Brad Stulberg

So I think that there's this interesting shift that happens in any pursuit from I did this for the achievement.

Some people call it a business card book.

Like I want to be able to say I wrote a book versus I'm a writer and I care about the craft.

And being values neutral, there's nothing wrong with doing certain things to say that you achieve them.

But I think that the amount of satisfaction and fulfillment you get out of them is much, much different if you view it as a craft or a practice.

Yeah, yeah.

The goal is the path and the path is the goal.

I mean, that's how I think about fitness.

I mean, you could like compete at a powerlifting meet and deadlift a certain amount of weight and no one can denigrate that.

But that goes away very quickly, no different than you can write a book, but if you never write again, your ability to write is going to go away.

What about obsession?

What role does obsession play?

Yeah, so it's interesting.

There's a more clinical definition of obsession, and then there's a colloquial definition of obsession.

So the clinical definition, I'll start there, essentially says that it is very similar to addiction, where you do the thing despite negative consequences,

And it becomes also like a compulsion.

So even if you don't want to do it, you do it.

So a true example of obsession would be that you are training to get better at basketball, and even though you're overtraining to the point where you're getting injured, you keep training.

That is like obsessive passion, is what the researchers call it.

It's associated with bad outcomes.