Steven Pressfield on Huberman Lab: Why Fear Points to Work

Steven Pressfield 0:00 For years when I was struggling and could never get it together, I realized that at one point that I was just thinking like an amateur, and that if I could flip a switch in my mind and think like a professional, that I c- I could overcome some of the things. A professional shows up every day. A professional stays on the job all day, or with the equivalent of, of all day. A professional, as I said this before, does not take success or failure personally. An amateur will, right? An amateur gets a bad review, bad response of this, and they just crap out, "I don't want to do this anymore." A professional plays hurt. Like, if, uh, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, you know, if they've tweaked a hamstring, they're out there, you know? They'll die before they'll g- be taken off the court. Whereas an amateur, when he or she confronts adversity, will fold.

Andrew Huberman 0:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 0:51 "Oh, it's too cold out. You know, I've got a, I got a, you know, I've got the flu." Da-da, that kind of thing. An amateur worries about how they feel. Like, "Oh, I don't feel like getting out of bed this morning. I don't feel like really doing my work today." A professional doesn't care how they feel. They, they, they do it. So an amateur has amateur habits, and a professional has professional habits.

Andrew Huberman 1:15 (instrumental music plays) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Steven Pressfield. Steven Pressfield is an author of numerous historical fiction and non-fiction books, including the now iconic War of Art and also the book Do the Work, which both focus on understanding the forces in our minds that barrier us from being our most focused, creative, and productive selves, and more importantly, how to overcome those barriers. Perhaps it's because Steven worked hard physical labor jobs and was in the military prior to becoming a book author and screenwriter, or perhaps it's because he published his first book at age 52, that Steven really understands how to persevere and overcome inner doubt and procrastination and turn creative blocks into important creative works. As you'll hear during today's episode, Steven doesn't talk in inspirational slogans or metaphors. So none of this get after it, or, you know, you just have to do the work. Instead, he gets very concrete about how to structure your day, how to frame your goals and your setbacks, and even how to make your creative environment more conducive to focus and effort. We also talk about how to capture your best ideas, which by the way, often occur away from the work that you're actually trying to do, and how to implement them. So if you have an idea or you're searching for an idea for a creative project to share with the world, this conversation will be immensely useful to you. It will also be extremely useful to anyone who suffers from procrastination and self-doubt, which frankly I think is all of us at some point or another. I read Steven's book, The War of Art, some years ago, and I loved it. It transformed the way that I did my science, how I approached the podcast, and many, many other aspects of life. You'll also notice that at 82 years old, Steven is incredibly sharp and fit. So we talk about his physical regimen and the important role that it plays in keeping his mind active, productive, and overcoming resistance. Steven is not only very accomplished, he's also truly wise and generous. And today, he shares a wealth of practical wisdom with us. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Steven Pressfield. Steven Pressfield, welcome.

Steven Pressfield 3:41 Andrew, it's a pleasure to be here. We're former neighbors, you know, so we've been talking about this for a while. It's great to be here.

Andrew Huberman 3:46 Yeah, I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've been reading your books for, goodness, a couple of decades now-

Steven Pressfield 3:52 Ah. (chuckles)

Andrew Huberman 3:52 ... or more. Um, first War of Art, then I started, uh, through the library, you've written a lot of books, non-fiction and fiction. It's been super impactful to me and many other people. I think everybody deals with procrastination.

Steven Pressfield 4:10 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 4:10 You'll tell us about resistance.

Steven Pressfield 4:11 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 4:12 Um, but there's a quote out there, they claim is you. I'm gonna assume it's you.

Steven Pressfield 4:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 4:19 And, um-

Steven Pressfield 4:20 I'm laughing already.

Andrew Huberman 4:20 ... and I recommend, um, accepting that it's you even if it's not, 'cause it's a, it's a beautiful quote. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 4:26 If it's a good quote, I'll take credit for it. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 4:27 It's great. Um, and I'd like your reflections on it and what you intended when you said it, which is, "The more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be."

Steven Pressfield 4:41 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 4:41 Which for me was very counterintuitive.

Steven Pressfield 4:44 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 4:44 'Cause we all imagine the creative process as one of, you know, being inspired, "Ah, this is my soul's work," and, and having a ton of motivation to get the work

Andrew Huberman 4:55 done, a ton of desire and drive. But the more important to your soul's growth, the stronger your resistance will be. Interesting.

Steven Pressfield 5:03 Well, that's absolutely true. And what I, what I meant by that was that, um, when we, uh, conceive an idea for something we want to do, a movie we want to make or a book we want to make, it's not like at all like what the fantasy was, "Oh, I'm really charged up, it's going to be great." What happens is waves of what I call resistance, with a capital R, start coming off that keyboard or whatever it is to try to stop us from doing it, make us procrastinate, and make us, you know, go to the beach, make us, you know, be just, you know, give in to distractions, so on and so forth. And, but the weird principle is, and this is why I always say if you want to know which one of three or four projects that you should do, you should do the one you're most afraid of. Because that fear is a form of resistance, with a capital R. And the more important a project is to your soul's evolution, not to your commercial success, but to your own evolution as an artist, the more resistance you will feel to it. So in other words, the thing that you really should be doing is gonna be the hardest and is gonna punch you in the face the hardest. Which is why-... so many artists have such a hardcore professional attitude, 'cause they have to have it to be able to kind of stand up to that resistance they're trying to push them away from, from doing their pr- their, uh, project, whatever it is.

Andrew Huberman 6:29 The more important to your soul's evolution, the more resistance you're going to experience, but that's the project you should be doing.

Steven Pressfield 6:36 Yeah. Um, here's, here's an analogy that I use sometimes, Andrew, and, and you may have heard me say this before. I think about, um, if you can imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. As soon as the tree appears, a shadow is gonna appear, and the shadow's gonna be, the tree is your dream, whatever it is, right? A book, a movie, whatever. And the shadow is the resistance you're gonna feel, and they're directly proportionate to each other. The bigger the tree, the bigger the shadow. So when you feel that shadow, you feel that massive resist, "Oh, I wanna quit. I don't wanna ... I'm not good enough to do this," et cetera, et cetera, that's a good sign, in that it says that the tree, your dream, is really big, and so you gotta do it. That's not the w- You don't wanna take a little tree. You wanna take the big tree.

Andrew Huberman 7:29 You have military training and background. You were a Marine, correct?

Steven Pressfield 7:33 Yeah. I was a reservist Marine, infantryman.

Andrew Huberman 7:35 Mm-hmm. Uh, how much does your training as a Marine impact this concept of resistance and your suggestions for people and your ability to push through resistance?

Steven Pressfield 7:48 A tremendous amount. You know, I think, you know, when I was going through, uh, boot camp and, you know, infantry training and stuff like that, I hated it, and I thought, "I just c- can't wait 'til I get out of this and just, just be a regular civilian again." But as I've grown and lived through the, the artist life of, you know, writing, you know, being in a room with your own demons for two or three years at a time, I've learned that kind of the virtues that you learn in the military, um, are the same virtues that you have to call upon to live that war of art, the war inside your head. You know, the virtues of, uh, of stubbornness, of, uh, the willing embracing of adversity, of patience, of selflessness, of courage, because it's about fear. And so yeah, it, it's influenced me tremendously, and I found, sort of to my amazement, as I started writing fiction,

Steven Pressfield 8:45 that I was drawn to themes of war, even though I've never actually been in a war. But the, it's the, it's the inner war that interests me, the metaphor of war. So yeah, a lot. It meant a lot.

Andrew Huberman 8:59 Do you think the physical training that you took part in when you were in the Marines has impacted, A, your current physical regimen? By the way, everybody, Steven is 82 years old. Uh, I see him at the gym.

Steven Pressfield 9:15 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 9:15 Um, he's there every morning very early. What time do you get there?

Steven Pressfield 9:18 I get there at quarter to 5:00.

Andrew Huberman 9:20 Quarter to 5:00 AM, um, which is why I see him from time to time-

Steven Pressfield 9:23 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 9:23 ... 'cause I'm not there at quarter to 5:00.

Steven Pressfield 9:24 You're coming in. I'm going home. Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 9:26 Yeah, a- and, and I sometimes train there and elsewhere, but you are very consistent. You train very early. So clearly, um, you're in great physical and mental shape. It's awesome to see. You are, you know, with all the discussion about longevity, you are living proof. Uh, so what, I am curious about your physical regimen and the extent to which your physical regimen impacts your ability to lean into and against resistance to do your creative work at the keyboard or with pen and paper.

Steven Pressfield 9:53 Ah, that's a great question. Um, going to the gym early, first thing for me, is, um, a rehearsal for when I get home and I go sit at the keyboard and I actually have to face the resistance of working that day, right? So to me, the gym is about something that I don't

Steven Pressfield 10:14 wanna do. I hate to get up that early in the morning and get there. It's something that is gonna hurt, right? We all know about that. And it's something that I'm afraid of, because as you know, there are all kinds of ways you can hurt yourself and, and embarrass yourself and so on and so forth. But having done that in the morning, so it's for m- Uh, I've got like, um ... I think we have a mutual friend in Randy Wallace, right? Do we have-

Andrew Huberman 10:39 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 10:39 Yeah. Randy has this thing, Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart and as secretary directed that and many others. He has a thing in the morning that he calls little successes, and what he's trying to do to build momentum for when he's actually gonna sit down and write is, you know, achieve something that he can say, "Okay, I did something good here, and then I d-" You know? So going to the gym for me is that. It's not so much about the physical aspect of it. It's the, uh, the rehearsal for kind of facing like it's ... So I feel like when I finish at the gym, nothing I'm gonna do for the rest of the day is gonna be as hard as what I already did. So, you know, there we go. The, the ways are greased and I can go forward. That's the theory anyway.

Andrew Huberman 11:23 So when you wake up in the morning, you're not looking forward to working out?

Steven Pressfield 11:25 Fuck, no. I mean, we can s- Can we say that here already?

Andrew Huberman 11:27 Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Steven Pressfield 11:29 Yeah, absolutely not. It's a drag. I hate to go, you know?

Andrew Huberman 11:31 You prefer to stay in bed?

Steven Pressfield 11:33 Absolutely, and I wish I could stay in bed, you know, on, and, but, uh, on the days I do stay in bed, Sunday, I've, I don't feel so good about myself, you know? I wish I had gone to the gym. I mean, you must feel the same way, Andrew, about whatever you do, being an old skateboarder and, you know, a fitness guy your whole life. What does it, how does it fit in with your regimen?

Andrew Huberman 11:54 Well, the problem for me is that I love working out.

Steven Pressfield 11:57 Oh, you do? Wow.

Andrew Huberman 11:57 So ... I do, and I always have. Um, I have noticed in the last maybe two, three years that occasionally I have to push myself a little bit more.

Steven Pressfield 12:07 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 12:07 But I, I loathe rest days-

Steven Pressfield 12:10 Ah. Ah.

Andrew Huberman 12:10 ... but they are important. You know, I do believe in taking one full day off per week letting my body recover.

Steven Pressfield 12:15 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 12:15 Um, but that's the problem is I really enjoy working out-

Steven Pressfield 12:19 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 12:20 ... and so by the time I'm done working out, and then I shower up and I...... eat, and I'm sitting down to do some work, like, oh, now comes the really hard workout.

Steven Pressfield 12:29 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 12:29 Um, but I noticed that I learn things during those workouts, provided that I don't have my phone with me.

Steven Pressfield 12:39 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 12:39 I might listen to music on my phone, sometimes a podcast or an audiobook, but I do my very best not to be on social media-

Steven Pressfield 12:47 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 12:47 ... or text while, during those workouts, because during those workouts, something always comes to mind that I find useful-

Steven Pressfield 12:54 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 12:54 ... for elsewhere in life, and it usually pops up during a rest period between sets. You know, I think exercise takes our brain and body into these st- unfamiliar states.

Steven Pressfield 13:04 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 13:04 And I think that our unconscious mind geysers stuff up-

Steven Pressfield 13:08 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 13:08 ... and, uh, I think it was the great Joe Strummer of The Clash that said, you know, when you have a thought that feels important, write it down, because you think it will be there later, but certain thoughts and ideas are offered up and they don't last, at least not in that form. You need to catch them.

Steven Pressfield 13:27 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 13:27 And so I have a mode of catch, usually in notes.

Steven Pressfield 13:30 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 13:30 Do you have a, do you have a capture method for ideas, whether or not you get them during workouts, or in the middle of the night?

Steven Pressfield 13:34 I don't have during workouts.

Andrew Huberman 13:36 Okay.

Steven Pressfield 13:36 I- I ne- I don't s- seem to get ideas during workouts, but I completely agree with that, that, you know, they're, th- those ideas, when they come, like in the shower, or when you're on the subway, or when you're driving along the freeway, your mind is occupied in something else, right? Your ego's involved, and somehow it opens the pipeline, and things burble up, and you always think, oh, I'll remember that, that-

Andrew Huberman 13:55 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 13:55 But you forget. It's like a dream, you know?

Andrew Huberman 13:57 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 13:58 They just go away. So yeah, I, I mean, I'll just dictate it into my phone. I mean, my phone now is-

Andrew Huberman 14:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 14:03 ... you know, full of stuff that I've gotta transcribe, but I- I couldn't agree more with that.

Andrew Huberman 14:07 Yeah, there's something about the way that our unconscious mind bec- I feel like it kind of tosses things up for the conscious mind to catch, and in those moments, just like in a dream, we think, oh, I'll remember this later (laughs) .

Steven Pressfield 14:19 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 14:20 Uh, and we don't.

Steven Pressfield 14:22 It's amazing how they go away, you know? Like-

Andrew Huberman 14:23 They just, it's-

Steven Pressfield 14:23 ... evanescence, you know?

Andrew Huberman 14:24 Evanescence.

Steven Pressfield 14:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 14:26 That's a beautiful word, and it captures it perfectly.

Steven Pressfield 14:28 See, I'm a different beli- I don't believe it's really coming from the subconscious.

Andrew Huberman 14:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 14:31 I'm a believer in the goddess. I'm a believer in the muse. I think it's coming from someplace else, you know? And that they're p- they're playing with us a little bit, you know? Like, I know Steven Spielberg says when an idea comes, he says it whispers rather than shouting, which is his way, I think, of saying, you know, it just, it's a very subtle thing that goes away very fast, you know, and you gotta grab it while it's there.

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Andrew Huberman 16:11 is giving up to 20% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to get up to 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years, and I've found it to be an extremely important component to my overall health. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and discuss issues with. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance with practical issues in your life. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights, insights that can allow you to make changes to improve your life, not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but also your professional life. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist who can help provide the benefits that come through effective therapy, and it's carried out entirely online, so it's extremely convenient. No driving to the therapist's office, no looking for parking, et cetera. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. Tell me more about this, uh, the, the, from the, the goddess, or the gods, or the muse, you know, th-

Steven Pressfield 17:27 Uh-

Andrew Huberman 17:27 ... from outside us, or from God.

Steven Pressfield 17:28 Ah. Well, you know, if you, um, go back to the ancient Greeks, right? Every, um, The Iliad, or The Odyssey, or any of those other great works always start with an invocation of the muse, right? Homer writes, you know, "Goddess, you know, tell the story," you know? And basically, the artist is stepping or taking his ego out of the picture and saying, "I'm not the one that's gonna tell you the story about ancient Troy. The goddess will tell through me." So they're sort of asking, you know, help me, show me, you know, uh, that kind of thing. And, um, I had a mentor, you know, Rob, we were talking about that earlier, a guy named Paul Rink. He's like, can I get into the weeds on this thing, Andrew?

Andrew Huberman 18:14 Please. Please.

Steven Pressfield 18:14 And, um, he sort of introduced me to this concept. This was like the first time I tried to write a book. I was like 27 or something like that. And I, well, I had actually tried and failed before, but it was the first time I ever finished one, and I used to have breakfast every morning. This was in Carmel Valley, not so far from where you grew up, and, uh, in, with

Steven Pressfield 18:36 my friend Paul Rink, who's a, who was a, maybe 30 years older than me. He was an established writer. He-... knew John Steinbeck, knew Henry Miller from Big Sur, and he told me about the muses, the Greek goddesses, the nine sisters whose job it was to inspire artists, right? The classic image of the muse is Beethoven at the piano and a, kind of a shadowy female figure is kind of whispering in his ear. You know, bringing him da-da-da-dum, right? And so he wrote out for me, my friend Paul, the invocation of the muse from... He typed it out on his Remington manual typewriter, the invocation of the muse from the Odyssey, from Homer's Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence, and I've kept that. It burned up in the fire, lost it in the fire, but I've kept that for, like, 50 years and every morning before I sit down to work, I say that prayer, you know, out loud and in full earnest. You know, "Goddess, help me." And, um, I'm absolutely a believer in that, you know, that, that ideas come from another place and it's our job... And I don't think it's the subconscious. It's our job to open the pipeline and, and get out of the way.

Andrew Huberman 19:58 I love it. I am... I'm totally open to the idea that it's not the unconscious mind or the subconscious, whatever people wanna call it. Um, I'm sad to hear that this, uh, um, this write-up of invocation of the muse burned. We should probably just mention that we used to be neighbors.

Steven Pressfield 20:15 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:15 Um, your home burned in the fires, sadly. Uh, the home that I lived in, um, it was not my home, I was renting it, also burned in the fires. Um, so my guess is that at some point during today's conversation, we'll talk about loss of objects-

Steven Pressfield 20:31 Uh-huh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:32 ... and items, but sounds like this one was pretty precious.

Steven Pressfield 20:34 Yeah, it was a sad thing to lose that.

Andrew Huberman 20:36 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 20:36 You know? But, you know, it's, it's in my head.

Andrew Huberman 20:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 20:38 You know? So...

Andrew Huberman 20:39 How long is it?

Steven Pressfield 20:40 Um, it was on one page.

Andrew Huberman 20:43 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 20:43 Double-spaced.

Andrew Huberman 20:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 20:45 I would say it takes, to recite it takes maybe 90 seconds.

Andrew Huberman 20:49 Do you have any, uh, interest or desire in calling it up now or a portion of it?

Steven Pressfield 20:55 Uh, I'll, I'll call up just the opening of it because the middle part i- is Homer sort of describing the whole story of the Odyssey.

Andrew Huberman 21:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 21:02 But it starts like this. It goes, "Oh, divine poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various minded man," meaning Odysseus, and then he kinda goes on to talk about da-da-da-da. And at the end it says, um, "Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, oh muse," which I think is a great... You know, make it live, make it come alive in all its many bearings. And so, you know, that's, uh... Thanks to my, my friend Paul, that's been a thing that's been with me for, you know, 40 years.

Andrew Huberman 21:41 I love it. Well, we'll provide a link to the full-

Steven Pressfield 21:43 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 21:44 ... uh, to the full script.

Steven Pressfield 21:44 It's in The War of Art, actually. I, I-

Andrew Huberman 21:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 21:46 ... wrote this out in the, in The War of Art.

Andrew Huberman 21:48 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 21:48 I think it's on page 114 or 115.

Andrew Huberman 21:51 Yeah, and if anyone hasn't read War of Art, it's an absolute must-read. I've read it many times. It's... I have it in audiobook form, uh, hard copy form. It is awesome. It is just awesome. So when you sit down to write, after you've, you've recited this, um, how many times in the first 10 minutes do you think your mind flits to something else? I mean, you're now a pro. Like, you've written many books and you know what to, uh, what is noise and you know what is signal and you know if you really need to go to the bathroom or if you don't.

Steven Pressfield 22:25 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:25 You know, well, these are, these are the things-

Steven Pressfield 22:26 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:27 ... that pop up, right?

Steven Pressfield 22:27 Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:28 As you point out, resistance comes in, "Oh, you know-"

Steven Pressfield 22:29 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:29 "... I need another glass of water, or-"

Steven Pressfield 22:31 Yeah, yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman 22:31 "... I'm not caffeinated enough," or-

Steven Pressfield 22:32 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:32 "... there's not enough sunlight coming through my window." Whatever, right?

Steven Pressfield 22:35 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:35 Um, how many times in the first 10 minutes on a typical day, just give us an average, uh, do you think your mind flits to, yeah, like, "I wonder what's going on in the news?"

Steven Pressfield 22:44 That's, that's a great question.

Andrew Huberman 22:45 You know, like-

Steven Pressfield 22:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:46 ... "What's going on in the world?" I mean, how many times? One?

Steven Pressfield 22:50 N- Never.

Andrew Huberman 22:50 Two? Never?

Steven Pressfield 22:52 Never. Now, that's not to say when I first started, many, many moons ago, that I didn't have a lot of that sort of stuff, but I have, I don't know whether just over the years, um, I'm, I'm absolutely a believer in, you know, like, diving straight into the pool. You know, I don't sit there for one second, you know, wondering what I'm gonna do. I just plunge right in and, uh, you know, thank goodness, I've somehow have learned how to do it and I just focus full tilt

Steven Pressfield 23:19 on it. Uh, so yeah, I don't, I don't have those thoughts at all.

Andrew Huberman 23:22 H- how long do you write in that first about?

Steven Pressfield 23:25 Um-

Andrew Huberman 23:26 Before you make-

Steven Pressfield 23:26 Maybe an hour.

Andrew Huberman 23:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 23:28 Uh, and then I'll take a, a little bit of a break.

Andrew Huberman 23:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 23:31 Um, I love to do laundry. That's my big thing, you know. I'll go, I'll change the... I'll put in the laundry at the start, you know, and it'll be... The lo- the load will be done, then I can put it into the dryer, I take a little break and then I come back and start again for, for another hour.

Andrew Huberman 23:43 Do you enjoy it or you enjoy clean laundry, or both? I mean, which-

Steven Pressfield 23:46 I just... I enjoy the, sort of the ritual of it and the craziness of it, you know?

Andrew Huberman 23:49 Oh, man. Not me, not one bit.

Steven Pressfield 23:51 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 23:51 The only thing I enjoy about doing laundry is clearing the lint trap.

Steven Pressfield 23:54 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 23:54 There's something very satisfying about that.

Steven Pressfield 23:55 That's the part I hate. I don't wanna do that at all, but... (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 23:56 Interesting. All right. Well, we're not considering, but we'd make good roommates. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 24:00 Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:01 Um, interesting. So for an hour, you're locked in and you're just typing away. How often does your inner critic pop up nowadays versus at the beginning? Meaning the, "I don't know if this is going the right direction." Um, I've heard before that you're just supposed to create and then edit later. What's your process there?

Steven Pressfield 24:20 Uh, it almost never comes up, the inner critic. Again, it used to. You know, it used to all the time. It was a terrible struggle I had for years.

Andrew Huberman 24:29 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 24:29 You know, you sit down and you think, "Well, does Hemingway... Would Hemingway write this sentence?" You know, right? Or, or, you know, "What will The New York Times think when I write..." You know? But eventually, over time, you learn you just can't deal with that bullshit.

Andrew Huberman 24:41 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 24:41 You know, it drives you insane.

Andrew Huberman 24:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 24:42 You know, so, so no, I don't, I don't let that inner critic come in, you know, and I'm definitely a believer, um...... at the end of the day, I never read what I wrote.

Andrew Huberman 24:55 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 24:55 And I never look back on it the next day. Um, I believe in multiple dra- uh, 'cause somebody taught me this one time, that, uh, think in multiple drafts. Um, this was Jack Epps, the writer of, the original writer of Top Gun. Um, I was working for him on a, on a movie project, and he said, he said, "Always think in multiple drafts." And, uh, and you can only fix so much in one draft. You can only fix one thing (laughs) in one draft. So, I usually will think of, f- and I start a book maybe 13, 14, 15 drafts. The last seven or eight will be really s- small, you know, really slight changes. But I won't look back on the day's work. So, I figure on the next draft, then I'll, then I'll read it fresh, and it'll look a million times cl- a much more clear sense, is this any good? 'Cause if you do it when it's too fresh, you start to drive yourself crazy. You start to, you know, perfectionism, another form of resistance comes in. So yeah, that's, that's my process. I know a lot of other people don't do it that way. But that's the way I do it. I never... When the, when the day is done, the o- the bell rings, the office is closed. That's it. I turn off my mind and just let, let the muse take care of it overnight. And I don't, I d- try not to worry about it at all. All I ask myself... I know I'm getting into the weeds here really, Andrew.

Andrew Huberman 26:18 This is, uh, no, it's very important that you get into the weeds 'cause I think, um, you've offered many times through books and, uh, other podcasts, uh, the, the contour and, and a lot of depth. But I think the more detail, the better. Uh, because-

Steven Pressfield 26:31 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 26:31 ... everyone will do it slightly differently.

Steven Pressfield 26:33 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 26:33 But I think it's very important. We rarely hear what people's real process is.

Steven Pressfield 26:38 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 26:38 So please, d- don't edit yourself here.

Steven Pressfield 26:40 Uh-huh. At the end of the, a day's session, all I ask myself is, "Did I put in the time and did I work as hard as I can?" Quality will take care of itself later, in the next draft or the next draft after that. But I never judge it, you know? And it took a long, long time to get to that place, to learn that, you know? 'Cause I would drive myself insane for years and years, judging along the way.

Andrew Huberman 27:05 How long is the total writing session, uh, depending on how much laundry you have to do? (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 27:10 Uh, great questions. I used to be able to write for four hours.

Andrew Huberman 27:13 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 27:13 Now, I can only write for about two. What I tell myself, and I think it's true, is that I can do in two hours now what I used to do in four.

Andrew Huberman 27:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 27:21 Um, but I stop when I start making mistakes. When I start having typos and things like that, then it's kinda like a workout at the gym. You know when you've reached the end, you know, "I'm just gonna hurt myself if I do another set," you know? Um, there's a point of diminishing returns. So, when I get tired, I stop and I don't question it at all. I don't say, I don't make (laughs) myself feel bad about, "Oh, you can get another 10 minutes." Um, like Steinbeck used to say that, um, pressing forward at the end of a long day to get just a little bit more is the falsest kind of economy because you pay for it the next day. And Hemingway used to say he always stopped when he knew what was coming next in the story.

Andrew Huberman 28:05 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 28:05 Which I also believe in that too 'cause that'll help you in that f- hairy first moment when you're sitting down 'cause at least you know, "Oh, okay, this is what's gonna happen."

Andrew Huberman 28:13 Ah, so you leave sort of an ellipse in your mind.

Steven Pressfield 28:15 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:16 So the next morning, you know exactly where to pick up and the, the entry point-

Steven Pressfield 28:19 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:19 ... is a little easier.

Steven Pressfield 28:20 Yeah, exactly.

Steven Pressfield 28:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:21 Yeah. The analogy to, uh, working out, uh, is a great one. Um, years ago, when I started resistance training, I learned from Mike Mentzer, I don't know if you ever overlapped with Mike at Gold's.

Steven Pressfield 28:32 No.

Andrew Huberman 28:33 He, he died some years ago.

Steven Pressfield 28:34 But just to interrupt for a second.

Andrew Huberman 28:35 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 28:35 They call it resistance training.

Andrew Huberman 28:37 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 28:37 Which is exactly what we're-

Andrew Huberman 28:39 Oh, yeah.

Steven Pressfield 28:39 ... talking about for art. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:40 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 28:40 So, but please continue.

Andrew Huberman 28:41 Yeah, excellent point. No, uh, please. Um, you know, there, there are a lot of theories out there about resistance training and how best to get muscles to grow and to get stronger, et cetera. And one extreme is, you know, you warm up and then you do one set to absolute failure, maybe a second set you push through. That's kind of the Mentzer high-intensity thing. At the other extreme is, is volume, just lots and lots and lots of sets.

Steven Pressfield 29:02 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 29:02 And there has been debate about this endlessly, and it has to do with all sorts of factors.

Steven Pressfield 29:07 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 29:07 But the literature is now coming to a place where it's pretty clear that after warming up, the first one or two sets that you do are really the most valuable of a given exercise.

Steven Pressfield 29:16 Oh. Oh, I didn't know that.

Andrew Huberman 29:17 And, and almost certainly you need more than one set, um, overall. You certainly do. But that it's really the intensity that you bring. But here's the, the point that is strongly analogous to what you're talking about when you say you used to be able to write for four hours a day. Now, you do two, and you tell yourself that you accomplished the same amount in those two. That's almost certainly true based on what we understand about neuroscience and believe it or not-

Steven Pressfield 29:39 Oh, I'm glad to hear that. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 29:39 ... resistance training in the gym.

Steven Pressfield 29:41 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 29:41 And the, the argument is that as you resistance train or write or play volleyball or do any activity, you develop a better ability to recruit your nervous system-

Steven Pressfield 29:57 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 29:57 ... to do the necessary work.

Steven Pressfield 29:59 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 29:59 You said you didn't used to be able to just sit down and focus for an hour with minimal interruption in your mind. Now, you can. You learned that. The more intensity that we can bring to something, the more focus we can bring to something, the more taxing it is.

Steven Pressfield 30:13 Hmm. Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:14 Y- y- like, if I do one set, uh, in the gym-

Steven Pressfield 30:17 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:17 ... with total concentration to absolute failure, which is very difficult to do when you first start training 'cause you barely know how to-

Steven Pressfield 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:23 ... do the movement, right? You're still learning. Your nervous system is still learning. You can't inflict the same stimulus-

Steven Pressfield 30:29 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:30 ... with one set that you-

Steven Pressfield 30:31 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 30:32 ... uh, that you can later after you're practiced. And so, and so there's this counterintuitive thing that people in the high-performance field are really starting to adopt. And I talk to people in a bunch of different high-performance fields, not just exercise and creative works, that the better you get at something, the shorter your real work bouts should be.

Steven Pressfield 30:51 Oh. Well, they feel better.

Andrew Huberman 30:52 And the more intense they should be. It's almost like a knife that's getting sharper and sharper. You can cut deeper and deeper.

Steven Pressfield 30:56 Ah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 30:57 Whereas at the beginning, we have sort of a dull blade and we have to, you know-

Steven Pressfield 31:00 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 31:00 ... route over the same path. So-I think this is a nervous system feature.

Steven Pressfield 31:06 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 31:07 And that's why it transcends physical and mental-

Steven Pressfield 31:10 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 31:10 ... creative and o- other types of works.

Steven Pressfield 31:12 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 31:13 Um, because if you talk to great musicians, they're not practicing 11 hours a day anymore.

Steven Pressfield 31:18 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 31:18 They're practicing for three or four extremely focused hours, sometimes divided up by naps and meals-

Steven Pressfield 31:25 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 31:25 ... you know, the-

Steven Pressfield 31:26 Ah ha.

Andrew Huberman 31:26 So in any case-

Steven Pressfield 31:27 Ah. Very interesting.

Andrew Huberman 31:28 ... so you, so you put in your two very focused hours with some laundry in between.

Steven Pressfield 31:33 Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 31:34 And then you, you rack it. You hang it up, and you don't look at it. Are you thinking about it throughout the day?

Steven Pressfield 31:40 Um, no. But like we were talking about, if an idea comes to me, then I grab my phone, and I dictate that. And l- let me say one thing here for anybody that's listening to this and would be, wanna be writers, aspiring writers. Um, so I'm a full-time writer. I don't have another job. I don't have to do anything. But yet, I can only get two hours a time th- r- basically in a day. So if you guys have a full-time job and kids and a family and a wife and a spouse, whatever, if you can squeeze out a couple of hours a day, you're doing, you're on the same level with me, same level with a, with a full-time writer. So that it is possible to, uh, have a full-time job and still do, do, uh, your artistic thing to

Steven Pressfield 32:28 f- a full tilt version.

Andrew Huberman 32:30 Excellent point. How important do you think it is for you to start that writing session at more or less the same time each day? You're not saying two hours in the morning or two hours in the evening, two hours in the morning or t- w- hour in the morning, hour in the afternoon. It sounds like it's very regimented.

Steven Pressfield 32:47 It, it is. I think it's really important. And when life was more predictable for me, I would always do it. But, like, since the fires and other things like that, um, sometimes I have to shift timeframes around and be ready to do that, you know. Um, I have a good friend, Jack Carr, the thriller writer who did The Terminal List and, and, uh, you know, he's a, he's a master of writing in airplanes and writing at Starbucks 'cause he's always traveling and doing all kinds of stuff and just finding the time. God bless him. I don't know how he does it, you know, to... and, and he's incredibly productive. Um, I, I don't, I don't know if I could do that. I... maybe m- I will shift from writing from 11:00 to 1:00 to writing from 1:00 to 3:00, but that's about the, the (laughs) the most, you know, uh, variance I can put into it.

Andrew Huberman 33:47 Do you have your phone in the room when you write? And is the internet engaged on your computer when you write?

Steven Pressfield 33:52 Not at, not at all, you know. No.

Andrew Huberman 33:55 Both of those-

Steven Pressfield 33:55 I mean, my phone-

Andrew Huberman 33:56 Yep.

Steven Pressfield 33:56 ... is there maybe to dictate a note or something like that. But otherwise, no, I d- you know, absolutely not. And, and, uh, yeah, I can't even imagine that.

Andrew Huberman 34:05 Music?

Steven Pressfield 34:06 No. No music. No.

Andrew Huberman 34:08 Just the sound of your own breathing?

Steven Pressfield 34:09 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 34:10 Yeah. What's that-

Steven Pressfield 34:11 'Cause you're in your own head, right?

Andrew Huberman 34:12 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 34:12 You're in th- that universe, you know.

Andrew Huberman 34:14 Mm-hmm. This is what I find so odd about writing, is you're in your head. It's your voice in your head, but you're in a conversation with the potential audience. W- what is the actual dialogue? Are you thinking... this gets a little philosophical, but at the end of the day, it's very concrete. Are you thinking about a conversation with the audience, or are you just translating thoughts into words and the audience doesn't exist yet?

Steven Pressfield 34:45 Uh, I'm very aware of, of the reader in the sense of, um... let's say it's a scene that I'm, that I'm writing, and I know certain things have to happen in this scene. Character A has to do something, character B, da-da-da-da. And so I'm r- I'm trying to put that down, but I'm thinking, "Is the reader understanding? What... have I got this in the right order for, for them, you know? Am I, am I boring them? Is it... did I, did I say that, you know, two pages ago and now I'm repeating myself?" So I'm... but I'm not having a conversation. I'm just trying to, to make it as, as easy and as interesting and as fun as I can for the, for the reader.

Steven Pressfield 35:31 And, and always m- trying to make sure that I'm, I'm leading, I'm leading them. I'm seducing them. I'm trying to reel them in, you know, all, you know, and not bore them, you know. By the end of, of this chapter or scene, I want the reader to be thinking, "Oh, I can't wait to turn the page and see what happens next."

Andrew Huberman 35:50 Growing up, were you a storyteller among your friends?

Steven Pressfield 35:53 No. I never even thought about it as a kid.

Andrew Huberman 35:55 Like, you didn't... hanging out with friends, you wouldn't tell a story about what had happened three days ago?

Steven Pressfield 35:58 No. I mean, just like anybody else would. But no, I was never, like, a, you know, a storyteller or anything. I was not a kid that wanted to be a writer. I never thought about it at all.

Andrew Huberman 36:07 Hm. So you just kind of tripped and fell into all the...

Steven Pressfield 36:10 (laughs) I mean, my first job-

Andrew Huberman 36:12 Oh.

Steven Pressfield 36:12 ... was in advertising in New York City out of, right out of college. And I-

Andrew Huberman 36:16 This is like the Mad Men thing.

Steven Pressfield 36:18 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:18 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 36:18 Yeah. But I guess at the time I thought, "Oh, I'd love to write a commercial that people said, uh, 'Oh, that was great. It was so funny. I loved that thing.'" So that sort of, um, got me kind of a little bit started into the idea of storytelling. And then I had a boss, his name was Ed Hannibal, and he wrote a book kind of at home, and it became a hit, you know. (laughs) And, uh, it was called Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks, and he quit to become, like, a novelist. And so I thought, "Well, shit. Why don't I do that?" You know. So that was what sort of started me into it, you know, being completely naive and totally stupid, you know, and having no idea of what I was doing.

Andrew Huberman 37:01 That's wild. So n- I- I imagined you as, like, the kid who was always coming in telling stories-

Steven Pressfield 37:06 No, not at all.

Andrew Huberman 37:06 ... and you were writing in the background.Uh, advertising is pretty interesting though because it, it's the same process. You have to get into the mind of the audience, you have a story to tell, and I guess with advertising the goal is a purchase and with writing the idea is they, they, uh, buy into the next page.

Steven Pressfield 37:26 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 37:27 Something like that?

Steven Pressfield 37:27 Yeah, yeah. Very similar in that sense, you know.

Andrew Huberman 37:30 Mm-hmm. What, any ads that you recall particularly enjoying working?

Steven Pressfield 37:32 No, I was terrible. I was never any good at it.

Andrew Huberman 37:34 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 37:34 No, I never made any money at it. I was never successful at all. Um, but I met a lot of nice people and I learned a lot of stuff in that, you know.

Andrew Huberman 37:43 You said that was in New York City?

Steven Pressfield 37:44 It was in New York City. Um, in fact if I can, if I can hype one of my books, it's a small follow-up to The War of Art called Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit. And it kind of, a lot of it is about what you learn in advertising, because nobody wants to read your ads or listen to your, uh, commercials or anything like that. And so one thing you learn in that business is to make it so good or so interesting, so intriguing that people will overcome their hatred of having to listen to your stupid Preparation H commercial. Um, so that was, uh, anyway, that was, that was what, that was what got me started. But I was never a storyteller as a kid, no.

Andrew Huberman 38:30 I'd like to go back to the quote that we started with. "The more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be." I think many people will hear that, including myself, and will think, "Okay, what is, what is my soul's growth? Where does it wanna go?" You know, I think when we hear the word soul and growth, particularly when it's about us, we think, like, there's gonna be this big sign written on the heavens about (laughs) what we're supposed to do and we're gonna feel compelled to do it. You're saying the opposite, that the thing that we need to do most sometimes is hidden from us. The muse perhaps can reveal that. And it's through the act of writing without knowing what the work even is that sometimes we arrive there. So for people that don't have a crystallized idea yet and they want to explore their creative sense, they might want to do it through writing, they might want to do it through pottery, they might wanna do it through music, they might wanna do it through making movies, any number of things. What's the translation from the thing you need most is the thing you're resisting most to actually getting into the process of evolving that thing out of us?

Steven Pressfield 39:43 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 39:43 It's like, it sounds like an extrusion

Andrew Huberman 39:45 process, like you're trying to like-

Steven Pressfield 39:46 It's a great question.

Andrew Huberman 39:47 ... push, push semi-solid concrete through a filter. But I wanna know what the filter is.

Steven Pressfield 39:53 Um, I mean, I know that young people today, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on people to find their passion, you know, and follow their passion, so on and so forth. And I, and I know for, for me I would, as a young person I would go, "What the fuck is that? I don't know what, what it is that I wanna do." You know? Um, "I'm lost. I'm s- just, you know, struggling." But I do think that we are all born with some sort of a, of a, at least one, a kind of, a calling of some kind. And it may not be the arts, you know, it may be helping other people through some kind of a nonprofit or something. Or like what you're doing, Andrew, you know, where you're bringing neuroscience and, and the scientific, the, you know, to personal development and so on and so forth. Um, I think we do all have some sort of, some sort of calling. And like, we, we know it. Like if, if we could somehow put somebody in here and say, "I'll give you three seconds, tell me what you should be supposed to be doing." It will pop into somebody's head, you know, they'll go, "Oh, you know, I knew, I know I've always wanted to do, to be a motorcycle whatever." You know? So but then that sort of whisper urge to do this thing is immediately countered by this force of resistance, you know? 'Cause it's trying to stop us, it's the devil. It's trying to stop us from being our true selves and becoming self-realized, self-actualized or whatever. So resistance will immediately say to us, like if you were to say, "Oh, I wanna have a podcast and I wanna talk about, you know, science, da da da da," immediately resistance would say, "Well who are you, Andrew, to do this thing? I mean, you're a professor, you know, at Stanford. You know, we, we don't have any experience doing this. Not to mention it's been done a million times by other people, they've done it 1,000 times better than you. Nobody's gonna give a shit. You're gonna put this out there, you're gonna embarrass yourself. You had a certain level of prestige at Stanford, now you're an idiot." You know, you did, you might, it's gonna be that voice, right?

Andrew Huberman 41:50 Yeah, some people actually said, "Stanford's not gonna like it. Why would you do this? You're tenured at Stanford. What, what are you doing? You're g- you've, you're funded, your lab's publishing well." One of those people was my father-

Steven Pressfield 42:01 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 42:02 ... um, who's also a scientist. Um, my process of pushing back on that-

Steven Pressfield 42:05 I rest my case.

Andrew Huberman 42:06 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 42:07 And t- the true part here, the really kind of interesting part is a lot of times those voices will be the voices closest to us. Our spouse, our father, you know? Because, well, I can get into that. I'll get into that in a, if we, if we wanna continue. But in any event, um, so that voice of resistance will come up. In addition, resistance will try to distract us, you know? It'll try to make us procrastinate. It'll try to make us yield to perfectionism where we d- we noodle over one sentence, you know, for three days, you know? Or we, or fear all of the other things will stop us. So many people live their entire lives and never do, and never enact their real calling, you know? Um, but we were talking about the more important to the growth of your soul, that was what the, we started with this, right? So that calling, whatever it is, to be a writer, a filmmaker, uh, wha- whatever it is, if we don't do that in our life, we, we, that energy...... doesn't go away. It becomes... it goes into a more malignant channel, right?

Andrew Huberman 43:16 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 43:16 And it shows itself in maybe, uh, an addiction, alcoholism, uh, cruelty to others, abuse of others, abuse of ourselves, porn, you name it. Any of the sort of vices that people have, uh, because that original creative divine energy that really wants to be the Odyssey or something like that, if we yield to our own resistance and don't evolve that, then bad things happen. On the other hand, if we do follow that, we kind of open ourselves up to, you know, to becoming who we, who we really are. And, you know, a lot of people in the podcasting and the s- and the, uh, human development or whatever they call it, personal development world, they sort of promise like some sort of nirvana is gonna happen if you do X, Y, Z. But what I'm, (laughs) what I'm promising is a fuck of a lot of hard work that's probably never gonna be rewarded, but you'll be on the track that, you know, your soul was meant to be on. And God bless you, you can't ask for any more than that.

Andrew Huberman 44:31 And sometimes it works out spectacular levels of whatever, income, fame, whatever it is that people think they might want, but that's not really the thing to chase.

Steven Pressfield 44:41 There you go.

Andrew Huberman 44:41 We'll talk about that.

Steven Pressfield 44:42 Yeah, we'll talk about that. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:43 So sometimes it's the lottery of-

Steven Pressfield 44:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:45 ... of-

Steven Pressfield 44:45 Sometimes.

Andrew Huberman 44:46 ... of life.

Steven Pressfield 44:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:47 Sometimes. But that absolutely should not be the thing that people are chasing.

Steven Pressfield 44:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:51 Yeah. I, um, I only know my own experience and I couldn't help but reflect a little bit on, you know, when I was deciding to do the podcast and I did get some voices back, like, "Hey, like maybe that's..." You know, uh, "What are you doing?" I- I, um, I'm not clinically diagnosed with Tourette's or anything like that, but I felt, um, at that point that I had a certain amount of knowledge in me, uh, based on 25 years of studying and research in neuroscience and related fields. And I felt like if I didn't let it out, I was going to explode.

Steven Pressfield 45:27 Ah, huh, huh.

Andrew Huberman 45:28 And so Rob, my producer, and my, my bulldog, Costello-

Steven Pressfield 45:32 Ah-ha.

Andrew Huberman 45:32 ... and I went into a small closet in Topanga and set up some cameras and I exploded onto the-

Steven Pressfield 45:38 Ah-ha.

Andrew Huberman 45:38 ... (laughs) onto the camera. I just, like, I, I... it just pour- poured out. I think for the entire first year, we were doing almost all solos, hardly any guests-

Steven Pressfield 45:45 Ah-ha.

Andrew Huberman 45:45 ... 'cause it was-

Steven Pressfield 45:45 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 45:46 ... pandemic and we weren't quite yet-

Steven Pressfield 45:47 Ah-ha.

Andrew Huberman 45:48 ... sitting down with guests.

Steven Pressfield 45:48 Oh, I didn't know that.

Andrew Huberman 45:49 And I don't even remember thinking about the, the hundreds of hours of preparation. We did hundreds of hours of preparation for each episode, but the just pww, I just feel like it just kind of like geysered out. So I think there's some benefit to having, um, something build up so much within us that it has to come out.

Steven Pressfield 46:08 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:09 And I can certainly relate to the dangers of suppressing something. I think that w-

Steven Pressfield 46:14 And how old were you when you s- when you started that?

Andrew Huberman 46:16 45 years old.

Steven Pressfield 46:17 45. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 46:18 Yeah, so I was kind of late to... Now, I had lectured-

Steven Pressfield 46:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 46:20 ... in front of students and given-

Steven Pressfield 46:21 Ah-huh.

Andrew Huberman 46:21 ... seminars and lectured in front of donors, which is in some ways similar to the podcast-

Steven Pressfield 46:27 Ah-huh.

Andrew Huberman 46:27 ... in the w- in the sense that you're teaching science often to non-scientists-

Steven Pressfield 46:30 Ah-huh.

Andrew Huberman 46:30 ... or diverse r- fields.

Steven Pressfield 46:32 Ah-huh.

Andrew Huberman 46:32 But, uh, for me, it was just k- inside I, I couldn't, couldn't help it.

Steven Pressfield 46:35 Ah-huh.

Andrew Huberman 46:36 It... Th- there was... My only answer was I couldn't help it. And, um, uh, to his credit, by the way, my, my dad has been immensely supportive-

Steven Pressfield 46:43 Ah (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 46:44 ... over the podcast. He actually was on the podcast.

Steven Pressfield 46:45 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 46:46 And it gave us a chance to bond and learn about-

Steven Pressfield 46:48 Oh, that's great.

Andrew Huberman 46:48 ... him. And, um, and he's a scientist, so I got to learn some physics. The audience got to learn some-

Steven Pressfield 46:53 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 46:53 ... physics as well. But, um, but yeah, when you take on something that people are not familiar with you doing or they are projecting onto you the sense that they want you safe and secure, because sometimes it's a-

Steven Pressfield 47:08 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:08 ... it's a real-

Steven Pressfield 47:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:09 ... um, it's a genuine k- uh, feeling of support for somebody.

Steven Pressfield 47:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:13 You know, uh, a mother or father or siblings-

Steven Pressfield 47:15 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:15 ... like, "Hey, so you're gonna give up your job as a lawyer to go write movie scripts?" Like-

Steven Pressfield 47:19 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:20 ... and you got three kids and, like, uh, they're scared for you because they don't wanna see you-

Steven Pressfield 47:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:26 ... take your life off a cliff.

Steven Pressfield 47:27 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:28 W- uh, what's your response to that?

Steven Pressfield 47:30 I mean, there's validity to that-

Andrew Huberman 47:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 47:31 ... obviously.

Andrew Huberman 47:32 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 47:33 But I think what happens, um, is that each person is dealing with their own resistance.

Andrew Huberman 47:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 47:43 Their own calling, their own... that they know that they really should be doing and 99.999% of them are not doing it or are unconscious of it, right? It's sort of a niggling thing, but they don't know about it. So then when they see you, Andrew, starting your podcast, that's a reproach to them. And they say, "Well, if Andrew can do it, why can't I do it?" You know? And so then it becomes kind of malicious and it's... I don't think it's

Steven Pressfield 48:10 deliberately malicious a lot of times, but people will then try to undermine you and say... and, and under the guise of, uh, "We're only looking out for you. We don't want your children to be starving and in the street," they will try to, try to undermine you and stop you from doing it and make fun of you or ridicule you. Like, um, the filmmaker David O. Russell, I don't know if you know who I'm talking about. He did the, The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg.

Andrew Huberman 48:35 I love that movie.

Steven Pressfield 48:35 He did Silver Linings Playbook, um, you know, with Jennifer Lawrence and, uh, Bradley Cooper. And, um-

Andrew Huberman 48:41 I did not see that one, but I did see The Fighter.

Steven Pressfield 48:43 ... and Joy about the lady who invented the Miracle Mop with, wh- which was Jennifer Lawrence. And all of these stories are about sabotage by the people closest to you.

Andrew Huberman 48:56 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 48:56 Partic- your family. Partic- like in The Fighter, Mark Wahlberg is the... is this boxer, right? And he's got seven sisters and he also has an older brother and they're like... and his mom is his manager and she's like booking him fights where he's outweighed by 20 pounds and he gets massacred, you know?

Andrew Huberman 49:12 True story of Micky Ward.

Steven Pressfield 49:14 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:14 Right. Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 49:15 And the story is, you know, he finally meets a girl who's like really supportive of him. But anyway, it's a real theme that the people closest to us will, will try to... They don't want us...They're happy the way, you know, we like you Andrew the way you are. You know? Our son, we know he's working at Stanford. He's doing his thing. We don't want to see him, it may be unconscious, I'm not knocking your dad, we don't want to see him suddenly burst out of the, uh, the cocoon and become a butterfly and wing away from us, you know? So they like you the way they are, you know? The way you are.

Andrew Huberman 49:49 We've known for a long time that there are things we can do to improve our sleep, and that includes things that we can take. Things like magnesium threonate, theanine, chamomile extract, and glycine along with lesser-known things like saffron and valerian root. These are all clinically supported ingredients that can help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling more refreshed. I'm excited to share that our longtime sponsor AG1 just created a new product called AGZ, a nightly drink designed to help you get better sleep and have you wake up feeling super refreshed. Over the past few years, I've worked with the team at AG1 to help create this new AGZ formula. It has the best sleep-supporting compounds in exactly the right ratios in one easy-to-drink mix. This removes all the complexity of trying to forage the vast landscape of supplements focused on sleep and figuring out the right dosages and which ones to take for you. AGZ is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive sleep supplement on the market. I take it 30 to 60 minutes before sleep, it's delicious by the way, and it dramatically increases both the quality and the depth of my sleep. I know that both from my subjective experience of my sleep and because I track my sleep. I'm excited for everyone to try this new AGZ formulation and to enjoy the benefits of better sleep. AGZ is available in chocolate, chocolate mint, and mixed berry flavors, and as I mentioned before, they're all extremely

Andrew Huberman 51:04 delicious. My favorite of the three has to be, I think, chocolate mint, but I really like them all. If you would like to try AGZ go to drinkagz.com/huberman to get a special offer. Again, that's drinkagz.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by RORA. RORA makes what I believe are the best water filters on the market. It's an unfortunate reality, but tap water often contains contaminants that negatively impact our health. In fact, a 2020 study by the Environmental Working Group estimated that more than 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS chemicals, also known as forever chemicals, through drinking of tap water. These forever chemicals are linked to serious health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. The Environmental Working Group has also shown that over 122 million Americans drink tap water with high levels of chemicals known to cause cancer. It's for all these reasons that I'm thrilled to have RORA as a sponsor of this podcast. I've been using the RORA countertop system for almost a year now. RORA's filtration technology removes harmful substances including endocrine disruptors and disinfection byproducts while preserving beneficial minerals like magnesium and calcium. It requires no installation or plumbing, it's built from medical-grade stainless steel, and its sleek design fits beautifully on your countertop. In fact, I consider it a welcome addition to my kitchen. It looks great, and the water is delicious. If you'd like to try RORA, you can go to rora.com/huberman and get an exclusive discount. Again, that's RORA, R-O-R-R-A, .com/huberman. We've had several clinical psychologists on the podcast, and a resounding theme from them has been that it is astounding and yet consistent that people will remain in a not-so-great place that they understand and is predictable in exchange for what they could do, stepping into some new life.

Steven Pressfield 53:01 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 53:01 Even getting over their, their anger about something.

Steven Pressfield 53:04 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 53:04 In fact I would, uh, I was thinking, uh, throughout today's conversation, I couldn't help but think that perhaps the two most dangerous things to the creative process, to really doing the important work, are the many, many things that exist in the world now that basically sell us the opportunity, for free, to be angry or to numb out.

Steven Pressfield 53:28 Mm. Mm.

Andrew Huberman 53:29 I mean, I, uh, again, if people want to drink a little bit, I'm not gonna disparage that. I've done an episode on alcohol.

Steven Pressfield 53:34 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 53:34 It's not good for you, but y- uh, some people can have a couple drinks in a week or whatever, okay, uh, not judging there. But, but things like alcohol, like certain forms of social media, and I say certain forms because I do think social media can be informative and educational in the right context and the right amount, um,

Andrew Huberman 53:52 certain forms of media more generally, the news, right? Um, any number of highly processed, highly palatable foods, uh, which are not delicious-

Steven Pressfield 54:03 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 54:03 ... they, but they allow us to kind of numb out, numb out our senses-

Steven Pressfield 54:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 54:06 ... and just kind of mindlessly eat, um, and on and on. I feel like anger and numbing out are how the world is trying to pull us away.

Steven Pressfield 54:14 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 54:15 A- and someone gets paid for that. We think we get it for free, but they get paid for that-

Steven Pressfield 54:19 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:19 ... very well. We give our time, our soul, according to what you're saying.

Steven Pressfield 54:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:24 And then more close to us, within our inner circle, people that genuinely care about us are, from what you're saying, kind of in their own psychological entanglements and they really care, they want us safe, they want to keep us where they know they can find us, and (laughs) as a consequence it's really tough to even get to the process of resistance at this point. It's all around us.

Steven Pressfield 54:50 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:50 It's all around us. It's like-

Steven Pressfield 54:51 You hit the nail on a lot of heads there, you do, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:52 So I feel like, uh, do you think the world is set up now in ways that it's more difficult to get to that chair and to meet the inner resistance, that's a, I sh- I phrased it poorly before. There's resistance all around us, there's, uh, in the things that are being sold to us, quote-unquote for free.

Steven Pressfield 55:12 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 55:13 The cost is immense.

Steven Pressfield 55:14 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 55:14 It's true you're not putting a coin in a, in a slot and pulling a lever, but it's your time, it's your soul-

Steven Pressfield 55:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:20 ... it's your essence, it's your life.

Steven Pressfield 55:22 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:22 And then it's close to us with family members and friends and significant others sometimes, um, dogs are immune from this-

Steven Pressfield 55:30 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 55:30 ... cats are immune. They want us to do the real work-

Steven Pressfield 55:32 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 55:32 ... 'cause we'll be, they'll be right next to us.

Steven Pressfield 55:34 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 55:36 ... and then with all that, then we sit down and then the resistance comes up from right up in the middle.

Steven Pressfield 55:42 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:43 It's like this is a, this is a minefield.

Steven Pressfield 55:45 Yeah. It is, uh, I agree with you completely. It's n- I don't think it's ever been harder. It's like, I always said that if you wanna make a billion dollars, come up with some kind of, uh, product that feeds into people's natural resistance, like potato chips or, um, social media or something li- And they did come up with a product and it's called, you know, the internet, you know? It's called social media. And you're right. People make a lot of money off of that because they, they... and I don't think they're even aware of what they're doing or aware of what they're tapping into, but they're just allowing people, you or me, who, who has a c- a calling that we know we should be doing, they're allowing us to not do it, to be drawn over here for whatever reason. And I think a lot of the anger and polarization in politics is about that today, you know, because people can't face, you know, to sit down and do whatever they were, they were born to do. So it's much easier to hate the other person over here or get completely caught up in all that rabbit hole of all that sort of stuff, you know. Um, yeah. It's, uh... to follow your calling is a, a really hard thing, you know. It's not, uh... we were born to be, by evolution, to be tribal creatures, you know, through all this evolution. And the opposite, the one thing that the tribe hates the most is somebody that goes his own way or her own way, right? Follows their own thing and doesn't, you know, hue to what the tribe wants them to do. So for us to do that as individuals is a bitch, you know? And it ta- And it's al- It's usually, like when you said you sort of exploded out of you when you got... You have to s- almost reach a, uh, a breaking point, you know, almost hit bottom in some kind of a sense before it just kind of explodes out of you, because we'll all resist that so much. It's so scary.

Andrew Huberman 57:44 Uh, it's so interesting. I think it was in high school, uh, that I first realized how silly humans are, and it was the following. At the time, I was into skateboarding.

Steven Pressfield 57:57 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 57:57 Um, skateboarding has gone through various evolutions of being popular, now it's in the Olympics, of being unpopular, of being profitab- When I got into it, it was really unpopular. It had gone through one big, two big waves. There was the kind of Dogtown and Z-Boys wave-

Steven Pressfield 58:12 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 58:12 ... like the back- discovering backyard pools, this kind of thing that the surfers did. Then there was a second wave, for those who, that care, this was like the classic Bones Brigade wave.

Steven Pressfield 58:20 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 58:20 There were only two or three big companies. Tony Hawk was early in this 'cause he was young. His dad, Frank Hawk, ran the National Skateboard Association. And then it disappeared. Just kinda, you know, the m- kids that were into soccer, they were into other sports. Skateboarding wasn't a big thing. It was small. And then, and there was this really kind of w- weird trend in the early '90s where skateboarders started wearing really baggy clothes. No one wore really baggy clothes.

Steven Pressfield 58:45 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 58:46 And I'll never forget, because I was part of that community, we wore these what now wouldn't even be considered baggy shorts.

Steven Pressfield 58:51 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 58:51 So we're not talking about like a deep sag on the shorts, but it was like baggy shorts.

Steven Pressfield 58:54 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 58:55 And I'll never forget the amount of teasing and ridicule

Andrew Huberman 59:00 that we received. People were like, "Pull up your pants." You know, "Why are your pants so-"

Steven Pressfield 59:03 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 59:03 By, uh, by the athletes, by the cool, by the water polo athletes-

Steven Pressfield 59:07 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 59:07 ... the, the jocks, the, the everything. But not just at school, but elsewhere. Leave for the summer, come back, and over that summer s- the, someone in the world of rock and roll and in hip hop had kind of, um, picked this up from skateboarding culture, and baggy pants and shorts hit the mainstream.

Steven Pressfield 59:29 Oh, I never knew that.

Andrew Huberman 59:30 And the next year, everyone was into that.

Steven Pressfield 59:32 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 59:32 And that's when the, the bell went off. I was like, "They don't actually know what they like." It's, this is just the, the essence of peer pressure.

Steven Pressfield 59:39 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 59:39 They have no concept of what they actually like. And I think that was a big one for me. I was like, uh, well, first of all, I thought, "Well, they're hypocrites."

Steven Pressfield 59:47 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 59:47 Then I thought, "They're idiots." And then I realized they're, but they're none of those things. It's that for most people, what they like is sold to them.

Steven Pressfield 59:54 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 59:54 It's... And they're tracking someone else. And so, throughout my life, I've had mentors, um, that didn't know me. I would, I literally have a list of different names, some pe- some of these people alive, some of them dead. Amazingly, some of them are now my close friends.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:09 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:09 Um, I embarrass them all the time by telling them that they're on this list.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:12 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:12 But I think that the concept of mentorship is so much different than the concept of looking to the other members of our species more broadly-

Steven Pressfield 1:00:22 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:22 ... for what is cool, what's worth pursuing. How valuable for you have mentors been? I know you're, you've been a mentor to many people. By the way, you're on the list.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:33 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:00:33 Just to embarrass you. I can show you that list.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:35 Ah, you know what?

Andrew Huberman 1:00:35 From, from, from the late '90s, late '90s, 2000s transition, how important are mentors and how do we differentiate mentors from the voice in our own head? How important is it to be self-guided versus encouraged and guided by these mentor voices?

Steven Pressfield 1:00:51 That's a great question.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:51 Because I believe that the general public is the absolute wrong signal. I think that, I think that signal-

Steven Pressfield 1:00:57 I agree with you there.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:58 ... uh, takes you off the metaphorical cliff.

Steven Pressfield 1:01:00 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, mentors have been really important to me, very important. Um, in fact, I, I wrote a memoir called Government Cheese. I don't know if you've heard about this one at all. But it's sh- it's do- uh, the chapters are n- named after the various mentors that I've had. And, um, many, many of them, and a lot of them are not in the writing world at all. Um, and, um, like my, my friend Paul, he was in the, in the writing world, but, um...You know, I had a boss at a trucking company that I worked for that was like a real mentor to me. I once, I picked fruit in, uh, Washington State, you know, and, uh, as a migratory worker, you know, for a while, and I had a mentor there. I never even knew his, um, last name. He was a fellow fruit picker, you know, a former Marine from, uh, the Cho... He was at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. I'm sure nobody listening to this know- knows what that is, but it-

Andrew Huberman 1:01:52 Go look it up.

Steven Pressfield 1:01:52 ... was like an amazing horror show of heroism and... Anyway.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:57 What, what was it about those two mentors that you can, uh, maybe summarize that you extracted? Was it a work ethic? Was it a, a style of being?

Steven Pressfield 1:02:06 It wa- It was a work ethic in both cases. Um, in, in the one h- In the one... Uh, again, I'll sort of get a little into the weeds here-

Andrew Huberman 1:02:14 Please.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:14 ... a little bit.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:15 Please.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:15 Um, I was, uh, I had gone to a tractor trailer driving school, and I got hired in, to work for this, uh, company in North Carolina, and I was, you know, a beginner, and, um, I really, I f- I fucked up big time one time. I dropped a trailer with like $300,000 worth of da-da-da-da, you know, uh, industrial equipment in it, and, and, um, my boss, his name was Hugh Reaves, uh, took me out to this hot dog place called Amos'n Andy's in Durham, North Carolina, and he sat me down and he said, um, "Son, I don't know what tra- you know, uh, internal drama you're going through. I know you're going through something, but let me tell you this. While you're working for me, you're a professional, and your job is to deliver a load, and I don't care what happens between A and B, you gotta do that." You know? And I was like, "A-a-a-a-a-a-a-" you know? And I knew he was just a- absolutely right and that, uh, and I thought, "Man, I gotta get my shit together here," you know? "I can't..." and so that obviously stuck with me forever. And the, uh, um, my friend John from Seattle in the fruit picking world was... Again, I'm gonna do a, a longer story than probably needs to be here. Um, in the, uh, in the fruit picking world, at least th- when I was doing this, it w- most of the work was done by fruit tramps, by guys that like were riding the rails from the old days, and the big, um... One of the phrases that they, that they used was "pulling the pin." Have you ever heard this saying? And what pulling the pin meant was quitting too soon. Like, pulling the pin came from railroad. If you want to uncouple one car from another, the trainman would pull a heavy steel pin and the cars would uncouple. So like, you would wake up one day in a bunk house at six weeks into a season and so-and-so would be gone and you'd say, "Oh, you know, what happened to Andrew?" And they'd say, "Oh, he pulled the pin." So, at the time that I was there, I was trying for the first time to finish a book, and I'd run out of money and I'd... This is why I was working to get the money. And I realized that in my life, I had pulled the pin on everything that I'd ever done. On my marriage, on this, that, the other, and this friend of mine, John, would... I, I wanted to quit before the season ended, you know? And he would not let me do it, you know? He sort of just had this... He, you know, he just took me under m- his wing and so that was another thing which is drilled into my head in the sense of, um, "Am I gonna finish this project? Fuck yeah, I'd rather die, I will die before I'll give up on this project." And it was all because of him. So that, those are two mentors that weren't writing mentors, but that I used their, those, those lessons stuck with me forever. And I will say one thing, too, for anybody that's struggling with finishing anything. Once I did finish that book, which I did, I've never had any trouble finishing anything ever again.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:21 Whereas it was my bête noire for years. I would fumble on the goal line, you know? Resistance, former resistance.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:30 I love that those two guys are, uh, now alive and present in 2025.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:35 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:35 I don't know, they may still be alive, uh, i- in general, but, um... Perfectionism. You've talked about it as the enemy. Um, I learned two very disparate schools of thought in research science. One was no one study can answer everything, so when it, you know, you get to the point where you have a, a clear answer what the data mean, you write it up, you ship it out-

Steven Pressfield 1:06:03 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:03 ... you publish it. And I feel very fortunate that I worked for people that encouraged that, um, because many people get caught up in the idea that every paper has to be a landmark paper. Actually, that's one of the major causes of scientific fraud, by the way.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:16 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:17 When people feel that their papers have to be published in the top-tier journals.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:21 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:21 It's, it's probably the strongest-

Steven Pressfield 1:06:23 Makes sense.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:23 ... driver of scientific fraud.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:24 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:25 Um, there are probably some bad apples that come in and are seeking ways that they can build narratives to get prizes and stuff, but that-

Steven Pressfield 1:06:31 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:32 I think they're exceedingly rare.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:33 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:33 The, um, those people are driven to other fields where there's more money involved-

Steven Pressfield 1:06:36 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:36 ... more fame involved.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:37 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:38 But in science, a lot of bad stuff comes from people feeling that they have to have a landmark paper, and I was taught early on, some papers end up in

Andrew Huberman 1:06:46 solid journals and some end up in spectacular journals and some projects go nowhere. That's just the reality.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:51 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:52 The key is to figure out which one is which-

Steven Pressfield 1:06:54 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:55 ... and, but finish things. At the other end of the spectrum is this idea that if you are able to make something better, you should. And, uh, this is the reason I delayed my book-

Steven Pressfield 1:07:06 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:07:06 ... release for a year. I felt like I could make it better. There was, n- there are new data, I wanted to add illustrations, but at some point it's gotta ship. So, w- I think we can all agree that perfectionism is not great because it limits our ability to complete things and ship things off. Sometimes even our ability to do the work in the first place. But at some level, if we can make something better, we probably should. That a- that's also, you know, part and parcel with-... meeting resistance and pushing through it. So how do you balance those, th- those two? They're, they're in a strong push-pull for me.

Steven Pressfield 1:07:40 I think that, uh, it's another great question. I mean, it's so easy to, as a writer, to noodle all day with one paragraph, you know, and, and of course, it's obviously, you know, uh, resi- resistance is watching and laughing at you. You know, "Oh man, look at this poor idiot. I've gotten him to completely blow the day on this one thing." So that sort of perfectionism is a form of resistance and really has to be avoided at all costs. Um, on the other hand, you do wanna produce something that's really good, you know, and not... But, you know, like Seth Godin says, when it's, you know, ship it, right? When it's ready to go, you know, there comes a time when, you know, "I'm just noodling with this because I'm afraid of the, uh, response. Is this gonna fail? Is it gonna fizzle? Is it gonna crash and, and burn? So I don't wanna s- ship it out right now." I had a friend, I tell this story, who had, uh, written this inc- deeply personal novel about, uh, salvaging a ship. He had been in the merchant marine and, you know what I mean, what a great metaphor that was.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:08:48 And I read it, it was in its sh- its mailing box, back in the days when you typed it out on a typewriter, ready to go, and to his agent, and he couldn't make himself send it off, you know? And the b- the, the sad part of the story is my friend died and there... so that was... I don't know whether that was perfectionism or just fear of, of, um, being judged or in the r- in the real world. But... so it's a real vice, perfectionism, and, uh, to be guarded against at all costs, I think. But when a thing is ready to go, let it go.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:26 I'd like to talk about death.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:28 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:28 Um, you know, I've-

Steven Pressfield 1:09:29 Me too.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:30 I've... (laughs) Great. Um, I've listened to and read, uh, Steve Jobs's biography.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:38 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:38 Um, uh, I think it's spectacular. Um, I had a particular interest in it because-

Steven Pressfield 1:09:44 What's the title? 'Cause I've never read it.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:45 Uh, my name is-

Steven Pressfield 1:09:46 Oh, I see. Oh, oh, I see.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:46 It's Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It's a phenomenal bio-

Steven Pressfield 1:09:49 Oh, I see. Oh, wasn't by Steve Jobs.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:49 No, it's not an autobiography.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:51 Although there was communication with him in the process of writing the book.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:53 Ah. Oh, okay.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:54 I think that's the, the, one of the kind of agreements for Isaacson is you have to be willing to talk to him-

Steven Pressfield 1:09:59 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:00 ... and he can talk to people in one's life, and, uh, it's spectacular. And, and one of the reasons I was so interested in it is that, you know, the personal computer came out during my, you know, childhood.

Steven Pressfield 1:10:11 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:12 Um, Steve lived in our area. We'd see him around downtown Palo Alto. He'd come into the sports shop where I worked to get rollerblade wheels and, um-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:20 Ah. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:21 I was a skateboarder, but we had to sell the rollerblades.

Steven Pressfield 1:10:23 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:23 It was just part of the job, and (laughs) wagons and things. In any case, um, he, from a very early point, apparently understood his own mortality. And apparently that was a strong driver for his intense, uh, drive to create things, to envision things.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:42 Um, in some sense, people say it's part of the reason why he didn't pay much attention to, uh, kind of typical conventions and he was able to evolve the world-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:52 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:52 ... and create these incr- incredible products. Um, devices, I mean, portals. They're really portals of, of communication and creativity-

Steven Pressfield 1:11:00 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:01 ... and, um, having a strong sense of one's mortality seems very useful in that respect. The other end of the spectrum, I have a theory, which is that all forms of addiction are basically an attempt to try and avoid the reality that we're gonna die. To just forget that for moments. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:11:20 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:20 Shorter or longer moments. And in some sense, the pursuit of flow states and creative works are an attempt to kind of either forget about that or to some people want to immortalize themselves. But I think knowing that one is going to die is an in- incredible driver. Um, I, I have always had a lot of energy, but it was only recently on, you know, on the threshold of my 50th birthday coming up, that I realized like, "Oh, I'm probably at about the halfway mark."

Steven Pressfield 1:11:47 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:11:48 Uh, uh, you know, realistically.

Steven Pressfield 1:11:50 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:50 I'm a biologist.

Steven Pressfield 1:11:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:51 I mean, I think, uh, genetic potential and human longevity is probably about 120. And with certain practices, maybe you can get out past your, you know, where one is fated to die by maybe five, maybe 10, maybe 20 years, and maybe new technologies will come along that will, um, expand that number. But I figure I'm probably about the halfway mark. So it's kind of nice to have a, like an "Oh, shit" moment because you stop wasting time.

Steven Pressfield 1:12:16 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:12:16 Like anyone else, I've wasted time. So how present is your sense of death eventually coming? Hopefully a long time from now. Again, you're in spectacularly good health and, um, so that's important. But how present is the reaper in your process?

Steven Pressfield 1:12:37 Ah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:12:37 And do you think having a, a real sense that the reaper's coming is useful?

Steven Pressfield 1:12:43 Yeah, definitely. Um, I was, uh, having breakfast in New York a f- a couple of years ago with a friend of mine who's exactly my age, you know, and I asked him, I said, "Nick, how often do you think about your own mortality?" And he said, "Every fucking minute of every fucking day," you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:13:02 And maybe that's a little bit excessive because it can become paralyzing too.

Steven Pressfield 1:13:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:13:05 Right?

Steven Pressfield 1:13:06 So, uh, I, I don't know if I, I go that far, but, uh, I'm definitely a- aware of it. You know, like Robert Redford died two days ago, right? In his sleep, you know? To me, he was like an immortal guy that was gonna live forever. Um, on the other hand, I have another friend who actually died a couple years ago, it was at my... one of my bosses in advertising named Phil Slott, great smart guy. And he said one time to me...... that people tell you that life is short, but really life is long. And like thinking about you, Andrew, that you're 50 years old, you've got another 50 years ahead of you, you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:13:46 Mm-hmm. God willing.

Steven Pressfield 1:13:46 So that one has to think, you know, it's, it can be also a form of resistance. Like for me at my age to think, "Well, I'm only gonna be around a few more years. I might as well fuck off or, you know, I don't have to work that hard." You know? But no, 'cause I'm, I might be around for another 20 years or, or more. That's a career. I should... I could write 15 books. I could make a m- who knows what. Um, certainly I have to... which is part of why I go to the gym, you know, to think of, uh, I don't wanna start thinking that I'm on the way down or I haven't got... You know? Life is, life is long. It's longer than we think. And, and we have in the sense of, uh, it's opportunity to do stuff, but it's also an obligation to, to do stuff, to keep evolving, so on and so forth. Um, on another, on another sort of side of... I don't know if this was a pretty bit confessional for me. I know when, when I was a kid, um, our family was sort of like the black sheep of our bigger family. Like, everybody, all the, uh, my uncles and stuff were all really successful and my dad was kinda struggling, you know? And so it became a thing in my mind where I said, and this is just looking ahead for how long you're gonna live, I said, "I'm gonna show these motherfuckers that our family is not what they think they are." You know? And so I, um... that's been a real driver for me, more so than any idea of mortality. Even over those long years where I was getting nowhere, that, uh, um, to sort of honor my dad and, um, that I was gonna, you know, hang in there and do something.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:33 Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I think that's a great opportunity for us to talk about, um, another kind of resistance which is actually very adaptive and, uh, can propel us forward, which is, um, having some friction with someone or something, now this is a little politically incorrect-

Steven Pressfield 1:15:51 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:51 ... but in one's mind to be able to drive yourself harder. And I think this can take on toxic forms, but I think it can also be very beneficial. There's this great moment in one of those Dark Knight movies where The Joker has the opportunity to kill Batman-

Steven Pressfield 1:16:08 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:09 ... and he says something like, "Just kill me." And The Joker says, "Kill you?" He said, "I don't wanna kill you."

Steven Pressfield 1:16:16 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:16:16 "You complete me."

Steven Pressfield 1:16:17 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:18 You know? It's this moment where The Joker doesn't exist without Batman-

Steven Pressfield 1:16:20 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:20 ... and vice versa.

Steven Pressfield 1:16:22 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:22 Right? You... that having somebody or something that you're challenging yourself to, to, uh, that you're trying to prove yourself to, sometimes to yourself, um, can be very beneficial. And at different times in my career, certainly not now, um... and I kinda miss it a little bit to be honest. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:16:38 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:16:38 But at various times in my, in my, uh, different careers of, of pursuits I should say, um, being in competition can be an incredible driver.

Steven Pressfield 1:16:47 Mm. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:48 I could go into a whole

Andrew Huberman 1:16:49 story here, but it doesn't matter. I think that the, it's kind of evident what, what we're talking about, that having someone that you, you're not gonna let get the best of you, that you know you can do better, um, can be very useful. It can also be toxic as we pointed out-

Steven Pressfield 1:17:04 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:04 ... because it's... I feel having experienced that and having won by the way... No, I'm just kidding. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:17:11 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:17:11 Not kidding, but, but that the, the energy that it pulls on... Here I'm gonna put