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David Epstein interview that compelled me to buy the book

What is excellence?

Stulberg’s position is that excellence is not merely excelling at an activity, but a biological imperative. As he writes in the introduction:

We have an innate drive for progress and growth. It’s why we feel so alive when we channel that drive into meaningful goals — be it starting a business, writing a book, learning an instrument, studying a craft, or training for a marathon. Excellence is less a destination and more an energizing process of growth and becoming — an ongoing path that yields our best performances and, every bit as important, our best selves. We are made to move toward excellence as a tree is made to move toward the sun.

A few other quotes I highlighted in this line of thinking:

• “Our nervous systems evolved for the pursuit of excellence, which explains why it’s such a powerful antidote to the dysregulation so many of us experience today. When we remove distractions, focus intently, and pursue excellence, we become situated in ourselves and situated in the world.”
• “Excellence is not a destination; it is a process of becoming. The real reward isn’t a bigger deadlift, a faster mile, or a sturdier table; it’s that you become a better version of yourself. … When we throw ourselves into worthwhile projects and pursuits, we engrave or stamp upon ourselves the type of person we are growing into.”

He also makes the claim that excellence is a knowable feeling:

• “Our feelings are indispensable to our success. They guide us toward what biology calls homeostatic upregulation and what I call excellence.”
• “Excellence requires curiosity and exploration. It is guided by an innate knowing that resides deep in your nervous system and that’s been passed down over millennia. Excellence is the opposite of mechanical. It is distinctly human, alive, and full of feeling.”
• “When we pursue excellence, we transcend our small selves — the parts of us that worry, doubt, and fear — and enter into something larger, a dance with the universe. We experience the opposite of existential loneliness: We feel whole and settled, at home in ourselves and at home in the world.”

What’s funny is that I wrote my post on aligning learning with the body a couple weeks before starting to read this book, and I described tuning into that inner feeling of excellence: “A greater learning has been this trust in my own awareness. I know when something feels right, whether it’s learning a new rope flow trick, or doing a lift at the gym, or a meditation session.” So it felt a bit like fate to find this book already written when I was already exploring these ideas.

After setting that philosophical foundation, the rest of the book describes characteristics of excellence journeys, including care, discipline, renewal, goals, curiosity, failure and community. What struck me from this part of the book was the paradox of excellence, where we must instead embrace the complexity of “both and”. A few examples:

• You might think that excellence requires grit, and never quitting. But top performers often quit several activities before finding the one that fits them where their grit kicks in: “don’t be scared to quit until you discover something where there is fit — an alignment with your values and natural abilities, a curiosity and potential for growth. Once you’ve determined fit, then the focus shifts to grit. Remember that passion and staying power are not automatic; you develop them by persevering through ups and downs.”
• “Fierce self-discipline benefits from fierce self-kindness. These qualities are not opposites, they are complements. If you want to be an extraordinary badass, you’ve got to be kind to yourself, too.”
• “Stress plus rest equals growth.”
• “Strength without flexibility leads to rigidity. Flexibility without strength leads to instability. … If we’ve been overdoing self-discipline, maybe what we need is more self-kindness. If we’ve been holding on to too much structure, maybe what we need is some freedom. If we’ve been grinding too hard, maybe what we need is a break. It’s all right to double down on your innate temperament — so long as you occasionally remember to look the other way.”
• “Failure sucks. It is also inevitable. Keep going.”

For those looking for the prescription for excellence, this “both and” advice might be confusing. When should I push myself and embrace grit and discipline? When should I rest and recover and be kind to myself? When should I keep going in the face of failure? When should I take failure as a signal to quit and find something else which fits me better?

This is where we return to the physical feeling of excellence. Stulberg claims that you will know what choice to make based on how your body feels aligned to the task. When you have learned to listen to that biological signal, you will know when you have more to give, and when you need a break. You will tune into that feeling of aliveness to push deeper when others would quit. And in that push, you will become a better version of yourself, able to accomplish things that you perhaps could not have imagined. As he ends the book, “Excellence is core to who we are. When we reclaim excellence, we reclaim our humanity.”

Part of the reason this book resonates so much with me is that one of the values I found from Robert Glazer’s values exercise was “Impact: Progress with conscious intention”, which is basically the same as what Stulberg describes as the pursuit of excellence. I have spent my whole life seeking out ways to feel more aliveness and joy, which has come from experiencing excellence through my own activities and personally witnessing top performers in a variety of settings: in academic settings like MIT and Stanford, playing volleyball or ultimate frisbee, singing with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, in biking and skiing, and working as a Chief of Staff with top leaders at Google.

The advantage of experiencing excellence across many activities is that I am in touch with that underlying biological feeling that Stulberg describes (and Rick Rubin describes in The Creative Act: A Way of Being). Without that embodied experience, I might dismiss these descriptions as “woo-woo” or “spiritual”, irrelevant to actually getting things done. But instead, I find them useful as guideposts for what this journey in excellence feels like, even if they are necessarily abstracted away from the specifics of any activity.

This book is not going to be useful to somebody seeking a how-to guide for excellence. It is more of a philosophical musing on the characteristics of excellence, and the foundations on which excellence can be built. I enjoyed Stulberg’s perspective because he put into words some things I had been feeling but couldn’t fully describe. You might like this book if you are a high achiever who enjoys the pursuit of excellence and wants to read how somebody else describes it.