you know, a speech where I know 10,000 people are going to be in the audience. It did it stop making sense at a certain point. And, you know, the other thing is there's only, you know, on book tour, you can very easily go out and, you know, you could have 5,000 people one day and 10 the next. And, you know, I'm an old punk rocker, so I'll play to the back of the bar. I get it.

Starting point is 01:02:52 but it's hard you know it's like whatever whatever you think of yourself when you're on stage with 10,000 people when you show up the next night and there's five people there and who cares that they schedule it wrong

Starting point is 01:03:04 and this you know the advert went out with the wrong date and there was a traffic you know whatever it doesn't matter you're still there with five people in the room there's a certain point in which I was just like okay I don't know if I am emotionally tough enough to keep doing this

Starting point is 01:03:19 this way yeah Wow. Oh, man, I love it. It's crazy to see and just to... Really, your speech process is I really like that, especially the part about giving you the speech while walking uphill outside. I think that is impressive. And especially, it goes back to like I was mentioning when I played.

Starting point is 01:03:44 I mean, it's about being prepared and doing what it takes, doing what's necessary for not everybody needs to prepare. I know my dad can go and give a talk without preparing and not doing anything. He can give up and just wing it and it'll absolutely blow away thousands of people. I'm certainly not there yet. And I know I need my preparation and practice has to be there in order for me to, I think, do a good job. And that's just the way it is for me right now. You know, I'll give you a funnier, different example of the same thing that I think is interesting.

Starting point is 01:04:18 And this is just something I started doing years ago. after I got sick of breaking bones, I've broken a lot of bones along the way, as an action sport athlete. And I started to realize that in action sports, you to succeed in action sports and to sort of stay out of the hospital, you have to be able to have balance and agility under conditions of extreme exhaustion. So what I learned to do is at the end of my whole workout. So I'll do yoga, I'll lift weights, I'll run.

Starting point is 01:04:48 and then I'll get on a balanced board for I try to stay on for usually like five to 10 minutes without the board touching the ground once under conditions of extreme exhaustion. So I'm training, you know, you want to train how you fight, right? So I'm training the very thing, right, that is hardest under the worst conditions. So when I get to do it under better conditions, it's easier. Same thing I do with speeches. Same thing you did with playing quarterback. Yeah, exactly right. Oh, this is cool.

Starting point is 01:05:24 Now, again, man, I appreciate it. Like this talk and going long, it's awesome. When it's ready to be released, I'll definitely give you a heads up and shoot you a link. I'll shoot me an email. I'll get it out to my people and we'll spread it around. Perfect. Sounds good. Well, thanks again, Steve.

Starting point is 01:05:42 I really appreciate it, man. Ryan, my pleasure. Thank you. All right. Talk to you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over. but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information

Starting point is 01:05:57 and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 108: Steven Kotler – Your Flow State: What Is It? How To Get There…

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