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David Goggins: Things I don’t want to do

David Goggins was on Joe Rogan’s podcast again recently. (Episode links: YouTube, iTunes)

David is a retired Navy SEAL, runs ultramarathons, and previously had the world record for pull-ups in a 24-hour period (4000+). Working out has been a huge part of his success in life.

But he says he doesn’t do it for the physical benefits (At 17:45):

Rogan: That’s such an important point, when you talk about the working out. A lot of people, when they think about working out, they think of it as being a physical thing.

Goggins: Right. No, no. I did it for mental. People always say, “My god.” No, don’t, don’t look at it like—I didn’t care about losing weight, I didn’t care about being the fastest person. I wasn’t making the Olympics. I wasn’t going to pros. I could barely read and write when I was a junior in high school. I wasn’t going anywhere. I saw working out as a way to build callouses on my mind. I had to callous over the victim’s mentality.

I watch these movies. I talked about Rocky last time I was on here. I always equated training to mental toughening. It always looked brutal. People waking up early and doing all these things. It looked horrible. I was like, “Wow, I’ve got to start doing that.” Not to get better, bigger, and stronger. But that is what’s going to build me. That looks uncomfortable. That looks brutal. Getting up early, I don’t want to do that. So I made this long list of things I don’t want to do. Through that I found myself.

(There should be a better term for working out to separate what he does from the 20-minute thing I’ll do later today and pat myself on the back for.)

I like how James Clear puts it (check out my notes on his book “Atomic Habits” here) when he describes casting a vote for yourself. Each time you do the good habit you’re trying to build, you’re casting a vote for yourself. You’re one step closer to being the person you want to become.

Even if you’ve finally accepted you won’t look like an action figure, there are so many other benefits to exercise. I’ll often consider the benefits it has for energy and for focus. What Goggins reminded me of is that you can build mental toughness.

The next time you hit your limit, go on just a little bit further. Callous your mind.

Weekly Deck — Issue 001

Books mentioned:

Podcasts mentioned:

Working undercover or just tracking books: Keep it simple

Check out the full notes for “The Rescue Artist” by Edward Dolnick

The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (by Edward Dolnick)

I’m working on a couple goals: (1) posting regularly and (2) focusing on 1-3 books at a time instead of jumping around in like 5-7 books. To keep things simple, I’m going to share one excerpt each day from one of the books I’m currently reading with some thoughts.

In the spirit of keeping things simple…

Here’s a quote from The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick:

Hill’s dislike of guns also reflects hostility toward technology in general. He can manage a cell phone or send an e-mail, but that is as far as he goes. The function of mechanical contrivances is to betray their user at the worst possible moment.

Hill in this is Charley Hill, the undercover cop Norwegian police hired when The Scream was stolen in 1994.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. If something isn’t going wrong with your gadgets while you’re undercover, it’s just waiting for the perfect moment to stop working.

The Rescue Artist gives a look into a few worlds: high-end art, the criminal underworld, and the world undercover cops. It’s fascinating.

I had a familiar thought: I should read more books like this

And the last time I had that feeling was when I was reading The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly. (I wrote about it earlier this year—check that out.) That book came to mind because I was really enjoying The Rescue Artist and trying to think of what made it special. I think that it’s a departure from the usual “Here’s sort of how to get rich but, you know, with meaning” books I read.

In any case, I’m almost finished with this book and haven’t decided what the next book will be. I ordered a few hardcover books: New York 2140 (fiction), On Grand Strategy, and Choose Wonder Over Worry. I’m hoping that hardcover will help me focus but I suspect it will also just end up being inconvenient and I’ll read less.

I also still need to finish Maverick, which is also in hardcover. I’m more than halfway through so I might do that. I’ll apply the snowball debt method to books to finish the books that are nearest to completion.

Someday I’d like to have a better format for this

In keeping things simple, I’ll stick to a bulleted list. The problem for me isn’t that the technology breaks, it’s that I end up in a tinkering black hole. I want to change some style in WordPress, then get the IDE set up, then think well maybe I should make a custom template, then…

Okay so the current reading list

  • The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick: See above
  • Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman: This will definitely be the next Kindle book I read. I bought it last year but didn’t finish it. I’ve been bingeing on William Goldman interviews and videos so I thought it’d be good to start reading his book again. It’s great.
  • Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks (audiobook): I wrote a post about Matthew Dicks’s appearance on The Art of Manliness the other day (check that out here). I went ahead and picked up the book. I’m about an hour in and it’s got some good tips on storytelling. Some themes so far are that you don’t have to live an insane life to have good stories, if you pay attention you’ll see stories in your life, and telling stories is different from acting out a play.
  • Snow Crash (audiobook): I’ve been sick the past few days so I’ve just been putting this on in the background. I’m realizing how enjoyable it is to put a book on that I’ve listened to already. It’s like opening Netflix and throwing Friends on. I can turn my focus off and relax.

Alright stay tuned. In the meantime I’ll press publish on this thing and hope that technology doesn’t betray me.

Podcast note: How to beat writer’s block

Treat writer’s block like Mario Hezonja treats a Giannis block attempt:

Pretend it doesn’t exist. Believe it doesn’t exist. Then step right over it.

Richard K. Morgan was on The Writer Files podcast recently. I enjoyed what he had to say about when asked about writer’s block (at 30:50):

Nahhhh—there’s no such thing. There’s writer’s block in the sense that, yeah, there are days where you sit down and you just don’t feel like it. Or you can’t—you’re writing and what you’re writing is shit. But that’s not writer’s block. That’s just—you’re having a bad day.

I do think it’s—the whole concept of writer’s block is a bit self indulgent. Because you can write. Okay so you’re not writing up to the standard you’re happy with. What you’re writing, you don’t especially like. Tough. Get on. Write it. You can always go back and revise it at a later stage.

The rest of the episode is great, too. He’s grateful that he can write full-time and doesn’t like the notion that writing full-time is this incredibly difficult, painful occupation. If you have another full-time job and are working into the night to work on your novel on the side, struggling to get published, then that can be tough. But he makes it sound like a pretty sweet gig once you’ve made it. Especially when you consider all the other things in the world you could be doing for work.

If you have writer’s block, write anyway. It reminded me of how Seth Godin compares writing and speaking. You never have talker’s block:

The reason we don’t get talker’s block is that we’re in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

Turn the mic on. Lower your bar. Start writing.

(Just also want to point out that Giannis did this later in the same game. He doesn’t believe in getting blocked either.)

Podcast note: How to tell better stories

Matthew Dicks knows how to tell stories. He’s a 5-time Moth GrandSlam winner and he was interviewed on The Art of Manliness: “Podcast #462: How to Tell Better Stories”.

Ever since reading James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” (check out my notecards), I’ve been considering small things I can do daily (instead of medium things done every other day or large things done weekly).

What’s one daily habit Matthew Dicks has to build his storytelling muscle? (at 8:01):

All I do is at the end of every day, before I go to bed, I sit down and ask myself, “What was the thing that made this day different than any other?”

Everyone has stories. Something happened to you today that was different from yesterday. Start collecting them. Then you can look at the collection and really start seeing which things are story-worthy.

Where does he keep track of these daily moments?

I use a spreadsheet. I’ve got two columns in my spreadsheet. I’ve got the date on one side and then I stretch that second column all the way across the screen. And in there I write what my story is. So I can really write only two or three sentences a day about that moment.

That’s one constraint that he talks about in the podcast. Slowing down and summarizing something that happened to you so it fits in a few sentences takes a little bit of effort.

Another constraint he talks about is working with real life in the first place. He also writes novels so he also knows how to write entirely fictional stories. He looks at telling stories from real life as a puzzle. You can only work with things that actually happened, so you have to figure out how to organize the moments and cut parts out to make it an interesting story.

Why is it worth keeping a record of these (sometimes benign) moments?

We just have these moments where we have a beautiful, or a terrible, or a memorable interaction with another person. Or we see something and it suddenly changes our mind in some way. The problem is we just take these moments and throw them away like trash.

I’m going to start asking myself “What was the thing that made this day different than any other?”

My answer today:

  • I got a hot coffee instead of iced coffee for the first time in a long time.

I’ve set the bar pretty low so I’m thinking something more interesting than that will happen by the end of today. And if not, that’s okay too.