How to Overcome Inner Resistance | Steven Pressfield

Category: Creative Process

Tags: CreativityDisciplineInspirationMentorshipResistance

Entities: Andrew HubermanDo the WorkHuberman LabKobe BryantMichael JordanStanford School of MedicineSteven PressfieldWar of Art

Transcript

00:00

For years when I was struggling and could never get it together, I realized that at one point that I was just thinking like an amateur and that if I could flip a switch in my mind and think like a professional that I I could overcome some of the things. A

00:15

professional shows up every day. A professional stays on the job all day or the equivalent of of all day.

A professional, as I said this before, does not take success or failure personally. An amateur will, right?

An

00:30

amateur gets a bad review, bad response of this and they just crap out. I don't want to do this anymore.

A professional plays hurt. Like if uh Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, you know, if they've tweaked the hamstring, they're out there.

You know, they'll die before they'll get be taken off the court.

00:46

Whereas an amateur when he or she confronts adversity will fold. >> Oh, it's too cold out.

You know, I've got a I got a you know, I've got the flu. that kind of thing.

An amateur worries about how they feel, like, "Oh,

01:02

I don't feel like getting out of bed this morning. I don't feel like really doing my work today." A professional doesn't care how they feel.

They they they do it. So, an amateur has amateur habits, and a professional has professional habits.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss

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science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

My guest today is Steven Presfield. Steven

01:33

Presfield is an author of numerous historical fiction and non-fiction books, including the now iconic War of Art and also the book Do the Work, which both focus on understanding the forces in our minds that barrier us from being our most focused, creative, and productive selves, and more importantly,

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how to overcome those barriers. Perhaps it's because Steven worked hard physical labor jobs and was in the military prior to becoming a book author and screenwriter.

Or perhaps it's because he published his first book at age 52 that Steven really understands how to persevere and overcome inner doubt and

02:07

procrastination and turn creative blocks into important creative works. As you'll hear during today's episode, Steven doesn't talk in inspirational slogans or metaphors.

So none of this get after it or you know, you just have to do the work. Instead, he gets very concrete about how to structure your day, how to

02:23

frame your goals and your setbacks, and even how to make your creative environment more conducive to focus and effort. We also talk about how to capture your best ideas, which by the way often occur away from the work that you're actually trying to do, and how to implement them.

So, if you have an idea

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or you're searching for an idea for a creative project to share with the world, this conversation will be immensely useful to you. It will also be extremely useful to anyone who suffers from procrastination and self-doubt, which frankly I think is all of us at some point or another.

I read Steven's book, The War of Art, some years ago,

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and I loved it. It transformed the way that I did my science, how I approached the podcast, and many, many other aspects of life.

You'll also notice that at 82 years old, Steven is incredibly sharp and fit. So, we talk about his physical regimen and the important role that it plays in keeping his mind

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active, productive, and overcoming resistance. Steven is not only very accomplished, he is also truly wise and generous.

And today he shares a wealth of practical wisdom with us. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is

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however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.

And now for my discussion with Steven Presfield. Steven Presfield, welcome.

Andrew, it's a pleasure to be

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here. We're former neighbors, you know, so we've been talking about this for a while.

It's great to be here. >> Yeah.

I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've been reading your books for goodness couple of decades now or more.

Um, first War of Art, then I started uh

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through the library. You've written a lot of books, non-fiction and fiction.

It's been super impactful to me and many other people. I think everybody deals with procrastination.

you'll tell us about resistance. Um, but there's a quote out there they claim is you.

I'm

04:17

going to assume it's you. And um, >> I'm laughing already.

>> And I recommend um, accepting that it's you even if it's not, cuz it's a it's a beautiful quote. >> It's a good quote.

I'll take credit. >> It's great.

Um, and I'd like your reflections on it and what you intended when you said it, which is quote, "The

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more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be," which for me was very counterintuitive. >> We all imagine the creative process as one of, you know, being inspired.

ah this is my soul's work and and having a

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ton of motivation to get the work done a ton of desire and drive but the more important to your soul's growth the stronger your resistance will be interesting >> well that's absolutely true and what I what I meant by that was that um

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when we conceive an idea for something we want to do a movie we want to make or book we want to make it's not like at all like what the fantasy was, "Oh, I'm really charged up. It's going to be great." What happens is waves of what I call resistance with a capital R start

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coming off that keyboard or whatever it is to try to stop us from doing it. Make us procrastinate, make us, you know, go to the beach, make us, you know, be dist, you know, give into distractions, so on and so forth.

And but the weird principle is, and this is why I always

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say if you want to know which one of three or four projects that you should do, you should do the one you're most afraid of, because that fear is a form of resistance with a capital R. And the more important a project is to your soul's evolution, not

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to your commercial success, but to your own evolution as an artist, the more resistance you will feel to it. So, in other words, the thing that you really should be doing is going to be the hardest and is going to punch you in the face the hardest, which is why so many

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artists have such a hardcore professional attitude because they have to have it to be able to kind of stand up to that resistance to trying to push them away from from doing their their project, whatever it is. >> The more important to your soul's evolution, the more resistance you're

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going to experience. But that's the project you should be doing.

>> Yeah. Um here's here's an analogy that I use sometimes, Andrew, and you may have heard me say this before.

I think about um if you can imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. As soon as the

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tree appears, a shadow is going to appear. And the shadow is going to be the tree is your dream, whatever it is, right?

A book, a movie, whatever. And the shadow is the resistance you're going to feel.

And they're directly proportionate to each other. The bigger the tree, the bigger the shadow.

So when

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you feel that shadow, you feel that massive resistance. Oh, I want to quit.

I don't want to I'm not good enough to do this, etc., etc. That's a good sign.

And then it says that the tree, your dream is really big. And so you got to

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do it. That's not the you don't want to take a little tree, you want to take the big tree.

>> You have military training and background. And you were a Marine, correct?

>> Yeah, I was a reservist Marine infantryman. >> Mhm.

>> Uh, how much does your training as a Marine impact this concept of resistance

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and your suggestions for people and your ability to push through resistance >> a tremendous amount. You know, I think, you know, when I was going through uh boot camp and, you know, infantry training and stuff like that, I hated it and I thought I just can't wait till I

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get out of this and just just be a regular civilian again. But as I've grown and lived through the the artist life of, you know, writing, you know, being in a room with your own demons for two or three years at a time.

I've learned that kind of the virtues that

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you learn in the military um are the same virtues that you have to call upon to live that war of art, the war inside your head. You know, the virtues of uh of stubbornness, of uh the willing

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embracing of adversity, of patience, of selflessness, of courage because it's about fear. And so, yeah, then it's influenced me tremendously.

And I found sort of to my amazement as I started writing fiction that I was drawn to

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themes of war, even though I've never actually been in a war, but the it's the it's the inner war that interests me, the metaphor of war. So, yeah, a lot.

It meant a lot. Do you think the physical training that you took part in when you

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were in the Marines has impacted a your current physical regimen? By the way, everybody, Stephen is 82 years old.

Uh, I see him at the gym. Um, he's there every morning very early.

What time do

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you get there? >> I get there at quarter to 5.

>> Quarter to 5:00 a.m. Um, which is why I see him from time to time cuz I'm not there at home.

>> You're coming in, I'm going home. Yeah.

>> Yeah. And and I sometimes train there and elsewhere.

But you are very consistent. You train very early.

So clearly um you're in great physical and

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mental shape. It's awesome to see.

you are, you know, with all the discussion about longevity, you are living proof. Uh, so I am curious about your physical regimen and the extent to which your physical regimen impacts your ability to lean into and against resistance to do

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your creative work at the keyboard or with pen and paper. >> That's a great question.

um going to the gym early first thing for me is um a rehearsal for when I get home and I go sit at the keyboard and I actually have

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to face the resistance of working that day. Right?

So to me the gym is about something that I don't want to do. I hate to get up that early in the morning and get there.

It's something that is going to hurt, right? We all know about

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that. And it's something that I'm afraid of because as you know there are all kinds of ways you can hurt yourself and and you embarrass yourself and so on and so forth.

But having done that in the morning. So it's for I've got like um I think we have a mutual friend in Randy

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Wallace, right? Do we have Yeah.

Randy has this thing Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and his secretary directed that and many others. He has a thing in the morning that he calls little successes.

And what he's trying to do to build momentum for when he's actually going to sit down and write is, you

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know, achieve something that he can say, "Okay, I did something good here and then I did, you know, so going to the gym for me is that it's not so much about the physical aspect of it. It's the uh the rehearsal for kind of facing like so I feel like when I finish at the

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gym, nothing I'm going to do for the rest of the day is going to be as hard as what I already did. So, you know, there we go.

The the ways are greased and I can go forward. That's the theory anyway.

>> So, when you wake up in the morning, you're not looking forward to working out. >> [ __ ] no.

I mean, we can can we say that

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here? >> Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. >> Absolutely not.

It's a drag. I hate to go.

You know, >> you prefer to stay in bed. >> Absolutely.

I wish I could stay in bed, you know, on and but uh on the days I do stay in bed, Sunday, I I don't feel so good about myself, you know. I wish I

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had gone to the gym. I mean, you must feel the same way, Andrew, about whatever you do, being an old skateboarder and, you know, a fitness guy your whole life.

What is it? How does it fit in with your regimen?

>> Well, the problem for me is that I love working out. >> Oh, you do?

>> So, wow. >> I do and I always have.

Um, I have

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noticed in the last maybe 2 3 years that occasionally I have to push myself a little bit more, but I I loathe rest days, but they are important. You know, I do believe in taking one full day off per week, letting my body recover.

>> Um, >> but that's the problem is I really enjoy

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working out. And so by the time I'm done working out and then I shower up and I eat and I'm sitting down to do some work, I'm like, "Oh, now comes the really hard workout." Um, but I notice that I learn things during those

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workouts, provided >> that I don't have my phone with me. Ah, >> I might listen to music on my phone, sometimes a podcast or an audio book, but I do my very best not to be on social media or text during those workouts because during those workouts,

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something always comes to mind that I find useful >> for elsewhere in life >> and it usually pops up during a rest period between sets. You know, I think exercise takes our brain and body into these unfamiliar states.

>> Yeah. And I think that our unconscious mind geysers stuff up.

And

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>> uh I think it was the great Joe Strummer of the Clash that said, you know, when you have a thought that feels important, write it down because >> you think it will be there later, but certain thoughts and ideas are offered up and they don't last, at least not in

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that form. You need to catch them.

And so I have a mode of catch usually in notes. Do you have a do you have a capture method for ideas whether or not you get them during workouts or >> I don't have during workouts.

I I I don't seem to get ideas during workouts, but I completely agree with that that

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you know there the those ideas when they come like in the shower or when you're on the subway or when you're driving along the freeway, your mind is occupied in something else, right? Your ego is involved and somehow it opens the pipeline and things burble up and you always think, "Oh, I'll remember that that." But you forget it's like a dream,

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you know? They just go away.

So yeah, I I mean I'll just dictate it into my phone. I mean, my phone now is, you know, full of stuff that I've got to transcribe.

But I I couldn't agree more with that. >> Yeah.

There's something about the way that our unconscious mind I feel like it

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kind of tosses things up for the conscious mind to catch. And in those moments, just like in a dream, we think, "Oh, I'll remember this later." >> Yeah.

Yeah. >> Uh and we don't.

>> It's amazing how they go away. They just eancence, you know, >> eancence.

It's a beautiful word and it captures it perfectly.

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>> See, I'm a different belie. I don't believe it's really coming from the subconscious.

I'm a believer in the goddess. I'm a believer in the muse.

I think it's coming from someplace else, you know, and that they're they're playing with us a little bit, you know, like I know Stephen Spielberg says when

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an idea comes, he says it whispers rather than shouting, which is his way, I think, of saying, you know, it just it's a very subtle thing that goes away very fast, you know, and you got to grab it while it's there. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep.

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>> Tell me more about this the from the the goddess or the gods or the muse, you know, that from outside us or from God. >> Ah, well, you know, if you um go back to the ancient Greeks, right?

every um the Iliad or the Odyssey or any of those

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other great works always start with an invocation of the muse, right? Homer writes, you know, goddess, you know, tell this story, you know, and basically the artist is stepping or taking his ego out of the picture and saying, I'm not

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the one that's going to tell you this story about ancient Troy. The goddess will tell through me.

So they're sort of asking, you know, help me, show me, you know, that kind of thing. And um I had a mentor, you know, Rob, we were talking about that earlier, a guy named Paul Rink.

He's like, can I get into the

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weeds on this thing, Andrew? >> Please.

>> And um he sort of introduced me to this concept. This was like the first time I tried to write a book.

I was like 27 or something like that. And I Well, I had actually tried and failed before, but it was the first time I ever finished one.

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And I used to have breakfast every morning. This was in Carmel Valley, not so far from where you grew up.

And uh in with my friend Paul Rank, who's a who was a maybe 30 years older than me. He was an established writer.

He knew John Steinbeck, knew Henry Miller from Big

18:43

Surf. And he told me about the muses, the Greek goddesses, the nine sisters whose job it was to inspire artists.

Right? The classic image of the muse is Beethoven at the piano and a kind of a

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shadowy female figure is kind of whispering in his ear, you know, bringing him da da da d right. And so he wrote out for me, my friend Paul, the invocation of the muse from he typed it out on his Remington manual typewriter,

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the invocation of the muse from the Odyssey, from Homer's Odyssey translation by TE Lawrence. And I've kept that.

It burned up in the fire. Lost it in the fire.

But I've kept that for like 50 years. And every morning

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before I sit down to work, I say that prayer, you know, out loud and in full earnest, you know, God has helped me. And um I'm absolutely a believer in that, you know, that that ideas come from another place.

And it's our job.

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And I don't think it's the subconscious. It's our job to open the pipeline and and get out of the way.

>> I love it. I And I'm totally open to the idea that it's not the unconscious mind or the subconscious, whatever people

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want to call it. Um I'm sad to hear that this uh um this write up of Invocation of the Muse burned.

We should probably just mention that we used to be neighbors. >> Yeah.

>> Um your home burned in the fires, sadly.

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Uh the home that I lived in um it was not my home. I was renting it.

Also burned in the fires. Um so my guess is at some point during today's conversation we'll talk about >> loss of objects and items.

But sounds like this one was pretty precious.

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>> Yeah, it was a sad thing to lose that, you know, but you know it's it's in my head, you know. >> How long is it?

>> Um it was on one page double spaced. >> I would say it takes to recite it takes maybe 90 seconds.

Do you have any uh

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interest or desire in calling it up now or a portion of it? >> Uh I'll I'll call up just the opening of it because the middle part is Homer sort of describing the whole story of the Odyssey.

But it starts like this. It goes, "Oh divine poisey,

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goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man," meaning Odysius. And then he kind of goes on to talk about da da da da and at the end it says um make this tale live for us in all its many bearings oh muse

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which I think is a great you know make it live make it come alive in all its many bearings. And so you know that's uh thanks to my my friend Paul that's been a thing that's been with me for you know 40 years.

>> I love it. Well we'll provide a link to

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the full uh >> it's in the war of art actually. I I wrote this out in the in the War of Art.

I think it's on page 114 or 115. >> Yeah.

And if anyone hasn't read War of Art, it's an absolute must-read. I've read it many times.

It's have an audiobook form, uh, hard copy form. It

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is awesome. It is just awesome.

So, when you sit down to write after you've you've recited this, um, how many times in the first 10 minutes do you think your mind flits to something else? I mean, you're now a pro.

like you've

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written many books and you know what to uh what is noise and you know what is signal and you know if you really need to go to the bathroom or if you don't you know well these are these are the things that pop up right as you point out resistance comes in oh you know I need another glass of water or I'm not

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caffeinating enough or there's not enough sunlight coming through my window whatever right um >> how many times in the first 10 minutes on a typical day just give us an average uh do you think your mind flits to yeah like I wonder what's going on in the news >> that's a great you know, like what's going on in the world. I mean,

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>> how many times? One, >> two, never.

>> Never. Now, that's not to say when I first started many, many moons ago that I didn't have a lot of that sort of stuff, but I have I don't know whether just over the years, um, I'm I'm

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absolutely a believer in, you know, like diving straight into the pool, you know, I don't sit there for one second, you know, wondering what I'm going to do. I just plunge right in.

And uh you know, thank goodness I'm somehow I've learned how to do it and I just focus full tilt

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on it. Uh so yeah, I don't I don't have those thoughts at all.

H >> how long do you write in that first bout? >> Um maybe an hour.

>> Mhm. >> Uh and then I'll take a a little bit of a break.

>> Um I love to do laundry. That's my big thing.

You know, I'll go I'll change the

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I'll put in the laundry at the start, you know, and it'll be the lo the load will be done. Then I can put it into the dryer.

I take a little break and then I come back and start again for for another hour. >> You enjoy it or you enjoy clean laundry or both?

>> I just I enjoy the sort of the ritual of it and the craziness of it, you know. >> Not me.

Not one bit. The only thing I

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enjoy about doing laundry is clearing the lint trap. There's something very satisfying about what I hate.

I don't want to do that. >> Interesting.

All right. Well, we're not considering, but we'd make good roommates.

>> Um interesting. So, for an hour, you're locked in and you're just typing.

Wait,

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how often does your inner critic pop up nowadays versus at the beginning? Meaning the I don't know if this is going the right direction.

Um, I've heard before that you're just supposed to create and then edit later. What's your process there?

>> Uh, it almost never comes up. The inner

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critic again. It used to, you know, used to all the time was a terrible struggle I had for years.

>> You know, you sit down and you think, well, is Hemingway would Hemingway write this sentence, you know, right? or or you know what will the New York Times think when I write you know but

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eventually over time you learn you just can't deal with that [ __ ] you know it drives you insane >> you know so so no I don't I don't let that inner critic come in you know and I'm definitely a believer um at the end of the day I never read what I wrote

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>> and I never look back on it the next day um I believe in multiple d somebody taught me this one time that uh think in multiple drafts. Um this was Jack Eps, the writer of the original writer of Top Gun.

Um I was working for him on a on a

25:13

movie project and he said he said always think in multiple drafts and uh and you can only fix so much in one draft. You can only fix one thing in one draft.

So I usually will think of and I start a book maybe 13, 14, 15 drafts. the last

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seven or eight will be really small, you know, really slight changes, but I won't look back on the day's work because I figure on my next draft then I'll then I'll read it fresh and it'll look a million times a much more clear sense.

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Is this any good? Because if you do it when it's too fresh, you start to drive yourself crazy.

You start to, you know, perfectionism, another form of resistance comes in. So, yeah, that's that's my process.

I know a lot of other people don't do it that way, but that's the way I do it. I never when the when

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the day is done, the the bell rings, the office is closed, that's it. I turn off my mind and just let you let the muse take care of it overnight and I don't I try not to worry about it at all.

All I ask myself, I know I'm getting into the weeds here really. No, it's very

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important that you get into the weeds because I think um you've offered many times through books and uh their podcasts the the contour and and a lot of depth, but I think the more detail the better because everyone will do it slightly differently, >> but I think it's very important. We

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rarely hear what people's real process is. So, please don't don't edit yourself here.

At the end of the a day's session, all I ask myself is did I put in the time and did I work as hard as I can. Quality will take care of itself later

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in the next draft and the next draft after that. But I'd never judge it, you know.

And it took a long, long time to get to that place to learn that, you know, because I would drive myself insane for years and years judging along the way. How long is the total writing session at

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depending on how much laundry you have to? >> Great questions.

I used to be able to write for four hours. Now I can only write for about two.

What I tell myself, and I think it's true, is that I can do in two hours now what I used to do in four. >> Um, but I stop when I start making

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mistakes. When I start having typos and things like that, then it's kind of like a workout at the gym.

you know, when you've reached the end, you know, I'm just going to hurt myself if I do another set, you know, um the point of diminishing returns. So, when I get tired, I stop and I don't question it at

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all. I don't say I don't make myself feel bad about, oh, you can get another 10 minutes.

Um like Steinbeck used to say that um pressing forward at the end of a long day to get just a little bit more is the falsest kind of economy

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because you pay for it the next day. And Hemingway used to say he always stopped when he knew what was coming next in the story which I also believe in that too because that'll help you in that hairy first moment when you're sitting down because at least you know oh okay this

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is what's going to happen. Ah, so you leave sort of an ellipse in your mind.

So the next morning you know exactly where to pick up and that the entry point is a little easier. >> Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

>> The analogy to uh working out is a great one. Um years ago when I started resistance

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training I learned from Mike Menser. I don't know if you ever overlapped with Mike at Golds.

No. >> He died some years ago.

>> Just interrupt for a second. They call it resistance training which is exactly what we're talking about for art.

Yeah. So but please continue.

>> Yeah. Excellent point, Noah.

please. Um,

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you know, there are a lot of theories out there about resistance training and how best to get muscles to grow and to get stronger, etc. At one extreme is, you know, you warm up and then you do one set to absolute failure, maybe a second set you push through.

That's kind of the mener high intensity thing. At the other extreme is it's volume, just

29:00

lots and lots and lots of sets. There's been debate about this endlessly and has to do with all sorts of factors, but the literature is now coming to a place where it's pretty clear that after warming up the first one or two sets that you do are really the most valuable of a given exercise.

And I didn't know

29:16

that >> almost certainly you need more than one set um overall you certainly do, but that it's really the intensity that you bring. But here's the the point that is strongly analogous to what you're talking about when you say you used to be able to write for four hours a day.

Now you do two and you tell yourself

29:31

that you accomplish the same amount in those two. That's almost certainly true based on what we understand about neuroscience and believe it or not resistance training in the gym.

And the the argument is that as you resistance train or write

29:47

>> or play volleyball or do any activity, >> you develop a better ability to recruit your nervous system to do the necessary work. You said you didn't used to be able to just sit down and focus for an

30:02

hour with minimal interruption in your mind. Now you can.

You learned that >> the more intensity that we can bring to something, the more focus we can bring to something, the more taxing it is. >> Like if I do one set in the gym with total concentration to absolute failure,

30:20

which is very difficult to do when you first start training. You barely know how to do the movement, right?

You're still learning. Your nervous system is still learning.

You can't inflict the same stimulus >> with one set that you uh that you can later after you're practiced.

30:35

>> Makes a lot of sense. >> So, and so there's this counterintuitive thing that people in the high performance field are really starting to adopt.

And I talked to people in a bunch of different high performance fields, not just exercise and creative works, that the better you get at something, the shorter your real workouts should be

30:52

>> and the more intense they should be. It's almost like a knife that's getting sharper and sharper.

you can cut deeper and deeper whereas at the beginning we have sort of a dull blade and we have to you know route over the same path. So >> I think this is a nervous system feature >> and that's why it transcends physical

31:08

and mental creative and other types of works. >> Um because if you talk to great musicians, they're not practicing 11 hours a day anymore.

They're practicing for three or four extremely focused hours, sometimes divided up by naps and

31:25

meals, you know, the So, in any case, >> so you so you put in your two very focused hours with some laundry in between. >> Yeah.

>> And then you you rack it, you hang it up, and you don't look at it. Are you thinking about it throughout the day?

31:40

>> Um, no. But like we were talking about, if an idea comes to me, then I grab my phone and I dictate that.

And let me say one thing here for anybody that's listening to this and would be want to be writers, aspiring writers. Um, so I'm

31:56

a full-time writer. I don't have another job.

I don't have to do anything. But yet I can only get two hours of time basically in the day.

So, if you guys have a full-time job and kids and a family and a wife and a spouse, whatever, if you can squeeze out a

32:13

couple hours a day, you're doing you're on the same level with me, same level with a with a full-time writer, so that it is possible to uh have a full-time job and still do do a your artistic thing to a full tilt version.

32:30

>> Excellent point. How important do you think it is for you to start that writing session at more or less the same time each day?

You're not saying two hours in the morning or two hours in the evening. Two hours in the morning or hour in the morning, hour in the afternoon.

It sounds like it's very

32:47

regimented. >> It it is.

I think it's really important. And when life was more predictable for me, I would always do it.

But like since the fires and other things like that, um, sometimes I have to shift time

33:04

frames around and be ready to do that, you know. Um, I have a good friend Jack Carr, the thriller writer who did the terminal list and and uh, you know, he's uh, he's a master of writing in airplanes and writing at Starbucks

33:20

because he's always traveling and doing all kinds of stuff and just finding the time. God bless him.

I don't know how he does it, you know, to and and he is incredibly productive. Um, I I don't I don't know if I could do that.

I maybe

33:35

my I will shift from writing from 11 to 1 to writing from one to three but that's about the the most you know uh variance I can put into it. >> Do you have your phone in the room when you write and is the internet engaged on

33:52

your computer? Not at all, you know.

No. I mean, my phone is there maybe to dictate a note or something like that, but otherwise, no.

I don't, you know, absolutely not. And and uh Yeah.

I can't even imagine that. >> Music.

>> No. No music.

No.

34:08

>> Just the sound of your own breathing. >> Yeah.

Yeah. >> Yeah.

What's that? >> Because you're in your own head, right?

You're in that universe, you know? >> This is what I find so odd about writing is you're in your head.

It's your voice in your head, but you're

34:23

in a conversation with the potential audience. What is the actual dialogue?

Are you thinking, this gets a little philosophical, but at the end of the day, it's very concrete. Are you thinking about a conversation with the

34:39

audience or are you just translating thoughts into words and the audience doesn't exist yet? Uh, I'm very aware of of the reader in the sense of um, let's say it's a scene that I that I'm

34:56

writing and I know certain things have to happen in this scene. Character A has to do something, character B, da da da da.

And so I'm I'm trying to put that down, but I'm thinking, is the reader understanding what have I got this in the right order for for

35:12

them? you know, am I am I boring them?

Is it did I did I say that, you know, two pages ago and now I'm repeating myself? So, I'm but I'm not having a conversation.

I'm just trying to to make it as as easy and as interesting and as

35:28

fun as I can for the for the reader and and always make trying to make sure that I'm I'm leading I'm leading them. I'm seducing them.

I'm trying to reel them in, you know, all you know, and not bore them. You know, by the end of of this

35:44

chapter or scene, I want the reader to be thinking, "Oh, I can't wait to turn the page and see what happens next." >> Growing up, were you a storyteller among your friends? >> I never even thought about it as a kid.

>> Like, you didn't hanging out with friends, you wouldn't tell a story about what had happened three days ago. >> I mean, just like anybody else would,

36:00

but no, I was never like a, you know, a storyteller or anything. I was not a kid that wanted to be a writer.

I never thought about it at all. So, you just kind of tripped and fell into all that.

>> I mean, my first job >> was in advertising in New York City out

36:15

of right out of college. >> This is like the Mad Men thing.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

But I guess at the time I thought, oh, I'd love to write a commercial that people said, uh, oh, that was great. It was so funny.

I love that thing. So, that sort of um got me kind of a little bit started into the

36:32

idea of storytelling. And then I had a boss.

His name was Ed Hannibal. and he wrote a book kind of at home and it became a hit, you know, and uh it was called Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks, and he quit to become like a novelist.

36:48

And so I thought, well, [ __ ] why don't I do that, you know? So that was what sort of started me into it, you know, being completely naive and totally stupid, you know, and having no idea of what I was doing.

That's wild. So I imagined you as like the kid who was

37:04

always coming in telling stories and you were writing in the background. Advertising is pretty interesting though because it it's the same process.

You have to get into the mind of the audience. You have a story to tell and I

37:19

guess with advertising the goal is a purchase and with writing the idea is they they uh buy into the next page. >> Yeah.

>> Something like that. >> Yeah.

Yeah. Very similar in that sense.

You know >> what? Any ads that you recall particularly enjoying?

>> No, I was terrible. I was never any good at it.

You know, I never made any money

37:35

at I was never successful at all. Um, but I met a lot of nice people and I learned a lot of stuff in that.

You know, >> you said that was in New York City. >> It was in New York City.

Um, in fact, if I can if I can hype one of my books, it's a small follow-up to The War of Art

37:51

called Nobody Wants to Read Your [ __ ] And it kind of a lot of it is about what you learn in advertising because nobody wants to read your ads or listen to your uh commercials or anything like that. And so one thing you learn in that

38:07

business is to make it so good or so interesting, so intriguing that people will overcome their hatred of having to listen to your stupid Preparation H commercial. Um, so that was uh anyway

38:24

that was that was what that was what got me started. But I was never a storyteller as a kid.

No, I'd like to go back to the quote that we started with. The more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be.

I think many people will hear that,

38:40

including myself, and we'll think, okay, what is what is my soul's growth? Where does it want to go?

You know, I think when we hear the word soul and growth, particularly when it's about us, we think like there's going to be this big sign written on the heavens about what

38:56

we're supposed to do and we're going to feel compelled to do it. You're saying the opposite.

That the thing that we need to do most sometimes is hidden from us. The muse perhaps can reveal that.

And it's through the act of writing without knowing what the work even is

39:13

that sometimes we arrive there. So for people that don't have a crystallized idea yet and they want to explore their creative sense.

They might want to do it through writing. They might want to do it through pottery.

They might want to do it through music. They might want to do

39:29

it through making movies. Any number of things.

What's the translation from the thing you need most is the thing you're resisting most to actually getting into the process of evolving that thing out of us? It's like it sounds like an

39:44

extrusion process like you're trying to like push push semiolid concrete through a filter. But I want to know what the filter is.

>> Um I mean I know that young people today there's a tremendous amount of pressure on people to find their passion, you

39:59

know, and follow their passion and so on so forth. And I and I know for for me I would as a young person I would go what the [ __ ] is that?

I don't know what what it is that I want to do you know um I'm lost. I'm you know struggling.

But I do think that we are all born with some

40:16

sort of a of at least one a kind of a calling of some kind. And it may not be the arts, you know, it may be helping other people through some kind of a nonprofit or something or like what you're doing, Andrew, you know, where you're bringing neuroscience and and the scientific, you know, to personal

40:33

development, so on and so forth. Um, I think we do all have some sort of some sort of calling and like we we know it.

Like if if we could somehow put somebody

40:48

in here and say, "I'll give you three seconds. Tell me what you should be supposed to be doing." It will pop into somebody's head.

You know, they go, "Oh, you know, I knew I know I've always wanted to do to you be a motorcycle, whatever." You know, so but then that

41:05

sort of whisper urge to do this thing is immediately countered by this force of resistance, you know, because it's trying to stop us. It's the devil.

It's trying to stop us from being our true selves and becoming self-realized, self-actualized or whatever. So,

41:21

resistance will immediately say to us, like if you were to say, "Oh, I want to have a podcast and I want to talk about, you know, science." Immediately, resistance would say, "Who are you, Andrew, to do this thing? I mean, you're a professor, you know, at Stanford.

You know, we don't have any experience doing this." Not to mention, it's been done a

41:37

million times by other people. They've done it a thousand times better than you.

Nobody's going to give a [ __ ] You're gonna put this out or you're gonna embarrass yourself. you had a certain level of prestige at Stanford.

Now you're an idiot. You know, you did it's gonna be that voice, right?

>> Some people actually said Stanford's not going to like it. Why would you do this?

41:54

You're tenured at Stanford. What What are you doing?

You're you you're funded. Your lab's publishing.

Well, one of those people was my father. Um who's also a scientist.

Um my process of pushing back. >> I rest my case.

>> Yeah. And the true part here, the really kind of interesting part is a lot of

42:11

times those voices will be the voices closest to us, our spouse, our father, you know, because well, I can get into that. I'll get into that and if we if we want to continue, but in any event, um, so that voice of resistance will come

42:26

up. In addition, resistance will try to distract us.

You know, it'll try to make us procrastinate. it'll try to make us yield to perfectionism where we we noodle over one sentence you know for three days you know or we or fear all of the other things will stop us.

So many

42:43

people live their entire lives and never do and never enact their real calling you know um but we were talking about the more important to the growth of your soul that was what the we started with this right so that calling whatever it is to be a writer a filmmaker whatever

43:00

it is if we don't do that in our life we we that energy doesn't go away it becomes it goes into a more malignant channel, right? And it

43:17

shows itself in maybe an addiction, alcoholism, uh cruelty to others, abuse of others, abuse of ourselves, porn, you name it. any of the sort of vices that people have uh because that original creative

43:35

divine energy that really wants to be the odyssey or something like that. If we yield to our own resistance and don't evolve that then bad things happen.

On

43:50

the other hand, if we do follow that, we kind of open ourselves up to, you know, to becoming who we who we really are. And, you know, a lot of people in the podcasting and in the uh human development or whatever they call it,

44:06

personal development world, they sort of promise like some sort of nirvana is going to happen if you do XYZ. But what I'm what I'm promising is a [ __ ] of a lot of hard work that's probably never going to be rewarded, but you'll be on

44:24

the track that you know your soul was meant to be on. And God bless you, you can't ask for any more than that.

>> And sometimes it works out at spectacular levels of whatever income, fame, whatever it is that people think they might want, but that's not really

44:40

the thing to chase. We'll talk about that.

>> Yeah, we'll talk about that. Sometimes it's the lottery of of life sometimes, but that absolutely should not be the thing that people are chasing.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah.

I um I only know my own experience and I couldn't help but reflect a little

44:57

bit on, you know, when I was deciding to do the podcast and I did get some voices back like, hey, like maybe that's, you know, what are you doing? I I um I not clinically diagnosed with Tourette's or anything like that, but I

45:12

felt um at that point that I had a certain amount of knowledge in me uh based on 25 years of studying and research in neuroscience and related fields. And I felt like if I didn't let it out, I was going to explode.

Uh-huh.

45:28

>> And so Rob, my producer, and my my bulldog Costello, and I went into a small >> closet in Topanga, set up some cameras, and I exploded onto the onto the camera. I just like I it just poured out.

I think for the entire first year, we were

45:43

doing almost all solos. Hardly any guests because it was pandemic and we weren't quite sitting down with guests.

I didn't know. And I don't even remember thinking about the the hundreds of hours of preparation.

We did hundreds of hours of preparation for each episode, but the just I just feel like it just kind of

45:59

like geysered out. So, I think there's some benefit to having um something build up so much within us that it has to come out.

>> And I can certainly relate to the dangers of suppressing something. I think

46:14

>> how old were you when you when you started that? >> 45 years ago.

>> 45. >> Yeah.

So, I was kind of late to it. Now I had lectured in front of students and given seminars and lectured in front of donors which is >> in some ways similar to the podcast in the in the sense that you're >> teaching science often to non-scientists

46:30

or diverse fields but uh for me it was just inside I couldn't couldn't help it. There was my only answer was I couldn't help it.

And um to his credit by the way my my dad has been immensely supportive of the podcast. He actually was on the podcast

46:46

>> and gave us a chance to bond and learn about him and um >> and he's a scientist so I got to learn some physics. The audience got to learn some physics as well.

But um but yeah, when you take on something that people are not familiar with you doing or they

47:02

are projecting on to you the sense that they want you safe and secure because sometimes it's a it's a real um it's a genuine >> feeling of support for somebody, you know, a mother or father or siblings like, "Hey, so you're going to give up your job as a lawyer to go write movie

47:19

scripts like and you got three kids and like uh they're scared for you because they don't want to see you take your life off a cliff. >> Yeah.

>> Uh what's your response to that? >> I mean, there's validity to that obviously.

>> Yeah. >> But I think what happens um is that each

47:38

person is dealing with their own resistance, >> their own calling, their own that they know that they really should be doing. And 99.999% of them are not doing it or are unconscious of it.

Right. It's sort of a

47:54

niggling thing, but they don't know about it. So then when they see you, Andrew, starting your podcast, that's a reproach to them and they say, "Well, if Andrew can do it, why can't I do it?" You know, and so then it becomes kind of malicious.

And it's I don't think it's

48:10

deliberately malicious a lot of times, but people will then try to undermine you and say and and under the guise of uh we're only looking out for you. We don't want your children to be starving and in the street.

They will try to try to undermine you and stop you from doing

48:25

it and make fun of you or ridicule you. Like um the filmmaker David O.

Russell, I don't know if you know who I'm talking about. He did the fighter with Mark Wahlberg.

I love that movie. He did Silver Linings Playbook um you know with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.

48:41

And I did not see that one, but I did see the >> joy about the lady who invented the miracle mop with which was Jennifer Lawrence. And all of these stories are about sabotage by the people closest to you, particer,

49:01

right? and he's got seven sisters and he also has an older brother and they're like and his mom is his manager and she's like booking him fights where he's outweighed by 20 pounds and he gets massacred.

You know, >> true story of Mickey Ward. >> Yeah.

Right. >> And the story is, you know, he finally

49:16

meets a girl who's like really supportive of him. But anyway, it's a real theme that the people closest to us will will try to they don't want us.

They're happy the way, you know, we like you, Andrew, the way you are. You know, our son, we know he's working at

49:32

Stanford. He's doing his thing.

We don't want to see him, it may be unconscious. I'm not knocking your dad.

We don't want to see him suddenly burst out of the uh the cocoon and become a butterfly and wing away from us, you know, so they like you the way they are, you know, the

49:47

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We've had several clinical psychologists on the podcast and a resounding theme

52:42

from them has been that it is astounding and yet consistent that people will remain in a not so great place that they understand and is predictable in exchange for what they could do stepping

53:00

into some new life even getting over their their anger about something. In fact, I I was thinking uh throughout today's conversation, I couldn't help but think that perhaps the two most dangerous things to the creative process to really doing the important work are

53:16

the many many things that exist in the world now that basically sell us the opportunity for free to be angry or to numb out. >> I mean, I again, if people want to drink a little bit, I'm not going to disparage

53:33

that. I've done an episode on alcohol.

It's not good for you. But some people can have a couple drinks a week or whatever.

Okay, I'm not judging there. But but things >> like alcohol, like certain forms of social media, and I say certain forms because I do think social media can be

53:48

informative and educational in the right context and the right amount. Um certain forms of media more generally, the news, right?

um any number of highly processed, highly palatable foods uh which are not delicious. They but they

54:03

allow us to kind of numb out numb out our senses and just kind of mindlessly eat. >> Um and on and on.

I feel like anger and numbing out >> are how the world is trying to pull us away. >> And someone gets paid for that.

We think we get it for free, but they get paid

54:18

for that very well. We give our time, our soul according to what you're saying.

Yeah. >> And then more close to us within our inner circle, people that genuinely care about us are, from what you're saying, kind of in their own psychological

54:34

entanglements and they really care. They want us safe.

They want to keep us where they know they can find us. And as a consequence, it's really tough to even get to the process of resistance at this point.

It's all around us.

54:50

>> Yeah. >> It's all around us.

>> Hit the nail on a lot of heads. So I feel like do you think the world is >> set up now in ways that it's more difficult to get to that chair and to meet the inner resistance?

That's I I phrased it poorly before. There's

55:06

resistance all around us. There's uh in the things that are being sold to us quote unquote for free.

>> The cost is immense. It's true.

You're not putting a coin in a in a slot and pulling a lever, but it's your time. It's your soul.

It's your essence. It's your life.

Yeah.

55:22

>> And then it's close to us with family members and friends and significant others. Sometimes um dogs are immune from this.

Cats are immune. They want us to do the real work cuz we'll be they'll be right next to us.

Um >> and then with all that, then we sit down

55:39

and then the resistance comes up from right up in the middle. >> Yeah.

>> It's like this is a this is a minefield. >> Yeah, it is.

I agree with you completely. It's I don't think it's ever been harder.

It's like I always said that if you want to make a billion dollars, come up with some kind of

55:56

product that feeds into people's natural resistance like potato chips or social media or something like and they did come up with a product and it's called, you know, the internet, you know, it's called social media. And you're right, people make a lot of money off of that

56:13

because they they and I don't think they're even aware of what they're doing or aware of what they're tapping into, but they're just allowing people, you or me, who who has a a calling that we know we should be doing. They're allowing us to not do it, to be drawn over here for

56:32

whatever reason. And I think a lot of the anger and polarization in politics is about that today, you know, because people can't face, you know, to sit down and do whatever they were they were born to do.

So, it's much easier to hate the other person over here or get completely

56:48

caught up in all that rabbit hole of all that sort of stuff, you know. Um, yeah, it's uh to follow your calling is a really hard thing, you know.

It's not uh we were born to be by evolution to be

57:05

tribal creatures, you know, through all those evolution. And the opposite, the one thing that the tribe hates the most is somebody that goes his own way or her own way, right?

Follows their own thing and doesn't, you know, hue to what the tribe wants them to do. So for us to do

57:22

that as individuals is a [ __ ] you know, and take and and it's it's usually like what you said, you sort of exploded out of you when you got you have to almost reach a a breaking point, you know, almost hit bottom in some kind of a sense before it just kind of explodes

57:39

out of you because we'll all resist that so much. It's so scary.

>> It's so interesting. I think it was in high school uh that I first realized how silly humans are and it was the

57:55

following. At the time I was into skateboarding.

Um skateboarding has gone through various evolutions of being popular. Now it's in the Olympics of being unpopular of being profitable.

When I got into it, it was really unpopular. It had gone through one big two big waves.

There was the kind of Dog

58:11

Town and Z Boys wave like the back discovering backyard pools. this kind of thing that the surfers did.

Then there was a second wave for those that care. This was like the classic Bones Brigade wave.

There were only two or three big companies. Tony Hawk was early in this because he was young.

Stad Frank Hawk ran the National Skateboard Association

58:26

and then it disappeared just kind of, you know, that kids that were into soccer. They were into other sports.

Skateboarding wasn't a big thing. It was small.

And and there was this really kind of weird trend in the early 90s where skateboarders started wearing

58:42

really baggy clothes. No one wore really baggy clothes.

And I'll never forget because I was part of that community, we wore these what now wouldn't even be considered baggy shorts. So we're not talking about like a deep sag on the shorts, but it was like baggy shorts.

>> Uhhuh. >> And I'll never forget the amount of

58:58

teasing and ridicule that we received. People like, pull up your pants, you know, why by the athletes, by the cool by the water polo athletes, the the jocks, the the everything.

But not just at school, but elsewhere. leave for the summer, come back,

59:15

and over that summer, the someone in the world of rock and roll and in hiphop had kind of um picked this up from skateboarding culture and baggy pants and shorts hit the mainstream. >> Oh, I never

59:31

was into it. And that's when the the bell went off.

I was like, they don't actually know what they like is this is just the the essence of peer pressure. They have no concept of what they actually like.

>> And I think that was a big one for me. I was like, well, first of all, I thought they're hypocrites.

I thought they're

59:48

idiots. And then I realized they're but they're none of those things.

It's that for most people, what they like is sold to them. >> It's and they're tracking someone else.

And so throughout my life, I've had mentors um that didn't know me. I would I literally have a list of different

00:04

names. Some some of these people live, some of them dead.

Amazingly, some of them are now my close friends. Um, I embarrass them all the time by telling them that they're on this list.

>> But I think that the concept of mentorship is so much different than the concept of looking to

00:19

>> the other members of our species more broadly >> for what is cool, what's worth pursuing. >> How valuable for you have mentors been?

I know you're you've been a mentor to many people, by the way. You're on the list.

Just to embarrass you. I can show you that list from from from the late

00:36

'9s late 90s 2000s transition. How important are mentors and how do we differentiate mentors from the voice in our own head?

How important is it to be self-guided versus encouraged and guided by these mentor voices? Because I

00:52

believe that the general public is the absolute wrong signal. I think that I think that signal >> I agree with you takes you off the metaphorical cliff.

>> Yeah. Mentors have been really important to me.

very important. Um, in fact, I I wrote a memoir called Government Cheese.

01:07

I don't know if you've heard about this one at all, but it's it's the chapters are named after the various mentors that I've had and um many many of them and a lot of them are not in the writing world at all. Um, and um, like my my friend

01:26

Paul, he was in the in the writing world, but um, you know, I had a boss at a trucking company that I worked for that was like a real mentor to me. I once I picked fruit in uh, Washington State, you know, and as a migratory worker, you know, for a while and I had a mentor there.

I never even knew his

01:43

um, last name. He was a fellow fruit picker, you know, former marine from uh, the Cho who was at the Chosen Reservoir in Korea.

I'm sure nobody listening to this know knows what that is, but it was like an amazing >> horror show of heroism. And anyway, >> what what was it about those two mentors

02:00

that you can uh maybe summarize that you extracted? Was it a work ethic?

Was it a a style of being? >> It was it was a work ethic in both cases.

Um in in the one in the one, again, I'll sort of get a little into the weeds here a little bit,

02:15

>> please. Um, I was uh I had gone to a tractor trailer driving school and I got hired and to work for this uh company in North Carolina and I was, you know, a beginner and um I really I I [ __ ] up big time one time.

I dropped a trailer

02:31

with like $300,000 worth of, you know, industrial equipment in it. and and um my boss, his name was Hugh Reeves, uh took me out to this hot dog place called Amos and Andy's in Durham, North Carolina.

And he sat me down and he

02:48

said, "Um, son, I don't know what Trump, you know, uh internal drama you're going through. I know you're going through something, but let me tell you this.

While you're working for me, you're a professional and your job is deliver a

03:05

load. And I don't care what happens between A and B, you got to do that, you know, and I was like, you know, and I knew he was just absolutely right.

And that uh and I thought, man, I got to get my [ __ ] together here, you know? I can't.

And so that obviously stuck with

03:21

me forever. And the uh um my friend John from Seattle in the fruit picking world was again, I'm going to do a longer story than probably needs to be here.

Um, in the uh in the fruit picking world, at

03:37

least when I was doing this, it was most of the work was done by fruit tramps, by guys that like were riding the rails from the old days. And the big um one of the phrases that they that they used was pulling the pin.

Have you ever heard this thing? And what pulling the pin

03:53

meant was quitting too soon. Like pulling the pin came from railroad.

If you want to uncouple one car from another, the trainman would pull a heavy steel pin and the cars would uncouple. So like you would wake up one day in a bunk house six weeks into a season and

04:09

so and so would be gone. He'd say, "Oh, you know what happened to Andrew?" And oh, he pulled the pin.

So at the time that I was there, I was trying for the first time to finish a book and I'd run out of money and I this is why I was working to get the money and I realized

04:25

that in my life I had pulled the pin on everything that I'd ever done on my marriage on this that the other and this friend of mine John would I I wanted to quit before the season ended you know and he would not let me do it you know

04:41

he sort of just had a he you know he took me under his wing. And so that was another thing that was just drilled into my head in the sense of um am I going to finish this project?

[ __ ] yeah, I'd rather die. I will die before I'll give up on this project.

And it was all

04:58

because of him. So that those are two mentors that weren't writing mentors, but that I used there those those lessons stuck with me forever.

And I will say one thing too for anybody that's struggling with finishing anything. Once I did finish that book,

05:15

which I did, I've never had any trouble finishing anything ever again. >> Whereas it was my bet noir for years.

I would fumble on the goal line, you know, >> resistance, former resistance.

05:30

>> I love that those two guys are uh now alive and present in 2025. I don't know.

They may still be alive uh in general, but um perfectionism, you talked about it as the enemy. Um I

05:47

learned two very disperate schools of thought in research science. One was no one study can answer everything.

So when it, you know, you get to the point where you have a clear answer what the data mean, you write it up, you ship it

06:03

out, you publish. And I feel very fortunate that I work for people that encourage that.

Um because many people get caught up in the idea that every paper has to be a landmark paper. Actually, that's one of the major causes of scientific fraud by the way >> when people feel that their papers have

06:19

to be published in the top tier journals. It's it's probably the strongest driver of scientific fraud.

Um there probably some bad apples that come in and are seeking ways that they can build narratives to get prizes and stuff, but that I think they're exceedingly rare that um those people are driven to other fields where there's

06:35

more money involved, more fame involved. >> But in science, a lot of bad stuff comes from people feeling that they have to have a landmark paper.

And I was taught early on some papers end up in solid journals and some end up in spectacular journals. And some projects go nowhere.

That's just the reality. Mhm.

06:52

>> The key is to figure out which one is which and but finish things. >> At the other end of the spectrum is this idea that if you are able to make something better, you should >> and uh this is the reason I delayed my book release for a year.

I felt like I

07:07

could make it better. There was there are new data.

I want to add illustrations, but at some point it's got to ship. So I think we can all agree that perfectionism is not great because it limits our ability to complete things and ship things off sometimes even our

07:23

ability to do the work in the first place. But at some level if we can make something better we probably should.

That that's also you know part and parcel with meeting resistance and pushing through it. So how do you balance those th those two?

They're

07:38

they're in a strong push pull for me. >> I think that uh it's another great question.

I mean, it's so easy to as a writer to noodle all day with one paragraph, you know, and and of course, it's obviously, you know, uh resist

07:54

resistance is watching and laughing at you, you know, oh man, look at this poor idiot. I've gotten him to completely blow the day on this one thing.

So, that sort of perfectionism is a form of resistance and really has to be avoided at all costs. Um, on the other hand, you

08:10

do want to produce something that's really good, you know, and not but, you know, like Seth Goden says, when it's, you know, ship it, right? When it's ready to go, you know, there comes a time when, you know, I'm just noodling with this because I'm afraid of the uh

08:26

response. Is this going to fail?

Is it going to fizzle? Is it going to crash and burn?

So, I don't want to ship it out right now. I had a friend, I tell this story, who had uh written this in deeply personal novel about uh salvaging a ship.

He had been

08:45

in the merchant marine and you know, I mean, what a great metaphor that was. And I read it.

It was in its its mailing box back in the days when you typed it out on a typewriter ready to go and to his agent and he couldn't make himself send it off, you know. And the the the

09:02

sad part of the story is my friend died and there so that was I don't know whether that was perfectionism or just fear of of um being judged in the in the real world but so it's a real vice perfectionism

09:19

and uh to be guarded against at all costs I think. But when a thing is ready to go let it go.

>> I'd like to talk about death. Uhhuh.

>> Um, you know, I've >> Me too. >> I've great u I've >> listened to and read uh Steve Jobs's

09:37

biography. >> Um I think it's spectacular.

Um I had a particular interest in it because >> what's the title? Cuz I've never read it.

>> I think it's Steve Jobs by Walter Isacson. It's a phenomenal >> Steve Jobs.

>> No, it's not an autobiography although there was communication with him in the

09:53

process of writing the book. I think that's the that one of the kind of agreements for Isacson is you have to be willing to talk to him and he can talk to people in one's life and it's spectacular and and one of the reasons I was so interested in it is that you know the personal computer came out during my

10:10

you know childhood. Um >> Steve lived in our area.

We'd see him around downtown Palo Alto. He'd come into the sport shop where I worked to get rollerblade wheels and um >> I was a skateboarder, but we had to assemble rollerblades.

It was just part of the job and wagons and things. In any

10:26

case, um he from a very early point apparently understood his own mortality. And apparently that was a strong driver for his intense uh drive to create things, to envision things.

um in some

10:43

sense people say it's part of the reason why he didn't pay much attention to uh kind of typical conventions and he was able to evolve the world and create these incredible products >> um >> devices I mean portals they're really portals of of communication and

11:00

creativity and um having a strong sense of one's mortality seems very useful in that respect >> the other end of the spectrum I have a theory which is that all forms of addiction are basically an attempt to try and

11:15

avoid the reality that we're going to die to just forget that for moments, >> shorter or longer moments. >> And in some sense, the pursuit of flow states and creative works are an attempt to kind of either forget about that or to some people want to immortalize

11:31

themselves. But I think knowing that one is going to die is an incredible driver.

Um, I have always had a lot of energy, but it was only recently on kind of on the threshold of my 50th birthday coming up that I realized like, oh, I'm

11:46

probably at about the halfway mark. You know, realistically, I'm a biologist.

I mean, I think, uh, genetic potential on human longevity is probably about 120. And with certain practices, maybe you can get out past your, you know, where one is faded to die by maybe five, maybe

12:02

10, maybe 20 years. And maybe new technologies will come along that will, um, expand that number.

But I figure I'm probably about the halfway mark. So it's kind of nice to have a like an oh [ __ ] moment because you stop wasting time.

>> Uhhuh. >> Like anyone else have wasted time.

So

12:19

how present is your sense of death eventually coming hopefully a long time from now. Again you're in spectacularly good health and um so that's important.

But how present is the reaper

12:35

in your process? >> And do you think having a a real sense that the reaper's coming is useful?

>> Yeah, definitely. Um, I was uh having breakfast in New York a couple of years ago with a friend of mine who's exactly my age, you know, and

12:53

I asked him, I said, "Nick, how often do you think about your own mortality?" and he said every [ __ ] minute of every [ __ ] day, you know, >> and maybe that's a little bit excessive because it could become paralyzing, too. >> Yeah.

>> Right. >> So, uh I I don't know if I I go that

13:09

far, but I'm definitely aware of it, you know, like Robert Redford died two days ago, right, in his sleep, you know, to me was like an immortal guy that was going to live forever. Um, on the other hand, I have another friend who actually

13:25

died a couple years ago, was at my one of my bosses in advertising named Phil Slott, great smart guy, and he said one time to me that people tell you that life is short, but really life is long and like thinking about you, Andrew,

13:41

that you're 50 years old, you've got another 50 years ahead of you, you know. So that one has to think, >> you know, it's it can be also a form of resistance.

Like for me at my age, you think, well, I'm only going to be around a few more years. I might as well [ __ ]

13:56

off or, you know, I don't have to work that hard, you know? But no, cuz I'm I might be around for another 20 years or more.

That's a career. I should I could write 15 books.

I could make them. Who knows what.

Um certainly I have to which

14:12

is part of why I go to the gym you know to think of uh I don't want to start thinking that I'm on the way down or I haven't got you know life is life is long it's longer than we think and and we have in the sense of uh it's opportunity to do stuff but it's also an

14:29

obligation to to do stuff to keep evolving so on and so forth. Um, on another on another sort of side of I don't know if this was I'll this will be confessional for me.

I know when when I was a kid,

14:45

um, our family was sort of like the black sheep of our bigger family. Like everybody, all the my uncles and stuff were all really successful and my dad was kind of struggling, you know, and so it became

15:02

a thing in my mind where I said, and it's just looking ahead for how long you're going to live. I said, 'I'm going to show these [ __ ] that our family is not what they think they are, you know?

And so I um that's been a real driver for me, more so than any idea of

15:19

mortality, even over those long years where I was getting nowhere that uh um to sort of honor my dad and um that I was going to, you know, hang in there and do something. >> Yeah.

I I think that's a great

15:35

opportunity for us to talk about um another kind of resistance which is actually very adaptive and can propel us forward which is um having some friction with someone or something. I know this is a little politically incorrect but in

15:52

one's mind to be able to drive yourself harder and I think this can take on toxic forms but I think it can also be very beneficial. There's this great moment in one of those Dark Knight movies where the Joker has the opportunity to kill Batman

16:09

>> and he says something like just kill me and the Joker says kill you. He's I don't want to kill you.

You complete me. You know it's this moment where the Joker doesn't exist without Batman and vice versa, right?

that having somebody or something that you're challenging

16:25

yourself to to uh that you're trying to prove yourself to sometimes to yourself um can be very beneficial. And at different times in my career, certainly not now um and I kind of miss it a little bit to be honest, but at various times in in my uh different careers of

16:41

of pursuits, I should say um being in competition can be an incredible driver. >> I could go into a whole story here, but it doesn't matter.

I think that it's kind of evident what what we're talking about that having someone that you

16:56

you're not going to let get the best of you, that you know you can do better, um can be very useful. It can also be toxic as we pointed out because it's >> I feel having experienced that >> and having won by the way.

No, just not kidding.

17:12

But that the the energy that it pulls on here, I'm going to put my physiologist uh neuroscience hat on is, you know, it's more of an adrenal adrenaline type drive >> than kind of orienting towards your love

17:29

of craft. I mean, it's meshed with that, >> right?

Hopefully, it's within a craft you love, but to just be in sheer competition all the time can be depleting. And one has to be really careful with this stuff.

So, um, obviously that got you propelled

17:44

forward. You're going to prove that your family >> in an unconscious way.

It certainly was not, you know, I'm only becoming aware of it now. >> Oh, I see.

So, at the time you weren't aware of it. >> I wasn't even aware of it.

>> Okay. Okay.

I was very aware of this friction cuz the guy and I had like an outright rivalry. Um, and it was a lot

18:01

of fun, too. Actually, years later, we uh shared a coffee and reflected on how much great work we each got done.

>> Yeah. >> In this I mean, if you think about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, you know, how they kind of made each other, you know, pum and now they're the best of friends, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

18:18

early on. >> Yeah.

Was that true? I didn't >> Oh, yeah.

There was a big competition, especially in the Bay Area where you had a was it was and still remains kind of the seat of of of tech and and computer science. It was like, is it going to be Windows or is it going to be the the the the Mac operating system?

And then they when they join forces later, that would

18:34

have been like the Yankees and the Red Sox merging. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. >> It's like it was a mind bend.

You're like, "This can't be happening." And all the all the nerds and the bear are like, "Oh, yeah. This happened." You know, next thing you know, everybody's moved on.

Um, >> so I think having resistance with

18:52

with a desire to prove to pro to prove oneself, I think, can be helpful, right? >> Yeah, I think so, too.

>> Yeah. >> Um, you know, my trainer at the gym, TR Goodman, he's trained a lot of professional athletes, particularly hockey players.

Um, and a lot of them,

19:09

he says, because he got to know him very well, really had a chip on their shoulder about something or other, like my dad, I'm going to show my [ __ ] dad that I can do this thing, you know, and and it would drive them, but like you say, it

19:24

becomes kind of toxic at some point. You do have to sort of have that come to Jesus moment when you say wait a minute you know let me get a let me get a handle on this and maybe a little forgiveness here or a little bit of empathy a little of you know putting myself in the position of this person

19:40

that I'm trying to show um Greg Norman's dad you know the golfer you know that and so many there's so many thing people like that that uh it does become toxic but it like you say it can produce great success because it drives people >> yeah Michael Jordan was famously

19:57

competitive about everything. >> Yeah.

>> Everything. >> Yeah.

Yeah. I I feel very fortunate that these days I do things and I create out of just a love for what I do.

There's none of that. I never think about another podcast or >> what other people I I think about

20:13

>> none of that truly. I would admit if I did for you, >> but in the past that wasn't the case.

>> It wasn't the case. And and I think that um and at times it brought out my best and at times it brought out my best but it made the process much more painful.

I

20:28

I think doing something for love of craft is really important. >> Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

>> But as you've pointed out that process can be painful >> even though you love the craft. It's a weird thing.

This is a bizarre dark and light >> braided together. >> This creativity thing.

20:46

What about feedback from the outside after the thing is done? Uh, reviews.

Um, let's talk about King Kong. >> I mean, you you've written about the fact that you made this movie and it wasn't received with uh with broad

21:04

accolades. >> It was quite embarrassing.

Yeah. >> But was the movie that bad?

>> Oh, it was terrible. Yeah, it was really terrible.

Yeah. >> Did you know it was terrible when you released it?

>> No, that was even worse. So, you thought it was awesome?

>> It was King Kong Lives, one of the worst movies ever. And I remember that uh I I

21:20

I wrote this with a partner, Ron Shuset, who was one of the guys who originally did the first alien, the thing where the guy burst the alien bursts out of that his the guy's chest. That was his along with the whole face hugger thing.

That was his too. So, he was like a a really

21:37

legendary guy, particularly in science fiction. and I was kind of his his junior partner.

And um when we we did this movie for Dino Dler on a contract and when and when we were done we thought this is great. It's how crazy we

21:53

were. And we invited, you know, all of our friends, you know, to the screening or something.

And and when it was over, it was like death, deathly silence, you know. And I was telling you before we did this thing today, the review and Daily Variety said Ronald said, and

22:08

Steven Presfield, we hope these are not their real names for their parents' sake. So that was that was definitely an uh a bad moment.

But from my point of view, it was the first time I got a movie made >> Mhm.

22:24

>> that I was involved with at all. So I had to say and a friend of mine, my friend Tony Keelman took me aside and said, you know, you're in the arena, man.

You're taking the blows, but you're out there doing it. And he was absolutely right.

So I, you know, I turned out to be very grateful to that.

22:39

And I still am grateful to it, but it was a but it certainly was a terrible review and uh kept you kept you humble. Did you go back and analyze what was wrong with the movie and what could have made it great?

>> No, it was like too painful to even think about. Yeah.

>> When was the last time you watched it?

22:55

>> Oh, not since when it came out, which was like 1980 something or other. Yeah.

>> What was the budget for the movie? >> A lot of it was a big budget.

>> Yeah. >> Um I don't I don't know what it was then, but it was it was a big budget.

Yeah. >> In the millions.

>> Oh, yeah. Yeah.

A lot of special effects. I mean, you know, a King Kong

23:12

movie had to Yeah. >> Wild.

>> Yeah. So, that was terrible.

But uh I'm definitely a believer that the ideal is to not listen to anything that anybody says about what you did and to judge it

23:27

only yourself. You know, and if you can, I think it's good to get a sort of an objective cross-section.

You know, some things go out there and they sink without a trace. Some things people really love.

Um, but the bottom line is

23:42

like Paul Rink said to me, start the next one today. You know, soon as you because it's a lifelong, like we were saying, it's for the love of the game.

It's a lifelong practice. And you know, uh, a professional does not take success

23:58

or failure personally, but keeps on going and does the next one and the next one and the next one. with creative works or anything that our name is closely attached to it uh it's a challenge right I mean a book with the

24:14

author's name there a movie with the you know producers and the directors there and the actors a podcast I mean almost every major podcast is named after the podcaster it's kind of funny and in science the lab is named after you know Huberman lab or whatever lab I always

24:31

thought the lab should be named after a particular scientific quest. That's how they do it in other countries.

I think that's a lot more elegant and it also >> teaches a lesson to the students and postocs that you're after discovery. It's not just about your career.

24:47

>> Um, unfortunately in the United States, we promote this notion of the independent investigator. It's all about the individual or maybe small group of two or three of them cracking some really difficult Watson and Crick.

And it's always been this way. It's it's

25:03

terrible. It's a feature that if I had a magic wand and I don't, I would abolish.

But when our name is closely attached to something, feedback that's great feels pretty good. And if you're a self-critical, hard driving person, feedback that's negative

25:20

can hurt. I will say my experience is that the larger volume of negative feedback that you get day in and day out, the less of an impact it has.

You know, initially like the podcast will come out, you get a bunch of great comments and you get some some nasty ones and then you're like, "Oh, that

25:36

really hurts." You know, you you podcast every week, >> two episodes a week or an episode every week and pretty soon that just stuff just flies right by the the signal, the noise, it just goes way way down. >> So, I offer that to people because it the the more you put out there, the more

25:51

feedback you get >> and the less of an impact the feedback has. But the positive feedback also it it's just it becomes just noisier in general.

So now when you sit down to write a book >> you must see some level of feedback. You

26:07

want to know is it selling? Is it doing well?

Is it not doing well >> and but it sounds like you don't analyze why it might have done well or not well. You just assume you know that's where you were at in that point in time and that's where they're at.

>> Yeah. I I don't analyze it because I don't know if you can ever even figure

26:22

it out. And also so much of it has to do with in any thing that you put out with timing.

Are people you know is this uh you know ready the moment you know how much does it get did it get promoted? Did it get you know did people even know

26:38

it existed? Um there's so many factors that are above and beyond whether it was actually good >> and I think you can only you can only ask your you know did you do your best >> you know um did you leave it all on the floor and if you did

26:54

>> then that's all you can ask um but again it's for me it's a lifelong practice >> and I'm going to do this till they take me out you know and whatever the next one is I'll do that. It's clear you're not going to pull the pin.

27:10

>> No, I'm not going to pull the pin. >> Good.

Dopamine dynamics in the brain would tell us that if you have a big success, say a book or a movie or an album, what have you, that the next thing, no matter how well it goes, is

27:26

not going to feel that great unless it exceeds the previous thing. This is just the laws of dopamine circuitry that exist in all of us.

>> I didn't write the script. It's hardwired.

>> Of all your books, which one got the

27:41

most public acceptance and praise? >> It's either The War of Art or Gates of Fire?

>> Okay. What book came after that?

>> But on uh let me say on both of them, >> it took years, >> years for that to for either of them to

27:58

uh to reach any kind of level. Neither of them were overnight successes.

There wasn't any, you know, any of that fanfare, nothing really. >> Finally, like maybe eight or 10 years later, you know, you realize, oh, you know, this thing is percolating along

28:14

pretty good, you know, so that's a whole different sort of there wasn't that much dopamine coming in to me on on that. >> That's probably a good thing.

>> Yeah, I think so. >> Yeah.

I mean, you know, the whole notion of one hit wonders like, you know, bands that get, you know, there's a great

28:29

movie with Tom Hanks about that. I forget what the title is.

>> That thing you do. >> That thing you do.

It's a perfect example of that. And um you know there these one hit wonders are kids that you know they they blow up.

They get one song they gone. >> There's actually an incredible movie that if you don't mind I'll just mention

28:46

to people that I wish everyone would see. Um it's a documentary that I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival years ago called My Big Break.

And it's a it's a true story of four guys living in an apartment in Los Angeles who all want to

29:01

become actors. And I won't give any more information about it, but let's just say one of them becomes immensely successful.

I won't talk about what happens to the other three, but the takeaway from the movie, and I'm not, this is not a spoiler, is

29:18

that everybody gets their big break at some point. >> Most people blow it.

Ah, >> and they don't blow it because they can't do the thing. They blow it because they can't handle that it's happening >> and they it gets in the way of their creative process or their essence.

It's

29:34

an awesome documentary. >> Oh, really?

My big break, huh? >> Yeah.

Fantastic. And I think anyone that wants to get good at anything >> should see it.

Uh I certainly learned a lot from it. >> Okay.

So, you're not paying attention to the criticism is uh

29:50

>> I'm trying not to. I'm human and you know but definitely the ideal >> is to really move beyond that.

>> I went to college with Jack Johnson you know guitar player. He's a very successful musician and uh years ago we connected and um >> he was telling me about his life cuz I

30:07

knew his now wife. She was went to college with us and he was telling me about his kids and um and it was so clear from everything he was telling me that he had created methods to not really come in contact with just how big

30:23

he had gotten >> like to really like humble himself >> good for him >> on a daily basis doing house chores >> great cleaning the toilet whatever it is you know especially the days after big >> big festivals where you just you know had immense crowds and you know

30:40

>> uh that he had built these sort of um self-regulatory process. It sounds like >> like a very zen sort of story.

Pastor would say sweep the corner. You know then >> we grew up in Hawaii so he's he's got that he always had this mellow.

It was amazing from be day one of college. He

30:56

was way cooler than everybody >> and super nice. So he didn't act cool.

He was just cool cuz he was just Jack. Great surfer, great guy.

His wife's awesome. Turn picked up a guitar.

He was in a college band uh that was um okay it was like a backup but he wasn't even the

31:12

main guy. >> Ah >> and then I was in graduate school one day and I I think I got iTunes and I looked and I was like Jack Johnson.

I called a friend. I was like Jack Johnson's on iTunes.

They're like you haven't noticed. I was like no I've been nosed down in the lab like he's a really big deal and he's I mean he's been a

31:28

really big deal for a very long time. Incredibly humble, incredibly kind >> and self-regulates, >> you know.

Um >> good for him. Yeah, external validation sounds like it's an enemy for you as much as criticism is an enemy.

>> Yeah, I mean I certainly don't believe

31:44

in it at all. I think it's a seductive thing that's only going to pull you in the wrong direction, you know.

Yeah. Third party validation as my uh my partner Shawn Coin, my business partner Sean Coin, which I have to give him credit before we forget.

The title, the

31:59

War of Art, was not my title. It was Shawn Coin's title.

>> He handed that to you. He gave me that title.

Yeah, we published we published the book together. His little company published it.

But um that was his title. So God bless him.

32:14

>> Yeah. God bless him.

Titles matter. >> Yeah, they do.

>> Titles matter. >> Eat, pray, love.

>> How does that It doesn't get better than that. Yeah.

>> The body keeps the score. >> Ah yeah.

No other book in the field of kind of um psychology, biology, wellness

32:32

has like resonated in people's minds as much and as long as the body keeps the score because it's just an awesome title. >> Yeah, it is.

It's a great one. >> Yeah.

How much or how often do you think about book titles? Is it at the end during?

at the end, but I find that

32:47

they're really hard, you know, and a lot of times other people have titled stuff for me or I've, you know, it's really hard >> to come up with a great one. Yeah, I don't know what the secret is at all.

If it sometimes it pops out along the way.

33:03

Um, yeah, I don't know. >> I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.

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like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Hubberman podcast listeners.

Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function. Do you

34:54

think that personal sacrifice at the level of relationships is necessary to be a successful artist of any kind? >> Certainly in my experience, yes.

And um

35:10

I was talking to uh a friend of mine who's a um a bodybuilder and he was talking he was just saying to me the other day he said, "I don't believe in balance. you know, the work life balance, you know,

35:25

um, and I'm kind of that way, too. You know, that, uh, if you want, I mean, I I take my hat off tremendously to Kobe Bryant for being such a family man.

Obviously loved his kids, loved his wife, >> but yet was obsessed with basketball,

35:42

you know, to the nth degree. Somehow he did it >> and and able even to go beyond that, you know, and be helpful to people and so forth.

But I do think that uh at some point, you know, if you're going to

35:58

pursue your calling, whatever it is, you got to pursue it with both feet. And, you know, so that might lead to an unbalanced, you know, life.

>> So that means telling people you're

36:13

going to bed early. You go to bed very early.

I go to bed early, but that that's just my own quirkyness, you know. But um but there are a lot of things that I've missed in life, including having kids.

And um but I don't I don't regret it, you know. That's the nature

36:29

of the game, I think. >> Well, you have a rich and full life.

>> I mean, I have an unbalanced life, but to me, it's what I what I I've chosen. You know, this is uh like that great speech in The Godfather Part Two where

36:44

uh is it Lee Stberg who played um uh the equivalent not Myer Lansky the real whatever I forget his name was but he said he was talking about when >> Hyman Roth >> Heyman Roth Heyman Roth and he said uh

37:00

he had his this scene with Michael Corleone where he says he talked about Mo Green his protege that they grew up somebody put a bullet in his eye. And I never asked who did it because I said to myself, "This is the life we've chosen." And that's that's how I look at it.

It's

37:18

interesting. It >> was a great scene, too.

>> It is a great scene. Um >> God, those movies are so good.

Yeah. >> Um the first two anyway.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah.

>> Talk about a flop on the third. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Um, in the United States we celebrate high

37:36

achievers and people that really break off from the pack. It's it's really the essence of the United States in terms of how it was >> Yeah.

>> You know, u >> more the pity. >> Yeah.

Exactly. >> Now we're paying the price.

Yeah. But you know, Michael Jordan, you know, Kobe

37:52

Bryant, I mean, these people had, as you pointed out, very um well, maybe Kobe was a bit more balanced, but immense number of hours devoted to craft, but I feel like if you grow up in the United States, at some point you get the message that that could be you. >> Mhm.

38:07

>> Right. That's that's different than uh and I know because my dad's from South America and I have family from Europe and uh I've been exposed to the fact that not every kid around the world grows up getting the message in their

38:22

ear all the time like hey that could be you. >> You just have to find your thing and devote yourself.

Then now there seems to be a bit of a pivot where people focus on, you know, the flaws those high achievers had and that they

38:38

weren't perfect. And I think what we're saying here is that or what I'm hearing is that it's by definition that if you're going to go for a high peak that your your life is not going to be balanced.

Sort of like >> um you know Edund Hillary first to climb Everest, he was gone for a long time.

38:54

They didn't have cell phones. I imagine if he had a family, they didn't even know if he was going to come back.

That's not balance. >> That's not balance at all.

They weren't handing out checks at the top of Everest. >> So, this idea that, you know, pursuing one's craft at the expense of something

39:09

else, >> is that something that uh you carefully analyzed along the way or do you feel you've been driven by some force inside you to just keep leaning into creative uh works and if things have to gently or not so gently fall off the side? Um, so

39:25

be it. >> I have tried in my life various um other endeavors including love, marriage, a straight career, you know, a bluecollar career, always trying to find

39:42

something that at the end of the day I could lay my head on the pillow and have peace of mind. And nothing worked until I found, you know, pursuing my craft that worked for me.

39:58

You know, I could I could at the end of the day I felt okay, I've earned my place on the planet doing this, whereas other things I would at the end of the day I would just be crazy, you know. So I was sort of led to that.

It was like, thank God I found

40:13

something, you know, that I can uh, you know, hang my hat on. And over that was a long time ago and over the course of those years I sort of from time to time I asked myself is this still working for you or is this are you did you you know should you be evolving into something beyond this but it it is still working

40:30

for me and it and there is I don't really have a bucket list of stuff you know somebody gave me a billion dollars I just give it away you know um so yeah uh it just was for me and again it's not

40:46

even like about peak success because I haven't had peak success at all. You know, I've had enough success to pay the rent, which is good enough for me.

You know, I'm doing what I want to do and I don't have to do something else. Um, so it is for me it's really a sort of

41:02

pursuit of of of what I feel like I was put on the planet to do. And it's always been a surprise, too.

Book to book to book. I'd never each one is a surprise.

Um, which is another sort of weird counterintuitive thing. It isn't like,

41:19

oh, could you do a five-year planning? Oh, I'm going to do this and this.

No, you know, something comes, it presents itself, it comes in from the goddess >> and there it is, you know, and then you do it. >> So, it's clear it's in your nature to create things and to discover what it is

41:34

you need to create. I so can't help but feel that like we're all here to do something particular to us.

>> Yeah, I think so. >> Yeah.

And I think a lot of times if people don't have a balanced life, people assume, oh, well, that's trauma.

41:52

And sometimes it is. And uh or that's this or that's that.

I mean, nowadays I have more >> uh you know, quote unquote famous friends and and a lot of them have trauma. A lot of them don't.

>> Mhm. Some of them are like really happy and a lot of them have >> kind of disappointing.

42:08

>> Yeah. And and a lot of them have what I call it kind of more of a bento box life like but where their career is, you know, the the main entree and then there's some other little >> things and they have relationship and um of different kinds animals or people and

42:25

um and some people the relationship bin is bigger >> and their career is less of a less of a focus and they seem very happy. Um so this notion of balance is a is a peculiar one that people whatever uh bento box people seem to exist in they

42:41

they sort of like to project onto others. >> Uh how much time do you spend on social media?

>> Maybe an hour a day. you know, I sort of uh it's a vice which I've got to definitely stop doing.

But I will go like through Instagram and do that, you

42:56

know, just kind of as far as like com communicating with people, very little, you know, like >> my email I'm get I'm done with my email in like two minutes in the morning, you know. >> But I do think it's great that it's you on social media, you know, that it's

43:12

your voice for your content. I think um I think that's great because I think that there's a real thing to that people now can get in near direct contact with the creators that they're >> inspiring with other people that are doing whatever they're doing.

Yeah.

43:28

>> One thing that I really appreciate about all your work is that >> um there doesn't seem to be a consistent theme. Some of them overlap, >> right?

Um but >> there are a lot of different themes in there. Before we move to some of the

43:43

themes that perhaps people are not expecting that I'd like to parse with you. Um talk about turning pro and the concept of being a professional.

Um if we accept the idea of resistance with a capital R that's our own internal

43:59

tendency to sabotage ourselves when we try to uh set out to write our book or do our movie or follow our calling whatever it is. Then the question becomes well how do you overcome this thing?

And uh what worked for me was the

44:15

idea of turning pro. For years when I was struggling and could never get it together, I realized that at one point that I was just thinking like an amateur and that if I could flip a switch in my mind and think like a professional that

44:30

I I could overcome some of the things like um um when I think of uh a great pro, I think of Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady or somebody like that. And um so like a professional some

44:46

of the characteristics of a professional as opposed to an amateur. >> Mhm.

>> A professional shows up every day. >> Mhm.

>> A professional stays on the job all day or the equivalent of of all day. I mean a lot of us who have jobs are

45:02

professionals in our jobs but when we come home at night and we try to you know start our band or you know our fiddle band we flame out on that sort of because we can't sort of carry over that professional attitude. A prof a professional as I said this before does

45:18

not take success or failure personally. An amateur will right?

An amateur gets a bad review bad response of this and they just crap out. I don't want to do this anymore.

Right? uh professional plays hurt like if uh Kobe Bryant, Michael

45:33

Jordan, you know, if they've tweaked the hamstring, they're out there, you know, they'll die before they'll get be taken off the court, you know. Uh whereas an amateur when he or she confronts adversity will fold.

>> Oh, it's too cold out, you know. I've

45:48

got a I got a you know, I've got the flu. That kind of thing.

Um, another thing, uh, an amateur worries about how they feel, like, "Oh, I don't feel like getting out of bed this morning. I don't feel like really doing my work today." A

46:04

professional doesn't care how they feel. They they they do it, right?

Um, so an amateur has amateur habits and a professional has professional habits. And my book, Turning Pro, is about that, flipping that switch in your head that

46:19

costs no money. You don't have to take a course.

You don't have to get certified. All you have to do is sort of say to yourself, if you can do it, and it ain't easy.

Okay, I'm going to attack this thing, whatever it is now, as if I were Kobe Bryant, you know, would he quit,

46:36

you know, when he didn't feel like doing it? Absolutely not.

So, and and um oh, here's another aspect of turning pro that worked for me. Uh, I had like about a 10-year career as a screenwriter, as we talked about with King Kong Lives.

And, um,

46:53

one of the things you learn is that screenwriters a lot of times will have their one-man corporations and they will not sign a contract as themselves. You know, it won't be Andrew Huberman is on the contract.

It'll be your corporation,

47:10

Huberman Lab, FSO, for services of Andrew Huberman. And I really love that idea of thinking of yourself as a twopart thing.

This you're the CEO of this thing and then you're the also the guy that does the work.

47:25

>> And I would find that if I was just thinking of myself as the guy that's doing the work, I have a hard time pitching my ideas. I'm sort of too shy.

But if I'm the CEO of my company, of my corporation, I'm a

47:41

pro. I can go in there and pimp the hell out of it, you know?

So that idea of being a of of looking at yourself as a professional kind of takes all judgment out of any failures that we've had. We don't blame ourselves anymore for procrastinating or being

47:56

perfectionists or giving into fear or self-doubt or anything. We just say, "Well, okay, I did that when I was thinking like an amateur, but now I'm going to think like a pro." And a pro just doesn't doesn't yield to that stuff.

So, it's a that that's a a mind

48:12

shift, a mindset shift that really helped me a lot. >> I love that.

I mean, so much of that feels is nested in taking oneself seriously. >> Yeah.

>> You know, I think when people hear the words taking oneself seriously, they think, "Oh, well, someone's going to be

48:28

heavy. They're never going to joke.

No sense of humor." But that's not what I'm referring to. >> I wish people would take themselves more seriously, including their creative sparks inside of them.

Um, you said there's no cost to turning pro. I agree

48:44

there's no u monetary cost. You can decide to flip that switch.

Uh, I would argue and I'm not arguing against because I don't think that uh >> No, I know what you're going to say. I agree with you.

I think there's a huge cost and the the huge cost I'm referring to is the one of how people around you

49:01

react when you start taking yourself seriously. I mean, I don't need to go into the story.

I've done it elsewhere, but I was a an unimpressive high school student. Thank God for my high school girlfriend going off to college and discovering that.

And then thank God for the biology teacher that turned me on to

49:17

biology. Thank God for Harry Carl.

But >> I had the drive, but certainly it wasn't organized in the right ways. But when I switched from being a fun guy to be around in a lot of context to the guy

49:32

that is absolutely going to ace the exam no matter how much work I have to put into it that's absolutely going to be in the gym three days a week that's absolutely going to get my sleep and you know you get a lot of flack especially in your early 20 late teens early 20s

49:48

now I did go out and party then I was I didn't never drank a lot but I I went to parties and but across the years I did fewer and fewer social things. Even as a as a graduate student, postoc and a junior professor, you know, at meetings, everyone would go to happy hour.

I would

50:04

go work out if I hadn't done it that morning. And I would go to sleep at night instead of staying up late talking in the bar because great interactions would happen in those bars, scientific discussions and so forth.

But the next morning, I wanted to be on point during the seminar and be able to learn and be

50:21

able to contribute. And so the big cost is not everybody likes that because they feel it as pressure.

It's sort of like if you're eating well, you're eating healthy. People pay more attention to the ways they are not eating healthy and

50:36

they will do everything they can to try and make you feel bad about that. >> Yeah, >> we see this in mass.

We see this in culture. You know it, you know, even there are extremes of, you know, body dysmorphia and people taking fitness to extremes that aren't healthy or anything

50:51

to extremes. But we see people being bas basically not shamed but uh ridiculed for being serious about their health.

It's nuts. But it's all about them.

It's very clear. It's all about their own

51:07

unwillingness to give up the second chocolate croissant. >> Yeah.

you know, or to feel like maybe they're not as fit as the people around them. I mean, when standards around you are at risk of rising, that can be really scary to people.

>> Yeah, we were talking about that

51:24

earlier, Andrew, when I was saying that like um it becomes when you start eating healthy and sleeping and getting up early and stuff, it becomes a reproach to your friends who know that they're not doing that, know they should be doing that, and they say, "Who is this guy to do that?" you know, and then they

51:40

will try to sabotage you and undermine you and ridicule you. And so, you're right, turning pro does have a cost.

A lot of times, you know, if you take that course, you have to leave people behind. You know, people who were your friends, you can't be friends with them anymore,

51:56

you know, because a lot of times groups of friends will have an unspoken kind of compact among them that we're all going to stay mediocre. That's the deal, right?

And in fact, um, Goodwill Hunting, that was what that

52:12

movie was about, right? That, uh, the, um, um, Matt Damon character was this mathematical genius, right?

And, uh, his buddies, all of his, you know, fist fighting Boston Souy guys were had this

52:28

compact. They were all going to stay, you know, kind of bluecollar guys and we're all going to be buddies and we're going to have a wonderful time, you And then there's that great scene at the end of the movie where um Ben Affleck, his best friend, says to him, you know, if I come back 20 years from now and you're

52:43

still here, I'm going to kill you cuz you won the lottery. You got this thing and you this gift and you got got to use it.

So there are those kind of packs that people make. We're all going to stay mediocre right here where we are.

And if you Andrew try to rise above you

52:58

be the tall poppy, somebody's going to, you know, cut you off. So sometimes we do have to leave people behind you know.

>> Well the good news is and I can say this from experience that there are people waiting for you who have high standards that are

53:14

>> make excellent friends and many of the people that at one point we feel we've left behind >> later come back and ask for ways to better themselves physically creative creatively etc. Um yeah, I think um the

53:31

notion of dominant culture is one that um my dad internalized in me really early on. One of the things I love about being a professor at Stanford is you look to your right or you look to your left and people are awesome.

People are going it's it has if anything I mean you

53:48

know it's the issue that you go well how much pressure is this? And um you know I would say actually very little from the outside.

Everyone who's a faculty member at Stanford is putting so much pressure on themselves to live out their vision of what they're trying to create. I mean, it's spectacular.

I've got

54:04

colleagues that I could tell you about multiple domains of life where they're just >> 11 out of 10, right? And some it's only one and in some they have more challenged personal lives like anything else.

And in some they seem to just do it all. But the uh I think the notion a

54:21

former guest on this podcast who's a a tier former tier one operator um DJ Shipley uh said you never want to be the big fish in the small pond. That's the worst place to be.

It's the most uncomfortable, sad, low place to be. You

54:36

want to be surrounded by people who are really striving but really pushing themselves. your standards go up and you get better and you realize all sorts of wonderful things about who you can become.

I think that's one good feature of social media now, which is that

54:52

people can find mentors. They can find people who are um are not giving the illusion of being perfect.

You know, we used to think that famous people were perfect. >> Nowadays, the more famous you are, the harder it is to control your reputation.

>> And I think that's in some ways a good

55:07

thing. has its darker side but the the idea that nobody's perfect.

It's just that people are emphasizing or deemphasizing certain aspects of life. >> So, but yeah, I think uh turning oneself pro, which is as you pointed out, something that people can just do for

55:22

themselves, is really about taking yourself seriously and taking life seriously. >> And that brings me to a bigger question, which is >> so much of what you talk about, this is why I love it so much, is about the practical.

We started off talking about like what you do and when and how and

55:40

how you close out a session and how you reopen a session, >> but it seems like you're also very connected to the spiritual aspects of the creative process that you really bookend these for lack of a better phrase that you really bookend the two aspects of the creative process because

55:56

for many people they hear about creativity and it can seem kind of mystical >> and it almost like trying to grab fog and many times it the process is like trying to grab fog. So, you've given a lot of extremely practical advice, but when it comes to the kind of spiritual

56:11

um higher order stuff, if you will, the muse um how large a role does that play in your reflections about where you're going? Uh because sounds like you believe that a lot of this stuff is not us, it's coming

56:28

through us. >> I I absolutely believe that.

And I, you know, you're right, Andrew, and it's a the creative life, I think, is a twosided thing. You know, the one side is kind of the the bluecollar practical aspect of being a professional that you

56:44

know, you can sit down, you can do your work, you discipline yourself, you know what you're going to do, but the other side is that where do ideas come from? They don't come from us, you know, they come from someplace else.

And um so I'm

57:00

I'm definitely a believer that we live on the material plane here, but there's a plane above us and we're trying to communicate to that plane and that plane is trying to communicate to us. And our job as artists um like if we were in a

57:15

in a monastery or something, the the move from here to here would be called prayer. But if we're artist, the move from here to here is like the invocation of the muse.

It's kind of saying, "Give me an idea. help me, you know, and and and one we on the material plane put

57:33

ourselves at the service of this higher plane of our illumined self or whatever you want to call it, the yungian self, whatever we want to call it, and um try to channel it as best we can. And our job here to be is to be a in terms of

57:49

being a pro is to sort of be ready to take that voltage as it comes in. And like Beethoven could play on the piano what he was hearing in his in his head, right?

So that's our job. We we have to be able to to know how to produce that

58:06

in material form, whatever that is, but it's coming from another place. So I'm I'm absolutely a believer that uh you know there are higher dimensions and there's probably a lot of higher dimensions.

Um,

58:21

and I think the Greeks were really kind of on to something in the ancient Greeks in their concept of uh the muses and the various gods and goddesses that are uh, you know, interacting with this material plane that we're on. I, you know, that's a way of anthropomorphizing it.

I'm sure

58:38

you could, we could come up with some way in the quantum field or something. If you're a scientist, you probably know how to that it has to do with something.

I don't know what, but there is something coming from somewhere and it ain't us. >> Well, I have my ideas about that.

Very few of them are grounded in um neurons

58:55

and and cells, but they interact with neurons and cells. It's an evolving area.

You know, we had um a guest on the podcast uh uh David Denno, who's a um professor at Northeastern University talk about the relationship between

59:10

science and religion and how acts of faith, not just saying one believes in God. um not just saying one believes in a higher order consciousness but acts of faith, >> prayer for you, maybe it's through writing or other expressions that

59:28

involve action that those absolutely have positive health benefits. We now know that um but that it's really about the acts of faith >> that >> I love that phrase.

That's a great one and it is true. >> Yeah.

He it it struck a chord with me

59:44

too because in biology you learn that you need to understand the names of things. Mitochondria, Golgi apparat you need to know that but those are just names.

But the real magic in understanding biology and being able to internalize it is understanding things

00:00

in their verb states, right? Understanding how neurons work, not just as a description, but being able to think about that and visualize it.

I think it's the same with ourselves. This is why like you know clinical labels can be useful but understanding when one is in a uh sort of a place verb actions of

00:17

gratitude as opposed to just a reciting some gratitude thing that there's it's subtle but it's meaningful. Anyway, I don't quite know how to articulate it, but Denno described this and and the data from his laboratory um are showing that when people start to think in terms of

00:34

faith-based actions for many people through, you know, religious, you know, scripture, reading scripture or whatever it is. But there are many ways to to access this that um all sorts of interesting things start to happen at the level of morality at the

00:50

level of their own consciousness at their level of feelings of connectedness that go beyond any kind of simple 2 plus 2 equals 4 outcome. So I totally agree with you.

There's something else >> definitely something else going on. >> It's exciting.

I think that you know >> I know you're not a big drinker. Neither

01:07

am I. Maybe that's why you um you look so young for your age and so robust.

Although I think uh if I were to wager, I'd say it's also because you're pursuing what you love. You're you're answering your calling.

Certainly, that's the neverending source of

01:23

dopamine. >> Ah, is it?

>> Absolutely. Because it's it's it's self-replenishing.

>> Ah, I mean that's a great word, self-relening. >> Yeah.

It's a you know that's the clearly the thing. clearly the thing.

Uh >> so

01:38

>> you don't drink much but nowadays there's a lot of discussion and perhaps there always was about taking things to be able to at to bridge this plane between the self and the this higher order uh these messages that that we can receive and can come through us. Um I know a lot of writers drink a lot a

01:55

there have been a lot of alcohol alcoholic writers um >> there you hear that anyway not that I know anybody. >> Yeah I I think historically that was true.

I think a lot of writers have relied on amphetamines and alcohol to get their work done >> and nicotine.

02:11

>> Nicotine's kind of making a comeback in non-smoke form. So, let's set that aside.

>> Um, >> you do this through sheer good old marine style grit, it sounds like. >> Yeah.

or or kind of surrendering to it, you know, like I'm not a meditator, but

02:28

from what I gather, that's sort of what meditation is about, you know? So, yeah, just sort of that's how I that's how I do it.

I'm not even sure how I do it. I just put myself at the service of what I'm trying to do and and try to get out of the way as much as I can.

02:45

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03:01

That's 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste amazing.

Right now, my favorite flavor is the new cinnamon roll flavor, but I also like the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor, and I also like the salted peanut butter flavor. Basically, I like all the flavors.

They're all

03:17

delicious. Also, big news.

David bars are now back in stock. They were sold out for several months because they are that popular, but they are now back in stock.

By eating a David bar, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy for me to meet my protein goals of

03:32

1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day and to do so without eating excess calories. I generally eat a David Bar most afternoons and I always keep them with me when I'm away from home or traveling because they're incredibly convenient to get enough protein.

As I mentioned, they're incredibly delicious. And given that 28

03:49

grams of protein, they're pretty filling for just 150 calories, so they're great between meals as well. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidproin.com/huberman.

Again, that's davidproin.com/huberman. Throughout today's discussion, you've

04:04

mentioned various physical labor jobs. I have a very practical question.

How comfortable is the chair you sit in when you write? Uh, not very comfortable, but I'm only sitting there for a couple hours, so it's okay.

Yeah. >> How much do you care that it's unc not

04:20

that comfortable? >> It probably should not be comfortable, you know.

>> But, uh, hopefully you're in your head and you're not really noticing that sort of thing. Why do you ask that question, Andrew?

>> Because years ago, I I went online and I was like looking at some stuff about writers and there's a very famous

04:35

writer. I won't mention his name.

And he said, you know, it's very important that you have a super comfortable chair because otherwise you're going to be and I and you know what my first thought was, even though I he's far more successful at writing than I am. Um I thought that's terrible advice because

04:51

if someone were going to ask me, you know, how to do, I don't know, like a a really clean uh protein labeling experiment in the lab, you know, imunohistochemistry or something like that. I would make sure that they had everything.

I would make sure that the antibodies were fresh out of the but

05:07

then >> I would not want them to even know that there are now you know like >> kits that can make certain aspects of the process much easier because the moment you experience that creature comfort the the more painful the good

05:24

old classic way of doing it is. Now, that's not to say I wouldn't embrace new technologies, but this notion of optimization, which sometimes gets thrown at me, is a terrible one with respect to the creative process because I believe that if you're thinking about, oh, like, am I comfortable or not?

Am I

05:41

in an optimal place to to create it? We started this podcast in a closet, >> a small closet with me, Rob, and the bulldog.

Yeah. >> And we were not thinking about optimizing anything except getting the audio and the visuals just right enough that we could get it out there.

05:56

>> So I love love love and I'm not surprised that you have a slightly uncomfortable chair and then you don't really care so much. >> Yeah.

>> You know, >> yeah, I agree completely that you know that advice was really bad. I would go to the absolute opposite.

You know, get the most uncomfortable chair you possibly can have.

06:13

Do you think those years of physical labor, marine training, and your morning ritual of going to the gym uh have allowed your mind to be more durable by virtue of the fact that you can toler I think you can tolerate a fair amount of physical discomfort that you probably

06:29

don't even realize because you have no comparison that most people would um >> probably buckle under or at least be kind of like like you that >> I don't know. >> I feel like you are the opposite of like crotchety, you know?

Yeah. Terrible word to describe.

You know,

06:44

>> you don't see me at home, Andrew. >> Okay.

Yeah. Are you you're not a Are you a complainer?

>> No, I'm I've really tried. I never complain at all.

I think it's a real vice. It's another form of resistance.

>> Interesting. Well, Stephen Presfield,

07:00

this has been awesome. Before we conclude, I do want to ask you, what's your most recent book and what's it about?

And if you're willing, maybe give us a little peak behind the veil of of what might be coming next.

07:15

>> I have a book coming next June. >> Uh we were talking about this before.

I I had a book uh a few years ago called A Man at Arms, which was about it's about a recurring character that I have who I call the oneman killing machine of the

07:32

ancient world. Kind of the Clint Eastwood of the ancient world, Telmon of Arcadia.

And that book took place around the time of the crucifixion um fiction. Um the new book is one of the aspects of Telmont is he keeps

07:48

living life after life after life. And he is he's doomed because of crimes he committed in the past to live life after life as a soldier.

Always as a soldier, always fighting, always killing, always being killed, so on and so forth. So,

08:05

this new book that's coming out, it's called The Arcadian, is about his final life. And uh I won't say any more than that except that it takes place in the past and that um it's it's it's pretty

08:21

interesting and that uh how this all sort of plays out. It really kind of goes what we were talking about before about are there different levels of reality?

And in this case, um there definitely are different levels of reality. and this character has to deal with them um on the field of justice and

08:39

payback. >> Fantastic.

Next June. >> Next June.

Yeah. Okay.

The Arcadian. >> The Arcadian.

We'll keep our eyes and ears out for that. Meanwhile, uh you know, I don't know which book to recommend most, but you know, I love War of Art.

Um I love Do the Work. There's

08:56

so many. Um you know, so I won't ask you to to add uh just one other Gates of Fire.

They're all awesome. They're awesome listens and they're awesome reads.

Uh people should definitely check these out. It's uh clear you've had an enormous impact on people's creative

09:12

process. And these books are also very >> entertaining to listen to.

It's not not a bunch of lists. Yeah, they they really are.

And um and I'm actually very grateful I should say that you didn't have a ton of like immediate and big success with your movie with the King

09:29

Kong movie or and that War of Art took some time because I do think everything we know about dopamine dynamics tells us that who knows maybe you would have not written the subsequent books and I I I look at your work as a as a body of work and as a scientist that's something that

09:44

I can really appreciate. body of work is really what makes for an awesome >> and what you just said about dopamine.

I never had thought about that about it that way. That's true.

Sort of a slow release dopamine for me, you know, over many years >> and well and it compounds the way that you've experienced uh your wins. I mean,

10:01

oh, I've got stories and go on for days about people I knew that had big papers published in Science or Nature that then disappeared completely. They're just gone.

They're just completely gone because they couldn't take that the next thing didn't match up to the first thing. Um, you know, th this stuff is real.

The one hit

10:18

wonder thing happens in every field. And, uh, that movie, My Big Break, like really captures it in the in the realm of, uh, acting.

>> Um, >> you know, a lot of things we're talking about here today, Andrew, they don't teach you in school. You know, nobody teaches you about what if you are have a

10:34

one hit, how do you handle, nobody even that's the topic doesn't come up at all or how to how to handle negative criticism, how to handle positive stuff like that. What's the idea of turning pro?

Nobody, you never learn this, you know, and they're all absolutely vital

10:50

life skills that you hope you encounter mentors along the way that teach you because it's not taught in school. >> Well, God bless you for stepping up and being that mentor to so many people, including to me.

You're on that list. I I swear you're on that list, and it's

11:07

not a long list. Embarrassed.

No. Well, for the right reasons, I should say.

>> And thank you for coming here today. And >> thank you for having me.

>> Yeah, this has been a real pleasure. >> We've been talking about this for years.

>> It was great when we discovered we were neighbors. >> Yeah.

>> I hope we haven't squeezed all the fruit

11:23

out of the orange here. We can do this again sometime.

>> Oh, absolutely. And I'll see you in the gym.

I'll try and get up a little earlier. That's actually starting after my >> a little later.

>> Starting after my 50th birthday, I'm I'm going to be a 5:00 a.m. riser.

ah >> no matter what time I went to sleep that

11:39

was something I resolved a few days ago with um after a different discussion on here but um I feel a strong anti-depressant effect of waking up and you just get so much more done >> you know but that getting out of bed >> when you haven't slept

11:54

>> quite as much as you would like is brutal >> and as I said to you before 50 is nothing at all you're just a kid you know you got another 50 plus years ahead of yourself so I know when you turn 50, you turn 40, you turn 30, oh my god, my life is over, you know, not so, you

12:10

know, take it from me. I' I'd give my left arm to be 50 again.

You got it made. Awesome.

Well, that perhaps is the best birthday gift I could have received. Feels good.

Thank you. Please come back again.

Thanks for doing everything you're doing. I know I do not need to tell you this, but please just

12:26

keep going. We're We're all >> I will if you will.

>> Deal. >> All right.

>> Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Steven Presfield. To learn more about his work and to find links to his various books, please see the show note captions.

If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube

12:42

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12:58

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For those of you

13:14

that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

It's entitled Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience.

And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to

13:32

stress control protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

The book is now available by pre-sale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors.

You can pick the one that you

13:48

like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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14:05

and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Hubberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Hubberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zerorost monthly

14:21

newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training.

All of

14:38

that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubbermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email.

And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Steven Presfield.

And last, but certainly not

14:55

least, thank you for your interest in science. [Music]