Brad Stulberg  03:22

The equation that I assume that you’re referring to is probably my favorite part of the book. It’s what I call “the growth equation,” this notion that stress plus rest equals growth. The most readily available way to understand it is to think of how you make a muscle stronger. If you want to make a muscle in the human body stronger, you need to stress it by applying a challenge, then you need to let it rest and recover, and then it grows. If you stress it way too much, say, you pick up a 50-pound weight, when you’ve never strength-trained before, you’re going to end up injuring yourself. Equally, if you stress it every single day all day, you’re going to end up burnt out. If you only pick up a 2-pound weight, you could sit there and lift it forever, and you’re never going to grow. So, it’s like the Goldilocks ratio. You need the right amount of stress, followed by the right amount of rest. That’s how you make the muscle in the body grow. This is a centuries-old concept. It’s called progressive overload or periodization in Sports Science.

Steve and I started looking outside of sports and looking at really successful creatives, successful researchers, successful executives, and successful investors. And we saw that their careers and improvement follow a very similar trajectory. They stress themselves. They take on a challenge that makes them uncomfortable that pushes them to the edge, and then they dial back, and they rest, recover, and reflect. They continuously repeat that cycle. We thought that was pretty interesting. We started to look at the literature, and it turns out that the way that creativity, the way that emotional intelligence, and the way that artistic ability evolves all follow that same pattern.

So you have to stress something; you have to challenge it at the right amount; then you have to rest, recover, and reflect; and then, you gain the capacity to take on a little bit more challenge. And that became the growth equation. It’s probably one of the more popular sections in the book. It really dives into, “How do you find the right amount of stress? How do you find the right amount of rest? How does it change over the course of one’s life as one gets more ‘fit’ for what they do?” As you can imagine, if you’re brand new to a field, the amount of stress that you can tolerate before you need to rest isn’t nearly as high, when you’re a veteran and you’re an expert in what you do. You gain the capacity to take on more stress.

Sean Murray  05:41

Yeah, this idea that stress can be productive I find really appealing because we don’t often think of it that way. When you hear people throw around stress, it’s usually, “I’m stressed out. I’m trying to balance between life and work, or family and work,” and rethinking your mindset around productive stress. You have this quote in the book from Nic Lamb, one of the big wave surfers that I think you interviewed. I really liked this: “Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves to the outer reaches of our abilities.” So, putting that stress in your life can lead to growth, but we also have to be careful not to go too far.

Brad Stulberg  06:20

Yeah, so what the research shows, and it’s really clear, is that you cannot grow without stress. You need some kind of stimulus; some kind of challenge that makes you uncomfortable as Nic says, “something that pushes you at the point of resistance.” Also, it’s pretty clear that long-term chronic stress is really harmful. So, being in an abusive relationship, that stress is not going to lead to growth. Constantly being completely overwhelmed and in anxiety mode because the work that you’re taking on is just so out of your wheelhouse, or the quantity of it is too much to bear, that’s not going to lead to growth. But neither is going through the motions and always being comfortable. So, the kind of stress that’s growth-promoting is something that is not chronic. It is not physically detrimental to yourself, and it can be followed up with rest and recovery. That’s the magic recipe for the types of challenges that you want to take on.

Working on a really challenging project that might require you to pull an all-nighter or two; that really pushes you to the brink of your sanity, doing that once or twice in your career; maybe 5-10 times in your career, as long as it’s followed up with rest, recovery, and reflection, that’s not bad. Doing that day in and day out, that becomes chronic. That becomes bad. That’s when you get burnt out. Another way to think about it is you want to keep your easy days easy and your hard days hard. It’s okay to go hard, to push, to go all in, as long as that’s followed up with an equal period of rest, recovery, and reflection.

Sean Murray  07:52

One of the concepts that you introduced that I find really helpful is this idea of a “just manageable challenge,” which again fits right in with what you’re talking about. What I think about it is looking for opportunities to push myself a little bit more than last week. Whether it’s writing or it’s going out for a run, even in parenting or in relationships, continue to push and grow, but take it in bite-sized chunks. I like the way you put that.

Brad Stulberg  08:22

I like it too. Actually, that came from a professor that I had way back in the day in undergraduate school that would talk about just manageable challenges. That struck a chord with me as well. I like to think of it as a 7/10. So if a 1/10 is completely going through the motions, and a 10/10 is you’re waking up in the middle of the night panicked, you want to be between a 6 and an 8. That’s something that is going to challenge you and make you uncomfortable, but not something that’s going to be anxiety-provoking. This is a question that I get asked a lot: “In the gym, it’s really easy to figure out the right dose of stress. If you were lifting a 15-pound weight and it becomes easy, you go up to a 20-pound weight. Well, how do you do that into your career? How do you do that in your relationships? How do you do that as a parent?”

Steve and I did some research. We took my co-author’s athletes whose stress responses we could really look at, and dial in the right amount of stress. Then we asked them, “Where are you right now? Where do you want to go? And what’s the next logical step?” In almost across the board, all of them defined for themselves what the next logical step is as well as what we could have done as coaches.

So, I think if you take the time to step back and ask yourself those questions, most people know. You pick an area of your life, figure out where you are, figure out where you want to go and say, “What’s the next logical step?” Most people do a pretty intuitively good job of figuring that next logical step out. And then the question becomes, “When’s the right time to take it? How much time am I going to need to recover from it? And how is it going to affect the other people in other parts of my life?” And then it becomes, “Okay, this is the next logical step. What are the concrete practices or actions that work in service of it? And how can I take them?” So, you start with this concept that’s pretty Zen and esoteric: stress plus rest equals growth. And ultimately, it might mean, “I’m going to meditate for 5 minutes every day. I’m going to take two deep breaths before I engage with my teenage daughter. And I’m going to try to go to sleep 20 minutes earlier.” Very concrete, practical things.

Sean Murray  10:25

It’s a great way to think about it. It’s a great question not just to ask ourselves, but also as leaders to ask people on our team, and as parents to ask our children. Just do that check to see, “Well, what do they think is the next step, and how can I help them get there?”

Brad Stulberg  10:41

Yeah, and in organizations, this is so important. If you look at organizations like America Online or Blockbuster. They did not stress themselves in the direction of growth. They never extended their products, when the markets changed. They kind of just did what they were always comfortable with, and they got selected out.

Now, compare that to organizations like Apple or Disney, who have constantly been making themselves uncomfortable by offering new products and services and reinventing themselves. Those organizations really do a wonderful job of leading over time into the future. Remember, it’s crazy, but Apple used to be a desktop computer company, and Disney used to be an amusement park. And now, Disney is a multimedia company, and Apple is a broad digital device company that’s working on a self-driving car. Those are really good examples of continuously stressing in the direction of growth.

You see it in athletics all the time, too. Organizations like the San Antonio Spurs that are perennial contenders and in the playoffs, they’re constantly innovating in the way that they play the game; whereas teams like from my hometown, Detroit Lions, never really did anything innovative, and it shows.

Sean Murray  11:53

You can also look at evolution. You’ll get species that get stressed regularly. They’re going to stay strong. Individual organisms as well. It goes with this idea of something we all have to face, which is failure. And you talk about something called “productive failure.” Failure is something that I have a hard time with. I think a lot of people do. When I read about productive failure and fail fast in Silicon Valley, that [idea] of “fail forward, fail fast,” it all sounds great. But when it comes to facing my own failures, it creates stress. It can set me back from a confidence perspective. But if I change my mindset to productive failure, I know it can be positive. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s great.

Brad Stulberg  12:36

I agree. I think that some of it can be taken too far and become nonsense. No one should want to fail. No one should look forward to failing. No one should celebrate failing. Failing sucks, especially if you fail in something that you really care about. It can hurt. It can really be disappointing, and to say, “Oh, I’m just going to fail fast, and fail forward,” and smile. It’s total BS. That said, once you fail, ruminating about the failure and beating yourself up, does nothing but waste time and energy that could be put towards other things moving forward.

The way that I like to think about this, and hopefully, we mentioned in Peak Performance and definitely more in our second book, this may be an area where *inaudible* is when you fail acutely, it should suck, but you have to have the perspective to zoom out and take a longer view. And when you take that longer view, then the failure, while it still hurts, hopefully, it takes on more of a rational tone of, “This is information for what I should do next,” versus an emotional tone of, “Me personally is a failure. This is all going to crap. I’m hopeless.” It could be all those things. If you look at what the failure means for you over the next month or week, it could be that you’re going to crap and you’re hopeless. But if you look at what it means over the next decade or your career, then it becomes, “Oh, this is really important information that I can learn from.”

Sean Murray  14:01

I like how you just acknowledge that failure sucks. It’s not fun. It’s not something we should look forward to. But we, intellectually, need to understand about our own growth and the growth of our companies. [With] anything that’s growing and innovating, there’s going to be some failure, so we have to acknowledge that. And so, when that happens, if we can get over it quickly, and say, “Okay, we knew there was going to be some failure along the way, how do I make this productive as opposed to setting me back?” That’s a great way to think about it.

Brad Stulberg  14:31

I think taking the long view is so key. Again, that’s something that sounds easier to say than it is to do, obviously. A little exercise that I like to do with my coaching clients, and often myself, is if you think of a situation that was really crappy, or you’re even in the middle of it and it’s a failure, and you imagine what that feels like, and then you kind of ask yourself, “What do I think of this person that failed?” Oftentimes, it’s going to be, “This person stinks. This person’s broken.” Then, you imagine that you’re across the room, looking at that person, who’s just failed. Well, what do you tell the person across the room? And oftentimes people say, “Well, I kind of feel bad for that person, but I still wouldn’t want to work with that person because they failed. But maybe it was not totally their fault.”

Imagine that you’re 10 years down the road, and you’re looking back at that person who just failed; who’s a mess. What do you tell that person? And inevitably, people say, “Oh, I tell that person, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s like a long path. This is nothing.'” That’s the kind of mindset that we have to try to bring to our failures. Not because it’s woo-woo, and you’re going to feel better immediately. But again, because once you fail, that is over. Anytime spent in a negative, ruminative spiral is just time wasted. It’s not working towards anything. But it can be really hard to take that long view.

There are all kinds of failure; a spectrum for failure. There’s losing a bunch of money. There’s losing a job. I mean, some failures really do hurt a lot more than others. And I think it’s not honest not to acknowledge that.

Sean Murray  16:05

That’s so true. With productive failure, I like to think it goes well with just manageable challenges, where you’re failing a little here, a little there on the way. But if you’re going to take some bold bets, you might have some bigger failures.

There’s a great quote from Jeff Bezos that had to do with the Fire Phone. I don’t know if you remember the Fire Phone, but it was a pretty big failure for Amazon. It was about 10 years ago. They were trying to compete against the iPhone, and it failed. He was asked at a press conference somewhere along the lines of, “Well, what about this failure?” And he said, “There are going to be a lot bigger failures than this. We know that, and we’re going to accept that.” I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the exact quote. But when you look at the example of Amazon, it goes in line with the other companies you’re mentioning: Disney and Apple around that took chances and evolved in stress themselves.

Brad Stulberg  16:56

Jeff Bezos is a good example of that. He’s a really polarizing figure, but something he’s been really consistent about is his embrace of failure.

There’s a company, I think, called Webvan. It was a grocery delivery company, and they totally failed like a decade ago. Bezos went to the grocery market and did Amazon Fresh. He hired the two founders of Webvan that had failed. Basically, he said, “You guys had a great idea. You figured out how to do it wrong. Now that you know what didn’t work, do it in a way that works.” And that became Amazon Fresh, which is massively disruptive and successful. So, that’s a good example. For those two founders, my guess is when they went bust, that probably felt pretty devastating. Fast forward a few years, it’s actually been an asset.

Sean Murray  17:39

That’s a great story. I think back on my own career, and the points in my career, where I grew the most were very much the points where I was pushing myself and under a certain amount of stress. Looking back, it was quite positive because it was the fuel that allowed me to grow.

Let’s talk about the second half of that equation: the rest part. Because that can have some negative connotation. Or in this world that we live in today, where it’s like you’ve got to pack your day with everything. It seems to be a badge of courage to get 6 hours of sleep and get up at 4 a.m. doing push-ups. There’s definitely a pressure to go, go, go. And what I took away from your book, and especially the part around rest was we often undervalue what rest can do to help us grow.

Brad Stulberg  18:28

For sure, I’m right there with you. I think that we’re kind of told this story that the all-nighter, “I’ll sleep when I die”, and actually, say, if you have that attitude, you’ll probably die sooner than the rest of us. Rest is really important. The research shows that whether it’s your body or your brain, the vast majority of growth occurs when you sleep. So, if you do a really hard workout during the day, all the growth-promoting hormones and biochemicals that are actually going to make your body stronger and more resilient are all released when you sleep. The same is true for your brain. It’s when you sleep that your brain consolidates, connects, stores all the various information that you receive during the day. So you can almost think of the work that you’re doing during the day as setting the stage or the stimulus for adaptation to occur when you sleep.

19:22

The first part of rest that for me is a non-negotiable, prioritizing sleep. Sleep can be seen as something that you’re doing at the expense of your job or of working harder. It should be seen as a critical part of your job and working better. If you ask anyone, “When are you at your best?” No one says they’re at their best on like 5 hours of sleep; probably, it’s when they get a full night’s sleep. So, it’s just about them actually, truly prioritizing it. Having the confidence to work one hour less in favor of sleep, knowing that over the long run, it’s actually going to really benefit how you feel and how you perform.

20:00

Secondary to sleep is just the importance of taking breaks and task-switching throughout the day. Again, I turn to science here. Researchers have looked across all kinds of industries’ types of work, and they found that the sweet spot is between 45 minutes and 2 hours for the ability to do deep focus, intense work. After that, the diminishing returns really kick in. After about 2 hours, it almost always makes sense to take a 15-minute break before we engage in the work.

Most people have had the experience where they get sucked into something, and they just won’t leave the financial model until they figure it out. Or they won’t finish drafting the email until it’s perfect, and they sink four hours on it. When they go to bed, wake up the next morning, and redo it, they find the answer within half an hour. It’s just about how you can short-circuit that, so you don’t sink the four hours in, and you step away sooner.

As a writer, I do this all the time. I’m not immune to any of this stuff. I get pulled in trying to finish the column or write the perfect paragraph, and I’m becoming better at noticing. For me, it’s a very physical thing. I start to tense up in my eyebrow and forward-leaning to the screen. And when I’m doing it, that’s the cue of I need to get up, make a snack, go on a little walk around my neighborhood, or just do something for 15 minutes, and then come back. Without fail, I’m always better when I come back, and the research supports that.

Sean Murray  21:28

Yeah, this is one of those things that I get intuitively, when I think about physical exercise, or when I look back on my career in sports. I played basketball in high school, and we practice for one and a half hours to two hours, or maybe two hours to two and a half hours– the exact amount that you just quoted as far as the amount of time we can focus until we have a drop off in performance. When I go for a run, it’s usually for an hour, then I need to rest. But when it comes to work, for whatever reason, we just sometimes try to power through, and it just makes sense that we’re under the same physical constraints, when we do mental work. We need to step away.

Brad Stulberg  22:07

One of my favorite studies in the book was from Stanford, and they found that just a 7-minute walk leads to a 40% improvement in problem-solving and creativity after an hour and a half of work.

Sean Murray  22:19

When I look across biographies of productive people, I often find that they have incorporated sleep into their world in ways that don’t seem to be acceptable today, like I recently read Churchill’s biography. He would nap. I think it was every day during World War II. He would take a nap and be more productive.

Brad Stulberg  22:40

Yup, and that’s confidence to rest because everyone else is like, “What are you doing taking a nap? You’re leading a country in war!” And I think what Churchill would say, “That’s precisely why I’m taking that nap.” Again, it’s stress plus rest equals growth. It’s not rest equals growth, so it’s got to be in balance with the stress. But I think, culturally, in a lot of Western countries, particularly in North America, the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of stress that a lot of people could benefit from taking rest more seriously. And for the Type A driven investor that might be listening to this podcast, start thinking of rest as a part of the work. Like athletes; they view sleep, rest, and recovery as a key part of their job. It’s going to make them the best athlete they can be. I think that if you use your brain to perform, it’s no different. You still ought to be thinking in that framework.

Sean Murray  23:31

You talk in the book that you profiled a number of professionals that have sort of perfected this. What I took away from some of those profiles was the way they went about managing their day, so they were at their peak when they needed to be at their peak. The story that comes to mind is the drummer that backs up Taylor Swift. The way that he would prepare to be at a peak during the performance, and often it wasn’t so much warming up on the drums, it was mentally getting prepared. It was doing some other physical exercises so that he was absolutely at his peak when the time came.

Brad Stulberg  24:05

Yup. And that’s something that you see in a lot of really high performers with a lot of expertise and experience in the topic. The more expertise and experience you have doing the thing, the less important it comes to warm up by doing that thing. You already know how to do that. You’re a master at it. It’s about getting your body and mind in the right mind state. Since writing the book, I’ve done a fair amount of speaking, and I’ve met a lot of investment professionals that talk about the importance of physical activity as a way to prime themselves for the day. A lot of them have said, “I’ve gone from reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal cover-to-cover,” then saying, “Screw that. What I need to do is spend 1 hour and 30 minutes running, because I know enough about the markets. I can quickly skim that stuff. But if I run, I’m calm. I’m able to focus more. I see things more clearly.” Again, very different than the poor work of the job and precisely why it’s such an effective way to warm up.

Sean Murray  24:57

That’s a great connection there, and it reminds me as well of famous investors like Ray Dalio, Bill Gross. They meditate. It was amazing [to know] the number of high performing investors that meditate. I’m not a meditator. I tried it, but I think what they’re getting at is just that rest component, right? They’re preparing themselves mentally, either before or after going into peak performance. So, they’re at their best at the moment, when they’re reading the 10-K, when they’re making decisions about investment, and then they make connections later through their subconscious by resting.

Brad Stulberg  25:28

I think a simple way to put it: more is not better, better is better. We so often confuse more with better. Now again, you have to have some kind of stress to recover from. The pendulum can swing in the opposite direction, and suddenly it’s just rest, rest, rest. Well, what are you resting from? It’s about figuring out the inputs to both of those things. And if you are really driven and struggle to hold yourself back, I think it’s just important to remember: more is not better, better is better.

I spend more time writing every day than I do now because I kind of fell into my own trap of more is better, but better is better. And for me, actually, writing less over the course of a day, I get less done; but over the course of a year, I get a lot more done.

Sean Murray  26:11

Something that goes along with this idea of “more is not better, better is better” is doing one thing at a time. You do talk about this in the book as well. And it goes along with this idea of flow. When I think about flow, for me, I think about skiing. I like to ski. That’s kind of my go-to. I like running too, but skiing even more so, because when you’re skiing, you have to be totally focused on the mountain, your weight, your balance– everything! When you run, you can kind of go into autopilot. You really can’t so much when skiing. And you’re forced to do one thing, and it’s just a great feeling. It’s something that I think as humans we’re meant to do. Yet, when I sit in front of my computer, I find it hard to get into that flow state. I’m all over the place. I’m doing a lot more things I think I am, but I’m really not doing them better.

Brad Stulberg  26:57

Our brains have a phenomenal ability to trick ourselves. Researchers asked people to single-task and multitask, and then they asked them under which condition did they get more done and do a better job. Most people say the multitasking condition, but when they actually measure the work, they got more done and did it better when single-tasking. So, we’re really good at tricking ourselves into thinking that we’re getting more done when we’re multitasking, when in fact, it’s quite clear that single-tasking is significantly better.

What’s interesting there is that, this research was also done at Stanford, they did find that about 1.5% of the general population has something in their genetics that allows them to multitask really effectively. The funny thing is that everyone thinks that they’re in that 1.5%. It’s funny. Again, I’ve done a fair amount of speaking to groups of investors and investment professionals, and for people that understand probability pretty well, they all raised their hand. I had a whole room of people saying they’re in the 1.5%. Come on, guys! You guys are math people. It’s not possible.

Sean Murray  28:04

Yeah, we can all beat the market. I’m sure, right? That’s what we think. It’s pretty easy to slip into that bias.

Brad Stulberg  28:11

Single-tasking is really important and that can become really practical, too. It’s just about turning the phone off and putting it in another room when you have an important 1-hour-and-30-minute-block of work. If you’re in a meeting with someone, really be there, particularly if it’s a virtual meeting. Don’t be on your email. Don’t be browsing the internet. Really be on the phone with that person, because you’re going to get more out of it, and you’re going to feel better.

This is really interesting. From a lot of my reporting, again, with business professionals, people talk about the worst days are the days where they were never really where they were. They might have been on a phone call, but during the phone call, they were writing an e-mail. They might have been at the meeting, but during the meeting, they were looking at their computer. They might have been trying to do deep work, but during the deep work, they were e-mailing the person that they didn’t pay attention to when they were on the phone. It just constantly is this cycle of never really being where you are, and at the end of those days, most people feel really crappy. So, it’s about recognizing that urge to multitask and do more, and realizing it’s human when it happens, but then being aware enough not to act on it.

Sean Murray  29:14

I think one of the things that can help, and you talk about this in the book with some of the profiles, is just having a routine, so that you’re conditioned to create the conditions for success for you, personally. And that starts with how you get up in the morning. Maybe going for a run, getting your cup of coffee, and going through whatever steps that you need to go through, so that when it’s time to be in that flow state, and do what’s critical for your career, whether it’s investing or writing, or even to be there for a relationship with someone, you’re at your peak performance. I think Stephen King, he mentioned, from the writing perspective, how he sort of has this routine, and he does the same thing every day.

Brad Stulberg  29:52

Yep, routine’s super helpful to help automate some of those decisions for you, so you don’t have to constantly make them. There are a lot of writing podcasting out there about optimal routines, and what the research shows really clearly is that having a routine is optimal, but there is no optimal routine. Some people are morning people. Some people are evening people. Jeff Bezos wakes up at 4 a.m., great! That works for Jeff Bezos. It doesn’t mean that everyone should wake up at 4 a.m.

Researchers who study this inside and out, and again, what they find is that people definitely benefit and perform and feel better, when they have a solid routine, but what that routine looks like is a very individual matter. It can change over the course of one’s lifetime, as well. Your hormones can change, so some people start as morning people and become evening people. You can have an infant, and then you better be able to release from any routine. So, it’s like a paradox, and people don’t like paradox, but routine itself is very fixed. It ought to be, but which fixed routine you carry might change multiple times over the course of your life.

Sean Murray  31:00

You get to a point in the book where you kind of introduce what I think of as a superpower for this sort of growth and performance, which is finding your purpose. I’m really glad that you put that in there. I think it’s one of the best parts of the book. To all the listeners, who are going out and read this book, I highly recommend it, make sure you get to the section about purpose, because if you can get stress plus rest equals growth in alignment with purpose, I think that’s the Holy Grail.

Brad Stulberg  31:32

For sure! Having that underlying source of motivation is so important for enduring tough times, and for staying grounded during really good times. Knowing your core values, and showing up and acting in service of them day in and day out, that’s what keeps you consistent not just over a month or a year, but over a lifetime. So really ask yourself, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” And being honest, you know? For some people, it’s to make the world a better place. For other people, it is to have the money. For other people, it is because I love the intellectual challenge of it. For other people, it’s because I like working in a team. It’s just about figuring out what’s true to you, and then trying to align how you work with that.

Sean Murray  32:17

One of the stories you tell in the book is about someone who witnesses a car accident. It was a car that hit a pedestrian or a cyclist. The person ended up trapped beneath the car, and this good samaritan ran over and was able to lift a car. Why was he able to do that? Well, there was a clear purpose. There was a life to be saved. There was some kind of untapped potential that was still there. And I think I remember the research where people are lifting weights, and they say, “I can’t lift anymore,” and then they jolt them with electricity, and actually your muscles can still contract. You just have to find a way to tap into it.

Brad Stulberg  32:54

Yeah, it’s one of my favorite parts of the book too, Sean; this purpose part. Particularly because I think the science behind it is so freakin’ interesting, and it makes intuitive sense. So when you break the science down, basically, what researchers hypothesized is happening is when you have a strong purpose, the part of your brain associated with yourself in self-protection, lets the reigns loose a little bit because you’re thinking about something that is beyond yourself, some sort of purpose. Instead of constantly protecting you from failure, your brain allows you to go and tap into this ability to achieve things and to endure what you never thought you would endure because you’re not so worried about protecting yourself from failing.

So in a physical sense, the brain says, “Oh, there’s someone under that car, I need to save that person.” The part of your brain that would normally stop you because it’s worried that you’re going to pull out your back goes offline, then you can tap into that string.

In an intellectual sense, if you take out a big challenge solely for yourself, your ego is probably going to get in the way. “What if I fail? What if I make a fool out of myself? What if it doesn’t work out?” Whereas if you’re taking on that challenge because it’s going to do some good for your family or for the world, that part of your brain that’s going to try to get you to stop because it’s scared, that part will quiet down.

So, the more that you can have that greater purpose, the more you get out of yourself. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to take stupid sloppy risks. It’s going to help you take good productive risks.

Sean Murray  34:19

You provide, in the book, a series of steps that anyone can walk through to help clarify your purpose. Maybe you could elaborate on that for the audience, because finding your purpose can be a daunting task, and you show the reader how it can be manageable. You don’t have to go on a 30-day silent retreat to figure it out.

Brad Stulberg  34:36

The program that we use in the book is developed by a researcher named Victor Strecher, who’s at the University of Michigan Psychology Department, and his research is focused on this topic: the benefits of purpose and how people find purpose. There is a pretty methodical way to come about a purpose. And we get a lot of feedback from readers that part of the book is really helpful because they go from this, “Woowoo, I’m going to put this book down because I don’t believe in any of this,” to the science, “This purpose stuff is fascinating, and it’s real. But how can I get it?” to, “Oh, here’s a step by step approach to actually think about my core values and my purpose.” I’m glad that that part of the book resonated with you as well.

Sean Murray  35:18

Yeah, I know. I highly recommend people go through the steps even if you think you know what your purpose is for any given project or maybe your life purpose. It’s helpful. I went through it. I came up with my own purpose statement based on your process. And whether or not that’s going to be my be-all-end-all purpose statement, I don’t know. But it’s helpful to get to a concise statement.

When I think about purpose, I think about Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He just does a great job in that book talking about survivors of the Holocaust. He was in Auschwitz for a while and eventually survived. But he noticed that if a prisoner in the concentration camp lost their sense of purpose, he knew that they would not make it. But if you held on to a purpose and that usually, the purpose had to do with something beyond yourself, that was critical. And that was the key to survival.

Brad Stulberg  36:13

Yup, totally. It’s in the book, too. It’s pairing purpose with core values. The core values are perhaps a little bit less esoteric and easier to operationalize, and say, “Well, if one of my core values is presence, like being present, well, then the action is every day at 7 p.m., I’m going to put my phone in a drawer in the other room because I want to be present for my family and friends.” The other thing that’s nice about having those core values underlying the purpose is that if individuals ever experienced a bout of depression or anxiety, oftentimes the first thing that happens is it feels like there is no purpose. Purpose goes, but if you have those core values, you can show up and act on them even if you don’t feel like it. And the research shows that it’s such an effective way through not only pathological mental illness but also the ruts that we all go through.

Sean Murray  37:06

Yeah. It goes along with what you talked about professionalism in the book, which is when peak performers, professionals, people like Stephen King, LeBron James, and Jeff Bezos, they show up even on good days or bad days. They show up.

Brad Stulberg  37:22

There’s this concept that you have to feel really good to get going, but it’s actually the opposite: mood follows action. So, you don’t have to feel good to get going. What you need to do is get going, then you’ll feel good. That is such a profound game-changer for so many people. Myself included. I used to be very much driven by motivation and mood. Then you get older, you have kids; like you just get tired. You don’t have the same spark. Crap, what’s happening? And nothing’s wrong. You just have to show up. Start going. And then, once you show up and start going, everything else tends to click in.

Sean Murray  37:55

There’s a quote from Stephen King in your book. He says, “Don’t wait for the muse. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine to noon.”

Brad Stulberg  38:05

Yep, that’s it.

Sean Murray  38:07

That’s great. Well, tell us a little bit more about your next book, the project you’re working on now.

Brad Stulberg  38:13

After Peak Performance came out, Steve and I wrote a book together called, The Passion Paradox, which explores drive and passion, and where drive and passion come from, how to make it sustainable, and also the tradeoffs that really driven people face. Society likes to talk about passion as this thing that’s always good, but it has this enormous dark side, which is divorce, burnout, unethical behavior, and anxiety. So, the book really explored if you are a person that is “blessed” with drive and passion, how can you control that, so it doesn’t end up controlling you. So, that was book number two.

Then, because we’re both driven, passionate people, we wrote that book for ourselves as much as anyone. We’re also both working on individual projects right now. Steve is writing a book that is exploring what it really means to be tough, and cultural definitions of toughness versus what the science says. And the project that I am just now starting is exploring how we define success, alternative definitions of success, and how people with alternative definitions of success tend to actually have more conventional success, probably as a result of their alternative definition.

Sean Murray  39:28

When you are looking into success, have you explored John Wooden’s definition of success?

Brad Stulberg  39:36

Oh, yeah. John Wooden is a part of this book, for sure. There’s a lot of thinking about the process versus the outcomes, and about external validation versus internal validation, and how to balance these things in a world that is constantly saying, “More! More! More! External! External! External!” knowing that a lot of sustainable performers actually come at it from a very different place.

I think Warren Buffett is another prime example of this. One of the wealthiest people who drives used cars and eats at McDonald’s. For him, it’s not about the money. It’s about the challenge; the creativity; the stimulation of what he does. So, how can we balance the need to perform well and to have conventional success; put food on the table; and live the life we want to live, while also not totally selling our soul and being kind of a slave to the next result that we may or may not have?

Sean Murray  40:29

Wow! It sounds like interesting work. I can’t wait to read it!

Where can people find out more about what you and Steve are up to?

Brad Stulberg  40:39

I have a website, which is just my name: bradstulberg.com, and I’m on Twitter @BStulberg. And then Steve and I just launched a new multimedia platform; it’s The Growth Equation (www.thegrowtheq.com), and that is a place, where we hope to house all of our work, so our essays, our articles, our blog, information on our books or workshops.

Sean Murray  41:04

That sounds great, Brad! Thank you for being on The Good Life podcast.

Brad Stulberg  41:09

Thanks for having me, Sean. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Outro  41:12

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