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184 - The Boredom Problem: Why You Can't Do Hard Things If You Can't Sit Still · Getting After It

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that you cannot do the hard thing is not a motivational problem, surprisingly.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's that you cannot sit still.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very different thing.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to think for a second about the last time that you had five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes to yourself with zero input, with nothing coming in.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's no podcast, there's no phone.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you and your thoughts.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have been thinking about this topic for a while now because I've I've noticed it in myself and I've noticed it in others.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But most people seem to get uncomfortable when within two minutes of being bored, I would say.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've recognized that that reflex of reaching for your phone or reaching for something else, it's slowly eroding at everyone's capacity to do anything that matters, which is why I wanted to have this conversation today.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Getting After It podcast, my friends.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Brett.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're new here, we talk about all things self-improvement and get out of your comfort zone and go do hard stuff.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really the whole gist of the show.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're talking about something that is relatively hard, and it's it's being bored.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, I've been watching it in myself, and it's kind of scary.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like with all topics on this podcast, it's typically something that I'm going through in that moment.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I've recognized that maybe my relationship with boredom is broken.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's broken with the quiet.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking about the kind of discomfort that shows up on mile 15 of a long run.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or in the lull of a conversation, you all know that point.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking to someone, and all of a sudden you guys stop talking about whatever topic you are, and you kind of just sit there awkwardly, and it's like, oh, okay, well, if he's not gonna talk or she's not gonna talk, I guess I guess I'll just pull out my phone.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have anything else to contribute here.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I've recognized when that feeling arrives, most of us immediately reach for something.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: It could be our phones, it could be something else.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that that habit is costing us more than we recognize.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start off by talking about uh a run that I had during my last training session.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Typical setup I had for this.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I went out on my run.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I start with music, you know, to pump me up, and then I'll I'll drift into podcasts and I'll listen to that.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll usually learn something from it, and I I really enjoy those moments.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the first chunk of the run, I was doing great.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then a mile around mile probably 13 or an hour and a half into the run.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, there's no way I was at mile 13 at that point.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: If it's an hour and a half, I was like 10 miles.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm 10 miles in, hour and a half in, and something changed.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember something definitely changed during that run.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: The music faded into more background noise, and the podcast became sound that I wasn't processing.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I like to learn, and podcasts are a great, great way for me to learn while I'm running.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But at this point, it was more just noise that I was hearing, and I wasn't actually thinking about what they were saying.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: My brain started inventorying everything else I could be doing with my time.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you've had moments like this, uh, especially if you train for endurance races or anything like that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, I could be doing X, Y, and Z.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I could be home recording a podcast, I could be taking my wife to lunch, uh, I could be doing the chores that I know I need to do after this.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The miles started feeling really long.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember questioning and saying, should I even be doing this?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is it even worth it?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is this run worth my time?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is it worth this boredom I'm going through?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was weird.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a I was it was like I was negotiating with myself, where one part of me was like, Yeah, we're doing this run, we're getting after it, we're gonna finish and and prep for our race.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the other side was a a weakness in myself that wanted me to quit because I was bored.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I realized like I just I stopped.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I stopped running, and not because anything was like physically wrong, but I stopped and made myself look up because I think a lot of the times, especially in myself, I'll be doing something and it won't recognize where I am.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was running on the trails that day, it was a gorgeous day.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just paused and I looked around me.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the beautiful trees.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I looked up at the ridgeline and there was light coming through it, and it was all lit up because it was pretty bright outside.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was just gorgeous, like the valley was clear, and I think some of sometimes we we forget, but that pause really helped reset me.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I finished that run strip run strong after that, and not because the boredom lifted, it was still there, but because I I gave it room to sit instead of fighting it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I also tried to find the the silver lining in my situation, which for me was in fact the actual mountains itself and the trees and the smells, and you miss a lot of that if you're so focused on trying to get out of the situation or you're so bored that your mind tries to think of all the other things that you could be doing.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about that moment a lot.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us don't pause when boredom hits.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I definitely am trying to learn this skill.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I've realized a few things that I'll talk about a little bit later, but we reach for the phone, we put something else, we put on something else, some other show, you know, we're bored 10 minutes in, or we fill that gap with some kind of more input.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We miss the view.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean just the literal view that I saw.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the things you own your own mind would show you if you left it a minute of quiet.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's so important is original ideas.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're trying to think through a problem, if you're trying to come up with a topic for a podcast, a blog post, if you are working through a situation, um silence provides that opportunity to do so.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not comfortable.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that a lot of us are used to because we have things given to us all the time.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's always entertainment, there's always uh things that are on demand.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Life moves pretty quick nowadays, and there is strength in learning how to pause.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a couple months ago, I I was in, uh I guess it was a month ago, I was in New York City.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, every night when I was done in the office, I would go out and walk.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a destination in mind.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was just, hey, I'm in the city, I'm gonna go walk.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I saw hundreds of people, hundreds of people moving through one of the most alive places on earth with their eyes glued to their screens.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Their heads down, they're shuffling around, sometimes they run into things.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw that happen, but I can imagine, especially in New York, and they're just completely checked out.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: The word that came to mind when I saw this was zombies.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like everyone was zombies, and that's the only word I had for it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this from some kind of place of superiority.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just giving you my observations.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've been that person, and watching it from the outside was unsettling in some kind of way I couldn't shake.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I immediately thought, okay, I gotta record a podcast episode on this because I don't know if people are aware that this happens.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for the most part, people are, but maybe in themselves they're not.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a danger, it really is.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's an addiction, and we have to learn how to use technology and use the other things that are at our fingertips as tools rather than vices.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And these people that I'm I observed, they handed their attention over at one swipe at a time, and the app is not giving anything back to them besides dopamine.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wish more people understood how important it is to have control over your own mind.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've learned a lot from observing my own mind and trying to make sure that I'm I'm utilizing it to its full force, which a lot of the times means I'm gonna have to think.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't think clearly, you can't solve real problems, and in my opinion, you can't grow if you're constantly consuming a feed and never sitting with any idea long enough to make it yours.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: That takes time away from your screen.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And most people, they don't like taking it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I I'm not trying to say this from a place of superiority or that, hey, I got this figured out.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm probably just as guilty as you are.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Phones are addicting, they really are.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can go and spend like 30 minutes on TikTok without even realizing 30 minutes went by.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I'm done, I always remember I try and think like, did I learn anything?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Did I gain anything from this?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Usually the answer is no.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just fun.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, I've I've recognized that distraction is a sort of pain management.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole thing.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you reach for your phone in a quiet moment, you're doing exactly what your nervous system was trained to do.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You feel something uncomfortable.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It could be boredom, anxiety, uncertainty.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain moves to relieve it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers call it internal triggering.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It kills the feeling uh for about eight seconds when you grab your phone.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then the feeling comes back, and then you reach again, and most people think they have some kind of focus problem.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know, I I hear people say they have ADHD all the time, which might be true.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if instead, if they if they put their phone down, if they were able to sit and think and focus, if they would reconsider their own diagnosis.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I I realized that I had an untrained relationship with boredom and discomfort, and nobody really taught me um taught me to sit with it long enough to see it pass.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I've always been a reader, I've always done things that do take a lot of time and you have to sit there for a while.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but usually I'm thinking during that, and especially if I'm reading, I try and think about the things that I'm I'm in taking.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I've I recognize like the more I use my phone, the more I posted or looked at posts and all these kinds of things, it took my uh attention, my focus away from things that actually mattered and moved it over to things that really, in the grand scheme of things, don't.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, here's the thing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That voice will whisper in your head that when you're bored.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: The one that says that you deserve a break, this is just too hard.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or hey, maybe I'll just get on there for a second or two.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I won't spend a lot of time.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna see what's on there.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: That voice is a liar.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hate to break it to you, but that voice is a liar.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And every time its job is to convince you that discomfort the discomfort that you feel right now needs immediately solv, immediate solving.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you stay in the moment and ignore it, it passes within a few minutes.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Every time.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every time.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You for you you don't cave, you sit there and you try and get through whatever you're doing, and I guarantee you that feeling of boredom will pass.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not if you're doing something that's like at work and you're going through and and looking at a spreadsheet full of data that you have to analyze.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you will be bored then, but just get it done.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then maybe afterwards you can check out your phone.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But do not take your focus from the thing you are doing just to feel a little bit more comfortable because you want to look at your phone.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have to train yourself to know that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And most people, including myself, don't.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's the other side of me that understands the things that I do with my physical training, like ultra running, that requires a lot of patience.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: It requires a lot of work.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned to instead of push away discomfort when I'm in a run, I've learned to embrace it because I know that that's kind of what I need to do to progress.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's hours on the trails, on your feet, and making uh making progress to, you know, if you're gonna run a 50-mile race.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or for me, hopefully like a hundred-mile race, and then my goal, my big overarching goal is 250 miles.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not gonna happen if I don't understand how to manage that discomfort when it comes up.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of times in a run where I feel uncomfortable.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like happens all the time.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's at mile three, sometimes it's at mile 13, others it's you know, right from the bat.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired and I'm sore.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I've learned that it is a skill to slow down, literally, sometimes your pace, and just focus on the next step.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's trained me on how to deal with physical discomfort.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And right now I'm learning how to deal with a little bit more mental discomfort, and that's things like boredom, it's things like anxiety, it's things like trying not to worry about what's happening in my life, like living in that moment instead.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And being present is a it's a master skill.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is something if you're able to be present, you're not thinking about the future all the time and what could happen, and you're not thinking about your past and what you could have done better.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in this moment now, you're listening to this podcast, there's power that comes from being present.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you have to train yourself for this.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's keep this analogy going of building a muscle because the boredom muscle is gonna be the foundation for this.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tolerating boredom is the um foundational skill, the one underneath all the others.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna be building a business, you're gonna be grinding through months and months of unglamorous repetitive work.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're training for a 50-mile race where you're alone with your thoughts for three hours and nothing dramatic is happening, that's gonna take work.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fixing a hard relationship requires requires sitting with silence and discomfort without reaching for the exit.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: The exit being your phone.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, every hard thing worth doing asks you to be uncomfortable be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard that before.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: That if you want to excel in anything, you have to learn how to be comfortable when discomfort arrives.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And boredom is where you practice that in this scenario.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's no other training ground.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pascal, uh Blaise Pascal, a philosopher.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me let me start over.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Blaise Pascal, a philosopher from the 1600s, said something that fits this concept very well.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: He said, All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quiet in a in a room alone.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote that before smartphones, before Netflix, before social media.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1600s.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let me reread this.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quiet in a room alone.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was watching people fill their lives with gambling and gossip and war because they they didn't tolerate sitting with their own thoughts.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And 400 years later, the scroll replaced the gossip that he's talking about.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's gossip during the scroll, whatever.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the same problem.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he identified it 400 years ago.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's interesting.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a 2026 meta-analysis of close to 100,000 people found that short form video use correlates with measurable reductions in attention and inhibitory control.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Real cognitive changes and not marginal ones.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The data confirms what you can already see.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you reach for your phone in a quiet moment, you train your brain to expect stimulation constantly.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That silence, it becomes harder.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more you escape, the more unbearable the quiet gets.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It gets hard.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about uh my wife for a minute because Allie figured something out that I'm still catching up to.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You will never see Allie at a family party, a social gathering, or anything like that on her phone.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's in the conversation, and it's something I really admire with her.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's present with whoever she's talking to, and it's just how she moves through the world.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's how she is as a person.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I know without a doubt, I'm more important to her than her phone is.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we're together, neither of us reaches for it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, I'm so blessed that I have a wife like that who not only shows those traits and qualities, but also I know them because of the way that she treats me and the way that she acts.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Watching her long enough, I understand what it reflects.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: She sees her phone as a tool, like I mentioned.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to use these as tools.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Allie sees her phone.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you pick up a tool when you need it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're not carrying a hammer around all the time because you're not going to need to nail in some kind of nail all I don't know at certain parts throughout your day.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And your phone should be used the same.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when there's nothing specific to do, it stays stays off.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't treat it as a companion or a comfort.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: That distinction sounds small until you start paying attention to how people actually live it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Allie and I don't bring our phones at the dinner table.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small little act that has a very high ROI.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just because our phones are away, it's her and I.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's no one else.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: No one else is vying for our attention.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It we can just have a conversation, we can chat about the day.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can find out, you know, if there's anything that's bothering her, she can do the same for me.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it just gives us a moment to be together.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as someone who constantly gets emails and slacks and messages all day from work, that's nice.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to just be able to have her and I there and and not be so distracted by whatever whatever trends are going on in social media.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: That rule has become more of a ritual now, and the meals are different.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I've realized you can't be full fully in the moment if you're halfway or halfway somewhere else.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: If your mind isn't paying attention to the person because you want to see, you know, what people are saying about the Los Angeles Dodgers on X.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, come on.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Be with the person that you care about.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Be with the person who's important to you, and show them that respect by putting your phone away.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about the silence because the silence is where your original thinking lot lives.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm on a long run with no input, sometimes I do this where I don't listen to anything, I just go out and run.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: No podcast, no music.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: My brain does something it won't do otherwise.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It starts making connections to things.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, try this.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you um and we'll talk about the challenge later, but I'll give you a sneak peek.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to try and exercise without headphones.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: It might sound weird, and you might be thinking, Brett, you're damn crazy.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds horrible.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be in the beginning, until you start understanding the power of what I'm talking about here.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um my brain, it makes connections.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: It works on problems I I haven't been consciously consciously chewing on, like actively thinking about.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the best episodes of getting after it came from runs where I had nothing but time and movement.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I ran my uh 50K last October, I didn't listen to anything the entire time.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I was thinking the entire time.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to understand, you know, what lessons am I learning here that I could bring to the podcast?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or what is this teaching about myself?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those kind of things are important, but they only show up when silence is there.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: The clearest thinkers I've done, uh I've I've done about this uh business, about relationships, about who I want to become came from hours like that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Journaling does the same thing for me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know how much I love to journal.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know this because I've talked about it so much, and I I do love sitting down and trying to write my thought out, thoughts out.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I take it seriously.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's where I go to figure out how I actually think.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I sit with a question and I work through it until something real comes out.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will just brain dump, brain dump what I'm feeling about a certain topic or brain dump how I'm feeling about this a certain situation I'm in.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it allows me to see clearly how I'm actually thinking about the problem.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it opens up different uh different viewpoints of how I could approach it differently.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very powerful thing, and it's simple in practice.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that process produces ideas I wouldn't typically get in any other way.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a lot of podcast episodes have come from my own journal.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Journals.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The common factor is being alone with your thoughts, and you remove that input.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is a trainable skill, guys.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like this is hopeless for you, it's not.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's your brain trying to keep you comfortable.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm your friend Brett.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I care about you.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I care about your progress.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to tell you straight up, you gotta ignore those thoughts.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta put them aside and try not to think about them.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: The first few times you sit in real silence, nothing revelatory will happen.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to paint that picture too, and set the expectation where it should be.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your mind might feel restless, and you won't have genius ideas the moment that you put your phone down.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not how it works.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you train it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like anything worth building, it gets more productive the more that you work at it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: That dead space becomes a live space.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The discomfort becomes familiar and then useful.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now listen to this quote from Epictetus.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: He is a former slave and someone who had every reason to check out.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he said this seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish, but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil, tranquil flow of life.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fight the quiet.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to make it more interesting than it is.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sit in it as it is.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's where clarity lives.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find that clarity.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now another quote here.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a quote heavy section, but Frankel, uh, Victor Frankel, he survived Nazi concentration camps, and he came out with one of the most important insights I've heard.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't read Man's Search for Meaning, I highly recommend you pick that book up.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he wrote, between stimulus and response, there is a space.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: In that space is our power to choose our response.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Between what happens to you and how you react, there is a space.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that space is where your life is determined.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about these actions that you do, that shows who you are.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your actions are the best judge of who you are as a person.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when you grab your phone, the moment you feel bored, you collapse that space to zero.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no space anymore.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking for input.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your hand, the reflex, the wheel, practicing boredom, actually sitting with it, is how you build that gap back.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Control your hand.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because the width of the gap matters more than most people ever consider.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the final quote I'll share in this section is from James Clear.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: He put it plainly in atomic habits, but he says, the greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: The excitement has faded, and we can't be bothered to show up.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most people do not fail because the work gets too hard.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: They quit because it's boring.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Think for a moment if you've ever done that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because I sure have.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've definitely quit when it's boring.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm not interested in this anymore.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've done that with books, I've done it with movies, I've done it with some things at work.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a uh it's a destructive habit.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you've never trained your tolerance for boredom, boring and impossible feel the same.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do we apply this?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are some practical applications that we can take from this episode and apply it to our lives?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have five things that you can do this week in order of how straightforward they are to start.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, first, there's a device that I love.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Brick.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned it before on this podcast.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a paid sponsor, unless Brick you want to be, because that would be cool.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love your product.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's a device called the Brick, and Allie got it for me for Christmas.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Really, the simplest thing uh to explain it is it restricts certain apps that you you say you want to be restricted.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's mainly the apps that I use which distract me or take up a bunch of time, or I know for a fact that I can waste a bunch of time on it.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's things like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, um YouTube, all the different kinds of social medias, different platforms like uh Prime Video, just random things, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: I it's it's okay, Brett's working.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be distracted by these things.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this tool has made such a difference in my daily focus because the decision to not look at it has already been made for me.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when the apps are locked, that pull to look at my phone disappears.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know for a fact that hey, even if I go on there, I can't I can't access those.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the point of even doing then?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not white knuckling anything, the option just isn't there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you rely on willpower alone to resist that distraction, if you listen to last episode, you know that willpower is finite.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You will lose it eventually.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: So build the environment that removes the choice.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to have the brick, it's just something I love.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You could keep your phone in another room, you could have uh a partner or someone that you know care about, put in time restricting apps.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, I think there's a uh I'm pretty sure there's like a time management tool on Apple at least to remove apps at certain times.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just do something like that.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be anything crazy.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you are working in an office, put it in a cupboard.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like just try to get the distraction away.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do not let yourself get pulled in.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, number two is do one task a day without any input.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Pick one thing that you already do every day and strip all input from it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a a walk, your daily walk, your commute, a workout, or it could be even washing dishes.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guilty of listening to podcasts while I wash dishes.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a chore that I don't really care about doing.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so, hey, why not listen to a podcast while I'm doing it?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: It can make it a little more enjoyable.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: While that is true, 20 minutes of just doing the thing without nothing playing can give you a lot of insight into yourself.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when the urge to reach for your phone shows up, fight it.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fight it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Notice it.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Name what you're feeling in the two seconds before it showed up.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that awareness alone will start to shift things.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, the morning question.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm calling this one.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I try my best to not look at my phone in the morning.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I try to not look at it until I have to work.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: The alarm goes off, that's the only caveat.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I will turn off my phone.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And before I do anything digital, I want to have at least a few minutes to myself where I can think, where I can process, what am I doing for the day, where I can just have some quiet to myself.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because, hey, I was sleeping for eight hours.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get a little clear on what I'm doing today.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And before picking up my phone at any point of the day, I ask myself a simple question.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do I actually need this right now?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do I actually need to pick this up right now?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not is there probably something interesting on there?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because the answer is probably yes.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: But do I need it?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, I leave it there.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Simple as that.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: That question has cut more mindless scrolling from my days than any other rule I've tried.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself that question.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need this right now?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in the morning.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're if your habit is you wake up and you immediately start scrolling, I want you to ask yourself that and be honest.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do I actually need this right now?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're not honest with yourself, nothing's gonna change.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hard truth.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is from your friend Brett.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I care about your progress and I want you to succeed.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is here's here's what I was talking about.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: One audio free workout.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna do this with you.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're in this together.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a community, we're building together, we're trying to get better together, and I'm gonna do this one.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you train, do one session a week with nothing in your ears.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels strange the first few times, honestly.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Push through it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain, without external input to process, starts working on whatever actually matters to you.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: You might have some great ideas.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you hate your job.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want to leave.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that opportunity to not listen to anything and move your body will help your brain start to come up with, hey, maybe I'll maybe I'll do this instead.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it will highlight your interests and tell you, you know, how I actually I love working with people, but my job doesn't really give me the opportunity to do so.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I need to find a job like that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You solve problems during this time, and ideas start to surface.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: You come back from those workouts.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: My experience has been with a kind of clarity that a playlist or a podcast can't give you.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the honest truth.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I know it feels strange.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: It feels so weird.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I am completely, I love listening to 90s rap or or other hardcore rap when I'm lifting weights.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's like, come on.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the best things in the world.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also a lot of power from resisting that and from just having moments to yourself.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, find your quiet space and protect it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your quiet space is wherever you can access your own thinking.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's running or journaling.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: But also walks.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for you, it might be walking, it could be lifting, driving some familiar route, or riding before anyone else is awake.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: But find it and make it intentional.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Use it to think and not to consume.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: After each each session that you do this for, again, ask yourself a question, and it's simple this time.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's what did I learn?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Did I learn anything from what I just did?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be nothing at first, but you keep on asking.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: You keep doing it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, you will be surprised about what comes through.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the challenge for the week is this.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Every day for 30 minutes, doesn't matter what time of day, but I want you to put your phone away.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do not look at it.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: You take a walk, you can journal, talk to someone that you love, work, I don't know, whatever you want, read.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever you choose, make it phone free.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the activity isn't the point of this.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: The discomfort is.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to start understanding that you can you'll be okay if you sit with discomfort a little long for 30 minutes.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even that long.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be okay.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: 30 minutes of sitting with whatever shows up.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It could be boredom, restlessness, a random thought, maybe something worth writing down without reaching for some kind of exit.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then ask yourself, what did I learn?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would say day one, like I said, probably nothing.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then days four and five, something might shift.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a quiet shift, like a muscle waking up that you forgot was there.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And a week goes by, two weeks go by, and I think some of your best ideas will start to surface because they are in you right now.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ideas about your work, your relationships, and even who you are becoming.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're in there.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: They can't get through when every quiet moment is filled with someone else's content.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to learn, you have to leave room for your thoughts.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, everything we talk about on this show, the hard training, the identity work, the real friendships, it all requires this first.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to be alone with yourself before you can become who you want to be.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for listening to this.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's kind of ironic me uh recording a piece of content telling you to not indulge on people's content.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a time and a place for all things.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole point of this episode was I I want you to make time just for your thoughts.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've talked a lot on this podcast about physical training and certain concepts like discipline, but rarely do I challenge you guys to actually go back and think and to have time where it's just 30 minutes of of sacred personal time, and you should treat it that way.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: But seriously, thank you for listening to this episode.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: If this landed, um, if this landed for you, like please share it with someone else.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, text in your training partner, maybe share it with your spouse.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes 30 seconds and it means a lot to me.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you haven't left a rating, that's another 30 seconds that helps the show find more people, and I truly appreciate it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to reach out directly, send me a message on Instagram.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working on a website where there's going to be a form filled that you can send uh future questions or if you want to be a guest, but I would love to hear from you.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And last thing I'll say is I want you guys to go find the quiet and see what's in it.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be surprised.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people don't think that they have great ideas, but that's not true.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's simply not true.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has good ideas, and you have to give that idea room to breathe, and you have to process it, you have to work on it because ideas don't become ideas and they don't actually, or ideas don't become actions until they're thought about.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: So think about that.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go into this next week, get excited about being quiet because the more excited you can be about it, the more amped up you'll be to do it.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate all you guys for listening.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And until next episode, everyone, go find that quiet and keep getting after it.