Ryan Holiday

And I'm not sure that you do.

Look, I'm not saying that some challenges aren't frustrating, that obstacles aren't painful.

But obviously, a core idea in Stoic philosophy is that some forms of struggle and adversity make us better.

Psychologists call this desirable difficulties.

And it's actually the theme of today's conversation with the great David Epstein.

We broke up his episode into a handful of sort of chunks rather than doing sort of one long episode.

And if you read his book, Range, which I loved, his book, Sports Gene, which is really good, or his new book, Inside the Box.

I think you'll see it's a theme of his work, how certain kinds of limits and friction and challenges can sharpen us rather than hold us back.

And that's what we're going to talk about here.

An obstacle isn't always in your way.

Sometimes it...

is the way.

And I think you're going to like this conversation.

As I said, David Epstein is one of my favorite writers.

I rave about his stuff all the time.

He's a former reporter at ProPublica, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, and he's written for many years about performance, human potential, learning, and hidden advantages, sometimes in breadth and sometimes in specialization.

You can follow him on Instagram at David Epstein.

You can get signed copies of Range and Inside the Box online.

But let's get into this idea of desirable difficulties.

You know what silently kills sales teams?