Interview with John Wolford, quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams - Nir And Far

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the near and Far Podcast. I am so honored to have John Wolford with me today. He is quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams. And, John, thank you so much for being here. I have to say, right off the bat, before I try and fool anybody, I told my wife and my daughter this morning that we're talking, and they laughed at me because they know that I know next to zero about football. So they were really excited that I had this opportunity to talk to you. But I just need you to know that in my mind, football players are those people who used to beat me up in high school school. But other than that, I just never.

Grew up with it.

So I'm sure I'm going to put my foot in my mouth about saying something about football that's going to show my ignorance. So I figured I'd put it right on the table. But you've been kind enough to join me today because I found that you actually read Indistractable, and so I was so curious to hear how you use the book and what it's done for you in your career and your life. And so I was just super eager to talk to you and you were kind enough to join me on the podcast. So thanks for being here.

Yeah. So how did I hear about Indistractible is probably one thing that you were thinking about. Balaji Srinivasan was on a podcast and I majored in finance, so I'm interested in this stuff. And he recommended it along with Atomic Habits in Tandem as two of the best books he's read for productivity. So he's a pretty guy. I thought it was interesting. And then I bought the book, read it, and then really applied a lot of it to my schedule for football and then my outside interests, which when I'm not in season, I have a lot more free time. So that's how I came across it. And I found it to be extremely useful for my own scheduling productivity in general. Happiness too. Just, you know, I'm a go, go, go type of guy and like, just blocking time to. To relax is something that's actually allowed me to turn off a little bit in season. So I loved it and got a lot out of the book.

Oh, I'm honored. Well, thank you for saying that. Can you. Can you tell us some more specifics about how you use. I'm particularly interested in how you use it in the on season versus the off season. What are some of the techniques and how does your life change accordingly?

Yeah. So in season, we're working seven Days a week, there's always something. And Tuesday, significantly an off day. But quarterbacks, we still watch film to prep for the next opponent. In season, a lot of our schedule is structured by the team, right. So from about 8am to 4pm on a given day, they structure the day and then we're doing extra work, you know, from 6 to 8 and then even into like 7pm Some nights for quarterbacks in terms of preparation. So I use it to block everything. You know, when I. When I looked at the book, the timeboxing I found to be super helpful. And then, you know, like the forest app, which was. Has been super helpful to me as well. But putting my phone away and really trying to get into like a deep focus mode when I study film, when we study upcoming opponents, has been useful to me. So in season, it blocks everything for me, like the time boxing and some of those tools you mentioned to become indestructible. And then off season, it transitions into a. All right, I'm training the first, you know, four or five hours of the day. But I also have a fledgling business that I'm starting with my partner in Jacksonville. And so the rest of the day I'm working on that. And that helps me to, you know, I switch gears. Obviously, I'm in training mode, transition into kind of business mode. But as a startup, right, you're setting your own schedule. Completely different than in season, where I'm getting told what to do and where to be. Every time off season is much more me setting it and I find it to be useful in both instances.

Yeah, interesting. What kind of business are you starting?

Basically a app that'll be basically learn how to train like an NFL quarterback. Right. So there's the latest and greatest sports science around, like biomechanical throwers. So every pitcher in MLB now throws 99. And a lot of that sports science, like understanding the underlying biomechanics is being applied to quarterback. And so that wave is crashing. But that information is in a select few amount of people's minds. Right. Obviously, it's getting integrated into the NFL. But like from a high school and from a youth development standpoint, there's a lot of bad coaching out there. So the app would be basically your solution to the latest and greatest lifts, arm care, throwing workouts, and period and poster routines that NFL quarterbacks use. So that's the. Obviously very targeted to a small niche, but it's a niche. I know. So that's where it's. We just started six months ago and we're starting to Build it.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, we should talk offline about that too. We can use some of the tactics from Hook to make sure that we can make the app habit forming. I'm curious to hear more. So you would say it's, it's. You struggle with distraction more in the off season because you don't have as much of a rigid schedule. Is that, is that right?

Yes. So I actually struggle more with distraction in season because we have so many liminal moments. A couple days scheduled out. So it's 45 minutes. 45 minutes, you know, hour meeting, yada, yada, yada. And I much prefer to like two hour, three hour blocks. And I can set em when I'm most focused. So I don't know if you listen to like the Huberman podcast, I'm sure you've dabbled, but he talks about like ultradian rhythms. Right. So there's these points in the day where you're your most focused and you can kind of just clock it, you know, if you pay attention to yourself. Right. Like I feel most alert around for me personally it's like 9am to 12 and then like 4 to 6. So like I do like deep focus work in those blocks. But in the NFL, they set the schedule. So there's a lot of liminal moments, a lot of meetings, some of which are very unnecessary. And I can get pulled like I feel much more cluttered in season than I do off season when I can set it on my own, which I really enjoy.

Yeah, yeah. So just to fill everyone in, if you haven't read the book, and I love John, that you're using the terminology from the book, a liminal moment are these times between times. So it's that space between meetings. It's that time when you're at a red light, waiting for it to turn, turn green. And those are those very dangerous points when you know you are likely to reach for something because you're waiting around or you're going from one place to the next, you're likely to get distracted by something which is not in itself a problem unless it bleeds into the next time box. And so John, how does that happen in your life? Like if you, if you're finding that you're scheduled with all these different occasions and meetings and things that are pulling you from one direction to another, where do you find that you are likely to get distracted and let the liminal moment turn into something that bleeds into another time?

Usually it's with my phone. Right. So I, I pick up my phone. Transitioning from one meeting to the next or from the weight room to, you know, our next meeting, where, you know, for example, right. We lift from like 9am to 10am and then we'll have a meeting. Usually the lift takes 45 minutes, right. And then our next meeting's at like 10, 15. So sometimes you have like 20, 30 minutes. Right. And if I want to be as productive as possible so I can get home and actually, like, read a book and relax, I should use that 20 minutes. Right. And sometimes I'll pick up my phone and I'll get a text or I'll get pinged. Right. And that's when I fall into it. Right. And then, you know, that 20 minutes, which wasn't scheduled for. For anything because you got done with your lift and then you had your next meet. I could have used to study game, tape, personnel, etc. So I look at that as a mishap on my part when I let that happen. So I try to keep my phone either on airplane mode. There's apps you can use that you mentioned in the book. Forest is one of my favorite ones. But in those moments, it's just noticing it and then trying to not repeat the pattern. But it's usually phone. It could be Gmail. It could be a text message. I delete Instagram as much as possible. Social media in general. I literally deleted off my phone. I don't even try and do the screen time limits. I just delete it. Yeah, Yeah.

I don't want you to name names, but do you see among your fellow NFL players, do you see that some of them struggle and how does that. How does that impact their performance?

Perhaps? Yeah, so, absolutely. And I don't. To be frank, I don't know if a lot of people even think about, you know, those 20 minutes as. As time that they could have used in the NFL. So I'm a little bit of a. Of a nerd in NFL circles, you know, relatively speaking. But I definitely think there are opportunities that are missed in a cutthroat industry like the NFL. I look at. Look at those 20 minutes as an opportunity where I can use my time better than the opponent. Right. And I'm sure there's some really smart quarterbacks that are doing this and players in the NFL that are. But I don't see it a lot, and I don't think a lot of people are thinking about it.

That's awesome that it really gives, you know, it's something that gives you an advantage not only in the corporate world, for people who are Listening, you know, who are at work, but also in every conceivable industry, that when you're making the most of your time and your opponent isn't that. I mean, that's a huge advantage. If you add up those 20 minutes throughout your day, that's a significant amount of time. When you compound that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, year, there's some serious advantage that can be gained there. Yeah.

And I felt ever since I started doing that time, boxing in general, you know, being aware of these things, it's written the book that my quality of life became a lot better too, because I would work till 8 or 8:30, because there's a. There's a lot of work to be done in preparation and I. I get done a lot sooner and I feel more prepped earlier in the week since I started doing those things. And I just think that the season is an absolute grind. You're working seven days a week for 18 weeks. And so later in the season I feel more alert and less burnout, et cetera.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Something that strikes me too, is that for you, rest is super important. Right. You need physical and psychological rest. But if your head is spinning with all the things you didn't get done, what tactics have you found to allow yourself to get rest? Because it can create that rumination loop? I hear this from a lot of people, you know, and we know this scientifically. We know the number one cause of insomnia is worrying about insomnia. It's not a chemical disorder. For the vast majority of people, it's a rumination problem. So how do you deal with that?

Yeah, so I try and get. I'm trying to be in bed for at least 8 hours and 30 minutes a night. You had a point in the book that stuck me that, you know, if I give myself the time and I don't sleep for all of it, then at least I gave myself the time and my body got what it needed. But I sleep pretty. My method for doing so is I try and put my phone away at least an hour before bed, dim the lights, and then I try and get morning sun and evening sun to set my circadian rhythm. And I work out so hard, by the end of the day, I'm pretty exhausted. So if I do that, then I fall asleep and I fall asleep good. So that's my way of getting the sleep I need because my body. Absolutely. Because it's both, you know, it's cerebral and it's physical. And you need that regenerative, regenerative sleep so that you can perform.

I love it. I love that you read every word of the book. It's fantastic. I can tell it's, it's wonderful. And to fill everyone else in. So one of the things I advocate for. So I used to struggle with insomnia for quite a long time. And so what, what I started to do was to have this, this mantra now that whenever I wake up, the mantra that I repeat to myself is, the body gets what the body needs. The body gets what the body needs. The core layer that I would add is if you let it. Meaning that what most people do is they can't sleep, but because they didn't give their body enough time, they didn't put the time in like John does. To say I have to be eight and a half hours in bed. Whether my body decides to sleep or not is a secondary point. That's what most people miss, right? Because they're busy with checking email or scrolling social media. They're not letting their brain rest with that time they have in bed. So they don't get to bed until 10, 11, 12 o' clock at night and then they have to wake up early in the morning. So you didn't give your body that time. But if you do give your body that time, doesn't matter if one night you get five hours of sleep because your body's going to get what it needs the next night if you let it. And so that's, that's awesome to see that you're, you're using that technique as well.

There's a lot of things. You wrote it well enough that there's, you know, like, with a lot of books, you read a lot of books and you don't retain much. I thought you did a good job of the way you structured it. And there's like sticking points that have just resonated and are etched in my memory.

Oh, I love it. Thank you. That's a huge compliment. I'm super curious with how you handle internal triggers. I mean, there must be so much stress and anxiety and potential worry. I mean, maybe it doesn't affect, affect you, but you know, to me, and I'm just thinking about all the fans, all the attention, the, the rigor that you put into your work. How do you deal with these internal triggers, these uncomfortable emotions?

The reality, the NFL is very cutthroat and I'm an undrafted free agent, so I'm a long shot. So anytime I play, my job is essentially on the line. And I've been backing up Matthew, who's the started for the Rams. I've been a backup. Now, this is my. This will be my fifth year in the league. So you have to be ready at a moment's notice. So sometimes you don't even play, but at any given moment, you get thrown in, and if you don't play well, then they can cut you like, they'll cut you the next day if you play terrible. Right. So I've had my own journey of, like, dealing with that amount of stress. And basically, I just try and remind myself, you know, do everything that you can. If I do everything that I can and the chips fall where they may, and the people that I care about most are the only people that. Whose opinions I care about or value, then the rest is answering. Right? So if it works out, great. But I know I did everything I could, and so I have to remind myself of that. In the middle of it. It's much harder. Right. It's hard to calm down those internal triggers that you talk about. But there's some techniques you can do. I mean, like taking a deep breath. There's box breathing. There's a plethora of techniques. I know you talk in the book about mindfulness, and I try and, you know, I try and get at least a minute, a day of meditation that's not long, but I just try and, like, focus on, you know, all right, just breathe for a second. You know, focus on your surroundings. So some of those things help. And, you know, I'm just. I know I give it everything I have, and. And I put my head down at night knowing I did that. And that's all that really matters in my mind. So that's. That's how I think about it. And there's times where my anxiety gets pretty high just in season because of the stress. But it is what it is. Yeah.

No, it's. I think it's very relatable that all of us feel that stress to different degrees. And I think you said it very eloquently of knowing what you can control. Right. It's ancient wisdom of knowing what you can control and worrying about the stuff you can control. And then there's a lot of stuff that's out of your control that's not worth worrying about. Mostly related to the past. I think what a lot of people struggle with is, again, this. This anxiety and rumination that comes from worrying about stuff that already happened or could happen in the future as opposed to the present moment. That's a big.

Yeah. There's a Friday said it, I don't remember. But like, there's an analogy. NASCAR drivers don't focus on the walls, you know, they focus on what's ahead. They don't look behind. Right. So that's trying to keep that mindset too. In anything that I do is, you know, whatever happened in the past or all the things that could go wrong, the only thing I can do is, you know, work to get better today, you know, 1% better, whatever that is, and move forward. Yeah.

What about when you don't feel like doing something right? You know, there's that marginal time you could put into more exercise, more reviewing of tape, more planning. There's always more you could do. How do you deal with knowing when enough is enough?

Yeah, so that's tough. I think at this point in the NFL, having played a few games, I have an understanding of what I need to know to play well. So I've kind of honed in on what that amount of study is and what that amount of physical preparation is. And then if you, if you couple that with, with, you know, timeboxing and productivity, right. Avoiding liminal moments. Right. And really honing in on that, you can get it all done and still have some time for yourself. And I think that's crucial for your, for your own sanity. Right. So for me, the biggest thing I focus on is I'm at least going to give myself an hour a day to just decompress. And, you know, if I'm able to do that in season and all the other work, right. That I put into it, you know, is going towards football and my preparation, then I feel pretty good about myself. And then we have off days, right? Off days where I have, you know, a three hour day or a two hour day in season and the off season, I have a lot of free time. So that mix, right, it's very much like a sprint for six months and then you completely decompress. Like, I go to Japan, I go to Singapore, and so that's how I've kind of done it. And in season, what keeps me sane is like just blocking, literally blocking free time, right? This is free time. I'm not thinking about football, I'm not thinking about anything else. Enjoying my girlfriend or I'm enjoying my friends or I'm reading a book and roxing. And that's been super crucial to me. And I think you hit a point of diminishing returns if you just keep trying to work all the time, right. And I will be less productive and a worst football Player if I do that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that point is something that a lot of people miss is they think it's like an indulgence to schedule time for yourself, but you don't even realize what real leisure feels like. Unless you say, no, this is all I'm going to do. Right. Like, if you constantly keep spinning your wheels on stuff you could be doing as opposed to. No, I said I'm going to chill out. And even if that time chilling out is scrolling social media or watching something on Netflix or reading a book, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Because that's exactly what you said you were going to do.

Exactly. And sticking to it. Right. It's a point, I think you've talked about that like, it's on the schedule. If I don't feel like doing it, but on the schedule, like, I got to do my arm care from X to X or my workout from xx, then I do it and that's that.

What do you think you've changed? That's kind of giving you the best bang for the buck? Anything in particular that that's worked for you?

Yeah. So in terms of, like, workouts, right. Which are very much. You know, I have my workout on my Google sheets, right. So my workout gets programmed. This is part of what my business is, but gets sent to me by someone who's very well in tune with how my body works and the best exercises to optimize me for throwing. And so I get my workout on Google sheets. But what, you know that's bad about that is that I get a text message or whatever, so I just completely turn my phone on. Airplane mode, you know, when I have, you know, workouts blocked, right. So I get nothing. I found airplane mode to be great. So it's force is great, too. But airplane mode just cuts everything off. So I use that a good amount when I'm really trying to focus beyond that. You know, that's really the main thing that enforced are the two tools that I kind of pull out of my toolbox the most that keep me productive.

All right, so this is kind of unusual, but I love it. So as soon as we stop recording, John started, said, hey, I got some questions for you. And he asked me the first one. I was like, hey, this is actually really good. We should record this so that everyone else can hear the answers as well. So first of all, John, I'm honored that you have these questions for me. And so, yeah, let's switch it around and you can. You can ask me as opposed to me asking you for a bit, could.

You just share your thoughts? You know, we talk about like, and I think about this, the balance between ambition and contentment. Right. High driving people who want to, you know, go far in life and. Right. Whatever that definition of success is in high performance industries. Right. That's a lot of your life. But then you also want to have time for family and friends, et cetera. So how do you think about that balance? Obviously you've written a book about it, but on a day to day basis you probably get pulled in each direction.

Yeah. So the conventional wisdom is you need to have a life plan, you need to have a big hairy goal, you need to do visioning exercises. And I don't think that works. I don't think that works because life changes. But what doesn't change is our values. Values are how you determine how you want to spend your time. So the advice I give in indistractable and an answer to this question is that you want to turn your values into time. Because again, all kinds of things can happen between now and some undetermined future. Good things can happen, bad things can happen, A lot of things outside of your control can happen. So you can't make those super long term plans because there's just so much uncertainty out there. What you can plan, what you do have control over. We talked about earlier how important it is to, to focus on the things you can control as opposed to things you can't control. So by focusing on the things you can control, which is most immediately, the two things that will produce your future are your time and your attention. So by simply focusing on your time and your attention and turning your values into time, this is how you make that future that you actually desire happen. And so even if it's not going to be like, oh, I want a million dollars in my bank account by this date, or I want to get married by this date and I want to have 2.5 children by that date. That's not the kind of planning that you can do because there's just too many exogenous variables. What you can do is to say, in the next week, I'm going to spend my time this way according to my values. And so what we do is we look at these three life domains. We look at you, you're at the center of these three life domains. If you can't take care of yourself, can't take care of other people, can't make the world a better place, so you got to take care of yourself first. So you put that time in your schedule so that you ask yourself, what are values? Values are attributes of the person I want to become. So you ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time taking care of themselves? So this is stuff you do already, right? You read, you make time to decompress. You do things for yourself that you know, you exercise those things that you're doing for yourself. That's the first rung, that's the first thing that goes into your schedule. Then your relationships. We know that you know how important personal relationships are. We're going through this loneliness epidemic right now in our country. It's incredibly bad for our health and our psychological well being. We have to make time for the important people in our life and don't just give them the scraps of time that are left over, but actually make time for those people, those important relationships, and then finally your work, right? And so that's where most people start. But actually I think that's the third thing we do. We after we do time for ourselves and for our relationships. So I think that's how you find this balance. It's about making trade offs. Because when you do this technique, you will force yourself to make decisions on how to spend your time. So part of the reason I hate to do lists is that to do lists have no ending. You can always add more. I want to be a perfect father. Okay, I'll check that box. I want to write a novel. I'll check that box. I want to, I want, I want. You have a million things you can add onto that, onto that to do list. But with no constraints, you can't make trade offs. And so what this forces you to do is to say what is more important than what, Right? Is my time with my family more important than time watching tv? I have to make that trade off. And how you decide, frankly, I don't care. That's up to you. And it has to be according to your values, not someone else's. But I think that's how to do this. So the way you build the life you want in the future is by building the life you want every day, day by day, by planning out that time according to your values and sticking to that plan. Is that helpful at all?

Yeah, no, 100%. It resonates, I think about that. You know, it's. You make it a little more simple in that, you know, you plan out your week, right? And you have these, these goals that are downstream but controlling what you focus on, what you can control today, tomorrow, the next Day. Right. And don't get too far ahead of yourself and then make decisions, you know, be intentional about how you spend your time. Right. As opposed to getting pulled into things that don't align with what your goals are. Right. So if I want to be, you know, my relationships obviously are important. My work's important, my stuff's important. Right. All my time should be spent on those three things. And don't get pulled into things unless you intentionally plan it. Right.

I'm curious, what are you specifically struggling with the trade off between?

So what would it be? Right. It's, you know, obviously I have an NFL career, I have business aspirations, and then I have relationships. I have a girlfriend who I'm very close with in my family. Right. And it's sometimes juggling those three things. Right. One's a full time job, another one's fledgling but growing, and then obviously you have your relationships. And I want to be the type of person who. Your relationships are so important to me. Right. I don't want to, you know, I don't care about having billions of dollars, you know, when I die. Right. I want a few people that care about me to always care about me. And so just making sure you allocate time for that. Sometimes I get pulled into because our schedules are so hectic in season and I have my own ambitions that, you know, I feel like sometimes that that gets pushed to the wayside and I don't want that.

Right, right. So what One interesting thing I see a lot of is confusing something being important and more important than other things, equaling to making it trump all else. And I think that's a mistake. So, you know, what do I mean by that? So when you, when people say, okay, what do you value in life? Oh, my relationships, that's more important than anything. Well, is you. Are your relationships more important than your career? Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah. Okay, so then why aren't you making more time for me? Right? Like why, why when there isn't a, when there's a choice to be made between, like, hey, working out because it helps your professional career or spending more time in the office or whatever the case might be for each individual. But you said I'm more important than why aren't you here? And I think that's, that's a dangerous trap because it's not saying that because something is necessarily more important to you that it should displace all else. It means that it needs time to be held on your schedule and that you will keep that time sacred. And because of how important it is. So even if the time you spend with your family is one hour a week, okay, because it's the most important thing in your life, you're going to keep that time sacred. Now, you might not be able to afford, or you're making a choice that you can't provide more time, but that's fine because you're still living according to your values. I think where people get in trouble is when there's a mis expectation or misalignment between different parties. So my girlfriend wants this, my kids want that, my parents want this. And I feel like I'm being pulled and stretched in different directions. The solution is to do what's called schedule syncing. And sometimes this can make for a difficult conversation, but it always end up ends up yielding great results because when you sit down with, with your significant other, by the way, you can do this with your boss, you can do this with your colleagues, you can do this with your kids and say, look, this is super important to me and this is how much time I'm allocating to this, okay? This is how much time is according to my values, how much time that I want to devote to you or to this effort, whatever the case might be. So maybe it's your business colleague, maybe it's your girlfriend. You're sitting down and saying, hey, this is the time I would love to be available to spend time with you, or this is how much time I will spend working on this business. Let's do a quick schedule sync to make sure we're on the same page. Many people fear having that conversation because they think they're going to be deficient, that the other person is going to say, well, I want more. Right? But many times it's actually incorrect that what ends up happening is they say, okay, well, now at least I know, right? That's fine. If we have different values or a different amount of time we want to spend together, that's fine. But at least now I know when you have time for me, and I won't need to expect you any other time, but when you say you're going to be there, I know you're going to be there. And so having that conversation upfront and saying like, okay, look, it's only going to be three times a week or whatever the case might be, that we're going to spend time together, but I promise you, I will be there every single time when I say I will. That's more important than saying I'm going to be available all the time because you're the most Important thing in my life. That's unrealistic, right?

No, that makes sense. Me and my girlfriend kind of do that in that we try and, you know, whenever the night's winding down, put our phones away. This is time for us to talk or go for a walk or hang out with the dogs. And it has led to a much happier relationship since doing that. So that makes sense. I had another question that I wrote down. The next is just in general, you're very successful. You've written two great books. In your experience, what are some of the key characteristics or habits that you see in successful people that they share? That begs the question, what is successful? Right. That asks that question, too. But what have you seen in your lifetime?

Yeah, yeah. So that's exactly the point I was going to make is what is success? So to me, success is following through with what you said you were going to do. To me, success is personal integrity that I'm as honest with others as I am with myself. Right. I think people find it generally easier to be honest with others. Right. When you shake someone's hand and you make a promise, you know, there's a lot of social pressure to keep that promise. You don't want to be called a liar. When it comes to keeping promises to ourselves, that's a little bit more difficult. Right. Because it's just us. So that's my goal, is to have personal integrity. When you look at these regrets of the dying, it's all these things that are pretty common sense. I spent quality time with my family. You know, I worked on something important. My life mattered. I help people. We know this. And we have, you know, when we're young, we have the opportunity to make this change in our life, but we don't. And so I think what to me, personal success comes from doing what I say I'm going to do. So, first step is examining your life and asking, well, what do I want to do? Like, what is important? What are my values? How should I spend my time? And then the second step is following through on that stuff. And, you know, of course, the way to do that is by becoming indistractable. So that's, to me, the formula for success is personal integrity. And then how do people do that? Is, you know, what I see in terms of people who are successful. They are people who are able to stick to their values and stick to the plan of how they're going to live out their values for an extraordinary amount of time. That's, I think, a common trait I see with successful people is that I think what others don't realize is how long it takes to be successful. They see the output, right? They see the outcome. They don't see the input. They don't see the time, the effort, the attention that it took to get there. When it comes to building a business, right, Everybody looks at these overnight successes and you say, oh, my God, so easy. No, it took years and years and years of practice, of the daily grind of serving customers and hiring employees and firing employees and all the crap that comes along with building a business. I mean, you know, and in your athletic career, right? Like, it takes forever to build these skills. So I think building that patience to persist is that key trait. And so building that patience requires. And this is another defining trait. It's about emotion regulation. So when we study high performers, the interesting thing to me, what surprised me, I thought that these people somehow just didn't have the same problems, right? That we all think our problems are unique, that nobody feels the way I feel. That, you know, my. My particular flavor of discomfort, you know, nobody would understand because it's unique to me somehow. That's bullshit, right? That high performers experience the same exact boredom and loneliness and doubt and anxiety and fearfulness. They feel the exact same sensations. The difference with the high performers is when they feel that discomfort, they use it as rocket fuel to propel them towards traction, right? Rather than what many people do is whenever they feel discomfort, they try and escape it with distraction, right? Let me take a drink, let me watch tv, let me scroll a newsfeed. And they don't utilize it as rocket fuel. And so what you find with a lot of high performers, they have this ability to almost get angry about that feeling and use it to their advantage. You see a lot of people, I'm sure you see it in your profession, right? Whether it's sports, entertainment or authors or leaders of business, they got a chip on their shoulder, right? They've got, like, something to prove, as opposed to people say, like the people who have something to prove, but they see it as trauma. They see it as something that makes them less able to accomplish what they want to accomplish. The high performers, they have the same trauma in their lives. The same type of shit happened to them, whether it was an abusive relationship or a difficult upbringing. But they use that discomfort to make them push harder and faster and longer and to persist. That, I think, is that defining trait, which is nothing more. If you think about it, it's nothing more than emotion regulation, right? It's nothing more than being able to take that discomfort and Use it versus trying to escape it.

That makes a ton of sense. I see that on a day to day basis with the highest performers in the NFL. There's, there's a chip on the shoulder, doesn't matter how much money they've made. And they just, for whatever reason, you know, when things get tough, they're in the trenches, they're working. And in my own experience, if I look back, you know, you know, if I smell the roses for a second, there were so many times where I could have quit. And I just, more times than not, I just said, no, I'm going to keep going. Right. And that's carried me because I was a long shot. You know, no one even drafted me. I was, I wasn't even signed after the draft. So in retrospect, but you keep going, you keep moving forward.

Very interesting. Where do you think that comes from? Or how do you, I guess, cultivate that in a way?

I mean, if I'm being honest with myself, there were times where I was like, I think, you know, like, you talk about, you know, I was like, should I keep doing this? I don't know. I was fortunate enough to have, call it, you know, experiences and people in my corner that whatever reason shaped me to handle those situations pretty well. I, it's hard to pinpoint other than I'm extremely competitive. And when people, you know, told me I suck or I can't do it, I, I kind of just keep my mouth shut and I keep working for whatever reason. That's open doors. And, and, you know, you talk about like embracing the journey, you know, not the goal. Right. Like, like I enjoy the kind of the grind of it. Right. Like waking up and being like, I, I really do enjoy waking up every morning. I'm like, tired and I don't want to do it. And I just make myself, you know, get through the workout and, and just kind of build that block. It kind of, once you do it long enough, it just embeds. It's kind of in fabric, who I am. That's why I've made it in the NFL when I, when I shouldn't have given my, you know, physical tools.

Yeah, I mean, that, that what you're saying there is, I think, a real defining trait of success. It's this secret that is not exactly clear to me how people do. I need to research it more. Maybe it'll be the subject of my next book. But what high performers do is they turn pain into pleasure somehow. Right? They do the stuff that other people think is awful. They get A kick out of. They. They change their. Their frame of reference. They can see that behavior differently somehow, and it no longer becomes work. And that, to me is like, that's amazing. Like, that's magical. Like, if you can take. Imagine the thing that you most hate for everyone listening out there, imagine the thing that you wish, you know, someone else could do for you, right? Whether it's, man, I wish I could magically get someone to work out for me or magically get someone to do my. My homework or study for a test or whatever it is that you're str with that you wish you really didn't have to do. Imagine if you could flip a switch and suddenly you liked doing that thing. I mean, that's such a huge advantage. And so that. That is something I see quite a bit with high performers. Somehow they love the hard work, and so that. I wish I had an answer for it. Maybe that's something I'll dive in deeper to.

There is something interesting. I don't know. There's a podcast on this, but again, by Huberman where he talks about, like, there's a dopamine kick, right, that I'm sure people. People are getting, right, which is that drive motivation hormone that fires in your brain. And if you can almost frame it differently the way you look at the work, right? So a lot of people work out and then that, you know, the. The end goal, they get a, you know, whatever. It's food or whatever. And. Right. The dopamine kick comes from I get food at the end or I reward myself with something. But if you can reframe it to, okay, now, even if you hate working out, for example, but you tell yourself, I love working out, and you're not lying to yourself because you want to love working out, right? Almost in the fact that you may not actually love it, but you want to love it because, you know, it makes you feel better. It makes you. You know, there's a plethora of neurological and physical benefits. And so just the lens in which you look at it, I think neurologically, based on the, you know, the podcast I listen to, you do get the kick from the work itself. And I'm sure that's probably what's happening with high performers, is that they learn to love the work and they frame it in a way that they love the work, and that, in turn creates this kind of perpetual cycle.

Yeah, yeah, there is a lot to that. I'm working on uncovering exactly how to do that. I mean, there is a lot of mindset work and you're right that it does become habitual over time. It does become part of it. I think part of it is your identity. There's a big, I like to say behavior changes, identity change that when you see yourself as a certain type of person, then it does just become part of your character, right? It's. I'm the kind of person who does this kind of thing, right? It's like I talk about this in the book a little bit around identity packs quite a bit actually around when you call yourself a certain moniker, a noun, right? It's like that joke, how do you know someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you, right? When like you have that moniker of this is what I am, it makes not doing the things you don't want to do really easy, right? A vegan doesn't wake up in the morning and say, ooh, should I have a bacon sandwich for breakfast? It's like, no, that's who they are. And so when you think to yourself, no, I am an athlete or you know, I am a high, a top performer or I am a whatever, it makes you much more likely to follow through. So that's one of the tricks I've definitely, I've definitely seen.

But, but that's a hundred percent.

But that requires a big mind shift, right? It's interesting because it, it, you know, that's why I called the book indistractable. Indistractable is meant to sound like indestructible and I want people to call themselves that. I am indistractable. Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't return every text message in 30 seconds. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not on social media every day. You know why? Because I indistractable. That's who I am. It's my religion. The problem is to get people to convert to even when it benefits you, to get them to say that, to be that is a big step for a lot of folks.

Yeah, it's interesting. No, it's 100% true. Your identity, if you're able to reframe it and then daily take those steps and it becomes part of the cycle. But the hard part is the first couple months to actually do that and ingrain those habits. So my last question to you, and this probably longer than you wanted, but what advice would you give to a 27 year old who's starting a business? And then, you know, as a second question, common mistakes that you see with people who are first starting out when.

It comes to starting businesses. I think the biggest mistake I see is not taking advantage of, I think, a huge hack in business, which is to make a product that you want. I think a lot of people start businesses for the outcome, which is I want to make money. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. I think that that's a fine motivation. The trouble is, if that's the only moniker of success, and I've made this mistake, by the way, like a few times I entered into businesses that I didn't really care about and all I wanted was the outcome. The problem is it's really a grind. If you're not passionate about something, if it doesn't matter to you, if you think that my existence on earth wasn't. It wasn't substantial because, great, I got money, but my life, like my work didn't matter, then it's going to be really tough to follow through. So the hack, for a few reasons, the hack is to make something that you yourself want or would have wanted if you were in that position. So I think what you're doing is a great example of that, right? Like, you are making a product for essentially your younger self. Like, you wish you would have had this app to train you how to be a quarterback when you were in high school, I'm guessing, right?

100%.

That's a great position to be for a few reasons. One, you know, the work matters, right? So that even if the business is not a commercial success, even if you don't ipo, that's not important because you in your mind think to yourself, look, because this exists, my work mattered. Like, this was important no matter what the financial outcome was. The second reason, I think it's super important. And by the way, just to finish that point, that's going to carry you through that hard work. When you want to quit, that's what's going to help you. That's going to be the rocket fuel to help you persist. The second reason it's so important is because the hardest part of building a product is building something people want, right? That is the hardest part, is that a lot of people go into, they have a product idea. And especially if it's something new, like this isn't so much the case if you're selling something that a lot of people, other people sell, that's different. I'm talking about when you're creating a new product. The hardest part is making something people actually want. And so I see a lot of entrepreneurs saying, oh, I have this great idea. And you know, who's the Customer, oh, Coca Cola is going to buy it. Well, have you ever worked at Coca Cola? Have you ever bought ads before? Have you ever done anything in this industry? And many times the answer is no. Well, then how do you have any clue that people are actually going to want what you have to offer? But when you build something for yourself, you can't fail because you know what you yourself would want in the product. And so that's a huge hack that I see a lot of people not taking advantage of, which is to make something that they themselves want.

That sounds good. Because that's exactly what, when I, when I thought about it, you know, because I've always had that kind of entrepreneurial itch. I don't remember where I read this, but you scratch your own itch. Someone once told me that, and this is right at my wheelhouse in terms of what I know so well and what would have helped me when I was, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, that I had to like hack my way through, you know, figuring out. Yeah, all super interesting. Thanks so much for answering my questions.

Oh, my pleasure. But by the way, it, it doesn't necessarily guarantee success. I just think it increases your odds of success. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I talk to and I ask them like, okay, like let's be honest here. Do you use this? Like, do you actually use your product every day? Not really. Yeah, the hem and ha. I mean, that's, that's a terrible sign, right? Whereas someone like you, you can put yourself in your, your mindset of, okay, when I was in high school, would I actually use this, like with all my other stuff going on, if I put myself back into my 16, 17 year old self? If you could put yourself in the eyes of your customer, that's going to guide your product decisions. That's going to decide what features go in, what features go out of your product and you're gonna be much more successful for it.

Awesome. That's all super interesting. Thanks so much for answering my questions.

Of course. My pleasure. Thank you. Anytime.