Thanks Matt, little surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did as I only got about a quarter of the way through ‘The Rise of Superman’....time to pick it up again I think!
Great to hear Elias Elhardt is coming up soon too👍
As a self proclaimed Information Junkie, recovering biohacker, and an eager consumer of many, many podcasts, I was pleasantly surprised to see that you had sat down with Steven for an interview. He is one of those on the circuit who are well polished, predictable, and repetitive yet also utterly fascinating, in my opinion. You and I differ Matt in that I find myself completely onboard with a lot of the content surrounding topics like peak performance etc.
I'm especially interested in how I can be in the second half of my 40's, have two children, and yet still feel like it's '95 and I'm an unstoppable 20 year old. My body might not agree though, but point being I've been blessed with the mindset that I developed as a teenage skate rat. I've read Art Of The Impossible by Kotler, but very interested in his new book.
The motivation to understand started to slip within the first 4 minutes and then the whole edifice collapsed under the weight of my ennui . I persisted to the end but it was a close run thing. Definitely a miss. Each to their own I suppose.
There’s plenty to be said for understanding how people get good at stuff (training, time, health, consistency, location etc) but I feel there’s a big leap from getting into the flow for writing and living in the mountains, snowboarding regularly for decades, having a training partner and a park on your doorstep and flow being sighted as the reason why he’s getting good at it in his 40s. I found that a bit jarring.
Not quite. The other factors aren’t circumstantial, as elite athletes do train hard, choose to live in certain places, train with others, cut out distractions, eat certain things etc to create focus and the right environment. Steven has done that too, which is cool and impressive in itself. So it does feel a bit disingenuous to gloss over those and present flow as the crux to get there.
I am glad that you interviewed Steven, I enjoyed the listen, and I think there are a lot of really interesting questions and related ideas to explore in the Flow state space. However, I find it difficult to conceive of the reason to 'chase' the flow state as being about 'peak performance' when there are undertones that this peak performance is related to beating odds at the individual level in a way that is unconnected to community and culture apart from being better than others. The connectedness people feel to others through shared practices, sport or other, that is cited as one of the 'flow triggers' brings the possibility of excellence and excellent performance as conceptualised as communally and culturally valuable as well as valuable at the level of the individual. This offers the question, why be excellent? What's it worth? And to whom? This is an interesting question and I wonder what Steven's answer would be?
Interesting episode. I share your mistrust for life hacks etc: the bleeding obvious repackaged. I thought there was a fair bit in the interview…my BS detector was triggered by the ‘science’ worn lightly to legitimise his claims. One that spontaneously comes to mind was the list of actions that he claimed added longevity to life, with action sports being at the top - a classic conflation of correlation and causality. Flow or no flow, action spots cannot be successfully undertaken by those who are not fit, strong and flexible. Factor these in and ofc you’re gonna live longer than your average sedentary, morbidly obese person. (Plus…tell Shane McConkey’s widow that action sports extend life). But I should read the book before piling in on him for the science.
Peel back the marketing - he sold his book very well - and he’s saying that supreme fitness and dedication are key factors (as Toby alludes to in his comments). His assertion that ‘Flow’ separates the icons from the journeymen is interesting. Actually I thought of Andrew Reynolds’ nervous ticks (not sure it’s the correct term) as an example of ‘pattern recognition’ - those little exercises to trigger a better session. (He’s just put out a post on Insta about bagging ’50, 60, 80 tricks’ before he feels fired up - a reminder of the gap between him & us ‘terminal intermediates’). But skaters all know these right? - if you’re not having a good skate, bag a few tricks you have on lock and the session gets better. Also I thought of Penny as the most obvious example of flow-state skating…which made me think about drugs, which made me think of the Pappas brothers skating on acid…and murder… so yeah perhaps the subject requires a health warning.
I thought you did really well to highlight his drive and punishing schedule. I'd argue this, rather than flow, is what is enabling him to achieve. The barriers for most middle aged people are life in general and the other things that take priority over being a park rat in their 50s. I’m glad you got to open that avenue of discussion, moving away from his well trodden & polished spiel. I think that’s what jars - the promise of “just buy my book and you’ll discover the hack”. It’s no hack, it’s hard graft, prioritisation & sacrifice. Impressive & inspiring but much harder to package & sell.
(Also you nailed your audience - terminal intermediate, I felt very heard!)
Thanks Matt, little surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did as I only got about a quarter of the way through ‘The Rise of Superman’....time to pick it up again I think!
Great to hear Elias Elhardt is coming up soon too👍
As a self proclaimed Information Junkie, recovering biohacker, and an eager consumer of many, many podcasts, I was pleasantly surprised to see that you had sat down with Steven for an interview. He is one of those on the circuit who are well polished, predictable, and repetitive yet also utterly fascinating, in my opinion. You and I differ Matt in that I find myself completely onboard with a lot of the content surrounding topics like peak performance etc.
I'm especially interested in how I can be in the second half of my 40's, have two children, and yet still feel like it's '95 and I'm an unstoppable 20 year old. My body might not agree though, but point being I've been blessed with the mindset that I developed as a teenage skate rat. I've read Art Of The Impossible by Kotler, but very interested in his new book.
Looking forward to Slater for sure.....
The motivation to understand started to slip within the first 4 minutes and then the whole edifice collapsed under the weight of my ennui . I persisted to the end but it was a close run thing. Definitely a miss. Each to their own I suppose.
There’s plenty to be said for understanding how people get good at stuff (training, time, health, consistency, location etc) but I feel there’s a big leap from getting into the flow for writing and living in the mountains, snowboarding regularly for decades, having a training partner and a park on your doorstep and flow being sighted as the reason why he’s getting good at it in his 40s. I found that a bit jarring.
Not quite. The other factors aren’t circumstantial, as elite athletes do train hard, choose to live in certain places, train with others, cut out distractions, eat certain things etc to create focus and the right environment. Steven has done that too, which is cool and impressive in itself. So it does feel a bit disingenuous to gloss over those and present flow as the crux to get there.
I am glad that you interviewed Steven, I enjoyed the listen, and I think there are a lot of really interesting questions and related ideas to explore in the Flow state space. However, I find it difficult to conceive of the reason to 'chase' the flow state as being about 'peak performance' when there are undertones that this peak performance is related to beating odds at the individual level in a way that is unconnected to community and culture apart from being better than others. The connectedness people feel to others through shared practices, sport or other, that is cited as one of the 'flow triggers' brings the possibility of excellence and excellent performance as conceptualised as communally and culturally valuable as well as valuable at the level of the individual. This offers the question, why be excellent? What's it worth? And to whom? This is an interesting question and I wonder what Steven's answer would be?
Interesting episode. I share your mistrust for life hacks etc: the bleeding obvious repackaged. I thought there was a fair bit in the interview…my BS detector was triggered by the ‘science’ worn lightly to legitimise his claims. One that spontaneously comes to mind was the list of actions that he claimed added longevity to life, with action sports being at the top - a classic conflation of correlation and causality. Flow or no flow, action spots cannot be successfully undertaken by those who are not fit, strong and flexible. Factor these in and ofc you’re gonna live longer than your average sedentary, morbidly obese person. (Plus…tell Shane McConkey’s widow that action sports extend life). But I should read the book before piling in on him for the science.
Peel back the marketing - he sold his book very well - and he’s saying that supreme fitness and dedication are key factors (as Toby alludes to in his comments). His assertion that ‘Flow’ separates the icons from the journeymen is interesting. Actually I thought of Andrew Reynolds’ nervous ticks (not sure it’s the correct term) as an example of ‘pattern recognition’ - those little exercises to trigger a better session. (He’s just put out a post on Insta about bagging ’50, 60, 80 tricks’ before he feels fired up - a reminder of the gap between him & us ‘terminal intermediates’). But skaters all know these right? - if you’re not having a good skate, bag a few tricks you have on lock and the session gets better. Also I thought of Penny as the most obvious example of flow-state skating…which made me think about drugs, which made me think of the Pappas brothers skating on acid…and murder… so yeah perhaps the subject requires a health warning.
I thought you did really well to highlight his drive and punishing schedule. I'd argue this, rather than flow, is what is enabling him to achieve. The barriers for most middle aged people are life in general and the other things that take priority over being a park rat in their 50s. I’m glad you got to open that avenue of discussion, moving away from his well trodden & polished spiel. I think that’s what jars - the promise of “just buy my book and you’ll discover the hack”. It’s no hack, it’s hard graft, prioritisation & sacrifice. Impressive & inspiring but much harder to package & sell.
(Also you nailed your audience - terminal intermediate, I felt very heard!)