In this solo, diaristic episode of the Daniel Bourke Show, host Daniel Bourke reflects on a recent dodgeball game and the broader benefits of team and individual sports for discipline and social connection. He recounts returning to a 20‑minute Headspace meditation session, noting how his accumulated 75 hours of practice aid in managing nerves and everyday stress. Daniel highlights his monthly newsletter, introducing a new "Mind Blow of the Month" segment that this week focuses on Neuralink, underscoring his fascination with cutting‑edge AI and brain‑computer interfaces. He shares his current reading of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, explaining the book’s concept of "resistance"—the internal force that fuels procrastination and short‑term gratification. Bourke connects this idea to his own pattern of juggling many small content projects (podcast, YouTube, newsletter, blog, study) as a possible avoidance of larger, more meaningful work such as writing a book or creating educational material. He outlines a shift from daily content creation to a weekly schedule that allows deeper focus on a few core projects, while still experimenting to discover his preferred medium. The episode concludes with a listener challenge: identify a personal area of resistance and dedicate a day or hour in the coming week to confront it. Daniel also reflects on the progress of his 100‑day podcast experiment, his upcoming interview with an international guest from an MIT bootcamp, and muses on the broader meaning of daily routines and life’s purpose before signing off.
Chapters
How you doing everyone? Welcome back to day 90 of the Daniel Bourke Show. Thank you so much for tuning in, whether it's on YouTube or the podcast. Whatever you're up to, I hope you're having an awesome day. I just finished dodgeball with some of my mates. As you can see, I'm in my Team Rex shirt. If you can't see it, just take my word for it. Had an awesome game. We finished up, I think, 16 to 5. We won. Yeah, really fun game. I think I like team sports. There's a good— I have a good— I'm lucky to have a good balance of sports and team sports and individual sports in my life. I think they both have a lot of, I don't know, good benefits. Well, any sport has a benefit, of course, because I'm all about movement and physical activity and you know what. But I think individual sports allow you to sort of build up an incredible self-discipline, and then same with, same with our team sports as well. Well, because you've got your teammates that you, you rely on and whatnot. And of course, it's just social dodgeball, but I think any, any sort of sport with it— human beings, sort of, we've evolved in tribes, right? So I think it's, it's only, I don't know, native or instinct to enjoy being a part of a team for something. But I don't know where that came from, that That was just out of the blue. But what else have I been up to this morning? So this morning I got up relatively late. I was catching up on sleep from the wedding over the weekend. Had an awesome time, some awesome memories from there. And woke up relatively late, did some meditation. Actually, I haven't meditated in a few days. It just wasn't on my radar. I had other things on my mind and this morning I sat down for 20 minutes with Headspace and it was a phenomenal time. I think I've built up the, Over the past year, I've done like 75 hours or so of meditating, and I've built up the ability to— I've built up those fundamental skills so I can get back into it relatively quickly. And it's not like I don't use the techniques. There was one scenario, I can't remember, the other night, maybe I had to go and talk to someone, or maybe I had to do a clip on YouTube or something, and I was feeling the nerves. and I was using my breath to support me. I think it might have even been in a dream where I had to go and do some sort of public speaking thing, and I was taking deep breaths and whatnot in my dream, and I think that's all from the meditation practice that I do. But what else? I sent out my monthly newsletter, a few cool things with some awesome reads, some awesome videos, there's a cool TED Talk in there. I send it out once a month, it's generally based around things that I'm interested in, so computer science, artificial intelligence, psychology, fitness, nutrition, whatnot. And I send it out once a month, usually around the first day of every month, as long as I'm on top of it. Today I got it out first day of the month. If you want to sign up to it, you can. It's at, uh, mrdburke.com, and you can just sign up on the field there. It's— yeah, I think, I think the links in there are valuable. I certainly— I've introduced a new segment this month, actually. It's only 3 to 5 points, the whole email, but it's called Mind Blow of the Month, and today's— this month's Mind Blow of the Month was about Neuralink, Elon Musk's company. So, I did a podcast on that recently, and I'm— that's fascinating me. It's sort of in— it's motivating me to keep studying what I'm studying, because I want to get involved in that sort of field somehow and improve the world through however I can. And so, I'll be— I also started reading a book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It's a play on words for The Art of War, and it's also written similar to The Art of War. I haven't actually read The Art of War by Sun Tzu, but this book so far, I'm about 20% into it, and it is phenomenal. Now, it's targeted at up-and-coming artists, up-and-coming entrepreneurs, anyone who's facing some sort of resistance, and that's what the author calls it, Steven Pressfield. Any form of procrastination or something holding you back, he terms as resistance. And anyone facing some sort of resistance for starting some sort of new venture, whether it be making art, whether it be building something, and whether it be anything to do with delaying short-term gratification for long-term satisfaction. So an example would be, um, drinking alcohol every week rather than saving money every weekend to purchase something big in the future. That's, that's one minor example, and I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but there's, there's a— it's really speaking to me at the moment because I feel like I may be doing so many things like a podcast, YouTube, writing, newsletter, blog, studying, starting up new different studies because I'm avoiding something, and I feel like it might be I'm avoiding the project I want to want to build to, or the book I want to write, by filling my time with all these small things that I can complete every day. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I think the podcast has definitely taught me a lot of things, um, and I'm, I'm so thankful that I've done it. And same with YouTube and same with writing. But I think what I may have to, to, to do after I finish these daily episodes is move more to a— I've spoken about this, of course— in a weekly schedule. So, I'll do one a week, one YouTube video a week, etc., etc., and just document what I'm up to. But at the same time, rather than me saying yes to so many new things and trying out new experiments, I want to knuckle down on a couple of projects and really, really give them my best work and put out something, whether it be writing a book, whether it be making some educational videos, educational podcasts, or whatnot. I really want to put, put some time and effort into creating some great things. And of course, as often as I can, because I'm still trying to find the medium that I enjoy the most, whether it be audio, YouTube, or writing. I really haven't, I haven't written anything in a while. I want to— I think this week I'm going to write an article about how I'm, how I'm studying at the moment, learning deep learning. But it's a, it's definitely a process. Every day I have to get up and battle the resistance, what Steven Pressfield calls it. And the resistance is literally anything that stops you from doing the work that your inner voice is telling you. And that's— I'm gonna actually— this book is— I'm only 20% in, but I'm doing so like, I'll probably finish it within the next few days. I'll do a video and a podcast about it because it's— and I'll probably write an article, who knows, about it because it's already influencing me so much. It's definitely, as I've said before in the podcast, this year I'm trying to consume consume less things and create more, create more value for other people. And I'm trying a lot of different things to find out how I can best do that. And I don't— I honestly don't know how, but that's why I'm trying so many things. And I'm absolutely loving it. It is tiring at times, I'll be honest with you, but that's— I wouldn't have it any other way at the moment. I would not have it any other way. I'm in a good place. And I'll be honest, like, it's— there are times where I'm just lying down, I don't, I don't feel like doing it, and I just want to stay. Like this, this afternoon I had a nap, I don't know how long for, but like I got up like 3 different times and then each time I just stayed in bed and laid down and just rested. I could have been extremely tired, or I don't know, I could have just been resisting the work that I had to do. And Yeah, I was just having one of those times, but I'll be back. I'll be back into it. I know I can bounce back really quick. Same with fitness, same with meditation, same with everything. I think that's a skill I've been working on the past few years, is being disciplined and bouncing back. And again, once again, this podcast has just turned out to be 10 minutes, 10 minutes of me talking and just explaining what my problems are, but Hey, it's helpful, and if there's someone out there who's going through the same sort of stuff, well, you're not alone. And I know I'm not alone as well. There's 7 billion people on this world and everyone's trying to do their thing, and it's— life's fun like that, right? It's just strange. It is strange, strange. The fact that— I can't even really explain it. The fact that we get up, we do these activities, and we go to bed, and we just get up and repeat. I don't know, that whole concept is just strange to me, and then eventually we leave this earth and then that's it, that's done. It's strange. It is. It's— that's the number one question, right? What is the meaning? What is what? And we just— we could go really deep on that, but I'm pretty hungry. I'm gonna go get some dinner and upload this podcast, and then I will see you tomorrow. Day 91. Can you believe today's day 90? 3 months into this podcast already. We've got 10 days left of the 100-day experiment. And I'm very happy with the progress I've made. I don't care about any of the numbers of listens or whatever. My main goal was to have fun and to get better at public speaking. I feel like I've done that. I think later in the week I'm interviewing another international guest. I'm excited for that. I met her at the MIT bootcamp, and then I'm trying to organize a time slot with one of my friends who's also studying nutrition, but because of both our schedules, it's just, it's just hard to find a common ground or something like that. I can't, right time, the right time slot. But nonetheless, oh wait, what's today's challenge? Hmm. Think about what you're resisting in your life right now. How can you listen to your inner voice and act upon that? Is it someone? Is it your spouse or your significant other holding you back from doing something you want to do? Is it your family? Is it yourself? Most of the time it's yourself. You can't blame anyone but yourself. But think about something that you're holding back from right now, and I want you to just, just try it. Try it for— set aside one day in a week, in the next upcoming week, set aside a day that you're just going to work on that one thing, or even if it's just an hour, but just try that thing that you've been holding off for so long. Trust me, it's an amazing feeling, and I've done that this year through many different forms. And I'm not saying I'm the best at it or that I'm one to give advice, but I can speak from experience in saying that it's such a gratifying feeling when you actually start trying it. So, give it a go. I don't know, I just realized I might not have even been looking at the camera this whole time, but Oh well. I hope you're having an awesome day. Tell someone you love them, and I'll catch you tomorrow. See ya.
