Brad Stulberg

No elite athlete.

No elite artist, no great writer hates writing or doing sports or making art.

They might find it really challenging.

They might find it very hard.

They might have bad days.

But the totality of the experience, of course they like it.

Because if you don't enjoy what you do, if you don't have fun, then you're not going to last very long.

There's this enormous misnomer that intensity and joy are separate and they're opposites.

But what I found in my reporting and my research is that actually intensity and joy can often coexist.

Like you can bring your all and be really intense about something and have a great time doing it.

And when you have that combination, that's when really good things tend to happen.

It's gotta be for a few select things.

I think that, as I was saying, if you try to bring this to everything, like you're just gonna burn yourself out and you're probably not gonna enjoy or be very excellent at any of the things.

So I think this is for one or at most two things in your life.

So a lot of people have a primary craft

And then maybe there's a secondary craft.

So in my own life, I bring this most to writing.

That's my craft.

I'm very lucky.

It's also my profession.