09/02/2025
After having spent an extended period of time training and listening to many hours of podcasts, I wanted to reflect on a few key ideas from none other than himself:
- Pull the string - start, when you’re not sure what to do, when you don’t want to do, start. Pull the string and begin, because starting is the hardest part and once you start you’ll find that the string begins to pull faster. I think this applies to any asleep of life, trying to get in shape, starting a business, working on a new project at work, etc.
- Volume negates luck - I often don’t tell people good luck in their endeavors if I know them well enough to know what is happening behind closed doors. I think that luck leaves things to this arbitrary idea that you can leave it to chance that you will be successful. While there are many things that can go wrong in an ultra, putting yourself in those situations as many times as possible before the actual test is a great way to mitigate the risk of a failure. “Outwork your self doubt” “Do so much work that it would be unreasonable for you to suck”
- Reference point, motivation & deprivation - I think this has been one of my favorite things Alex has discussed. He had someone ask him to give them motivation, to which his response was, “define motivation.” Which she couldn’t, and he then operationalized the definition in typical fashion. Motivation is the opposite of deprivation. You’re most motivated to eat, when you’ve been starved of food. Yet, it is different when talking about non-physiological needs. Things like being rich, where you may not have a lot of money, but are not motivated to go get rich. Which brings up the concept of reference points. That the reference point dictates the level of motivation. If you perceive your deprivation to be larger than those around you then you will be more motivated to achieve more. The people you surround yourself with and compare yourself to will be one of the biggest impacts on your life. “Always be the dumbest person in the room.”
While there are many more ideas and lessons to be gleaned from the many hours of podcasts, these are some that stick out. I hope you enjoy them!!