The Rich Roll Podcast - How To Achieve Peak Performance — And Sustain It — With Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness

Episode Date: June 5, 2017

Plenty has been written about achieving peak performance in sport, career and life. But there is a black hole in the literature when it comes to the tools and practices required to consistently perform at your absolute best over the course of an athletic season, a long professional career and ultimately an entire lifetime. Until now. This week I convene with Brad Stulberg (@BStulberg) and Steve Magness (@stevemagness), two high performers who both quested for greatness but fell short, succumbing to the paralyzing burnout that all too often destroys the hopes and dreams of even the most talented, determined and capable. Once a rising star at McKinsey & Co. with a stint consulting on health care at The White House, Brad was a golden boy determined to maximize his seemingly unlimited career potential. Instead, he worked himself right out the door of his chosen profession. Reinventing himself as a writer and author, today Brad specializes in the health and the science of human performance, known for his ability to merge the latest science with compelling personal stories to offer readers practical insights that they can apply in their own lives. Currently a columnist for Outside Magazine and New York Magazine, Brad has also written for Forbes, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, Runner’s World, and The Huffington Post. And because Brad's insights are generally so awesome, they often find their way into my weekly Roll Call newsletter. An elite track & field athlete with very realistic Olympic dreams, Steve clocked an extraordinary 4:01 mile in high school. As a collegiate, he would spend the next several years chasing the elusive sub-4 minute barrier, unable to best what he accomplished as a teen. Steve reinvented himself as one of the most accomplished, respected and in demand track & field and cross country coaches in the world. In addition to serving up duties at the University of Houston, he is the personal coach to some of the most accomplished professional and Olympic runners on the planet. In the wake of their respective course corrections, both Brad and Steve wondered: what could we have done differently? And more importantly, what can be learned from the latest science, our experience and that of others to save people from suffering our fate? The product of that inquiry is Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout and Thrive with the New Science of Success*. Based on science and insight derived from some of the world's most accomplished athletes, artists, and intellectuals, it's a must-read primer on the common principles that drive and ultimately sustain performance, regardless if you're trying to qualify for the Olympics, break ground in mathematical theory, craft an artistic masterpiece or just become a better weekend warrior, parent or professional. Today, I sit down with Brad and Steve to unpack the aforementioned common principles. Chockablock with life-enhancing treasures, this is a great conversation. Enjoy! Rich

It's really, really hard to be balanced and that's okay. But what's not okay is to mindlessly just go down a path because that's where your passion is taking you and to do it recklessly. I'll just layer on and I think it's about being intentional. It's being thoughtful and intentional on what you're trying to do and what you want out of it. Deciding where you go and how do you get that, but also making sure that you're not getting in your own way.

So I think getting out of our way and then being intentional on what we're trying to accomplish is two takeaways that I think are really important. That's Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus. And this week on The Rich Roll Podcast, it's all about peak performance. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody.

How are you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to my podcast, where each week I bring you the best and the brightest, the most paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of health, fitness, diet, nutrition, entertainment, athletics, business, entrepreneurship, all with one goal in mind, to help you manifest your best, most authentic self, to help you self-actualize,

which is, you know, the greatest aspiration that we could all have for ourselves and each other. I've got a fantastic show coming up for you in a couple minutes, but first, we've got to take care of a little business. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

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To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide.

Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery.

To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, today's show. So today I sit down with two guests, two really awesome guys, Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus. Now, I could easily do an entire show with either one of these guys individually, and I may do that in the future. But today they're here as the dynamic duo behind their new book, which is called Peak Performance, Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success. It's a great read. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of it. I really enjoyed it. You should all check it out because these are two gentlemen who have each in their own respective fields achieved super impressive

levels of success and really understand both the science and the process behind not only attaining peak performance, your potential, but also how to sustain it over the long term. And it's that sustainability part that's perhaps not that sexy, but is really most critical, most important. It's what separates the most successful people across every field, any field of expertise and prowess from the flash in the pants. So who are these guys?

Well, a former consultant for McKinsey and Company, Brad Stolberg. He's at B Stolberg, S-T-U-L-B-E-R-G on Twitter, is a writer. He's an author who specializes in writing about health and the science of human performance. He's a columnist with Outside Magazine and New York Magazine. He's also written for Forbes, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Runner's World, and the Huffington Post. Brad is known specifically for his ability to merge the latest science with compelling personal stories, offering readers practical insights that they can apply in their own lives. And this new book is really a manifestation of that style. Steve Magnus. Steve is a former world-class runner who once clocked a 401 mile in high school and today is one of the world's most accomplished, respected, and in-demand track and field and cross-country coaches. In addition to serving up his duties at the University of Houston, Steve is the personal coach to several professional athletes, a bunch of Olympians, basically some

of the best runners on the entire planet. As an aside, Steve was also the main whistleblower on the Nike Oregon project, Alberto Salazar doping scandal. That's a fascinating story in its own right, but it's a little bit far afield of what we talked about today. So we didn't really get into that in today's podcast, but if there's some interest, perhaps I can revisit that with Steve at a later date. What's interesting is that both of these guys are, like I said earlier, super high performers, but they're also two people who both ultimately burned out, dying on the sword of this more is better or I'll sleep when I die ethos. Despite being a high school phenom, Steve never reached his personal athletic potential. And

despite Brad being sort of a golden boy in his younger years, he never reached his potential in the consulting world. And I personally have a version of this story as well. In any event, this got each of these two guys thinking deeply about the sustainability aspect of peak performance and really how to help others not only achieve it, but prevent the failures that they experienced. And this new book, which is packed with the latest science and insights from some of the world's greatest athletes, artists, and intellectuals is a result. And it's great. I think it's going to help a lot of people.

And today we get into the principles behind it. So this is a conversation about, of course, the sustainability of peak performance, athletic performance, and how it can apply to non-athletic activities, practices, and careers in a non-athlete's life. It's about training versus overtraining, avoiding burnout, the courage to rest for the athletes out there. It's about habits to set yourself up to perform at your best. It's about self-actualization. It's about passion versus purpose and the mindfulness to enjoy your pursuits. In other words, purpose as the ultimate performance enhancer. It's about meditation. It's about

service. It's about overcoming fear. But ultimately, it's really about identifying who you are, defining your core principles and constructing a principled life that supports that mission over the long term. So I love connecting with these guys. They're awesome. They have great energy. And I think you guys are going to really enjoy this one. So I love connecting with these guys. They're awesome. They have great energy. And I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this one. So let's dig in. Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation

with Brad Stuhlberg and Steve Magnus. You guys ready to rock? Yeah. Let's do the podcast. All right. All right, man. We're in a super sexy Marina Del Rey, what are we in? Like some kind of Holiday Inn situation here?

I think it might be a double tree. Yeah, I feel like we're in like a CIA safe room, you know? Like some kind of weird Edward Snowden situation here. Pull the blinds shut. We're going to talk about this book. It's not out yet. Anyway, super great to meet you guys to talk about this book. It's not out yet. So anyway, super great to meet you guys. I love the book. I'm excited to talk about all the good stuff in it about peak

performance, athletic performance, basically, you know, self-actualization, which is, you know, the undercurrent kind of theme behind all of this. Brad, you and I kind of go back virtually, like we've communicated over the last, I don't know, year and a half, two years or something like that. I've been following you for a while. I've shared your stuff in my roll call and retweeted your stuff. Steve, I know less about you, and I'm looking forward to learning more about you today. to kind of kick off this discussion about peak performance is to contextualize it with your own personal stories in the way that you did in the book, which I thought was really great, like sort of sharing a little bit about how each of you have come into this sort of interest in

this field. So whoever wants to go first. Yeah, I can start off. This is, that's Brad, by the way. Yeah, we'll have to do something with that. Get the voices down. So this is Brad here. Yeah, so coming out of undergraduate school, oh, about 10 years ago, I took a job at a corporate consulting firm called McKinsey & Company. Super prestigious. Yeah, I don't know if prestigious is the right word but it was a tough tough gig to get and

be really smart um thanks rich that I know it very quickly became all consuming um and not so much because the work itself but because of my relationship with the work I just really, really struggled to turn it off. I kind of realized that I had a problem when I would be on the phone with my, at the time, girlfriend or my family. And even though I'm talking to them, I'm thinking about like the PowerPoint slides I'm working on or the Excel spreadsheet. Just struggled mightily to turn it off. And that was sustainable. And I performed well for a short period of time. But about a year and a half, two years in, I just started feeling

burnt out, like emotions that I hadn't felt before. Just like, what am I doing here? Do I really want to be here? Is this sustainable? Is this the path that I want to be on? And to put it in perspective, I mean, you were working on high level health care policy on behalf of the White House, right? We're talking like 1600 Penn and you're running spreadsheets trying to figure out how to create or innovate on health care and make it work. Right. So this is like big time stuff. Yeah, it was definitely intense for sure. So there you know, there wasn't much opportunity to, to rest and kick back, but there probably was more than, than I gave it. Um, yeah, so it was big time stuff. It was thrilling. It was super exciting for sure. Um,

and are you like, just to get climb inside your mind and sorry for interrupting, but, you know, at the time, are you thinking like, this is my shot? Like I've got a, like sort of the pressure that you, you internalize and place on yourself to really make sure that you're maximizing this rare opportunity that you found yourself in. Yeah, I think so. That was definitely the case. I mean, I was like 22 or 23 at the time. So, um, I wonder if I'd feel the same way if I went back now, I think that there was a fair amount of ego that got caught up into, like, it felt really good to say that I was working on that stuff. Even if I was just saying it to myself, it was pretty validating. Um, but again, you can say that to yourself and it can make you feel good and you might get a nice little

hit of a feel good neurochemical in the moment, but repetitively, not sleeping, grinding, not being able to turn it off, not cultivating any kind of spiritual practice, just being purely in the work became pretty draining. And so how did that ultimately manifest itself? Do you end up just walking away from this career or what happens? So I was fortunate to have a pivot point. The way that the firm operates is they encourage their consultants to go to graduate school. So I was encouraged to go to graduate school and I did. I ended up studying public health and it was in graduate school that I

did some soul searching and I kind of realized that perhaps the path to being a partner at this consulting firm wasn't for me. And again, it's not to say a partner at this consulting firm wasn't for me. And again, it's not to say anything wrong against the consulting firm. I think McKinsey's a great place to work, and I think they do great work. It's just that I struggled. My fit for that job wasn't right. Right, I get that. But I think even maybe perhaps more importantly is this idea of reframing what the appropriate or sustainable or optimal path

towards achieving whatever goal it is that you set for yourself, as opposed to the burnout, work every waking minute kind of program that is culturally reinforced. I mean, at that time, did you have the awareness to start rethinking that or that came in later? That came in later, culturally reinforced. I mean, at that time, did you have the awareness to start rethinking that or did that came in later? That came in later. All right. Okay. So we're going to get into all of that, but like, but like, let's hear Steve's version of Brad's story. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. It's, it is my own version of, of Brad's story. Only mine takes place in athletics. You know, I think conceptualizing mine it it starts in high school i was essentially a phenom um my senior year of high school i ran at the pre-fontaine classic which is probably the biggest professional track meet in the country if not one of the worlds

and i was the the fastest high school miler in the country, third fastest in the world. And at that point thought, man, like I have the world at my fingertips. Like you are pre-fontaine. Yeah. Like that's it. You just need the mustache. Exactly. Just grow the hair out, get the mustache with the, that's what you envisioned. And that's like Olympics were what was all in my head. So at that point, you're 18 and you grew up where Houston, Texas. So, you know, and I was obsessive about it, you know, much like Brad said in his story that he was all about McKinsey and healthcare and stuff. I mean, I was running as a high school kid, a hundred plus miles a week, um, in the Houston heat and humidity. You know, I was in bed at 9 p.m. I didn't do the social life high school thing. Like I would skip my prom and all that stuff.

Like my parents hated me on vacations because I'd run 16, 17 miles a day and drive them nuts while they were trying to like, you know, tour around some, some vacation spot. And so you're at this meet and, and, uh, this is where you're going to be able to put your, put your wares on display for the world. Right. And so what happens? So I ran the mile on four minutes and one second. So, and you, do you win this race? I did not, but because it was the best athletes in the world. It's not just high school. It's everybody. It's everyone. To give you an example, Bernard Legat was there, who is, I mean, it's multiple-time world champion, Olympic medalist, and that things. And I was running. I was ahead of Alan Webb, who is the American record holder in the mile, until he came by me with maybe like 60 meters left in the race.

So 401, which establishes you, does that make you the fastest high school miler in the country? Yes. In the world? It was third fastest in the world that year. And like sixth fastest high school all time, right? So superstar. Yeah. And you must have been stoked right oh yeah i mean i was

a little bit peeved that i didn't get under for right but i mean i was i was stoked i was on top of the world as i said i thought that you're a senior in high school yeah i i thought i was classic phenom like i'm gonna go do anything that i want to in this sport. And then what happens? I never ran a step faster. Like that is still my, my best mile I have ever run. I went to college, burned out. I did the exact thing that, you know, I think anytime you struggle, as I said, all right, I'm going to put my head down and do more. And I went from under a hundred miles a week to 120 miles a week to, you know, becoming more obsessive and compulsive on like training as hard as I could, because I thought the solution was put your head down, grind away, be tough, get it done. And all I did was keep digging that hole.

Making it worse and worse and worse. Yeah. And the more tired you are and the worse that's happening, your solution is to then double down again. Exactly. And that's all it was. My whole college career was going backwards every year as I doubled down and doubled down and doubled down. And so did you run throughout college? Yes. You were a glutton for punishment. I was. Yeah. I mean, I ran myself. By the end, it was like I was a walking zombie at some point. And at no point you have a coach who pulls you aside and says, listen, man, I know you're all up in your head about this, but we need to find a new way.

You know, no, I didn't. I mean, I was lucky in that I had some coaches who had done some great things as athletes. But normally, even at the college college level you're used to having to have to motivate athletes to do things yeah and i was the kind of kid who if you told me i if you gave me free reigns i was going to push that edge as far as i could go training rights right so no one was there to put the reins on and say hey like, like, stop doing this. Like, yeah, it's this idea that that that performance is a linear equation. Exactly. Right. And it's a function of how much work you put in and how much you're willing to sacrifice and dedicate yourself to. And should you do that,

you will get the result that you seek. And it becomes, you know, really painful when you realize not only is that not working, it's moving you further and further away from your goal. Exactly. And as a young person without that much life experience, and, you know, it's hard to, like, have perspective enough or the confidence to step outside that unless you have some kind of mentor or coach who can, like, do that for you. Yeah. You're exactly right.

Like, you don't have the knowledge or the perspective to do it. I mean, you just, the best way I can describe it is like your, your vision kind of narrows and all you see is this, you know, path forward of work harder until it eventually kind of all blows up in your face. Well, what I love about this is that my own, you know, my own personal experience is like a weird hybrid of both of your... It's like a less sexy hybrid of both of your stories. I wasn't a phenom. I was pretty good at swimming.

And I wasn't working at the White House, but I was successful in the lawyer world, in the corporate context. So I'm able to relate to both of your experiences in some regard. And the last time I swam, I swam my best times when I was 18, 19 years old. You know, so and I'm convinced looking back that I was overtrained in my entire swimming career because that was an era in which volume dictated everything. And I was a glutton for punishment and I wasn't the most talented swimmer. But I realized early and often that if I was willing to put in more work than the guy next to me, that I was progressing more quickly. And I swam the butterfly events, which were considered, that's where the people that liked punishment would go.

And I would do ridiculous sets, and I got results. But then at a certain point, you can only escalate that volume to a certain point before it becomes diminishing returns. And I think when you're 17, 18, you can absorb that level of volume and punishment. But at a certain point, it starts to work across purposes. And if you don't have another idea of where to go with it, you're just you're digging your grave. And I walked around like a zombie through college, you know, and then I started drinking, and then it got worse from there. But then I found myself in the corporate world. And I walked around like a zombie through college, you know, and then I started drinking and then it got worse from there But then I found myself in the corporate world and I was you know

Working those 70 or 80 hour weeks without any self-awareness to look at the people above me and say do I even want that? Person's life. I just was like this is what I'm supposed to be doing And it took you know a big shake-up in my life in order to to get me to look at it in a different perspective. But that's a long roundabout way of saying that I love what you guys are doing. And I think it's a beautiful kind of collaboration that you guys have created to bring your two different perspectives to this subject matter that I think is in great need of redress, especially in this culture that we find ourselves in, in which there's this heightened sense of like, you gotta hustle and sleep is for the weak

and all that kind of stuff. It's like we gotta find a sustainable path towards success. So tell me how you conceptualize peak performance. Like how do you define it? What does it mean to you? And what have you learned through your, not just conceptualize peak performance, like how do you define it? What does it mean to you? And what have you learned through your not just your own life experience, but the research that you guys have put together and put into this book? So, Brad here, I would I would say that how I would define peak performance is sustainably getting the most out of yourself and feeling good about it. And how to get there, it's an entire section of the book. We call it the growth equation,

which is stress plus rest equals growth. And that's the big secret. And that's it. That's the secret. And I think that, Rich, what you were alluding to is that society pushes us to really focus on the stress part of that equation, but not so much on how to temper that and manage it and follow it up with enough rest to elicit growth. And when I say stress, I don't mean stress as in like fighting with your spouse or even like being anxious about your boss. I'm using the word more scientifically like a stimulus. So the stimulus in swimming might be to log that 75K week. The stimulus in a more intellectual pursuit might be to really, really grind and work hard on solving a problem. And that's all good. You need to do that to grow.

You want to take on challenges. You want to get outside of your comfort zone, but if you don't insert periods of rest and recuperation, rather than grow, you get injured, you burn out. I mean, just think about lifting a muscle or lifting a weight with your bicep muscle. And if you pick up way too much weight, you're going to tear your bicep. If you lift weight nonstop all day, you're going to fatigue and your muscle will literally burn out. If you don't pick up enough weight or you pick up hardly all day, you're going to fatigue and your muscle will literally burn out. If you don't pick up enough weight or you pick up hardly any weight, nothing's going to happen.

So you need to find the right weight, do it to a point that is stressful enough to stimulate some growth, but then follow that up with rest. And we learned that that applies. I hesitate to use the word universally because there are always exceptions, but that equation applied pretty broadly as we reported out across great performers in various fields. It's super interesting. I mean, any, you know, runners, swimmers, triathletes, they are pretty well versed in this idea of, you know, stress and rest and the periodization of training and this idea that you have periods of intense work and then periods of overemphasized rest. And this is the, you know, this is the process of how you get better over time. And I think, you know, even on a fundamental level, like a lot of athletes

don't understand that you don't get better during the training, you get better in the period in between the training sessions, you know, just that like basic concept alone is like, oh, wow, like I never thought about that. It's so true. But I've never, like until your book broached the subject, like I had never really conceptualized that idea applying to anything outside of sport, like the idea that it applies intellectually. And of course, it makes sense. Like you hear stories of these great thinkers and artists who were sort of deemed lazy, you know, and perhaps they were just in their rest phase, you know, in between their work phase where that kind of creativity percolates up.

And you talk about that in the book. Like when do you have your, you know, when do you have that sort of light bulb moment or that creative impulse? Like it doesn't happen when you're grinding. It happens. When you're at rest. Yeah, in doesn't happen when you're grinding it happens when you're at rest yeah in the shower or when you're on a walk through the woods exactly so um so you know maybe like uh let's talk a little bit about like the nuts and bolts of this though like i you know i can understand that intellectually but let's say somebody's just, first of all, why should we even care about peak performance?

Is this important? What if I just want to go to work and go home and be happy? Well, I think the part of it is peak performance defined for each individual, and you get to define what that is. And that's dependent on what your goal and all that is. And I think there's a couple misnomers in it in the sense that when we say peak performance, we mean not only what you can do,

but it's what you want to do. And you kind of create those parameters around things so i would say that that's number one number two on why you should care about this stuff is because it's sustainable like it's really like it's really easy to work really hard people think oh it's hot it's really tough to go grind away and get all the work done and work the 80 hours weeks no like anybody can do that if they're motivated and they choose to but eventually it's going to catch up to you right and like what we're conceptualizing around peak performance is how to maybe reach the levels that i did as an athlete or brad did um in the corporate career. But to be able to be comfortable with that

and do it for not only two years, but 10, 15, 20, 30, however long you want to and give you the choice and the power to decide that versus having this burnout decision forced upon you. Yeah, it's tricky. It's challenging. It's a little bit of a mind fuck because I'm thinking of you as this young 18-year-old phenomenal runner and thinking, all right, well, what if he just had a healthier relationship with performance, right? But had you had that, would you have been on the blocks running 401 at 18?

Like, I don't know the answer to that. Maybe, you know what I mean? Certainly you would have had longevity in your career. Would you have achieved that level of performance? Because, and this is through the filter of my own perception and experience, because I'm like a crazy workaholic and an extreme person. And my whole life has been you know Early bird gets the worm and and like you got to work out work the next guy and like I burned out like I'm I'm like you guys like I get that and still it's like it's uncomfortable the idea like creating like a balanced Sustainable approach to this it doesn't feel the same like I don't get the jolts and I think that's where there's a big Misconception is I don't think it's about balance.

I don't think we think it's about balance in the sense that, you know, I work with some really elite athletes. I mean, I just had two who finished first and second at the U.S. Half Marathon Championships. And I'm trying to get them to make Olympic teams and, you know, medal and all those stuff. So we're trying to get them to make Olympic teams and you know metal and all those stuff. So we're trying to maximize performance So this is almost like a little experiment is can we get that like that max level? Well still making it sustainable. Mm-hmm. And I think what what I found and what we found in researching this book is that There's gonna be periods where you need to go into that like obsessive work mode right but then you have to have like the self-awareness to be able to like shut it off and know that like this is my secret power almost like i need to go into that obsessiveness and get like get that jolt that

is my power but then when i no longer need, when it's no longer moving me forward, then I have to have the ability to turn it off and go have the, as we call in the book, the courage to rest. Yeah, that's a definitely a different kind of discipline that I think gets overlooked. And that's hard for athletes. They know how to be disciplined about the hard work, but they don't know how to be disciplined about the holding back. And, you know, Brad, we talked about this in that first phone call. When I interviewed you for, man, we were on the same wavelength. So I was just going to say, when I interviewed Rich for a story in Outside Magazine on passion, what I learned is that passion is really a gift and it can also be a curse.

And I think that when passion meets self-awareness, that's when the magic happens. But passion is inherently a force working against self-awareness. Um, just think about when you are in high school and you set eyes on the girl that you have a crush on, you get tunnel vision and you are just after that. And that is like one of my favorite, most basic examples of passion. eyes on the girl that you have a crush on, you get tunnel vision and you are just after that. And that is like one of my favorite, most basic examples of passion, but that can manifest itself in a career, in a sporting event. And how do you overcome that tunnel vision and the biochemicals that are behind it that are like dopamine is being released. I mean, you are like being driven by your entire biochemistry to go after

that. So how can you have the self-awareness to pull up and A, say like, is this really what I want to be doing? B, back to that definition, is this sustainable? Is it making me feel good? And C, if not, how can I recalibrate and adjust? But Brad, come on. That's a lot of work to do. That's a lot of work, especially when every message that I'm seeing on Instagram and on Twitter is like, you got to be passionate, live your passion, you know, you get, you know, unleash the passion. You know what I mean? So come on, how are we going to do this? You know, it's, it's, I'm with you and I'm on your page and I think you're correct. But the practical aspect of like parsing that and applying it to your life, I think is, you know, is a harder, is a harder journey.

I mean, Ryan Holiday talks about this too. He's written about like, forget about your passion, cares about your passion. You know what I mean? And how your passion can lead you astray because it, it, it has such powerful, you know, headlamps on it. It's blinding. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, this is not something that is in, in peak performance. Um, but a practice that I have adopted for myself by almost by happenstance is, um, just reading and thinking more about mortality. And I find that if I read a really, really moving book that has death as a central theme, there's nothing like that to shock my system to do some like very, very clean, clear evaluation. Like, is this what I want to be spending my time doing?

And now I'm happy because like I love writing and I'm able to do it in a way that leaves room for other things that I care about. Like Steve said, I'm by no means a balanced person. I don't think of myself as balanced. I kind of envy someone that can be balanced and just have everything in alignment, but I'm not sure if that really exists. But I've been able to do enough self-reflection to actually like make certain decisions to pull the plug on things when old me might not have. I should say that, you know, you're, you say you're not balanced and I'm interested, like when you said that, I was thinking about how prolific you are, because you turn out like a lot of articles compared to, you know, the average journalist,

magazine journalist. I mean, you're writing, it seems like you're just coming out with stuff all the time. So is that a reflection of you doing that, what Steve was talking about, like going into the intense hole and cranking it out and then coming back out again? Yeah, and I've really made a practice of what I preach, I guess. So I try to follow that growth equation, stress plus rest equals growth. So I'll go into the whole, we talk about this in the book, I try to chunk my day into blocks of between 60 and 90 minutes of deep focus. And then I'll come out of that. I mean, you've written, I don't know what

your process is, but a lot of prolific writers will adopt such a process. And then I'll come out of that. I mean, you've written, I don't know what your process is, but a lot of, a lot of prolific writers will adopt such a process. Um, and then I'll come out of it. So while I'm not balanced in the sense that I write, I run and I love my wife and I'm probably not a good friend, I might not be the best family member. So I still wouldn't say that I'm balanced, but in the things that I do, I do them in a way that's sustainable. Whereas old me, like more Twitter followers, more articles, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, I would write myself into the ground. Right. So you're apportioning your energy in between the things that are most important to you in your life. Yes. And I think that's I think you're hitting on something that is nuanced, but really important, which, again, maybe we're hitting a broken record. Like it's not about balance. It's about deciding what is important to you and then going all in in a way that allows you to go all in for a long time.

And I think a lot of it is like about knowing what how much energy you have to give and what's sustainable. And I think actually the writing of this book was a great example. it is like about knowing what how much energy you have to give and what's sustainable and i think actually the writing of this book was a great example i mean we finished this thing in what three months maybe less time than that and it was you know we would do that we would be like obsessive about it for you know a couple hours and then like walk away and do something else and then come back obsessive about it and we we had this, like we followed what was in the book essentially of like when to stress and when to rest. But then there would be periods.

I mean, Brad lives in, in California. I'm in Texas. There would be periods when we were together for like three or four days and it would just be like hammer at home full on because we know we have this specific block. And if we like, it's like doing a really hard

workout, if we need to go over the edge, then this is the time to just go over the edge. And once we're done, like we'll take some time, come back out of it and make sure we rest and recover. So the book was a great example and also forcing us to practice what we preach. All right. So we have the stress and we have the rest for growth. Let's talk about like the next phase, which is the priming, right? You talk about this in the second sort of section of the book. So what does that mean? Yeah, I think it's all about setting yourself up for a performance and that whether that performance is running a race or writing a book or giving a speech is what we found

is that regardless of what the performer was doing is they would do things intentionally set up routines so that they were at their best or gave them their best shot to perform on on that given day and what that means is the the favorite example i like to give is we talked to a drummer who is Taylor Swift's drummer named Matt Billingsley. And we just said, hey, I don't know anything about music. Like, I don't know anything about drums. Like, walk us through your process when you're about to perform in front of, you know, 80,000 people.

And he starts walking us through, like, how he gets ready for the drums and how he does like various exercises and stuff and i'm waiting the whole time to hear him say and then i pick up my drums and i like go through things but he just kept walking like then i do arm swings and then i do like these stretches and then i get my mind right and then the show starts and i'm like i get my mind right and then the show starts and i'm like you didn't talk about drumming and you know he he's also a personal trainer and he said yeah like my warm-up is just like what i would do getting ready for a lifting session or getting ready to go run a 5k race because he said i need to warm up my my body and then i use that to warm up my mind to put me in the space that i need to And then I use that to warm up my mind, to put me in the space that I need to.

And I think regardless of whether you're sitting down at your desk to go write, great writers set themselves up and set their entire environment and their routine up so that when they need to write, then they're going to write. It's not haphazard. Yeah, I think it's universal across anybody who's a high performer in whatever field they're in. They have a routine that they stick to, and that routine is going to vary wildly. But they're conscious and they're mindful about their approach leading up to it. Let's say they're pitching a venture capitalist on their startup, or it doesn't matter what it is. But it's interesting how these examples so often root back in athletics because that's the one discipline where there's actually some thought that goes into the benefits of that. Like athletes practice this, you know, across every sport. And yet it's so, you know, it really doesn't spill over into other areas of culture and performance.

of culture and performance. DAN GALPIN- During the writing of this book, I wrote out of one coffee shop at the same time of day with the same coffee on a computer that I only used for writing the book. DAN GALPIN- What do they call that? The computers that are cut off from the internet? They're called gray boxed or something like that? DAN GALPIN- Yeah, that was me.

DAN GALPIN- Back to the Snowden analogy. DAN GALPIN- I was just thinking that. We're back in the CIA room. I'm on my computer that no one else can access. Unhackable. Totally. But, yeah, and, you know, we write in the book that it stems from what in the early 1900s was called behaviorism, which is like if you, you know, ring a bell and give a dog a treat, the dog learns

to associate the bell with the treat. And while that science has evolved quite a bit, like the fundamental pairing of a cue with an action, there's actually lots of recent science that that still holds pretty true. Something called affordances. So when you see a chair, the motor neurons in your brain that are going to tell your body to sit, start firing before you have any conscious thinking about sitting in that chair. So to the extent that you can create a routine that you associate with what you are going to do, what the desired action is, it helps. it helps bring about where you want to be. Yeah, you're sort of reaffirming like a habit or a pattern in your brain and you're removing

decision fatigue because there's that association. And so it's almost like a stoic Spartan sort of approach. I read that like Jonathan Fran like moved up to Santa Cruz, and he rented some crappy room that was just terrible, you know, and just had like a, like a, you know, like a wooden desk and an uncomfortable chair and nothing else in the entire room just to remove every single distraction to make it impossible to avoid doing the one thing that every fiber in your body is going to resist doing. Why is writing so hard?

I can't believe you guys wrote this book in three months. I'm pissed now. Well, you know, the secret is there's two of us. So it was like whenever I got stuck, it's like, oh, Brad, I don't know what to do. Like, you take this now. Do you guys go running together? Steve, do you still run? I do still run.

Do you? I have a good relationship with running now. go running together? Steve, do you still run? I do still run. Do you? I have a good relationship with running now. Go running together. I would need to be on my bike in the aero position and keep up with this guy. So how did you – I'm interested. This is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm interested in how you sort of maybe repaired is the wrong word, but like kind of recalibrated your relationship to running in the wake of having like a less than, you know, sort of, uh, or, uh, you know, a collegiate career that was disappointing to you. Yeah. You know, it actually ties a lot to the purpose chapter of our book. Um, and the sense that when I was burnt out and done, my whole entire identity was wrapped around running. Like that was it. Like it it was Steve the runner and like nothing else mattered or existed so it was

really a process of unraveling that and figuring out like okay like what else is there to me like what else do I enjoy what else are my interests and what really got me over the hump is like getting outside of myself and stop being so like individual self-focused because that's what running does to you in the sense that like all that mattered really was my performance and i was you know for everybody else in the world is a puppet exactly so for you know four years through high school, four years through college, all that I was focused on is how do I get Steve to run faster? And what changed my relationship was volunteer coaching. And all of a sudden my perspective changed because now it's not me.

It's, you know, 35 high school kids who have various levels of talent and, you know, love of the sport. And it's like, okay, how do I help them? So it was really, you know, getting away from myself and helping others and helping others realize what is good about this sport that reminded me of like, oh, like, yeah, that's why I started in the first place. Like, that's why I fell in love with it. That's exactly what Anthony Irvin told me about his relationship with swimming and what got him to come back. You know, service, you know, getting outside of yourself. And it's a, you know, it's a theme as old as time.

And you hear it, you know, everywhere you go. Like, I'm a long time in recovery, and it's a big theme of recovery, right? Like, you devote your life to service. You put that first ahead of everything else, and your life gets better. And it's so anti, you know, right? Like you devote your life service, you put that first ahead of everything else and your life gets better. And it's so anti, you know, you're just like, what? Like, how does that make sense? Like, that's not on my agenda, you know what I mean?

But my experience and the experience of everybody I've ever seen truly practice this is their life expands in direct proportion to the extent that they are of service to others. I couldn't agree more. And I think that to the extent that they are of service to others. I couldn't agree more. And I think that to the extent that you can make yourself a coach, make yourself a coach. So Steve very literally has made himself a coach. I'd say that I listen to your podcast, what you do, you are coaching.

It's a different medium. And in the way that I write, I am trying to coach too. And I think that it like Steve said when you get outside of yourself like that paradoxically it gives you more self-awareness so not only does it feel good to be helping other people but I think it's easier to kind of step back and be like am I doing this right when the beneficiary and the other end isn't yourself but someone else I think the idea of service gets, I agree. Thank you for that.

I, you know, I think the idea of service gets confused or conflated with this idea that like, you're going to be at, you know, like serving soup at the soup kitchen to the homeless. And it can be that, and that's great, but it can be something as simple as, you know, saying something nice to the cashier at Ralph's or just making yourself available to help or calling up a friend who's having a hard time. And I think a lot of people think, well, I don't really have that much to give. I'm not an expert in anything. There's nothing that I can coach.

But I think we all have life experience. And there are always people that are further down the ladder in some regard who could benefit from a helping hand. And more than that, I think it's just about stepping into that mindset. So you're thinking in that way. And that becomes like, it's a muscle that you have to flex until it becomes an instinct. And I'm not saying I'm great at it. I'm super selfish. You know what I mean? I have to work hard to do it. And when I do it, then I'm like, oh, yeah, my life's working better now. You can almost do it. And when I do it, then I'm like, oh yeah, my life's working better now.

You know, you can almost do it for selfish reasons, you know, like I'm going to selfishly be unselfish so that my life gets better. So I'm not necessarily recommending that. I mean, I would imagine the spirit of doing it selflessly is better. But I couldn't agree more with you than that. And I think it, you know, it goes back to the kind of the arc of the book or the structure of the book, which is, you know, it kind of culminates in this idea of finding a purpose outside of yourself that directs all of this energy that you're putting into whatever it is you're trying to, you know, achieve that peak performance with. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, purpose is the ultimate performance enhancer. I mean, it sounds strange to be like, oh, find a purpose so you can enhance performance, right?

It's almost like being selfish. But if you don't know, like, can you, you can't just band-aid on a purpose. It has to be real. It has to be real. And how does somebody, in the same way that it's like, I don't know, I don't have a passion. All right. I don't know what my purpose is. Like, how do you speak to somebody who's sitting in that chair?

So it, it's in the book, um, and we can go through it a little bit now, but there's a, there's a researcher at the university of Michigan. His name's Dr. Vic Strecker. And he has a remarkable personal story, um, of overcoming loss through finding a purpose and helping others. And for him, loss wasn't like not hitting the mile time. He lost a daughter and just had, she had health issues, very, very like gut-wrenching personal story. He overcame it through purpose. And he didn't use to study purpose, but he saw what having this self-transcending purpose did for himself, and he redirected his academic career into studying purpose. And he's actually developed an evidence-based process to help individuals come to a purpose. And it works.

And so what is that process? So the process begins with identifying your core values. And those core values can be things like creativity, community, intellectualism, athleticism. I think that I'd have to look in the book, but I'm pretty sure he defines them as like the things that are your North stars, your guiding principles that you hold most dearly. And most people, if you give them some time to think about it, can come up with a couple of core values. Um, then the second step would be to personalize those core values. So what does creativity mean to you? What does community mean to you? And then you go through this process of personalizing your core values. Eventually you rank them. And at the end,

it's only like a 20 minute process of this. And again, it can be 20 minutes. It can also be a lifetime. Um, but at the end of this process, you are asked to reflect on your core values, how you personalize them, how you rank them, the relationship with each other, and then come to a purpose statement. Um, I went through this exercise when Dr. Strecker had first introduced, um, this process and I had no clue really like what my purpose was. And I came out with cultivate positive energy and share it, which I would not have done on my own. But now that is like on a little sticky note on my mirror. And I think that, I mean, whether or not I'm a better performer for it, it's arguable, but I feel better.

And it's a nice reminder, like, okay, like, what am I, what am I going to do today? It's also wide open. I mean that, you know, you can express that in, you know, countless ways, right? So it's not pigeonholing you into one specific thing. Like my purpose is to, you know countless ways right so it's not pigeonholing you into one specific thing like my purpose is to you know whatever you know save the tigers or something like that you know what i mean like it can be it's adaptable yes i think a lot of people get too specific on like passion and purpose and they think i need this one tiny thing and i'm going to do only this and i think what this process does is it a it gets you to think about it and become self-aware about it and ask ask the questions that most of the time you don't because

when when people don't have like a purpose or haven't thought about it when they get asked that question they almost go to this default like oh that's too big of a question for me to think about i don't want to go there and what this does is it breaks it down simple enough so that you can kind of get a better understanding of what you're looking for. But then on the other hand, it's like we just said, is it doesn't narrow it down into saying like my purpose is to run the fastest mile that I ever can. Right. It gives you this broad understanding,

this broad statement that can apply in multiple places in your life. It's also not unrelated to goal setting, which is another area that I wanna explore with you guys, like the idea of purpose and goals are sort of bedfellows in certain respects. You know, and I'm still kind of sitting in the chair of the guy who's like,

I don't know what I'm passionate about, I don't know what my purpose is. And I think, you know, look, I'm doing that because I think that's most people, honestly. And I think it creates a paralysis because until they're waiting to get struck by lightning to have this epiphany before they make a move, right? As opposed to if you could have a general sense of cultivating positive energy, whatever, like some, even if it's the most vaguest notion of what your purpose is, at least it's something to then take an action on. And I think this also gets into like getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, which

is another thing you guys talk about, like taking an action without having to know where that's going to lead you. It doesn't have to be anchored to a goal, but it has to be, there has to be a doing, you know what I mean? There has to be an implementation of that idea into a specific action. Yeah. You know, one of the examples that I can give is when I work with my college team is a lot of times before like big races we talk about purpose and goals and you know in the past um before you know understanding all this stuff and researching we would have individual goals you know i want to place top five or run this time in the 5k or whatever and it works okay right there's there's benefits to that kind of goal setting but what we've shifted more to is

like as a team like what do we what is our purpose as a team what do we want people to to know about us when we cross the line and sometimes it's it's as simple as like we want to be the guys that are underdogs who don't expect to run well but when they look at us crossing the line they know that we gave everything we got and that's some as simple as that um and that works really powerful because it takes them away from like all that matters is like how i do and if i'm having a bad day then i can just kind of throw in the towel and like it doesn't matter right to realizing that it's not just me it's you know the seven eight nine ten other guys on this line that all have the shared common goal or purpose whatever you want to call it and you've just see better and consistent performance out of that right because it transcends the individual performer right right? There, um, there's some pretty interesting research that,

um, that we, we stumbled across in, in writing the book on this notion of fatigue occurring in the brain before the body. And if you think about this in evolutionary terms, it makes a lot of sense because your, your brain is protecting your literal self. And when you're out and you feel pain, that's the brain telling the body, Whoa, you might hurt yourself. Like let's, let's pull back. And it got us thinking, well, if you can, again, not just pay lip service to it, but really feel and deeply hold a purpose that is beyond just yourself, can you kind of like quiet that part of your brain? The answer is there has been, it would be very hard to do such a study to show that that is in fact the case, but they're having some interesting studies with neuroimaging that shows that when individuals reflect really deeply on their core

values, they have a better response to threats. In the sporting world, you hear tons of anecdotes of when people do things that were thought to be impossible, rarely do they finish and say like, oh, I was thinking about being champion, or I was thinking about all the money I'm going to bank winning this race. It's generally, I was thinking about my family and how much they've sacrificed me. Or I was thinking about my friend with cancer. If they're religious, I was thinking about God. So again, they're fueled in their performance by something that is beyond themselves. It's a longer term view also, right? Like you're pursuing something not for the short term result of whatever goal like running a sub four minute mile, but because it's in alignment with some higher purpose or this core set of values. And that's a more sustainable energy source. Right.

And it totally and it holds true off the road, too. There is an enormous meta-analysis that we cite that looked at workers across industries and they found that people that have jobs that they connect to a greater sense of meaning tend to perform significantly better than those that are motivated by something like a paycheck. Right. And, you know, back to that fear thread, because I think about this a lot. And if you just were to ask yourself, like, would you take a risk for and then if on the other end of that, it might be one hundred dollars or like to help a good friend or to do something for someone else. I know that I tend to answer yes. And I have less fear of messing up if I'm doing the action for someone else.

And that just kind of happens automatically. We talk about in the book this notion of superhuman strength, which is that these things happen not frequently, but more frequently than we would have thought when you get like a kid or a pet stuck under a car and the person comes over and lifts up the car. Right. And that's like the ultimate example of this because they are totally overcoming whatever in their brain is telling their body, like you are going to hurt yourself to do this. And my hunch is that if you were to say, you know, rich, if you lift this car, I'll give you $7 million. There's no way you're going to lift the car. But man, God forbid someone you care about is stuck under that car dying. You have a shot at lifting the

car because it's happened. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's super interesting where the brain can override the body in that kind of way. But what you said just prior to that has me thinking about identity, the psychology of identity, right? So if you're, if you're like a young Steve, and your identity is totally wrapped up and running a sub four minute mile, that's different than an identity of somebody who just who loves running and running as a form of self expression, you know what I mean? Or like, you know, like just performing at your peak just brings you joy. You know what I mean? So then you remove the fear of failure because whether you run under four minutes doesn't really matter

because you are living in alignment with your core values. Exactly. I mean, that, that sums things up exactly. I mean, if I had a bad race when I was 18 years old, like I would see myself as a failure, like not just like, Oh, I failed at running. It was, I myself as a failure like not just like oh i failed at running it was i steve am a failure and you see that along whether it's runners or other pursuits is if they are tied to their identity to that activity and they see themselves as that identity then you get this fear of failure as you mentioned and, and they stop trying to, um, to play to win and they play not to lose. Right. Because it's just, that's a fear-based approach. Exactly. And I, I wonder if a lot of folks like you mentioned that are sitting back kind of like,

I don't know what my goals are. I don't know what my purpose is. Maybe it's that there's actually like this fear because like, you know, changing paths and going on a new direction is a pretty scary thing to do. Um, so I wonder if part of it is overcoming fear. And like, I look at Steve and, and, you know, even yourself, Rich, like, I don't think that any of us would say that we made a very rational decision to come in and take chances and, you know, do what we do now. It happened because we all burnt out in one way or another, had these like inflection points where we had wake up calls. So I can't tell someone like, oh, here's exactly how you find your purpose and goals. Because for me, it was to burn the fuck out. And like, that's not

advice that I'd want other people to have. But I wonder if part of the reason that I burnt out was because my identity was in this young, young consultant rock star that eventually got a gig at the White House for a summer. Right, you're supposed to be on Pod Save America right now, not on my podcast. You're talking to Lovett, John Favreau about healthcare policy. And it would have been a totally different path. And like, maybe if I would have, if I would have had the wisdom to pursue it more sustainably, like maybe that's where I'd be. Um, but here I am and it wasn't a conscious choice back then. But now I'm hoping that I'm making more conscious choices, you know, to be more explicit about, I guess, the goals I want to take on. ruminate on what it is that brings you joy and then have the courage to give that expression, even if it's in just a really small way.

And I think with guys, it's hard. We're just on a path. And it's like we're climbing the corporate ladder. And the pressure to be alpha and all that kind of stuff gets in the way of that. And I think it's hard for guys to talk about being content in their lives or being happy in their lives. It's not cool to talk about that. But the truth is there's a lot of guys out there suffering in careers that they don't like, and they're there as a result of circumstance

or social or familial pressure that have placed them in situations that they really don't want to be in. And there's, there's a sense of feeling trapped and like, this is it, right? Yeah. I mean, it's almost like, especially if you've devoted years to that path, if you're along that path a while, and I know I felt this, you're so running. It's like, what else do I do? Like you've been zoomed in all the way where you can just you just see the tunnel ahead and this one road and then you know five years down the line like you know you stick your head out of the sand a little bit and you're like all right like all the other roads i don't know where they lead i don't know if i can even take them but you stayed in running you know

like brad is like what you're gonna you're gonna walk away from like, wait, you're going to, you're going to walk away from McKinsey. You're going to be like a writer now. Like what? Yeah. But so, but so to be fair, you know, it's, it's funny. I, um, I recently wrote a column about this for New York magazine. So the, the way that I made that transition, it wasn't like all at one point. So following public health school, um, I took a gig that was still in consulting and still in healthcare. It was much less high pressure, high stress than McKinsey. Yeah. But this is a very inconvenient narrative that you're spinning right now.

Like we just want to know that we just want to think that you like flick that switch. I wish I don't have the gut. I mean, it's very hard to have the guts to do that. Don't interrupt with reality. Yeah. So he like we were talking about this before we started recording like reality um so yeah like i i didn't just make the jump to writing i decided that it was something that i really wanted to do and i

started doing as a hobby and then i went down to 80 at my job and then 70 and i still do part-time consulting um and and it's allowed me i I would say to like take more shots in writing and maybe if I make the jump fully, who knows, maybe like instead of two articles a week, there'll be four, but maybe I'd work myself into the ground. So I guess back to your point, like, yes, there is there, there are those times where there's an inflection point and you just make the jump. But I also think that you can identify other interests or paths that you might want to be on and test them without making the jump and then see what happens. Yeah. I mean, I, I like that because it's incredibly sensible, you know what I mean? And it, and it, and it does, you know, it's a counterpoint to that, you know, that internet

meme of like, you know, follow your passion and everything else be gone. You know what I mean? And it's like, life's more complicated than that. And it's more nuanced than that. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean quit your job. It means like, you know, taking those tiny steps and not knowing where they're going to lead and having faith that it's going to, you know, set you on some kind of trajectory where more will be revealed. There's actually, there's a, there's a study that showed that entrepreneurs that started their venture while still holding on to their current job were more successful than entrepreneurs that made a... Leapt all the way in.

Exactly. And the, the researchers speculated that, um, this is like in the Exactly. Interesting. And the researchers speculated that, and this is like in the Harvard Business Review, so this is like corporate world stuff, and I guess a lot of these entrepreneurs were probably starting new startup ventures. The researchers speculated that because they had something safe on one end, they actually probably took greater risks with higher payoffs on the other. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's very interesting. I wouldn't have thought that, but that makes complete sense. Of all the people that you kind of interviewed and the studies that you reviewed

and all the research that you did for this book, what was the most surprising thing that you came across? Oh, man. was the most surprising thing that you came across oh man um i think personally the most interesting is we went out and um met with the guys who essentially started google's like meditation unit essentially now it's called search inside yourself and that's branched off but you know i've been a runner so i considered like that my my form of therapy now that like i have a good relationship with it i'd go out on runs and just have clear headspace and you know think about things and and that was my form of meditation but i never had any meditation

practice and and sitting there and listening to these guys and explaining the brain science behind it and explaining the practice behind it uh i was sitting there thinking like oh my gosh like this is exactly what goes through my head my athletes heads in the middle of races in the sense that what they explained meditation was or one of the benefits of it is that when you have like an intrusive thought or a stress response right there's either it either goes stress to straight reaction where you have emotional reaction from it and what meditation allows you to do is have space between that like and have space to make a decision and with myself and my runners that i coach is what we've always talked

about is when that point in a race comes and you're really hurting and like you have that almost like that freak out moment where you're like oh i can't do this and i'm just gonna slow down and forget about it and a lot of times when you choose that like slow path and just like i'm gonna back off it's because like instant stress because like i can't do this those thoughts going crazy in my head leads to instant like emotional response and what we talk about is having a calm conversation which is creating space in between that where you can almost like rationally talk yourself out of it and like not out of it but like accept it and be like yeah this

hurts but it's supposed to hurt like this isn't necessarily bad this is how it's supposed to be so i'm going to do the best that i can within it and i think like that connecting like these two very different worlds that i wouldn't have put together was really like an aha moment for myself yeah the implementation of the meditation and mindfulness programs at Google were really a reaction to like recognizing the fact that they have these coders there that are just going to work, you know, until they drop dead. And that if they wanted to create, you know, some sustainability around the employment of these brilliant people, they were going to have to figure out a way to take care of them, right? And really that space that you talk about is like a superpower because even if it's just a microsecond where you have enough awareness

to make a conscious decision about how you're going to respond as opposed to react in a given scenario, that can change your life. If you're doing that on a you know, on a micro basis, like a million times a day, like it really becomes like a very, very powerful thing. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's it. It drove me to start my own meditation practice in addition to running. So I think that is like, again, a very mind opening thing for me because it's, you know, you, if you don't dive deep into it, you think like, oh, okay. Meditation. Like I get that. Like it's kind of new agey, but like I get it behind it. But once you like experience that, like just, you know, as you said, microsecond of space, it gives you that, that moment to pause and have

almost that awareness to almost like choose your path instead of just being this reactive being who just like, oh, this happens, like, here's my emotions, I'm going that way. Speaking of superpowers, you know, there is, i've talked a little bit about this recently and i'm interested in your thoughts on it you know we're in this arms race for attention right now where we're constantly being enticed and and sort of romanced by all of these apps uh to achieve to get our focus right and so to be able to have discipline around that for the sake of the greater goal that you're pursuing or whatever you're trying to achieve peak performance in

requires this added level of discipline that I feel like 10, 15 years ago, I mean, when I was, you know, I was like, that didn't exist. And now we're contending with something that's so powerful that is constantly taking me out and taking me away from the thing, the greater, the greater goal and the greater good. So how do you do, you know, how do you guys think about that? What is in our Edward and Snowden CAA Doubletree top secret room? What is not on the table where we're having a conversation our phones

bingo so what we learned is that it is a futile effort to try to resist the temptation of your phone or whatever other device is there that connects you to the world and that to think that you have the discipline to do so is almost always going to be a fool's errand. And that the best bet is just to remove the phone or whatever that device is that's connecting you to the world literally from your site altogether. that showed that simply having a phone on the table, even if it was turned off and isn't yours, interferes with your ability to think clearly, to be creative, to problem solve.

Because you're just looking at it. When can I look at it? Yes. Totally. I mean, your mind, literally, if they've tracked this, your brain, if there's a phone there, has part of it that's processing, like phone there, phone there, like expect ring, expect buzz, even if it's a phone there, has part of it that's processing. Phone there, phone there. Expect ring, expect buzz, even if it's not your own.

So you'll have things like phantom rings where you'll feel your phone vibrate. And then you go down to check your phone and you don't have it in your pocket. Right. I'm wearing a Garmin watch and it's Bluetooth connected to my phone. And every once in a while it vibrates. But sometimes I imagine it's vibrating. Have you ever had that? Exactly.

I felt like it was vibrating, and I look at it, and I just impulsively look at it, and I'm like, this is insanity. It's not just you. I want to say, maybe I'd have to look at the book to be sure, but I think researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison found that phantom vibrations, like the majority of college students, now feel them. Really? I had no idea that was a thing. That is a thing.

I thought I was being oversensitive or something like that. It's your brain adapting to have it, right? You're used to that vibration. So it will almost predict that it's going to happen at times wrongly. And you'll just feel that sensation. Yeah, go ahead, sir. I was going to say, I'm forgetting his name now. It's Tristan something.

He was on Sam Harris's podcast recently, and he was on 60 Minutes. But he's like an ex-Googler, I think, who... He's teaming up with Arianna Huffington, I think, right now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's created this nonprofit that's all about sort of educating people. Because he understands how they sort of, you know, bake the bread in terms of creating that addictive response that makes it impossible to not, you know, sort of impulsively be using these devices in that unhealthy way. It's like going to the casino. I mean, we write in the book, if you think about your favorite app, odds are you are scrolling down or scrolling to the right, seeing a little

ball, which is the slot machine doing its thing, and then having a potential reward, which is a retweet or a like or a Facebook message. And what we argue in the book is that those potential rewards are as meaningful, if not more meaningful than winning money, because that is like a validation that you exist in the world and you are important. Like what is a more enticing reward than that? Right. So it's really hard for Steve. Who's trying to, who's struggling with his identity. That's right. I'm just on the phone. Someone like me, but it's, I mean, look, Brad, you have a, you have a pronounced presence, especially on Twitter.

You know, Twitter is kind of like your medium and you've, you've hit like a kind of a sweet spot with it and you're sharing content and you're very involved there. So how do you create boundaries around that? It's hard. Um, you know, I could give you like a cookie cutter answer that wouldn't be true. It's something that I struggle with for sure. Um, I think it's back to what I said about just removing the object of distraction. So when I sit down to write, my phone is, if I'm, if I'm at home, my phone's in another room. If I go to the coffee shop, my wife, who's kind of anxious, hates this, but like, I don't even bring it because like, all I'm going to do is look at it. It's not what I'm going to the coffee shop. And she'll text me asking where you are. Yeah. Um, in, in the evening I, you know, if I, if, if, if like I need to be there for,

or not, I need to, I want to be there. Right. And be present with my wife. Like I turned the phone off. Um, but yeah, like I, I struggle with it for sure. So I guess it's, it's a long-winded way of saying I try to be aware of when the phone will be a distraction that is unwelcome and not have the phone there now before we like go down this road of just bashing technology and in phones and especially Twitter there's a lot of good I met both of you on Twitter right yeah so I have to always balance that. That always comes in. You know, that's the little guy on the other shoulder who's like, listen, man, this is how like you get to do what you do. You know, like my whole like living is sort of, you know, a result of the, you know, the online community. So in some sense, like I have to embrace that, but not at the sort of, you know, cost of everything else.

Right. And it's like, you know, I think that there's a huge gray area finding out a healthy relationship with your phone and with these devices. But I mean, I met Steve on Twitter. So this book would not have happened. Not only are we collaborators, we've become like best friends. This friendship wouldn't have happened. I love your work. Here we are sitting down having a great conversation. And 90% of the people listening to this are listening to it on their phone right now. Right. Exactly. So there's a lot of good packed away in that device too. So I think it's not about good or bad.

It's just about being mindful with what are the good things, what are the bad things, and how can you manage them. And for the less disciplined, there's a program called Freedom. You know this program? Yes, I use that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can install it on your phone, on your desktop, on your laptop, or whatever. And essentially, you can just set a timer. And it just prevents you from going online or using any apps for a set

period of time so that you know if you don't trust yourself but so if you're trying to write or whatever you can just focus on that yeah and i don't think i don't think any of us have the ability to trust ourselves like no one everyone likes to think like oh i'm like i just think we can yeah like i can do it like i can write with like my Twitter and my Wi-Fi and everything on, but you can't. And I think coming to that realization and realizing like, no, like I don't have that power. I'm not like Superman with my phone. On a similar note, what do you guys think about all these trackable devices and the

sort of quantified self movement that's happening right now? I mean, Steve's laughing, you know, as a coach of elite athletes and also, you know, Brad, who's interviewed a ton of people on rights for outside where they talk about all these things a lot. And it's always like, what's the latest thing? How do you like, what's your perspective on, on all of that? Yeah, it's tough because like, I'm a science nerd, like that's my background. So I love like data, but at the same time from a

practical standpoint and from a coaching standpoint i think what they've done is they've made us lose touch with um being able to pay attention to like what our internal sensations are doing i know from a running standpoint is like all the all all the tracking data, all the GPS stuff has made like people lose the ability to like internalize their pace and their effort. And they become reliant on like this little external thing. Yeah. I would, I would venture to imagine that any elite runner on a track could tell you within a 10th of a second, their splits per 400 meters just based on feel, right? And it's the same in swimming. Growing up, I could tell you exactly where I was because you're so in touch with your body. But once you abdicate that to a device, you end up

tuning out. And then there's a disconnect between you and yourself that is not serving performance. And that's the skill that needs to be developed. You know, the example I always give, if you watch high school kids run a track race, there's some of them who have developed that skill early on, and there's some who are entirely reliant. And what you do is if you stand at the first lap, and you'll see, or the first mile in in a 5k you'll see runners all look at

their gps watches it beeps and you'll see certain ones just like go oh my gosh and slam on the brakes and what they've done there is they've taken away listening to their internal self where maybe they were on their way to a breakthrough and they they were ready to come through the mile faster but what they've done is they've abdicated that and looked at their watch and said my watch is dictating and it says i'm too fast for what i should be even if possibly my internal sensations tell me otherwise and they've just given away that breakthrough or the same thing happens on the opposite side where maybe it's not a day where i can hit the splits that i need to and i need to listen to my body but they'll just like like you know

robots be like oh my watch is beeping at you know six minutes a mile and i need to be on six minutes a mile it takes the wonder out of sport you know what i mean like oh i'm only i'm only as good as this spreadsheet and i know what i've what i've hit you know in every week leading up to this so there's no way that i'm going to be able to, to eclipse that in any way. So I just need to like, you know, hit the mark that the data is telling me I'm capable of, as opposed to like throwing all that out the window and just racing. It holds you back. You know, I think the best example I can give is professional runner. I coached named Natasha Rogers, who just won the U.S. Half Marathon Championship. When we started working together, she'd been hurt for two years

and just had this horrible, horrible relationship with running. So she was so bad that for three months, the first three months we were working together, she refused to wear any watch. And at the time, I was like, right that's that's a bit extreme like especially like if i'm looking you know i kind of want to know like what your tempo run is or something so i can adjust yeah instead of being like uh go right go run hard today you know and is your heart rate at like 180 or 120 right you know you have no idea but in a lot of ways i think what it did is it gave her the ability

to like listen to her body more than anything and if you watched how she ran this this half marathon that she won it was a huge breakthrough for her and she ended up going out with with the leader who she on paper had no like reason, no business to be with. But she wasn't looking at her watch. She had no idea what her splits were. And she was like, I just felt good. And it felt within my realm of possibility. And then at mile 10 of the half marathon, she said, I just felt good.

So I decided to take the lead. And it led to this huge breakthrough that you know a year and a half two years ago i don't think she could have had because she would have you know said oh this is too fast i can't do this you're geeking out on the data too much thinking uh i'm way outside my range i'm gonna blow up exactly yeah well i think it's it's the same as it is with with the tech like it's about your relationship to it, right? Like, I think you need to have that time without it so that you develop that understanding and that connection with yourself. And it's a tool.

Like, if you have a responsible relationship to it, it can inform your training and it can make you better. But I think, you know, the idea that, like, all these numbers are going to, to like somehow translate into you being a peak performer, I think is myopic. Exactly. It's feedback, right? You can't be a slave to the data. It shouldn't drive the horse. I'm all about peak performance because every night, you know, I plug my Garmin in and I track my sleep. And it's like, what does that really mean?

How is that making you a better performer the funny the funny thing about that is like with sleep is they've actually shown and a couple research studies that show that like the quality of sleep goes down because it makes them anxious i have to perform tonight in this sleep you know and it's like the pressure is on me i'm looking at my watch like am i gonna hit how long is that deep phase gonna be unless unless someone is coming out of like clinical insomnia where they've actually lost their biological clock significantly more accurate than any device you're gonna wear on your wrist to tell you if you got a good night's sleep is like when you wake up do you feel well rested? You know immediately how you feel. Are you falling asleep at 3 p.m. in the day?

And like the margin of error of that is a lot less than the device. But I mean like otherwise I've got nothing to add. You guys nailed it. It's a tool and context is key and it can hold you back in certain circumstances. It's a helpful tool. Does Outside Magazine call you up and ask you to write articles about wearables? Can you answer that off the record? Yeah, it's interesting because they are a product and lots of products.

They claim to be the panacea to a lot of things, and they're not. But like you said, they're a tool. So I actually, outside's a great magazine. My, my only article on wearables for outside was called listen to your gut. Um, so they let me do that. That's cool. Yeah. So you, you, you, you were able to put your spin on it and still deliver the goods. Well, yeah, I love it.

I'm not bashing up to don't under yeah like i love outside man and i love the work that you do for them so i'm it's like i always read outside it um yeah it it but i guess my point is like i had full editorial freedom and like what the what the story said is the discussion that we've been having which are like yeah tools can help but if you rely on them you become fragile and you might end up holding yourself back. And it's not fun. Like, if you count every single step you take, when are you going to, like, have a moment of joy of, like, taking that step?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of been something that I've been focused on lately. Like, I haven't raced in five years, and I'm doing this race in September, and so I'm kind of getting back into structured training in a way that I haven't in many years. Rich looks super fit, by the way. Trust me, I'm not actually. But my life is really a lot busier and more complicated than it was in 2009 and 2010. And so the journey for me is being okay with that.

I'm not going to be able to train like I'm living in a hut by myself. And I've got to find like the purpose of it is to use it to carry a message that's helpful to other people, a positive message. Like that's the purpose. And the underlying kind of current that supports that purpose is finding the joy in the day-to-day of the training because i love the training but if i'm so caught up in performance it it undermines that sense of joy and ultimately it's going to harm my performance but i'm going into it knowing like you know when i show up at the starting line like i probably could have trained harder you know and it's like i have to be at peace with that which is uncomfortable for me because i want to toe the line thing with knowing that i did everything possible and it's just not have to be at peace with that, which is uncomfortable for me because I want to toe the line knowing that I did everything possible.

And it's just not my life right now. And what I would have to sacrifice for that, the cost of that is too much because then I'm not sitting with you guys doing a podcast or writing another book. I'm just riding my bike all day. And I don't know that that's really of service to anybody. For sure. So it is, yeah, it's like finding that joy. And that's been a little bit of a, that's, there's some discomfort with that. Like, cause that's acclimating to a different

perspective on performance that I'm used to. Yeah. It goes back to that original definition that I offered around performance being sustainable and you feel good about it. And that changes over one's lifespan, because if you're, you know, 23, 24-year-old rich wanting to swim in the Olympics, then at that time, it's probably sustainable to swim a lot more. And what might make you feel good is really going for it, trying to be in the Olympics. Then it's having the self-awareness right now to say, you know what? Like, what is sustainable and what's going to make me feel good isn't to go live in a hut and put my head down and just train. isn't to go live in a hut and put my

head down and just train it's to do it in this greater context so i would argue that you are like nailing your peak performance you've just shipped you've had the self-awareness to shift the parameters yeah i think it it plays into the theme of the book pretty pretty clearly in the sense that you know you are saying in the book like there's this there's this sort of default mentality if like if you you wanna achieve peak performance, you gotta sacrifice, you gotta remove all distractions from your life and just put 110% of everything that you do 24 hours a day

into optimizing yourself to achieve this particular goal. But human beings don't work that way. We don't function long-term in that way. I had an amazing conversation with Kerry Walsh Jennings about this, you know? And she's like, I mean, look at the sustainability of her performance over like five Olympiads. It's crazy, right?

And I'm like, do you think you'd be a better volleyball player if you weren't married and didn't have kids? It's like, she has a busy life. Like, you know, she's a mom in like a big way and she shows up for her kids. She's not like a mom in word only. Like she's there. She's like, no, this, this enhances my ability to perform at my peak. Whereas most like on paper, the math of that is like, this is, this is time away from your training. This is an energy drain where she needs that to support her. And so it

doesn't work like it, like we were saying at the beginning it's not a linear equation yeah I mean it's funny one of the pro athletes I coach Sarah Hall really has done phenomenal oh my god well and she has kids all like overnight literally and it was literally and a husband it's a bodybuilder yeah i know like i see those sponsored ads popping up on instagram now where he looks like a superhero it's not but like i don't know how she doesn't like i don't know how she because she's a fantastic mom but i i think that that shows it is like right mom but i i think that that shows it is like right that having it's not about like being selfish and being obsessed about it in that way you think that's the message we're given is that in order to reach our maximum potential we need to like be all in forget everything else in the world forget

everybody else and that's what it it's all we have to do and i think these examples like carrie walsh sarah hall like they're great examples of people who are at the top of their game have been for a while and have these diverse other you know activities and things going on in their life um so it's not about sacrificing next necessarily it's just about figuring out how to prioritize and like getting the most out of yourself given those priorities. Yeah. And I think people can get comfort out of that because I think a lot of people are thinking, well, you know, it's like, look, man, I'm just trying to, you know, I got kids, I got this, I got that. Like, yeah, it would be great if I didn't have any of that. And then I could just, you know, pursue my goal, but that's not my life. But to understand like even people that are performing

at the absolute elite level of whatever it is they're pursuing, have the same challenges and, and, and are welcoming those distractions into their lives as part of the success equation. You know, Lin-Manuel Miranda, um, behind Hamilton, he said that he, he credits the spaces between writing sessions for that show. And he talks about, like, I think he says that, you know, it's when I was playing with my kid with trains that a scene came into my mind and he could have put in more work like at the whiteboard or at his notebook. I'm not sure exactly how he writes and maybe the show wouldn't have been as good because like there is this space in between where in his case, like insight occurred. Um, so it kind of gets back to that stress plus rest equals growth. Um, and, and like realizing like the rest is not just there in lip service. Like

the magic happens, not when you're applying the load. It happens when you're at rest. Right, and back to that discipline about making sure that you carve out that time. You still have to work hard, though. Like, it's funny. What we don't want is people to think, like, oh, I can just rest and chill out. You've got to work hard, too. That's the clickbait headline to this podcast is don't work. Rest your way to peak

performance or something like that. No, no, no. You've, you've, you've got to, you've got to work hard for sure. Um, but I think that it's the people it's like Steve said, I think that, you know, individuals can get very, very easily caught up in work, work, work, work. So I think that the, the kind of counterintuitive message is, is the one of rest. So that's the drum that we're hitting loudest. But I mean, you'll see in the book, everyone that we spoke with that is world-class, I mean, they also put in the work. Yeah, of course. Right. There's no end around that. I mean, on the subject of work, like what do you, Steve, in dealing with these incredibly elite athletes and being integral in the running, not just track and being, you know, integral in the,

in the running, not just track and field, but the running community at large, what do you see? You know, there's a lot of runners that listen to this podcast. So like, what, you know, what are the mistakes that you commonly see where you're just like, oh, really? Like all these people I'm at a 10 K or I'm at a half marathon. Like, doesn't that, doesn't she know that if she just did this, it would be so much easier? You mean, what are the things that Brad does? Brad, what are you doing wrong? What is getting in the way of your peak performance, Brad? I don't have Steve as my coach.

I think a lot of it. Isn't that baked into the deal that you guys have? It should have been. You're not getting free coaching? I renegotiate i think a lot of it is like people try to go places before they're ready to go places what i mean that is is one of my core like coaching principles is like don't go there before you need to go there which means a lot of times people get like super excited like i got a marathon coming up or i'm gonna do my first half marathon

i'm gonna go you know zero to a hundred percent in this short amount of time and then what happens is they they just fail or they get hurt or they have a horrible experience and then they just kind of like abandon it or go into a slump for a while and come back out of it and get motivated and try and do because they bite off a huge goal and then they can't consistently show up to prepare for that exactly and and one one of the things from a coaching standpoint i always say is like you know you're looking at maximizing adaptation and to do that like you need a challenge or stimulus it's just a little bit more than you can than you've done before but like not 2x 3x 4x and then you just have to have the patience to be able to like all right you know this week i'm a little

bit better than last week the next week i'm going to be a little bit better and then a little bit better instead of going for these huge chunks because what you see is like regardless of the level it's the people that can put in consistent solid work not like brief periods of insane work that do the best over time right like you can't cram for it exactly you can't go from surfing surfing venice beach to surfing mavericks overnight like and the guys that surf mavericks like how do you surf mavericks well they just inched up to it over a very long period of time so that by the time they're surfing Mavericks, it feels like a wave they're used to surfing. Exactly.

Compression gear. Huge in the tri community, but anathema with pure runners, right? Is that still the case? For the most part, it is. Totally not cool the case uh for the most part it's totally not cool right for the most compression gear is is interesting um you know this is way off i just had to ask my one my one tip is this so like the compression gear that like have you seen like the norma tech pants that are yeah yeah compression like if you go stand in like the the pool like the shallow end of the pool you'll actually get more compression than any either of those more than

normatec really yeah just from the water pressure yeah that's the water pressure the scientist i right in the research yeah really it's true so like with my athletes in the pool yeah they're like oh i need to wear like my compression pants and stuff i'm like go splash athletes in the pool yeah they're like oh i need to wear like my compression pants and stuff i'm like go splash around in the pool like you'll get the same thing uh-huh so same with the socks and everything yeah yeah even when you're getting on an airplane guys we've got a new product we need to be at kona with like these like little tubs of water like right at the kona airport for after the race and just have people like stand in the tub on their way to security all right enough bashing of the triathlon community i will say

this about triathletes they are experimenters they are and so they're the first they're early adopters of lots of things and i think those things the good ideas ultimately percolate down into other into other sports and there's some of the best athletes. Yeah, incredible athletes. Well-rounded, so strong. And the ideas going around now, like the Wim Hof stuff, the breathing and the cold therapy, are you familiar with that at all? Yeah, I'm familiar. Are you making a weird face? No, I mean, I'll put it this way. If you look back like meditation and like we talked about in running right and how like if you apply a stress or a pain and then you create space all i would say is that if you do some of that like wim hof stuff forget you know we'll ignore the breathing for now but getting in the

in the cold and you create this like sensation of like you know almost like stress response pain discomfort whatever essentially what you're trying to do is figure out a way to cope and deal with that and the breathing technique is essentially teaching you like one way to deal with it whether it works or not whatever but it's developing a skill set to do that and i think you'd probably get the same benefit and i've tried this with some my runners is like hey jump in an ice bath like make sense accept it in your brain however you cope with it and then translate that into running and accepting pain and you'll see you'll see some benefit so i don't necessarily

think it's like oh this guy's figured out how to control you you know, his body reactions, like anything like that. Like we can already do that to some degree. I think it's just like putting yourself in a stressful situation and then figuring out how to cope with it. Yeah. Well, ultimately at the end of the day, you know, learning how to be comfortable with discomfort is a huge thing, right? And Brad, that's something you talk about quite a bit and finds its way into your writing. So that's going to spill over into everything that you do. Exactly. Right. I mean, that's the whole key to, I mean, any, almost any endurance athletic endeavor is like being comfortable. One of my favorite studies of all time had college students start an exercise program and make themselves uncomfortable physically while exercising. And then it measured their stress response during exams. So their biochemistry,

as well as like how they reported stress and the individuals that went at it hard in the exercise program had less stress during their exam period. Two are totally on its face disconnected, but exercise and what's so great about a physical practice, it's all relative. So for Steve, it might be running four minute miles. For me, it might be running six minute miles for, you know, my wife might be running eight minute miles, but it's learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like you just said, might be running eight minute miles, but it's learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, like you just said. And once you can do that, that transfers like quite broadly. What is the most, uh, let me rephrase that. Let me rephrase this. I'm trying to think of how to articulate this. So in the course of, of researching this book, book, I'm sure you came across people that have like sort of freak performances,

like that were almost inexplicable, right? Like massive gains that were like beyond like what people thought humanly possible. Like do you come across examples of that? Or is there any kind of like literature on explaining that kind of stuff outside of a doping context, I suppose? You know what I'm talking about. I mean, you kind of refer to it like with the lifting the car kind of thing. So it gets back to purpose.

I think that the ones that are legitimate that weren't aided by performance enhancing drugs, when individuals tend to break through their own limits, they tend to report being fueled by something that is beyond themselves. We saw that in athletes, but we also saw that in an artist, a sculptor that was dealing with some fear and some insecurity and lack of patience for the financial and business side of art. And for him, it was coming back to his purpose, reminding himself of it and really meditating and reflecting on it that allowed him to break through and become an internationally acclaimed sculptor. So again, you know, for me, the most fascinating thing in the book, when we went into this,

we had a hypothesis that there might be some connections but we actually thought that like we learn stuff from art that could be applied to sports and learn stuff in sports that could be applied to business and while there was a fair amount of that i'd say there was equal if not more parallels of these like universal principles that applied across the board um in in where breakthrough was there tended to be there tended to be some sort of very strong, deeply held purpose. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the connection between fear, failure, and identity. Because when you're driven by purpose, then the missteps along the way or the failures along the way aren't even really failures. You're just because you're committed to this higher vision. They don't they're just like

bumps in the road that don't mean as much as they would if your identity is tied up and whether you're going to achieve this short term goal or not. And I think that that, you know, that's huge, right? That's absolutely huge. I mean, you talk, you've written also about like visualization, right? Like, and that's part of the priming thing, but like, and we're taught to like visualize success and to be kind of, you know, positively minded, but there's value in visualizing failure. Like, what does that feel like? Like, what's the worst case scenario? Like how bad would that feel? And if you can be okay with that or comfortable with that, then you can dissipate the fear that surrounds that. And it has a biological impact. I mean, there's some of my

favorite studies to point out to runners, I coaches, it's been a slew that looked at like testosterone levels in athletes after they've won or lost games. And not only testosterone levels at that point, but then during or prior to their next game. And what's really interesting is like, if they failed, how they viewed that, if they saw it as like an attack on themselves, right? Or if they saw it as like a teaching moment where they watched their failures and then, you know, with the coach discuss like, how do I, you know, get around this? That will actually influence hormones like testosterone. And what's really interesting in some related research is that that testosterone level, like if it drops post-game, let's say they watch a failure and they think that are they watch

mistakes of a game and they think they fail if that testosterone drops then it'll stay low the next game and it will essentially predict their performance the next game that's amazing wow that's super fascinating that's incredible um yeah i think uh i think there's so much it's so interesting how there's so much science going on right now in this world and that we're able to like quantify some of this stuff and calibrate it yeah you know what i think it finds is it's fascinating to look at but what it does is it like almost validates some of the intuitive things that you know either great coaches or smart thinkers or just people have been through some of these process of kind of like figured out. And that's what we found in this book is that a lot of these performers were doing things.

And then like we'd say, oh, we found some science on this stuff. And they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Of course. But they're already doing it. Yeah. that's figure it out right yeah the purpose stuff victor frankel wrote man's search for meaning like in the late 40s or early 50s shortly after the holocaust maybe 60s i'm not sure exactly when but well before we were neuroimaging people's brains while they were reflecting on their purpose this guy said like if you have a reason to live that's beyond yourself, you'll live.

So I think, like, to Steve's point, a lot of this stuff is intuitive, but now we are validating it, proving it, and learning more about it. Right. Ryan Hollow gave you guys a blurb, said essentially that in his blurb. He's like, it's so great to read this book

that just validates everything I've believed and thought my whole life. But it's true, like when you grow up as an athlete, and maybe this is more specific to individual sports or endurance sports than team sports. Like I grew up with a lot of these ideas that you talk about in the book, and they're like intuitive to me. And then you're like, oh man, like all these business people are going to read this book who didn't have that experience that I had. And they're going to learn something about how to like be more effective in their job or whatever it is that they're doing. And in certain respects, it is sort of self-evident.

But to see that reflected back in other people's experiences who are pursuing other disciplines and then have science to support it is pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I, I think so. Um, at least I hope so that that's our objective with the book, but, um, in, in even like myself, it really made me realize that there are very few people have the privilege to be professional athletes. So for those of us that are like myself that are, I don't know, I train like eight to 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours a week. So like, I'm an athlete yourself. It's a part of my identity for sure. But it made me realize that there are so many things that I do in my eight to 12 hour hobby that I don't do in my career and my, in my profession that I could apply to that, that has made me like a significantly better writer.

So that was like really eyeopening. Even someone that lives it in sports didn't necessarily see how it could then translate off the field. Yeah. I think I struggled with that in my own life. And I just looked at it like, well, that chapter's over. And I was jealous of people that like loved playing the guitar or loved business or something that they could pursue their whole life. And it's like, why did I choose to be passionate about this thing that I got to stop doing when I'm 20? And it's like, my life hasn't even started yet. You know? And I, and I, and I always thought like, oh, well, all of this sort of like hard work ethic that I had will probably translate into other areas of my life. But I struggled with that

because I could, I didn't have a purpose and I wasn't passionate about what I was doing. So all of that, all of that, all of those skills that I developed weren't finding a home in these other areas. Yeah. And I think that's one of our hopes out of this book too, is to get people to start thinking like out of their silo domains and start thinking like okay like all of this can apply in other areas you know from an athletic standpoint um especially a college athletic standpoint i see athletes in every sport who don't have that understanding of like this can help and translate into the next area of my life my my next step. And you see that in a lot in professional sports where athletes finish and they're like, all right.

That's the identity crisis. It's major. You know, it's an epidemic. It is. And I feel like the organizing bodies of these various sports really need to get more actively involved in these athletes' lives to prevent that from happening. I think the damage from that is severe. It's incredible. And I think it's something that, as you said, needs to be addressed. And then, you know, our hope at least is that people realize that those tool sets that you develop

can transfer over. It's just about figuring out how to use those best in almost any endeavor. Right. All right. We got to wrap this up in a couple of minutes. But one thing that's on my mind is, you know, other than this kind of conventional wisdom of go big and go home, for lack of a better phrase, you know, what other kind of conventional ideas are out there about peak performance that you were able to kind of rebut or revise as a result of the journey of writing this book? You know, I think one of them is that it can be hacked. So we're all about like quick fixes and hacks and everyone wants to like cut down the time to nothing that they can do. And I think what we found in talking to, you know, great performers across domains is that's not what occurs.

I've never met an elite performer who's focused on hacks. Exactly. I like, I like all of your stuff, Rich. My favorite thing that you've ever produced is that blog post on why you should stop hacking your life. Yeah.

Yep. That's it. There, there, like, there are like, you know, like I said, yeah, you have to rest, but you also have to work hard. Um, there are, there are very, very few shortcuts and often the shortcut is like running 90 miles a week instead of a hundred. Like that's not really a shortcut. Um, well, I think it goes to the mindset too. If you're looking for a hack or if you's not really a shortcut. Well, I think it goes to the mindset too. If you're looking for a hack or if you're looking for a shortcut, then you're not in the mindset to achieve what we define as peak performance. Yeah. I think that you have to define your terms. I mean, if you're defining hack as like an interesting new good idea, like there's certainly

nothing wrong with that, but if you're defining it as a shortcut or an end run, then I think you're being short-sighted. So an example is sleep. So there's been a flurry of like, hack your way to sleep. So take like, you know, six naps every hour and a half or wear this brain stimulation device that you'll hit a button and it'll be like you slept eight hours. Well, when you talk to sleep scientists, they, I mean, they're scientists. So like, maybe that could work, but we've yet to see the evidence that that could work. Um, and even just short cutting your own sleep, like that's not even in the framework of a hack, but like, Oh, I only need five or six hours of sleep. Um, and that is true for no one,

like a bare minimum seven hours of sleep to support whatever performance, whether that is intellectual, artistic, physical, or even like being a good spouse. Like there's all kinds of emotional processing that happens in your sleep. Um, so there's an area where like, I just irk when I hear someone talk about like hacking your way to sleep. Um, because like, it's just, there's no evidence to support it. Um, when in fact all the evidence is the opposite, which is like, it's, it's almost hard to sleep too much. Right. I listen to your preaching to the choir with this stuff. You know what I mean? We could do a whole podcast on this guy. You know what I mean? I think that people want to hear that there's an easier way.

You know what I mean? And yeah, there are always easier ways. And perhaps you can achieve whatever goal you set for yourself by taking shortcuts. But it's just not that interesting to me. You know what I mean? Like, if you want to, if you're, if you're pursuing it with your heart, then I would imagine you're trying to achieve some kind of value from that experience that is going to, you know, give your life purpose or meaning. And if you're focused on trying to find the quickest way there, then I think you're missing the beauty of just embracing what comes with,

you know, the longer road. Totally. Ryan Holiday, who I know you've had in the show, I think that he wrote in one of his books that basically like we're all going to die. And like very few people, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, like very few people are we still talking about a couple hundred years later. It's not going to matter. Right. So if the goal is the end point, you're like missing the boat because you're going to die. So you might as well like enjoy the journey and embrace the journey because like that's what you're going to experience. Very few people are going to remember that end point 100 years from now. Next to no one 200 years from now unless you do something really special in a thousand years from now. Like good luck.

Right. All right. Last question for you guys. So let's say somebody's listening to this. They're, they're looking at their first 10 K or maybe they're just trying to get a promotion at their job. And they're like, all right, like peak performance. These are new ideas to me. Like what are, you know, what's the main takeaway here? What is, you know, what's one or two things that I could like hear from you guys that I could like incorporate into my life right away that, that might, you know, give me some benefit. So I think that it goes back to what I'd led with, but just this notion of the growth equation and trying to figure out like going through some goal setting and where do I want to be in one year, two years, three years? And how, how am I going

to plot out those cycles of stress plus rest equals growth to get there? And how am I going to do that over the course of a day? So can I block my work into chunks with little abilities to recuperate? We talk about in the book, um, short walks, looking at pictures of nature, listening to music, like there are all kinds of things. And again, you could call those hacks, but they're not really hacks. Like they're, they're good practices, ways to take breaks throughout the day, um, to, to get more quality work done in a day. And then you think about over the course of a month or a week. And I'd say over the course of a career, like what projects can you take on that? Like Steve said, are ever so slightly out of your comfort zone. So not zero to a hundred,

but just make you a little bit uncomfortable. And then what's the next project that you take on after that? Um, in a relationship, like in a romantic relationship, like what are things that you can do with your partner that make your relationship, you know, just a little bit more uncomfortable. Maybe you get a plant, then you get a pet, then you have a kid. Like it's so universal how, At least I've interpreted this thinking quite universally to really think about what do you want to grow? What capability? What part of yourself do you want to grow? And how can you apply the right stimulus, reflect on it, digest it, recover from it, and then build on it?

That would be takeaway number one. And then I think my second takeaway that Steve alluded to earlier, um, is just this, I hope you saw what you're going to say. This, this notion that this notion that balance, um, is kind of an illusion and it's really, really hard to, to be balanced and that's okay. But what's not okay is to kind of, I'm looking at Steve, like I was going to say, what's not okay is to mindlessly just go down a path because that's okay but what's not okay is to kind of i'm looking at steve like i was gonna say what's not okay is to mindlessly just go down a path because that's where your passion is taking you and to do it recklessly so with brad stealing my thunder uh honestly you're on and i think it's about being intentional it's being thoughtful and intentional on what you're trying to do and

what you want out of it. And as I think we've, we've talked about a lot now is like deciding where you go and how, how do you get that? But also making sure that you're not getting in your own way. You know, I think a lot of times what we do is both from Brad and I stories of ourselves is like, essentially we got in our own way and like led us to burnout out and whether it's something as simple as saying like i am easily distracted by my phone so if i'm going to do something that i want to do well i'm going to go put it in the drawer or like not bring it to the coffee shop you know the world didn't end you know 15 years ago when we didn't all have cell phones, right? So I think getting

out of our way and then being intentional on what we're trying to accomplish is two takeaways that layer on top of Brad's that I think are really important. Yeah, beautiful. I mean, I think, you know, sort of interwoven into that is a commitment to is a commitment to self-understanding, like self-knowledge, right? In the sense, what I mean by that is understanding, like, who you are and what drives you and being self-directed and intentional, like you said about that, not getting caught up in what other people are doing or being influenced by, you know, the distracting noise of whatever's going on on Instagram or holding yourself up to some imagined sense of balance where everything has to be in proper check at all times

or you're falling short as a human being sets yourself up for failure because you feel like internally you're falling short all the time. And that inevitably is gonna lead to low self-esteem and self-defeatism. And then you're falling short all the time. And that inevitably is going to lead to, you know, low self-esteem and self-defeatism. And then you're in this vicious cycle that's going to, you know, basically lead you to nowhere good. Exactly. It's all awareness and perspective. And, you know, one quick story I'll throw in there is my, our good friend, Phoebe Wright,

who has run at the Olympic trials. When I i was when we were talking to her about like how does she handle like being on the olympic trials and like a chance to make the olympics and deal with all that stuff you know her answer was like i remind myself that no one else gives a shit how i do and then it doesn't well i put all this pressure on myself and think it's the end of the world in the, it doesn't really matter. No one cares. That's beautiful. That's like a beautiful expression of humility.

Exactly. You know what I mean? Humility is huge. That's in the book as well, like how important to cultivate humility. Did you see that? Somebody sent me this video the other day. It was this collegiate track and field runner at Cornell. And she was talking about how like she, she smiles like the whole time that she's running.

And that's how she like had this massive like leap in her. She had this huge like drop in her time and she, because it was, yeah, she was like engaging in her joy. Yeah. Chrissy Wellington did that a lot. She did do that.

Yeah. That's true. That's true. Did you see that video? You did. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And. That's true. Did you see that video? Yeah, I did. You did? Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, it was amazing.

Yeah, and I think, you know, to kind of round it out also, like a lot of people are just like, oh, this is, you know, convenient, but like I'm busy. And the truth is, like, I think everyone wastes so much time. You know, we're talking about our devices. And on that kind of vein of self-understanding and self-knowledge to really get honest with yourself about how you're allocating your time. Because I think we lie to ourselves or we're in denial about how we're actually spending our time. And if you got out a notebook and wrote down honestly what you're doing of 15 minute increments throughout the day, I think most people would be shocked. I know that I was, I've gone through this process before. Oh my God. Like, look at all this free time I could have if I just stopped doing this thing that I'm getting no value out of anyway you know everyone comes up to Brad and

myself and they're always like oh man you guys like write so much and coach and like consult and do all these things and you wrote a book how do you have that much time you guys must be like on it all the time like if you really watched us like there's there's hours spent like hours spent doing nothing and lazing around. And it's because we're not perfect. Everyone has this mistaken idea that, oh, you guys are machines and you get stuff done. But all of us have way, way more time than we realize. We do.

And I think that's a great place to put a pin in it. You guys wrote a great book, Peak Performance. I love it. Thank you for asking me to write a blurb. You have incredible blurbs here from so many people. Adam Grant, Ariana Huffington, Daniel Pink, Ryan Hall, Ryan Holiday also. Awesome. I love it.

You guys did a really great job. And I think this is going to really help a lot of people. So congratulations. And I'm excited for people to check it out. Thank you. This has been such a wonderful conversation. Did we do it? Yeah. Did we do the podcast?

I think so. I think we nailed it. That was awesome. All right. Got to get a picture and... We'll do all that. We'll do all that. So you can connect with Brad. Best place to find Brad is at B Stolberg on Twitter. Brad Stolberg is your website.

And Steve, you have your Steve Magnus on Twitter and also scienceofrunning.com, right? Correct. Is that correct? Anywhere else people can find out what you're doing? We have a book website, peakperformancebook.net. Ah, cool. Awesome, man man and so the book comes out june 9th june 6th june 6th and uh are you guys gonna do the book tour thing and cruise around and give talks and all that kind of stuff or what's what's happening we are we're uh we're

setting that up right now all right so pay attention to our social media. Yeah. It's, uh, it's coming together nicely. Yeah. No, we hope to be, uh, to be in a couple of big cities. Um, and then also just on social media and, uh, hopefully just continuing to have opportunities to write about this stuff. Yeah. Awesome, man. All right. Super nice to meet you guys. I appreciate your time. Guys, again, did a wonderful job on the book and, uh, much love. Well, thanks a lot. Thank you. Peace Good dudes great information. What more do you guys want? I thought that was awesome. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you got a lot out of it. Do yourself a favor, pick up their new book, Peak Performance, and hit them up and me up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever your

favorite social media is. Again, Brad is at B Stulberg, S-T-U-L-B-E-R-G. Steve is at Steve Magnus, M-A-G-N-E-S-S. And let them know what you thought of this conversation and their book. A couple of announcements before I let you go. Julie's new book, This Cheese is Nuts, it's coming out June 13th. You can pre-order it now. Do us a favor and do that. Those pre-order numbers are super important in terms of enhancing the visibility of the book and influencing booksellers' order size. So if it sounds like something you would be into, it would be huge if you would click that pre-order button

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and it's just a cool little thing. Plant Power Ireland is coming up July 24th through 31. We're going to this amazing place. I keep calling it Ballyvalane and all the Irish people keep tweeting me and telling me it's Ballyvalon or I'm pretty sure that that's how you pronounce it, Ballyvalon. In any event, it's this extraordinary manor on 90 acres in the Irish countryside. We're taking a group of about 35 to 40 people to this location for an extraordinary seven days of transformation. We're going to do all kinds of stuff. We're going to cook. We're going to eat.

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visit squarespace.com and use the code rich roll at checkout Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Uh, thank you to everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production and work on the show notes and the script that I tried to riff on for all of these introductions. Sean Patterson for all the help on graphics and theme music, as always, by Annalima. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here soon. Have a great week.

Make it count. Be well. Search out your own peak performance and figure out how you're going to sustain it over the long haul. That's what it's all about, right? All right, you guys. Take care. I'm done rambling. Bye-bye. Peace. Thank you.