Brad Stulberg
speaker
1,230 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 31 Mar
Brad Stulberg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Oh, thank you.
That's one of my favorite parts of the book, too, probably because I also struggle with it.
So, you know, I write these things to help myself figure them out in many ways.
So making things happen is, to me, effortful focus.
And it is driving.
It is screwing the wrench tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter until the bolt locks in.
And what the research shows is that strategy gets you very, very, very far until it becomes the very thing that gets in your way.
So these coveted flow states, I'm sure you've talked about this on the podcast before, where everything's clicking, you're in the zone.
A big part of those flow states is effortlessness, right?
So once you get really close to breaking through, to peaking in something, the thing that got you that far, the making things happen, the trying, actually becomes the one thing that keeps you attached to your ego, to your sense of self, that you have to learn to let go of.
This is so hard, particularly in organizational settings, because you get these people that rise to leadership positions by just constantly crushing it, by making things happen.
They even become known in the organization as someone that can make things happen.
Well, if you're an N of 1, that works.
If you're leading a team of 10, that works.
If you're leading a team of 1,000, that makes you a micromanager that's going to burn out because it's impossible to make things happen across 1,000 people.
So it's true both in an individual context when we need to learn to just let go, to peak, but it's also true when you're in an organizational context
where you get better and better and better using this one quality, and then eventually you have to let things happen on their own.
The metaphor that I use in the book that I find really powerful is from the mid-century psychoanalyst, D.W.
Winnicott, who talked a lot about the good enough parent.
And what Winnicott said is that the helicopter parent that is constantly intruding on their kids and doing things for their kids, the kid does not end up well.
Showing 781–800 of 1,230 · page 40 of 62
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