The Art of Manliness - The One-Skill-a-Year Plan for a More Interesting Life

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00:01:00.620 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast,

00:01:03.820 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders

00:01:08.120 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.

00:01:12.500 The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed.

00:01:18.420 Also be sure to explore articles on artofmanliness.com,

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00:01:24.180 and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at

00:01:27.560 strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show. We all have things we've always wanted to know how to do,

00:01:39.860 but have never gotten around to learning. Speak a foreign language, play an instrument,

00:01:43.960 write a book, take up surfing. Maybe you've even started one of these pursuits a few times,

00:01:47.940 only to drop it after a couple of weeks. My guest calls this collection of abandoned or

00:01:51.960 Deferred Desires, Your Invisible List, and is the author of a book of the same name.

00:01:56.380 Today on the show, Ravi Gupta presents a plan for tackling the things in your invisible

00:01:59.420 list by picking one hobby-like activity each year and working your way to an intermediate

00:02:03.180 level in it.

00:02:04.100 He explains the different categories these pursuits can fall into, from the liftoff

00:02:07.340 project to the mental marathon to the skillbatical, and how to pick the right one for your season

00:02:11.380 of life.

00:02:12.180 We also discuss how camps for grown-ups can make skill acquisition more enjoyable, why

00:02:15.960 you should consider taking up an adult-appropriate sport like tennis, why Ravi decided to take

00:02:19.840 the MCAT even though he doesn't plan to become a doctor, and how working on your invisible list

00:02:23.540 can give your life chapters and, over the course of a decade, turn you into a renaissance man

00:02:27.700 badass. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash invisiblist.

00:02:45.360 All right. Ravi Gupta, welcome to the show.

00:02:48.300 Excited to be here.

00:02:49.460 So you got a new book out called The Invisible List.

00:02:52.100 We're going to talk about what The Invisible List is today.

00:02:54.580 But you start the book off with how you were going to friends' weddings, you were getting

00:02:59.380 married, and there was one wedding you went to in particular that you realized, I've got

00:03:04.740 this invisible list, which is like stuff I've wanted to do my entire life, passions, hobbies,

00:03:10.180 but I never got around to doing.

00:03:12.800 Why did these weddings get you thinking about that?

00:03:15.700 Well, you know, at the time I was running a network of schools down south and I was 24-7 for my students, my teachers and families. And, you know, it's such a cliche to say and to open a self-help book to be like I was burnt out. But there's no other way to open it because it was true. And I was gaining weight. You know, I'm 43 now. I look back to then when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. And I look older then than I do now.

00:03:44.640 but you know like anything else you're not completely aware of what's going on with you

00:03:50.320 and the interesting thing about a wedding is it's an opportunity to check in with people who haven't

00:03:54.120 seen you in a while and they notice right away and i was going to these weddings and i was hearing

00:03:58.820 all kinds of things including my buddy sam who was like hey are you on drugs uh and i wasn't on

00:04:04.900 drugs i was just completely hopelessly spent and not taking care of myself and that was kind of

00:04:12.900 the genesis of a lot of changes I needed to make in my life. I think one thing you talk about is

00:04:17.980 you wanted to dance because there's dancing at weddings. You're like, I've been wanting to take

00:04:22.280 salsa dancing, but I never got around to it. Like that's, that's one of those things on my list of

00:04:26.300 things I've wanted to do, but I'd never made time for. Well, that, you know, that is a big impetus

00:04:30.620 behind this book in general, right? So at the wedding, I see people salsa dancing and doing

00:04:34.340 other kinds of dancing. I'm like, you know what? I've picked up and put down salsa dancing so many

00:04:38.960 times and I never followed through you know and it went all the way through that wedding to other

00:04:44.960 weddings you know like there were a couple of weddings a couple years later where I just kept

00:04:48.500 having this experience right where I just be like I tried I didn't follow through it's not because

00:04:53.180 I couldn't do it it's because I wasn't dedicated enough and organized enough and there are a bunch

00:04:57.960 of things like that you hear somebody speaking a language you want to speak or there's a screenplay

00:05:02.000 that's like a little similar to what you wanted to write and these things accumulate in your head

00:05:07.240 and they bother you.

00:05:08.140 I imagine a lot of people listening to this

00:05:09.320 have all kinds of examples of this.

00:05:11.220 And it eats away at you and your confidence.

00:05:14.820 And if you don't start to pull those things off the list

00:05:18.420 and nurture them, you can grow into a very cranky,

00:05:22.700 regret-filled person.

00:05:23.880 And my whole book is about how to be the opposite, right?

00:05:26.920 To be somebody who feels like there are endless possibilities

00:05:29.700 even as you get older.

00:05:31.280 And that's really the journey I started right around then.

00:05:34.820 So what other things were on your invisible list?

00:05:36.300 So you had salsa dancing.

00:05:37.620 What else was on there?

00:05:39.280 You know, it's hard to go back

00:05:40.560 and remember everything that was on there,

00:05:42.000 but certainly all kinds of writing.

00:05:43.920 So I had been picking up and putting down a memoir

00:05:46.200 of some sorts to write about my experiences

00:05:49.640 growing up in Staten Island

00:05:51.040 and then working in politics and then in schools.

00:05:53.780 And I would start it, I would stop it.

00:05:55.560 I didn't have confidence to write.

00:05:57.640 I had all kinds of writer's block.

00:05:59.480 I would tell myself that it was indulgent to do that.

00:06:03.160 Surfing was certainly on the list.

00:06:04.380 I'm sure we'll get to that.

00:06:05.920 Breakdancing was on the list, something I did as a kid and then stopped, which I, for many reasons,

00:06:10.780 have still not pulled off my list. And languages of all kinds have been on the list. And so there

00:06:18.520 are a ton of different things, flying airplanes, some things that I have never gotten to even

00:06:22.780 until this day. And my list was growing and growing and growing. And I just kept telling

00:06:27.760 myself, you know what, that's not me. I'm a responsible adult now. And that's for dilettantes

00:06:34.640 and rich people and Tom Cruise.

00:06:36.720 That's for people who have endless time and money.

00:06:39.340 Yeah, I've got my list of things.

00:06:41.840 One of them that I've started and stopped multiple times

00:06:44.620 is drawing, like pencil sketching.

00:06:46.740 That's one.

00:06:47.580 Another one is language.

00:06:49.780 Like I used to speak Spanish fluently,

00:06:51.380 but I haven't done it in over 20 years.

00:06:53.720 And I'm always thinking,

00:06:54.360 I should probably get back to speaking Spanish again.

00:06:57.340 And then I make these sort of attempts,

00:07:00.840 but then I abort mission a couple of weeks later.

00:07:03.360 What else has been on my list? Oh, piano. That's another one. So I took a piano class in college.

00:07:08.840 I enjoyed it. And I was a decent beginner for a semester of piano in college. And I've always

00:07:13.860 like, I should get back into doing that. And I've picked up some beginner piano handbooks

00:07:18.180 and I'll do it for a week. And then, yeah, no, stop. Yep. And those are actually very common.

00:07:24.360 What you just named piano and languages are very common. And I think what's fascinating about those

00:07:29.080 to is that those are two things that people are forced to do as kids usually and they don't enjoy

00:07:34.820 them. And you'd often, unless you're, you have a tiger parent, you don't follow through on them.

00:07:39.440 And for me, languages has been that too. Like I picked up and put down Italian so many times and

00:07:45.380 I really, really want to be fluent one day. And I know that that will be a hallmark of one of my

00:07:50.700 years. How is an invisible list different from a bucket list? Bucket list to me is like, I want to

00:07:56.960 go to Paris. I want to see the Eiffel Tower. I want to, you know, I want to see the Northern

00:08:02.180 lights in Iceland or whatever. Right. So it can include things. And this is also somewhat true

00:08:07.300 of the Misogi concept in Japan is like things that are almost one-off things that you could

00:08:11.700 cross off just by like a short sprint period of time, like either just going to the right place,

00:08:17.680 going to the right restaurant. You know, when people talk about bucket lists, for example,

00:08:20.400 in New York city, it's like, you know, go to central park during the day and read a book or

00:08:24.140 something like that, right? It's not this ongoing investment, usually the way people talk about

00:08:28.680 bucket lists. Whereas the invisible list, it's really about tackling things that are hard and

00:08:36.640 that require a year to become at least intermediate at. And the whole process is all about creating

00:08:44.580 themes to your years to say, okay, this is not just about one thing you did that year, but about

00:08:49.780 a process you went through the entire year and a skill or hobby that you've acquired that year

00:08:57.360 that you can either take with you into future years or say, hey, I am glad I did that thing,

00:09:01.900 but I'm never going to do it again. But it really is a whole different level of commitment

00:09:06.220 than what people typically talk about when they talk about bucket lists.

00:09:10.580 Okay. So an invisible list, it's more skill focused, hobby focused, and these are hobbies

00:09:14.760 that require commitment. And then, like you said, the way you approach your invisible list is

00:09:20.160 you're laying out a process that you have to commit at least a year towards. So I think when

00:09:26.460 most people, like I'm a perfect example of that, when I'm like, I want to learn this new skill,

00:09:31.180 I like the idea of it. And then I'll kind of take sort of half steps towards it. And then I give up

00:09:37.300 after maybe two or three weeks. You're saying, no, you have to give yourself a year to do this

00:09:42.560 thing? Yeah. And there's something powerful about a year for a few reasons. One is it's long enough

00:09:49.760 that you can go from beginner to intermediate in almost anything. And two is it also allows for a

00:09:56.080 little bit of trial and error. Every year, pretty much, I have this middle period of time in which

00:10:01.700 I hit a slump of some form, whether it's an injury or writer's block or lack of confidence, or just

00:10:08.720 this middle period of learning where you've gotten through all the easy wins and now each

00:10:13.720 new sub skill within your area takes a lot longer to learn. So a year is a good period of time for

00:10:20.580 that. But the year also has a couple of other benefits. And I think the most important is it

00:10:26.080 gives you chapters to your life and you don't have to do calendar years. Some people will start

00:10:30.500 there's in September alongside their kids going to school, for example, or they start on their

00:10:34.660 birthdays. It really doesn't matter which date you pick. I happen to pick January 1st. So I'm

00:10:38.900 able to say, oh, 2020 was the year I learned to surf. 2021 was the year of tennis. And you think

00:10:43.740 about all the people you met, the places you went. And so you have these themes to your years.

00:10:47.900 And that combats this sort of lack of definition that tends to come as you get older, right? Because

00:10:53.000 when you're a kid, you're like, oh, third grade, that was Mrs. Williamson. And I was in this

00:10:57.480 building and I had these friends and I read these books, right? You could remember it to this day,

00:11:01.160 most people, right? But if you think about, oh, when I was 26, what's the difference between 26

00:11:04.980 and 27 or 32 and 33? And the older you get, the less definition you have. And that's demoralizing.

00:11:11.240 And it's also demoralizing looking ahead because I'm 43 and I'm looking ahead. I'm like, oh my

00:11:16.220 God, I'm going to be 50 one day. And you could be scared. You know, like it's coming quickly.

00:11:21.280 And sooner or later, I'll be closer to 50 than I will be to 40. And you could either be scared

00:11:25.860 at that or you could reframe it and say, you know what? I've got seven more years till I hit 50.

00:11:30.760 And by the time I get to 50, I will be a badass.

00:11:33.260 I'll be flying airplanes.

00:11:34.160 I'll speak Italian.

00:11:35.200 I'll have made a movie, whatever your crazy ideas are, right?

00:11:37.900 And you can picture all those things that you will do each of those years.

00:11:41.280 And it actually makes you excited about the prospect of getting older instead of dreading it.

00:11:46.360 I love that idea that devoting a year creates chapters in your life.

00:11:49.360 Because you're right.

00:11:49.980 If I look back at my life, I can see chapters in my life through my childhood, high school years, and then it ends at law school.

00:11:56.660 And then after that, it's been kind of the same.

00:11:58.480 I've had kids and there's chapters to that, but once they hit, I don't know, eight or nine or

00:12:05.100 10, they're pretty self-sufficient and you start losing that. In my work, there's been different

00:12:10.180 phases and projects that have added texture to my memory, but a lot of it's been years of the

00:12:15.640 same thing, just doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah. And with your kids, I think

00:12:20.260 it's interesting. I hear from people who have kids and then they're married. And the often thing I

00:12:24.700 hear from people is, you know, I have to be about them. I have to be about my kids. I have to be

00:12:29.300 around. I don't have time to be indulgent and learn pottery or whatever, you know, and I can

00:12:35.640 only share my experience, which is, you know, my dad left when I was a kid, but before he left

00:12:40.620 every now and then he'd show up to my games, my football games and stuff. Now it was cool to see

00:12:45.360 him there from time to time, but looking back, my dad was very unfulfilled in certain ways. And

00:12:50.760 that's part of the reason why he left. And if I could go back in time, I'd be like, it's okay if

00:12:56.720 you don't come to my game, if you're doing something that makes you excited and happy,

00:13:00.640 because like, that's what it means to be a great dad. Like when I see you fulfilled and happy and

00:13:05.740 actually learning things and trying hard things, that's inspiring to me, but also you're happy.

00:13:11.300 So like when we see each other, you're a different kind of person. And I feel like that for so many

00:13:15.580 parents I see and so many spouses, it's like, it is okay. Obviously, there are plenty of things you

00:13:21.200 have to do and you want to do, but there's also a real value in showing your kids that you're

00:13:27.740 learning new things, that you're taking risks, that will inspire them. And often you could pick

00:13:33.040 things that enrich them and your spouse. For instance, you could learn to cook extravagant

00:13:38.100 meals and cook them for your family, for example. And also for your spouse, your wife or your

00:13:44.060 husband, they'll think you're sexy when you're taking on these new things. It gives you this

00:13:48.000 sort of glow that will make you a more captivating person for the people around you. So I do think

00:13:53.980 making room for this actually helps people around you as well. Yeah, that point about it makes you

00:13:58.840 attractive to your spouse. I mean, you think about that, your wife married you because you probably

00:14:04.520 had some sort of ambition when you were in your 20s of things you were going to do. That was

00:14:08.700 attractive. And then you hit 30 and 40 and you've kind of settled. And there's a virtue to having a

00:14:13.900 routine and kind of being established. But, you know, seeing a person do new and exciting things,

00:14:19.220 that's also incredibly attractive still, even if you're 40 or 50 years old.

00:14:23.820 And you could do it within the structure of a routine. So like, you know,

00:14:26.620 strong couples communicate well. So a lot of people I coach through this, they'll be like,

00:14:30.260 and sometimes I have both couples who are going through this process and I'll be like, okay,

00:14:34.500 like somebody is a night person, somebody is a morning person. So the morning person you,

00:14:38.800 you know, if you're writing your novel, you'll get that time in the morning while your spouse

00:14:43.620 is making breakfast and getting the kids ready for school, and then you flip it at night.

00:14:47.220 And there's all kinds of things like that that you could do, or you could do it alongside each

00:14:51.260 other. There's all kinds of stuff you could do to fit that time in. I also think that people

00:14:56.580 exaggerate the constraints in their lives. My mom raised three kids with two jobs in the 90s,

00:15:04.420 and she still managed eventually to break out and tackle her own passions when we left.

00:15:10.980 but most people have fewer constraints than her and then fewer constraints even than the people

00:15:17.040 I write about in this book some of whom are battling cancer lupus you know had a spouse die

00:15:22.980 and they're in their 70s or 80s and then they go back and learn to cook because their wife would

00:15:27.740 cook for them and they want to honor that memory but also take care of themselves right there are

00:15:32.260 people with all kinds of constraints you know one woman I profile literally cannot leave the cottage

00:15:38.340 in the back of her parents' house,

00:15:40.220 but still is basically going through

00:15:41.760 a Bob Ross journey of painting.

00:15:44.620 So we exaggerate the constraints we have

00:15:47.380 and how little time we have.

00:15:49.100 I think most people, if they think about

00:15:50.660 how much time they spend on their phones

00:15:51.820 or watching Netflix or doing things they don't need to do,

00:15:54.680 you could eke out that time to at the very least

00:15:57.860 tackle the lowest lift items on your list.

00:16:01.080 And then as I talk about in the book,

00:16:02.760 one of the cool things about getting your list down

00:16:04.440 is you can categorize them.

00:16:06.100 And in the book, I give people frameworks

00:16:08.180 for how to categorize different things

00:16:09.640 that are on their lists

00:16:10.420 according to the resources they would demand.

00:16:13.280 And you could say, okay,

00:16:14.180 there's this big thing I want to do eventually.

00:16:16.640 And I can't do it now,

00:16:17.760 but just knowing I have it on my list,

00:16:19.260 I can picture it.

00:16:19.960 Maybe it's when my kids go to college.

00:16:21.560 Maybe it's when I retire.

00:16:22.820 Maybe it's when I'm on sabbatical.

00:16:24.520 Or maybe it's when I get laid off.

00:16:26.080 And I'll tackle it then.

00:16:27.880 Yeah, we're going to talk about these categories

00:16:29.400 because I think it's really interesting.

00:16:30.920 See, the benefits of pursuing your invisible list,

00:16:32.860 it feels good.

00:16:33.560 They're just enjoyable to do in and of themselves.

00:16:35.680 It can strengthen relationships.

00:16:36.880 You can be a good example to your kids.

00:16:38.600 It can add texture to your life.

00:16:40.460 So you've got rules for following your invisible list.

00:16:43.300 There's five of them.

00:16:44.300 What are they?

00:16:45.620 So, and, you know, I might get the five out of order or wrong here, but, you know, one

00:16:49.980 is it's one new item a year.

00:16:52.360 This is really important.

00:16:53.780 So it's tempting to be like, I'm in the middle of my year, you know, this is my cooking year,

00:16:58.280 for example.

00:16:58.900 And I, you can wander into a Muay Thai boxing place and think, oh, well, what's the harm?

00:17:04.200 You know, this isn't going to crowd out my cooking year.

00:17:06.880 it's really important that you take on one new thing a year

00:17:09.400 and no more than one new thing a year

00:17:11.020 because you really have to honor the time

00:17:13.980 and commitment it takes to really get good

00:17:16.020 at that thing in that year.

00:17:17.580 And two is you often use exploration of new items

00:17:22.180 and the thrill of that newness

00:17:24.580 as a form of procrastination.

00:17:26.980 So I literally had this poll the other day

00:17:29.060 when I wandered into a Muay Thai place

00:17:31.000 because I was having a hard time with my cooking,

00:17:33.600 but I didn't quite clock it.

00:17:35.800 So I went in there and I was like,

00:17:36.720 oh, this is just for fitness. And then I go in there and I'm like starting to think through,

00:17:40.040 oh, I'm going to sign up for five classes a week and I'm going to get a personal trainer.

00:17:43.900 And then I stopped myself. I was like, no, I'm doing this to get that thrill because I'm not

00:17:48.800 getting that thrill from cooking right now because I'm in the messy middle. I'm going to pause. I

00:17:52.540 now have a little data. If I want to take on Muay Thai boxing next year, I will. But this is pulling

00:17:57.400 me away from what I should be doing right now, which is learning cooking. It's procrastination.

00:18:01.060 So one new item a year.

00:18:03.640 Now, secondarily, you could still pursue the other items from prior years.

00:18:07.980 And I still do pursue a lot of the items from prior years, but you don't have to.

00:18:12.220 And you could pursue them as long as they don't crowd out your exploration of your new item.

00:18:16.660 And often they don't because you can pick complimentary items.

00:18:19.880 Three is that it has to be a year, right?

00:18:21.560 Like you have to devote yourself to that year, which means when you pick your item for that year, you have to see it through.

00:18:25.920 Even if you're like a couple of weeks in and you're like, I hate this.

00:18:29.080 Like you have to honor that.

00:18:30.600 you have to be the equivalent of the parent. And I love when parents say this to their kids. It's

00:18:34.840 like, look, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but once you commit to something, you're going to

00:18:38.580 see it through. So if you're committing to a sports team, you're going to do that whole season.

00:18:42.300 If you're committing to an instrument, you're going to do a whole year of that instrument or

00:18:46.020 whatever the period of time is, the amount of lessons you committed to or whatever. I think

00:18:49.620 that's a good form of parenting because it's not saying, hey, I'm going to be the tiger parent and

00:18:55.100 dictate everything you do, but I'm going to teach you the value of consistency and finishing.

00:19:00.280 something. So you have to do that to yourself. Another rule is meta-learning, this idea of

00:19:06.620 learning how to learn. You could take a few weeks on the front end to read the books about the thing

00:19:11.540 you want to learn. So for instance, in languages, there's this great book called Fluent Forever,

00:19:15.240 all about learning languages. You could read about these things. You could watch YouTube videos.

00:19:20.080 You can consult experts, et cetera. But for me, it's three weeks, no more than a month.

00:19:25.900 You have to start moving. You have to do the thing. And then you could fit in the meta-learning

00:19:30.180 between the doing, but you really have to get moving really fast because if it's March and

00:19:35.740 you're supposed to be learning swimming, but you haven't been in the water,

00:19:38.900 then we have a real problem. Yeah. You mentioned that your aim with this one year of focusing on

00:19:45.240 a skill or a hobby is to get to an intermediate level. Why that level? Why not aim to be an

00:19:50.820 expert? Why intermediate? One is because it's a year. I think it's unreasonable for most people

00:19:57.240 to get to expert in that year.

00:19:58.660 You could shoot for it,

00:19:59.700 but it's hard to get to in a year

00:20:01.340 unless you're truly all in on just that thing

00:20:04.120 and you have very few professional

00:20:05.420 and personal obligations for that year,

00:20:07.160 or you're some kind of phenom.

00:20:08.580 I also think that,

00:20:10.120 and I talked to Oliver Berkman,

00:20:11.460 the writer about this,

00:20:12.980 for type A folks,

00:20:14.200 which I imagine a lot of people

00:20:15.220 listen to this podcast,

00:20:16.880 you're not comfortable being

00:20:18.540 less than excellent at something.

00:20:20.480 And I want you to get used to that.

00:20:22.440 There's a beauty in not being,

00:20:24.660 you know, a Picasso level painter

00:20:26.340 or being a professional level athlete,

00:20:29.680 but just being somebody who could show up

00:20:31.240 to a pickup game and have fun

00:20:32.700 or to write something that doesn't win the Pulitzer,

00:20:36.260 but that is enjoyable for you to write

00:20:38.840 and enjoyable for people to read.

00:20:40.800 And taking the pressure off to reach these levels

00:20:43.640 that take some people a lifetime

00:20:45.340 will teach you to think differently about these pursuits,

00:20:49.300 that it's not about the external validation.

00:20:51.960 It's not about being perfect,

00:20:53.900 but it's learning that domain sufficiently that you can enjoy it. And that's why I like

00:20:59.660 intermediacy. Yeah. And I think it's doable in a year. I think most skills are like, I mean,

00:21:04.540 you talk about powerlifting here in a bit, but yeah, like I started powerlifting 15 years ago

00:21:09.600 or so. And within a year I was an intermediate level powerlifter. And then it's taken 10, 12

00:21:17.400 years to get, you know, it just gets harder and harder after you get to an intermediate level.

00:21:22.080 And you reach a certain point where there's diminishing returns.

00:21:24.260 You're like, well, do I really want to like go all in on this?

00:21:27.180 Or am I just going to enjoy this?

00:21:28.980 And I decided just to enjoy it.

00:21:30.420 And I'm not pursuing big giant PRs anymore because it's just too hard.

00:21:34.660 It's also a kind of thing you could maintain very easily.

00:21:36.600 So, you know, often people ask, okay, what are the things that you keep doing in your years?

00:21:40.640 And which did you put down?

00:21:41.920 And I mentioned powerlifting as a good example because it really doesn't crowd out anything else.

00:21:47.500 Because I'm going to be lifting weights no matter what.

00:21:49.300 So it's like, how am I lifting weights?

00:21:50.840 Like I would have been lifting weights before and after.

00:21:53.180 Now I just have a cannon of lifts

00:21:55.300 that I pay attention to and I track.

00:21:57.480 And in many ways, it may be more efficient

00:21:58.920 with my working out

00:21:59.920 because powerlifting is really three lifts.

00:22:02.760 And once you know how to do them really well,

00:22:04.840 they give you a huge bang for your buck.

00:22:07.060 And so I'm in and out of the gym.

00:22:08.120 It's like such a small part of my life

00:22:10.300 because I'm not competing anymore.

00:22:12.020 So it's weird to say that I even keep doing it

00:22:15.060 in a weird way

00:22:15.620 because I spend so little time thinking about it.

00:22:18.120 But obviously it still impacts my life.

00:22:19.700 All right. So the first thing you recommend to people, if they don't have an invisible list,

00:22:23.880 yeah, they probably do. They just haven't really articulated it. They haven't written it down,

00:22:27.540 but like write it down and just go crazy with it. Just think of all the things you've wanted

00:22:30.720 to do your entire life, but have been putting off, put it on that list. And then once you've

00:22:34.880 made that list, you recommend going through and using this category framework that you mentioned

00:22:40.660 and like slotting them into different categories. So what are sort of the big categories that you

00:22:44.820 slot your invisible list into? Yeah. And one important thing you said,

00:22:48.320 I want to underscore, which is you have to take the time to get the list down. And I recommend

00:22:52.360 people take a physical piece of paper, get away from their technology and give it a whole hour at

00:22:57.600 least. Because what will happen is there are a few things that will pour out of you right away,

00:23:01.820 but you should really be staring out into the distance, digging deep to be like, what are

00:23:07.000 things that I've just been telling myself are not possible? What is innately inside of me that maybe

00:23:12.300 I haven't even figured out about myself? Like what's the big bad thing that I would feel almost

00:23:18.080 embarrassed to tell somebody about. For me, that's making a movie. I feel weird telling

00:23:24.020 anybody I want to make a movie because it's super expensive usually. I mean, it's getting a lot

00:23:28.360 cheaper. And it seems like such an ambitious project that would require so many things to go

00:23:34.600 right. And it sounds goofy to say. And it took me so long to give myself permission to even say that

00:23:41.360 out loud. Now as for the categories, so basically these frameworks and each chapter in the middle

00:23:47.720 of the book is centered around each one of these, these archetypes I call them. And I organize them

00:23:53.980 according to the place in life you will be in, in order to pursue them. And relatedly, what kind of

00:24:00.980 resources you have at your disposal. So, you know, one of them is called the anywhere, anytime

00:24:06.080 passion, which is what it sounds like, which is a passion that is for the busy years. You know,

00:24:11.860 maybe you just, you know, you have a newborn or something, or you just took on a new demanding

00:24:15.400 job. And it's the kind of thing you could do from anywhere with relative low costs and with a

00:24:21.060 minimal amount of time investment. So writing and creative projects tend to be good examples of

00:24:28.580 anywhere, anytime archetypes. So screenwriting was one for me where it's like, okay, I can spend 30

00:24:34.700 minutes at a Starbucks in the morning every day knocking out another part of a scene. And if I do

00:24:40.160 that every single day for the year and then mix in some meta learning and longer writing periods

00:24:44.900 of time when I have bigger blocks, I will have achieved what I needed to achieve by the end of

00:24:48.680 the year. Versus the exact opposite of that, which is what I call the big one or a skill

00:24:54.220 baddicle, which is something that is a kind of stop the presses. I have to go somewhere or I have

00:25:01.520 to like have huge blocks of time nearly every day to pursue this thing because it requires a whole

00:25:08.360 different level of commitment. And those are great for people who are recent retirees, people who are

00:25:13.720 between jobs or they sold a company or their kids left to go to school or whatever. Like you have

00:25:20.000 more time than you thought. You know, for me, it was surfing because like surfing is the kind of

00:25:25.120 thing you have to do it every day. You have to be somewhere where you could surf. And, you know,

00:25:29.640 New York City has surf breaks, but it's not a great place to learn every single day. And so

00:25:34.400 for certain people, it could be, you know, for instance, another scobatical I took was this year

00:25:38.660 around cooking. I went to Tuscany to learn how to cook. And I went to Naples to learn pizza.

00:25:44.980 Like cooking could be a anywhere, anytime skill if you treat it in a very narrow way,

00:25:50.160 or it could be a skillbatical if you want to go completely all out on it. So those are two

00:25:54.740 archetypes. A third is a mental marathon, which is something where you train your mind the way

00:26:00.280 you train your body. So, you know, most people listen to this have friends who've done an Iron

00:26:03.660 man or a marathon or whatever, or even now High Rocks is very popular, but you probably don't have

00:26:09.880 too many people who did the equivalent for their brain. And so I give people a ton of examples in

00:26:14.420 the book. For me, I took the MCAT one year, which is like, I think it's seven to nine hours or

00:26:20.040 something like that of, you know, biochemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology,

00:26:25.360 psychology, sociology, critical reading, physics. You have to learn all these subjects and then you

00:26:31.160 have to apply it in this very rigorous way. And by studying for it and then taking the test, I had

00:26:36.700 to, you know, I had to upgrade my memory. I had to upgrade my reasoning skills. I had to learn

00:26:41.920 how to learn again. And then I had to learn to extend my attention span so that I could sit for

00:26:48.260 an exam for nine hours. Right. And so those are all ways to improve my brain. So that's the mental

00:26:53.800 marathon. I have what's called the giving year, which is where you learn something to give back

00:26:58.840 to the people around you. So you could do community service projects. You could do cooking,

00:27:03.980 like you could frame cooking around that, you know, if you do it to cook for the people in

00:27:07.520 your life. And then I have what's called a liftoff year, which is, I often recommend doing this early,

00:27:13.360 but for me, powerlifting was this. It's kind of the mirror image of the mental marathon. This is

00:27:18.300 a year where you do something to improve your physical health, your non-mental health, which

00:27:23.980 obviously there's overlap in improving your physical health to improve your mental health.

00:27:27.360 But for me, this was powerlifting. For some people, it could be training for hybrid athletic competitions like High Rocks. It could be training for a marathon. I interviewed a woman who was learning how to do pull-ups her year. So those are some of the archetypes. And when you're getting your list down, you just get your list down first. And then I say, go in and tag your years to say, oh, what kind of year is that? What kind of archetype is it?

00:27:50.620 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

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00:32:16.620 And now back to the show.

00:32:18.580 Well, let's dig into some of these years or these archetypes you highlight in the book.

00:32:21.900 Let's talk about that launchpad one.

00:32:23.260 You talked about how you used powerlifting for a launchpad or a liftoff passion pursuit

00:32:28.820 or passion year.

00:32:30.160 And I think you're right.

00:32:30.840 I think physical fitness is a great way to get into this whole idea of I'm going to dedicate

00:32:35.420 myself to an entire year of a skill or a passion because fitness, you can do that in a year. Like

00:32:41.100 you can get to an intermediate level in a year and you can actually see it. Like you can see it in

00:32:46.200 real time, which is motivating, which keeps you doing it. That's been my experience at least.

00:32:51.760 For sure. And it's a cliche to say, but all roads lead through your physical health. So I personally,

00:32:59.100 You know, I had put on a lot more weight than I was used to.

00:33:02.120 I didn't feel confident in myself.

00:33:03.980 You go to this death spiral where when you don't feel good about your body,

00:33:07.360 you get depressed and then you eat more and then you feel less good about your body.

00:33:10.620 You don't move.

00:33:11.300 You don't go out there, you know.

00:33:12.640 So I said to myself, I have to get this right.

00:33:15.260 And I didn't completely understand what was going to come after

00:33:17.600 because I was still kind of getting into the flow of what this process would look like.

00:33:22.500 But if I look at the years that came after it, I think about, for example, screenwriting

00:33:27.300 or I think about especially surfing, tennis, even cooking,

00:33:32.840 feeling better about my body made me, number one,

00:33:36.340 so much more likely to do those things,

00:33:37.680 but also better at those things.

00:33:40.120 So it really did help on so many different levels.

00:33:43.300 So when you set out this year of powerlifting,

00:33:46.320 how did you determine what was an intermediate level?

00:33:48.820 How did you decide, if I reach this metric,

00:33:51.260 I know I'm an intermediate?

00:33:53.000 So for me, I looked at powerlifting and said,

00:33:55.900 okay, this is three lifts. It's the deadlift, it's the back squat and the bench press.

00:34:00.980 And each one of those has certain metrics that are associated with it. And you can come up with

00:34:07.320 a number that says, I am at a certain level. Now with AI, I am sure you could talk to the AI and

00:34:14.780 be like, here's my age, here's my weight. What would an intermediate level be? And you could

00:34:18.200 talk to the AI about it. For me, I had listened to a podcast from this guy, Ryan Flaherty,

00:34:23.120 who at the time was at Nike training athletes for things like the NFL Combine. I'm a huge Buffalo

00:34:28.840 Bills fan and he trained Josh Allen to get a good 40 time. And I remember him describing this hex

00:34:34.480 bar deadlift, which the hex bar deadlift, we don't need to go into this. You and I could geek out on

00:34:39.300 it. It's not exactly a power lifting lift, but I was very captivated by his description of what

00:34:44.440 your body weight was relative to how much you could hex bar deadlift and how that translated

00:34:50.080 into your speed. And so he had all these numbers about, okay, if you can do 2.5 times your body

00:34:55.920 weight in a deadlift, it means this. If you do 2.75, it would mean this. If you do three,

00:35:00.680 you're an elite athlete or whatever. So I picked a number and it was actually a fairly advanced

00:35:04.580 number, but I knew myself at that point. And I said, okay, I'm aiming for this number.

00:35:10.320 And then I added a few other things like a competition I wanted to enter, et cetera.

00:35:14.020 And I hit my number for the most part that year, but more importantly, I started competing. And

00:35:18.540 And then in subsequent years, I competed in a powerlifting competition and hit, you know,

00:35:23.540 this gets to your point about expertise.

00:35:24.900 I hit an expert level straight bar deadlift in a competition.

00:35:28.440 And in the competition, I had the highest deadlift for my weight class.

00:35:31.600 So I got the gold in that competition for that lift.

00:35:34.240 And that's where I topped out.

00:35:35.920 You know, I've, I've been nursing injuries every year since I've hurt my arm three times

00:35:40.700 in the past two years and I just tore my bicep surfing.

00:35:43.380 So I've been basically out of the game for competing in powerlifting, but that was like

00:35:47.240 my sort of apex.

00:35:47.980 That was my Al Bundy.

00:35:49.400 I scored four touchdowns in a high school football match moment.

00:35:52.780 And then what you did too, you talk about with this process of starting powerlifting,

00:35:56.380 you did spend a few, like a month or a few weeks doing this meta learning where you just

00:36:00.960 read up about powerlifting, watched YouTube videos, listened to podcasts.

00:36:05.920 You're just learning all you can about the thing.

00:36:08.680 But like you said, you have to get going and start with the program as soon as possible.

00:36:13.820 Yeah, the key is to figure out a domain.

00:36:15.940 And to me, it does not matter in fitness what you pick.

00:36:18.880 If it's High Rocks, which seems to be compelling a lot of people now,

00:36:22.600 and for people who don't know, High Rocks is like this thing

00:36:24.620 where you do, I think, 10 or 8 events that are these CrossFit-esque things

00:36:29.980 where you might push a sled or do a 1,000-meter row or whatever,

00:36:34.480 and then you run, I think, one kilometer in between each event.

00:36:37.800 It's hell. I did it once.

00:36:39.720 It is challenging, and I might focus on it more in a future year.

00:36:43.900 but that's very popular for people now.

00:36:46.500 You could do a Tough Mudder, you could do Spartan races,

00:36:48.860 you could do Ironman, marathon, whatever you pick.

00:36:52.420 Do a little bit of research to say,

00:36:53.880 okay, what does it mean to be intermediate in that thing?

00:36:57.300 And then say, okay, that's my baseline.

00:36:59.880 And then you could say, here's my stretch goal.

00:37:01.960 Intermediate might mean X

00:37:03.200 and whatever the next rung is could be Y

00:37:06.020 and then shoot for it, start going, start moving.

00:37:08.900 Yeah, and what's nice about powerlifting,

00:37:10.740 as I said earlier, you can see your progress.

00:37:13.000 like is the weight going up on the bar some other skills it's harder to see progress like am i

00:37:16.920 actually getting better at you know speaking spanish fluently but with weightlifting you can

00:37:21.440 actually see this which is i think motivating and in the process of seeing that growth like you start

00:37:27.580 learning about how you how you learn and how you develop skills and then you talk about an important

00:37:32.180 skill you picked up and this sort of skill acquisition is the skill of journaling your

00:37:36.760 progress when you did that with powerlifting like you had your weightlifting log and you're able to

00:37:40.940 see, like, here's how I'm making progress. Here's where I've hit this plateau. Like what was going

00:37:45.360 on with the plateau? You start making notes and then you start making adjustments. And you took

00:37:49.800 that skill of journaling and your powerlifting skill acquisition to your other skills as well.

00:37:56.820 Yeah. I can't remember, you know, I saw a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about like when

00:38:02.140 he was in Austria and building the foundation for what allowed him to be this elite level

00:38:08.180 bodybuilder. And he was basically like, I would have a wall and I would have all my lifts and I

00:38:13.380 would just have like a line that would indicate a set or whatever. Right. And I would just fill

00:38:17.740 the wall with that. And it just gave him this immense satisfaction. And then I saw Alex Honnold,

00:38:22.780 the free solo climber, and I watched the documentary on him and he was taking these

00:38:28.020 meticulous notes about, okay, this is what I felt at this time, you know, right when he comes down

00:38:33.300 from whatever climb I, you know, I use this grip on this thing. It worked. It didn't work. I felt

00:38:37.700 this way, blah, blah, blah. And he takes these meticulous notes. And I don't know if this is a

00:38:42.240 term of art and I can't imagine I'm the first one to use it. It's like, I think of it as performance

00:38:47.020 journaling as opposed to like this emotional, like, here's how I felt today, which is no problem

00:38:51.820 with that. Like, here's how I felt. Here's what my spouse said to me. You know, I'm feeling

00:38:56.060 depressed. I'm feeling good, whatever. I just think of it more as like a precise awareness

00:39:00.720 of what you're doing, what your output is in a way that can be motivating. And then a meticulous

00:39:05.540 meticulous sense, and this is going off of Hanal, of what's working and what's not. And that stuff

00:39:10.820 gets really valuable over time. And then the funny thing about that is actually through the

00:39:15.880 performance journaling, you get at the emotional. So surfing and tennis were perfect for this,

00:39:20.460 where at a certain point, the obstacles became my emotional state. Am I getting frustrated when

00:39:26.300 I'm getting tight? Am I getting angry at myself? Am I scared to go out on waves because I'm

00:39:32.400 nosediving and what is my internal talk? What did it feel like to get pulled under the water

00:39:37.920 and did I overcome it or not? Did I panic? Did I exhaust myself more? And then you can get some

00:39:43.080 profound self-reflection off of that. But it kind of starts with the precise, almost unemotional

00:39:49.520 recounting of what you did and then can quickly turn into some really important mental growth

00:39:56.700 that you exhibit on the page.

00:39:59.340 And when I compare the extensions

00:40:01.340 of that performance journaling

00:40:02.660 and when it became full bloom in some of these areas

00:40:06.100 and compare it to my journaling outside of that

00:40:08.960 where I'm trying to intentionally tap

00:40:10.540 into my emotional state,

00:40:12.000 often the performance journaling reflects back

00:40:14.540 a more astute and deep understanding of my mental state

00:40:17.820 than when I'm intentionally trying to get there.

00:40:20.140 All right, so we're gonna do meta learning.

00:40:22.160 We're gonna do this performance journaling.

00:40:23.900 You also recommend using immersive experiences

00:40:26.520 to turbocharge your passion pursuit.

00:40:28.560 What did that look like for your powerlifting?

00:40:30.640 Yeah, it's kind of a fancy term for adult camps.

00:40:34.100 So I've been to so many adult camps.

00:40:36.900 It's wild.

00:40:37.600 I was just writing them all down the other day.

00:40:40.020 But my first camp was in the powerlifting year.

00:40:42.720 I went to a place called Power Monkey Fitness Camp,

00:40:45.020 which is in the remote corners of Eastern Tennessee.

00:40:48.900 And it's run by this wonderful couple.

00:40:51.280 One was an Olympic gymnast, Dave Durante,

00:40:53.680 and then Sadie Durante, his wife, 0.95

00:40:55.480 who was like a Cirque du Soleil style aerial performer.

00:40:58.700 And they've collaborated with a bunch of like Olympic lifting,

00:41:02.060 Olympian champions and national champions.

00:41:05.000 And it's this fitness camp in the middle of the woods

00:41:07.980 where you go through these stations

00:41:09.660 where they'll be like,

00:41:10.900 we're going to focus for two hours on the back squat. 0.98

00:41:13.240 We're going to focus for two hours on the clean and jerk.

00:41:15.940 And they even had two hours on jump roping and kettlebells.

00:41:19.640 And they bring in like the foremost expert

00:41:21.320 on whatever that thing is,

00:41:22.320 like the captain of the South African row team was teaching me how to row on a row. So it's like

00:41:28.940 this super elite level instruction. But what's cool about it is the campers come from all walks

00:41:33.200 of life. You have some people who are, you know, CrossFit competitive athletes and champions

00:41:37.500 alongside a 70 year old grandmother who's just coming through this for the first time. And it

00:41:43.220 was really a beautiful experience. And you bunk, you know, you go out to the fire and roast

00:41:48.040 marshmallows. I mean, it was a cool experience. That was my first immersive experience. And yes,

00:41:52.400 you level up on the skill, but you make a ton of friends. So I didn't know Sadie and Dave back then,

00:41:57.260 but now we're super good friends and we also live not far from each other. So I see Dave and Sadie

00:42:03.500 pretty much every week now. And so they're like super close friends of mine. And this has happened

00:42:08.220 in so many camps I attended. I've been to so many tennis camps, for example, and I've met tons of

00:42:13.540 friends through those. And two of my really good friends in New York City are two doctor friends

00:42:17.980 who live uptown, who I met at tennis camp when I was all by myself and I was put into a group with

00:42:23.480 them. We started talking at lunch because you have to sit next to each other at lunch and make small

00:42:28.980 talk. And they're now friends with Sadie and Dave. They come over for dinner at my place. I go for

00:42:34.400 dinner of theirs. I went and saw Keith's band play the other day when they were playing in the East

00:42:38.520 Village. So the coolest thing is not the skills, really. It's these friends. And it's so hard to

00:42:44.520 make friends later into life. But when you do these immersive experiences, you make these friends

00:42:48.480 in such a durable, exciting way. Let's talk about the skillbatical skill. So you mentioned

00:42:54.320 for yours, this was learning to surf in Costa Rica. So you took a year off to do this?

00:43:01.340 Yeah, it wasn't a full year intentionally. And I was still doing some work, but essentially to

00:43:07.260 put you in the frame of it, this was right after the 2020 election. I had worked on that election.

00:43:11.980 and I was burnt out from politics again.

00:43:16.180 I wasn't crisp, you know, burnt to a crisp

00:43:18.420 like I was after running schools,

00:43:19.600 but I was like, you know, all in on that effort.

00:43:21.660 And I booked a trip to go to Costa Rica to surf

00:43:25.500 and I went and this was a year

00:43:27.940 where I bent my rules a little bit

00:43:29.360 and started a little earlier

00:43:30.280 because I had finished the previous year's skill earlier.

00:43:33.160 And so I go to a surf camp in Costa Rica

00:43:34.680 and I was only planning to be there for two weeks

00:43:36.540 just to get me started.

00:43:38.160 I hadn't really thought through what it would mean

00:43:39.820 to really see through a surfing year.

00:43:41.980 I loved it so much. I stayed. It also was the D, I think it was the Delta or Omicron COVID wave

00:43:48.400 was going on in New York. And there was really nothing to go back to. I would have been going

00:43:52.100 back to a cold New York. I had some money saved. And I said, you know what, I'm just going to stay

00:43:56.500 in Costa Rica. And I kept extending. And I wound up staying for six months in Costa Rica. And my

00:44:01.920 coach at the surf camp was starting his own surf coaching company and took me on as his first

00:44:07.420 student. And so he started filming me and coaching me and every day I would go out and surf.

00:44:12.340 And so I did that sort of intense six month experience. And because surfing being what it

00:44:16.260 is, you really do it in the morning. And I had certain professional obligations that would

00:44:20.820 linger in the afternoons, but they didn't really crowd out my surfing. I was able to really give

00:44:25.440 my all to surfing in the mornings, do that for six months, come back to New York. And then for

00:44:30.180 the next six months, you know, find opportunities to surf in New York and take surf trips to other

00:44:35.380 places. And that was what I call a skillbatical. And, you know, for people who are doing it

00:44:39.440 intentionally, and you know, you have that time off, you can plan it more purposely than I did.

00:44:45.580 Could you do something like a skillbatical if you don't have six months or a year to devote

00:44:50.940 to it completely? Like, let's say you're not retired, or you can't take time off for work

00:44:55.720 for a year. Is it possible to develop something like it? I mean, could those immersive experiences

00:45:00.060 you talked about, could that substitute as a skillbatical? For sure. I actually think the

00:45:05.620 immersive experiences and skillbaticals sometimes align, but sometimes the immersive experience

00:45:11.460 is an opportunity to rescue a year where you're struggling. So let's say, for instance, you're

00:45:17.900 trying to learn tennis, but you've been hitting a plateau or haven't been getting out there to play

00:45:24.920 as much as you'd like booking a week long tennis you know vacation at a tennis camp or even a few

00:45:30.480 weekends we live in new york for example there's this place total tennis upstate where they do

00:45:34.240 three day two and a half to three day tennis camps like booking a couple of those or even one

00:45:39.240 it could be your opportunity to play cleanup on your own learning for that year or if you're just

00:45:43.940 steady as they go on and anywhere anytime or you know one of the archetypes i forgot to mention is

00:45:49.460 like a adult appropriate sport. So it's basically for me, tennis was this, I subbed out basketball

00:45:55.220 for tennis. So, you know, like whatever your, your sport is, you could say, I'm not taking off

00:46:00.820 six months, but I have a week off or I have a weekend off. And you could find often an immersive

00:46:06.340 experience or a camp bike experience within those shorter timeframes. Yeah. I've been noticing

00:46:10.240 more and more companies offering skill cations for adults, right? Where you just go for a week

00:46:16.580 to like, yeah, learn tennis, learn cooking, learn surfing.

00:46:20.380 So there's definitely more opportunities for that

00:46:23.400 than there were maybe even 10 years ago.

00:46:26.000 Totally.

00:46:26.500 This is a huge growing trend.

00:46:28.480 I think it's a great trend.

00:46:30.260 And, you know, people are in different phases of life.

00:46:32.640 Sometimes I take a vacation

00:46:33.680 where I just want to read a book and stare at the ocean.

00:46:35.900 I think that's totally cool.

00:46:37.160 Like, absolutely love that.

00:46:38.760 But sometimes you want to get a vacation so you can move.

00:46:42.280 You want to move, you want to learn,

00:46:43.260 you want to meet new people.

00:46:44.080 and i'm super pumped that there are so many examples of this i've done you know cooking

00:46:49.140 schools i mentioned i did a pizza school in naples i did a pasta making school in luca i did

00:46:53.520 tennis camp in upstate new york i've done tennis camp in spain and france i've done writer's

00:46:59.240 retreats i actually just did a writer's retreat this weekend that i hosted myself i've done surf

00:47:04.380 camps i did the lifting camps i mean these are some of the most enjoyable experiences i've had

00:47:09.800 and I can't recommend them enough.

00:47:12.360 Something you mentioned with your surfing

00:47:13.600 is you had a coach.

00:47:14.860 And that's another thing you talk about

00:47:16.400 throughout all these skills.

00:47:17.520 Sometimes it is appropriate to get a coach or a teacher

00:47:20.640 to walk you through this stuff and give you feedback.

00:47:23.660 And just like there's lots of opportunities

00:47:26.000 to take skillcations,

00:47:27.220 there are coaches for pretty much any skill you can think of

00:47:30.600 and you can find them easily on the internet.

00:47:32.720 For sure.

00:47:33.520 And this is an area where you just have to be honest

00:47:35.840 about your level of resources.

00:47:36.860 And I have a whole section of a chapter

00:47:38.900 about like where you are.

00:47:41.360 Are you a penny pincher?

00:47:42.960 Are you, or are you somebody who has unlimited resources?

00:47:45.960 And obviously, depending on where you are in that spectrum,

00:47:49.180 you can go bigger or smaller.

00:47:51.320 I tend to think in the age that we live in now,

00:47:54.160 you can get a lot done cheap in a lot of skills,

00:47:57.760 especially given the quality of AI, for example.

00:48:01.240 Like you could go to a cooking school like I did,

00:48:03.120 or you could watch a ton of YouTube videos

00:48:05.140 and you could upload your dishes every step of the way

00:48:07.980 to Anthropic or GPT and get great feedback

00:48:12.480 that you wouldn't have been able to get before.

00:48:15.080 And so one is essentially free

00:48:17.020 and the other is pretty expensive.

00:48:19.360 And you have to be honest about where you are on that.

00:48:21.980 Now, for most people, if you're somewhere in the middle,

00:48:24.900 you might have a little bit of resources

00:48:26.560 to devote to actual coaches,

00:48:28.580 whether it's a tennis coach you meet once a week

00:48:30.740 or a couple of times a month,

00:48:32.640 or somebody reviewed drafts of your writing

00:48:34.640 and give you feedback like I did.

00:48:36.400 And you could do that through certain websites

00:48:37.620 like Fiverr or whatever. So you mentioned one of your years was to acquire a sustainable or age

00:48:43.820 appropriate adult sport. And you chose tennis. Why do you think it's important to find an age

00:48:49.240 appropriate sport for someone to pursue in adulthood? I think for some people, you could

00:48:54.780 probably keep doing the same thing you were doing as a kid, depending on what it is. Like I have

00:48:59.460 friends, for example, who play basketball pretty late into their lives. But I had basketball as my

00:49:04.080 main sport and I just kept getting injured. So I did some research and I was like, oh,

00:49:08.540 tennis has all this incredible data about how it improves your longevity. It seems like a lot of

00:49:12.540 fun. I had a ton of friends who played it. I go to these tennis clubs and I see people super old

00:49:18.100 playing tennis. So I'm like, well, that seems like a great thing to sub out. And I can get a lot of 1.00

00:49:22.660 the enjoyment I got from basketball. It trains your body in a lot of the same ways. It's a fun

00:49:26.720 way to get cardio, but it's not all this stop and start where you can get as many non-contact

00:49:32.240 injuries as you do in basketball so that was an easy one for me you know if for instance if you

00:49:37.020 did gymnastics or something right at a certain point or like for me break dancing you know those

00:49:41.360 are things that you could conceivably do for the rest of your life you know for me i think of my

00:49:45.520 life as having a risk budget and if i can do things that are enjoyable at lower risk that bring me

00:49:50.960 about as much enjoyment or as much i try to sub those things out and what turns out i actually

00:49:55.320 like tennis more than i did playing basketball in my later years yeah when i read that i've been

00:50:00.900 thinking about tennis too. I haven't had a sport for, I mean, I have powerlifting, which is kind

00:50:04.540 of a sport, but I want a sport where I interact with other people and tennis has been on my list.

00:50:09.700 So this inspired me. Maybe we should start taking tennis lessons. I quote Matthew McConaughey in

00:50:13.680 the book. I forget his exact quote, but he's basically talking about learning tennis. He was

00:50:17.000 like, I feel guilty at how much I love this. He's like, it shouldn't be this fun. That's how I feel

00:50:21.960 about tennis. Tennis is awesome. And what's cool about it is the culture of tennis in the United

00:50:28.000 States is really dominated by intermediate people. There's this huge concentration of people who are 0.99

00:50:33.200 in the 3.0 to 3.5 range, which is, you know, squarely intermediate, which you can get to in

00:50:39.000 a year. And once you get there, you access tennis adult culture. You know, when you go to this

00:50:44.300 tennis camps, the vast majority of people are in those numbers. And actually the funny thing about

00:50:48.820 tennis, adult tennis culture, is that if you get too good, you're almost a pariah because people,

00:50:54.480 they don't want to play you because you're too good. Like if you get to 4.0 and beyond,

00:50:58.500 you're now in this smaller circle of people and it's almost annoying to play you because you're

00:51:02.960 too good. So actually it really, it really pays to be in that 3.5 range. Like that's where all

00:51:08.500 the action is. Let's talk about your mental marathon year. This is the one where you studied

00:51:13.260 for and you took the MCAT, which is the test you got to take to get into medical school.

00:51:17.840 I don't think you had plans on going to medical school, but you decided to do this anyway.

00:51:21.440 and you talked about how you had to relearn a lot of things.

00:51:24.720 You haven't been in school for over 20 years.

00:51:27.060 Tell us about what sorts of skills you had to relearn

00:51:29.940 in order to take the MCAT.

00:51:31.320 Because I think they apply not only

00:51:32.780 to other kinds of mental marathons,

00:51:34.900 but to learning all kinds of new skills as well.

00:51:38.180 This is alternatively the quirkiest chapter,

00:51:41.060 but I think is my favorite

00:51:42.320 because it taught me so much

00:51:45.220 that I thought I had already known.

00:51:46.640 I come at this as somebody who ran schools

00:51:48.540 and thought I was an expert on education.

00:51:50.620 And then I went through this process where I had to learn all these subjects, some for

00:51:54.940 the first time and some for the first time in 20 years, which is essentially the same

00:51:58.160 as doing it for the first time.

00:51:59.800 And I had to really acquaint myself with the experience of young people learning today.

00:52:06.540 And I found out that learning today is wildly different than it was when I was a kid.

00:52:12.300 When I took college level chemistry, when I was in college, they would assign you one

00:52:16.420 textbook.

00:52:17.500 Often it was the textbook written by the professor,

00:52:19.940 which often meant it wasn't the best textbook.

00:52:22.360 And then maybe, as in my case,

00:52:24.180 the library would have four or five other textbooks,

00:52:26.440 but they would all be checked out immediately

00:52:28.380 because there are 400 kids in your lecture

00:52:30.460 and every one of the gunners is grabbing that textbook.

00:52:34.320 So essentially what it means is you have one explanation

00:52:36.560 for each of the sort of key aspects of the material.

00:52:39.760 And if that explanation doesn't stick with you 0.65

00:52:42.160 or if it's imperfect, you're screwed. 0.91

00:52:44.860 But back then, the good thing was 0.96

00:52:46.680 we had our attention spans. We didn't have all these digital distractions. YouTube didn't exist

00:52:51.380 when I was in college. Facebook didn't exist when I was in my first few years of college. We just

00:52:56.220 didn't have all those digital distractions. So it was give and take. Now, when I was relearning

00:53:01.240 these, or in certain cases, learning these subjects, you have an infinite amount of

00:53:05.200 amazing explanations for glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, kinematics, acid-base equilibrium,

00:53:11.560 whatever difficult concept you want. And you have adaptive modules so that you can get unlimited

00:53:17.680 practice problems and they're adaptive. So they get harder as you get better or easier. If you

00:53:22.920 need better understandings, you could interface with AI, which was starting to get better a little

00:53:28.700 bit into my year for the MCAT, where you can talk to the AI about, hey, why did I get this problem

00:53:34.420 wrong? All this kind of stuff. I mean, you had all these incredible tools. And so I learned

00:53:38.620 quickly that you had this amazing just universe of material. Number two is I learned that the

00:53:45.200 sort of science of learning, you know, it may have been mature in some form back when I was in school,

00:53:51.140 but we weren't aware of it. Now you have this incredible awareness of, you know, advanced

00:53:57.180 techniques for how do you memorize things and or grasp difficult concepts. And I'll give you two

00:54:03.360 examples. One is spaced repetition. Back in the day, we would copy our notes, recopy our notes,

00:54:09.880 do flashcards, but we had no sense for how often do I go back to my notes and what's the most

00:54:15.300 effective way to recount material that I had already been exposed to before. But now we have

00:54:21.200 knowledge of spaced repetition, which is this fancy way of saying there's actually algorithmically

00:54:27.600 effective ways to dose out your review of material. And the way it kind of goes is you learn

00:54:33.920 something, then you review it the next day, then you might wait three days, then you might wait

00:54:38.180 a week, then you might wait a month. And actually, like, there's an algorithm to how often you go

00:54:44.120 back to it that means that at the end of the process, it sticks better than if you did it

00:54:47.940 every single day. And there's also a way to go about it so that you're actively recounting it

00:54:52.720 So that instead of just looking at a flashcard, you're, you know, you're writing out the thing

00:54:58.720 from memory and challenging yourself to actually do something with that material as you're

00:55:03.980 recounting it.

00:55:04.620 And that makes it stick more.

00:55:05.680 So that was one area that I thought was modern and very fascinating.

00:55:09.840 And there's all sorts of tools available there.

00:55:11.720 The other is there's this thing called the Feynman technique, which we had known about

00:55:15.080 for a while.

00:55:15.720 But now in modern discourse, there's a healthy, robust discussion of what it looks like.

00:55:21.500 and essentially it means that the best way to learn something and make it stick is to teach

00:55:27.620 it to people so if you're in college if this is the easy way to implement this is do study groups

00:55:33.240 where you're kind of dominating the study group and you know you're you're actually seeking out

00:55:37.300 people who are kind of stragglers who are not as advanced as you so that you can teach it to them

00:55:42.740 or tutor them because the art of explaining it reinforces the concept for you now if you're an

00:55:47.620 adult and you don't have those kinds of study circles at your availability, what you could do

00:55:52.140 is what I did, which is I started to just audio tape myself. And in some cases, videotape myself,

00:55:56.520 explaining it to myself and just pushing myself to have to explain the material to a beginner.

00:56:01.980 And that really reinforces your learning. So what'd you end up scoring on the MCAT?

00:56:06.540 I scored a 514. I think it was a 514 or 518, whatever the number is in the book. It's the

00:56:12.380 fact check number, but it was a 89th percentile, whatever my number was. My goal was to get an

00:56:17.480 80th percentile because that's basically the gating mechanism to be competitive for medical school.

00:56:23.240 And so mission accomplished. I did what I needed to do. Yeah. This chapter, it inspired me. So I've

00:56:28.340 kind of been thinking about this for a while. So I went to law school 20 years ago, graduated law

00:56:32.660 school, but I didn't take the bar exam. And every now, every year I'm like, man, should I take the

00:56:37.260 bar exam. But this chapter really cemented, like, maybe I should buy some Barbary review and start

00:56:43.760 studying for the bar exam, even though I don't plan on practicing. What state do you live in?

00:56:48.140 I live in Oklahoma. Oh, yeah. You should do it. I've thought about it too, the bar exam. And

00:56:52.920 you know, what's interesting about the bar exam, the one thing it doesn't have going for it is

00:56:56.940 it's a little bit less skill-based than it is knowledge-based, which there's nothing wrong

00:57:01.040 with that. But I like to combine, you know, where it feels like an athletic experience,

00:57:05.640 you know where you're like okay the cool thing about the mcat is yes you have to memorize a ton

00:57:09.880 of stuff but you also have to do things like kinematics problems and acid base equilibrium

00:57:15.180 problems and things like that and although there is some version of that on the the bar exam from

00:57:19.320 what i understand of like having to reason through things a lot of it's just regurgitating

00:57:22.620 information yeah the sweet spot is is there something where you have to like you almost

00:57:28.740 get sweaty trying to figure it out you know it's almost like learning a dance maneuver or something

00:57:33.220 Like you have to whip out a sheet of paper and really challenge your mind to think creatively.

00:57:38.980 And those are cool experiences.

00:57:40.700 I'm drawn to it just for like the challenge of it.

00:57:42.960 You know, it's like relearning everything I learned in law school 20 something years ago.

00:57:47.820 Or should have.

00:57:48.440 Yeah, or should have.

00:57:49.740 Like, do I remember the elements of a tort?

00:57:51.900 I don't know, maybe some of them, but not all.

00:57:55.360 I think you should do it.

00:57:56.520 I actually had friends who did the old version of Barbary and actually said they really enjoyed the experience.

00:58:00.800 because you get these mini lectures from actually, in some cases, really good at professors

00:58:04.240 talking about different aspects of the law. All right. Well, Ravi, this has been a great

00:58:08.420 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:58:11.500 Yes. So people can search for the invisible list wherever they get books. And you could also go to

00:58:16.380 our website, which is readinvisibllist.com. And on the website, I actually have an opportunity for

00:58:21.060 people to take an extra step if they want to join what I call the invisible posse, which is people

00:58:25.200 who want to not just read the book,

00:58:26.500 but implement the ideas in the book alongside others.

00:58:31.000 So the Posse has like all kinds of stuff.

00:58:33.240 So you can check that out at readinvisibullist.com

00:58:35.760 or just get the book, you know,

00:58:37.660 wherever you get your book.

00:58:38.340 We have audio book, we have Kindle,

00:58:39.920 we have the regular book,

00:58:40.960 and then it's going to be available also

00:58:42.680 in a bunch of different countries as well.

00:58:45.000 Awesome.

00:58:45.200 Well, Ravi Gupta, thanks for your time.

00:58:46.160 It's been a pleasure.

00:58:46.900 Thank you.

00:58:48.840 My guest here is Ravi Gupta.

00:58:50.120 He's the author of the book, The Invisible List.

00:58:51.940 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:58:54.220 You can learn more information about the book

00:58:55.420 at his website, readinvisibllist.com.

00:58:57.980 Also check out our show notes at awim.is

00:58:59.780 slash invisiblist, where you can find links to resources

00:59:01.860 when we delve deeper into this topic.

00:59:10.520 Well, that wraps up another edition

00:59:12.100 of the AWIM Podcast.

00:59:13.140 If you haven't done so already,

00:59:14.020 I'd appreciate it to take one minute

00:59:15.320 to give us a review on the podcast player

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00:59:18.260 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:59:19.860 Please consider sharing the show with a friend

00:59:21.540 or family member who would think

00:59:22.720 with something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,

00:59:25.880 it's Brett McCabe. Remind you to listen to the podcast, put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - September 22, 2026

The One-Skill-a-Year Plan for a More Interesting Life

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