Steven Kotler

Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers—athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more—who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us. What does it take to accomplish the impossible? What does it take to shatter our limitations, exceed our expectations, and turn our biggest dreams into our most recent achievements? We are capable of so much more than we know—that’s the message at the core of The Art of Impossible. Building upon cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of research, bestselling author, peak performance expert and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, Steven Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement. If you want to aim high, here is the playbook to make it happen! Inspirational and aspirational, pragmatic and accessible, The Art of Impossible is a life-changing experience disguised as a how-to manual for peak performance that anyone can use to shoot for the stars . . . space-suit, not included.

A Peak Performance Primer

The Art of Impossible

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Simultaneously, what Csikszentmihalyi describes as "ontological anxiety" is both our fear of death and our desire for this life to mat- ter. It is a form of persistent cognitive load, what psychologist Ernest Becker called "the denial of death." When we focus attention in the present, we are taking attention off these forms of anxiety. This light- ens the load and lets us repurpose the extra energy for focus.

When we're in a good mood, the ACC is more sensitive to odd thoughts and strange hunches. Put differently, if an active ACC is the ready condition for insight, then a good mood is the ready condition for an active ACC. The opposite is also true. While a good mood in- creases creativity, a bad mood amplifies analytical thought. 

Creativity, then, from the perspective of brain structure, is alwavs Aot ontions. That's one reason it has proved so stubbornly difficult n understand. It's an invisible skill hidden inside our oldest skill: the exnloration and execution of action plans. If our explorations produce the same old action plans, we're being instinctive (a.k.a. efficient) but not creative. If we're producing completely novel action plans, we're creative but perhaps not efficient. But if we're producing novel action plans that are also efficient (a.k.a. useful and valuable), we've arrived at the now standard psychological definition of creativity "The production of novel ideas that have value"—yet on a sounder neurological footing.

This work gave us both a measurement tool and the rudiments of what has since become the accepted definition of creativity: "the process of developing original ideas that have value."

The cycle, according to Wallas and Poincaré, begins with a pe- riod of preparation. Here, a problem is identified and the mind starts to explore its dimensions. This leads to the second stage, incubation, where the problem gets passed from the conscious mind to the uncon- scious mind, and the pattern recognition system begins to chew on the problem. The third step is illumination, where an idea bursts back Into consciousness, often through the experience we call "insight." The cycle closes with a period of verification, where this new idea is Consciously reviewed, tested, and applied to real-world problems. 

Experts often feel dumber about their subject than novices. They know what they don't know and they know there's a lot they don't know they don't know. It's a daunting combination and one that can be crippling. Forward progress feels like backward progress and this can be demotivating. Instead, use this to your advantage. Those additional knowledge gaps are the foundation of curiosity, so follow them into five more books, and repeat the process.

Blogs: Three minutes gets you three days. Articles: Twenty minutes gets you four months. Books: Five hours gets you fifteen years.

Here's how Peter helped unlock the space frontier: He woke up, typed at his computer for a while, then had breakfast. Then he went someplace and had a conversation, then he went someplace else and had another conversation, then he opened up his computer and punched the keys again. Eventually, he had lunch. After lunch he went some- where else and had another conversation, then he talked on the phone a while, then he punched more keys on the computer. There were airplane rides and trips to the gym. Every now and again, he grabbed a shower, got some sleep, or went to the bathroom. And repeat. And repeat. 

University of North Carolina's Barbara Fredrick son discovered "the positivity ratio," or the fact that it takes three pos. itive thoughts to counter a single negative thought. "Three-to-one" she wrote in a recent journal article, "is the ratio we've found to be the tipping point beyond which the full impact of positive emotions becomes unleashed. 

David Foster Wallace, This is water; boredom, routine, and petty frustration; the need for thought control.

Twenty years after my own graduation, l have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. ... And I submit that this is what the real, no bull- shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, im- perially alone day in and day out. 

Quite often, passion feels like frustration on the inside and looks like obsession from the outside. Peak performers must learn to tolerate enormous amounts of anxiety and overwhelm, which is what pas- sion feels like much of the time. Passion doesn't make us gritty. Pas- sion makes us able to tolerate all the negative emotions produced by grit.

Passion showed up earlier a concept related to curiosity. Now it’s an aspect of persistence. Which is it? Both?

When researchers tease "persistence" apart, they find three psychological traits: willpower, mindset, and passion. Again, there are no shortcuts. You need all three for sustained high performance.

In the early 2000s, Angela Duckworth replaced zeal" with "pas. sion" and capacity for hard labor" with "perseverance." It's the combination she famously calls "grit." In a series of studies, Duckworth discovered that this combination was twice as important to academic success as IQ. 

The act of telling someone about your goal gives you the feeling that the goal's already been achieved. It releases the dopamine you're supposed to get afterward, prematurely. And with that neurochemistry comes the feeling of satisfaction. This is the issue. Once you've already felt that high, it's difficult to get back up for the hard fight required to actually earn it. As the saying goes, real bad boys move in silence. 

Just the goal setting itself without any further incentive for teaching them.

Latham and Locke found that setting goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent. 

Drive is the psychological fuel that pushes us to obtain resources. We have the greatest chance of obtaining those resources if we have a plan for chasing them (curiosity, passion, purpose), the freedom to chase them (autonomy), and the skills required for that chase (mastery).

“The single biggest motivator,” explains author Dan Pink in Drive, ”by far, [is] making progress in meaningful work.”

Neurobiologically, purpose alters the brain. It decreases the reactivity of the amygdala, decreases the volume of the medial temporal cortex, and increases the volume of the right insular cortex. A less reactive amygdala translates to less stress and greater resilience. The medial temporal cortex is involved in many aspects of perception, suggesting that having a purpose alters the way the brain filters incoming information, while a larger right insular cortex has been shown to protect against depression and correlate with a significant number of well-being measures. 

It was an okay book. I think it is a little too light on examples. Sure, I want to discover my “Massively Transformative Process”, but how? The goal-setting section was good, but the sales pitch to enter into the author’s special program at the end has left a sour taste in my mouth. 

jason birchall

Interesting insights in prose that’s slightly too journalistic for my taste.

Jeremy Anderberg

“You get one shot at this life, and you’re going to spend one-third of it asleep. So what do you choose to do with the remaining two-thirds? That is the only question that matters. . . . you lose by not trying to play full out, by not trying to do the impossible—whatever that is for you.”

Kotler’s The Rise of Superman is one of the books I recommend most; the extreme sports anecdotes and insights into how to achieve a flow state are mind-bendingly interesting.

This new book is a continuation of his lifelong work of helping people achieve their big goals. The Art of Impossible walks through, in fine detail, every step on the path towards the impossible—“the feats that no one, including ourselves, at least for a while, ever imagined we’d be capable of accomplishing.”

There are scientific/psychological insights on creativity, flow, motivation, grit, even compiling your weekly calendar and to-do list. Right on page 1, Kotler calls this book a “practical playbook for impractical people.”

It’s nitty gritty—in a good way—and fills a very concrete need in the world of motivational books. If how-tos are your thing, don’t look any further. After reading, it really does feel like you can achieve what seems like a crazy, impossible goal (though it certainly won’t be an easy road). While I usually roll my eyes at these types of books, every few years there’s one that stands out from the crowd. The Art of Impossible is that stand-out.

More of a 4.5 or 4.75 than a 4-star, for sure. Really inspiring.

The Art of Impossible A Peak Performance Primer

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