Steven Kotler
9 things Steven uses or recommends, from 1 episode.
Steven's top picks
What Steven uses or recommends most, ranked by how often and how strongly. Paid ads are left out.
Uses and recommends it · 1 episode
"I always talk about the importance of non-time. I get up and start my writing day about 3:30, 4:00 every day. And one of the reasons is nobody bugs me. Nobody owns 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. ... there are days I got to spend an hour or 2 hours on a sentence. And if you're asking me to spend 2 hours on a sentence at 9:00 a.m. in normal business hours... I cannot do it."
Uses and recommends it · 1 episode
"I spend most of my time these days reading textbooks, cuz I think it's the ultimate edge. I love them cuz literally you have the best people in the world summarizing and putting all their most important stuff into it, and nobody else reads them."
Recommends it · 1 episode
"You have an awake and alert cycle. It's the exact same, like this 90 to 110 minutes long. Your brain is biologically designed to focus for 90-minute slots. So I always tell people, when we're training them in flow, start by starting. If you can only focus for 10 minutes at a time, start there... when you start to get better at this, you will find that your brain will naturally move."
Recommends it · 1 episode
"We pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge of that task slightly exceeds our skill set. So, you want to stretch but not snap... what we discovered is if you stayed in that sweet spot, you never plateaued. You would get more flow and more flow and more flow, and you made way more progress over the course of a season."
Recommends it · 1 episode
"If you're outside of a bounded discipline, which is pretty much almost everything else other than like musical instruments and a couple other things, deliberate play outperforms deliberate practice significantly... when we play versus when we repeat the same thing with incremental improvement, we get way more neurochemicals... So you asked for one thing that most people can do to increase learning and peak performance: be more playful."
Recommends it · 1 episode
"If you're really burnt out, doubling down on your primary flow activity is sort of the only way back... research shows that like two to four hours a week is about what it takes on your primary flow activity. So, the first place to start if you're training flow is actually the thing that you've done your whole life that you've probably stopped doing."
What Steven warns against
Things Steven says to avoid or be careful with. Other experts don't always agree.
"Neuralink is vaporware. We're going to be able to link humans to the internet. No, there's foundational neurobiological problems with Elon's plan"
All 9 of Steven's picks
- Non-time (early morning writing) Uses and recommends it "I always talk about the importance of non-time. I get up and start my writing day about 3:30, 4:00 every day. And one of the reasons is nobody bugs me. Nobody owns 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. ... there are days I got to spend an hour or 2 hours on a sentence. And if you're asking me to spend 2 hours on a sentence at 9:00 a.m. in normal business hours... I cannot do it." Only Steven
- Reading textbooks Uses and recommends it "I spend most of my time these days reading textbooks, cuz I think it's the ultimate edge. I love them cuz literally you have the best people in the world summarizing and putting all their most important stuff into it, and nobody else reads them." Only Steven
- 90-minute focus blocks Recommends it "You have an awake and alert cycle. It's the exact same, like this 90 to 110 minutes long. Your brain is biologically designed to focus for 90-minute slots. So I always tell people, when we're training them in flow, start by starting. If you can only focus for 10 minutes at a time, start there... when you start to get better at this, you will find that your brain will naturally move." Only Steven
- Challenge-skills balance (4% rule) Recommends it "We pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge of that task slightly exceeds our skill set. So, you want to stretch but not snap... what we discovered is if you stayed in that sweet spot, you never plateaued. You would get more flow and more flow and more flow, and you made way more progress over the course of a season." Only Steven
- Deliberate play Recommends it "If you're outside of a bounded discipline, which is pretty much almost everything else other than like musical instruments and a couple other things, deliberate play outperforms deliberate practice significantly... when we play versus when we repeat the same thing with incremental improvement, we get way more neurochemicals... So you asked for one thing that most people can do to increase learning and peak performance: be more playful." Only Steven
- Primary flow activity Recommends it "If you're really burnt out, doubling down on your primary flow activity is sort of the only way back... research shows that like two to four hours a week is about what it takes on your primary flow activity. So, the first place to start if you're training flow is actually the thing that you've done your whole life that you've probably stopped doing." Only Steven
- Reading Recommends it "One of the things I will always have people I'm working with do is read a minimum of 25 pages a day, usually in a book. I think books are the best, cuz you have to stock the pattern recognition system with ammunition... I like reading books because they're just the densest form of information available on the planet." +2 others
- Writing Uses it "When I'm starting a book, I like to write about 500 words a day. And so that's right in that 4% sweet spot for me... If I didn't get any sleep last night... I wouldn't ask myself to write 500 words. That would be too hard. I'd do 300 words." +1 other
- Batching communications Recommends it "So, limit communication channels, keep one channel open for emergency. So, like your boss or your wife or whatever. One channel for emergency. Get rid of the others, batch communications. So communications in the morning, the end of the day." Only Steven