Ep. 389: Is the Internet Hijacking Ambition? + Escaping Messaging Hell

I’m curious how the internet is reshaping our instinct to do hard, impressive things; it can connect you with real tribes, like serious readers, or lure you into flashy extremes that burn time and cash. To unpack this, I’ve got my friend Brad Stulberg here—his new book on excellence just dropped, Steve Kerr and I blurbed it, and between us we’ve got nine rings—so let’s dig in.

Before we diagnose the web, catch us up on pseudo‑excellence and how it differs from the real thing.

Pseudo‑excellence is performing greatness instead of doing the simple, repeated work that actually makes you great. Real excellence is caring deeply and practicing your craft, not winning the morning‑routine contest.

Part of the draw is that checklists feel safe; you can ace a routine every day while the race, the book, or the promotion could expose you to failure.

Exactly, elaborate processes soothe insecurity by offering control, but they often become motion without progress. The best keep it simple and repeat the fundamentals with consistency.

I see this with writers who build baroque idea machines with AI and automations; as a pro idea guy, I barely use tech—doesn’t that smell like pseudo‑excellence?

It can if the system eclipses doing the work; many top thinkers capture ideas with a pen and notebook and get back to execution.

I pulled up a clip of a very jacked guy claiming he works eighteen hours every day; what do you make of that?

It’s theater and largely impossible to sustain; if it were true, it would tank quality and health, and more likely it’s content dressed up as hustle.

Another clip shows a man up at three doing hours of rituals before any work; what’s the lesson there?

If you need a two‑hour pregame to start, you’re fragile; elite performers keep compact routines and protect sleep because that drives output more than four a.m. heroics.

These videos lean on physiques; is the muscle the hook that draws young men in, then swaps in easy routines for the hard years of training?

The aesthetic hijacks instincts, and many of those bodies are steroid‑enhanced, not products of mystical routines. The danger is young people think supplements and 3 a.m. ice baths built that look while undisclosed drugs and risks did the work.

I played the clip of Elon brandishing a chainsaw on stage—what kind of pseudo‑excellence is that?

He’s done remarkable things, but social media performance seems to have rewired him; it’s WWE spectacle versus the quiet dominance of real collegiate wrestling.

Is this about shallow vanity, or is the internet hijacking a core drive to do hard, visible things?

It hijacks a deep urge to matter; people feel numb and lost, so the content delivers a hit of purpose without the substance.

The more a platform rewards virality, the more we see shirtless shock‑value; in slower formats, even tough‑love shows for men often sound grounded—does format drive behavior?

Format sets incentives; when growth outranks integrity you chase fads, while slow, steady building supports truth and progress.

What’s the female version of this online?

You see body‑image extremes and diets, the tradwife brand run by full‑time content hustlers, and the grinding study aesthetic powered by stimulants; great for views, bad for mastery.

Let’s pivot—how do we redirect the same ambition toward sustainable excellence and away from performance cosplay?

Start by redefining excellence as an ongoing process of becoming, rooted in involved engagement with pursuits aligned to your values, not a rank on a list.

Once you pick a values‑aligned arena, go all in and repeat that pattern across seasons of life; meaning tends to follow.

Exactly, as woodworker Peter Korn realized, you think you’re building a table with integrity, but you’re really cultivating integrity in yourself; any craft can do this at any level.

Use your deadlift practice as a case—same lift, different motives can lead to totally different lives.

What I gain isn’t big quads but patience, courage under the bar, community, and coaching; leaders like Greg Popovich and artists like Hilary Hahn echo this because real excellence shapes who you become.

A twenty‑something feels the itch beyond email and weekend drinks; how do they start?

Risk being earnest and failing, define your values, choose fitting challenges, and change your inputs; I swapped dorm‑room haze for reading and writing after a book cracked me open.

That’s why stepping away from social feeds helps; the imagined spotlight makes people too careful to care deeply.

Look at quarterback Mendoza, mocked online for sincere emotion, then winning the Heisman and leading his team; earnest beats ironic when it’s time to perform.

Same energy when Tim Tebow showed open gratitude and got clowned for it, yet he just kept competing.

Right, he wasn’t the four a.m. nose‑strip guy; he was busy winning championships.

Now picture a forty‑something parent with a full plate; how do they weave excellence back in?

If you can, turn work into a real challenge that grows you as a leader and human, and if not, build a serious leisure craft where you control the terms and can trace progress to your effort.

Our parents treated leadership at work as a core source of meaning; many of us optimized lifestyle and now need to rediscover the pride of leading people well.

It’s not blind loyalty, it’s choosing growth that spills into family and community, and if your job’s light, use that extra time to pursue mastery instead of scrolling.

So what’s the tech play—keep excellence mostly offline or use the internet differently?

Treat the internet like a tool and a way station, not your destination; find information and people there, then move it into the real world where excellence actually forms.

For the record, our friendship didn’t start with my shirtless scalding‑water tutorial—that water was CGI.

Explains why I lost my hair following your routine.

Last one for now: how do we steer our kids away from internet performance and toward the joy of real excellence?

Show, don’t just tell; let them see you train, learn, and build something real so the example sticks more than any lecture.

I wrestle with the example I set at home. I show my kids hard work, but there’s also that YouTube plaque on my wall. I keep telling them the camera isn’t the job. The craft is. Watch me write in the office. That’s the thing that matters.

That plaque’s just the accessory lift. Your deadlift is the real work—the computer science and ideas writing. Lots of folks have giant biceps on YouTube, but can’t move any weight where it counts.

Which is why I hung a framed book cover and bestseller ranking above the plaque. That’s the upstream engine. And on that note, Brad’s new book The Way of Excellence is out now. It’s fantastic and will help you pivot from internet-fueled “success” to the real thing.

The site is wayofexcellencebook.com. I should probably know that better than I do.

Alright, quick vibe check with Jesse: maybe we should lean into hustle-video parody—supplements table, sleeveless shirt, anti‑aging walkthrough. We’d crush it, though I probably need to look younger. Jokes aside, let’s shift to the practice segment and get practical about work in a distracted world.

The new Microsoft Work Trends Index shows the mess clearly: average days with 117 emails and 153 Teams pings add up to around 270 interruptions. Focus work slips to weekends as people escape chat. Half of workers describe the day as chaotic and fragmented. That’s insane. So how do we push back? Here are five moves that actually help.

First, kill message threads that need back‑and‑forth. If it takes more than one reply, shift to a quick real‑time touchpoint. Office hours work. A phone window works. Keep it synchronous and short, not a calendar‑blocking meeting. Second, protect deep work by changing location. Go somewhere without email or chat and let that place train your brain. Third, batch group discussions. Use a shared docket everyone adds to, then clear it together two or three times a week. You’ll wipe out most group threads and a lot of one‑off meetings. Fourth, create simple processes. When a task appears, agree on who will do what, where it lives, and when it’s due. Investing a few minutes here saves days of inbox whiplash. Fifth, reduce active projects. Fewer live initiatives means fewer messages. Say no when you can, or park commitments in a holding pattern until you’re ready to start.

Notice none of this is about filters, notification gymnastics, or AI summarizers. The fix is procedural, not more tools. If you want the full framework, my book A World Without Email lays out the protocols for individuals and teams.

Big question I’ve been mulling: with all the money in generative AI, what has actually changed outside of coding? I scanned a huge thread collecting real uses, and set ground rules: no traditional machine‑learning wins and no programming. The list is modest so far. People use it to find patterns in data, crank out slide decks, summarize long text, handle basic customer support, produce routine writing, and simplify complicated rules. Useful, yes. Transformative at scale beyond software development, not yet. The hype keeps pointing to next year. We’ll see. Send the angry emails to Jesse—he can summarize them for me.

Listener notes. If you’re uneasy about giving kids full‑power phones, that instinct is healthy. We use a landline and a simple push‑button cell when they need it. Honestly, I’d love to see a retro brick phone that looks like Wall Street for kids—uncool enough to keep them present, functional enough to keep them safe.

On the Amish: the lesson isn’t to freeze time. It’s to test tech against your values and adopt only what serves the community. Boundaries beat convenience. Think of it like budgeting—if you never say no, you don’t have a plan, you’re just doing data entry for Big Tech.

Reading corner. I read to decompress, not to signal. This week it was Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future era memoir on audio, and Jeff Baham’s deep dive on Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Cinema histories and dark‑ride engineering are my stress relief. Read widely in nonfiction and let your interests, not optics, set the list.

That’s the show. We’ll be back next week. Until then, stay deep.