How To Master Anything

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So today we're going to talk about the why Mastery. Now, if you haven't had your why discovered, go to whyinstitute.com, discover your why, and then come back. Because this will make a whole lot more sense to you after you've discovered your why. But today we're going to talk about the why mastery. And I've got a very special guest for you, the why Mastery. Let's talk about that for a minute. People with this why love depth and breadth and details, right? They love the intricacies and they love the nuances of things, and they're really good at going very deep on lots of different subjects. And so I want to introduce you today to a very special guest. His name is Jason Rogers. Jason is an Olympic silver medalist and he's.

Following his athletic career. He began working in advertising, initially through the prestigious WPP Fellowship and later at Ogilvy, a worldwide leader in the industry. Jason attended the Ohio State University on a combined athletic and academic full scholarship and graduated summa cum laude in 2006 with a degree in psychology. He is also an active public speaker, having delivered talks at Google and multiple TEDx forums. In addition to writing and speaking, he also runs Better Fencer, an educational website aimed at helping fencers and get to the next level. Jason lives in Los Angeles, California. Welcome, Jason. I am so glad and honored that you joined us here today.

It's a pleasure to be here, Gary.

Well, I gotta ask you, since we're just finishing up the Olympics, I gotta ask you the first thing, which I'm sure everybody's wondering, is what is it like to be in the Olympics?

I mean, the Olympics are such a constellation of experiences. You know, it's broken down into so many parts. You know, you, when you're talking about the lead up to the Olympic Games, that's primarily characterized by just complete nervousness. You're trying to deal with the pressure. There's a lot of media attention, which, especially for a sport like fencing, it's quite a bit more than you would have during the regular season. So that can be overwhelming. Then you get to the actual Olympics themselves and you're talking about your competition event and sometimes multiple competition events, depending on what sport you're in. And that is, I mean, that's the crescendo of stress, ultimately.

So there's always 30, 40% of your brain that's kind of thinking, processing, dealing with all of that while you're trying to experience, you know, the wonder that is the Olympic Games. Going to the opening ceremonies, meeting new athletes, kind of just exploring what the new city has to offer. And then once you finish your event, you have.

Basically kind of the wide open plane. You know, you've released all the stress of the event, really, you're just there to have fun. You know, there's a lot of partying and revelry and carousing with other athletes that happens in the two or three weeks that follow. And then you go home and life returns back to normal, which can be great for some, it can also be really tough for others. And you know, for me in particular, I found that after both Olympics, you, you dip in energy and you find kind of a weird little post Olympic depression period that can be hard. Hard to get out of, I bet, I bet.

So where, where were the two Olympics that you were in?

So I competed first in Athens in 2004. That was my first Olympics. I was 21 years old, green, wide eyed. And then my second Olympics were the following Olympics in 2008 in Beijing, China.

Wow, fascinating places to go to, I'm assuming.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I had been to both of them before, so the cities weren't new to me. But when you go to a city for the Olympic Games, it's completely transformed. Especially when you're talking about Beijing, which, you know, was, I mean, the degree to which the Chinese government and the organizing committee revamped the city, you know, cleaned the air, built infrastructure for the Olympic Games and made it a great event for spectators. I mean, it was night and day between the one year that I spent in between.

So you show up, you go through the opening ceremonies. What is that like to walk out with all the athletes for the opening ceremonies?

Well, first of all, what's interesting about the opening ceremonies is that the major part of the show, you know, the part that the organizing committee puts on, you know, with the, the dancers and in the case of Beijing, they had, you know, know, hundreds and hundreds of drummers, you know, drumming in, in unison, all of that, the athletes are actually cordoned away in a stadium, basically waiting for the athletes parade. So you miss all of that. You see, you watch it on a tiny little screen up in the corner. But once you do actually march out and you're, you're there with your teammates, with all the other countries, you know, with something like 90,000 people in the stadium, just sort of, you know, Cheering their heads off. I mean, it's an energy that, you know, it's hard to reproduce. Even. Even when you go to a sports event as a spectator, me being there on the actual, you know, track and field plane and just kind of walking around and, you know, just the festivity of it is pretty overpowering.

Wow. Were you one of the guys that walks with their phone recording as you're walking in and trying to record everything? Or. Or was that even possible back then?

Well, in 2004, I mean, I didn't have a smartphone. I think at that point, they actually gave us a small video recording device, which I probably used, and then I never managed to extract the footage from it. In 2008, I remember having a video camera, but I don't.

So you were in the.

Go ahead. It locked up on us there for a second. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

I actually just was. Wanted to correct myself because in Athens in 2004, I actually didn't walk in the opening ceremonies because I competed literally on the first day of the Olympics the next day. So in 2008, that was the only opening ceremonies that I was able to walk in. And I did have a video camera that I managed to capture a little bit of footage on.

Ah, okay, that's great. So you went through the whole tournament. You get to the final match. What happened in that final match in Beijing?

Yes, well, let me just. If I may, let me just back up and tell a little bit of a story from Athens to Beijing, because I think, you know, it illustrates how. How important that moment then later became to us, which was in 2004. You know, as I mentioned, I was 21. I was my first Olympic Games. I showed up there, you know, really not prepared for that pressure at all. And I fenced against a very veteran Italian fencer, a guy who had probably 10. 10 years more experience than I. And he just. He battered me. He beat me very, very, very badly, you know. And so in the. In the Olympics, you have two competitions, an individual and a team event. So in between that, you know, bruising that he gave me, team event, I had to kind of figure out how to recover psychologically and, you know, at least put forward a good performance in the team. My teammates. Then in the team event several days later, we fenced incredibly well. We ended up in the medal round fencing against Russia for the bronze medal. And the score went all the way up until the final touch. And the team events, you fenced to 45 points. So it was 44 to 44, US against Russia. And unfortunately for us, the Russians won. So we lost by one point for a bronze medal. So we all left Athens just completely crestfallen. I was very unsure about what I wanted to do with respect to sport. I didn't know if I wanted to continue or not or go back to school or whatever. I ended up deciding I wanted to go on and manage to qualify re. Qualify for the Beijing Olympics, and again, you know, very excited for the experience, but, you know, not always not as equipped for the pressure as one, you know, could be. So, in the first, second match, actually, of the Beijing individual competition, I lost again, very, very, very badly. So, again, I had to have these three or four days where I was kind of trying to psychologically recover and get myself ready for the team event. You know, dig deep. I mean, that was a moment of real resilience for me. And then in the team event, to your original question, we fenced a very, very strong team in the early rounds. We managed to beat them by one point, so. So the narrowest of margins. And then we fenced Russia, the team that had beaten us for the bronze medal, by one point, yet again for a medal. So, in this match, we all performed amazing performances, and it went all the way up to basically the last point. We were losing by one point, 44 to 43. At that point, their veteran Russian captain scores a point on my teammate, and we think it's over. But when they review the video replay, they realized that my teammate had actually stepped outside of the competitive arena, which technically means they should stop the match. So the Russians are arguing that all their fans are cheering, protesting, but the referee decides to reset the match. So it's 43, 44. USA Russia. My teammate scores like a masterful touch, bringing it even 44 to 44. We're all sitting there on the sidelines, gritting our teeth, gripping each other's shoulders, just trying to keep our breath moving in our bodies because we were so nervous. And on the final touch, he makes him miss and launches into this tremendous airborne attack, catching him just on the mask before somersaulting over and literally landing on the ground. We win, 45 to 44. That advances us through. That basically puts us into the round where we were guaranteed a medal. It was the most kind of explosive moment, emotionally, I've ever felt. We all kind of ran together, celebrated in a big kind of dog pile. All of us pretty much in tears, completely in disbelief. I ran into the stands, hugged my mom. She's crying. My dad's crying. Everybody's just like screaming bloody murder. It was, I mean, it was the magic of Olympics, I think, summarized in a moment.

Oh, that's awesome. And then you went on to the next round.

We went on to the next round. Unfortunately, we then lost that match to France. They won the gold, we won the silver. But nevertheless, we went on, you know, stood on the podium, got our medal, and it was a moment of great pride for us and all of our friends and family.

What a great experience. And so tell me, what is it that you like? What attracts you to fencing? How did you get into fencing? I mean, of all the possible sports, how did you end up in fencing?

You know, it was actually completely by luck. I, you know, like every kid, I was playing, you know, a variety of sports. I was doing ayss soccer, I was playing paddle tennis, you know, because I grew up in Southern California, which is kind of a unique sport in this area. Played basketball, baseball. But then when I was 11, one of my elementary school friends told me he was fencing. And I didn't know anything about fencing except for the fact that I had seen Princess Bride, I had seen Star wars, and I thought that sounded pretty cool. So I went along with him and I tried it for a few weeks and I actually didn't really like it at first.

It's very technical. It's an extremely technical sport. And so for an 11 year old with wandering attention span, that can be kind of challenging. And I nearly stopped fencing, actually. And then the club manager managed to convince me and my mom to get me to switch over to a new coach. And when I met this coach, that's kind of what sealed the deal for me. He's this wonderful, wonderful man. His name is Daniel Kostin. He is this jovial man from Romania. And, you know, every. He was basically the opposite of all the coaches that I had met in the club. You know, they were very serious. He was always cracking jokes. And, you know, there was something about his energy that I was really attracted to. And he was the one that kind of kept me in the sport for those one or two years that it takes to really kind of get the technique under your belt. At which point it becomes fun because then you know what you're doing, you can start competing. And once you're competing, it's a whole other ball game because you're, you know, the thrill of competition is exciting. You're starting to kind of be recognized for achievements and you get a whole number of other things that, you know, you get energy from. And I think that's. That's ultimately why I stuck with it. But as I got older and more mature as a fencer, you know, I, unlike many other athletes, I absolutely loved practice. I loved competing, too. But there was something about, you know, this sort of.

Taking apart of the complex movements that you have to make into tiny little pieces and just refining them over and over and over again that I really enjoyed. And I, when I tell this to my other fencing friends, they always say, like, oh, I hate practice. Like, what are you talking about? This is ridiculous that you would enjoy these things. And it's hard for me to explain to them, you know, why I did. But I would spend hours, you know, even just working on the way that you roll your foot to make the perfect, you know, step forward.

And it's something that's carried, you know, through my career, especially towards the end when, you know, the practice just keeps growing more and more. I managed to kind of find ways to enjoy it.

So what about the practice aspect of it, do you think intrigues you? I mean, can you see how your why can play out in the desire to practice?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, so my why is, you know, to master things. And when I learned that, it made so much sense because, you know, I almost get uncomfortable when I find that I don't have enough time to dig into something. And that could be in the fencing arena, that could be in the work arena as well. But for some reason, I feel kind of magnetically pulled towards really getting under the skin of something.

And so as it relates to practice, you know, I think it was just, you know, me trying to, like, pull apart even just that one movement into its most basic, almost like molecular components and trying to figure out how a little improvement to one or changing things just so could potentially improve it just even by 1%. And then the accretion of all that gain, you know, I felt was, you know, going to be sort of my competitive advantage in the long run.

Have you always enjoyed taking things and going deep with them like that? I mean, is that something that's always been in your DNA?

Absolutely. I mean, I think I've always been told that I'm very detail oriented, almost to a fault.

You know, when it came to my, you know, later on after my fencing career in advertising.

It was interesting because one of the. In my first year working in advertising, I was working as an advertising strategist with what often agencies call a planner. And the job of a planner is to uncover insights that help the team basically create better messaging and more relevant communications. With them. And I was doing what we call a competitive report for one of the brands that we were working on, and I was tag teaming it with a more experienced strategist. And I was completely baffled by the fact that we were going to do this competitive report, which in my view, needed to be extremely detail oriented and needed to canvas kind of all markets and all competitive brands and, you know, present a very cogent, you know, argument as to why and how the brand needed to do whatever it was they needed to do. And my. My colleague was, you know, couldn't believe the level of detail that I wanted to put into it. She was like, look, spend a day on this and move on. Because, you know, and. And to her credit, she was right. You know, the client is only going to spend two hours with this, so why are you spending two weeks with it? But inclination is there. I wanted to do it properly. I wanted to kind of get into the very bare bones of it and, you know, mostly to get to the right answer, but, you know, natural realities of the workplace don't allow that sometimes.

So it's interesting because there'll be other people that have your why that are going to listen to this podcast, and I think you can share a lot of insight with them. You know, you and I talked a little bit about this the other day, and that is that people with your why have such a desire to go deep and such a desire for knowledge that it can work in their favor because they become an expert at something and they have that detail and people look up to the expertise that they gain from that. But it can also have a downside to it in that it can take you forever or something. You can't sometimes get out of your own way because you want to go so deep and you meet. You love that. That's the fun part to you.

Yeah. Yes.

How are you able to overcome that?

You know, I.

It's a constant challenge. I mean, I don't think there ever is an overcoming it. But what I try to do, and actually what my fiance, who's wired very differently than I am, tries to help remind me to do as well, is.

To always.

Try to get out of that little cave that I like to spend time. And I mean that both physically and kind of figuratively in that, you know, when I go into something, it's kind of my own little bubble.

Sooner than I'm comfortable. And, you know, that in my work life in advertising, you know, if I was working on a strategy presentation, you know, and I thought it was going to Take me five days. I would try to show it to somebody that could give me critical feedback around three days.

Because otherwise I found there was a lot of wasted energy. Because if I then showed them something that was completely perfect, it may have been perfect by my standards, but it may have been completely different from what they actually wanted. And finding that course correction earlier on was actually, you know, it was the best way of doing it, even though I was uncomfortable with it. And I think the same is true now, and I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit later, but I'm in the process of writing a book, and, you know, that is the ultimate. The ultimate project type, which, you know, you. You kind of go away into your. Your private space and you kind of toil away on this opus for, you know, months, sometimes years. And, you know, the amount of energy you spend is just absolutely, you know, ridiculous. And I'm feeling like I'm at a point where I don't want to share my work with people, but I have been sharing my work with people because I know that if I don't, I may get to a certain point later on where I've. I've basically spent a lot of time perfecting something that isn't actually what is either marketable or, you know, the way that I actually really mean to tell the story in the first place.

So you and I were talking before, and there I told you that I ran into. I've struggled a little bit in finding people with your why that have found success because of their propensity to go deep and go into that cave, like you said, and not really come out for years. And you and this other gentleman I was talking about have this same thing in common, which is you both are and were elite athletes. And I'm curious on your perspective on how athletics played a part in you being able to get through that part of the why, taking that part of your why and actually making it a benefit versus a challenge. How did athletics play in. Help you out with that?

You know, I'm hypothesizing, but, you know, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that athletes are constantly tested. You know, in my sport, you compete somewhere in between.

15, call it 15 to 18 times a year.

Sometimes internationally, sometimes nationally. And, you know, the inclination of somebody with this why is, you know, you'd spend all your time practicing, practicing, getting better, getting better. But if you want to achieve a result of any importance or if you want to qualify for a national team, for example, you have to consistently be showing up at these tournaments every single year so that you can earn the points to then go on and be selected to that team.

And so while my inclination may have been to continue practicing because something didn't feel quite right in my game or because I was nursing an injury or whatever it may be, I didn't have a choice. And so that forced need to kind of put yourself out there and be vulnerable and expose the skills that you've been accumulating, you know, I think you eventually kind of figure out how to balance that urge to really dive deep and to actually kind of just lay everything out on the table.

So what kind of advice might you give? And I know you didn't know I was going to plan on asking you for advice, but I mean, what kind of advice might you give for somebody who has your why, who feels like they're in their own way and they can't quite move forward?

I think honestly it's just feedback. You need to ask for feedback consistently and regularly, whether that be scheduling it or just having kind of a spoken agreement with somebody that you trust to give you that feedback. Because one of the things about that I notice about myself, and I imagine this is true for a number of people with mastery, is that there are. Because I like to look very closely at things, I tend to see things that other people don't, which often leads to conclusions that can be right when others are wrong. But it also can lead me to pay attention to details that are unimportant and I can be very wrong sometimes. And what's helpful about getting feedback is that, you know, when I start to form those conclusions that are off, there are other people that can help bring me back to basically reframe how I look at things. And you know, it allows me to kind of progress forward on whatever it is I'm trying to work on or achieve.

Can you, can you say that again? It kind of cut out right there. What did you just say the last bit?

Yeah, I was just saying that the feedback helps me to reset the way I'm thinking. Because sometimes when I look at something very closely, I can be very right. But there are occasions where I'm very, very wrong. And you know, for example, you know, in a work scenario, 8 out of 10 times I'm going to listen to a client and they're going to say we're looking for this and I'm going to go away. And I can, because I'm pretty self sufficient and detail oriented, I can put together a solution pretty autonomously but two out of those 10 times I'm going to have completely misinterpreted something that they said because I'm paying attention to details that actually they said but didn't really mean or aren't important. And so having feedback from a. Yeah, exactly. In the case of, you know, the book that I'm writing, having a, you know, a sort of strong editorial voice, be able to weigh in on some of the work that I'm doing, you know, that's what kind of keeps me. That keeps me away from the danger of going too deep.

Excellent. You know, how about time frames? Is it important for you to have a time frame structure around time?

Yes. And, and I. And there's two things I'm thinking of when you, as you ask that question, maybe, probably, probably should talk about both of them because I think what, what you're asking is whether or not routines play a key part in my life. But there's also the. If you're working on a project, how do you structure that timeline out so that you don't let mastery get the best of you and basically miss your deadline? Yes, but to the former part of that, I am very routine oriented. You know, I.

Take a certain pleasure from knowing that I'm going to, for example, write every morning for call it three, three or four hours. And I block out nine to one every day to do that.

Or, you know, knowing that not necessarily, it's not necessarily linked to when, at what time of the day, but you know, doing physical exercise or fencing or whatever it is that I'm doing for, for exercise that week regularly. Like, I get very uncomfortable when I don't have those regular inputs.

And then in terms of like, timelines at. The book is a great example because I've set timelines probably three or four times already and I've completely blown them.

And that is, I suppose, in my defense, not entirely because of this, like, mastery kind of need to get everything right and perfect, but also because the project has changed and naturally that extends the timeline because you almost have to reset where you started from in the first place. But you know, having timelines or setting deadlines, even if they're artificial deadlines are an important tool that I use, but they don't always work. In other words, the mastery need sometimes just overtakes the commitment to make that deadline.

So an example that I'm thinking about is I have a patient that has your why? And he's a painter, right. And so he could go into a room to paint that room and he could take six weeks to paint that room. Well. While at the same time, he could take six hours to paint that. If he's left unchecked, he's gonna go on and on and make it perfect. I mean, he's gonna go on forever. If he doesn't have a timeline, he. Or a time frame or a deadline, I guess that would be. He's gonna just keep going. And I don't know if you feel that same way of, okay, I get in here. I gotta say, I got this amount of time. That's all I got.

Yeah, I mean, I. I definitely always feel that urge to keep going and perfecting and perfecting and perfecting. But again, like, I guess back to this sports analogy we made before. You know, when the competition is happening and there's a dude lunging at you.

You don't have that liberty anymore. Um, and so, you know, in my case, it's about continually kind of putting myself in the, you know, situation where I'm a bit uncomfortable going, like, all right, either this is done because I need to stop working on this and move on. Or, for example, in the case of the book, you know, when I eventually get to a, you know, a full manuscript, and I'm sure I'll be. I'll be at that point where I'm like, I don't. It's not done. And someone else will say, it's done. And I'll go, okay, you're right, it's done. So I'll. External input to help me make that. Help me step over that obstacle.

You know, what I like about what you're saying is, and this might be something that goes back to sports as well, but what I like about what you're saying and what I'm hearing is you're saying I need to look outside myself for help. If it just comes down to me, only it could overtake me. But if I have a coach or I have a deadline or I have someone, my significant other can help me through, accentuate my positives versus get stuck in my negative.

Absolutely. And that's actually another interesting parallel, I think, with sport.

In sport, you have to listen to a coach. A coach is your lifeline.

And, you know, not all people are very coachable. And I'd be curious, you know, to meet other folks with, you know, mastery as their. Why? Because there are some, you know, that are deep learners, and they know that they need to extract knowledge from those who, you know, are far more experienced than they. But I also suspect that there are many that are like, I can learn this on my own.

And I may have been conditioned by the fact that that wasn't an option in sport. You know, I was going to absorb as much as I could from, you know, the various coaches that I had during my career. And as a result, perhaps I'm more open to outside feedback than I might otherwise have been.

So this other gentleman that I was telling you about, that was the athlete. He was.

I have a tennis player and a teaching pro. He was here visiting in Albuquerque, and I was playing squash. And so he saw me playing squash and he wanted to play. And so first thing he says to me is, can you show me how to play more? I play, but I don't really know exactly what I'm doing. And I'm very coachable. I'm very coachable. Just tell me what to do and I can go do it. And so I wonder if that's a function of the why or is that a function of having a coach in tennis. But he's the other gentleman. That same thing in tennis, when the ball. When you hit the ball, you don't have time to analyze that for 10 minutes.

Right.

You got another ball coming back at you in about six seconds or whatever that timeframe is. You can't sit and analyze it. Just like in fencing, you can't analyze what just happened. You got to go to the next situation.

Yeah, you do have to move on. And it's interesting that you describe him that way, because that's exactly what I would say or and have said about myself. You know, it's like I consider myself pretty coachable under circumstances. And, you know, it is interesting to think about whether that's part of the why or whether or not that's part of the athletic conditioning. Yeah.

One of the challenges with your why for me is that there's so few of you. It is the most rare why. You know, there's probably under 3% have your why. So there's not a lot of examples out there. And then there's not a lot of examples that have found the success that you have and that he has. So that's why it's very interesting to see how you think and how you've been able to overcome some of these challenges and turn them into strengths. And so what I'm hearing so far is one is time frames. You got to have timeframes. Number two is you gotta have outside help. Whether that's a coach, a spouse, or whatever it is, someone that you trust that is going to keep you on the right track because when you're on the right track, you're super effective. When you're on the wrong track, you're super effectively on the wrong track.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I think it's, you know, just to give an example of how that.

Why can kind of channel in the wrong way is, you know, trying to think of a specific way to express this. But I guess in more general terms, if I'm doing something, you know, whether it be.

Like doing research, for example, you kind of have the. I kind of have this inclination to start at the beginning and end at the end, despite.

Despite the outcome that I actually need. It may be that I really just need to know a few things. For example, if I'm writing an article and I just really need a few little bits and pieces of information to support whatever point I'm trying to make. But my inclination is always to go deep into every single little bullet point. And you know, that can make the, that can be the difference between 30 minutes of work and 10 hours of work. And so having somebody be either that gut check against, you know, hey, maybe you just need to spend 30 minutes on that and not 10 hours can be very helpful because most of the time I see it and that's come with the wisdom of some experience.

But I don't always see it. And that, and that urge sometimes wins.

Yeah, I can see that. I think I might have told you that there was a gentleman that worked for our organization that had the why of mastery and he was our IT guy. And I remember there was a time when I said, and we had it. We were, we were doing lots of different websites for people. And so there was a time when I needed something changed on the website. And I said, you know, I need this phone number changed to a different phone number. And I said, how long do you think it'll take you to get that just changed for me? He goes, that'll be about two weeks. And I said, two weeks? How could it possibly take two weeks to change the phone number? I know it's like a 10 second thing because, well, I'm going to have to say, you know, if I change that, how is it going to affect the page? How's it going to affect this and that? I got to research this and research that. I'm like, you know, I need it done now. Just, I don't care whatever happens to it, just do it right now. So it was, you know, it was hard to get around that without a time frame. If I left it to just him two weeks later, I'd be checking up on a phone number change.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it that can be helpful, I guess. I suppose, you know, in your case that that example is, you know, it seems pretty clear, right, he needs to.

Just make what seems like a very superficial change. But I can also guarantee you though that because of his why, your IT systems were probably not vulnerable. Everything was up to date, you weren't.

You're always kind of trying to future proof things, I think, or at least that's the way I think about stuff. For example, in this educational site that I run, I'm always trying to kind of think ahead so that I put the work in now so I don't have to put it in later. But oftentimes you don't get to the later. So that work that you do at the beginning is wasted. And making that judgment call for someone with a different why is easy. Just do what's easiest right now. But for somebody with, I suppose, mastery, I'm always inclined to pick the hard way because I view that energy as an investment.

So if you knew somebody had the why of mastery, you run into somebody or I introduce you to somebody and you know, their why is mastery? What kinds of careers would you say would be good for somebody that has your why?

I mean, I think, I think writing, you know, any long form communication, you know, because it requires a certain.

Persistence and attention to detail that I think comes more naturally to people with.

That why. It's one of the reasons why I've taken a step back from my advertising career to work on this project. Because it was a craft that I thought that I would be.

Better suited for or I suppose even better calibrated for is probably a good way of expressing that.

Academia, certainly. I mean, if you get a PhD, you've got to spend years researching just one specific aspect of a topic.

I mean, anything that is deeply technical. Engineers, I think.

You know, again, it's a certain, it's a certain.

Desire to learn new things, which engineers need to do all the time, as well as implementing things with a certain level of precision that's going to be able to stand the test of time. People always talk about, you know, the beauty of the code that one writes. And I think only, you know, someone with a mastery why is much more inclined to be able to assimilate the skills to be able to do that. I mean, it's really just anything that, you know, isn't rapid fire. You know, just referencing again my kind of advertising background, you know, There was a. There was a position in the agency where there was a team that was responsible essentially for generating new business. They would go out and they would talk to clients that were looking for new agencies. And that client would then offer some kind of challenge to us. And we would. The agency as a whole would then put together a response to that challenge. So that position is the sort of antithesis of what I think a mastery person is inclined towards because it was. Everything was new, everything was fast, everything was just about getting the best possible work in front of that client in the short amount of time that they had. Cutting corners if needed, but.

Ultimately just trying to get the result. And that was something that perfect for somebody that's not like me. And every time I was put in that position, I was always uncomfortable.

You're doing me a big favor. So you don't know this, but you're doing me a big favor because I get asked this question all the time and I have my outside perspective of what it's like to have your why and all the other whys as well, except for my why a better way. But you're helping me to understand it from inside of that why, which is really, really helpful. So I really appreciate your insight.

Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to talk about it.

And so you've, you've got a fiance.

I do.

And you know her why?

I do. I do.

Tell everybody what her why is.

Well, first of all, my fiance's name is Martina. She's. We met while working in advertising when I was living in London and she in Amsterdam and she.

She'S from Sweden. And you know, just a very opposite personality to me. You know, I am a little bit introverted. She's very extroverted. You know, I am very detail oriented and you know, my have a why mastery. She's much more interested in working on new things and multiple things all at once. And her why when she went through the process was to challenge the status quo. And it's interesting because.

She agreed with that. She agreed with that. That sort of. That.

She didn't necessarily feel that it was true in all cases.

She loves having to do things that she doesn't think make sense, but she's not necessarily rebelling against every rule that is imposed upon her. So she's kind of. She must be a blend. There must be another one that she's, you know, quite closely associated with.

Well, this is a great conversation to have because what is the if your why is to challenge the status quo and you're so people with that, why don't even want to be put in the box of being outside the box.

Yeah, right.

They don't even want to be in a box. And their natural tendency is going to be to challenge it.

Yeah.

You know, but I see this all the time. And then when they really start to think about it and they start to think to see how it's played out in their life, they go, you know what? That really is the way that I do things. I don't really always want to admit it, but that really is. So it's.

That right off the bat, because that's what challenge people do is they challenge that. So it would be a great conversation for us to have some time with her, because I think it'll come out as, you know what. That really is the way I do things in every situation, even though they don't really want that. But it'll be a. You two are an interesting mix.

Yeah, well.

The way I think about it is, you know, we are a great counterbalanced against each other. We have a lot of the same interests, but we. We approach the world in a very different way, you know, and, you know, like I mentioned before, you know, I need sometimes, you know, my tendencies are. I mean, they're like superpowers sometimes, but sometimes they're like vices. And, you know, she helps to pull me back towards the middle when. When they're not really acting in my best interest. You know, she's the one that says, like, hey, maybe you should take a break, and, you know, we should just relax a little bit. And on. On the other side of things, you know, sometimes I'm the one that helps her find focus when she's feeling like she doesn't really want to focus.

Yeah, it'll be. It'll be an interesting mix of you two and. And both of you should come with a warning label, by the way.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I don't want to get too deep into all the personal stuff, but. So tell us a little bit about this book you're writing. What's it about?

Absolutely. So I'll just tell you the genesis of it. You know, around the time of the Rio Olympics, I was feeling a pullback towards fencing, and I hadn't fenced in probably seven years or so.

And.

You know, I also was starting to kind of. I couldn't put.

One thing that was going to, uh. Oh, are you there?

Yeah, you. You cut out there for just a second.

Okay. Should I go backwards and start again?

Yeah, just start with your. Right after Rio, you were. You were thinking you hadn't fenced in seven years.

Yeah. So I was feeling nostalgic about fencing, and, you know, the Rio Games certainly contributed to that. And I was sort of watching some of the athletes that I. That I knew that had qualified for the team and, you know, were getting ready for the Games. And at the same time, I was also.

Starting to feel this slight discomfort in my job, partially because of some of the things we talked about where I was jumping from project to project, and I wasn't getting that satisfaction going deep into something.

And writing has always been a part of my life. You know, I. It was sort of drilled into me in my early years at school, and then I would write sporadically over, you know, my kind of academic life. And I wanted to. I wanted to make something. I wanted to make something that was mine and to control that craft from beginning to end. And so I initially kind of had the idea to write a book that would have been teaching book for young fencers, so sort of a how to be a better fencer kind of book. And I set about writing that while I was still working and living in London and got pretty far along. And then I realized, you know, that the challenge that it was providing to me was not what I wanted or needed from a creative perspective. And, you know, if I was going to write one book in my life, it wasn't going to be that book. I wanted to write something that was more personal and more.

More along the lines of a memoir. And so that the project transformed into a memoir, essentially about the aspects of my career that I struggle with the most, which was dealing with pressure.

So I spent another few months writing about that, and then I realized, with the help of Martina, you know, that I can't write about those things without exposing some of the personal milestones, sort of the highlights and lowlights of things that were going on in my. In my personal life. You know, things that were happening in intimate relationships, you know, both good and bad. You know, the discomfort that I was starting to feel in my athletic life around what I perceived to be kind of like stereotypical or toxically masculine behaviors. And I was, you know, so essentially the story has become a story about fencing and, you know, all of those years that I, you know, went from a young fencer to an Olympic fencer. But it's. But it's also about, you know, kind of my coming of age and, you know, learning and understanding who I wanted to become as a man, both through the sport, but also Through a variety of other things that were happening in my own personal journey.

Do you have a title for it yet?

I do, but I won't tell you what it is because I've been critiqued on it multiple times by. By other people. And also because.

You know, I'm told that some editors run screaming when you have too many things Definite, you know, defined as part of your book.

Good.

I mean, it is a memoir about, you know.

Dealing with. Essentially a memoir about kind of dealing with pressure, the Olympics, and my understanding of masculinity and manhood.

I'm curious how you now see that from the perspective of mastery.

Depth and details, and all the things that you went through. I can imagine you were at a different level of thinking than a lot of other people.

Yeah, I think.

I would say over the years, it's just about noticing. I think. I. You know, I've always kind of considered myself a sensitive person. By sensitive, I mean.

Emotionally sensitive, but I really mean sensitive to stimulation.

You know, my nervous system feels almost more sensitive than maybe some others. And as a result, you know, I. In certain situations, you just kind of feel something doesn't feel right or, you know, in the. In the more sort of extreme physiological description of that, like, I don't drink caffeine because caffeine makes me feel anxious. But I think those two things, sensitivity and mastery, are part and parcel with each other, because in order to be able to go deep into the details and kind of like, discern what matters and what doesn't, or to pick apart in that little difference that actually makes the difference in the end. You have to have a certain level of.

Ability to really feel the nuances that comes from some level of acute sensitivity.

Well, I am excited to see it. I'm excited to read it. If you finish, right?

Yeah.

Challenge probably is getting to the end.

Do you have a deadline? Do you have a date?

I would really like to have a full draft of the book by the end of the summer. And I have a lot right now probably somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 60,000 words. Not all of them are publishable, but, you know, I'm gonna just keep. Keep grinding at it and see where I get to.

That's awesome. And I like what you're doing with not telling people your. Your name, because it's like when you have a baby, right? When. When you're gonna have a child, what you don't want to do is tell people what you named the child before the child is born, because then they're gonna have a comment on it. But if you say, oh, here's my son, you know, Michael, or whatever, then they, oh, great, that's wonderful. You don't have to deal with all that.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. It's interesting because Martina was telling me about, in Sweden, it's actually not customary to ask A, the name or B, whether it's a boy or a girl first. It's almost like taboo to do. So the first thing you should ask is, is it healthy, you know, or, you know, what things do you expect for it in the future? And I think that's probably true for a project like this. This is my baby. I'd much rather the details of it than the summary of it.

So, Jason, are you still working in the advertising agency? Are you doing some. Are you doing some coaching, some speaking? What kinds of things are you doing?

So right now, you know, my primary focus is the book. That's the majority of my time. And then I spend another sort of 20, 30% of my time right now kind of advancing this.

Educational website that I. That I run called Better Fencer, which is really kind of the outgrowth of the initial idea for the book. You know, it was. It's very much geared towards helping young fencers kind of get to the next level. It's very sort of didactic content about sports psychology and, you know, training and conditioning, injury prevention, things that a key part, you know, when it comes to, you know, advancing in the sport. And then another percentage. Percentage of my time is.

Going out and kind of talking and.

Doing some speaking. And I imagine, you know, the book is sort of aligned with that. And when the book is ready, I imagine I will do more of that as well.

Okay, great. So can people follow you? Are you on any of the social media platforms? Are you building your tribe as you go along? Are you getting ready for the launch? Are there things like that that people that are listening to this can connect with you? Let's say it's another mastery person that wants to talk to you. Is there a way that you'd like people to get a hold of you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm Jason Rogers, R O G EE R S USA on pretty much every social media platform.

And, you know, for those that, you know, inquiring minds that are interested in fencing or if there are any fencers in your. In your audience, you know, that website is betterfencer.com and it's better Fencer on Facebook. And we'll be launching some other social platforms for that as well later on. But yeah, I would say social media would probably be the best way to get in touch with me.

Awesome. Well, hey, I appreciate you spending an hour with us. This has been awesome for me. It's going to be great for all of the other people that have your why or want to learn about that. Your why. Because they've got someone in their life that has your why. Just this morning I was at a board meeting and the son of one of the other board members has your why. He lives in New York City and he's in an art school in New York City. And he's always struggled, you know, with understanding his son. So I told him today that we were going to have this conversation, so I'm sure he's going to want to hear this. So I thank you very much for your time and we'll stay in touch.

That's great. Thank you. It was great to be on the podcast.