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now. I started thinking about obsession
and why no one understands obsession. I
think literally no one understands why
obsession is the way it is. Discipline,
motivation, and obsession are three
words that get thrown around quite a
lot. I think most people misunderstand
all three, and because of that, they
miss some very big lessons about how
life actually works. So, here's the
simplest way to separate those three
out. Discipline is I will make myself do
the thing.
Motivation is I want to do the thing,
and obsession is I can't not do the
thing.
So, all three produce the same outcome,
right? The thing gets done.
But, the internal cost couldn't be more
different, and the difference is
primarily around friction. So,
discipline is friction accepted. You
don't want to do the thing, but you do
it anyway. You lean on effort,
willpower, routines, and environments,
and design, and past patterns, and
habits, and drag yourself over the line.
And it's mostly under your control,
which is why it's so reliable. If you're
willing to pay the price, discipline
will always show up. But, the problem is
that the price is high. Discipline is
really expensive. Burns energy, creates
resistance, feels heavy. It works,
but it's a grind. And motivation is
friction reduced. You want to do the
thing, so the resistance drops. You
still need effort, but you need less of
it. Motivation comes from desire,
circumstance, novelty, and identity, and
community, and emotion. And you can try
to kind of manufacture it with goal
setting or visualization, community
support, and celebrating micro wins, or
me and Alex Hormozi compilation videos,
and heavy metal music.
Sometimes it works, but sometimes it
doesn't. Right, motivation is unreliable
because it's kind of downstream of how
you feel. When your mood dips,
motivation just [ __ ] evaporates.
Useful fuel,
but you can't build a life that depends
on it. And obsession
is friction inverted.
So, remember, we've got discipline,
friction accepted, motivation friction
reduced, and obsession is friction
inverted. You don't need to make
yourself do the thing,
you can't avoid doing it. You don't
push, instead the work sort of
pulls you toward it. It invades your
thoughts, it follows you into the
shower, into the car, into bed. And when
you're tired, it doesn't disappear.
Obsession is kind of like motivation's
poltergeist big brother,
who just never stops haunting you.
And because you can't switch it off,
that's why obsessions with negative
pursuits like politics, or porn, or a
toxic ex can be so destructive. The
reason that obsession is so powerful is
simple.
It's basically permanent free motivation
and discipline. You get output without
negotiation, and you get action without
having to tap into any willpower. To the
uh
fuel source equivalent of hitting a
superstar in Super Mario. So, this is
why obsession produces such
disproportionate results in a short
window of time. And people
look at the output and assume superhuman
discipline,
when in reality, if you're obsessed, the
work felt
almost unavoidable. People admire
discipline and envy motivation,
but very few understand obsession. And
because they don't understand it,
they waste it. So, here I think is the
part that people miss.
Obsession isn't a personality trait.
It's a state, which means that it can't
be summoned on command. You can't decide
to be obsessed. It appears when
curiosity, identity, reward, and meaning
sort of all accidentally align some
weird celestial bodies. And when it
appears, it doesn't last forever, which
is a tragedy. Obsession is a
non-renewable fuel source. When it
leaves,
you don't get it back on demand.
In future, it will take you so much more
effort to get even partially close to
this obsessive level of output. So, use
your free fuel while it's available,
which is why the correct response to a
positive obsession
isn't to suppress it, or balance it, or
apologize for it.
It's to surrender to it. So, if you're
currently obsessed with something
positive, my advice is to kind of let it
crawl inside of you and wear your skin
and stare out through your eyes. Like,
if you can't stop watching lifting
videos and spend all of your time
thinking about diet and training,
now isn't the time to be balanced in the
gym. Or if your sleep is wrecked because
you're ruminating about a business idea
that you can't wait to launch and then
you this isn't the time for you to seek
calm. You're allowed to go full on demon
founder mode with it.
Serial obsessives, as far as I can see,
move from intense project to intense
project, making huge progress while the
tide is with them, so that when the
obsession inevitably fades, something
important's happened already.
The rails for their future behavior get
laid down. So,
by the time that your obsession wanes,
you have built the patterns and
routines, the skills and habits that
allow you to keep going
when the fuel is no longer free.
So, I I started going to the gym when I
was 18 because I was obsessed with
gaining muscle, and I researched protein
shake formulations, and dreamt of going
to Gold's Gym in LA, and skipped nights
out partying to stay in my bedroom and
read the misc forums on
bodybuilding.com. Like, the most
autistic excuse for not going on a night
out ever. Nearly 20 years later,
I'm still training. And
not really even because I'm that
disciplined or motivated now, but just
because an old obsession of mine
fossilized into my identity. And you
know, being honest, this is true for my
meditation habit, and my research for
podcast guests, and the productivity
systems that I've got, and my desire to
build businesses.
What once obsessed me
has now just simply become me.
What often looks like discipline today
is just the
echo of someone's past obsessions.
This is
a quiet reframe that people basically
never say out loud.
Discipline sometimes isn't the starting
point. It's just the residue.
So, what It's what remains when
obsession cools down and settles into
routine.
So, if you're lucky enough to be
obsessed right now,
I think you can stop trying to moderate
it into something respectable. You can
stop worrying about whether it looks
excessive, and you can stop
pretending whether you're supposed to
feel balanced.
Balance is what you can enjoy later, and
obsession is what you get to embrace
now.
Basically,
as far as I can see it, most people
never get an obsession worth anything.
So, if you have one,
don't waste it.
And the more that I think about this,
and I look at a lot of the guys that
I've met who appear to be super
disciplined and they're absolutely
crushing it in life and they've got
they've their systems are so dialed and
you look from the outside and think
holy [ __ ] this person is
just a machine. What you don't realize
is that in the past they had no choice
other than to do that thing. They were
completely obsessed with it, consumed
their life, and now the like the cooled
heart of the dying star that's left
over, the brown dwarf of their previous
huge furnace
is the life that they still have. The
thing that obsessed them became their
identity. And um
yeah, sure. I said you can't engineer
obsession. I do think that's true. You
can certainly lay the ground the
foundations for it.
But the other thing is
some people are more obsessive than
others. I I
that's something that I've been blessed
or cursed with. I have a slightly
obsessive personality. Not wash my hands
all the time obsessive, but struggle to
switch off obsessive. And I'm going to
guess if you're watching this show that
you do, too. What that means is you are
going to probably like a a serial
monogamist, you're going to bounce from
obsession relationship to obsession
relationship. And if you dampen it down
too much, if you don't fully allow it to
kind of take over your life at least to
whatever level is healthy, or even maybe
a little bit beyond the level that's
healthy
you're going to miss out on free
motivation and free discipline. And then
at the end of it, because this isn't
going to last forever, right? Obsession
isn't going to it's a non-renewable fuel
source, you can't bring it back when you
want to.
Once that's cooled off, if you haven't
allowed it to kind of take over your
life fully, what you end up with is a
world where
you fought against
the thing you wanted to do
to stop it from being so
all-encompassing or like unrespectable.
And then once it's finished and you
don't have it anymore, you didn't gain
the momentum and the identity that
allowed you to kind of flow through it
afterward so that it then became the the
way that you show up. I'm just a guy
that goes to the gym. I'm just a guy
that build businesses. I'm just a guy
that meditate or whatever.
So yeah, I think uh
that's uh I I just I I love this I love
this idea. I love the fact that
obsession gets a really bad rap and in
many ways it can be horrible especially
when it's pointed toward politics or
pornographic but if it's pointed toward
something that's actually good you
should it to kind of take over your life
and then once it's finished everyone
will look from the outside oh my god
dude how do you how do you train so much
you know you like really consistent with
your training must be really disciplined
must be so motivated you like
not really man like I just used to be
obsessed with this and now it's
kind of who I am.
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