Real Optimal Performance: Attributes Of The World’s Top Leading Performers with Rich Diviney and Simon Sinek

I think skills are finite, or they have finite application, whereas attributes are infinite. And I think there's a perfect overlap because you need to learn a skill for a particular event. So I need to learn how to shoot a basketball for when I'm playing basketball, but when I'm not playing basketball, that skill is completely unnecessary.

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before? What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to to achieve paradigm shifting. Nothing is ever the same again.

Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance, access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Rhian Dorris, and together with bestselling author Steven Kotler, I Present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Simon Sinek and Rich Deviney, welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. It is absolutely great to have you both here. I think this is going to be an exciting one, and I want to start us off with some definitions because when it comes to peak performance, we talk about lots of different categories of things. We talk about skills and states and traits. And Rich, the title of your book is The Attributes, so can you tell us about, you know, what attributes are to kick us off?

Yes, first of all, thanks for being here. It's wonderful to be with all four of you, and Stephen and Simon, both great friends, and it's just a thrill, and both mentors. So thank you for both being mentors. You know, the attributes I wrote about because when we talk about what causes people to do the things they do in whatever environment. And the background I come from, we were in all sorts of environments. Some were great, some were awful, but most of the time they were challenging, stressful, and uncertain. And in those types of environments, the question is, what are those elemental things that cause us to keep moving? Because so often things we train for and skills that we're great at seem to recede or even go away altogether when we're in those environments. So So the attributes are those elemental qualities that tell us how we're gonna show up, right? Skills are trained. Everybody can learn how to shoot a gun, ride a bike, drive a car. Therefore, they're easy to measure, see, and assess, but they tell us what to do in specific known situations. Attributes are different. They're inherent. You were born with the levels of patience and adaptability and situational awareness, and they inform the way that we show up when we learn how to ride a bike, for example, and we fall off tons, you know, a dozen times. Our levels of resilience and adaptability and perseverance will inform the way we show up when we're in that situation. So as such, they're hard to assess, measure, and test, and they're hard to see, but they're most visceral and visible in situations and environments of uncertainty, challenge, and stress, which is why when I was running SEAL training for the command I was running it at, it was such a great laboratory because everything about SEAL training is about throwing people into challenge, uncertainty, and stress and seeing what comes out. And I always joke, in regular SEAL training, you spend hundreds of hours running around with boats on your head and carrying telephone poles on your shoulders and freezing in the surf zone. And over the course of a 20-year career, I did hundreds of combat missions and I did probably thousands of training operations, and never on one did I carry a telephone pole or a boat on my head, right? So in that process, they weren't training me to be a SEAL, right? What they were doing was they were putting me into a situation to see if I had what it took to do the job, right? They were teasing out these attributes of personality. So the attributes goes over, and I extracted it for all of us because all of us have our own engine. We're all made up of certain attributes and have different levels. The attributes I talk about in the book are the ones that define optimal performance. How can we do the very best with what we've got in the moment? I go over the 25, which I think there are obviously more than 25, but I think those are the most common I've seen in my experience.

Just a clarifying question there, Rich, which I think people will be wondering. You mentioned skills are obviously trained. How do you view our ability to expand or develop or refine attributes?

Yes, attributes can't be trained like a skill, right? So if Stephen finds himself impatient and wants to be more patient, I can't sit down and give Stephen a class on how to be patient. I can't teach him how to be patient. An attribute must be developed.

My wife would be really happy if you could.

That's right. Yeah.

Let me just throw that out there.

Yeah.

But it has to be self-motivated, self-directed, and it takes a conscious effort, right? You must decide as an individual, I want to develop this. And then, this is the hard part, you have to deliberately throw yourself into a situation of discomfort and uncertainty to develop that. So you have to throw yourself into an environment that tests your patience so that you may develop your patience. Same thing with adaptability, same thing with open-mindedness, with any of the attributes. So you can't develop them the same way you learn a skill, because we can learn a skill on the periphery, right? If all of us use a computer for 6 weeks, we'll kind of learn how to type. That's a peripheral training, right? Can't do that with an attribute. It has to be more consciously developed if you want to develop one.

I have a friend who decided that he needed to learn patience. So every time he went to the supermarket, he would stand in the longest line.

Wow. There you go. That sounds like grit training.

I'm just not that eager to learn that kind of patience, I guess.

Yeah, probably a couple attributes being developed on that one.

Simon, just out of curiosity, because I know you and Rich work together, In your work with organizations, are you seeing similar things with the attributes that he was seeing in the teams?

Yes. I mean, of course, you know, one of the things that I think that the military in general does, and the SEALs do even more, is it exaggerates all the lessons, you know. And this is one thing I've been— one of the reasons I'm drawn to the military. It's not that they necessarily do everything better. It's that the lessons are just easier to see because the stakes are higher. And so all of those, all of those things are transferable to other places. So you can either pan for gold in a, in a place filled with gold. You can pan for gold where you don't, not sure if there is any. And for me, the military and the SEAL training is that place filled with gold. And so I think one of the reasons Rich's work is so important and so valuable, quite frankly, is because everything was so extreme that it, it just becomes much easier to identify. And then we get the benefit.

Because Simon was talking, I realized, you know, I do the same thing working with action adventure sport athletes, right? It's an extreme set of conditions. Your life is on the line. If you don't drop into flow, you go to the hospital. It's really— it's very clear. And yet I am constantly having to say to people, hey, what works for the athletes is going to work for you. It's the same toolkit, right? And people have a very hard time believing it. And yet, as you were talking, and I was wondering this, nobody ever seems to say this to, like, SEAL And yet, like, I don't know if you said to me, Stephen, do you want to become a pro skater or a Navy SEAL? Like, I think I might take skater. Like, it might be easier to get to skater than SEAL, right?

Like, one is the stuff of fantasy and the other one is like, I'm not sure I really want to be a skater, you know?

Okay, I see. I— that's— so that's—

it's the—

it's everybody wants to be a SEAL so we can use this to trade up businesses, right? But not everybody wants— okay. You think it's the tattoos? Might be the tattoos.

I mean, I don't know, you know, there's, there's no movies glorifying skaters, at least not in the 2000s.

Only the '90s.

Gleaming the Cube. Gleaming the Cube.

One example, great.

Yeah, you know, it's a terrible movie. It's not really an example.

The thing that I think that is so interesting about Rich's work that I think that a lot of people in private sector just don't recognize, which is his, his very careful parsing of the learnable skill versus the need to self-motivate to learn an attribute, to improve an attribute where, you know, I can learn how to like do accounting, you know, or may or may not be good at it, but I can practice and practice and practice and I can learn how to read a P&L. You can teach me that. That's a skill. I can learn how to use the computer to input data for a sales call, whatever it is. But for me to learn the attributes and, you know, Rich points out patience, for example, you know, when I'm sitting in a meeting and somebody is driving me crazy that I can't then just take a class. I can listen to a lecture, but nothing's going to happen. You know, somebody can stand on the stage and talk about the importance of patience and how you develop patience. But unless I'm willing to go inside, go deep and find personal reason why I need to learn this, want to learn this and put myself through discomfort in order to learn this, it's just never going to happen. And I think that the parsing out of those things is something that, quite frankly, hasn't been done clearly prior.

Yeah, that was my feeling when I read the book as well, which is why, you know, I think the blurb I wrote for Rich says something along the lines of this is an absolute, like, gap in the peak performance literature. I talk about it a little bit. I, I never thought about it in terms of attributes, though. I think that's a better terminology. I always talked about it in terms of invisible skills. Like when you're training people to find their strengths, right, we know that if you work in such a way that you use new strengths in a new way consistently, you get more flow, right? This is kind of well established in positive psychology, but people have a hard time identifying their strengths. And I always say you want to look for invisible skills. For example, if you grew up, you know, mom and dad fought a lot when you were growing up and you learned how to make peace, that's an invisible skill. It really matters in the real world, right? But you won't find it on an aptitude test. But like, you know, How do you diffuse tension is a real-world important and visible skill, and it's a strength that you can build on. I think of attributes sort of in the same way. The question I was going to ask is, Rich, you identified 25 attributes that show up in the teams predominantly, or has it also come out of your work with organizations? Is there always crossover between the 25, or the—

yeah, yeah. So when I did it with the teams, we came up with 36, and what I did was I looked at that 36 and say, hey, Out of those 36, what do I think are the most ubiquitous for optimal performance? The list of attributes required to be a SEAL is gonna be different than the list of attributes required to be a great salesperson or a nurse or an athlete, right? But, you know, one of the things I wanted to hit on, because, and we've talked about this before, is this difference between athletes and SEALs. And it's always been a sticky point for me because SEALs are often compared to athletes, and in some cases they are similar, physically certainly. But the big difference in, I think, why the lessons in the, and I say military 'cause it's not just SEALs, you know, and I could say first responders, The big difference in why the lessons, I think, are sometimes more transferable is because of the environment. The athlete's environment is certain. Okay? The basketball player knows exactly what he needs to do or she needs to do. The skier knows exactly what he or she needs to do and can plan and prepare and train for that environment and does, and therefore can peak a little bit more easily sometimes because it's planned for and trained and scheduled. The SEALs' environment is uncertain, and that's what we train for. We train for uncertainty. This is the difference between peak and optimal, which we've discussed. I think peak is wonderful. There's nothing wrong with peak. Peak is, however, an apex from which we can only come down, and it often has to be planned for, scheduled, prepared for. And the pro football player plans and conducts his entire week so that he may peak for 3 hours on Sunday. Okay, any one of us can do this if we're planning for a podcast or a presentation at work or anything. Optimal performance is different. Optimal performance is how can I do the very best that I can in the moment with what I've got. Okay, sometimes that looks like peak, it looks like flow states and all that. Sometimes it's I'm going minute by minute, I'm taking step by step, it's dirty, it's ugly, it's tough, it's muddy, it's gritty. This is the SEAL going through SEAL training. This is the cancer patient going through chemo. This is a student studying for exams. This is in fact life. So I think the lessons extracted from the athletes are how do I best prepare, plan, and design myself so that I may peak when I want to The lessons that you can glean from military and first responders and those who run into and live in a world of uncertainty is how can I design my performance so that in any moment I know I'm doing the very best I can even though it may not feel good, all right? And I think the attributes help us do that 'cause it comes down to that elemental thing. When we're stressed and challenged and uncertain, we're gonna lean on these things. And flow states and peak performance are really a combination. It's a dynamic dance.

Rich, you're using a definition that is yours for this is optimal, is peak. When I say peak, I mean the same thing you mean as optimal, right?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I mean, of course, yes, there are moments of flow. By the way, I'm much more interested in increasing microflow moments during suboptimal conditions, right? Which— yes, yes, it happens, right? That's very common. It is the absolute peak macroflow state, those are much rarer experiences, I think. And you can I think they're hard to precipitate, but flow, microflow states are very reliable and very repeatable. And I think they're a foundational component of kind of just optimal performance. Optimal performance over time without microflow tends to lead to burnout. Working at that level without regular access to, you know, flow, you, that's a condition for burnout.

Yeah. Yeah. That definitely makes sense to me. So yeah.

Hey Rich, I have a question. Which is, what attribute that you honed on the teams that you thought would be valuable when you left and joined civilian life turned out to be not useful? And conversely, what attribute that you honed on the teams did you think would have no application in the real world and you found it actually was really important?

That's a great question.

Yeah, I'm gonna answer the second one first because it's easier. And that is the one that you hone so much, and it's probably what I miss the most about the teams, is humor. Because you realize and you recognize the power of humor in challenge and stress. Every high-performing team I've ever encountered, ever, in whatever environment, has at least one class clown. The person who makes a joke and makes people laugh when things are bad. And laughing, as we know, it's an involuntary response. And as soon as we laugh, we get hit with dopamine. This feels good, keep going. Endorphins. Hey, I'm masking pain. That doesn't feel that bad. And then oxytocin. I'm bonding, right? And so the story I usually tell on this, which you guys will appreciate, is surf torture in SEAL training, which for your audience, it's when you as students lock arms and you walk out to about ankle or knee deep in the surf zone, turn around and lay back, and the water crashes over you and then recedes and crashes over. The coldest thing you'll ever do, especially in Southern California where the water's like, I don't know, low 60s. And you do that and many, many people quit. But during that evolution, oftentimes the instructor will drive a van onto the beach and jump out with a megaphone and say, okay, For anybody who quits right now, I have hot chocolate and donuts and blankets in the van. Anybody who quits, kind of like this survivor moment. And we get a lot of people quitting, right? And I remember that happening in my Hell Week. I was in surf zone, I was getting surfed on, and the guy did that, instructor did that. And next to me, the guy next to me to my right pipes up, he yells, he's like, hey, do you have any chocolate glazed donuts? Because if you don't have any chocolate glazed donuts, I'm not quitting. Okay, now he said that and I burst out laughing. And he burst out laughing. We're both laughing, okay? I immediately knew he was going to be okay. He's not going to quit. I immediately knew I was going to be okay. I was not going to quit. I looked to my left, the guy next to me on my left, stone-cold face. I mean, didn't even hear the joke. He was lost in his pain, okay? I said to myself, that guy's not going to make it. Well, sure enough, 2 minutes later he quits, okay? What happened during that moment, right? He made— my buddy made the joke, who I'm still friends with to this day, right? He made that joke. Immediately I get hit with dopamine. Hey, This is fine, keep going, this is good. Endorphins, this doesn't feel that bad, right? And then oxytocin, this guy and I, we're together, we're bonded, right? So laughter and humor is a hack into anything and can be applied to really life, I think. So that's the one I probably hyperdeveloped in the teams that I realize is, is very applicable. The one that I probably had a lot of that you don't need as much of in real world is situational awareness. Situational awareness is this idea of vigilance, really. How much do I notice about my— listen, I'm the guy who walks around New York City and I notice the hands of people. I notice the dark alleys. I notice—

Dude, you're my favorite guy in the world to walk into a bar with. I just calm down. I like, it's the only time I don't have to do that. I'm like, Rich has got this. I don't have to do this. Cool.

However, too much. When you're overseas, when you're in the combat zone, you have to be hypervigilant. I mean, you're vigilant about everything. And when you get home, this is where sometimes PTSD shows up in in veterans because they come home from this heightened state of vigilance and they come home and they— and it exists still. So they're noticing everything and there's this a little bit of a paranoia that comes with that. If you can't learn to let go and know it's okay, I don't have to worry about the dude who's walking, you know, 3 feet behind me. I don't have to worry about the person across the street who looks sketchy. I can let go of some of that. You become much more relaxed, you become much more stressed. So that's one of the things I've had to tamper down a little bit and just recognize. And it's been very relaxing for me to be able to do that.

This question's for Simon, but it's more about Rich's stuff. It's actually two sets of questions. So question one is, in your new book, The Infinite Game, you center things on five main ideas. These are the five things. So I want to know why you chose those five, right? Rich's filter was, we started with 37 in the teams and I whittled it down to 25. When I'm doing kind of peak performance flow stuff, I'm always coming off of what does our biology do? So I look at those 5, and I think they're great. They're awesome. I totally agree. I've got no disagreement. But how the hell did you pick these 5?

A.

And B, how do you see, in terms of the infinite game approach to business, how do you see the attributes playing a role?

Right. So I believe in the scientific method. I believe in developing theory and testing it and testing it and testing until it fails, and then changing the theory. And the way I approach my work is pattern recognition. Which is I'm constantly looking for patterns in chaos, or what other people see as chaos. And the infinite game is not something— the way my books come to be, I don't sit down and go like, I'd like to write another book, what should I write about? It's that I'm grappling with problems every day of my life. I'm talking to people about the problems that they're grappling with. I'm constantly being informed by ideas that I'm learning from people. And Dr. Kars's work, Dr. James Kars's work, when I discovered his work years ago, it started to inform my point of view and organizations and leaders that I saw that embodied this infinite mindset. I started to see patterns. And the question was, is how consistent were those patterns? Which ones stayed and which ones fell away? And the 5 that I ended up writing were the ones that stayed regardless of where, regardless of who, regardless of industry. They were consistent. Others sort of came and went. And the hardest part actually was actually not identifying the 5. The hardest part was finding words that captured what they were.

Yeah, I was going right there with the courage to lead because A dovetails into the attributes. But that to me was the one where I was like, this sounds really great. And I, you know, I can obviously go to the chapters and read it, but I was looking at it. I was really thinking about the problem of definitions with that one.

Yeah. And they're not totally apples to apples, you know? And I was okay with that. Like a lot of books, people feel like they have to stick to a convention. For example, you know, just having, advancing a just cause is something you do. A capacity for existential flexibility is actually comes from the just cause and from the building the trusting teams. You have to maintain a capacity, but it's not actually something you do. And so I was okay with the fact that they were different flavors, which was okay 'cause they were just, Like I said, I was agnostic as to what the patterns were and let the chips fall where they may. My challenge was simply finding words to capture what the concepts were. To answer your question about how Rich's stuff fits into the infinite game, I think skills are finite or they have finite application, whereas attributes are infinite. And I think there's a perfect overlap because you need to learn a skill for a particular event. So I need to learn how to shoot a basketball for when I'm playing basketball. But when I'm not playing basketball, that skill is completely unnecessary. And the same is true in, you know, you know, Rich talked about he needs to learn to shoot a gun in a certain way to accomplish a mission outside of the work he does on the teams. Not a very useful skill, not a lot of application for that one. And I think the same is true in business. We learn certain things at work that we need at work that quite frankly have no application for how we raise our kids. And so skills are finite. There's sort of beginning, middle, and end, and they're easily measured. And all of that's in definitions of finite fit Rich's definitions of skills. Attributes are things that you're probably never going to be an expert at, unlike a skill. And it's something that requires constant, constant, constant work. It's more like a muscle. You take your attention away, it will atrophy. And in the sense of the infinite game, has universal application. You can hone an attribute even though it may be from a professional circumstance. Like Rich said, you know, he had to learn humor or patience or any of these things for work, but he found that it was really valuable in his marriage, with his kids, at work, when he was doing new things. There's much more universality in an attribute than in a skill. They are, quote unquote— I like the idea. I mean, if we want to play a stupid semantic game, You could say that attributes are infinite skills, you know, versus what Rich defines as skills, which are finite skills. But there's absolutely perfect overlap.

Ryan, I promise I will let you ask all the questions that you did so much work for to prep for this interview. But I've got one question that came out of what Rich just said. And I'm sorry, this is just—

Three A-type personalities. It's not a good combination, really.

We know. Anders Ericsson's work, obviously we know the 10,000 hours is a made-up number. That said, it gives us a way to think about skill acquisition and skill mastery, perhaps. Do you think there's a made-up number metaphorically for attribute development? Meaning, Simon pointed out that attributes take a lot longer to develop, and if you're not constantly focused on them, they can wither a little bit.

I didn't say they took a lot longer to develop. I said they take constant attention.

Constant attention. Sorry, I didn't mean to twist your words. Yes, I did. Well, a little.

No, because I think to Rich's point, I mean, we should probably let Rich talk about Rich's work, shouldn't we? No, no.

Why don't you make Rich's point for him? Yeah. Then you can make Rian's point.

Which is, which is we don't know if they take a long time or a short time. It depends on how you were raised. It depends on what you bring to the table. Depends on the experiences you had as a kid. Like some of us are quicker with some and slower with others. You know, our egos get in the way, all of it. Rich?

Well, it's really— well, you all, in case you know me so well, you answered most of it for me, which is great. I will add this, though. And I— so I agree. I don't think there's a timestamp. And the reason is because it has to do with plasticity. When we're learning this stuff, the intensity of an experience matters, right? So the more intense an experience— this is why I think a lot of our attributes in the SEAL teams were hyperdeveloped because we had such intense experienced. And so, I mean, SEAL training is only 6 months long. That's not a lot of time to hyper-develop attributes, whereas someone can take a while of less intense experiences to learn, you know, resiliency, for example, or discipline, or, you know, something like that. So, so I think when, when someone's developing an attribute, they have to think of it in terms of attention and focus, which obviously we know neurologically is going to start enabling plasticity. and then in that attention and focus, that gets hyperdeveloped based on intensity, because we all know a really, really bad experience or really a good experience, but something that's very intense, those lessons will be like right away. It's like, oh my God, you know, you'll never forget them, you know? And so I think depending on intensity, someone can develop an attribute faster than maybe someone else. That's, that's what I would think. And I'm no neuroscientist, so I'm just, if it's, if it's debatable, I'd love to hear.

What's interesting about that is intensity. I mean, the more neurochemicals that show up during experience, right, the more intense we're going to essentially call that, and the faster we're going to remember all that stuff. But that's interesting because it means that you could underpin attribute development. I mean, intensity is something that can be artificially created. We can create environments that produce more neurochemicals and amplify learning that way. So that's interesting.

Well, so just an example, I— and you both know this about me— I don't like heights. I never have. Right, so skydiving was always an issue for me. Okay, in the teams I had to do a lot of it. Okay, that was me being forced to push through fear on a consistent basis. Okay, I became and have become very good at pushing through fear, which is the courage attribute. Okay, it's because I was thrown into intense environments to be able to do that. Someone who might be kind of an introvert who, you know, says, you know, talking to someone or having a conversation is a scary thing may not be as intense. It may it may take a lot of conversations with people before they feel like they're good at pushing through that versus jumping out of an airplane at, you know, 22,000 feet, right? So I think that, that matters.

Rich, one of the things that BUD/S does, as you said, it doesn't necessarily develop attributes, but it finds ways to tease them out, you know, and I'm sure there is some attribute development in BUD/S, but for the most part, you know, running with boats on your heads and holding telephone poles and putting you in the surf, for example, you're finding ways— the SEALs have found ways to, to see who has the attributes that are required to be in the teams. So one of the things in private sector is when we interview for jobs, for the most part, the questions they're asking us, they're asking us about our skills. You know, have you ever done this? What's your experience with that? That's what our resumes are. It's just a list of skills, right? And so Are there things that, you know, short of holding telephone poles and stuff, that can be done in the artificial environment of a job interview scenario that allows regular folk like us to look for, parse out the attributes that may be necessary in, in the jobs that we have?

Yeah, I always joke about interview processes because they're just— because I was once talking to a buddy of mine, this was years ago when I was starting this work, and he He wasn't a team guy, he was part of one of our agencies and he helped people develop undercover personas, right? And he said, Rich, this is so cool because, you know, when we're helping someone develop an undercover persona, what we're doing is we're always trying to help them do it in a way that's congruent with who they really are, right? Because he said, no one, he said that even the best actors on the planet can't fake, can't pretend to be someone else for longer than 30 days. And that's like the best people on the planet, right? Most of us can't do it for more than a day or two, right? All of us can do it for a 15-minute interview. We can pretend to be whoever we want to be, right, for a 15-minute interview. So interviews are tough. I would say that interview— if you're limited to an interview process, tough, unusual questions that put someone off guard are going to start teasing that out a little bit. But I would always offer any business, they have to first figure out what attributes they're looking for because it's going to be different. Figure out that list and then design their interview. But more, hopefully more than just an interview, design their whole process. So it should be an interview, it should be maybe some events, it should be them hanging together, having dinner, whatever, different contexts, so that you can start to see this person and how they show up in real different environments. And, uh, but admittedly, interviews are tough.

Rich, my question is, can you design— let's just say, use the term organization because companies might be a little particular here— can you design organizations as kind of attribute development. SEAL training teased it out. Could you design an organization that was designed to cultivate attributes? I mean, clearly Enron was an organization designed to cultivate a particular kind of attribute that it went wrong, right? Like, we, we have examples of it when it goes wrong. I'm wondering what right looks like.

Well, and so this is— I think probably I'm going to toss the football to Simon here in a second because I think this is what resonated with me so much about Simon's work when I first heard it, and then we met and we started talking. And when we start talking about purpose and why we're doing something, and we start talking about leadership as a behavior, not a skill, that's attributes, right? That's tapping into something that's beyond skill. This is why someone who might be selling hot dogs says, I want to go work for Tesla because I love what they're doing. Everything about what they're doing feels right to me. And that's, I think, so it's tapping into those feelings. So I want to, I want to toss that to Simon because I think that's really a great question that Simon's work has always— I felt like, felt like that's resonated with me, that, that point.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Thanks for listening to Flow Research Collective Radio. Before we dive back into our conversation, there's something to consider. It may be that today we are under-challenged. We're drowning in comfort. Now, in his book Antifragile, statistician Nassim Taleb pointed out something that's of key importance. Quote, undercompensation from the absence of challenge degrades the best of the best. The best horses lose when they compete with slower ones and win against better rivals. Now, put another way, who we could be, or our highest potential, is squandered by safety, coddled by comfort. If you want to train with us at the Flow Research Collective, it will require boldness. But what's life without a little adventure, right? To learn more about how you can get more flow in your life and achieve your professional and personal goals in less time and with more ease, go to getmoreflow.com. If you're a good fit, we'd love to train with you. All the best.

You know, I think a lot of it is environmental, and one of the reasons to articulate, you know, purpose, cause, or belief is that it's more likely to attract the attributes that you want. In other words, it is a teasing out. The Marines are constantly talking about the intangibles, which is, I think, overlaps a lot with what you're talking about, Rich, you know. And you— the Marines are always talking about the intent. Now, you think what makes a Marine a Marine is, you know, strength, courage, you know, brute force and all of these things. But they talk about love and they talk about brotherhood and sisterhood, like all of what they— again, the hard-to-measure personality things that make someone belong to the Marine Corps. And when you talk about purpose and cause, when you talk about why you do what you do, it is very viscerally appealing to some people and repulsive to others. I don't want to work for that company versus I do want to work for that company. That place sounds amazing. Amazing, that place sounds terrible. Because certain organizations culturally will attract certain attributes and repel others. And so, I have found, and at least in my experience, that the clearer an organization is about its why, it is more likely to attract the attributes that it wants inside the organization.

And then presumably, some of those attributes compound and are teased out more and more and more and grow if the culture is oriented in that in that way.

Yeah, and the values reinforce those, those attributes. And I think that's part, you know, the SEALs are not just like, hey, come do cool stuff, because the dropout rate would be even higher because you'd attract people who just want to do cool stuff. But there's, you know, it is well known that SEAL is about intensity. Nobody really knows a lot of the missions. We know the ones that made it into movies. But we know that they're probably harder and more intense and more dangerous. And it— and you know, when you hear those words, you hear danger, like, well, that's a courage thing, you know. And it's going to sift out a lot of the people who, you know, you're going to have some of the attributes just if you apply, because that's already been filtered.

Just a quick story. I remember this was years ago, I was a younger officer, and then I had some young Navy enlisted folks and young officers. I was on a ship and they wanted to talk to me about being a SEAL. You know, they said, hey, we're interested in being SEALs, all that stuff. So I had a gathering of about 10, 15 young sailors, and the first thing I said to them is, hey, I want you guys to— I want you all to realize one thing, okay? And they're like, okay. You heard— so lean forward. I said, when you're conducting the work of a Navy SEAL, there's never any cool music playing during that process, right? And it's— oh, it always sucks, right? It's always hard. It's always cold, it's dirty, it's hard. The best feeling is when it's all over and you look back and you realize what you've done. So you're right, Simon, people get seduced sometimes from the movies and the books and the TV, but those people who go to the, who actually in fact make it to the beaches of Coronado for SEAL training often are the first to quit, 'cause they realize, oh, wait a second, there's no cool music while I'm in the surf zone right now. This is not cool at all, you know? And so, but this is where purpose matters, and the people, and now, it's just a wonderful, modification to SEAL training. Now the students in SEAL training are being required at certain points to sit down and write out why they want to be a Navy SEAL, right? Because— and the instructors are reading that and looking at that because that's an important exercise. And even if someone hasn't even thought about the act of writing, it is really important because it's solidifying that in their brain. So, and then, you know, it's a great evolution.

So, Rich, I would love to get your comment on one thing that happens at BUD/S. That I find really fascinating, which is, you know, so much of this stuff is about the individual, the individual, and like all of us developing ourselves. But there is a camaraderie and a cooperation that really, really matters. The, you know, community component that really helps determine whether you make it through or not. You told the example of the guy next to you who you— who wasn't your friend. He was just a guy in SEAL training with you who made a joke, and that helped you get through it. On the other extreme, I've heard stories and I've seen it happen where, you know, there's some enlisted guys who are hanging on, hanging on, hanging on, and then their officer quits and immediately, like, 4 enlisted guys will drop out immediately. In other words, had that officer hung on, those 4 enlisted guys would have hung on. What is it about that relationship of the officer and the enlisted that that they're all looking to this one guy, and if he can't make it, I can't make it. If he can make it, I can make it. Can you talk a little more about that responsibility of the person in the leadership position?

Again, it's a— so it's an example that you're setting. Um, now I would say, because I have to say this, because if any, if any of my enlisted SEAL friends don't hear me say this, then they will eviscerate me, right? Um, and that is, it's not always the officer that people are looking to, right?

Because it's fair enough, fair enough. There are Okay, so let me adjust. They're looking to someone, and if that one person drops, it's, you know, they don't drop out one, one, one, you know, they seem to drop out like one, two, three, four, you know?

Yeah, yeah. I think it goes, it serves or it speaks to two concepts. First is the concept of togetherness, right? You are bonded in this experience, and you form bonds through that experience. So to get you through any challenge, and you're in boat cruise in buds, so it's a group of seven. So in any challenge, as soon as you're bonding with people, you are kind of inextricably linked to their behavior to an extent. In other words, if they're going to drop out, your purpose has to be higher than that bond. But if that bond becomes the reason why you're staying, it's very understandable as to why you get that occurrence. However, I think it's actually something else, because we see this quite often. I talk about this idea of the— and it's actually an attribute— the fear of rejection. Okay, and this idea that some of us have more elevated perceptions of what we think people are thinking. Now, team guys have this, have a lot of this. We actually, we care what our teammates think. We don't want to look bad. We want to be part of that group. In fact, it'll drive us to do things that we don't necessarily want to do. It drove me to jump out of airplanes. It drives the guys who don't like to scuba dive to scuba dive all the time. It's like, hey, I'm just going to do this because they're doing it, you know, and I'm not going to let them down. Okay. Sometimes I think that happens in BUD/S because when someone quits who other people hold in higher esteem, it gives permission for that person who is on the edge to then quit. It allows them to not be alone and singular in that task. You have to think about it. I mean, and guys, you know, guys who are SEALs will actually agree with this. It actually takes a lot of courage to stand up alone, say, "I'm out of here," and go ring a bell. I mean, that takes a lot, right? And for someone to do that singularly, that is someone who's standing up, standing out, and saying, "I'm done, I'm not doing this," and they ring the bell. As soon as that person does that, those people who may not have had that, I would say courage, I don't want to make it sound bad, but, you know, the ability to stand up on their own, say, "Oh, wait a second, that guy did it, it's okay to do it," right? Now it's okay. So I think that plays into it, but it's a, that's a very general way, because it's a very complex thing, and it's fascinating. I'm sure the guys at the command now are always looking at that, but those would be my two theories.

I find that fascinating, especially in times of stress, you know, where I talk about— I've made the distinction between blind positivity and optimism, you know, that blind positivity is not helpful, where a person in a leadership position is like, everything's fine, everything's good, everything's fine, thinking they need to be blindly positive because it'll help other people be positive. But the reality is, when I'm feeling stress and strain and I see somebody going, everything's fine, I actually make me— it makes me feel worse.

Yeah, this is the same reason why affirmations don't work and gratitude works, right? We have a built-in bullshit detector, and you can't lie to yourself. It's a hell of a lot easier to lie to the world than it is to try to lie to yourself. And when you see that leader, it's not just fake positivity, it's demotivating. It builds pessimism in a sense, like, oh, this guy is— it's so bad that this guy has to lie to me about how not bad it is.

Or if I'm doubting myself, right? Like, boy, they seem that they got a handle on this. I'm in worse shape than I thought I was.

And I always say that the leader needs to have optimism with realism, right? Because it's this idea that, hey, this is bad and it might get worse, but overall we're going to be okay and I'm going to be there with you and I'm hurting too. So it's a vulnerability as well. I'm just like you. I'm feeling what you feel, but don't worry, it'll be okay because we'll do it together. That's optimism, but it's balanced with realism. And that makes people say, oh, wait a second, okay. I'm with you, I got you, you're human, and we're good.

I think that's one of the big lessons that has been parsed out, which is optimism is not naive. Optimism is just the belief that the future is bright, not necessarily that the current state— like, we're in a dark tunnel, this sucks, but we will get through this if we stick together.

What's really interesting about— so one of the questions I've been looking at a lot lately is the neurobiology of the Bannister effect. Right? What is it about believing that the impossible is possible that suddenly makes it much more possible for a lot of people? And a lot of the work that's been going on in memory recently says, you know, there was— this was 10 years ago— we discovered that episodic memory, right, our ability to remember episodes, those are part of the ingredients of how we imagine the future. New work is like, okay, you also have semantic memory that usually inflects But my point is that the Bannister effect is some version of that, meaning there's an upper limit to the possibility we think is possible, right? And it's governed— some of it's semantic memory, some of it's episodic memory, some of it is something we have yet not yet figured out. But we know that this limit exists. And my question, or what I'm kind of poking at, is there's probably like— there's a realistic optimism limit that is probably somewhat related neurobiologically when we get it all said and done to how the Bannister limit is also set. And it's probably some combination of memories plus something we're not, we're not looking at. But it's a, it's a really interesting puzzle, which is like, how optimistic can you be, you know, before you start triggering, you know, people's bullshit detectors?

And like, I'm very interested to get your point of view on this, which is you also run up against physics, you know, or biology. When the fastest person ran a 7-minute mile you know, whenever that was. And then, you know, then it was 6 minutes, then it was 5 minutes, and Roger Bannister saying, "I'm going to do it in 4," you know. And, you know, clearly the biology will not allow us to run a mile in a minute.

Yeah, well, we know if 24 miles an hour is top speed, everything else aside, there's a physics to this. Yeah.

My question for you is, is like, you know, at some point the Bannister effect stops. It has a limit, and then you're dealing in hundredths of seconds.

Here's the thing. I think you're thinking about the banister effect as a finite game inside a particular thing. I'm running and I'm trying to beat it, and inside of those things, I think there are hard laws of physics. I think the more interesting banister effects that we play with are where you're not running into hard laws of physics. But I will also say, you know, We didn't think we could fly. There were laws of physics that say human beings couldn't, right? And we use technologies to get around the laws of physics at times. So, yes, there are certain— when you really bound it and it's that finite, yes, it runs up against the limit. But if you're playing a more infinite game where you can bring other things to the problem, if you've expanded the problem space, I don't necessarily know if you know, the, this laws of physics work in the same way. Which is not to say that we're— you're going to violate the laws of physics, you'll just find a damn workaround.

I think the nuance that is valuable in that we have to use is the difference between impossible and improbable. You know, like it's impossible to run a mile in 4 minutes. No, it's improbable that we can run a mile in 4 minutes. And I think we overuse the word impossible, and it's those who push boundaries and innovate that see things more as improbable.

Well, that's the— I mean, you know, the fun— funny anecdote. Laird Hamilton was once talking to me about the day he surfed the Millennium Wave at Teahupo'o, right, which was the biggest wave changed surf— surfing history. It was insane. And one of the reasons he went— he paddled out is because He was on the beach and one of the Tahitian guys was like, "Yeah, man, when it's like this, we don't go out." And Larry said to me, he's like, "You know, when you talk to a guy like me and I hear the word never and I think you're lying to me, there's a secret that you know that you don't want to tell me and it just makes me want to go out." Like, he doesn't hear impossible. He hears, "Oh no, dude, this is when guys like you should go." Right? Like literally doesn't even hear the language that way. And I always point out that the view— this is another Laird Hamilton story, but it's relevant here— the view is different on the inside than the outside. The point that Laird was talking— when I first met him, this conversation took place, he was like 31 years old. He had just started towing in Jaws and nobody had ever seen anything like it. And he said, you know, Stephen, people see me on a wave, they think, oh dude, that's impossible. There's no way, Laird, I could never do that. And I'm They see me, I'm 31 years old. And what they don't realize is that I was on a 3-foot wave at 3 years old, on a 4-foot wave at 4 years old, a 5-foot wave at 5 years old. And last week I was on a 49.5-foot wave. So they see me on a 50-foot wave and they think, oh dude, that's impossible. And to me, I'm thinking, Laird, you're not even pushing very hard. Last week you went 49.5 feet. So I always say that the view of what is impossible is very different on the inside than on the outside. And we have pattern recognition systems for brains. So we see something like that and the brain goes, well, now imagine yourself doing that. Not imagining, right?

And Roger Bannister was running faster and faster and faster and faster. He didn't start at 7 minutes.

Well, and let me add to that, because I think this is something I was thinking about as you both talked, is that I think the difference between impossible and improbable often has to do with the delta between A and B, right? I mean, you know, if you look at the 4-minute mile for someone 200 years ago, when the fastest mile that had been run was 7 minutes, that's a 3-minute delta. Whereas Roger Bannister, I don't know what the fastest time he beat was, that delta wasn't as big. And so these incremental changes we make as humans, who knows if we can run a 1-minute mile? In 500 years, maybe humans will be running a 1-minute mile because maybe the delta will have decreased. And so impossible seems impossible when the A to B delta is really huge. It gets to be improbable when the delta becomes smaller. And that's how we evolve. So it's all in increments.

It's also, basketball's really funny this way 'cause I remember, Growing up, you guys will probably remember this as well, scoring 50 points in a game was a thing that, like, you had to be built like Wilt Chamberlain. Like, you could do it, but you looked like Wilt. You were 7 feet tall, you were a force, nobody had ever seen anything like you. And now we have multiple 50-point games from guys like James Harden and Kobe Bryant, who are— they're specimens, they're best in the world, but it's a much small— it's a different kind of impossible. And now we can see multitudes, and it shifts over time. 2.

Yeah, I mean, Wilt Chamberlain did it because he was a force of nature. He was just a big guy. And since then, diet and training and musculature and all of these things have been refined and refined and refined and refined. I mean, you see it with race car drivers, like, you know, they get their blood taken all the time and they're putting the right amount of sugar and the right amount of protein and the right amount of this to have the right amount of energy and the right amount of attention. And it makes them It makes Michael Schumacher, you know, these guys, like, they're doing things other than just driving a car. Like, they're optimizing their bodies.

That speaks to the incremental improvement over time.

I think one of the other things, you know, one of the first was explained to me back when I first started studying this. The guy who was— I was trying to look— history is littered with the impossible becoming like those points that we call it history. A lot of what we call history is those moments in time the impossible became possible. And on average, the things that stay impossible over long periods of time are rarer, I think.

Rich, I have a question for you, and every author goes through this, that when you're done, the book is finished, it's sent to the publisher, worse, it's now out in print, and you're like, I left that out, or damn it, I got that wrong. You know, is there something now that the book has been published that you're like, "Dah!" Nothing egregious.

I was just with my buddy, Andrew. In fact, I'm in California. My buddy, Andrew Huberman, and I are doing some work together, neuroscientists, and Steven knows him. We were talking about task switching and multitasking. And in the book, I talk about multitasking being a myth. And that's true to an extent. Neurologically, what Huberman and I joke about, 'cause he informed me, is that we actually have the ability to pay attention to at least a couple things, certainly not 3 things. So I would say I probably put a little bit more of an explanation into the multitasking, which I do when I do podcasts. But then there are some things that I've thought about with more depth since writing the book. Discipline would be one of them in terms of the difference between discipline and self-discipline. But overall, I think ask me again in 2 or 3 months, there might be more.

Fair enough, fair enough.

Rich, since COVID which of the attributes kind of feel most necessary for people to develop, or is there anything that's shifted with your perception since COVID I think all of us have become master—

so I say multitask— master task switchers in COVID. Maybe not master, we've all had to work on it, right? All of us who were thrown into quarantine and suddenly our work and our school and our home life were all in one place at one time, had to become very good at shifting focus, right? I was finishing up the book, and then suddenly a moment later I was helping my son with advanced algebra, and a moment later I was helping making lunch, and then a moment later I was walking the dog, and then shifting back and forth. And this is where parents who raise small children have it on us all. My wife was way better at task switching than I was because she had raised two small kids while I was on deployment. Well, guess what parents with small kids have to do? Task switch all the time, right? So So I think all of us developed task switching to a much better degree, much greater degree, because we all, all of our contexts of life just shrunk into one area and we didn't have an environment to help us switch. You know, now I'm in the office, I can focus on work. Now I'm at home, I can focus on kids. Now I'm at the gym, I can focus on working out. All of us had to do all of that in the same place, so our task switching had to be much more efficient. I think probably that's the, probably the biggest one.

Simon, I've got another quick question for you. I know we're coming up on time. Since COVID what's been the most surprising leadership insight or lesson that you've learned? And obviously you've been in the, you know, in the leadership game for God knows how long. So I'm curious as to what new surprises or insights you've had in that domain since COVID and everything that happened in 2020.

There was nothing new. I think things were reinforced. Turns out the leadership principles in crisis are the same as the leadership principles not in crisis. But one of the things that was nice that I actually was sort of appreciated was that when COVID started, a lot of people in leadership positions, whether they were effective or ineffective prior to COVID, they leaned back on their humanity and they called each member of their team one by one and said, are you okay? How are you doing? Well, that's called good leadership. You should be doing that all the time regardless of what the times are. And so what it showed me is that A lot of people have innate leadership capacity even if they weren't using it prior. I hope that those habits remain. There's a couple things that I thought were really fascinating as well. I talk about this concept of the worthy rival, that in an infinite game you want to stop viewing the other players in the game as competitors to be beaten. They're rather rivals, and some of those rivals are worthy of comparison. And those that are worthy of comparison, their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses. And in so doing, it gives you an opportunity to improve. We can be better at this because look how good they are at that. But the opportunity isn't to beat them. The goal is to improve yourself. You know, I make the joke that, you know, when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything, you know. And so trying to beat your competition is stupid because all it does is distract from self-improvement. And you get to pick the metrics in the time frame so you can win or lose any day you want. And what I thought was so fascinating, when COVID struck, there was not a single company, a total of zero companies in the entire world who woke up in the morning to beat their competition. None. All they were doing is trying to survive. That's it. Every single one of them didn't care a rat's ass what anyone else was doing. And that's actually the right mindset regardless of whether we're in a crisis or in good times, which is even in bullish, in a bull market, we should be trying to survive. Meaning how do we make sure that our organization is equipped to survive regardless of what eventualities might show up in the future? And we wish everybody luck. We work in a game where two companies selling the exact same product can both be wildly successful, you know, and to say that we beat them, it's literally arbitrary and pointless.

I just want to be sensitive to both your time. And there's a question we love asking our academics, which is the research genie question. And I'd love to ask you both. So if you could instantly have the research done to answer any question that you have around, you know, presumably each of your, your main domains, what would that question be?

I, I would— here's what I would offer, just because I've been thinking about a little bit— would be I would love for Academic Minds to help me figure out, when it comes to attributes, how much is innate How much are heritable and how much are environmental? Because part of our innate qualities are, that's just who we are. We show up because that's it. Part of it's heritable because mom and dad were like that. And then part of it's, this is where I was born and what happened. I think that distinction would be interesting in terms of how much of us is that. That's the best I can do because that's a really great but tough question.

The reason I think that I, that I struggle with the question is because my work is about a journey, you know. I view my work as part of a continuum, like each piece of work that I've done has led into the next, like it's chronological. And so I don't view any of my work as conclusive or final. Everything that I've produced is incomplete. And so when your, your question is asking me what thing do I want conclusive, and the answer is I, I literally don't know. What I'm attempting to do is point out patterns that I see along a journey. And so, uh, my mind— maybe it's just the way my brain works— I literally don't even know how to comprehend the question.

Do you have a destination in mind?

Yeah, absolutely. My destination is an idealized state of the future. I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. And for me, the joy is trying to figure out all the things that we can do to take us a little closer to that. You know, I, I've made a bet on leadership. I think leaders offer us a great capacity to move closer to that world. And so my, my responsibility is to find support and celebrate the leaders who are moving us in that direction. I've also bet on rebalancing. You know, we've over-indexed on the thing called rugged individualism. You look at our incentive programs and structures inside our organizations, how we view ourselves, how we— I mean, look how we advertise universities. Universities advertise themselves based on the average starting salary of their graduates. Like, talk about the wrong direction. And, you know, we have an entire section in the bookshop called self-help and we have no section in the bookshop called help others. I want to help contribute to building the help others industry. And so I have a destination, but it's an idealized state of the future. I know I'll never get there, but it's about moving, you know, making progress towards it. And, you know, though I won't get there, I'll die trying, which is kind of the whole point. So for me, it's continuum, which is why I struggle— I'm struggling so much with the question.

I like that answer, Simon. Very, very infinite.

Yeah, there was— for a dodge, that was a hell of a good dodge.

Yeah, exactly.

And I just want to, before I finish, recognize and acknowledge Stephen and Simon. I mean, you guys have had such meaning and value in my life. You know, one of the things I learned in the teams, and it was fortunately— unfortunately because we lost people, you have to tell people who you care about you love them more often. And I want you guys to know that I love both of you, I appreciate you, and thank you so much for being my mentors as I've gone through this process and your continued mentorship, because I'm gonna keep on calling.

The feeling's mutual, brother.

Yeah, I don't think this is a mentorship, like Seriously, Rich, do you remember the whole like SEAL Commander 6 thing? Like, I don't— you don't see that after on my resume or on Simon's resume. I just like, in terms of the mentor-mentee, who's gonna ask who questions thing, I'm just saying.

Yeah, I've learned way more from you than I think I've shared with you or given you. So, uh, yeah, I appreciate it. You and I have known each other a long time. You and I have— you and I met when you were still in uniform. And I remember visiting Bud's just to understand, you know, how it all— just trying to understand how it all works. And I learned so much about trust, and I learned so much about community and camaraderie and brotherhood from you. It's been not only essential to me as a human being, but it's been invaluable to my work as well.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

So back, back at you.

Thank you guys so much. And yeah, just want to really encourage everyone to grab a copy of The Attributes and Simon's Simon's book as well. Although I feel like, Simon, everyone's read your book at this point. People love that. I've heard tons of amazing things about it. But if you haven't, definitely grab a copy of Simon's book as well. And thank you guys a ton for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. And one of the biggest challenges of high performers is a lack of time or inefficient time management. Now without leverage on your time, it doesn't matter the size of opportunities that come your way. It doesn't matter how excited you you are about pursuing your goals. Time scarcity or poor time management blocks you from performing at your best. But here's the good news: you don't necessarily need more time. What matters is more flow. Research shows that a flow state makes you up to 500% more productive within the tiny bit of time that you have. Flow is the experience of being in the zone. It's a state of total immersion and focus where you feel limitless and you perform at the highest level. The Flow Research Collective is founded by Pulitzer Prize nominee Steven Kotler, and we've trained thousands of high achievers to free up more time through flow. Here's the sad truth that we've seen: most skilled professionals find flow by accident. It's intermittent and inconsistent instead of inevitable. But what happens when you make flow a readily accessible and automatic part of your day, as natural to you as breathing, eating, or tying your shoes, for example? Well, for starters, time constraints start to matter a whole lot less. Now, multiplying your productivity by 5x sounds hyperbolic, so let's just back up a minute. Even if you only double what you can currently get done in a given day, wouldn't that be worth learning how to access flow reliably and consistently? This is exactly what we train together at the Flow Research Collective. Just go to getmoreflow.com. We'll train you in the same protocols we teach to Navy SEALs and to executives in the boardrooms of Google and Facebook. What you'll learn is backed by research out of Harvard, DARPA, Deloitte, and others. Tapping this high level of productivity through flow and freeing up your time exponentially is a measurable outcome you can expect. It's time to get your time back. Just go to getmoreflow.com right now.

If what you've heard on Flow Research Collective Radio has been helpful, please consider doing us a solid and leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this. Reviews help us connect to a wider audience so we can get these peak performance principles out to more people.