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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week, in the show, I am joined by author Brad Stalberg to chat about the routines, habits, goal setting, practices, and philosophies that peak performers across the world use to achieve excellence and success in their world, and how we can take lessons from those and apply them to our own pursuits of hunting, archery, marksmanship, or much more. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. Today we have got another one of these unique kind of outside of the box episodes. We did one a couple weeks ago with Michael Easter. We’ve got one more here today in which I am trying to look outside of our hunting world for new ideas and strategies and practices that can be applied inside of our world and can be applied to our pursuits of trying to become better deer hunters, or better Western hunters, or better archers, marksmen, whatever that pursuit might be. There’s a whole lot outside of our little, tiny hunting and fishing world that we can probably learn from, and so I’ve been seeking out those experts who have studied this as a career and who I think can teach us a lot, and our guest here today is just one of those people. Brad Staalberg is the author of many different books and many articles and podcasts and different pieces of content that circle all around this. How do you pursue a goal? How do you achieve excellence or success or mastery in something you care a lot about? Right? That’s something that we’re trying to do. That’s why you’re listening to this podcast as you’ve been trying to figure out how to get better at hunting, or how to get better at some version of this hunting set of pursuits that we chase. So Brad is going to take some of the ideas that we add actually talked about with him several many years ago. Actually I spoke with him on episode two hundred and eighty two about a couple of his books, one being The Passion Paradox and one being a Peak Performance, And we’re going to take some of those ideas and advance them forward. He’s written several other best selling books since then, including Master of Change, and now most recently, it’s launching either right when you’re hearing this or very soon after The Way of Excellence, and this book, I think, really ties a nice bow on a lot of the ideas that he has explored across all of his books and all of his articles and content. And really what it does and what we’re going to be talking about here today is how we can think about pursuing excellence in anything. And he cites examples from the world of professional sports, from the worlds of health and fitness, and business and entrepreneurship and science and all these different things. How can the lessons learn from those fields be applied to what you and I care about? How can can we learn more about how to do what we do better and enjoy it more and find more satisfaction in it and grow more. That’s the conversation today. It’s a really unique one, and that’s why I think it’s particularly important and hopefully useful. Certainly for me it has been, and I hope it will be for you too. So, without any further ado by chat with author Brad Stellberg. All right, joining me now on the line is Brad Stellberg. Welcome to the show, Brad Mark.
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Speaker 2: It’s great to be here.
00:03:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that’s just welcome back because you were on the show, and I went back and looked in our archives and that was back in the early two hundreds of the show, and now we’re over a thousand episodes, which is pretty crazy. So it’s well, it’s well pastime that we chat again and circle back. And you have been very busy in the intro years. I think you’ve published three books since we last chatted, maybe maybe four. Uh So, how how are you holding up underneath that incredible workload in the year since.
00:04:07
Speaker 2: I’m doing well. I don’t know any other way to live.
00:04:09
Speaker 3: So I’m just doing my thing, and I’m fortunate that the you know, the the creative gods are are still in my favor and the books keep coming.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s that’s a good thing. When when fate shines on you like that, you do seem to be putting your work into action. You know, all of your books, whether it’s about you know, this practice of groundness or you know, mastering change or in this case, you know, finding and articulating what excellence is in your life seems to be from afar, something you’re putting into play. But but that’s where I want to start is with this word excellence, because I think every single person when they hear that word, they think of something probably a little bit different. There’s a different definition for every one of us. When I think of it in the context of this podcast and in my audience, I’m thinking more about, you know, how do we pursue excellence in our pursuit? Maybe that’s how do I become a better archer, or how do I become a better marksman with a rifle, or how do I train some ready for a big backcountry hunt, or just become a better you deer hunter? Understanding wildlife behavior and habitat and all those kinds of things. There’s a lot of people that spend a big chunk of their lives chasing those kinds of goals. That’s what maybe the listeners are thinking of right now when they think of excellence. What are you thinking of when you say excellence?
00:05:31
Speaker 3: I define excellence really simply. It is involved engagement and caring deeply about a pursuit that you find worthwhile, that aligns with your values and goals, and it is giving something your all in. It is realizing that in the process, the goal that you’re working toward is also shaping you as a person.
00:05:51
Speaker 2: So, yes, you want to achieve a goal.
00:05:53
Speaker 3: You might want to become a better archer, or a better overall hunter, or a better outdoors person, or gain fitness to go on a big back country and that is the goal that you’re working toward. But that goal is also shaping you as a person. It’s working on you as teaching you about resilience and being uncomfortable and overcoming challenges and frustration and building community and all of these things.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: And what I found in.
00:06:13
Speaker 3: The research and reporting for this book, what I’ve found in my own life, is that when we have these big goals and we pursue them with integrity, it gives us a sense of a liveness and satisfaction that is increasingly hard to find in the modern world.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: And that’s why I think it’s so important.
00:06:27
Speaker 1: You’ve done some writing, and I’ve seen this on social in your Guys’s newsletter, and you’ve kind of explored I don’t want to say toxic because toxics becoming like a loaded word, but almost like the double edged sword of this pursuit maybe, And I’ve heard you. I think you’ve kind of explored that the performative side of excellence or different things like that, and that’s certainly been something that seems amplified by social media and our world today. Can you talk about that other side of this pursuit of excellence a little bit and what risks might be that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I call it pseudo excellence or like hustle culture greatness, which essentially says, and I’m painting in broad strokes, that you’ve got to wake up at four am, have a fifty six step routine, optimize every part of your day, do six cold plunges, count every single calorie, be on a super restrictive diet, measure your sleep, your heart.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: Rate, on and on and on.
00:07:27
Speaker 3: In there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but what often happens is that we lose sight of the main thing, which is like, what’s your goal? What do you care about? And are you living in alignment with that? And I think that what often happens, especially on the Internet, is you get the performance of greatness or the performance of excellence and not the real thing, because generally speaking, people who are doing the real thing, they don’t have time for all that elaborate kabuki like they’re so focused on the fundamentals of their craft and on gaining skill and mastery and competence that they don’t mess around with any of these in shiny objects or you know, cyclical trends. And I think that that’s a distinction that’s important to make because what happens is people hear excellence and they have these two very common misconceptions. One is what I just said. They’re like, oh, that’s all the bros on the internet, Like, that’s not for me. I don’t have time for that. That I can’t deal with that. The other, though, is that excellence is only for the elite few, or people with impeccable genetics, or it’s this standard that they’re never going to attain. And I don’t think that’s accurate. I think that you go back to all the ancient wisdom traditions, starting with the ancient Greeks, excellence is actually not a standard. It’s a process of becoming, and it’s available to all of us, and its benefits are available to all of us.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s this there’s a similar thing going on within the hunting and fishing world around. I don’t know if it’s hero worship or trophy worship or or whatever it is. I mean, it’s it’s worshiping the outcome. It’s this adoration and sensationalization of the big buck, the huge fish having more of this kind of quote unquote success, and it seems to have all sorts of ripple effects because of that, it’s changing how people feel about their pursuit. Maybe they start doing things for different reasons, or they’re feeling bad about their version of this pursuit because it’s not like the person they see online. There’s all this kind of comparison culture stuff. How do you break out of that? How have you found how do you be someone who cares about pursuing growth and getting better at your thing without falling into that trap?
00:09:36
Speaker 3: I think you need to have a finely tuned bullshit detector to be quite frank, And I think that I make the assumption that if someone or some group of people is like really just posting NonStop on the internet about something that seems extreme, I just make an assumption that they’re not serious people and maybe they did it, and maybe they did it without integrity, or maybe they’re just this crazy outlier and about them. But like, either way, if it’s not if it’s not useful, if it’s not a good motivating force, then I’m just going to ignore it. Who do I compare myself to who do I draw inspiration from, Like actual people who I know and I know their work and I know how they pursue it, and I know it’s real, And those are the people that are better than me, that inspire me, that I want to learn from and grow. But it’s much more local because like I actually know these people and I know their work. I think it’s just going to get worse with AI. It’s already happening. I mean, I’m sure that if you want it to be a tremendous outdoors men or outdoors woman influencer, you could, with a couple hundred bucks in a couple of basic training courses in AI create all kinds of stuff that is completely fake that would gain you a massive following on the internet. So I just think, like we have to be very careful about when we compare ourselves to people. Do we actually know the person, do we actually know their process? And and if not, then I think it’s largely just like ignore.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another side of this too in this context that I’m curious about. When you hear about whether it’s self development or peak performance or you know, trying to pursue excellence, many times these ideas are explored in the context of your profession. You know, it’s something you’re trying to do to become better at your job, or to become a better entrepreneur, to become a world class athlete, or anything like that, and so there seems to be like a tangible outcome that you are dependent on in one way or another. While with a pursuit like hunting or fishing, or just like a recreational pursuit of anything, I’m curious if the pursuit of excellence and what you’ve learned about it is or should be considered differently. When it’s you know, it’s supposed to be your recreation, right, this is something usually whether it’s playing basketball or running or anything. A lot of people got into it because, hey, this is like a fun thing I liked. But then at some point they start pursuing more and more and more. What have you found about the unique aspect of this when it’s just supposed to be your your fun time, your spare time, your weekend, but it becomes more.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: It’s a great question. I like to think of it as a craft or a practice. So I think that a lot of people experience this on their journey. They start just because they’re interested in something, and it’s like a hobby, and then you do it more and you get better at it, and you get more into it, and then it becomes a craft or a practice. And I think that’s actually a really beautiful thing because unlike a job, where you have all of these external pressures and you know you have to maybe do things that you don’t want to do because you’re in an organization and so on and so forth, with a craft or a practice, or even if it’s just a hobby, you have so much agency and freedom to shape how you’re going to pursue it. So you get to take this container of something like hunting or archery, and you get to say, here’s the ways that I want to pursue it. Here are the goals that I want to work towards, Here are the values that I have as a person, And here’s how I think pursuing this this craft is going to help me not only become a better archer a better hunter, but become a better person. And I actually think that’s in I think too often we think that excellence is only in the domain of what you’re doing for a living. But I actually think I’ve learned this in reporting on the book a lot of people that the pursuit of excellence is maybe more profound and more satisfying when it’s not what you do professionally, because you have so much more agency to shape it exactly how you want.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like for a lot of people, they just fall into this by accident somehow, and they don’t really give a lot of thought to it. They kind of fall in love with it, as you described, Like they get into something and then they realize they want more, and they go deeper and deeper, and then all of a sudden, five years later or twenty years later, they realize they’ve been pursuing this thing. They’ve been trying to become great at it, to develop you know, excellence or whatever might be. If you were to start from ground zero, or if you were to restart that process today and you said, hey, I’ve been trying to learn to become a better archer. I’ve been doing it kind of on in a Willy Nilli fashion for the last ten years. Today, I’m going to start with a new structure in place, and I’m going to try to take Brad Stellber’s approach to pursuing this. What’s your first step in creating a more structured, thoughtful approach to pursuing excellence in a pursuit. Let’s just use archery for this example. I think that kind of lends itself well to this. What’s that first step in doing this in a more thoughtful way? First step, I think is what’s the goal?
00:14:19
Speaker 2: So?
00:14:20
Speaker 3: Is the goal to become a better marksman or marxwoman? Is the goal to compete at tournaments?
00:14:28
Speaker 2: Is the goal?
00:14:29
Speaker 3: To become an archer that actually hunts? Is the goal to hunt in a way where it is sport? Is the goal to hunt in a way where you’re no longer purchasing me except what you kill. I mean, there’s so many different ways to think about becoming a better Marx person. So I would start with defining, really clearly what’s the goal. And I wouldn’t define that based on what Mark is doing, or what Brad’s doing, or whatever social media influencer is doing.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: I wouldn’t just mimic them.
00:14:56
Speaker 3: I would step back and say that for each of these possible goals in the sport, what’s the process that I’m going to most enjoy and find most satisfying pursuing. So how do I actually want to train? How much time do I have to train? How big of a part of my life do I want this to be? Do I want to have to be outside all the time? Do I want to join an archery club where there’s other people in, there’s community. So I’d step back and I’d say, I’ve gotten pretty good at this thing. I’ve been doing it, you know, willy nilly, As you said, now I want to get more serious. So let me think about all the different goals I could pursue, and then let me envision what pursuing that goal would look like, and let me pick the right one. It’s essentially a dilemma that every single alpinis climber faces. There’s all these mountains to climb. Well, it’s really important to pick the right mountain to climb. It’s also really helpful to have a mountain to climb, because if don’t have a mountain of climb, you’re just kind of aimlessly wandering.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are the most significant goal setting pitfalls that you’ve come across. I think there’s a lot of ways we can probably set goals the wrong way. What are a few that stand out to you?
00:15:57
Speaker 2: The biggest is just wrote mimicry.
00:15:59
Speaker 3: So this person killed that size buck, and therefore I want to kill that size buck.
00:16:05
Speaker 2: Well do you? Maybe you do, but like you need a.
00:16:07
Speaker 3: Better reason than I saw that person do it and it got my dopamine firing. That’s the biggest trap. Another trap is UH doing too much too soon, too early. So like using the inspiration and the motivation of having this enormous goal that gets you really fired up when you’re telling your friends about it, or you’re journaling about it, or you’re thinking about it, but then when you actually start the process of working toward it, it’s so overwhelming and so outside of your capabilities that you’re just going to flame out and be frustrated all the time. And then I think that there’s this nuance that is a third thing that at first is very helpful but then becomes a trap. And this is one of the most popular goal setting frameworks. They’re called smart goals.
00:16:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:51
Speaker 3: In smarkles are specific, measurable, attainable, relatable, and timely. So for me, a smart goal would be I’m going to lift five hundred and fifty pounds by the end of twenty twenty six, and that would actually be a terrible goal, because I’m far enough along the path of mastery where it’s not very predictable what’s going to happen to my deadlift next. But if I was an amateur and my goal is I want to deadlift three hundred and fifteen pounds by the end of the year, that would be a great goal. So what often happens is we get this in reverse. So beginners that could benefit from smart goals, from having that accountability and that specificity and that really good closed reward circuit where you’re measuring something, they’re too loose. They’re just like, I just want to be a better hunter. What the hell does that mean? Like be a better hunter? No, Like you need to set a goal that you could actually fail at, like hold yourself accountable. But then what happens is once you’ve gotten pretty good, and once you’ve nailed a couple of smart goals, progress becomes much less linear.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: And if you tell yourself, hey, you.
00:17:52
Speaker 3: Know, my goal is to go from from P to Q in the alphabet, Well that might take a year, but but that might take three years once you get really good at something. So smart goals work until they get in the way and I think too often more advanced people try to use smart goles when they’d be better off. Just like the goal is to get as good as I can, Like you’ve already done the early work, the games are going to be much less predictable in more novices and intermediate folks can actually benefit from that tight structure around smart goles. And in the final trap that everyone runs into is the arrival fallacy, and just this notion that if I set a goal and achieve it, then I’m going to be content, you know. So if I just get that size buck, then I’m going to be able to call myself a hunter and I’m going to sleep.
00:18:31
Speaker 2: Easy for the rest of my life.
00:18:33
Speaker 3: Well, what ends up happening is you get that size buck, You’re happy that night, You wake up the next morning and you’re you know, you’re hungry for more.
00:18:41
Speaker 1: So what about goals, Brad, where the outcome is significantly outside of your control, where there’s just ninety percent of the variables are beyond you, and in many cases depending on this would be a hunting related goal. But let’s say if your goal is to kill your first buck or whatever it might be, you could do everything right and still because so much is outside of your hands when it comes to something like a wild animal and a wild place, you may not succeed. So in that kind of situation where many hunters or anglers or even you know sports, you know folks playing competitive sports, right, there’s a lot of stuff that’s outside of your oalm of control too. How do you handle both setting goals and then judging your success on those goals when so much is seemingly outside of your hands.
00:19:32
Speaker 3: I think that the way to do this is to put yourself in a position to win. And if you put yourself in a position to win, then that success success isn’t winning because like you said, whether or not you get that buck, it’s it’s outside of your control. But if you put yourself in a position to get that buck, and at the start of the hunt you say, hey, I’ve prepared, I’ve executed my process. I’m in a position to win, and now you know it’s up to fate, well then that’s great because if you don’t get a buck that time, but you go out next hunting season and you execute that process like eventually you’re going to win. And I think, like this is such a misconception, is that the like the goal is to win, which is true, but you can’t control whether or not you win, especially in something like hunting. If we’re going to define win is like getting the killer or whatever. Yeah, But what you can control is are you in a position to do that? And what any intermedia or advanced hunter is going to tell you is that if you put yourself in a position to win enough times, eventually you’re going to get some wins and you start to get a feel for what it’s like to be in a position to win. And then the goal, over the course of a hunting season is just to be in that position to win over and over and over again, and maybe you win sixty percent of the time and that’s a great season.
00:20:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I’ve wrestled with this a lot myself over the years as I’ve pursued, you know, competence in hunting and archery and all these different things. And something that you write about in this book and you’ve talked about and other people have talked about over the years that’s helped me a lot has been this idea of what you call process over outcomes mindset. Can you expand on that a little bit, because I think that’s a really helpful way to think about this.
00:21:05
Speaker 3: Outcomes are generally outside of our control. Whether or not we’re going to win or lose the race is going to depend on who else shows up. Whether or not we’re going to get the kill is going to depend on the weather, the wind, and so many factors that we probably can’t even imagine. So we can’t control outcomes, but we can’t control our process. So our process is our preparation, our training, our study, the individuals that we go on the journey with, how we carry ourselves when we’re out there, how we compete, our mindsets, our habits, all those things, and too often we spend a lot of time thinking about the outcome, dreaming about the buck and how we’re going to feel when we kill it, and reading about other people that did it, when that’s just wasted time because it’s out of our control. What we can’t control is our process. So do we take good care of our equipment, did we train appropriately, did we study appropriately? Do we come to the hunt with the right attitudes and mindset? And if we execute on our process, that’s just how you put yourself in a position to win. So it’s not that outcomes don’t matter like they do matter. It’s a thrill to succeed and to have a goal, and sometimes if you’re actually competing, like it matters. You know, if you’re an angler and you’re at one of these weekends where like they’re going to weigh then the fish that you caught or how many you caught, like you want to win, it matters, But you.
00:22:17
Speaker 2: Can’t control that. All you can control is your process.
00:22:21
Speaker 3: So the more that you can stay rooted in your process, the more fulfilling you’re going to find the pursuit in the craft, and paradoxically, the better chance you give yourself of attaining your outcomes. The times when I’ve had the best outcomes as an athlete have been the times when I’m least focused on achieving the outcome and I’m just.
00:22:37
Speaker 2: Completely lost in the process.
00:22:39
Speaker 3: The times when I’ve struggled as an athlete is when I spend too much time thinking about whether or not I’m going to hit the lift, I inevitably fail.
00:22:58
Speaker 1: So let’s take this one stuff. Let’s say, for the sake of an example, that I want to become a better bow hunter, and one way that I’m going to try to pursue that goal is I’m going to set a you know, sort of a smart goal that would force me to get better at my accuracy. So I’m thinking out loud here, but let’s say maybe my goal is that by this coming October I will be able to accurately hit a bullseye, you know, nine times out of ten at one hundred yards, which is a really, really far shot. So that would really really stretch my skills as an archer. Therefore, when I’m actually hunting at forty yards, it feels like a slam dunk. Maybe that’s my goal. And with that goal in mind, how would you go about setting up a process or a system of you know, training and preparing to reach that goal so we can actually do that in a smart way. I think it’s I think James clear someone said something on the lines of like, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems, something along those lines, And I’m curious how you would build a system that we could fall back on that would help us reach that big goal.
00:24:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is like this is training one on one and I love it because to me, where my background is really in athletics, this is so second nature, But I think for outdoors people like, maybe it’s not so second nature, because there’s like a wildness to your sport that sometimes I think is like very mystical and magical and incredible, and that’s why it’s so addictive. But I think there’s a kind of rigor that you could bring to it too that is perhaps helpful, and that’s what you’re getting out. So what I would say is like, all right, well, how are you going to do that? So how many days a week are you going to go to the range, or if you’re fortunate and you can do this at home because you’ve got a lot of land, Like how are you going to set up target practice? And then you can’t just sit from one hundred yards away and start shooting. You need to start at fifteen yards or twenty yards. And you probably need to have some over distance days too, where you’re shooting from one hundred and forty yards, And you need to have some days where you’re shooting really quick and you’re trying to get ten shots off in forty seconds or whatever it is, because you’re stressed the system that way.
00:25:01
Speaker 2: You probably want.
00:25:01
Speaker 3: Other days where you’re only taking ten shots and you’re putting six minutes between each shot because you’re really trying to replicate being on a hunt where you have to find your target, calm yourself, take that deep breath. You might actually break it down. You might say a huge part of this is being steady and breathing. So you might have a day where you’re not even holding your bow and you’re just doing breath work. So is something as simple is hitting a target from one hundred miles away. Excuse me, that’d be really hard from one hundred yards away. Something as simple as hitting a target from one hundred yards away, It really is as simple and as hard as that. But then you have to break it down into all the component parts and then find ways to work those parts. And I can’t tell you what any individual’s training program is going to be like, but I can assure you it’s not just going to be firing at a target from one hundred yards over and over again. They’ll be over distance, they’ll be under distance, they’ll be breath work, they’ll be speed work, they’ll be patience, so on and so forth.
00:25:57
Speaker 1: So related to this, then you write about this kind of juxtaposition between consistency and intensity in your book, and I’d love for you to expand a little bit on that and how you think about those two parts of any kind of training regimen or or you know, growth towards some type of excellence. How do you what’s more important or how do you know, have both of those within your life?
00:26:24
Speaker 3: So intensity are those those training days or those competition days where you’re just going to the well? I call it like you go see God. You know, it’s a mystical experience because you are just giving everything that you have. You can’t do that very frequently because you just burn yourself out, like the system can only tolerate so many days of going to the well. And I think what often happens is that we mistake intensity as the driver of excellence when it’s actually consistency. It’s how you show up day in and day out, and not necessarily what you do on your magical great days, but what you do on your average days, and even what you do on your bad days, because you’re making these small deposits in the bank that compound over time. And what’s fascinating is that the more consistent you are, the better you get a consistency, the higher you’re ceiling for intensity becomes so if you’re brand new to hunting and you try to go out on a thirty day backpacking, you know hunt, you’re never going to be able to do that, Like you’re going to crash and burn and have a miserable experience. But if you’ve built up to that consistently over five years or a decade, your capacity to tolerate that intensity is so much higher. So too often people start with intensity because it’s the bright and shiny object and it’s the heroic day that they want to write home and tell their friends about one. What we need to do is we need to start with insistency. We need to build brick by brick by brick, and then that allows us to have the intense days. And that’s true in training, and that’s that’s true in performance time.
00:27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. I’ve got a little sticky note here in my computer monitor and it says you’ll appreciate appreciate this. It says writing a page a day doesn’t sound like much, but if you do it every day, you’ll write a book a year. That’s the key consistency. People who do great things don’t get a lot done every day. They get something done rather than nothing truer words have not been spoken. I don’t think right there, I love that.
00:28:20
Speaker 3: I mean, the goal isn’t to be hero of the day or hero of the week. The goal is to have a heroic decade. And those two things look very different. And the challenge is we’re very myopic creatures. We’re very short terms. So we see the thrill of writing the manuscript in one day or the you know, ten days to a new year program, whatever the equivalent might be in in hunting or archery, and we just cycle from again from intense fad to intense fad instead of just like becoming known for our consistency. I mean, if you take one thing away from this this this conversation as a listener, like become known for your consistency. And if you become known for your consistency, people are going to respect you and you’re going to get very damn good at whatever it is that you do.
00:29:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now I’m gonna throw a curveball at you though, because you throw a little bit of a curveball at the reader. As you’re exploring this topic, we hear about the importance of consistency, But then right after that you tell us that you know this myth or this idea of like trying to get just one percent better every day, which sounds a whole lot like consistency to me. You say that, maybe that’s a little bit of a myth, or maybe we’re thinking about things the wrong way. If we’re trying to do that just a little bit one percent better day, one percent better to day. Why why is that or why is the one percent a day thing? Maybe a little bit misleading?
00:29:35
Speaker 3: It’s great as a mindset because it’s a mindset. It’s exactly what you said. It’s like, it’s consistency. You don’t have to hit home runs right, just show up and put the ball in play. And it’s great when you’re a beginner or even when you’re intermediate, because when you’re a beginner or you’re intermediate, you actually do get one percent better every day. You might get one hundred percent better every day if you’re brand new at something, But once you get pretty good, once you’ve been doing something for a year or a couple of years or a decade, you don’t get one percent better every day. I mean, you mark, if you got one percent better every day as a hunter, you’d probably at this point be the best hunter to ever live.
00:30:09
Speaker 2: That motivation has to switch.
00:30:11
Speaker 3: And if you get addicted to those tangible performance gains, you’re going to get to about seventy or eighty percent of as good as you could be, and then you’re going to flame out. To me, all the interesting stuff happens when you stop getting one percent better every day, because that’s when you’re really good. And this is another core component of the book and hopefully this conversation is that when you’re new to something, the motivation to come back is very much driven by those concrete incremental progress gains, and they’re great and you should strive for them. Once you get good at something, it’s got to switch. The drive has to be more about curiosity and love for the pursuit and intimacy and how it feels in the community that you do it with and what you’re learning about yourself. Because I’ll take micraft, when I was brand new to powerlifting, I got ten percent better every week. I went from deadlifting one hundred thirty five pounds to two hundred and twenty five pounds and three months you do the math, that’s a lot percent better.
00:31:13
Speaker 2: Every day.
00:31:15
Speaker 3: I pulled five hundred twenty pounds a year and a half ago, and since then, I’ve pulled five hundred thirty pounds once. That’s a lot less than one percent better every day. That’s like a tenth of a percent better every day. So if I was still addicted to those early performance gains, I wouldn’t be training anymore because they’re just not going to happen.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: I’m too good.
00:31:33
Speaker 3: But now when I go to the gym, I’m actually not driven by those incremental gains. What I’m driven by is a love for the sport, how the bar feels when I take tension out of it, how I can make these small subtle changes to how I brace and the impact that has, And that’s where the motivation comes from. And I’m sure the same thing is true as an outdoors men and outdoors women. As a hunter is early on when you’re brand new to the sport, like it’s thrilling because you are getting so much better, and then you get really good, like you got.
00:32:00
Speaker 2: To find a different, a different source of motivation.
00:32:03
Speaker 3: So that’s my qualm with the get one percent better every day, It’s just not true because if it was, everyone would be world class at everything within ten years.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: And it’s not how it works.
00:32:10
Speaker 1: Now what does that mean for someone who’s in that situation though, Because there’s what you describe, which is, you know, fy for love of the game, right, you find your love of the game and the process and all that. But that sounds from one perspective, it sounds like settling to be stuck at that plateau. So what if someone’s like, well, I don’t want to be stuck at that plateau? How do I break through that plateau to some other next level? What do you say to that person?
00:32:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to have the mindset of one percent better every day without being addicted to the observable gains because the actual observable gains often trail the effort that you put in, and once you get really good, it gets less predictable and more magical. So you don’t know when the breakthrough is going to occur. But if you keeping the stone and you have a good process and you do it with integrity, odds are there are breakthroughs that are going to happen. You just can’t predict when, and they’re not going to be linear. So the mindset of consistency in getting one percent better every day and showing up and doing the work that holds. But the motivation to keep showing up, it’s got to come from the intrinsic reward of how how you feel doing the thing versus the tangible results that you get. The example in the book I gave is from Lane Norton, who is a world champion powerlifter, and it took him ten years to move his deadlift from seven hundred ten pounds to seven hundred and twenty three pounds, ten years to gain thirteen pounds. Now, if he was addicted to getting one percent better every day, he would ac quit.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: But he showed up.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: He was consistent is you know, and disciplined as all can be. But what kept him coming back to the pursuit was like the mystery.
00:33:52
Speaker 2: Of it all.
00:33:53
Speaker 3: In every great crafts person, whether you’re an athlete, whether you’re a surgeon, whether you’re a marksman, every great crist person, at some point in their journey, it’s got to be about curiosity, in discovery, in the satisfaction and fulfillment that you get from just going deeper and deeper and deeper, and then the results they just take care of themselves. And sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a decade, but it doesn’t really matter, because what’s driving you to come back is the love of the game.
00:34:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, one thing that does seem to help structure. I guess some of that if you have the love of the game, that gives you some of the motivation to keep going. But then there’s you mentioned that a second ago, there’s like the discipline or the routines that you can build that keeped you on that track. You quoted Venus Williams saying, you know something along the lines of, you know, discipline is freedom, and I know Jocko Willing says something pretty similar to that, discipline equals freedom, I think is his version. Can you expand a little bit on what that looks like on how someone could put that into practice in pursuit of something like this and why, you know, dicipline and or routines, which I think are just kind of like systematizing discipline, how that can help us, you know, get better, and how that tangibly you know, could be done. I know you’ve looked into this a lot, You’ve talked to many different people that have figured out kind of the science of building routines and habits. What stands out to on that front.
00:35:18
Speaker 3: I love this topic so much, so let’s start with a little philosophy lesson. So philosophers talk about two kinds of freedom, negative freedom and positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from constraints, so I’m free from going to bad at a certain time. I’m free from eating a certain way. I’m free from having to make a specific choice, so I can just do whatever I want, anything goes. Those are negative freedoms. They also talk about positive freedom. In positive freedom is freedom to become your best self to do something. And in order to have positive freedom, in order to have the freedom to become the best outdoors person you can be, you often have to sacrific I some negative freedoms. You have to put some constraints on yourself. Those constraints could be I’m going to drink less during the week. I’m going to go to bed at nine thirty a pm so that I can wake up at five am to get a practice session in or to train. I’m going to limit the AI digital slot that I consume because it really makes me impatient and I lose focus, and then that actually affects me as a hunter because I’m antsy all the time.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: So in order to be disciplined.
00:36:29
Speaker 3: We often have to put self imposed rules and constraints on ourselves, so we’re sacrificing negative freedoms.
00:36:35
Speaker 2: You know, I’m not free to go to bed whenever I want.
00:36:37
Speaker 3: I’m not free from constraints on needing a certain way for the positive freedom to be the best writer I can be, the best athlete I can be, in the case of a listener, the best hunter you can be.
00:36:45
Speaker 2: So that’s the first thing i’d say.
00:36:47
Speaker 3: The second thing that I would say is that discipline is not something that is temperamental. I firmly believe we’re not born with discipline or without it. It’s a muscle, and it really also is contingent on the systems.
00:37:02
Speaker 2: And routines around us.
00:37:03
Speaker 3: And the example that I want to give here because I think it’s such a great one is a professional athlete. So we often look at professional athletes and we say, my god, are they discipline? And to some extent, they are, But they’re also in a system where everything is structured every meal, every recovery session, every practice, every bedtime, every game, every warm up, So they’re in a system that supports that discipline. And what ends up happening when you take so many of these athletes outside of the system is they blow up their lives. And that just shows that it’s not that they have this intrinsic discipline within them, it’s that they had a system around them that allowed them to be disciplined.
00:37:39
Speaker 2: So most listeners here aren’t professional athletes.
00:37:42
Speaker 3: But what we can take from that is in our own lives, we can build those systems, those routines, those rituals, those constraints that then allow us to be disciplined. And I think good places to start are just around like the fundamentals. So what are your self imposed rules on your nutrition? I am not a big believer in super rigid diets, but I also think that just existing in the modern food environment is going to make you sick because the modern food environment is so obesigenic it’s not good for you. So I’ve yet to meet a healthy high performer that doesn’t have some kind of system for how they eat what. Those systems are completely different based on the person, but like some.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: Kind of constraints.
00:38:22
Speaker 3: I mean, I live in Western Carolina, Okay, if I didn’t have constraints, I would be very unhealthy because I can’t drive half a mile without two barbecues and four Bojangles. So my rule is I only eat that stuff once a week. Like, that’s a constraint. Constraints around sleep, you know, are you going to go to bed when you feel tired? Are you going to push to keep watching Netflix? That’s a constraint. Constraints around training. Like a self imposed rule is that I’m going to show up to train regardless of how i feel unless I’m really sick, and I’m going to at least get started, and if after ten minutes I still feel like shit, I’m going to shut it down.
00:38:55
Speaker 2: But like, that’s a rule.
00:38:57
Speaker 3: So I think, without becoming too rigid of a person, have some constraints, have some rules. That’s really what discipline is. Discipline is not this chest thumping Look how tough I am. I need a hype speech every morning. Discipline is just having a goal and saying here of the things I need to do to accomplish that goal, and I’m going to put the constraints and systems in my life to allow me to do that.
00:39:19
Speaker 1: How about habits, like trying to create This is very adjacent to what you’re describing, But what if I’m trying to develop one of these systems, and we’ll call it a habit to do one of these positive things that will lead me towards my goal. So we’ll just say I want to because of my one hundred yard goal. Right With archery, maybe the thing is like, Okay, I need to shoot every single day. I want to develop a daily archery habit. But for years I’ve been saying that, and I never have time. I get busy, and this thing happens, and that thing happens, and I’ve just never stuck to it. What are some of the things that you’ve found, Brad, that have actually helped you develop and stick to habits that last. Then make a difference.
00:39:58
Speaker 3: All Right, the first thing is I’m going to I’m gonna add some nuance to what I just said. I just talked about rules. But the first thing I’d say is flexibility. So there’s research that shows that if you have a habit like I’m going to shoot every day, you’re much less likely to stick to it. Then if you say I’m going to shoot five to seven days a week, because five to seven days a week allows for the messiness of life to get in the way, whereas if you’re all or nothing and the messiness of life happens. Then you just quit and you’re like, ah, crap, you know, didn’t get my seven days.
00:40:25
Speaker 2: What the hell? I guess this isn’t going to be the year.
00:40:28
Speaker 3: So have a really high ceiling or really high standard, but also have a floor that allows for some flexibility.
00:40:33
Speaker 2: That’s the first thing i’d say.
00:40:35
Speaker 3: The second thing I’d say is be realistic with when in the day or when in the week it actually makes sense for you to do it. If you’ve got you know, young kids at home, in a loving relationship with your wife or your husband, in your time to practice is in the evening, It’s probably not going to work out because like you’re going to have your kids that are gonna have activities and they’re going to want you, and your your wife or husband’s gonna want to eat dinner with you. So like, maybe you actually need to shoot earlier in the morning. And if you’re gonna shoot earlier in the morning, then maybe you gotta get upstream of that and actually not have those two beers the night before so that you.
00:41:11
Speaker 2: Can wake up to shoot earlier in the morning.
00:41:14
Speaker 3: So I think, like we often think about the thing we want to do, and we don’t think about the environment or the ecosystem around us. And I think when it comes to developing a habit, having some flexibility, and then developing the ecosystem around us, that kind of pulls us in the direction of that habit goes a long way. And then just starting really small. So if you want to shoot every day, that’s great, but maybe it’s every day for ten minutes, and then once you stick to that, well, then going from ten to fifteen minutes as it much not Once you’re doing fifteen minutes, fifteen to twenty five is not much, and before you know it, you’re doing a forty five minute session every day.
00:41:46
Speaker 2: So starting really small.
00:41:48
Speaker 3: And then I would also say just like removing friction as much as possible. So if there’s a way to find a range that’s on the way to your work so you don’t have to drive out of the way, great do that. If there’s a way to do it in your backyard, maybe that removes friction. But actually maybe that causes friction because then you’re isolated, you’re doing it alone, and maybe the accountability of going to a range and seeing the same familiar faces that show up at the same time as you is actually the thing that makes sense that’s going to be individual but getting really clear on like all the inputs that lead to that desired behavior and trying to remove friction away from those inputs.
00:42:28
Speaker 1: So if I were to continue down this path further and I’m pursuing this goal of getting better at this thing, pursuing excellence and archery, will say or whatever, I’m going to build these routines, I’m gonna build these habits, I’m gonna have some discipline, I’m going to have these goals. There seems to be an inevitable point that we all reach in whatever our pursuit is where the shiny object effect comes into play. Where you hear about this new supplement or this new bow or there’s this fancy new mud water ag one creating whatever that’s going to all of a sudden, you know, twenty x your performance. You call this complexity. I think, you know, kind of simplifying what I’m talking about here, the way that there’s all these different fancy strategies or whizbang theories or gizmos or gadgets that people want to say will lead to excellence or success. You mentioned you call this complexity, and you wrote here that complexity is a way to avoid facing the reality that what really matters for progress and most endeavors is simply showing up and doing the work. And then a little bit later you say, people love bright and shiny objects. But the truth is that the way you improve in anything is by eliminating distractions, prioritizing the fundamentals, and executing them with ruthless efficiency. Can you expand on how we can do that ourselves? Because there’s all of these different people sing in, you know, the praises of this product or this new fad or this new idea that’s going to fix it all for us. How do we deal with that when we are just barraged by this all day every day.
00:44:11
Speaker 2: The secret is there is no secret.
00:44:13
Speaker 3: You got to just do the fucking work, man or woman like that’s it. And I think that okay, So here’s my general heuristic for this, all right, When you look at a program to get good at.
00:44:26
Speaker 2: Anything, So we’re going to keep using this archery example.
00:44:29
Speaker 3: Ninety percent of the programs out there on the internet are are just absolute garbage being peddled by grifters and charlatans.
00:44:36
Speaker 2: Ten percent are probably great. Within those ten percent.
00:44:39
Speaker 3: There’s probably multiple variations of ways to do it, and you just got to pick one. You got to pick the one that makes the most sense for you, that you’re most interested in it, that’s going to fit your lifestyle. And then once you’ve picked that program, your job is to put blinders on and to execute on your program and to ignore the bright and shiny objects. And if anyone tells you they’ve got the one thing, that is like the ultimate sign to run the opposite direction.
00:45:03
Speaker 2: Now I am not. I don’t want to be like.
00:45:06
Speaker 3: Such a purist where people are like this guy’s a curmudgety old person, because I’m only forty, so I’m not even that old to be this curmudgeony. There’s nothing wrong with getting the new bow, you know, if that’s going to excite you and light you up and it’s actually got like some cool carbon fiber or whatever the technology is, like, that’s great. But just because you got the new bow doesn’t mean that you’ve got to stop showing up at six am to the range to work it out, you know, getting a new pair of shoes or getting the new special deadlift bar. Like that stuff’s great, Like it’s fun, it’s interesting. If you can afford it, by all means do it. But if you’re getting a new thing every month or every quarter, then you’re probably majoring in the minors and you’re looking for this solution to your problem that is outside of just like the work that you have to do.
00:45:52
Speaker 2: So I don’t know if I.
00:45:53
Speaker 3: Think about my reporting and like how the role of like these new brighton shiny aptes come in. I think if you fuck around with those kinds of things like once or twice a year, that’s fine. But if it’s any more of that, then I think it’s just becoming a distraction.
00:46:16
Speaker 1: There’s another I keep on having these these like temptations when you’re on this kind of path, I feel that there’s there’s typical common temptations that you that arise. And another one of those is, and I again have experienced this in my own life, is obsession is taking this pursuit of excellence and taking it really, really, really far. You know, we talked about this a little bit years ago when we discussed the passion paradox and some of the things you wrote about in those first two books of yours. I’ve continued to talk to other people about this because of course, you know, anything, you can become obsessed with hunting, fishing, all these outdoor pursuits. They absolutely that happens within our world too. There’s a whole lot of dopamine people are chasing, There’s a whole lot of comparison culture go that people can kind of mistakenly chase. That all of these things can lead you to just going very very very deep sometimes in the in, you know, to the to the destruction of other things on the on the edges of that collateral damage. So I’m curious about how you think now about this idea of of single minded pursuit for something all the way deep, deep, deep, deep versus range. You know, there has been some research and a lot of people talking about maybe there’s there’s something to be said about having some range and diversity within what you pursue. Too. Where’s your head at these days when it comes to those that kind of echotomy there all right.
00:47:39
Speaker 3: Where my head is at is to think about having your identity be like a house. And I’ll explain what I mean. If you have a house that only has one room in it, and that one room catches fire or floods, it’s going to be very disorienting. You’re gonna have to move out of your house. Okay, you’re not gonna know what to do next. You might be homeless for a period of time. If you’ve got a house that has multiple rooms in it, in one room catches fire or floods, you can go seek refuge in the other rooms while you work out the fire of the flood, while you repair the damage. And we should think about our identities the same way. So we want to build an identity house that has more than one room. So maybe the biggest room in your identity house is an angler or an outdoorsman.
00:48:24
Speaker 2: But if that’s the only room.
00:48:25
Speaker 3: In your identity house, then it actually makes you really fragile because when things don’t go your way in the sport, when you go through a rough patch, you’re not going to know who you are. So you want to have other rooms in your identity house. What are some other rooms? Husband, wife, dad, mom, coach, athlete, creative reader, person who loves coffee, German shepherd, enthusiast. Doesn’t matter what the rooms are. You just want to make sure that you have more than one. And I’m not arguing for balance. I think balance is bullshit. At least this is popular conceived. I think if you want to be excellent, like my definition of excellence, right, it’s like carrying deeply and giving something you’re all. You can’t do that and be balanced. So it’s not to say that you have to spend the same amount of time and energy in each room in the house. It’s not to say that the rooms have to be the same size. You just have to have more than one and you want to make sure that none of the important rooms get moldy. So maybe you’re in a season where you’re going all in to be a competitive archer. Well you want to ask yourself, what’s the minimum effective dose that I need to spend in my marriage room to make sure that room doesn’t get moldy and I don’t blow up my marriage. What’s the minimum effective dose of community involvement so I can stay in touch with the actual people around me and not start to feel isolated and lonely. What’s the minimum effective dose for my health? Because I can imagine that you get like so into this thing, you let your health go to shit. Well that’s not good. That’s not going to actually help you in the long term be a better archer. So think of what are the core rooms in your identity house, and then what are the minimum effective doses that each of those rooms need, not so that you’re always emphasizing everything, but just so that they’re there for you when you need them while you pursue the main thing.
00:50:06
Speaker 2: And also there’s a seasonality to life.
00:50:08
Speaker 3: In the reporting on this book, I found time and time again that when you look at the really like successful, high performing people who are highly filled and satisfied too, so they’re not miserable. What I found is that when you zoom in on any one moment of their life, they don’t look very balanced. They’re like all in on one or two things. But when you zoom out and you look across their whole life, they actually do look pretty balanced. So they have different seasons for emphasizing different things. And what they’ve gotten really good about is even when they’re emphasizing one thing, they make sure that they spend just enough time in those other rooms in the house so that in other seasons of life those rooms are still available to them.
00:50:50
Speaker 1: So I feel like, right next door to this idea is another I guess one of these pitfalls on the journey, which is you know is you go down this line and you navigate balance and obsession and all of this, there can be this point where, and especially if you’re really focused on outcomes with those goals tied to these things. I feel like a lot of folks in pursuit of greatness or mastery or excellence of some kind of pursuit eventually can get to the point where you start losing the fun of it, you start losing the joy in it. I talked to your buddy Steve about this in his book that came out last year about this. I certainly have experienced this with you know, twenty years ago, I said, Hey, I’m going to really figure out this deer hunting thing. And then I went deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper until I became obsessed with it. And all that mattered was am I going to, you know, have this level success on this you know, consistent basis, et cetera. And it got to the point where I was out there doing the thing that supposedly dreamed of doing and being miserable doing it. And so over the last two to four or five years, I’ve been resetting what my relationship is with hunting and how I measure success and what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and all of that. And you wrote about this in your book. You’ve got a whole chapter devoted to joy, and I love the fact that that was in there, and it’s in the towards the end too, which I thought was the appropriate place to kind of start wrapping this whole topic up. So I’d love for you to expand on that a little bit from your perspective and why that’s so important. Why is joy important to excellence and getting good at something.
00:52:33
Speaker 3: Because having fun is like the greatest competitive advantage there is. If you’re not having fun, you’re not going to last very long and you’re not going to get the best out of yourself. So I think this is a real misnomer that is important to address. It’s why I addressed it as in a whole chapter in the book, and we’ll address it in brief here. I think what happens is people hear about excellence or greatness, and we talk about discipline, and we talk about consistency, and then we talk about some like a David Goggins character who is a badass to the core and who’s very much fueled by like anger, chip on your shoulder doesn’t appear to have a lot of joy in the pursuit, and people think that, like, that’s what it takes to be great. You just have to be angry all the time, and you got to be so obsessed. And what I found in the reporting on that book is that people who are world class at what they do, not world class motivational speakers on the Internet, but actually world class at what they do, they’re not angry at all. They love what they do. They have so much fun. They laugh, they smile. Look at Steph Curry just slay everyone in the NBA at age thirty seven with a.
00:53:41
Speaker 2: Smile on his face.
00:53:42
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan, the player who is known for having the most fierce, ferocious intensity, would stick his tongue out this primal, joyous act when he was dunking a basketball. So I’m not here to bad mouth David Goggins and say that it’s not important to have intensity. What I’m here to say is the intensity and joy they’re not opposites, right, They can coexist. You can be that fiercely disciplined, driven Goggins badass and have a great time while you do the thing. And I think that the pursuit of excellence requires that, because if you don’t have a great time, eventually you’re going to burn out. I mean, goggins is an alien right, but most people they can’t just be angry all the time. Eventually you’re going to burn out. So what I have found is that the way to take something all the way is to do it in a way where you’re serious, and you are working hard, and you are pushing yourself and you are making yourself uncomfortable and you’re doing hard things, and if you can’t smile while you’re doing it, then you probably need to adjust your process to be able to smile. And oftentimes that comes down to the people you have around you, the goals that you set, and those two things go like such a long way.
00:54:50
Speaker 2: And we all go through it. I mean I’ve gone through it.
00:54:52
Speaker 3: Like when when the craft loses its joy, that’s not a problem with the craft.
00:54:57
Speaker 2: That’s a problem with how I’m approaching it. I’m not naive.
00:55:01
Speaker 3: This isn’t let’s all hold hands in sing Kumbaya and live in a utopia.
00:55:04
Speaker 2: Right.
00:55:05
Speaker 3: There are days that are really freaking tedious. There are months that are tedious, But the totality of the pursuits, the totality of the path ought to give you some deep joy and some deep satisfaction, and if not, then you better evaluate how you’re doing it lest you won’t last very long.
00:55:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there any I don’t want to I don’t want to say this. I was gonna say, are there any tricks? And the whole point of your book is really there are no tricks. But are there any specific, other tangible ways to foster joy in your pursuit of excellence? I guess you mentioned one that being like surround yourself with people, but is there any Are there any other tangible ways we can put that into action kind of proactively so that it’s not that we reach and hit this hard wall and like, oh my god, I’ve lost the joy and now it’s an emergency, but instead build it in now.
00:55:55
Speaker 2: I think that take the work seriously. But be able to laugh at yourself.
00:55:59
Speaker 3: So when you have airs or a shitty training session, or a bad hunt or a bad day at the range, like you got to be able to laugh at yourself, like make fun of yourself. It goes such a long way to make fun of yourself, be around young people to the extent that you can. I know this is something that you’ve written about a little bit on the innerwebs that like when you go hunting with your kids, seems like I’m saying this from Afar, like that rekindles some joy because like you’re experiencing it like through their eyes who are doing this for the first time, and the excitement and the exhilaration and the thrill.
00:56:29
Speaker 2: Well, guess what.
00:56:30
Speaker 3: The people that I studied for this book that are a little bit older in their pursuit, they’re always training with people that are younger than them because like there’s this youthful energy you can’t help but have that be contagious. I think it’s also really important to identify the things that kill joy. I call them like joy vampires, and to try to eliminate them. So if you’ve gotten really good at hunting and now you’re guiding all these trips and suddenly you’re spending your whole day in your inbox because people are canceling and people are saying that they have this dietary restriction and all this stuff before your trip, and you’re not enjoying it anymore, Maybe you need to scale down your business and instead of leading forty eight hunts a year, you only should lead fifteen. I don’t know what the answer is, but like identify the joykillers because every pursuit has them, and then try to eliminate them.
00:57:20
Speaker 2: Those would be some concrete ways to help.
00:57:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are great. Idea is I’ve got one other joy killer which might seem wildly out of left field to most people listening to this podcast and ostensibly coming here to learn about how to become a better hunter or archer or something like that, but it’s a set of issues that I think kind of hangs over everything we do today, whether you’re talking about hunting or weightlifting, or training or working or having relationships or anything. It’s been something that’s been on my mind a lot over the last three to six months, as I’ve been more longer in that, as I’ve been wrestling with this. It’s something that you call I love the way you coin this, you call it Internet brain or you’ve also discussed kind of an offshoot of that, being like algorithmic mass distraction. I would love for you to share with me a little bit of your thoughts on how all of today’s technology and social media and everything that comes along with that is skewering the way we see the world, the way our attention is focused, the way we have relationships with people. I know this seems kind of out of left field on a podcast like this, but I do feel like it is impacting our joy and our satisfaction and how we engage with these pursuits. I’d love to get your take on that, because I think you’ve got some really worthwhile thoughts on it.
00:58:45
Speaker 2: Thanks Mark.
00:58:46
Speaker 3: I like this topic because it’s an important one. It affects all of us. Internet brain is essentially what happens when you spend too much time on the Internet and you start to feel impatient and restless and frustrated and grumpy, and you’re a little bit more angry, you’re quicker to snap.
00:59:05
Speaker 2: You start to see the worst and everything and everyone.
00:59:09
Speaker 3: And this happens to everyone when they spend too much time on the Internet, especially social media, because the modern Internet is essentially a rage machine, because all sorts of research shows that rage hooks our attention more than joy, more than satisfaction. If we’re pissed off at someone or about something, we’re going to lean in and we’re gonna read and we’re going to feel our blood boil, and we’re going to comment, and we’re going to go, go, go, go go, and then we’re going to end that session. We’re gonna be all fired up and our nervous system is going to be aroused, and we’re going to sleep like shit, and then we’re gonna do it again the next day, and eventually we’re just gonna tire ourselves out. Our brain’s going to turn to mush, We’re not going to be able to focus, We’re not going to find much joy in life.
00:59:47
Speaker 2: Is going to be worse than it was before.
00:59:50
Speaker 3: So I think it’s really important back to discipline and constraints, to have some constraints about how you use these digital technologies.
01:00:00
Speaker 2: Lest we’re all going to have Internet brain.
01:00:02
Speaker 3: And this is before AI takes over the Internet, which is going to happen probably in the next few years. So I think that all of us are going to have to decide at some point whether we’re content to turn ourselves into angry, numbed out slaves to the Internet, or if we’re going to touch grass and challenge ourselves and create and contribute and be an actual community and do cool shit and like contribute and love. And that’s a choice that we still have some agency to make, and I think it’s the most important choice that any of us can make.
01:00:34
Speaker 2: So it’s not to say.
01:00:35
Speaker 3: Log off completely. I mean this podcast is recorded over the Internet. The Internet is an incredible freaking tool and it has so many benefits. There are certain parts of the Internet and there are certain ways that we use it which come with a lot of negative consequences, and we should be aware of them and should we should minimize them. And I think this is especially true on social media. So I am a big believer in curating your feed. I block people extremely quickly because I don’t know these people from Adam. And if there’s someone who I respect that says something that I disagree with or that I find bizarre, I reach out to that person and I get on the phone with them, or if I can’t, I meet them in person because I want to learn from them, not just get pissed off at someone. Because life is way too short to just get pissed off at everyone about everything. But when you realize that the way that these platforms make money is by making us all pissed off at each other about everything, it’s.
01:01:30
Speaker 2: A real conundrum and the only way around.
01:01:32
Speaker 3: It is to get off the platforms increasingly and to get out in the real world and to have real conversations with people, and to realize that, yes, there are some evil, shitty people, but most people are doing the best they can with what they have.
01:01:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about building systems or constraints or structures, sometimes to enforce good things, but also maybe sometimes to suppress less good things. How have you built some kind of structure around how you use social media or your phone to keep it from getting overwhelming and taking over your time and attention. This is something that you know, I’ve been wrestling with myself, and I you know, one of the main antidotes to this a lot of people prescribe is getting outside and engaging outdoors and all that, which definitely is something that hunters and anglers understand and can relate to. But even those of us who do that stuff all the time are finding ourselves still being hijacked by these things. Heck, even being hijacked by them while we are outside hunting or fishing and then getting sucked into that wormhole. How have you battled that yourself.
01:02:32
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, like, when you’re doing your craft, you should not be you should not have your phone on you. So if you’re on Instagram during the hunt that you’ve been training for for the last three months because you want to be totally present during that hunt, Like, that’s a bad use of Instagram. I’m sorry, man Like, and if take take the app off your phone, if you need the wayfinder whatever on your phone, great, But I’d argue, like go analog, like buy a compass. And I don’t know, maybe there’s other things you use your phone for, but generally speaking, like a good compass, a good watch, a good knife, and a good notebook, and then like an emergency device for contact, Like do you really need your.
01:03:07
Speaker 2: iPhone so you can scroll Instagram?
01:03:09
Speaker 3: Probably not, I think also being really honest with yourself about which of the platforms like gets you. So for me, it’s Twitter or X Like I just there’s something about the textual and the very political nature of it where when I’m on Twitter, I’m just pissed off at everyone. So I don’t have Twitter on my phone, like I use it professionally. I log onto the computer, I put something out, and I close it and I don’t come on until the next day.
01:03:31
Speaker 2: Instagram is not as bad. I don’t know.
01:03:32
Speaker 3: I think it’s probably because I’m such a textual person, so I get more sucked into reading text on Twitter, so I can have Instagram on my phone.
01:03:38
Speaker 2: It doesn’t destroy my life. It’s fine.
01:03:40
Speaker 3: Something else that I do is I took a digital sabbath where one day a week I don’t use any of my Internet connected devices.
01:03:49
Speaker 2: Well that’s actually not true.
01:03:50
Speaker 3: I watch like sports, and I guess now those are streamers, But I don’t use my email or social media, and I don’t go to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or whatever. So I turn off news, and I turn off social media, and I turn off email. And I do this by having my wife hide my phone in my computer, because if I know where they are, I’m going to check, or the temptation to check is going to be so strong it’s going to distract me from what I’m trying to do. So I take one day a week where I’m essentially offline, and like, that is such a great reset for my brain and just my being and my soul. But that’s a constraint, right, Like that gets back to that is a constraint I’m The constraint is I’m constraining myself from being able to log onto the internet whenever I want, But that allows me to be the best writer, the best parent, the best husband, the best athlete that.
01:04:35
Speaker 2: I can be.
01:04:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think those are really smart ideas and constraints to put into place, and unfortunately we need to go to extreme lengths now to develop.
01:04:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, fire and let me let me interjact real quick, Mark, because here’s the thing, and this is like inside baseball for your audience. So maybe people find this interesting, maybe not. I’m looking at you, I’m reading your body language. I think part of the re and that you struggle is like you’re a good guy that’s doing it right with integrity and with genuine care about your craft. In so many of the biggest, most popular accounts that suck all the attention on the internet are charlatan grifters that don’t know what they’re talking about, that are preying on people’s insecurities, that don’t actually give a shit about the craft. They just want to be famous. And it is really because I face that all the time. Like the biggest names and like performance and excellence and I’m not going to name names, I’ve met these people they’re clowns. They’re phenomenal digital marketers, but they’re clowns. They’re not good at anything, and the things that they’re good at, they cheat. They look jacked because they take steroids, and then they don’t disclose that they’re taking steroids. So like it’s really frustrating and it’s kind of despairing. And what I found is, like, screw it, I don’t care. I would rather have a niche readership, in a niche community of people who are actually committed to excellence, who are doing it the right way, with integrity and with with like heartfelt, genuine nature, and be a million times smaller than the biggest freaking influencers who are clowns. And I think once you get to meet some of these influencers and pull the curtain back and you see what clowns they are, and how miserable their marriages are, and what shitty parents they are, and how fucked up their lives are, you.
01:06:13
Speaker 2: Wouldn’t want to be one.
01:06:15
Speaker 3: And yet every time I log onto Instagram and I see someone with a gazillion followers, I get a little bit frustrated, and I’ve just kind of accepted, like that’s it. But That’s why I’m talking to you, because like you’re real and I think the more that you can surround yourself with real people who are going about it the right way, the more joy that we all get.
01:06:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that is very very not just good but profound advice. It’s simple but really impactful. And that’s something that a lot of your writing and your social media posts and everything that you put out there, your newsletter, all of it is is grounded. I guess going back to one of your books, it’s grounded in a sense of humanity. Maybe that really resonates with me and I’ve really appreciated. So I thank you for that, Brad, And I want to make sure we give folks a chance to learn a little bit more about where they can connect with you, connect with all the different things you’ve got going out into the world and see this latest book and all the rest. Can you give us a quick scoop on where to find all those things?
01:07:18
Speaker 2: Thanks Mark.
01:07:18
Speaker 3: So the book is called The Way of Excellence. My name is Brad Stalberg. The book is available from wherever you get books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Bookshop dot Org. In the spirit of Internet Brain. If you want to go deep. I would actually encourage you not to check out my social media, but to like buy the book or audible the book and listen to it. Read the book, spend some time with it, take notes in it, and then apply it to your craft, apply it to being a better outdoorsman or outdoors woman. If you’ve done that and you are on social media, the place where I am most active is Instagram.
01:07:48
Speaker 2: My handle is just my name at Brad Stalberg.
01:07:50
Speaker 3: I co host the podcast called Excellence actually, and I have a substack that is also just my name Brad Stealberg.
01:07:58
Speaker 1: It’s all great work. Appreciate you doing all that. I appreciate you being here, and let’s make sure to do it again.
01:08:05
Speaker 2: Thanks Mark, keep fighting the good fight.
01:08:07
Speaker 1: I will, all right, and that’s going to do it for us today. I appreciate you tuning in. Hopefully this was a nice change of pace. Hopefully this gave you some new ideas to think about as you head into this new season. As we’re speaking right now, it’s twenty twenty six, I know a lot of you are reflecting on the season that just wrapped up. Maybe you’re already planning and thinking through some ideas for the new year, so hopefully this one can help set you on the right path as we pursue excellence as deer hunters, or bow hunters or outdoors people of all different kinds. There’s a lot that we can take from this one. I hope you did too, and thank you for being here. Until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.
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