Brad Stulberg on the Way of Excellence, Involved Engagement, and Compounding Consistency

Richer, Wiser, Happier

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Brad Stulberg on the Way of Excellence, Involved Engagement, and Compounding Consistency

Guest: Brad Stulberg, author and performance coach Host: William Green Source: Richer, Wiser, Happier (The Investor’s Podcast Network) Date: January 2025 (episode released around publication of The Way of Excellence)

Key ideas

  1. Excellence as involved engagement. Stulberg defines excellence not as an outcome but a quality of relationship: caring deeply about something worthwhile that aligns with your values, removing the separation between actor and act. The concept derives from Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance): “Quality” is a sense of deep caring that “essentially evaporates the space between the person doing the activity and the activity itself.” The opposite is alienation — the defining problem of modern life.

  2. Compounding applies to skills, not just capital. Skill development follows the same compound-interest logic as wealth: small consistent deposits compound over a decade into genuine mastery. Heroic days or heroic sprints do not compound. What makes a portfolio resilient — minimising losses on bad days — maps precisely to “raising the floor”: what you do on your worst days matters more than what you do on your best. See Compounding.

  3. Balance is a myth; the identity house is the alternative. A single-room identity (fund manager only) is structurally fragile — one rupture destroys the whole house. The identity house has multiple rooms (professional, spouse, parent, athlete, community member) of different sizes; you don’t have to spend equal time in each, but you must ensure no room goes entirely mouldy. “Minimum effective dose” per room preserves the capacity to return; it is easier to maintain than to rebuild.

  4. Fundamentals vs. kabuki. Every craft has tried-and-true fundamentals and a surrounding industry selling pseudo-improvements. Stulberg cites Dan John: gym-goers spending 30 minutes foam-rolling and 15 minutes training. The fundamentals are what compound; the periphery is noise. In investing, Joel Greenblatt’s summary: “Value a business and buy it for less.” That is the whole thing.

  5. Process mindset and the 3–3–3 routine. Excellence requires a process mindset — breaking a large goal into the levers that actually move the needle, then into quarters, months, weeks, days. Stulberg’s personal framework: three daily practices (deep focus work, 45 minutes of movement, not fighting evening sleepiness), three weekly practices (digital Sabbath, long walk, time with friends), three monthly practices (spiritual reconnection, community, extended time in nature). The goal is not an elaborate routine but a few practices that let everything else function.

Content

Pirsig and the origin

Stulberg has read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fifteen times since undergraduate; his daughter is named Lila after Pirsig’s sequel. Pirsig’s Quality is the cutting edge of evolution: single-cell bacteria “sense and respond” to quality environments; humans inherited this drive but have a much longer life than reproductive age requires, so they need to find outlets for it in craft, contribution, and creation. We are drawn to excellence in others — Rothko’s canvases, Steph Curry’s jump shot — without intellectual analysis, because quality is pre-intellectual.

Alienation as the modern ailment

Alienation — disconnect from one’s own life and work — is the opposite of quality. Ubiquitous digital distraction (Stulberg calls it “algorithmic mass distraction”) and the pseudo-excellence industrial complex (hacks, quick fixes, 37-step morning routines) together create the conditions for a numbed-out, alienated life. Stulberg’s gas-pump anecdote: having 2½ minutes of quiet while filling the car, only to be interrupted by a video trying to sell a masterclass. “I can’t even connect with myself to fill up my car with gas.”

Quality is love

Avedis Donabedian, founder of the quality movement in healthcare, was asked on his deathbed what he had to say about quality after decades of rigorous metrics and dashboards. He said: “Quality is love.” The dashboards are necessary to stay on the path, but caring deeply — that is what love is about. Buffett described Berkshire as “lovingly built” over 60 years.

The identity house

Rather than balance (equal allocation across all domains), Stulberg recommends building an identity house with multiple rooms of different sizes. During a season of deep focus on one thing, other rooms need only a minimum effective dose — not a full commitment. The minimum effective dose is “whatever allows you to make sure that nothing important in your identity house completely goes moldy.” In athletics: maintaining fitness requires far less effort than building it.

Reckless vs. healthy obsession

Reckless obsession: you cannot stop even when you want to. Associated with anxiety, depression, and unethical behaviour. Healthy obsession: caring extremely deeply, spending outsized time and cognitive energy, but remaining in control — you can step away for two hours when a child needs you. “To be all in is required; to be all in all the time is dangerous.”

Consistency and raising the floor

“Everyone wants the secret to greatness, but the secret is there is no secret.” The path is: pick a thing, do it for a decade, learn from the greats, stay endlessly curious. What distinguishes elite performers is not heroic peaks but resilient floors — what they do on bad days. In portfolio terms: the fund that minimises losses in rough markets performs comparably to the fund that crushes good markets, because anyone can perform well on great days. Only the consistent ones last.