Brad Stulberg

So I think it's bad culturally.

And then on a personal level, I think it's so important to separate the pursuit of excellence from success because the top of the mountain is so freaking narrow.

Like you don't spend much time on the top of the mountain.

You spend 99.9999% of your life on the sides of the mountain, you know, doing the work, climbing, digging where your feet are.

And that's where you have to find the mastery of mattering.

So if you're on the side of the mountain, you don't give a shit about values, then it's not going to be a very good journey to the top.

And I'm so glad that you're asking.

I don't know if you saw recently on my Twitter feed, I posted an example of someone that was giving this huge talk about how external success doesn't matter and fame doesn't matter.

And he's on a podcast that gets 3.4 million downloads wearing a shirt that makes this person's bicep muscle look bigger than the planet Mars.

So

In my definition of excellence, there's multiple sections in this book that explicitly say that outcomes matter.

Success matters.

Outcomes are important.

Anyone that tells you otherwise, don't listen to.

Outcomes often have financial repercussions.

They often open you up to new opportunities.

And when you set a big goal and you want to achieve it, it can be an enormous force of motivation.

There's a reason that we keep score.

There's a reason that we have the New York Times bestseller list.

You should want to achieve.