Annotations (20)
“If you have a house and the house only has one single room in it, and that room catches fire or floods, it's extremely dislocating. But if you have a house that has multiple rooms in it, and one room catches fire or floods, you can go seek refuge in the other rooms while you work on resolving the fire or flood. Think of our identities the same way.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Identity house: multiple rooms prevent fragility
“The way that I've come to think about values is they're most powerful when you have between 2 and 5. You just start with a list of 100 commonly held values and you pick out whatever ones resonate with you. Most people end up with somewhere between 15 and 30, and then you take those 15 to 30 terms and you group like terms together. Most people end up with somewhere between 3 and 7 groups.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Values identification: 100 to 15-30 to 3-7 to 2-5
“Long before we had nervous systems or consciousness, all the way to the very beginning of life, single-cell species, bacteria, they rely on this ability called sensing and responding to survive, flourish, and proliferate. A bacteria can sense when an environment is conducive to its survival and it can move towards those environments. That's what biologists now call a high-quality environment.”— Brad Stulberg
Biology, Ecology & Systems · Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Quality-sensing is evolutionary survival mechanism
“Reckless obsession is when you cannot stop doing what you're doing, even when you want to stop. You cannot stop thinking about the work or doing the work, even when you want to, even when you think actually stepping away from it would be good because it would allow you to renew, to recover, to take on new perspectives. That kind of obsession is not associated with high performance. It's actually associated with a degradation in performance.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Reckless obsession: can't stop. Healthy: all in but controlled
“Balance as it's popularly conceived tends to mean you're going to devote equal proportion of time and energy to equal things. It just makes you miserable because nobody can do all those things. The antidote to that is to step back and to say, I'm going to have to be an adult here. You have to pick and choose. You have to make trade-offs. Most people can be highly focused on somewhere between 2 and 3 things at max at any given point of time.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Balance is seasons across lifetime, not equal allocation
“The real cycle you are working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not two separate things. They grow toward quality or fall away from quality together. Whether you are mending a chair or sewing a dress or sharpening a kitchen knife, there's an ugly way of doing it and a high-quality, beautiful way of doing it.”— Robert Pirsig
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Work shapes worker; quality is bidirectional
“What's the minimum effective dose to keep a healthy marriage while you go all in on being an entrepreneur? For some people, it's one date night a week. For some people, it's 3 family dinners a week. For health, maybe instead of exercising 5 days a week for 45 minutes during that season, you're only going to exercise 3 days a week for 30 minutes, but you're never going to leave it completely behind.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution
DUR_ENDURING
Minimum dose prevents rooms going moldy; maintaining easier than rebuilding
“If you want to be a maximalist, you have to be a minimalist. What he meant by that is if you want to live a full maximal life and get your all out of yourself in a couple of domains, you've got to be willing to forego a lot of the bullocks. The best performers in the world are focused, determined, a little bit crazy, at times obsessive, and live mundane lifestyles that most people would find boring.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Maximalism requires minimalism; boring externally, exciting internally
“You can make one enormous bet and hope for the best, or you could make a bunch of small investments over time and have those small, smart investments with a high probability of return compound. We all too often fall for having a heroic day or a heroic week or being super intense when what leads to sustainable lasting excellence is really a resolute, relentless consistency. It's showing up day in and day out and making deposits in the bank.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Consistency compounds; bad days matter more than great days
“Fierce self-discipline benefits from fierce self-kindness. The people who really embody excellence get the best out of themselves, they take those two qualities and they combine them. It is true that no one is going to do your bidding for you. And it is true that you need to have personal responsibility.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Excellence needs fierce discipline AND fierce self-kindness
“Excellence is involved engagement. It's caring deeply about something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals. The first is involved engagement or caring deeply. There has to be a sense of commitment, a sense of focus and intention that I want to give my all to this craft. The second part, something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals, you can't be pursuing something because you think it's what you should be doing or what other people think you should be doing.”— Brad Stulberg
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Excellence is deep caring plus values alignment
“What is caring deeply in repeated practice, in commitment, in consistency, in showing up, in closeness, in falling off the path and then getting back on the path. What is that if not describing love? It's describing love. It's describing excellence. Quality and excellence is a lot like love. The founder of the quality movement in healthcare is Avedis Donabedian.”— Brad Stulberg
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Excellence equals love: caring deeply, consistently showing up
“Robert Pirsig defines quality as a sense of deep caring between an actor and his or her act that essentially evaporates the space between the person doing the activity and the activity itself. So you are no longer playing basketball, it's just happening. The closer that we can get to what we are doing, the more quality our lives will have and the more quality our work will have. Quality is really on the cutting edge of evolution.”— Brad Stulberg
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Biology, Ecology & Systems
DUR_ENDURING
Quality eliminates separation between actor and act
“There is something that is just deeply innately fulfilling about making concrete, tangible progress that you can trace back to yourself. For me, I get this skill every time I face the blank page as a writer, but I also get it in the weight room because the bar is either going to move or not. And I can trace that back to the work that I put in. When people don't have that kind of concrete objective sources of competence in their life, they can feel a little bit empty or long for it.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Concrete progress traced to effort creates fulfillment
“If you're a highly driven pusher, you have to stop thinking of rest as something that is separate from the work and start thinking of rest as an integral part of the work. Athletes have recovery days. They have rest days. They are built into the program, so they're not separate from the training. They're a part of their training. For cognitive and intellectual pursuits, we need to build in the equivalent of rest breaks and rest days.”— Brad Stulberg
Operations & Execution · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Rest integral to work, not separate; working 7 days loses 2x quality
“You need to try to engineer an ecosystem around you that is supportive of your values and goals and the pursuit of excellence. All of these objects around us, they have a gravity, a sense of gravity, and that gravity can either pull us toward our goals and toward our values and toward the person we want to become and toward our craft, or it can pull us away from our craft.”— Brad Stulberg
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution
DUR_ENDURING
Engineer ecosystem with gravitational pull toward values
“When you give something your all, when you care deeply, when you step into the arena, you open yourself up to vulnerability because things might not go your way. And if they don't go your way, if you fail, if you come up short, then you have no excuse. You put your heart into it and it didn't work out. So to care deeply requires guts and it requires vulnerability because there's no self-handicapping. There's nothing to hide behind if things don't go your way.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Deep caring requires vulnerability without excuse
“The biggest real challenge is just distraction is utterly ubiquitous. We walk around with these powerful digital slot machines in our pockets. And the reward is actually greater than money. It's existential validation. It's an email, a text message, a like, a comment. It says that you exist in the world and you matter. And it's very tempting to just constantly pull down on that lever and try to get that reward. That can be extremely alienating from whatever it is that you're trying to do.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Technology & Engineering
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
Digital devices as existential validation machines
“The second big bucket is pseudo-excellence or hustle culture greatness. This is the entire industrial complex of hacks and quick fixes and 10-day programs and diets and fads that all have this illusory promise that if you just do this one thing, if you just do this new hack, this new trick, then my friend, you'll be happy, you'll be strong, you'll be calm.”— Brad Stulberg
Psychology & Behavior · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Quick fixes prevent commitment required for excellence
“There is no kind of satisfaction like the satisfaction that comes from gaining skill and exerting that skill. For Jerry Seinfeld, it is telling a good joke. It is seeing the audience's reaction to that good joke. There's nothing contrived or wishy-washy about it. Either the joke lands or it doesn't. When it lands, the sense of satisfaction that he gets from all the practice that went into it, from all the times that that joke didn't land, it's enormous and it's immense.”— Brad Stulberg
Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Satisfaction from skill gained and deployed
Frameworks (4)
Two-Part Excellence Definition
Involved Engagement Plus Values Alignment
Excellence requires two integral components: (1) involved engagement or caring deeply, which demands commitment, focus, and intention; and (2) alignment with values and goals, ensuring the pursuit reflects who you want to become rather than mimicking others or chasing external validation. Both parts must be present for true excellence.
Components
- Establish Involved Engagement
- Ensure Values Alignment
Prerequisites
- Clarity on core values
- Willingness to be vulnerable
Success Indicators
- Feeling deeply connected to your work
- Progress aligns with who you want to become
- Can articulate why your pursuit matters to you
Failure Modes
- Pursuing excellence in domains misaligned with values
- Caring deeply but without personal meaning
- Values alignment without genuine effort
Values Identification Process
From 100 to 2-5 Core Values
A systematic process for identifying core values by starting with a comprehensive list of 100 commonly held values, narrowing through grouping and prioritization to arrive at 2-5 core values that guide decision-making. Each value must be defined explicitly to be actionable.
Components
- Initial Selection
- Group Like Terms
- Prioritize Core Groups
- Name Each Value
- Define Each Value
Prerequisites
- Access to comprehensive values list
- Time for reflection
- Willingness to be honest about what matters
Success Indicators
- Can articulate 2-5 core values clearly
- Values help guide difficult decisions
- Definitions are specific enough to eliminate vagueness
Failure Modes
- Skipping the definition step
- Choosing values that sound good rather than feel right
- Never testing values against real decisions
Identity House Framework
Diversifying Identity to Build Resilience
Think of your identity as a house with multiple rooms, where each room represents a different role or pursuit. If your identity house has only one room and that room catches fire (crisis in one domain), you're completely displaced. Multiple rooms allow you to seek refuge in other areas during crisis. Rooms don't need to be equal sizes, and you'll spend different amounts of time in each during different life seasons, but none should go completely moldy.
Components
- Identify Your Rooms
- Determine Room Sizes
- Establish Minimum Effective Doses
Prerequisites
- Clarity on current life priorities
- Honesty about time constraints
- Willingness to accept unequal allocation
Success Indicators
- Can name 3-6 rooms in identity house
- Crisis in one domain doesn't devastate entire life
- Clear on minimum doses for non-primary rooms
Failure Modes
- Single-room identity house (all eggs in one basket)
- Rooms going moldy through complete neglect
- Trying to spend equal time in all rooms simultaneously
- Never adjusting room sizes as life changes
3 Daily, 3 Weekly, 3 Monthly Practice Framework
Minimalist Routine Supporting Excellence
Rather than elaborate morning routines with 19 steps, identify the 3 practices you need daily, 3 you need weekly, and 3 you need monthly to support your core pursuits. This creates a foundation for excellence without the routine becoming the focus instead of the work itself.
Components
- Identify 3 Daily Practices
- Identify 3 Weekly Practices
- Identify 3 Monthly Practices
- Aim for 70-80% Consistency
Prerequisites
- Clarity on main pursuits
- Understanding of what supports your work
- Willingness to keep it simple
Success Indicators
- Can name your 3-3-3 practices
- Hitting 70-80% consistency
- Practices feel supportive rather than burdensome
Failure Modes
- Creating too many practices
- Making practices too elaborate
- Never adjusting practices as needs change
- Expecting 100% perfection
Mental Models (8)
Sensing and Responding
Biology & EvolutionThe fundamental biological ability of organisms (from bacteria to humans) to sense environmental conditions conducive to survival and move toward those conditions while avoiding harmful ones. This pre-intellectual capacity underlies quality recognition and drives humans to seek excellence.
In Practice: Explanation of why we are innately drawn to quality and excellence
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Variable Ratio Reinforcement
PsychologyRewards delivered on an unpredictable schedule create the strongest behavioral engagement.
In Practice: Discussion of ubiquitous distraction as barrier to excellence
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Gravitational Systems
Systems ThinkingObjects and environmental factors exert a gravitational pull on behavior, either
In Practice: Discussion of engineering supportive ecosystems for excellence
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Maximalist-Minimalist Paradox
Decision MakingTo be a maximalist requires being a minimalist.
In Practice: Discussion of focus and trade-offs required for excellence
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Portfolio Diversification Applied to Identity
Strategic ThinkingJust as investment portfolios diversify to reduce risk, identity portfolios benefit from multiple di
In Practice: Discussion of identity house framework and resilience
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Maintenance Efficiency
EconomicsIt is always easier to maintain something at a current level than to rebuild it from nothing after complete neglect.
In Practice: Discussion of minimum effective doses for non-primary identity rooms
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Compounding (Applied to Excellence)
MathematicsSmall, consistent improvements compound over time into large gains.
In Practice: Discussion of consistency versus heroic efforts
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Balance as Seasons Not Simultaneity
TimeTrue balance over a lifetime means spending different proportions of time in dif
In Practice: Discussion of reconceiving balance across life seasons
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Connective Tissue (2)
Bacterial sensing and responding as evolutionary basis for quality recognition
Single-cell bacteria possess an ability called sensing and responding: they can sense when an environment is conducive to survival and move toward those environments (what biologists now call high-quality environments). This same innate ability to be drawn to quality, which predates nervous systems or consciousness, remains in humans. We sense quality pre-intellectually in everything from art to business models. The life force to create, contribute, and produce comes from this ancient biological drive to flourish that once meant avoiding predators and passing on DNA but now finds expression in mastery and excellence.
Discussion of why we are drawn to excellence and quality without intellectual analysis
House with multiple rooms as model for identity resilience
A house with only one room becomes uninhabitable when that room floods or catches fire; you must move out entirely. A house with multiple rooms allows you to seek refuge in other spaces while one room is damaged. This architectural principle maps directly to identity construction: if your identity has only one room (one professional identity, one role), a crisis in that domain is completely dislocating. Multiple identity rooms (professional, parental, athletic, creative, community) create resilience. The rooms need not be equal sizes, and you'll spend more time in some than others, but maintaining multiple rooms prevents complete collapse when one area faces difficulty.
Discussion of balance, identity diversification, and resilience through seasons of life
Key Figures (4)
Robert Pirsig
8 mentionsAuthor and Philosopher
Jerry Seinfeld
3 mentionsComedian
Michael Joyner
2 mentionsPhysician and Performance Researcher
Avedis Donabedian
2 mentionsFounder of Healthcare Quality Movement
Glossary (1)
self-handicapping
VOCABULARYSabotaging one's own performance to have an excuse if one fails
“To care deeply requires guts and vulnerability because there's no self-handicapping.”
Key People (4)
Robert Pirsig
(1928–2017)Author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Jerry Seinfeld
(1954–)Legendary comedian known for observational humor
Michael Joyner
Physician and human performance researcher
Avedis Donabedian
(1919–2000)Founded healthcare quality movement
Concepts (2)
Quality (Pirsig definition)
CL_PHILOSOPHYDeep caring between actor and act that evaporates space between person and activity
Sensing and responding
CL_SCIENCEBiological ability of organisms to sense conducive environments and move toward them
Synthesis
Synthesis
Migrated from Scholia