Episode 90: David Epstein on All Things Performance, Drive, Passion, And Range.

A special episode of the On Coaching Podcast featuring NYT bestselling author David Epstein. In this wide-ranging conversation covering all things performance, we start off by discussing my new book The Passion Paradox and the similarities with David’s new book Range. From there we dive deep into the psychology of performance before ending on a discussion on following your interest, instead of specialization. We hope that you enjoy this special edition of the podcast:

Walking the tight rope of drive and success (8 min)
How did passion evolve from meaning suffering to something positive. (12min)
Cultivating passion and motivation in runners. We need to look at what is driving each of our runners, and identify who is going down the path of a motivation style that isn’t sustainable. (18min)
What makes people cheat, or utilize performance enhancing drugs? One indicator is when people go from a position of winning to losing. (26min)
Racing tactics- When going from a strong position to a weak position, how panic plays a role. (28min)
“People don’t know how to shoot the shit anymore.” The role of social media on how we judge and validate ourselves (36min)
“Every new generation has a skill set that is taken for granted in the previous generation. It used to be fixing the car, now it’s interaction.” (40min)
Moving up the ladder. Let your interest drive you, not the title. (54min)
Path Dependency- When we get stuck in doing things that fit in our competency or comfort zone. How do we break away from that? (1hr 10min)