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I'm a little hesitant about writing this book this is a book about running not a treaties on how to be healthy I'm not trying to give advice here like okay everybody let's run every day to stay healthy Instead This is a book in which
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I've gathered my thoughts about what running has meant to me as a person just a book in which I Ponder various things and think out loud no matter how mundane some action might appear if you keep at it long enough it becomes a
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contemplative even meditative Act once I was lying around a hotel room in Paris reading the international Herald Tribune when I came across a special article on the marathon there were interviews with several famous marathon runners and they
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were asked what special Mantra goes through their head to keep themselves pumped up during a race I was impressed by all the different things that these Runners think about as they run 26.2 miles if you don't keep repeating a
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mantra of some sort to yourself you'll never survive one Runner told his Mantra here it is pain is inevitable suffering is optional say you're running and you start to think man this hurts I can't take it anymore the hurt part is an unavoidable reality but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself so I suppose it's all right to read this as a kind of memoir centered on the act of running this book does contain a certain
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amount of what might be dubbed life lessons they are personal lessons I've learned through actually putting my own body in motion and thereby discovering that suffering is optional that was an excerpt from the forward of the book that I'm going to
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talk to you about today which is what I talk about when I talk about running a memoir and it was written by Haruki mirami so before I jump into the book I want to give you background into the unexpected way I was not expecting to
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make a podcast about this I didn't even know this book existed before a couple days ago so I actually stumbled across this book on Twitter so then what I did is I love to read I always read physical books but what I'll do is if I discover a new book I will test it out by buying the the Kindle version and I'll start reading it and then usually if I like the first few chapters then I'll order the physical book because that's the how
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I prefer to read and that's how I like to make the podcast and everything else I start reading the Kindle version of this book on my phone on the Kindle app on my phone and I could not put it down I read the entire book in like a day and
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a half maybe two days at most on my phone this really is a memoir about his two obsessions his first obsession is writing his second obsession is running and so in the book he says unless it's totally unavoidable he runs every single
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day not only does he run every single day this is his schedule when he's writing a novel he wakes up at 4:00 a.m. he writes for five or 6 hours completely uninterrupted then he'll go and run a 10K he will also swim after that then
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he'll read listen to music run errands and then he falls asleep by 9:00 p.m. usually there's a nap in the like a quick 30-minute nap in the afternoon as well and he does this seven days a week and so even though it's obvious that
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he's got a very intense and disciplined personality he clearly believes in consistency over intensity and so that's why he spreads everything out over a 7-Day week to keep the momentum going day to day so he talks about this he says listen the point being is to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day even though he's physically capable of running more than a 10K every day he purposely pulls back he wants that
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exhilaration I feel at the end of each run to carry over to the next day this is the same sort of tack that I find necessary when writing a novel I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more do that and the
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next day's work goes surprisingly smooth I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that in fact it's really funny again I didn't even know this this book existed you know say two weeks ago and yet in my right hand right now is Ernest
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Hemingway's book Ernest Hemingway on writing I had read the book completely marked it up took notes on it I didn't think it was enough I've read I don't know if I've told you this I might have mentioned it last week but in the last month alone I've been hitting like this dry streak over and over again so I've read three full books literally got to the end of all three books and then when I got to the end I was like these are
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not episode worthy enough so anyways one of those three books with Ernest Hemingway on writing and he talks about this in the book Hemingway did not want to drain himself completely every day he wanted to have a little bit left so then
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he could pick up writing the next day and I think this is an overlooked key for these long-term projects again I am obsessed with hedgehogs the hedgehogs are the people that do something for a long period of time hero Mami is one of
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these people he's been a novelist for 45 years he's still writing go to the last few weeks the people you and I have been talking about Bernar andol that's a hedgehog he's been running LV H for 40-some years Sam Walton J Paul Getty
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the founder of Rolex Steve Jobs you see this over and over and over again Walt Disney and so I think the point that mirami is about to make right now is really important because this is about how the hell do you manage these
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long-term decade long projects and he says do that and the next day work goes Sur surprisingly smoothly I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that to keep on going you have to keep up the Rhythm this is the important thing for
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long-term projects once you set the pace the rest will follow the problem is getting the fly wheel to spin at a set speed and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage that is why routine is so
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powerful this is also another reason I believe the routine is so powerful I don't know why but the older you get the busier you become and so as you're reading this book the way I would describe this is he goes back and forth
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between these dual obsessions and how they Ser one each Obsession serves the other and so he begins and he starts talking about like why did he pick a career as a novelist why did he pick running as the most important physical
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activity in his life he talks about the importance of picking things that are authentic to your true self something that suits you and something that you can do for a long period of time so he says I started running in the fall of
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1982 so it's actually a few years after he publishes his first novel 1979 so he picks up running a few years later he says I started running in the fall of 1982 and I've been running since then for nearly 23 years even longer now
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because this book is like 15 16 years old and there's going to be many times in the book where you see why he picked a career as a novelist and why he chose to run one of it is he's a loner he likes to do things without relying on
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other people and things that are as simple as possible he's like well if you want to be a writer all you need is a pen and a piece of paper if you want to be a runner all you need is shoes you don't need teammates you don't need any
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kind of equipment you don't need anything and he says longdistance running suits my personality and of all the habits I've acquired over my lifetime I have to say that this one has been the most helpful and the most meaningful running without a break for more than two decades has also Made Me Stronger both physically and emotionally I am not much for team sports that's just the way I am I think that very simple sentence is one of the most
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important sentences in the entire book that's just the way I am it is clear from reading this book that mirami knows who he is I was just rereading highlights from one of my favorite talks I know I've talked about this a million
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times it's running down a dream how to survive and thrive in a career you love and when I got to this part because I was also reading the transcript and when I went back on this section I added the note after I was like you must find find
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a business that's authentic to you you cannot F if you're going to do the business over long term you cannot fake who you are over the long term and there's a line that bill Gurley says in that that talk Running Down a Dream how
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to survive and thrive in a career that you love and he's he's talking to University of Texas NBA students but he says you can't fake passion somebody else that really loves the job will outrun you somebody else sitting in some
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other NBA program has a deep passion for whatever career path that you're going down and they're going to smoke you if you don't have it yourself mirami could not be running for four decades he could not be writing for four decades unless
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it suited him unless it suited his authentic self and he immediately draws the analogy from running to writing it's the same thing in the novelist's profession as far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as winning or
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losing maybe numbers of copies sold awards won and critics praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature but none of them really matter this hits so hard the Jud what he's saying is the judge within Reigns Supreme this is my interpretation of what he's saying what's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself failure to reach that bar is not something that you can easily explain
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away then he continues to seem and goes right back to running for me running is both exercise and a metaphor running day after day working day after day right running day after day piling up the races bit by bit I raise the bar and by
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clearing each level I Elevate myself that's why I've put in the effort day after day to raise my own level and then a few pages later it goes back to this the importance of picking a a craft a profession that suits you that is
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authentic to you that you're not just looking around and mimicking what other people are doing he's he's going to talk about like if you think about what this paragraph I'm about to read to you right now this is why he's been able to write
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15 books over 40 years and countless numbers of short and publish countless numbers of short stories he says I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself to put a finer point on it I'm the type of person who doesn't find it
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painful to be alone I find spending an hour or two every day running alone not speaking to anyone as well as four or five hours a day alone at my desk to be neither difficult nor boring I've had this tendency ever since I was young
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when given a choice I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating over being with somebody else I could always think of things to do by myself and then he goes into some of the psychological benefits of running or
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just spending time with letting your mind wander and so he has a great phrase on this you know you there's a bunch of different ways you can do this he just chooses to get to this uh destination uh through running but he says I run in order to acquire aoid running gives him a calm and empty mind obviously he says like an occasional thought is going to slip into this void because people's minds can't be completely blank for long
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periods of time but running gives his ability to give his brain a a rest it gives him the ability to acquire a void and I think it's during these voids whether it's in a shower on a long walk uh running swimming whatever it is that
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you're doing where you get this like download this very valuable download from your unconscious in fact this is something that's popped up several times in the books I think David olvy is the really the person that communicated this
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idea best to me so I'm going to read an actual quote from his book ogy on advertising and he says Big Ideas come from the unconscious this is true in art in science and in advertising but your unconscious has to be well informed or
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your idea will be irrelevant stuff your conscious mind with information like books and podcasts and conversations right then unhook your rational thought process you can help this process by going for a long walk and that's oab's
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words obviously in Mir kami's words he's running or taking a hot bath or drinking half a pint of pint of liquor I guess suddenly the if the telephone line from your unconscious is open a big ideal Wells up within you and there's also
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another mental or psychological benefit from in his Case mami's Case running physical exercise has come up a bunch of time in the books as well he's in a an industry like a lot of people are every entrepreneur you're just going to be
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misunderstood and criticized you know maybe he writes a novel he thinks it's great and you know it doesn't sell as well and people critics kind of pound it and make him feel bad and so he says something he says uh it's not much fun
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to be misunderstood or criticized but rather a painful experience that hurts people deeply as I've gotten older though I've gradually come to the realization that this kind of pain and hurt is necessary part of life and I
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would say unavoidable in fact Jeff basos has a great line about this where he says if you absolutely cannot tolerate critics then don't do anything new or interesting back to Mir kamami if you think about it precisely because people
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are different from others that they're able to create their own independent selves take me as an example it's precisely my ability to detect some aspects of a scene that other people can't to feel differently than others
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and choose words that differ from theirs that's allowed me to write stories that are mine alone and because of this we have an extraordinary situation in which quite a few people read what I've written so the fact that I'm me and no
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one else is one of my greatest assets asss that's that's got to be one of the best lines in the book so the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be
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independent so we've established it's unavoidable it's it's very constant through human nature in history so what do you do so he uses exercise vigorous physical exercise as a way to relieve this emotional stress that he goes through that everybody goes through when I'm criticized unjustly from my viewpoint or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't I go running for a little longer than usual by running longer it's like I can physically
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exhaust that portion of my discontent he's essentially processing you know the struggle the painful emotions through physical activity there's a great line in this biography of Teddy Roosevelt that I read his wife and his mother die
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on the same day if I remember correctly and so he goes and he he says like when he's going through emotional turmoil he does this early in his life he does throughout his entire life that he needed physical tests of endurance to
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chase away the depression that was bearing down on him and this is what Teddy Roosevelt said about that black care rarely sits behind a writer whose expanses and pace is fast enough and it's one way to turn a negative experience and emotion into a positive result and mirami talks about this in the book and one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger if I'm I'm angry I direct that anger towards
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myself if I have a frustrating experience I use that to improve myself so before he was a writer or a runner he actually was an entrepreneur and his first business was a jazz club and I think there's a little there's value into to covering the section for a little bit because it also gives you an idea of really the kind of his Fierce work ethic that he was able to apply even at a business that wasn't suited for himself but again
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he this this business I think lasts seven years where his second business as a novelist lasted 45 so I think that that's actually instructive it's like well if you want to be in the game for a long time you want to get to the LP of
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profession you really should try to find something that suits you and that's authentic to you and so he talks about this most of the people I knew had predicted that the bar wouldn't do well they figured that an establishment run
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as kind of a hobby wouldn't work out that somebody like me who was pretty naive and most likely didn't have the slightest aptitude for running a business wouldn't be able to make a go of it well their predictions were totally
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to tell you the truth I didn't think I had much aptitude for business either I just figured that since failure was not an option I'd have to give it everything I had my only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a
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lot physically I'm more of a Workhorse than a racehorse and if you think about it there's already been hints the fact that he's more of a Workhorse than a racehorse the just look at how he set up his schedule he's like you know what I'm going to work I'm going to have the same schedule every day I'm going to put my faith in consistency and routine I'm going to wake up at 4:00 a.m. I'm going to write for 5 to 6 hours every day I'm
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going to run a 10K I'm going to swim I'm going to nap I'm going to run errands uh because he he talks about later on and I'll get to this the fact that he just thinks he's a morning person his brain works better in the morning so he he
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takes like lowl stuff for the afternoon like he can swim he can run errands you know go listen to music and then I'm going to go to bed early and I'm going to do it again and again and again that is a Workhorse and his schedule at this
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time it is life when he's running the Jazz Club when he's running the bar it's going to get real crazy because he's going to be for a short period of time there's going to be overlap between the two professions this we're not there yet
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though he says the work itself was hard I worked from morning till late at night until I was exhausted I had all kinds of painful experiences things I had to Rack my brains about and plenty of disappointments but I worked like crazy
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and I finally began to make enough profit to hire other people to help out as I neared the end of my 20s I was able to finally take a breather to start the bar I had borrowed as much as I could from every place that would lend me
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money and I'd almost repaid it all things were settling down up until then it had been a question of sheer survival of keeping my head above water and I didn't have room to think of anything else now at this point of his life he
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can take inventory he's like well I'm about to turn 30 am I going to be running this jazz club forever is this what I want my life to be I took a deep breath and I slowly gazed around turning 30 was just around the corner and pretty
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much out of the blue I got the idea to write a novel and this is the crazy part he says I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought I could write a novel he's a huge baseball fan so it says it was around 1:30 in the afternoon
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on April 1st 1978 I was at jingu stadium that day alone in the Outfield drinking a beer and watching the game and all of the sudden a thought struck me you know what I could try writing a no and listen to how he describes his experience something flew down the thought that idea right that little voice inside of him something flew down from the sky at that instant and whatever it was I accepted it I had never had any Ambitions to be a novelist
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I just had the strong desire to write a novel no concrete image of what I wanted to write about just the conviction that if I wrote it now I could come up with something that I'd find convincing this was in the spring of 197 8 and by the
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Fall I had finished a 200 Page work handwritten he writes it on pen and paper handwritten on Japanese manuscript paper and it's about to get crazier listen to what he does here and after I finished it I felt great I had no idea
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what to do with the novel once I finished it but I just sort of let momentum carry me and I sent it in to be considered for a literary Magazine's new new writer prize this is the crazy part I shipped it off without making a copy of it this is 1978 doesn't have a digital backup I shipped it off without making a copy of it so it seems I didn't much care if it wasn't selected and vanished Forever This is the work that's published under
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the title hear the wind sing I was more interested in having finished it then in whether or not it would ever see the light of day there is a name name for what he just did and that name is autotelic autotelic is an activity done for the
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sake of itself autotelic is also the very first name when I had this idea like almost a decade ago hey I'm going to make a podcast about the books I read the very first name I chose for the podcast was autotelic you can see this
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because in the URL for the RSS feed for the podcast it still says autotelic autotelic an activity done for the sake of self if this guy sits down he has this thought this strike of light lightning this almost Eureka moment this
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hey I have this intense desire to write a novel he does so in a few months writes it by hand over 200 Pages written by hand and then sends it off not even thinking what happens it gets lost in the middle what happens if they throw it
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in the trash that is an activity done for the sake of itself it just so happens that is going to be his first ever ever published novel and this part of the story just made me laugh out loud because he says by the next spring when
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I got a phone call from the publication telling me my novel had made the short list I had completely forgotten that I had entered the contest my novel won the prize and was published that summer the book was fairly well received I was 30 and
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without really knowing what was going on I suddenly found myself labeled a new upand cominging right I was pretty surprised but people who knew me were even more surprised and at this point in his life the fact that he
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was a Workhorse wind up benefiting him immensely after this while still running my business I wrote a second novel and so he is 30 but when he was a younger man in his 20s when he's an older man in his 70s his discipline and work ethic or
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constant throughout his entire life what do I mean by this listen to what he's doing every day for 3 years I ran my Jack Club keeping accounts checking inventory scheduling my staff standing behind the counter mixing up cocktails
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myself cooking and closing up in the wee hours of the morning and only then riding at home at the kitchen table until I got sleepy I felt like I was living enough for two people's lives physically every day was tough with
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these first two novels I was only able to write in spurts snatching bits of time here and there a half hour here an hour hour here and because I was always tired and felt like I was competing against a clock as I wrote I was never
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able to fully concentrate and so then it is this point in his life story that he makes the most important decision and the riskiest decision that he ever makes he decides I'm going to go all in on being a writer even though most of his
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income is coming from the jazz club and not writing I felt I had been given a wonderful opportunity to be a novelist a chance you don't get every day and a natural desire sprang up to take it as far as I possibly could and write the
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kind of Novel I'd feel satisfied with after giving it a lot of thought I decided to close the business for a while and concentrate solely on writing at this point my income from the jazz club was more than my income as a
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novelist a reality that I had to resign myself to most people I knew were flat out against my decision you're business is doing fine they said why not just let someone else run it for a while and then you go off and write your novels from
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the world's Viewpoint this makes perfect sense and most people probably didn't think I'd make it as a professional writer but I couldn't follow their advice I'm the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do I had to
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give it everything I had if I failed I could accept that but I knew that if I did things halfheartedly and they didn't work out I i' always have regrets this is the part where he bets on himself despite the objections of
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everybody else I sold the business and though a bit embarrassed about it I hung out my sign as a novelist and set out to make a living writing i' just like to be free for 2 years to write I explained to my wife if it doesn't work out we can
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always open up another little bar somewhere I'm still young and we can always start over all right she said this was in 1981 and we still had a considerable amount of debt but I figured I'd just do my best and see what happened I figured it was do or die so I put everything I had into it and this is one of my favorite parts of the story I'm going to read my note to you before I read the paragraph that prompted the note and I wrote he knows
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he found his path the sense of relief that occurs when this happens in your life is worth all of the struggle to get there and this is what he writes when I finished the novel I had a good feeling that it created my own writing style my
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whole body thrilled at the thought of how wonderful and how difficult it is to be able to sit at my desk not worrying about time and concentrate on writing there were untouched veins still dormant within me I felt and I now could
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actually picture myself making a living as a novelist and even though he was excited exed he's like I found my style this book is better than the previous ones I have written when he tries to get it published the editors did not like it they said they were looking for something more mainstream and didn't like the book is called a wild sheep chase they didn't like the book at all and I recall how unenthusiastic their reception was this
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part is so important and there's so many parallels to the history of Entrepreneurship it seems back then my notion of the novel was pretty unorthodox ERS though this is so important right editors like oh we want some more mainstream okay well why
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because you want more readers well what happens when he puts out this unorthodox this differentiated product into the market readers though seem to love this new book and that is what makes me happiest there's a great quote about
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this from James Dyson if you can try to go direct to the end user of your product because he said the entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer thank God that gatekeeper that publisher
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didn't get in the way oh we don't like this we're looking for something more mainstream that is the entrenched professional right but the private consumer is like we love this give us more now we've been talking about this
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journey from bar owner jazz club owner to novelist but how does this tie with the book with his this diary this inner monologue about running how did he he's not a runner yet now he's a novelist he solved that problem but he hasn't found
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that second Obsession that second Obsession that's going to serve his first Obsession how does he do that well he tells us a problem arose with my decision to become a professional writer the question was how to keep physically
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fit running the bar required hard physical labor every day and I could keep my weight down but once I started sitting at my desk all day writing my energy level gradually declined and I started putting on pounds I was also
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smoking too much as I concentrated on my work back then I was smoking 60 cigarettes a day I decided that if I wanted to have a long life as a novelist I needed to find a way to keep fit and maintain a healthy weight and so this is
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where he's looking at okay there's all kinds of sports I can choose like why am I going to choose running because it's who he is it's his description of running is the same for writing and reading he says running has a lot of
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advantages first of all you don't need anybody else to do it and no need for special equipment you don't have to go to any special place to do it as long as you have running shoes and a good road you can run to your heart's content and
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so he in the mornings he he writes in the afternoon he reads Reading Writing running no special equipment you need a pen and paper or typewriter you need some shoes you need a you know a $9 book but you don't need anybody else to do these things and an added benefit or all those things are positive healthy habits and they crowd out the more obsessed you become with running with reading with writing the more they're going to crowd
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out things that don't serve them and so he just said hey I was smoking 60 cigarettes a day I think he's 75 76 years old today would he be alive if he didn't kick the habit maybe not but how why did he kick the habit because he
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couldn't run and smoke not longer after I also gave up smoking giving up smoking was kind of a natural result of running every day it wasn't easy to quit but I couldn't very well keep on smoking and continue running this natural desire to
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run became a powerful motivator for me to not go back to smoking and a great help in overcoming the withdrawal symptoms and this line is so great this s so great quitting smoking was like a symbolic gesture of farewell to the life that I used to lead and then he talks about the difference of kind of like struggling through a profession or an activity you don't like like team sports he hated that loves running so he can do it all
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the time he can give everything he got didn't you know he's an introvert he talks about over and over again he's like I I I just want to control who has access to me well if you're running a bar you have to it's a surface business
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anybody can come through the door you have to serve them didn't like that and so he talks about this aspect of his personality again just this fundamental he did this this really important work of understanding who he actually is
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inside I could never stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it whenever I was able to do something I like to do though when I wanted to do it and the way I wanted to do it I'd give it
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everything I had and so by switching into a profession that was more suited to his authentic self he's able to redesign his entire lifestyle listen to how different his lifestyle was as a novelist than when he was running a bar
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the happiest thing about becoming a rider was that I could go to bed early and get up early when I was running the bar I often didn't get to sleep until near dawn after I closed the bar and began My Life as a novelist the first
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thing that we and he talks about him and his wife decided to completely revamped their lifestyle the first thing we did is we decided to go to bed soon after it got dark and wake up with the son so my new simple and regular life began I got
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up before 5:00 a.m. went to bed before 10:00 p.m. people are at their best at different times of the day but I'm definitely a morning person that's when I can focus and finish up important work I have to do afterwards I work out or do
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other errands that don't take much concentration at the end of the day I relax and don't do any more work I read listen to music take it easy and try to go bed early this is the pattern I've mostly followed up until today thanks to
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this I've been able to work efficiently these past 24 years and now he's into you know 40 years he's been doing this I also found this interview when I got to this part I I was also reading and uh listening to interviews that he's done and I found this interview about his daily schedule very interesting it was this from this 2004 interview and so he describes his daily schedule but I think the the last few sentences is really
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what's important so he talks about you know I get up at 400 a.m. I've already told you this he writes for 5 to six hours then he'll go run uh 10 km and swim 1500 met then read a bit listen to some music and go to bed early now this
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is the important part I keep to this routine every day without variation the repetition itself becomes the most important thing it is a form of mesmerism I Mesmerize myself to reach a deeper State of Mind the power of routine is a reoccurring theme
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throughout the entire book he goes back to it I'm struck by how except when you're young you you really need to prioritize in your life figure out in what order you should divide up your time and energy if you don't get that
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sort of system set by a certain age you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing why because writing is an act of service so he's going to
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talk about the relationship that he has with his readers the entrepreneurial equivalent is relationships that you have with your customer customers what did what did Henry Ford tell us that money comes naturally as a result of service focus on service that mirami built his entire life his entire lifestyle what he focuses on his routine about this active service because he believes what he's about to say in beautiful language is that the most
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important relationship he has in his life is with his readers the most important relationship that entrepreneurs have in their business is with their customers I place the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing why because I felt that the IND dispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person but with an unspecified number of readers my opinion on this has not changed over the years I've
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consistently considered this invisible conceptual relationship to be the most important thing in my life actions Express priority how you spend your time is all that matters it's not what we think it's not what we believe it is only matters what we do
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and you can tell what's a priority what's the most important in your life to how you spend your time actions Express priority he has another genius thing that I've T talked about a lot and again this isn't something that's
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uh I don't even know if it's explicit it's just this idea I had where it's like it's weird that so many entrepreneurs focus on like the C like converting customers that don't like them or being concerned about like criticism of their product or their business is like wait a minute your business is built by serving the customers that love what you do and ignoring the rest and this may be the first time I had this like idea this vague notion in my
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head and I don't know if I've even can even express it the the right way to how I truly think about this but this is Mir what mirami writes here is like the closest that I've got like yes that's exactly this like weird idea that keeps
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popping up so he says you cannot please everybody even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy a lot of customers came to the bar if one out of 10 enjoyed the place and said he'd come again that was enough if one out of 10
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was a repeat customer then the business would survive to put it the other way it didn't matter if nine out of 10 didn't like my bar this realization lifted a weight off of my shoulders still I had to make sure that one person who did
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like the place really liked it in order to make sure he did I had to make my philosophy and stance clearcut and patiently maintain that stance no matter what this is what I learned through running a business he does the exact
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same thing think about if you're a novelist you know what's going to happen any new book especially he becomes famous for doing this every time you release a book you're going to have a million people review the book you know
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maybe 70% says this sucks you know 10% says it's okay 10% is like yeah I kind of liked it but 10% really love it and so he talks about the fact that he just focused on writing what other people thought was unorthodox but it was
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completely authentic to him it was differentiated from the other novels out there and it found its market and over time since he was doing this for the long term he says every time he released a new novel he had more readers it
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didn't matter if a new novel came out and 90% of the stuff said you know that's not for me that 10% loved it and then they told other people and that 10% slowly grew over time and he has a great line in the book to describe this
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perspective he says there's no need to be literature's top Runner and I was like oh I read that and in the context of everything else that's going on in the story it's like oh he approached building his customer base the same way you would approach building up and increasing the length of distance that you can run slowly over time year after year and so then he illustrates this point through training through running this goes back
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to this idea of he's clearly if you analyze what he's doing he's like clearly prioritizing consistency over intensity and it's clear as he's talking about these dual obsessions that his skill at running and his skill at
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business were built the very same way just this little bit every day I'm going to read this to you and then I I want to quote one of my favorite essays which is how to do great work by Paul Graham so mirami says when I first started running
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I couldn't run long distances I could only run for about 20 minutes or 30 minutes and that left me panting my heart pounding my legs shaking it was expected though since I hadn't really exercised for a long time at first I was
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also a little embarrassed to have people in my neighborhood see me running it was the exact same feeling I had upon first seeing the title novelist after my name but as I continued to run and obviously continued to write my body body started
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to accept the fact that I was running and I could gradually increase the distance I was starting to acquire a runner's form my breathing became more regular he's saying I'm acquiring more skills right my breathing became more
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regular and my pulse settled down the main thing was not the speed or the distance so much as running every day without taking a break and so there's this line in Paul Graham's essay how to do great work which I think is episode
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314 if I remember correctly and you know something that I'm I'm really trying to orient my own career and and like Obsession around it's that consistency over decades after decades and so what Paul Graham says is the reason that
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we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work writing a page a day doesn't sound like much but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year that is the key consistency people who do great things don't get a
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lot done every day they get something done rather than nothing and of course done over a long period of time and so then it goes back to this power of routine what does mirami say so like three meals a day along with sleeping housework and work running was incorporated into my daily routine and then immediately after this he goes back to this idea that you and I keep discussing it's like if it suits you you're going to do it for a long time if
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you do it for a long time you're going to get really good at it and if you get really good at at at something money is is a result of that process right so he says when I tell people I run every day some are quite impressed you must really
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have a strong will they sometimes tell me to tell you the truth I don't even think that's a correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have a strong will I think I've been able to run for more than 20 years and
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so now you know 35 years or 40 years whatever has been the present day but I think I've been able to run for decades for a simple reason it suits me go back to what Paul Graham said I think it's in the same essay on how to do great work
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he says when you follow what you were intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working we just saw this on episode was it episode 355 on with
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Bernard orol that's on a rare Bernard orol interview he's 75 years old when the interview is given and he talks about the fact that like this guy's up pushing himself you know 12 hours a day seven days a week on Saturday mornings
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he like super excited doing all these uh store uh tour like visits on a store trying to like find any like slight little detail that's off and he just has a great line on this he goes you know when are you going to retire he's like I
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have fun every morning I have fun every morning is another way to say this suits me this activity suits me goes back to what Bill Gurley said in that talk Running Down a Dream somebody else somewhere else has a deep passion for
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whatever career path that you're going down and they're going to smoke you if you don't have it yourself I'm sure there's somebody that's like I love orn's business I would love to do that too but they don't have the passion and
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you can't fake it over decades and so we go back to mirami on this a few sentences later no matter how strong a will a person has no matter how much he may hate to lose if it's an activity he doesn't really care for he won't keep it
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up for long I just did this post I trying to summarize the most important lesson I learned from spending two hours with Sam zel before he passed and the most important lesson I mean that guy had me fired up and I think about it all
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the time but if I had to say just one lesson from spending time with him was go for freedom freedom allows you to control what you work on if you control what you work on then you can work on what you love if you love it you'll do it for a long time and if you do it for a long time you'll get really good at it and money will come as a result and one of the most important unstated things if you're really paying attention to as I
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was reading this and if you're really paying attention to what he's saying and it's obviously in all these biographies too it's like nobody can do this for you nobody can tell you if your profession if your craft if your work is actually
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authentic to you so he ties Us in that's why I've never recommended running to others I've tried my best never to say something like running is great everybody should try it if some people have an interest in longdistance running
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just leave them be and they'll start running on their own if they're not interested in it no amount of persuasion will make any difference nobody ever recommended or even desired that I'd be a novelist in fact some people tried to
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stop me I had the idea to be one and that is what I did I love that I'm obsessed with this idea I I've been I do a lot of talks to company and conferences and stuff and there's a lot of Q&A too and I've been asked this this
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question in in various forms a bunch over the years and it's like you know how can we encourage more people to be entrepreneurs I'm like it's an inner thing I'd be shocked if this wasn't the exact same experience you had but the
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exact same experience that mirami saying I had the idea to be one and that's what I did the the greatest way the funniest way or most memorable way that I think about this idea is this this I don't even know if this is true but there's a
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story about Mozart where a guy guy comes to him and says mosar how do you write a symphony and mosar replies you're too young to write a symphony and the man goes but you were writing Symphonies when you were 10 years of age and I'm 21
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and mozar goes yeah but I didn't run around asking people how to do it mirami just said Not only did no one ever recommend that I'd be a novelist they try to stop me but it doesn't matter I had the idea to be one and that's what I
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did one of my favorite all-time quotes from Coco Chanel it's exactly the same idea she goes I decided who I want to be and that is who I am and so the something else that's important to add to this just because you love what you
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do you have a passion for it you want to do it for a long time doesn't mean that you're going to want to feel like doing it every day obviously it's impossible that every day of your life you're going to wake up like I'm I want to do this
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right now I have to do this and so this's is great conversation that happens between mirami and Olympic runner so he says no matter how much longdistance running might suit me of course there are days when I feel kind
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of lethargic and I don't want to run actually this happens a lot on days like that I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to call it off once I interviewed an Olympic runner this guy's last name is SEO and I asked him does a
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runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today like you don't want to run and you'd rather just sleep in he stared at me and then in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was replied of course all the time the difference is the people that reach the top of their profession that reach Olympic levels the equivalent of Olympic levels in their profession they do it regardless of how they feel one of
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my favorite movies that's come out in the last few years has been Dune the fir I like Dune one and two but I've watched the first one I don't know like eight times and I love this part where Paul tradies has to he's he's supposed to be
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training on and learning how to fight and sharpening his skills and there's a scene in the movie where he tries to get out of he's like oh I'm not in the mood and the response by the trainer was per what's mood got to do with it there's a
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paragraph in Henry Ford's autobiography that's written 100 years ago that talks about the same problem that is constant in human nature the fact that how we feel our mood it cannot affect the commitments that we have to our work and
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to serving other people he says I pity the poor fellow who's so soft and flabby that he must always have an atmosphere of Good Feeling around him before he can do his work there are many such men and in the end unless they obtain enough
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mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft Reliance on feeling they are failures not only are they business failures they are character failures also it is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of
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hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet there is altogether too much Reliance on Good Feeling in our business organizations and so then I want to move on to one of my favorite lessons in the book and so for for a while he had the
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idea he like okay every year at Le I'm going to run at least one marathon and he did this a bunch and he gets a little cocky and the the lesson here is never try to cheat the work there's no shortcuts and what happens is he goes
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through this like emotionally devastating thing because he's like oh I've run marathons before oh yeah I haven't been really training that much but you know like I can just show up and it'll happen he finishes the marathon
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but he had to walk to finish the marathon and one of his rules was like no walking absolutely no walking he holds himself to very high standards and so he had to break one of his own standards he failed to live up to his
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expectations and the fact that he had to walk to finish this Marathon just made him like he was like in tears he just could not believe it and I loved his self assessment of what he did wrong he's like there's three reasons that I
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failed not enough training not enough training and not enough training without knowing it I had developed an arrogant attitude convinced that just a fair to middling amount of training was enough for me to do a good job it's pretty thin the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride and his reaction to this was perfect you go back to the basics and you recommit yourself to your training schedule he says as I ran this race I
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felt I never ever wanted to go through that again right then and there I decided that before my next marathon I was going to go back to the basics start from scratch and do the very best I could train meticulously and ReDiscover
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what I was physically capable of tighten up all the loose screws one by one do all of that and see what happens and part of what happened is you know he said as you get older you get busier he becomes you know more well known he's
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got all kinds of different opportunities to go his way A lot of those are just you know the external world is largely an external distraction and what he realizes there's always going to be more reasons not to run not to spend the time
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doing this than there are to do that you have to hold on to the few precious valuable reasons and he says even if there were two of me I still can do all that has to be done no matter what I keep up my running running every day is
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a kind of Lifeline for me so I'm not going to lay off running or quit just because I'm busy if I use being busy as an excuse not to run I'd never run again I only have a few reasons to keep on running and a truckload of them to quit
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all all I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished no matter what just keep doing it he's been talking about running see how it goes back and forth he's like we're going to talk about running for a little bit but then
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we're going to draw a life lesson from there and we're going to apply it to our craft and so he goes if I'm asked what's the next most important quality is for a novelist that's easy Focus the ability to concentrate all your limited talents
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on whatever is critical at the moment without Focus you cannot accomplish anything of value I concentrate on my work every morning I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing I don't see anything else I don't think
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about anything else after Focus the next most important thing for a novelist is hands down endurance if you concentrate on writing 3 or 4 hours a day and feel tired after a week of this you're not going to be able to write a long work focus and endurance can be acquired and sharpened through training you'll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point
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this is a lot like training muscles you have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the
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work at hand and gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn't write anything he made sure he to sit down at his desk every single day and
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concentrate I understand the purpose behind his doing this this is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs quietly strengthening his willpower this sort of daily training was indispensable to him a few weeks ago when I did George Lucas's biography in that biography talked about that George Lucas wrote Star Wars the same way yeah he found writing Star Wars unbelievably difficult so what he would do he like
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okay I'm going I'm going to write from 9 to 5 I'm going to sit in the desk I can do two things and two things only I can either write or I can stare at the wall and so Lucas sat at his desk for eight hours a day no matter if he wrote a
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single word or not something else that jumps off the pages of this book is the fact that he is fully alive he is given into his obsessions he's organized his entire life around these handful of things that he truly loves to do the
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personal relationship he has with his wife the taking care of his health the writing the complete control over his schedule and I just think this paragraph is just gives you an idea like you want you want to organize your life so you feel alive with capital letters alive and there's actually before I read this there's something I also say on my phone it's this picture of Sam Walton and it's a quote overlaid a picture on top of Sam
50:17
Walton that he said in his autobiography he says the great thing about entrepreneurship is you get to spend your time building something you enjoy most people don't get to do this they're stuck in jobs say hey I had the time of
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my life and you feel that mirami has completely worked himself into a position where he's having the time of his life it may be a different life than you would choose or that I would choose but it's what it's what it's what makes
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him feel alive and I think this paragraph gives insight into like what's important to him he says most runners run not because they want to live longer but because they want to live life to the fullest if you're going to whittle
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away the years it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully Alive than in a fog and I believe running helps you you do that exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits that's the essence of running and
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a metaphor for life and for me for writing as well if something's worth doing this goes back to him it's going to sound a lot like Edwin Lan I always quote this this hilarious quote from Edwin Landy says there's a rule they don't teach you at Harvard Business School it is if anything is worth doing it's worth doing to excess this is miri's version of that if something's worth doing it's worth giving it your best are in some cases beyond your best
51:30
now that can also be very dangerous piece of advice because his whole thing was like consistency over intensity I'm going to do things for a very long time I want to you know end my run with still a little bit in the tank so I can run
51:42
and be excited and exhilarated and run again tomorrow same way that he he writes his novel same way the Hemingway wrote his novels but mironi makes the mistake and he pushed it too far and this actually leads him to fall out of love
51:57
with running for several years he runs he decides hey I'm running a marathon every year I'm doing triathlons I'm going to run an ultramarathon I think it's like 60 something miles and he talks about completing it and just hitting a wall almost feeling like he's dying but having this like crazy will to to to push through so I'm going to get to that but then he's going to talk about the fact that it gave him depression and so I'll pick right up in
52:20
the story where he's already hit this wall he's like oh I'm I'm in trouble here I have like 20 something more miles and I can barely move ultimately using every trick in the book I managed to grip my teeth and make it through 13
52:29
miles of sheer torment I'm not human I'm just a piece of Machinery I don't need to feel a thing just forge on a head that's what I told myself I'm not human I'm a piece of Machinery I don't feel a thing just forge on a head I repeat this
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like a mantra a literal mechanical repetition and I try hard to reduce the perceptible world to the narrowest parameters all I can see is the ground 3 yards ahead nothing beyond my whole world consists of that ground three yards ahead no need think beyond that
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and the effect of going too far of burning himself out was detrimental he says the most significant fall off from running the ultramarathon wasn't physical but mental what I ended up with was a sense of lethargy and before I
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knew it if I felt covered by a thin film something I've dubbed runers Blues after this ultramarathon I lost the enthusiasm I'd always had for the act of running itself I no longer had the simple positive stance I used to have of
53:31
wanting to run no matter what so this is something that's very fascinating and I don't think it's obvious to many people but I really do believe that great entrepreneurs likely have low introspection and I'm not talking about
53:45
early in their lives I think introspection especially early in your life is extremely important I'm saying once you found the thing that you know you're going to commit to introspection is not always helpful so let's define what I mean by introspection the examination or observation of One's Own mental and emotional processes probably very necessary before you find your life's work but after questionable do you think Sam Walton woke up every
54:08
morning is like what should I do today should I continue to build this retail Empire should I watch my cost should I keep visiting stores no he there was no introspection he was like a shark he woke up and he just swam there's a
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simple genius to that so in Mir kami's case the ultra marathon Burns him out he gets the runners Blues it takes several years and a lot of this like lack of excitement about running before he picks up the passion again and does it on a
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daily basis and once he works his way through this depression through this Runners Blues he does a recommitment there's this great book on Vince Lombardi called the Lombardi rules and rule number six is really important and
54:46
it says the essence of commitment is making a decision the Latin roote for decision is to cut away from as in an decision when you commit to something you are cutting away all your other possibilities all your other options and
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that is the story of Mir kami's Memoir this commitment to his dual obsessions I didn't start running because somebody asked me to become a runner just like I didn't become a novelist because someone asked me to one day out of the blue I
55:12
wanted to write a novel and one day out of the blue I started to run simply because I wanted to I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life people may try to stop me and convince me I'm wrong but I won't change I expect
55:26
that this winter I'll run another Marathon somewhere in the world and I'm sure come next summer I'll be out in another Triathlon somewhere giving it my best shot thus the seasons come and go and the years pass by I'll age one more
55:40
year and probably finish another novel one by one I'll face the tasks before me and I'll complete them the best I can focusing on each stride forward but at the same time taking a Long Range View scanning the scenery as far ahead as I
55:56
can I am after all a runner and that is where I'll leave it for the full story highly recommend reading the book I devoured it like I said you know day day and a half you could probably read it in a weekend if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player also available at Founders podcast.com you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 357 books down 1,000 a go and I'll talk to you again soon