excellence, actually

Routines are powerful tools for peak performance—until they become the performance itself. In this episode, we explain the important difference between routines that serve you and routines you serve. You'll learn why elite athletes keep their warmups simple, how to avoid turning routines into superstitions, the "training wheels" theory of routines, Brad's 3-3-3 daily, weekly, and monthly practice...

91% of New Year’s Resolutions fail. That’s because behavior change is really hard. Which means that the only real way to make new habits stick is to build them in the right way. Today, we’re giving you a few ideas on how to do just that, exploring why values-driven goals beat outcome-based ones, how to design your environment for success rather than relying on motivation or willpower, and why star...

We're ringing in 2026 by bringing you 26 lessons that will help you achieve excellence in whatever it is you do. These are the the habits, practices, and mindsets that we revisit so often in our work and that have proven effective in creating a foundation for high-level achievement. Consider this your cheat sheet: Give yourself credit for the things you're doing well, notice areas you might like t...

Merry Christmas! We're taking a little break, so we're bringing you an episode with an all-time great athlete, Courtney Dauwalter, whose interview, two years later, still delivers some all-time great advice on excellence. Here's the original intro... 01/04/24: Last summer, ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter did something that had never been done before. She ran three of the sport's most iconic 100-mil...

Just last month, Sasha DiGiulian completed only the fourth ever free climb (and the first by a woman) of "Platinum," a route on El Capitan—a 23-day feat that tested her physical and mental boundaries, including nine days of being stuck in a hanging portaledge 2600 feet above the ground to wait out inclement weather. Sasha opens up about overcoming fear, handling adversity with grace and patience (...

At some point, we're all going to suffer. So what if you treated it as a practice—something to be done skillfully? This was the question Matt posed to himself when he came back to running in his late twenties, after quitting the sport following his senior spring season of high school track. He said he'd become fearful of the pain of racing. He was scared to suffer. He's spent the last two and a ha...

Today, we dive deep into the age-old debate of talent acquisition versus talent development, using the contrasting blueprints of top college basketball teams as a springboard. We discuss the complex interplay of genetics, opportunity, motivation, and grit—not just in sports, but in every domain of life—as well as challenge the binary of nature vs. nurture, discuss the pitfalls of applying the "tal...

As a thanks you to you on Thanksgiving week, we're answering a handful of listener questions. 1. How can I navigate periods of intense work where my life is out of balance without developing bad habits? 2. If I truly internalize that achievement won’t make me happy, won’t I lose my drive? 3. How can I manage the tedium of doing a job that’s meaningful but involves a lot of boring day-to-day work?...

Elite performers know: mental fitness needs the same intentional training as physical fitness. In this episode, we break down mental fitness into three trainable components: resilience (your mental strength), emotional regulation (your psychological endurance), and psychological flexibility (your mental mobility). Drawing from meditation research, disaster psychology, and ultra-running wisdom, we...

How does someone become CEO of The Atlantic, run a 2:29 marathon at age 44, write books, make music, and still be present for their family? For the answer, we turned to Nick Thompson, who, conveniently (and impressively), does all of those things. On today's episode, we use the release of Nick's new book, The Running Ground , to discuss his systematic approach to productivity and running, includin...

This week, we use the L.A. Dodgers' Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s gutsy back-to-back World Series appearances in Game 6 and 7 to discuss what we’re calling the optimization (or protocol) trap. This is when you become so tethered to a specific routine or “optimal zone” of performance that you become fragile. You trade self-efficacy for hyper-control or neuroticism. There are plenty of times when you have to...

In anticipation of the New York City Marathon this weekend, we (well, okay, mostly Steve) discuss the ins and outs of how to have your best race, building you a complete toolkit to help you get through 26.2 miles. BUT! It’s not just for runners. As the legendary marathoner Eliud Kipchoge once said, “Marathon is life, and life is marathon.” So we're explaining how each of the tools you can use for...

For a long time, it was assumed that fatigue was a muscular phenomenon. It was thought be a set point and once you hit it, you couldn't go any further—like running into a wall. However, more recent research has showed that it's actually much more of mental phenomenon. Our brain shuts us down before our body does, in order to protect us from injury, exhaustion, or even death. (See: Tim Noakes's cen...

We talk a lot on this podcast about the principles that underlie true excellence, so we’re especially excited when we see those core ideas exemplified in the real world. On today’s podcast, Steve, Brad, and Clay each pick one sports moment from this past weekend that illustrated a lesson (or three) about healthy competition, unpacking what you can learn from the Tigers and Mariners going 15 inning...

Today, we're exploring the transformative power of curiosity, which is one of the most effective tools elite performers use in high-pressure situations. We'll explain how shifting from a mindset of fear or rigid confidence to one of open curiosity can change your biology and psychology, unlocking new levels of performance—whether you’re stepping up to a heavy barbell or presenting to a boardroom....

Is personal development and self-improvement making us better—or just more self-absorbed? In today's episode, we wade into the debate sparked by a recent New York Times article (link below) about whether the world of betterment is actually helping with personal growth, or just creating inward navel-gazing? We discuss how to think about the role of individual agency in a world of structural challen...

Forget everything you’ve been told about toughness. On today's episode, we're taking on many of the macho myths that dominate sports, business, and social media. Is “pushing through the pain” just stupidity in disguise? Are Instagram’s chest-thumping “tough guys” actually the weakest of all? We'll unpack the lies we tell ourselves about grit, reveal why real resilience is nothing like what you’ve...

Before the 1993-1994 NBA season, coach Phil Jackson wanted to get his Chicago Bulls some help. They'd won the championship the previous year, but right before the season, Michael Jordan made a surprise retirement announcement. So Jackson called George Mumford—a meditation practitioner who was then teaching mindfulness in hospitals, clinics, and prisons—hoping he might be able to use the same techn...

As we transition into Fall, we've got a few ideas and strategies that we're trying to implement into our lives. Today we're sharing those with you, with the hope that they might also help give you some good momentum heading into the last quarter of the year. You can think of it as your Fall Performance Syllabus. We'll break down the importance of thinking through "set and setting" when beginning a...

What role should work play in your life? How hard should you be working? And how can you do it in a way that's sustainable over years, or even decades? These aren't simple questions to answer, even if both the "grind like crazy to get ahead" and the "find your bliss" sets tell you that they are. Today, we've enlisted the help of Cal Newport to discuss healthy ways to think about how hard, meaningf...

The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality, heavily influencing our decision-making, behavior, and ability to bounce back from challenges. Which is why it's important to identify the "narrative values" that help frame the story of your life. These are the words that will impact how we show up in the world, and how we interpret what happens to us, affecting both our psychological and biologica...

We spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about how to achieve success in your own personal pursuit of excellence, but we don't spend all that much time talking about what happens after that: how do you sustain it? That's the question facing Cooper Lutkenhaus, a 16-year-old who recently ran a blazing 1:42 in the 800-meter race at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, who provides the...

Since we launched "excellence, actually," we've gotten a bunch of questions from listeners and members of The Growth Equation Academy. So today we're answering four of your most pressing questions. (1) Where is the line between productive preparation and preparation that is done purely to curb anxiety about an upcoming event? (2) How should we transition between important tasks or deep work period...

It's the end of the day and you're finally ready to shut down, unplug from work, relax, or go to sleep—except your mind won't stop racing. You're wiped, but your brain and body are still vibrating. Maybe this doesn't just happen at the end of the day, but during breaks throughout it, or maybe you notice it when you've finally gotten to the weekend or a vacation and still can't turn off. This is re...

At some point, we will all face discomfort, be it psychological or physical, at work or in a workout. But we do often get to choose how to handle that difficulty: Can we work through it? And if so, how? Or is it a case where fighting it actually makes it worse? If we can’t work through it, can we continue to perform at a high level despite the discomfort? Today’s episode is all about giving you th...