January 28, 2026 • 24 mins
Brad Stulberg, author of The Way of Excellence, shares tips for boosting performance in any sphere
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am excited to welcome Brad Stilberg to Before Breakfast. Brad
is the author of the brand new book The Way
of Excellence. So Brad, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Laura, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, well, thanks so much for joining us. Why don't
you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So I wear a couple of hats.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
One hat is an author, where I'm really interested in
exploring the things that make humans flourish. I write books,
I research, and I report for those books. The second
hat I wear as a performance coach, so I work
with athletes, executives, entrepreneurs and creatives on their own performance,
applying so many of the things that I write about.
(01:03):
And then the third hat that I wear as a professor,
where I'm adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan and
much like my writing and coaching. I work with students
there on their professional development, leadership and mental performance.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Excellent. Well, your book is about excellence, which is a
bit of a lofty topic, and I know that your
clients are people like the these athletes and things like
that is excellent something that the rest of us should
be thinking about as well. I mean, there's same things
that athletes do. Are they applicable to the rest of us.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about excellence
is that it's only for the select few with impeccable
genetics that are competing in the World Championships or the Olympics,
and that just couldn't be further from the truth. Excellence
really comes down to caring deeply about projects that align
with your values and goals and giving them your all,
(01:56):
and all of us can do that, and it helps
all of us to feel more live, to get the
best out of ourselves, and to have awesome days.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely, well. I understand that some parts of the genesis
of this book had to do with Robert Persig and
Zen and the art of mozorviicals and maintenances of course
his most famous book. But maybe you can talk a
little bit about the connection between Persig's work and yours.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So Zen The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila are
person's two big books. They're two of my favorite books.
They've really help informs my philosophy of life. And at
the center of Persig's work is this term called quality,
and Perseig defines quality is the relationship between an actor
and their act. So it's not what you are experiencing,
(02:41):
is the person dancing, It's not what the dance floor
is experiencing with your feet tapping on it. It's the
relationship between you and what you're doing. And what Persig
argued is that so much of the fulfillment and satisfaction
in good stuff in life comes out of that relationship
between awesome the things that we care about. Persik said,
and this is back in nineteen seventy four, is that
(03:03):
more and more of modern life alienates us from that
direct experience of the things that we care about. And
again he wrote this before social media in some ways,
before the modern internet, so imagine what he'd be thinking
if he was alive now, And that we should do
everything that we can to remove those distractions so that
we can experience that kind of intimacy with the things
that are important to us. And again, a big part
(03:25):
of having an excellent life in such a chaotic and
crazy world is being able to set aside time in
space to get really close and focused and undistracted on
the projects that we find worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, well, figuring out what is worthwhile is sometimes a
little bit complicated. And you have a great phrase in
your book. I believe it is quit, fit, and grit,
which is memorable for sure. So why don't you talk
about what that means.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, So grit is this phenomenal term as coined by
Angela Duckworth, and it became all the rage and self
help and personal development really over the last decade, and
grit is really important. Grit says that you have to
have stick to itiveness. You've got to be tough, you
can't let stepbacks throw you off course, you got to
stick to what you're doing. Commit And that's true, but
(04:12):
that can also get in the way because what if
you're doing the wrong thing, What if what you actually
should do is quit and try to find something new.
So the way that I like to think about this
is it's really helpful to sample a whole bunch of
different pursuits. This can be professional if you're young, this
can be hobbies. If you're older and you're already locked
in your career.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And you want to quit early and often.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
If you don't enjoy something, if it doesn't align with
your values or the person that you think you want
to become, then there's no need to stick it out
in that thing. However, once you found something where there
is a good fit, that is when grit becomes super important.
So to make this really practical in my own life,
I was never very good at math or science, and
I constantly quit things that involve math and science. I
(04:53):
quit ap math in high school. In college, I thought
I was going to be an economics major until I
took econ four oh one, which had all kinds of
math that I couldn't do.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So I quit math.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
And the flip side is that in writing, I was
extremely gritty. I was on a school newspaper. I got
rejected more times than I can count, Yet I kept
on writing because I liked it. I had fit. So
I was really gritty with my writing because there was
good fit. But I quit math in science very early
and very often. And imagine if I would have forced
(05:23):
myself to say, you know, my parents had this more
analytic career, so therefore I need to have a career
that is more analytic. I might be miserable right now.
So I think that too often we over index when
we say the great performance is all about grit and
being really tough and stick toitiveness. And that's very true,
but it's only true once you found something for which
you have a good fit.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah. So this is the time of year, you know,
this is airing in January. A lot of people have
set resolutions and goals for the new year. Are there
ways we should think about setting these goals that might
make them more workable or more in keeping with the
pursuit of excellent.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, it's so important to set big, challenging, inspirational, motivating goals,
but then to largely forget about the big, challenging inspirational
goal and to focus on the process, to focus on
the steps that are going to help you achieve that goal.
This is at the crux of a process mindset, and
a process mindset is crucial for excellence. It essentially says,
set your big goal, then break that big goal down
(06:22):
into the component parts, into the small steps, and then
largely forget about the big goal and just focus on
nailing the steps. Little by little becomes a lot. One
of my favorite interviews I did for the book was
with Kelly Humphries. She is one of the winningest Olympians ever.
She's won three gold medals, one bronze, and five world championships.
And she's about to compete in February in this upcoming
(06:44):
Winter Olympics. And she's a bob sled athlete. You can
do the math. She's been at the top of the
world for the last twenty years. And I asked Kelly.
I said, Kelly, talk to me about what goes into
setting a goal for the Olympics. And she says, well,
my goal is simple. I want to be the best
in the world. I want to win a gold medal.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Four years after that. I take a four year.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Olympic cycle and I break it down into two by
two years, and then each of those two years has
a particular focus. The first two years are building a base,
the second two years are sharpening the saw. Then I
take each of those two years and I break them
down into individual years, and each of those years has
a focus. Each year gets broken down into quarters, each
quarter to months, each months to week, and then each
week gets broken down into days, and then what I
(07:24):
do is I show up and I focus on the
workout I need to execute today. So she has this
big goal, arguably the biggest, to be the best in
the world at what she does, but day to day,
she's digging exactly where her feet are. She's focused on
the process, and all of us can apply that mindset
to our big goals.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So just focus on the process instead of the summit fever,
we might get at the top.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I mean, think about it. I love the EU summit
fever and a climber. If you're a climber and you're
so fixated on getting to the peak that you're constantly
looking up and staring at the top of the mountain,
you're gonna literally like trip and fall over your own feet.
You're gonna make mistakes on the side of the mountain.
So you can't have a climb without a top. You
have to know where you're going, but to successfully get there,
you've got to focus on climbing exactly where you are.
(08:07):
So it's this paradox of yes, set the big goal,
care deeply about it, but then also kind of forget
about it, or at least don't obsess over it, so
that you can focus on the small steps that are
going to help you get there.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Absolutely Well, we're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Brad Stolberg.
So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg, who is
the author of the brand new book The Way of Excellence.
We've been talking about breaking down big goals into small
daily steps toward those big goals. Now when we get
(08:41):
to sort of rubber meeting the road and day to
day life, as you know, schedules get crazy, things come up.
People have various obstacles on any given day. Is there
I think you had a phrase in there about raising
the floor, I mean figuring out, you know, what is
the least amount you can do on certain days. Even
if we are eventually aiming towards these big goals, what
(09:02):
does that mean to do that?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So many people focus on needing to have great days.
What I have found in my research with performers of
all different levels, from beginner to world class, is that
what actually leads to lasting progress isn't having more great days,
it's making your bad days a little bit better. And
what I mean by that is you might have a
day where everything kind of goes to crap. Right, the
(09:26):
dog is vomiting on the floor, your toddler sick, it's
like everything's a mess. You can spiral and catastrophize and
get absolutely nothing done that day, or you can say,
all right, today's going to be very different than what
i'd hope for. What would it look like to get
five or ten percent out of myself instead of the
one hundred percent i'd hope for, Or maybe you don't
even get five or ten percent of yourself, But instead
(09:48):
of catastrophizing and spiraling where a bad day becomes a
bad week, you say, all right, today's a zero. I'm
going to take a zero to day, but tomorrow I'm
going to get back on the bandwagon. And really good
progress requires not just those great days, not just to
having a high ceiling, but also raising the floor. Because
the truth is, and I bet every listener knows this,
by definition, great days are rare, Like we don't have
(10:10):
our best days very often. There's a reason that our
best days, it's much more frequent that we're having an
average day or and not so great day. But if
we can just nudge what we can get out of
ourselves on those not so great in average days up
over time, that makes an enormous difference. So when you're
having a bad day, instead of freaking out about it,
try to disrupt that negative rumination and spiral and say,
(10:32):
all right, for whatever reason, it's not going to happen
like I thought today, But how could I make this
bad day a little bit better? What could I get
out of myself? How could I adjust and still work
toward my goal even if it's not in the way
I hope for.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I think you refer to this as the next play mentality.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, athletes are great. Athletes are phenomenal with this, which
just says, like next play mentality, the play that just
happened is in the past. There's nothing that you can
do about it. You can learn from it if possible,
but then you've got to focus on the next. And obviously,
an next play mentality isn't just important in tennis or
golf or soccer basketball. It's important in life. And so
(11:09):
often we get caught up in thinking about what just
happened instead of saying, all right, what happened happens? Take
what I can and then I'm going to focus on
the next play.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So I understand that you have a lot of rituals
and routines in your life, things that you do repeatedly.
We are all about routines on this show, a show
called Before Breakfast. In particular, morning routines are something that
a lot of people are interested in. Do you have
a particular morning routine that is part of your life
right now?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I do have a particular morning routine that is part
of my life, and it revolves around coffee, which is
an ergogenic performance enhancer. I believe in free pub for
coffee on the show today. But my morning routine is
actually quite simple. I get out of bed, I say
hi to my kids, who are generally up around the
same time as me, or generally they're actually waking me up.
I have young kids, so they're my alarm clock. And
(11:58):
then I make a pot of coffee and make coffee
for myself and my wife, and I drink that coffee,
and then, to the extent possible, again depending on what's
happening with the kids, I try to sit down and
do my most important, high demanding cognitive work first thing
in the day. But it's really like the ritual of
getting out of bed and making that pot of coffee
that helps me shift from a barely waking state to
(12:20):
a wakeful state. And of course the caffeine helps, but
I know that it's actually the ritual as much as
the caffeine, because even before any coffee hits my digestive track,
the coffee signifies like, all right, it started the day,
It's go time. Something that I do when I'm working
on a book is I'll also light incense. And again,
there's just something about connecting, like the the the actual
(12:43):
physical process of getting the incent burning and then the
smell of it to writing where my brain kind of
locks in and says all right, like it's time to write.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I'm curious, I mean, because you said with the
young kids, and this is often something that makes people's
morning routines slightly more complicated, right, dealing with little people.
Is it more that you're aiming to start at a
particular time when they're off doing their stuff for the day,
or is it that they're part of it. I mean,
I'm curious, like, you know, you sit down at a
(13:12):
certain time when they are at school, or how does
that work?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a great question, because it gets it gets messy, right,
So it depends on the morning. But generally speaking, let's
say that I'm up at six thirty, the kids are
up at six thirty, and my wife is up at
six thirty. We both have jobs. We co parent, and
by coparent, we're not divorced. We're together, but we both
raise the kids. It's not like a situation where she's
doing all the labor and I'm not. At least I
(13:36):
certainly try not to do that. So six thirty to
seven thirty is kind of like, all right, who's slept
better last night, who's got important work to do? Whoever
doesn't is on point for the kids, and then the
other person can go do forty five minutes of work,
and then it's time to get the kids ready, get
them off to school. They're off to school by seven thirty.
And then at that point I am just trying to
lock in from seven thirty to nine thirty on my
(13:58):
most important work for the day, before meetings start and
before all these other things come into play.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Now, do you try to push meetings too later in
the day? Is that how you would schedule an ideal day?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I do, and that's very much aligned with my chronotype,
which is just the fancy word that scientists use for
how the rhythms of our days go. And that's a
very individual thing. So I'm very much a morning person.
I'm not a night owl. I'm a morning lark. So
I know that my ability to focus deeply is generally
speaking best before noon, and then I know that from
(14:30):
noon to five I struggle if I'm alone, but if
I'm with other people, if I'm in meetings, if I'm
having conversations, that kind of energy can help light me
back up. So it doesn't always work like this, but
to the extent possible, I try to put my meetings
in my more extroverted social work in the afternoon and
schedule my more deep focus, cognitive alone work in the morning.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Now, you had mentioned that you have a couple of
weekly routines, like things that you aim to do once
a week, which is sort of a different unit of
time than a lot of people think about with routines.
But yeah, what are some of those things?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, I'm glad you asked, so I'll share the framework
real quick because I think it can be really helpful,
which is three daily routines, three weekly routines and three
monthly routines. So my daily routines are forty five to
sixty minutes of exercise and I try to do this
every day. And this doesn't always mean going to the
gym and killing myself. Sometimes it means walking the dog,
but moving my body for forty five to sixty minutes
(15:27):
a day at least one and a half hours of
deep focus work where I'm not running from meeting to meeting,
and I'm focused on a project that matters to me.
For me, usually that's writing, and then going to bed
when I'm tired. So I've learned not to fight sleep again.
We have young kids. They go to bed at eight. Often,
my wife and I are in bed at nine thirty.
We're not very exciting because without going to bed at
nine thirty, we wouldn't get much sleep. Some of my
(15:47):
weekly routines my three weekly routines. The first is some
kind of extended time in nature. This can just be
an hour and a half walk with the dog. So
instead of the quick walk around our neighborhood, we go
out in a trail that like really helps me clear
my mind, reconnect to myself. A digital sabbath, which is
a time period where I put my phone in my computer,
(16:07):
completely away in When I'm doing this at my best,
it's a whole day. When I'm not at my best,
it's a half a day. But it's literally like in
the Attict, you know, nowhere near me, not in the
other room, not turned off, but a place where I'm
not even thinking about it, to get away from the
digital device. And then some kind of social interaction with
friends once a week so I can be really busy.
(16:29):
I'm very work driven, and sometimes friendship gets crowded out.
So if I'm really cognizant of hey, I've got to
make sure I'm hanging out with people at least once
a week. And then I also have these three monthly
things that I do, which is try to spend a
day in nature, often with the family. Try to do
something with my community, so go to a neighborhood barbecue,
go do a cleanup on one of the local trails nearby,
(16:50):
something like that to connect with my community. And then
I also try to have some time period for contemplation
and reflection. So maybe it's meditation, maybe it's listening to
my favorite music album, so on and so forth. I
find especially with young kids in the cast of life.
Sometimes having like very elaborate routines helps people at certain
phases of life. For me right now, the more I
can simplify, the better. So I know that if I'm
(17:11):
doing my three daily and my three weekly and my
three monthly things, my physical, cognitive, emotional, and social health
will be in a good enough spot.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Absolutely. All right, We're going to take one more quick
ad break and then I'll be back with more from
Brad Stolberg. So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg,
who is the author of the book The Way of Excellence.
So I have a follow up question about the digital
sabbath because I know a lot of people say, well,
I really would like to be off a lot of
(17:40):
my devices and my connectivity. However, there are other people,
like even within my family or friends, that I would
need to be connected to. On a weekend day, for instance,
my teenager is going to be out and about and
want to connect to pick up, you know, get a
ride home, or like my parents will need to reach me.
So I'm curious to how one should thread that needle
of having some of the upsides the connectivity without getting
(18:02):
into all the downsides that can happen.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So I can share how I did it in what
worked for my family, and that is I got a
phone called a Jitterbug, which is marketed towards senior citizens.
It has no Internet. In order to text, you have
to like do the old texting, or in order to
get to like the letter C, you have to hit
one three times to go through A B and C.
So functionally, you're never going to text on this thing.
It is just a phone. The other thing is is
(18:25):
if I fall, there's a special button that will automatically
call nine one one for me, because again it's marketing
senior citizens.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
But I have a Jitterbug.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It has its own phone number, and that's what I
use to stay in touch with my family. That's so
my wife can reach me when we're running the kids
in various places. And that's also sometimes on these digital savags,
I want to call my brother who lives in another state,
or my closest friend who lives across the country, and
that's still really meaningful. Like that's the kind of technology
that I want to take advantage of. But what having
the Jitterbug phone does is it keeps me off of Twitter.
(18:55):
It keeps me off of Instagram, It keeps me off
of email, It keeps me from on and on and on.
Got it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
So I loved a phrase that you used in your
book when you are trying something new that you haven't
done or that will might be a little bit outside
your comfort zones, Brave New World? How does this mantra
work for you?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
One of my favorite parts of the book, Brave New World.
What the genesis of this is? The sport that I
engage in is powerlifting, and when you walk up to
a barbell that has more weight on it than you've
ever lifted before, there can be like a real sense
of fear and not so much fear is am I
going to make the lift or not? Because no one
really cares, not a pro athlete, but genuine fear about
(19:36):
this is going to feel so hard, Like what's this
going to feel? Like? I'm kind of scared in When
you walk up to a bar in a state of fear,
you tend not to perform very well. But if you
can shift from fear to curiosity, your performance can be incredible.
So instead of walking up to that bar saying I
don't know if I'm going to do this or yikes,
(19:57):
I don't know what this is going to feel like.
I walk up to the bar and I say, Brave
New World. I have no idea what's going to happen,
but let's find out. And that shift from uh oh,
this is scary to this is a whole new horizon. Heck,
if I'm you know, if I told myself I'm gonna
for sure make the lift, I know because I'd be
lying to myself. I don't know if I'm going to
make the lift. But what I can say is like,
(20:17):
I'm taking on a challenge. Brave New world. Let's find out.
It started in the weight room. But I can tell
you that the first words I said to my wife
when we had our second kid, I looked at her
and I said, Brave New World. When I take on
a big writing assignment for an outlet I've never written
for and I feel overwhelmed, I tell myself like, brave
New World. So it's this really powerful mantra because again
it shifts us out of fear to curiosity. There's some
(20:38):
fascinating neuroscience that I go into in the book that
essentially shows that the circuitry in our brains that lights
up when we are really scared or rageful. Angry is
completely at odds with the circuitry that lights up when
we're curious, So anyone knows this. It's impossible to be
genuinely curious and terrified at the same time time. So
(21:01):
I think curiosity is one of the best antidotes to fear.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So I ask all my guests a question of what
is something you have done recently to take a day
from great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I have set aside thirty minutes to have an afternoon coffee,
not the morning coffee, and read and do deep, undistracted
reading nonfiction fiction. I think that I'm a writer, so
this is my job. And yet sometimes the time to
sit down and cozy up with a book gets crowded
out because life is so busy and there's so many
(21:36):
of these short form mechanisms of communication. That I've really
made it a priority to reclaim reading in the days
that I set aside that time for myself to read,
I never regret it.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What time does that tend to happen for you?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
So again, I'm fortunate I control my own schedule that
tends to happen towards the end of the day, So
like four thirty to five back to I know you
love rituals and routines. It also kind of acts as
a nice transition out of the workday and into family time.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, well, that would be a great way to end
the day and to say, well this my brain is
moving into a different space and I can I can
transition into a different role at this point, Particularly for
people who might work from home, that's a way to
create a bit of a fake commute, right.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Oh, one hundred percent. And I'm glad you mentioned that.
I think that that is that is so important and
that's a whole other conversation and topic, but the importance
of like, if you do work from home, there's so
many benefits, but one of the costs is that we
used to have all these boundaries built in between work
and life, and if you work from home, you have
to create those boundaries a little bit artificially.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, we try the best we can around here, for sure.
So Bradus, what is something you are looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I love I'm coaching my son's basketball team and we're
having this conversation on a Friday, and we play on Saturdays,
and I just nothing brings me more joy than coaching
rex Sports seven to eight year olds playing basketball.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It just lights me up more than anything.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Because they're really learning. I mean, they're at this point
there's still.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
They're learning and they're innocents. They're still young enough where
yes there's some crazy parents, but most of the parents
are very kind. There's none of the politics that you
get in sport that gets that happens when you're at
the high school or college level. They're just a bunch
of kids having so much fun together in the Yes,
they want to win, but like they have so much
(23:29):
fun and then they move on after the game so
quick it's like it never happened. And it's just such
an innocent way to engage with sport, and I think
it's the best.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, well they've got a next game mentality for sure.
So Brad, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
The best place to find me on the internet is
my podcast, which is Excellence. Actually the book is called
The Way of Excellence, and then the social media platform
that I'm most active on is Instagram and my username
is just my name at Brad Stolberg.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Absolutely all right, Well, Brad, thank you so much much
for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
you have feedback about this or any other episode, you
can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot
com and in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
(24:22):
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:44):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am excited to welcome Brad Stilberg to Before Breakfast. Brad
is the author of the brand new book The Way
of Excellence. So Brad, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Laura, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, well, thanks so much for joining us. Why don't
you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So I wear a couple of hats.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
One hat is an author, where I'm really interested in
exploring the things that make humans flourish. I write books,
I research, and I report for those books. The second
hat I wear as a performance coach, so I work
with athletes, executives, entrepreneurs and creatives on their own performance,
applying so many of the things that I write about.
(01:03):
And then the third hat that I wear as a professor,
where I'm adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan and
much like my writing and coaching. I work with students
there on their professional development, leadership and mental performance.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Excellent. Well, your book is about excellence, which is a
bit of a lofty topic, and I know that your
clients are people like the these athletes and things like
that is excellent something that the rest of us should
be thinking about as well. I mean, there's same things
that athletes do. Are they applicable to the rest of us.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about excellence
is that it's only for the select few with impeccable
genetics that are competing in the World Championships or the Olympics,
and that just couldn't be further from the truth. Excellence
really comes down to caring deeply about projects that align
with your values and goals and giving them your all,
(01:56):
and all of us can do that, and it helps
all of us to feel more live, to get the
best out of ourselves, and to have awesome days.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely, well. I understand that some parts of the genesis
of this book had to do with Robert Persig and
Zen and the art of mozorviicals and maintenances of course
his most famous book. But maybe you can talk a
little bit about the connection between Persig's work and yours.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So Zen The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila are
person's two big books. They're two of my favorite books.
They've really help informs my philosophy of life. And at
the center of Persig's work is this term called quality,
and Perseig defines quality is the relationship between an actor
and their act. So it's not what you are experiencing,
(02:41):
is the person dancing, It's not what the dance floor
is experiencing with your feet tapping on it. It's the
relationship between you and what you're doing. And what Persig
argued is that so much of the fulfillment and satisfaction
in good stuff in life comes out of that relationship
between awesome the things that we care about. Persik said,
and this is back in nineteen seventy four, is that
(03:03):
more and more of modern life alienates us from that
direct experience of the things that we care about. And
again he wrote this before social media in some ways,
before the modern internet, so imagine what he'd be thinking
if he was alive now, And that we should do
everything that we can to remove those distractions so that
we can experience that kind of intimacy with the things
that are important to us. And again, a big part
(03:25):
of having an excellent life in such a chaotic and
crazy world is being able to set aside time in
space to get really close and focused and undistracted on
the projects that we find worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, well, figuring out what is worthwhile is sometimes a
little bit complicated. And you have a great phrase in
your book. I believe it is quit, fit, and grit,
which is memorable for sure. So why don't you talk
about what that means.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, So grit is this phenomenal term as coined by
Angela Duckworth, and it became all the rage and self
help and personal development really over the last decade, and
grit is really important. Grit says that you have to
have stick to itiveness. You've got to be tough, you
can't let stepbacks throw you off course, you got to
stick to what you're doing. Commit And that's true, but
(04:12):
that can also get in the way because what if
you're doing the wrong thing, What if what you actually
should do is quit and try to find something new.
So the way that I like to think about this
is it's really helpful to sample a whole bunch of
different pursuits. This can be professional if you're young, this
can be hobbies. If you're older and you're already locked
in your career.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And you want to quit early and often.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
If you don't enjoy something, if it doesn't align with
your values or the person that you think you want
to become, then there's no need to stick it out
in that thing. However, once you found something where there
is a good fit, that is when grit becomes super important.
So to make this really practical in my own life,
I was never very good at math or science, and
I constantly quit things that involve math and science. I
(04:53):
quit ap math in high school. In college, I thought
I was going to be an economics major until I
took econ four oh one, which had all kinds of
math that I couldn't do.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So I quit math.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
And the flip side is that in writing, I was
extremely gritty. I was on a school newspaper. I got
rejected more times than I can count, Yet I kept
on writing because I liked it. I had fit. So
I was really gritty with my writing because there was
good fit. But I quit math in science very early
and very often. And imagine if I would have forced
(05:23):
myself to say, you know, my parents had this more
analytic career, so therefore I need to have a career
that is more analytic. I might be miserable right now.
So I think that too often we over index when
we say the great performance is all about grit and
being really tough and stick toitiveness. And that's very true,
but it's only true once you found something for which
you have a good fit.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah. So this is the time of year, you know,
this is airing in January. A lot of people have
set resolutions and goals for the new year. Are there
ways we should think about setting these goals that might
make them more workable or more in keeping with the
pursuit of excellent.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, it's so important to set big, challenging, inspirational, motivating goals,
but then to largely forget about the big, challenging inspirational
goal and to focus on the process, to focus on
the steps that are going to help you achieve that goal.
This is at the crux of a process mindset, and
a process mindset is crucial for excellence. It essentially says,
set your big goal, then break that big goal down
(06:22):
into the component parts, into the small steps, and then
largely forget about the big goal and just focus on
nailing the steps. Little by little becomes a lot. One
of my favorite interviews I did for the book was
with Kelly Humphries. She is one of the winningest Olympians ever.
She's won three gold medals, one bronze, and five world championships.
And she's about to compete in February in this upcoming
(06:44):
Winter Olympics. And she's a bob sled athlete. You can
do the math. She's been at the top of the
world for the last twenty years. And I asked Kelly.
I said, Kelly, talk to me about what goes into
setting a goal for the Olympics. And she says, well,
my goal is simple. I want to be the best
in the world. I want to win a gold medal.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Four years after that. I take a four year.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Olympic cycle and I break it down into two by
two years, and then each of those two years has
a particular focus. The first two years are building a base,
the second two years are sharpening the saw. Then I
take each of those two years and I break them
down into individual years, and each of those years has
a focus. Each year gets broken down into quarters, each
quarter to months, each months to week, and then each
week gets broken down into days, and then what I
(07:24):
do is I show up and I focus on the
workout I need to execute today. So she has this
big goal, arguably the biggest, to be the best in
the world at what she does, but day to day,
she's digging exactly where her feet are. She's focused on
the process, and all of us can apply that mindset
to our big goals.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So just focus on the process instead of the summit fever,
we might get at the top.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I mean, think about it. I love the EU summit
fever and a climber. If you're a climber and you're
so fixated on getting to the peak that you're constantly
looking up and staring at the top of the mountain,
you're gonna literally like trip and fall over your own feet.
You're gonna make mistakes on the side of the mountain.
So you can't have a climb without a top. You
have to know where you're going, but to successfully get there,
you've got to focus on climbing exactly where you are.
(08:07):
So it's this paradox of yes, set the big goal,
care deeply about it, but then also kind of forget
about it, or at least don't obsess over it, so
that you can focus on the small steps that are
going to help you get there.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Absolutely Well, we're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Brad Stolberg.
So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg, who is
the author of the brand new book The Way of Excellence.
We've been talking about breaking down big goals into small
daily steps toward those big goals. Now when we get
(08:41):
to sort of rubber meeting the road and day to
day life, as you know, schedules get crazy, things come up.
People have various obstacles on any given day. Is there
I think you had a phrase in there about raising
the floor, I mean figuring out, you know, what is
the least amount you can do on certain days. Even
if we are eventually aiming towards these big goals, what
(09:02):
does that mean to do that?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So many people focus on needing to have great days.
What I have found in my research with performers of
all different levels, from beginner to world class, is that
what actually leads to lasting progress isn't having more great days,
it's making your bad days a little bit better. And
what I mean by that is you might have a
day where everything kind of goes to crap. Right, the
(09:26):
dog is vomiting on the floor, your toddler sick, it's
like everything's a mess. You can spiral and catastrophize and
get absolutely nothing done that day, or you can say,
all right, today's going to be very different than what
i'd hope for. What would it look like to get
five or ten percent out of myself instead of the
one hundred percent i'd hope for, Or maybe you don't
even get five or ten percent of yourself, But instead
(09:48):
of catastrophizing and spiraling where a bad day becomes a
bad week, you say, all right, today's a zero. I'm
going to take a zero to day, but tomorrow I'm
going to get back on the bandwagon. And really good
progress requires not just those great days, not just to
having a high ceiling, but also raising the floor. Because
the truth is, and I bet every listener knows this,
by definition, great days are rare, Like we don't have
(10:10):
our best days very often. There's a reason that our
best days, it's much more frequent that we're having an
average day or and not so great day. But if
we can just nudge what we can get out of
ourselves on those not so great in average days up
over time, that makes an enormous difference. So when you're
having a bad day, instead of freaking out about it,
try to disrupt that negative rumination and spiral and say,
(10:32):
all right, for whatever reason, it's not going to happen
like I thought today, But how could I make this
bad day a little bit better? What could I get
out of myself? How could I adjust and still work
toward my goal even if it's not in the way
I hope for.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I think you refer to this as the next play mentality.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, athletes are great. Athletes are phenomenal with this, which
just says, like next play mentality, the play that just
happened is in the past. There's nothing that you can
do about it. You can learn from it if possible,
but then you've got to focus on the next. And obviously,
an next play mentality isn't just important in tennis or
golf or soccer basketball. It's important in life. And so
(11:09):
often we get caught up in thinking about what just
happened instead of saying, all right, what happened happens? Take
what I can and then I'm going to focus on
the next play.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So I understand that you have a lot of rituals
and routines in your life, things that you do repeatedly.
We are all about routines on this show, a show
called Before Breakfast. In particular, morning routines are something that
a lot of people are interested in. Do you have
a particular morning routine that is part of your life
right now?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I do have a particular morning routine that is part
of my life, and it revolves around coffee, which is
an ergogenic performance enhancer. I believe in free pub for
coffee on the show today. But my morning routine is
actually quite simple. I get out of bed, I say
hi to my kids, who are generally up around the
same time as me, or generally they're actually waking me up.
I have young kids, so they're my alarm clock. And
(11:58):
then I make a pot of coffee and make coffee
for myself and my wife, and I drink that coffee,
and then, to the extent possible, again depending on what's
happening with the kids, I try to sit down and
do my most important, high demanding cognitive work first thing
in the day. But it's really like the ritual of
getting out of bed and making that pot of coffee
that helps me shift from a barely waking state to
(12:20):
a wakeful state. And of course the caffeine helps, but
I know that it's actually the ritual as much as
the caffeine, because even before any coffee hits my digestive track,
the coffee signifies like, all right, it started the day,
It's go time. Something that I do when I'm working
on a book is I'll also light incense. And again,
there's just something about connecting, like the the the actual
(12:43):
physical process of getting the incent burning and then the
smell of it to writing where my brain kind of
locks in and says all right, like it's time to write.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I'm curious, I mean, because you said with the
young kids, and this is often something that makes people's
morning routines slightly more complicated, right, dealing with little people.
Is it more that you're aiming to start at a
particular time when they're off doing their stuff for the day,
or is it that they're part of it. I mean,
I'm curious, like, you know, you sit down at a
(13:12):
certain time when they are at school, or how does
that work?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a great question, because it gets it gets messy, right,
So it depends on the morning. But generally speaking, let's
say that I'm up at six thirty, the kids are
up at six thirty, and my wife is up at
six thirty. We both have jobs. We co parent, and
by coparent, we're not divorced. We're together, but we both
raise the kids. It's not like a situation where she's
doing all the labor and I'm not. At least I
(13:36):
certainly try not to do that. So six thirty to
seven thirty is kind of like, all right, who's slept
better last night, who's got important work to do? Whoever
doesn't is on point for the kids, and then the
other person can go do forty five minutes of work,
and then it's time to get the kids ready, get
them off to school. They're off to school by seven thirty.
And then at that point I am just trying to
lock in from seven thirty to nine thirty on my
(13:58):
most important work for the day, before meetings start and
before all these other things come into play.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Now, do you try to push meetings too later in
the day? Is that how you would schedule an ideal day?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I do, and that's very much aligned with my chronotype,
which is just the fancy word that scientists use for
how the rhythms of our days go. And that's a
very individual thing. So I'm very much a morning person.
I'm not a night owl. I'm a morning lark. So
I know that my ability to focus deeply is generally
speaking best before noon, and then I know that from
(14:30):
noon to five I struggle if I'm alone, but if
I'm with other people, if I'm in meetings, if I'm
having conversations, that kind of energy can help light me
back up. So it doesn't always work like this, but
to the extent possible, I try to put my meetings
in my more extroverted social work in the afternoon and
schedule my more deep focus, cognitive alone work in the morning.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Now, you had mentioned that you have a couple of
weekly routines, like things that you aim to do once
a week, which is sort of a different unit of
time than a lot of people think about with routines.
But yeah, what are some of those things?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, I'm glad you asked, so I'll share the framework
real quick because I think it can be really helpful,
which is three daily routines, three weekly routines and three
monthly routines. So my daily routines are forty five to
sixty minutes of exercise and I try to do this
every day. And this doesn't always mean going to the
gym and killing myself. Sometimes it means walking the dog,
but moving my body for forty five to sixty minutes
(15:27):
a day at least one and a half hours of
deep focus work where I'm not running from meeting to meeting,
and I'm focused on a project that matters to me.
For me, usually that's writing, and then going to bed
when I'm tired. So I've learned not to fight sleep again.
We have young kids. They go to bed at eight. Often,
my wife and I are in bed at nine thirty.
We're not very exciting because without going to bed at
nine thirty, we wouldn't get much sleep. Some of my
(15:47):
weekly routines my three weekly routines. The first is some
kind of extended time in nature. This can just be
an hour and a half walk with the dog. So
instead of the quick walk around our neighborhood, we go
out in a trail that like really helps me clear
my mind, reconnect to myself. A digital sabbath, which is
a time period where I put my phone in my computer,
(16:07):
completely away in When I'm doing this at my best,
it's a whole day. When I'm not at my best,
it's a half a day. But it's literally like in
the Attict, you know, nowhere near me, not in the
other room, not turned off, but a place where I'm
not even thinking about it, to get away from the
digital device. And then some kind of social interaction with
friends once a week so I can be really busy.
(16:29):
I'm very work driven, and sometimes friendship gets crowded out.
So if I'm really cognizant of hey, I've got to
make sure I'm hanging out with people at least once
a week. And then I also have these three monthly
things that I do, which is try to spend a
day in nature, often with the family. Try to do
something with my community, so go to a neighborhood barbecue,
go do a cleanup on one of the local trails nearby,
(16:50):
something like that to connect with my community. And then
I also try to have some time period for contemplation
and reflection. So maybe it's meditation, maybe it's listening to
my favorite music album, so on and so forth. I
find especially with young kids in the cast of life.
Sometimes having like very elaborate routines helps people at certain
phases of life. For me right now, the more I
can simplify, the better. So I know that if I'm
(17:11):
doing my three daily and my three weekly and my
three monthly things, my physical, cognitive, emotional, and social health
will be in a good enough spot.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Absolutely. All right, We're going to take one more quick
ad break and then I'll be back with more from
Brad Stolberg. So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg,
who is the author of the book The Way of Excellence.
So I have a follow up question about the digital
sabbath because I know a lot of people say, well,
I really would like to be off a lot of
(17:40):
my devices and my connectivity. However, there are other people,
like even within my family or friends, that I would
need to be connected to. On a weekend day, for instance,
my teenager is going to be out and about and
want to connect to pick up, you know, get a
ride home, or like my parents will need to reach me.
So I'm curious to how one should thread that needle
of having some of the upsides the connectivity without getting
(18:02):
into all the downsides that can happen.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So I can share how I did it in what
worked for my family, and that is I got a
phone called a Jitterbug, which is marketed towards senior citizens.
It has no Internet. In order to text, you have
to like do the old texting, or in order to
get to like the letter C, you have to hit
one three times to go through A B and C.
So functionally, you're never going to text on this thing.
It is just a phone. The other thing is is
(18:25):
if I fall, there's a special button that will automatically
call nine one one for me, because again it's marketing
senior citizens.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
But I have a Jitterbug.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It has its own phone number, and that's what I
use to stay in touch with my family. That's so
my wife can reach me when we're running the kids
in various places. And that's also sometimes on these digital savags,
I want to call my brother who lives in another state,
or my closest friend who lives across the country, and
that's still really meaningful. Like that's the kind of technology
that I want to take advantage of. But what having
the Jitterbug phone does is it keeps me off of Twitter.
(18:55):
It keeps me off of Instagram, It keeps me off
of email, It keeps me from on and on and on.
Got it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
So I loved a phrase that you used in your
book when you are trying something new that you haven't
done or that will might be a little bit outside
your comfort zones, Brave New World? How does this mantra
work for you?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
One of my favorite parts of the book, Brave New World.
What the genesis of this is? The sport that I
engage in is powerlifting, and when you walk up to
a barbell that has more weight on it than you've
ever lifted before, there can be like a real sense
of fear and not so much fear is am I
going to make the lift or not? Because no one
really cares, not a pro athlete, but genuine fear about
(19:36):
this is going to feel so hard, Like what's this
going to feel? Like? I'm kind of scared in When
you walk up to a bar in a state of fear,
you tend not to perform very well. But if you
can shift from fear to curiosity, your performance can be incredible.
So instead of walking up to that bar saying I
don't know if I'm going to do this or yikes,
(19:57):
I don't know what this is going to feel like.
I walk up to the bar and I say, Brave
New World. I have no idea what's going to happen,
but let's find out. And that shift from uh oh,
this is scary to this is a whole new horizon. Heck,
if I'm you know, if I told myself I'm gonna
for sure make the lift, I know because I'd be
lying to myself. I don't know if I'm going to
make the lift. But what I can say is like,
(20:17):
I'm taking on a challenge. Brave New world. Let's find out.
It started in the weight room. But I can tell
you that the first words I said to my wife
when we had our second kid, I looked at her
and I said, Brave New World. When I take on
a big writing assignment for an outlet I've never written
for and I feel overwhelmed, I tell myself like, brave
New World. So it's this really powerful mantra because again
it shifts us out of fear to curiosity. There's some
(20:38):
fascinating neuroscience that I go into in the book that
essentially shows that the circuitry in our brains that lights
up when we are really scared or rageful. Angry is
completely at odds with the circuitry that lights up when
we're curious, So anyone knows this. It's impossible to be
genuinely curious and terrified at the same time time. So
(21:01):
I think curiosity is one of the best antidotes to fear.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So I ask all my guests a question of what
is something you have done recently to take a day
from great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I have set aside thirty minutes to have an afternoon coffee,
not the morning coffee, and read and do deep, undistracted
reading nonfiction fiction. I think that I'm a writer, so
this is my job. And yet sometimes the time to
sit down and cozy up with a book gets crowded
out because life is so busy and there's so many
(21:36):
of these short form mechanisms of communication. That I've really
made it a priority to reclaim reading in the days
that I set aside that time for myself to read,
I never regret it.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What time does that tend to happen for you?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
So again, I'm fortunate I control my own schedule that
tends to happen towards the end of the day, So
like four thirty to five back to I know you
love rituals and routines. It also kind of acts as
a nice transition out of the workday and into family time.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, well, that would be a great way to end
the day and to say, well this my brain is
moving into a different space and I can I can
transition into a different role at this point, Particularly for
people who might work from home, that's a way to
create a bit of a fake commute, right.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Oh, one hundred percent. And I'm glad you mentioned that.
I think that that is that is so important and
that's a whole other conversation and topic, but the importance
of like, if you do work from home, there's so
many benefits, but one of the costs is that we
used to have all these boundaries built in between work
and life, and if you work from home, you have
to create those boundaries a little bit artificially.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, we try the best we can around here, for sure.
So Bradus, what is something you are looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I love I'm coaching my son's basketball team and we're
having this conversation on a Friday, and we play on Saturdays,
and I just nothing brings me more joy than coaching
rex Sports seven to eight year olds playing basketball.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It just lights me up more than anything.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Because they're really learning. I mean, they're at this point
there's still.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
They're learning and they're innocents. They're still young enough where
yes there's some crazy parents, but most of the parents
are very kind. There's none of the politics that you
get in sport that gets that happens when you're at
the high school or college level. They're just a bunch
of kids having so much fun together in the Yes,
they want to win, but like they have so much
(23:29):
fun and then they move on after the game so
quick it's like it never happened. And it's just such
an innocent way to engage with sport, and I think
it's the best.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, well they've got a next game mentality for sure.
So Brad, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
The best place to find me on the internet is
my podcast, which is Excellence. Actually the book is called
The Way of Excellence, and then the social media platform
that I'm most active on is Instagram and my username
is just my name at Brad Stolberg.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Absolutely all right, Well, Brad, thank you so much much
for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
you have feedback about this or any other episode, you
can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot
com and in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
(24:22):
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:44):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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