Brad Stulberg

And I think it's an especially important quality in today's world because more and more people do have to be their own publicist and they do have to be their own marketer and they do have to develop their own brand.

So if you want to go into a creative pursuit, it's not like the days of the old where you can just go into a hermitage and write a great book and it'll sell a million copies.

If you don't tell people about your book, it's not going to sell any copies.

So how do you arm yourself to go out into the world to swim in this water of dopamine and external validation and results without getting completely drowned by it?

Does that make sense?

So it's like centering yourself on doing the work more so than the external stuff.

But I think that oftentimes too, people get into this trap where they're like, oh, I don't care about results.

All I care about is the work.

It's bullshit.

Like if you're saying that you're projecting because it's normal to care about results.

So the goal isn't to be perfect.

The goal is just never to let that obsession with results become a more important force than the obsession with the work itself.

Yeah.

I mean, that's such a part of it, right?

There's a whole section in the book on this notion of like consistency compounds.

So if heroic individualism loves the all-nighter that you post on LinkedIn or the video of you doing CrossFit where you puke at the end, groundedness loves the, hey, I inched myself forward today, but I didn't destroy myself, so I'll be able to pick up again tomorrow.

And again, it's such a part of this notion of being in the process, being present allows you to be consistent.

Whereas if you're constantly focused on crushing yourself or crushing it or optimizing all the time, then that might look good in the short term, but will lead to eventually burnout in the long term.

So, like, the way that I like to put it is an all-nighter every once in a while.

It happens.