The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 308: Alex Hutchinson - The Curiously Elastic Limits Of Human Performance

Episode Date: April 28, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #308: Alex Hutchinson TEXT LEARNERS to 44222 Full shownotes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com  Leaders who sustain excellence = They show up... Willing to take a shot when they might not be successful People over-estimate short term and under-estimate long term.  Be ambitious about long term Consistency - Secret to success: "When an editor gives me an assignment, they will receive it back on time with the right words."  You have to always get it done and be known as someone who does this. To rise above a certain level, you must do more than what is expected.  "Dream big while not neglecting daily responsibility." Eliud Kipchoge - spiritual leader of self-disciplined people around the world. "Only the disciplined in life are free." Getting there earlier than his coach... "As hard as I was willing to work, he was willing to support me." -- Alex describing his great basketball coach "Discipline is a muscle.  You get better as you use it more." Model of achievement -- Work hard, support others "Sweat more than you watch other people sweat."  -- Every leader should get some sort of activity.  It's indefensible to have a healthy body and mind. "We are cognitively better when we are fit." "Pushing yourself physically reveals what you're made of mentally." How to raise your threshold of pain: It's expectation based Pain perception is the same for all... It's all about how you respond Learn to tolerate it it by going through it regularly.  Develop psychological coping system. Pain is just a signal -- Understand it's how you choose to respond Navy SEALs, Olympians did an experiment with brain scanners where oxygen was restricted: They have a 'higher level of self-monitoring' Elite athletes get better when stress hits.  Normal people get worse Take a mindfulness based course: Cultivate "non-judgmental self-awareness" When you make a pancake for your 5 year old and they don't like it, "try not to respond with frustration in the moment.  Think about how you'll feel in 30 minutes." Change in training?  "Training will be the same, but my mind will be different." The importance of self-talk -- Inner monologue -- "I've trained for this, I can do it." "When you've reached a point that you think you've hit a wall, in fact in almost every case, those limits are perceptions of effort." Handle fear with preparation -- You must show yourself you have reason to believe you can do it. Delayed gratification -- Sports is the clearest venues to see benefit of delayed gratification "Champions in November are made in July." Alain de Botton quote -- "Of many books, one feels, it could have been truly good, if the author's appetite for suffering had been greater." Advice: Read a lot of books... On topics that have nothing to do with your topic Give self space to think Give self time to be bored

Sometimes I think to myself, if I wasn't a competitive runner, I would never, there would be nothing in my life that forced me to confront this feeling that I'm reaching an absolute limit. There's nothing where, in the normal course of things, where I'm forced to dig as deep as I am in running. And like you, I find that really a powerful thing. And I don't think it's something that's just for elite athletes or anything like that. I think it's something that anyone can find by, and millions of people do, by deciding to run a marathon or run. whatever the case may be, do something that they really didn't think was possible for them that forces them to dig deep. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2. In order to be part of Mindful Monday, a note that goes out every Monday morning, 9 o'clock Eastern, what I've been reading, watching, and thinking about, sharing the great works of others, as well as some of my own. own. We're also doing some cool giveaways and you can read about how to become part of my book launch team. Text learners to 4-4222. Now on a night's featured leader, the great Alex Hutchinson,

a national magazine award-winning journalist, a former long-distance runner for the Canadian national team. He holds a master's in journalism from Columbia and a PhD in physics from Cambridge. Did his post-doctoral research with the NSA, the National Security Agency, and has written an incredible New York Times bestselling book titled Endur, Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. A few of the topics we got into. The difference between the ultra-elite and the really good. Then how to raise your threshold for pain.

Then the science behind positive self-talk. Does it work? Alex has done the research and answers this question. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Alex Hutchinson. All right, Alex Hutchinson, man. So good to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome.

Thanks a lot, Ryan. It's great to be here. I am curious. So you've spent a great portion of your life studying high performers. And I'm fascinated by people who sustain excellence over an extended period of time, which I think that high performance, sustaining excellence, very similar. I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among those people who sustain excellence over an extended period of time?

Yeah, so that's a long question with many, many answers, as you know. So I won't pretend I have one answer. One of the things that I often like to remind myself of and that I think is a powerful thing is, and it's a cliche, is showing up and being willing to take a shot even when you don't necessarily think you're going to be successful, but you know that you're always going to show up and give your best shot on each given day, and you're willing to forecast that into the future and see a thousand days from now

and know that you'll still be showing up every day and doing it. Because I think, again, not to speak entirely in cliches, but I think people often tend to overestimate what they can achieve in the short term, but underestimate what they can achieve in the long term. And so people have big goals, and they get out of the gate quickly, and they maybe don't quite get as far as they wanted to, as quickly as they wanted to, and get discouraged.

And so I feel like a lot of people have to kind of be a little more realistic about their short-term goals, but be a lot more ambitious about their long-term goals because a little bit of progress each day takes you a long way. So in terms of sustaining excellence, it's having that long-term vision and feeling like, yeah, I'm going to be still plugging away. No single day has to be heroic, but every day I have to be getting a little closer towards my goals. I feel like that the word I think of there is consistency. How has consistency played a role in your life both as a runner and as a creator slash writer? Yeah, I think it's been huge. And I think that's a, you know, it's not the sexiest trait there is.

But so I'm a freelance journalist is how I make my living. And, and that's kind of like more or less if you want to sort of write a script for how to be poor and barely able to pay your rent and not. have a sustainable career freelance journalism is a great place to to make that happen and so i often i end up giving uh you know talks to like a grad to science grad students often who are trying to figure out what what they want to do outside outside academia maybe anyway when i give talks about freelance journalism one of the things i i always say is the secret to my success such as it is as a journalist has been that when an editor gives me a story uh they know that they will get that they will get that they they will will receive my submission by the time, on time, it'll be the right number of words. It will

reflect what the assignment was that they gave me. Like, I'll understand the assignment. I'll do what they asked me. So I, I want to be a genius. I want to write like wonderful things that people, generations from now will read. But the starting point to that is I want to do what the editors want and I want to be consistent as a guy, not a guy who hits it, you know, the grand slam homer sometimes and strikes out 52 times because that's fine in baseball, but it's not fine in most professions. You have to be more consistent than that. And I think that's one thing I've been very good at, both in running and as a career, is just getting it done. What do you need to get done today? And I'll do it. I won't be worried too much about what I should be doing in 10 days or what I

could have done yesterday. I'll just do what I need to do today. You're dependable, reliable, and they know what they're going to get. And there's a lot to be said for that. If you translate that to let's say the corporate world where a lot of my listeners are in this, this, this, they're ambitious about growing within a business or a company. So most are not freelance journalist. However, I think this applies because if you say, okay, how can I make that as part of my role? Well, most people listening have a boss, almost everybody. And what does Alex do in this case? You take care of your boss. You know, if it's that editor, you make your boss's life easier. Really, that's a big part of our jobs. Even if we're high level.

leaders within companies, we need to make the lives easier of the people that depend on us. And that's what I'm hearing from you. And the ways to do that, not sexy, but show up every day, be consistent, put out quality work, do what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it. It seems like that's been the secret to you being in New York Times, bestselling author, publishing all over the place, befriending Malcolm Gladwell. I mean, anything you want to say with what you've done, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah, and I would say at a certain point, to rise beyond a certain level, you have to do more than the minimum expected.

And you have to dream big and you have to take chances and all these things. And I guess the thing that I would emphasize is that you have to do those things like the dreaming big, blah, blah, blah, while not neglecting the basic responsibilities of your position, whatever that position has to be. Because we all know people who are, you know, maybe very creative, have big ideas, have bold ideas, but don't get the basics done. aren't dependable. And, you know, it's a much harder path that way if you're like, that guy has some really good ideas, but he also drops the ball half the time as opposed to you want to be the guy who has good ideas, but also the guy who everybody knows will get whatever, whatever does they say they're going to get done, they'll get it done when they said they'll get it done. Yeah. So the reason, one of the reasons that I became really excited about getting the opportunity to talk with you is because your book is called Endur. mind, body, and the curiously elastic limits of human performance.

One of the best subtitles I've read, especially you can put the word curiously in it, curiously elastic. I like that. But anyway, it's one of those books that there is a running component, but I don't really think it's a book about running. I think it's a book about life and about work and about how to kind of what the already the theme of this conversation is early. And your background is as a runner.

And you still obviously do it a lot forward by Malcolm. Gladwell, who wrote about that, how you guys race together and you smoked them, which is pretty cool. But I want to get into some of the work in your book and then have you expand on it if you're cool with that. Does that work? Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about discipline for a second. So I'm a big discipline guy. It's kind of been been ingrained in me since I was very little from my parents, my siblings, as well as coaches that I've played for, my background's in playing football, played in high school college and a little bit after college. So we both have some athletic and workout stuff, just different sports.

But one of the quotes that I pulled from Kipchogi, Elliot Kipchogi, which you can feel free to talk more about is, is only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions. Now, this is the guy who has the world record marathon time of 201.39. Talk to me about this. I mean, what does discipline mean to you, both for your life as well as the people that you've studied. Yeah, I mean, Elliot Kipchogi is, like you said, he's the world record holder for the marathon. He's also kind of the spiritual leader of, you know, of endurance runners around the world

and maybe more generally of really self-disciplined, humble people around the world. There was this great documentary that National Geographic put together about when he participated in this Nike project to try and break the two-hour marathon. And it really gave some insights into his life. This is a guy who's a multi-millionaire, like he's very, very rich because he's been very, very successful. He spends at least five days a week away from his family at this training camp with a bunch of runners in a rural part of Kenya in the Kenyan Highlands where he lives this absolutely monastic life, you know, sharing a room and taking his shift, cleaning the toilet. Like, this is a guy who could buy the whole province where he's, you know, where he's training.

But to him, it's very important to keep his eye on the goal and to keep doing the things that got him of the place where he's at not to change and start living the, you know, the cliche of the, you know, the boxer wearing the golden warm-up gown or whatever, you know, once you reach a certain level of success, it becomes different. That he's the total opposite of that. And I think, yeah, well outside the athletic sphere, I think that's just an amazing sort of example of thinking carefully about what's important to him in his life and not getting bogged down with a bunch of, a bunch of trivialities. But, you know, in terms of my own life, I think discipline is It's a bit of a muscle that you get better at it as you use it more.

And just, you know, you're talking about coaches that inspired you. It makes me think of a – I had a basketball coach in high school who was absolutely an old-school, old-school, old-school basketball coach. He went to the Olympics on the Canadian basketball team in the 1950s. And so, you know, his vision of basketball was a little bit – he would keep telling us, you know, Despite what you may see on the television, basketball is a game played on the ground. He never wanted you to like elevate and then decide, which is what the T-shirt said at the time. But what I remember about him is that, you know, we practiced before school every morning and our practices started at 7.30 in the morning. And I would sometimes show up at, you know, five minutes early because I wanted to shoot around a little bit.

And then usually the gym would be open and the balls be there. Sometimes I'd get there before he got, he had opened up the door. And if he ever found me there waiting at the door of the gym with it locked, the next week or the next day, he'd be there earlier. And so then I knew, you know, I could be there at 720. And, you know, the door would magically open earlier. And we had this sort of escalating, totally unspoken. Neither of us ever said a word about it.

But by the time, you know, halfway through the season, I could show up at 7 o'clock, halfway, half an hour before practice started. And the door would be open and the balls would be there. And I could go and shoot around for an extra half hour before practice started and work on some things. And I just remember it really stuck with me that sort of I knew that as hard as I was willing to work, he was willing to support me. He was never going to, he never asked me to show up a half hour early. He would never push that on me because discipline and motivation has to come really from yourself. But to me, that seemed like a parable of, I've often thought of that as I've sort of moved on to other pursuits and thought about other things. That's the, that's the sort of model of achievement that I want to, I want to have. have that I'm willing to work as hard as it takes and I'm willing to support other people never to push them I never like I'm never trying to make other people want things but if they're if they're trying to push hard I want to be the type of person type of colleague or

leader or mentor who enables other people to push as hard as they're willing I love that example my the coach that that has left that imprint on me it's funny he he was famous for no one would ever beat him to the locker room or the weight room ever June July, August. You name it. It doesn't matter. His name's Ron Allery and I love him. I'm still scared of him a little bit.

But he was, he led by that. He was always the most prepared person in the room or on the field. Always. I mean, there wasn't even like an off day. And that has inspired me and I've learned so much from it. It sounds like it's amazing the impact people can have in our formative years on our lives

that will potentially change us for the rest of our lives. When we see the coach who's willing to get there early to support. support you because you're a self-starter type of a guy who wants to do extra and he's not going to make you, but he's going to be there for you or the coach who was always the most prepared person on the team. That's inspiring. I want to shift gears a little bit when it comes to, so you write about the book's titled Endurr and you write about in a way pushing yourself physically and seeing how far you can go in a sense. And I'm curious from your perspective, when you think of leaders in any space, whether they work in the corporate world, a coach of a team, it doesn't matter.

Do you think that leaders should strive to physically be in shape, physically work out? Scott Galloway, who I had on the show, really interesting guy. And one of his rules of life is you should sweat more than you watch other people sweat. Meaning a lot of us like to watch sports on TV, but you should be sweating in the gym. or your sport or lifting weights more than you should watch other people. Sweat because his words was it built so much confidence in him that he's in really good shape. If the world's coming to an end, I'm going to be able to, I'm going to be able to defend myself, that type of thing.

What do you think about that from a leadership perspective and being in physical good shape? Yeah, it's interesting. So I definitely agree with the rule that you should sweat more than you watch other people sweat. And I've always enjoyed watching sports. but if I have to make a choice in allocating my time, I would rather be out there putting up a bad jump shot than watching someone else put up a good jump shot. In terms of the importance of working out,

I guess I would, so I think I'm on the same wavelength as Scott Galloway in terms of how I approach my work and my life, and I feel the same way and I get the same things out of exercise. Can we generalize that to all types of life? leader, to every leader. Well, I would say, I think you can make a very good argument that every leader should be in the gym or having getting some sort of physical activity in a very general way that exercises, not just good, but pretty much indispensable for being fully healthy, having a healthy body and a healthy mind. There's just piles and piles of evidence showing that your cognitive performance

is better when you're physically fit. So I think there's a, there's a, very, you know, when we can go down that road, but I think there's, there's, and it's not like a surprising road to anyone. Exercise is good for you. Well, it's really good for your performance. It's good for your performance. It's good for your mental performance. It's good for your health and good for your longevity. It's good for your relationships. Is it a component of leadership independent of health? I think it can be for some people, but I'm a little wary of and I would say in my own for for me, it's at that feeling of like, yeah, I'm I know I have confidence in myself. I know I'm physically fit, it makes me not shrink to the corner of the room. I don't think it's the only way. And I think

there's a bit of a danger for people like me and you and probably Scott Galloway who draw our strength from that sort of thing to assume that that's the only path. I think there are other people who can feel that they're confident leaders because of the things they've read or the people they know or the place they come from or they're, you know, I just, I'm a little. Yeah. I'm a little. Yeah. I I can hear you thinking through. One of the things my friend James Clear wrote an article, I don't know if you read some of James work, but he wrote about why everyone should lift weights, everybody. And he said, because when you push yourself physically, it reveals what you're made of

mentally, which, again, I am biased. This is one way that I do this. This is something I do every day. And I think, and so I'm talking to the person who maybe says, I don't have time for that stuff. I got a job and a family and everything else to do. But I think it actually has a positive. impact on what you do. And you're right, though. I think I'm glad you're adding better perspective

than me, which is true. Obviously, exercise is good. But I'm saying it's great for developing, to understand what you're made of, to try to push the boundaries of what you're capable of physically because at some point it becomes a mind game, like especially as a runner, you know, like I'm not a big long distance runner like you. At some point, you have to push and fight and develop this mental toughness to keep going that I don't see how it couldn't help you in other areas of life, especially leading a team when things are tough and it gets really hard, that you have experience of pushing through those tough moments, that this is certainly one avenue that could be really beneficial.

That, Alex, you know, anybody can do it. I mean, I shouldn't say anybody. If you have a physical disability or anything like it, but if you don't have a physical disability, anybody can put on the shoes and go outside and run. anybody can go to the gym and lift weights. So if you're capable of doing it, that's one of the ways to build up how strong you are mentally. Yeah, and I agree. So I get the same thing out of running that you're talking about with weights, although I do lift weights to, you know, less than I should.

But the barriers that I encounter when running and the effort that I have to put in to push through them, those things are probably in, at least in a superficial sense, they're harder than. anything else I do in any other part of my life. And I, and sometimes those barriers get the best of me and sometimes I get the best of the barriers. And so sometimes I think to myself, if I wasn't a competitive runner, I would never, there would be nothing in my life that forced me to confront this feeling that I'm reaching an absolute limit. There'd be, I would never, there's nothing where, in the normal course of things, where I'm forced to dig as deep as I am in running. And like, like you, I find that really a powerful thing. And I don't think it's something that's just for elite athletes or anything like that. I think it's something that anyone could find by, and, you know,

millions of people do by deciding to run a marathon or whatever the case may be, do something that they really didn't think was possible for them that forces them to dig deep. I think that can be super helpful for a leader. I'm still going to say that I'm not necessarily sure. Like people are just wired so differently that I'm not sure it's the only path. to self-mastery, to leadership. Some people, you know, maybe through meditation, they're going to, you know, push back barriers in a different way. So I'll just keep that note of caution there.

But personally, I'm on the same page as you. And I think it's a really amazing path to self-discovery and to sort of proving to yourself or learning what you're capable of and proving that you're, proving to yourself that you're capable of pushing past. So we all have thresholds of pain. and you've written some of the science and stories behind how to elevate this or raise your threshold for pain. So I always want to be cognizant and careful to balance out the physical with then relating

it to somebody who is working in a leadership capacity in an office environment so that it hits both of those. So how have you, whether it's from studying or your own, experimentation, learn to raise your threshold for pain. Yeah, I mean, I think there's really fascinating literature on how we perceive pain. And the first thing to understand is that it's not this sort of simple circuit where, you know, if you press this hard on your finger, you're going to feel three units of pain. And if you push twice as hard, you're going to feel six units of pain.

Pain is really fundamentally, it's a subjective experience. and a lot depends on your expectations and how your sort of emotional interpretation of that signal that's coming into your body. So one of the things that I've found really powerful, when I look at the literature where people study the pain perception and athletes, one of the key things is that pain perception is the same.

If you look at the average everyday person and you look at a group of elite athletes and if you start applying, I don't know, electric shocks or whatever and start increasing the intensity until you get to the point where people say, hey, that hurts. It's the same. So becoming an elite athlete does not mean you feel less pain. It's a question of how you respond to it, because if you keep turning up the electric shocks

until someone says, okay, I can't take it anymore, stop. That's where the athletes are totally different from everybody else. They're willing to continue feeling the shocks to a much higher level, even though their actual perception of the pain isn't different at all. So their pain tolerance is higher without changing their pain perception. So that raises a million dollar question of like, okay, is that why they're athletes because they have a high pain tolerance or is that something they've learned? And there's probably a bit of both, but there's pretty good evidence that you do learn to tolerate higher levels of discomfort just by going through it. Just by experiencing on a day-to-day basis, whether in the sports context in training and competition, the more you do it, the more you develop psychological.

coping strategies. You're able to distract yourself, think about something else. You're able to reframe the pain as information rather than a panic signal. And you're able to just avoid the emotional reaction to the pain. The pain is just a signal. It's the emotional reaction. Oh my God, the panic that causes trouble. And I think that's where the crossover comes away from sports and to life more generally, maybe to the corporate environment, is understanding that it's how you react, how you respond to whether it's physical pain or whether it's frustration or, you know, at a challenging work situation or other sort of situations where you might be inclined to lose it, that you have to distinguish between what the signal is and how you respond to it and learning how to

respond to things and not to get, you know, not to blow your top is really the sort of common factor there. I think this is why in the hiring process, I've been in position to hire probably hundreds of people of course my career. A common question that all people have started asking or have maybe been asking for many years is share stories of adversity and how you've handled it. Because if we can learn a little bit about, okay, we know this is not always going to go well. I need to know how you're going to choose to respond in those moments. And I can learn a little bit about that by asking you about how you've done it in the past. When I speak with people from the military, this is, this comes up a lot. And I always lean towards hiring them.

And I'm not always right because there's more to it than just responding to pain. But, but that is, that is one area that if you show that you've got a framework in place to make distinctive choices for how you respond to adversity, that is, I mean, we're talking about resiliency here. That's a big deal when it comes to sustaining any type of excellence. Yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, the military is a great example. And there's some really fascinating research at the University of California, San Diego, where they've been putting, you know, Navy SEALs and elite adventure racers and Olympic athletes and all sorts of high performers into brain scanners and subjecting them to a stressful situation.

So you're lying inside this brain scanner. and you're doing a bunch of cognitive tests. So you're lying inside this giant magnet, tapping buttons in response to cues. And then all of a sudden, you're breathing through a mask. All of a sudden, they start restricting the oxygen

that can get into the mask. So you can still breathe, but it's like you're breathing through a straw, basically. And you're already inside this very claustrophobic magnet, and you still have to keep doing these. This is a surprise, too, by the way. They don't tell them they're going to restrict oxygen? They know it's going to happen,

but they don't know when. Okay, okay. So they're aware that it's going to happen, but otherwise you'd have people, just losing their. Hold on a second. There's a problem here. Yeah, yeah.

That would be scary. I'd be losing it. But, you know, and so they can see different parts of the brain acting up in different ways in different people. And so the elite performers, be they Navy Seals or elite athletes or adventure racers, they're constantly, they have a higher level of self-monitoring. So they're always keeping kind of track of how they're feeling what's going on in their bodies and minds.

And then compared to the sort of quote-unquote, normal people who are just kind of blissfully oblivious when everything's going right, they're just kind of sailing along without thinking about it. And then when the adversity comes along, when the breathing is restricted, for the elite performers, nothing much changes in terms of how they're, you know, they're self-monitoring. They, you know, changes a little bit, but they're already, they're like, okay, I'm feeling fine, I'm feeling fine. Okay, now there's a problem, so I need to adjust. Whereas the normal people are like, la-di-da-di-da, not paying attention to anything. And then their brain activity goes through the roof when the, when the adversity starts.

They're like, oh my God, what's happening? Five alarm fire. Oh, no, let's do something. And so the fascinating thing is you look at the cognitive tests and the normal people, when the breathing gets restricted, of course, their performance gets worse. All of a sudden, they're making mistakes. Their reaction time is slower. The elite performers, they actually get better. So the stress comes and then they know, okay, this is the performance defining moment. And so they're buckling down, they're focusing and they get actually even better on the cognitive tests. And to me, that's the, you know, obviously that's the person you want to be, right? person who, when the chips are down, when the disaster strikes or when the stress is highest,

that's when you're at your best. You're hitting the free throw at the end of the game. So that's, that's a really powerful example of me. And I think it's something that people like Navy SEALs and elite athletes already tend to have. But so one of the things these researchers have been trying to figure is how do the rest of us get it? What's the shortcut if we don't have 15 years to spend training? Well, they've found mindfulness training is one root to that. And it's, I always sort of want to punch myself in the face when I say something like mindfulness because it's such a cliche and such a buzzword these days. But it is what it is. It's interesting. They've found that an eight-week mindfulness training course can change these brain activation patterns so that

it's not a miracle fix or anything, but you're becoming a little bit more able to avoid that overreaction in self-monitoring when under stressful situations. I remember my coaches tell me, going into my freshman year of high school, we would be on the game field with the lights on. And they would say, you want to be a legend here? You want to be a big time player here? Well, the big time players make big time plays in the big time moments. That's what it takes. When the chips are down, when it's the toughest, it's fourth down, right?

Those sites, like you're going to overcome and you're going to make plays in those moments because anybody can do it when it's a blowout or it doesn't matter. But we want you to do it when it's tough. Speaking of the mindfulness training, because I do always want to get applicable to the non-premer athlete or Navy SEAL since that's the majority of people. Do you practice this? Is this meditation? Is it a course? I mean, how do you define mindfulness when it comes to the research you're talking about? Yeah, so this is the question I always wish I could dodge because, you know, I spent pretty much a decade working on this book and coming up with all sorts of interesting ideas about what, or discovering the research about what it takes to be a peak performer. And then it's like, so what do you do, Alex?

I'm like, well, I've just kind of been trying to survive for the last year. I've got a couple of young kids. And so I haven't done a formal mindfulness course. It's one of those things where I think there's good reason to do it. I haven't done it yet. My wife did one, actually, shortly after our first kid was born. So there's these eight-week courses that are a couple hours a week. They're pretty standard around the world.

And they can be, some of them are targeted to athletes or to new moms or things like that. But there's also just some generic. They're called mindfulness-based stress reduction. course. It's an eight-week program developed by John Cabot-Zinn back in the late 70s. And there's been a lot of research, you know, hundreds and hundreds of studies of this particular eight-week protocol where, you know, you learn things. And it includes things like, you know, sticking your hand in a bucket of ice and sort of trying to, you know, ask yourself, what do I feel right now as it gets more and more painful? Listening to your thoughts and trying to understand the thoughts that

go through, which of them are real, which of them are, you know, which of them are exaggerating. or which should you listen to? And so the fundamental premise of mindfulness is to cultivate non-judgmental self-awareness, which again goes back to what I was saying with the Navy SEALs in the brain scanner. It's like be aware of what's going on in your body, but don't be judgmental about it. It's not, I feel pain, therefore it means I'm about to die. It's just I feel some pain. Okay, that suggests that my, you know, I'm not breathing as much as I could be or something like that.

So you don't panic in response to it. Anyway, to get back to your question about what can you do about these sorts of things. So there's these eight-week courses. Lately, there's a bunch of apps that have come out, things like minds, or Headspace, rather, which try and teach the principles of mindfulness in a more accessible way that can, you know, can start with two minutes or five minutes in the, you know, in the morning before you get going. And I know I've talked to a bunch of people who've had success with some of these apps that they've found. It's helped guide them along this path.

And to be honest, not to be too blasé about it or too glib about it, but I think thinking about it a lot and just understanding these principles has helped me, you know, in moments when I'm, you know, this morning, my five-year-old wanted me to make waffles for breakfast and I made waffles. And then I didn't put enough apples sauce on the waffles. And so she was flipping out and decided not to eat any of the waffles. And it's like, I could feel myself. I was like, are you kidding me? Like I spent a bunch of time making, or it was actually not waffles, pancakes. As a nice thing, I made the breakfast you wanted and now you're telling me you're not going to eat it. I was about to blow my top. And then it's like being aware of the sort of idea of non-genital self-awareness. Like, okay, Alex, what are you feeling? And is it productive? Are you going to, you know, is there. Were you able to really do this? Because this happens to me all the time. Like, were you able to, a four-year-old who has the same reactions from time where I feel like, I just did exactly what you asked me to do? And all of a sudden, her mind has changed, I guess. which every parent of a four, three, whatever, kids, they all are saying, yep, yep, yep.

I mean, like, are you really able in that moment to stop and, as you say, cultivate a non-judgmental self-awareness in the moment? Put it this way. I don't want to overstate my parenting skills. I was pissed off, and I wouldn't say I gave the warmest hug goodbye to my daughter. But I could see what was happening. I was aware of what was happening. And I was like, I can't make those feelings go away.

I can't stop being angry, but I'm going to, I see those angry feelings. I'm going to let them pass through my brain. I know they're there, and I'm going to try, I'm going to try not to react on them. I'm not going to, I'm going to try not to, you know, say something that's too, that's, that's out of proportion to what I'm feeling. And I think I'm a little better at that now than I was, especially, so when, after my wife went through the mindfulness course, she was good at pointing out. to me when she saw that I was kind of getting getting more wound up than was reasonable. Well, first of all, she wanted me to take the course and I should have, but she would say, you know, think about it, Alex.

Just think about what you feel. Think about how you're going to feel about this in half an hour. Is this? And it became, it was, she did it enough that I can now catch myself in that moment. And like I said, it's not that the feelings, and that's not the point. Mindfulness doesn't make the feelings go away. Mindfulness doesn't stop you from being angry when someone's being an idiot. But it allows you to be aware, just to see that.

anger, to let it be there, to know that it'll pass, and hopefully to avoid overreacting in that moment. Yeah. But like I said, I don't want to pretend that. Yeah, I got you. No, we all are flawed in that and try our best. And anything to help even a little bit, I think is useful here, which is what this shows about, because we're talking about the whole person, not just, all right, this is what

you do as a manager at work. But, I mean, leading at home is the most important leadership job, that leadership role that will, will ever have. Let's be honest, leading at work often involves dealing with the equivalent of five-year-olds. Well, there's so many carry-o. I mean, there's so many things that apply to both. So I often find, and I work with leaders all the time, host these leadership circles. And I find we talk equally as much about our personal lives as we do as work when initially the circles are essentially like mastermind groups were created for work.

But, I mean, we're people. and we have lives. And once you become closer to people, it's not just about the work. It's about your life and living it. And so it carries over from both. There's not really a difference. And there's just so many similarities between leading people at home and leading people at work. One of the things from a mindset perspective, I want to pull a quote from breaking two,

too, a great documentary you talked about with Kipchogi and Nike, they were trying to break the two hour mark for the marathon. And he was asked how he would change his training to break the two hour mark. Kipchogi was asked this. Like, what are you going to do differently? And his response, quote, was, I'm not. I'm just going to change my mind, unquote. I mean, I'd love to hear the science behind. I'm not necessarily going to change my training.

My training is already intense. It's crazy. I'm going to change the way I think about this goal, this problem, this thing I'm trying to solve to run a marathon under two hours. when you, you've, you've had some, some great time studying him, what do you think about that and saying, and how that also applies to the everyday person, not trying to break two hours in the marathon, but just trying to break through whatever it is they're trying to break through of how they could do that.

Yeah. So that quote, this was about six months before he was going to try and break the two-hour marathon barrier. And he had just run a half marathon in like, just under an hour. So I was like, you know, how are you going to go twice as far at the same distance? how are you going to change your training? And so when he said, I'm not going to change my training, the training will be the same, but my mind will be different. To be honest, my reaction at the time, you know, in my head at least was like, man, that's a terrible plan. You're not going to

get very far like that. But he then actually did come very close. And I thought a lot about that over, you know, in the months that followed. And I started to see a big connection between that and the idea of motivational self-talk, which is a big theme in sports psychology that's been around for decades, and not just sports psychology, psychology, motivational psychology more generally, where just in the last few years there's actually been some really good research that really bears out how important your internal monologue is, that it matters what you're saying to yourself in your head. And I'm a very skeptical guy. I'm always a data-first kind of guy. Show me the evidence before you show me any sort of motivational techniques or whatever. And so this was something

I'd been taught for years, but only in the last few years have I started to become convinced that it's real, this idea that, you know, so in the sports context, if you're running a marathon and you're telling yourself halfway through, you know, oh, this is so hard, I can't do this. My training wasn't good enough. I'm going to slow down. I'm going to hit the wall. It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy versus telling yourself, I've trained for this. I can do this. Come on, just keep pushing. And there's some great studies showing, you know, massive differences in performance in, you know, you know, on an exercise bike, say, when you get, just get a couple weeks of training in how to stop those negative thoughts and replace them with the positive thoughts. And, you know, we could go pretty far down the rabbit hole on how or why this works. But I think the basic message is that when you reach a point where you feel like you've pushed as hard as you can, where you're like, that's as much as I can do, whether it's, whether it's professionally or personally or athletically, there's always a tendency to view it as an external imposition that you've hit a wall, that your muscles are incapable of doing any more, you've done everything

you can. In fact, what it's in almost every case, but again, both whether you're talking professionally or personally or athletically, those limits are essentially, they reflect your perception of the effort. So it's a creation in your mind, or at least a, it's your mind's evaluation of the situation saying you can't go any further. And so there are ways in the lab where in a sports context where you can trick the mind, you can change your perception of effort and all of a sudden your performance improves. And I think that's very generalizable. And I think that's some of what Elliot Kipchogi's magic is. His mindset of, yeah, my mind's going to be different. I'm going to be running and training with the idea that I'm going to run a two-hour marathon.

And it sounds glib and it sounds sort of too simple. But that makes a difference. That makes a difference when he tries to run to a marathon because he's spent the last year training with the belief, with the sincere belief, not the sort of patched-on hopefulness, but the sincere belief that he's ready to run into our marathon. And I think this, so again, I'm with you when it comes to some of these motivational sayings to look at it with a bit of a skeptical eye to make sure let's kind of find the research. there to make sure this is accurate. But when the, for, for example, if you have a big presentation, if you have a big sales call, part of how you develop this, this self-talk is, is through your preparation, right?

The preparation is a, for me, has always been a way to, to handle and to deal with fear. If I was scared for, let's say, a big triathlon, I knew the only way that I was going to handle any sort of fear was to be over-prepared. And the same thing is true for work. if you're still scared the day of, you might have those nerves, the anticipatory feeling, I get that, right? You're getting ready to go on. But really, the fear can be mitigated by your prep and by what you say to yourself,

hey, I'm prepped, I'm ready, I've practiced, I've done it over and over. So I think that's how this applies to the regular world outside of the running world is when it comes to preparation. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's important. Whenever I start talking about motivational self-talk, it's easy to kind of slide into the idea that it's all in your head and whatever you believe you can achieve and all that sort of thing. Of course, it's all dictated by the reality of your physical constraints.

You're trying to reach up to the height of your level. You're not going to be able, I can't go and become an NBA player just no matter how confident I am. But in terms of then, so you know, you kind of have an idea of you should be saying, you should have positive internal self-talk. Well, how do you, and you have to believe in it. Well, how do you come up with positive self-talk that you believe in? It comes back to what you said.

You have to have a reason to believe in yourself. You've done the preparation. You've convinced yourself. You've done everything possible. Therefore, it's entirely logical to believe that you're going to be successful, that you're going to do this well. Now, those two things should go hand in hand, right? Like great preparation and a positive self-talk.

They don't always. There are people who do all the preparation in the world, more preparation than they need, and are still paralyzed by doubt or uncertainty or fear. And so that's where sometimes some people, and you have to be kind of be honest in your self-diagnosis, some people are doing all the preparation they need, but they need to fix their mindset.

They need to take care of building their confidence. Other people, it's the other way around. Like you said, they may be nervous on the day of it. It may be because they're actually not well enough prepared. Like if you're in a marathon saying, to take it back to the sports analogy, if you're in a marathon saying, oh, I can't do this.

I haven't trained well enough. I'm going to hit the wall. Well, if it's true that you haven't trained well enough, changing the words in your head isn't going to change anything. But you have to have done the preparation, and that preparation should give you the confidence. And if it's not, then you need to think about what it is

that's preventing you from being confident about your abilities. Productive paranoia can be helpful to prepare. And then it'll give you some of that confidence to have real self-talk on the day of the big moment. Um, there's a phrase that's, that's out there a decent amount that I found a commonality of people who are able to play the long game, thus sustain excellence in whatever game that they choose to play. Um, a phrase that goes by delayed gratification. The ability to not need the feeling to be right now. Uh, especially like I'm, I'm, I'm in the, the closing stages of finishing my first manuscript, right? Right. Right. Written over 60, whatever, seven thousand words. Um, You know, and it's, but there's no gratification for it until, I mean, I feel gratified

that I'm, I'm at this place, but nobody else sees it. They don't know it, like broadly, as you know. So you don't get any gratification until it comes out, which won't be for some time. What is your thought process on delayed gratification, both from an athletic perspective as well as a, you're a writer, you produce, you're a creator. So from both parts from writing as well as, uh, the exercise world. Yeah.

So I would say that's, you know, going back to one of the first things we talked about and, you know, should leaders be pushing themselves in the gym, I feel like when you talk about what are the crossover benefits of training hard at something, of getting fit and maybe even competing in some respect, sports is one of the clearest venues where you can see the benefits of delayed gratification. And I would say, you know, as a pitch for my own sport, running. is maybe the clearest example where it's like really how well you perform in a 10K is going to reflect how much you've run in the previous six months and how hard you've trained.

And it's like if you run for a few seasons or a few years, that lesson gets ingrained. And this is true in every sport. The champions in November are made in August or July or, in fact, they're made two years earlier, or whatever the case may be. And it's one of those generalizable lessons that once you sort of understand or integrated into your thinking, you realize how true it is in every respect.

And for me, as a journalist, it's actually a little, it's tricky, especially in this age of social media where there is, you know, if I write an article that goes up online, you know, there's immediate social media response. And that's, look, it's a dopamine hit, right? It's gratifying to have people saying, hey, great article.

I really enjoyed it. And so I'm in a space right now where I spend about half my time writing relatively quick turnover articles that I spend maybe a day on, and I do maybe eight of those a month. And the other half of my time is devoted to longer term projects, things like the book that came out last year. And I would like to shift more of my time to big longer term projects. And it's a complicated question. like what do I lose if I cut back on my, you know, my shorter, my quick columns. You know, I, I lose income, but, and I lose visibility, but I also lose that, that immediate

gratification. And it's hard to go back. Like my last book, I was working on it for close to 10 years. And through that time, I was writing the shorter articles. And so I, I'm wrestling with this right now. I'm wondering, like, how much am I, you know, shackling the possibilities for my next project? project by remaining, by keeping wanting to hit the button to say, yeah, immediate gratification of it, you know, and we all have to balance that, right? Like, nobody can think only of 10 years down the road, and nobody can think only of how am I going to feel tomorrow. But finding that balance, and I think it's important to recognize that, that delayed gratification

is important, but you also have to have some intermediate goals, some benchmarks that remind you you you're on the right path or that give you the positive feedback to keep you enthusiastic and stuff, but it's hard to find the right balance and not to get trapped pursuing just one or the other. There's a quote that I look at every day as I write, and I want to get your thoughts on this. It took you 10 years to write this book. I mean, it's well worth it. It'll live on.

You know, it's timeless. They'll live on forever. You may already know it, the Elaine De Botton quote. Of many books, one feels it could have been truly good if the author's appetite for suffering had been greater. I haven't heard that quote. That's an amazing quote. And boy, the appetite for suffering. Yeah. And, and, you know, I look at my own book, which I spent a long time on. And there's, like, I guess the main thing, the, the biggest thing I feel about that along those lines is if I could have spent three more months making the book 10,000 words shorter, like, I think I could have conveyed the same information. but done just a little more streamlined. But man, I had hit my limits in a sense.

I at least I perceived that I had hit my limits. I couldn't do it. I couldn't to do a really good edit like that. You really have to be right back inside the text. And I'd been inside the text for so long. It was just like I, so yeah, of many books, and I think that quote is probably, you know, especially true when you're looking at your own books,

you realize only you know what you could have done differently. And I know there's things I could have done differently. And I know that you will feel that way about yours too. And you just have to accept that at a certain point, you do the best you can within the parameters you have available. Well, that's why I guess the publisher says it's got to be turned in by this date. And because for me, I'm always iterating, always wanting to change. I know for a fact they're going to print this sucker.

And I'm going to get it back and say, well, I want to change this. I want to change that. And maybe you can, I guess, for the Kindle version. But the print of version, like that books, it's there. It's there. It's there. You've got to live with it. And that's why it's like maybe any.

to suffer a little bit more to make sure I'm happy with as much as humanly possible when that thing's printed forever. And that's something I wrestle with on a regular basis when it comes to trying to put out as useful and as good of a book as possible. Alex, we've talked before. And one of the things that because you're such a thoughtful, intelligent guy, this is not really, I don't think this applies to really any one topic, but just life and career in general. I like to ask wise, thoughtful people, general career slash life advice, meaning you're sitting in a room and you have a person who's, who looks up to you, perhaps you're in some sort of a mentorship with this person and they, and you're trying to steer them as best you can.

And you want to offer up a few pieces, a couple things to say, hey, you know, maybe this and that. what are a few of those as we wind down here? What are a few of those pieces of advice that you would share with that person if they're sitting in front of you in this moment? Those are big questions. Yeah. I think obviously the advice depends on where that person is in their life. But any advice that I give is drawn from my own experiences.

And so one thing I'll say, I was extremely, extremely lucky in my life that when I was 24, no, I guess I had just turned 25, or I was just about to turn 25. I was at a kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, and I had an opportunity to basically step back for what turned out to be a year. I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I could move back in with my parents. And, you know, I lived the cliche of the 25-year-old with my parents, not quite sure what he wanted to do. And I'll tell you what I did do during that year. I was training very hard. I was trying to make it as a full-time athlete, which didn't really pan out. I read a ton of books, a ton of really good books. In fact, the local library near me, they just had a couple racks that

were called World Classics. And I went and basically read, I didn't have any, I didn't like drop a list of books. I just went and every, you know, every week or every two weeks I'd go and see what books were on that rack. And I read them. And I thought a lot about what I wanted at a life. and at the end of that year I still didn't know what I wanted to do and I went back and I was in physics at the time I started as a scientist I went back and took another job in physics

and stayed there for another two and a half years but that year it ceded the thinking process that eventually made me realize what I did want to do and so I guess it was three years after that or three and a half years after that that I made the switch to journalism so look no one's going to retrace my specific steps

but giving yourself some space some time if you're able to look and I realize how privileged I sound, but if you're able to find some time to just think about things, you know, read some books that don't necessarily have any direct connection with where you're headed. Read what some of the great thinkers or great writers have thought about. I think that sort of that non-linear, non-goal directed thinking is harder and harder to make time for in the world. I find like I think about it a lot right now. I think about because I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do next in my career right and so one way of to do that is to think about you know make a list of the 10 things I might be interested in and and research them and you know be very like I'm going to find something to write a book about and the other way is to like read interesting things give myself some time to stare out the window and give those sort of background processes in the mind chance to to chew over all the

experiences that I've had. So that's a very long and rambling piece and answer, but I guess I would boil it down to, you know, give yourself a chance to think laterally, give yourself a chance to don't always be in pursuit of a specific goal. Because, I mean, look, I'm very goal directed and it's, you know, it's important to be on the tracks, but it's also important to see if there are some branches off the tracks you're on right now that might be actually a better fit for you. This is the notion of creating space, even if it's not a full year devoted to that, but if the person's still, let's get practical for a second, that you do have kids and mortgage, car payments, responsibilities, you're the sole breadwinner for your family, perhaps, which a lot

of people listening are. I think at minimum you could take from that advice is to build blocks of time on a regular basis to be thoughtful, introspective, reflect, because that's when we learn. We learn in the moments of reflection. And if we don't, if we aren't intentional about building those times, those blocks into our lives, that is a guarantee that it won't happen. Yeah. Yeah. So I would just jump in and say that's, that's exactly kind of what I was thinking of in the sense of like today. It's so easy to, every time I get on the subway or sit in a car or go outside. I can have a podcast or music in my head. I can read a book, bring a book with me. And it's great. I can read a lot more because I always have books with me in an electronic form.

But I've started to actually cut back a little bit sometimes and say, you know what? I had a drive, a couple hour drive from Flagstaff to Phoenix last weekend. And I was like, I'm not even going to turn on the radio. I'm just going to just stare at the windows I drive and let myself think. And so running is a great opportunity for me to, you know, I get, let's say it's 40 minutes a day or whatever, just I'm not against, like, listening to music or podcasts, they're great, but sometimes give yourself a chance just to let the wheels spin without any direction and see where they take you. And so it doesn't have, yeah, it doesn't have to be a year. That's, that's a big ask, but, but if you give yourself an hour sometimes, that's, and it's not like, give yourself an hour

and then say, okay, what great ideas did I come up with? Let's see what I got into this hour. It's a much more sort of long-term thing. Yeah, give yourself a chance and just to see where your mind goes. It's funny. Think about, and I know we're trying to do this a non-judgmental way, but think about where some of your best ideas come from. Like, where are you? You'll hear the shower, things like that. For me, the weird time is this happened sometimes laying in bed with the lights out.

And whether it's an idea for a speech or a way to make it better or what I want to write. but it's always when I've created some space or I shared an article in my Mindful Monday note recently like let's get bored like creating some of that. That's the fear probably. You have the same thing with your kids like I do where they can't have one second of boredom. And that really scares me because it's like, oh, that YouTube video didn't get started fast enough. I'm going to the next one when it's like we shouldn't be on the iPad at all.

And I think that's what I worry about from a creativity, innovation standpoint is building blocks of open space is healthy for all of us. Yeah. So we, and we all worry about it from a parenting perspective now, and it's become a bit of a thing like, oh, let kids get bored. Think about yourself too. Think about, give yourself a chance to stare at the wall every once in a while. You know, don't be, don't be afraid to get bored.

Love it. Alex, I could talk to you all day, man. I really appreciate it. And I'd love to do this again to continue recording and just to catch up and see what you're doing next. I'm excited. The book I highly, highly recommend to anybody, regardless if you're a runner or into athletes, athletics at all, even if you're not.

It's called Endurr, Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. Alex wrote it. Malcolm Gladwell, your buddy wrote the foreword is really good. Highly recommend reading this book. It's not a new book. Alex didn't come on to promote this book. We came on to have a conversation. I reached out to him and I'm really glad we were able to do this, man.

Thanks, Ryan. It's a lot of fun to sort of dig deeper into some of these, the offshoots of some of these ideas. Yeah. Where would you send to my listeners to learn more about you online? Probably the easiest place to find me is on Twitter. That's where I sort of keep up to date. My handle is at sweat science, all one word. I do have a website, Alex Hutchinson.net, with a few more details.

So either of those options. Why is that your handle? Sweat science is the name of the column that I write for Outside Magazine, and I used to write it for Runner's World. So it's interesting because it, in a sense, it means my online presence is tied to this idea of the science of fitness, whereas I'm maybe thinking about branching out beyond that. So I'll have to wrestle with whether I change it to sweat science and other stuff at Twitter.com or whether I stick with the initial handle. Well, I'd love to create again, a fellow Canadian and friend of mine, Neil Pasricha, created the end of the podcast club. For those of you who are with us, dialed in, note takers, tweet at Alex and me at Ryan Hawk 1,2, and tell us one key learning so we can amplify and share that message more broadly because still only about 49% of people in North America are listening to a podcast. So there's more people out there to share this with,

and maybe we can get more people in on us, because I think it's a really important message. And it's a thoughtful, long-form conversation that I think could benefit people. So tweet us, end to the podcast club, something that you picked up, you learned. If you can fit two things into 280, then do that as well.

But Sweat Science and at Ryan Hawk 1 too. Alex, thanks again, man. I'd certainly, as mentioned, love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Sounds great. Thanks, Ryan. Awesome. Thanks, ma'am.

Wow, I love having conversations with people like Alex, the deep thinkers, the really smart people who share high level as well as a zoomed-in tactical, practical advice. And some of the advice is not sexy, right? Show up every day. Be consistent. Be disciplined and understanding that discipline leads to freedom and how to do that on a day. after day basis. I really enjoy this one and found it useful. I hope you did as well. If so, I would love it. If you would share this episode with a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast before. Doing so is the best form of marketing, which is word of mouth.

And it continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. Man, that was great. I don't know how to compare, but I feel like this one was, was just money all the way through. So I really appreciate you and being on it, especially not all the questions are, some of them would take you like an hour to answer, I guess. And I realize that. But I can't help it. I mean, I just follow what I'm naturally curious about. And I think it could be useful for the listener. And that's how I try to operate with this. And I love the depth of. thought that you give to it. Cool. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun to just see where we ended up. And I do think we ended up covering like different and fresh ground from last time.

I can't really remember. But I think it was, yeah, it felt totally fresh. It was great. It was great. So like before, I will, I'll make sure to shoot you a note when this one goes, goes live, man. I don't see any like any edits or anything happening. I think we'll just play it straight through and go from there. I'm excited for my honesty to hear it though.

Okay, sounds great. Awesome. Thanks again, Ryan. Thanks. Okay. Bye. Bye.