The Way of Excellence

In The Way of Excellence, Brad Stulberg defines excellence not as elite achievement but as a universal human capacity and lays out a framework for cultivating it. The book is divided into two parts: The first establishes a theoretical foundation drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, while the second outlines practical mindsets, habits, and practices.

Stulberg opens by posing the question "When are you at your best, and what does it feel like?" Hundreds of people across professions converge on similar answers: working without distraction on something meaningful, feeling fully alive, and experiencing deep satisfaction. He defines excellence as "involved engagement in something worthwhile that supports your values and goals" (3), combining two components: mastery, or developing skill in worthwhile activities, and mattering, a sense that one's contributions are significant. He distinguishes excellence from common impostors including perfectionism, obsession, optimization, happiness, and flow, a state of values-neutral absorption that can occur during destructive activities as easily as productive ones. Citing data showing over 75 percent of people experience burnout annually and only 32 percent feel fully engaged at work, he frames modern algorithmic distractions and fractured attention as forces that alienate people from the states of being they most desire.

The first chapter traces the biological roots of excellence back nearly four billion years to bacteria, which survived by sensing whether conditions were favorable and responding accordingly. Stulberg follows the evolutionary chain through the emergence of nervous systems and the development of homeostatic upregulation: an innate drive toward flourishing, with feelings serving as the guide. He presents the four phases of competence, which describe how skill develops from unconscious incompetence through conscious effort to unconscious competence, where performers act through feeling rather than deliberate thinking. Violinist Hilary Hahn illustrates this stage, describing performance as total immersion rather than analytical thought, and golfer Tiger Woods speaks of the moment "feel and real start intersecting" (21). Stulberg also cites neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's finding that patients with damage to emotional-processing brain regions retain their intellect but cannot make real-world decisions, evidence that feelings are essential to functioning.

The second chapter explores how thinking complements feeling. Stulberg introduces episodic future thinking, the ability to simulate different futures and anticipate their emotional consequences, and identifies three core psychological needs from self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, and belonging. He introduces the term shitty flow, coined by psychologists David Pizarro and Paul Bloom, to describe absorption in activities that feel engrossing but leave one empty afterward. He contrasts hedonic happiness, focused on pleasure, with eudaimonic happiness, rooted in meaning, citing research showing the latter yields more lasting satisfaction. He emphasizes that identical effort produces a different physiological response depending on whether one views the challenge as worthwhile, and coins the term zombie burnout to describe the restless exhaustion of not doing enough meaningful work. He recommends designing physical spaces to support excellence and practicing a weekly digital sabbath.

The third chapter builds a philosophical case for excellence as a moral virtue, centered on Robert M. Pirsig's concept of Quality from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: a pre-intellectual awareness that collapses the distance between actor and act when one cares deeply. Stulberg traces parallel ideas across traditions, including the Greek arete, or excellence through fulfilling one's purpose; Confucian wu-wei, a state of harmonious activity; and Spinoza's conatus, an innate disposition to persist and improve. He argues that modern alienation erodes Quality and produces existential loneliness, illustrating through singer-songwriter John Moreland, who after excessive touring and online promotion felt alienated from his art. Moreland stopped touring, discarded his smartphone for six months, and wrote his next album, Visitor (2024), alone at home, exemplifying what Stulberg calls intimacy with one's craft: focused attentiveness that fosters presence and depth. He concludes Part 1 by suggesting that excellence, Quality, and love may be the same thing.

Part 2 details sixteen factors of excellence. The first is care, which Stulberg calls the foundation. He argues passion develops through fit and grit: exploring widely, quitting when necessary, and committing once alignment with one's values emerges. He identifies fear as the biggest barrier to caring and introduces the identity house metaphor: Identity should contain multiple rooms so that setbacks in one area do not collapse the whole structure. The scientific concept of self-complexity, or diversifying one's sources of meaning, is linked in studies to greater resilience.

On goals, Stulberg reframes them as vehicles for growth rather than endpoints, introducing the arrival fallacy, coined by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar: the false belief that achieving a big goal brings lasting fulfillment. On consistency, he argues it matters more than intensity and introduces the concept of raising the floor, or making bad days slightly better. Using a hypothetical example of golfer Rory McIlroy recovering from a mid-round collapse at the 2025 Masters, he illustrates the next-play mentality essential to sustained performance.

The chapter on trade-offs rejects conventional balance in favor of intentional prioritization, introducing the minimum effective dose of time needed to stay connected to each important life area. Focus addresses what Stulberg calls algorithmic mass distraction, the endless engineered interruptions served by digital platforms, noting that average sustained attention has dropped from two and a half minutes in 2003 to 47 seconds today. He advocates for deep-focus blocks of 50 minutes to two hours with devices physically removed. Discipline bridges the gap between motivation and action, drawing on psychologist Peter Lewinsohn's 1974 research showing that productive action improves mood more effectively than trying to change thoughts first. On renewal, Stulberg restates the equation that stress plus rest equals growth, citing playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, who conceived Hamilton during his first vacation from In the Heights. He establishes three features of genuine rest: not exerting self-control, not thinking about work, and not turning rest into work through obsessive tracking.

Confidence comes from accumulated evidence rather than bravado, grounded in self-efficacy, an evidence-based belief in one's capacity to meet challenges and work through uncertainty. Patience receives sustained attention: Charles Darwin took over 20 years to publish On the Origin of Species, biochemist Katalin Karikó researched mRNA for nearly 40 years before lifesaving vaccine development, and a study of 2.7 million US founders found that the average age at launch for the top 0.1 percent of fastest-growing businesses was 45. Staying in the game, Stulberg argues, increases one's surface area for luck.

Routine proposes a framework of three daily, three weekly, and three monthly practices, while cautioning against rigidity. Gumption, borrowed from Pirsig, represents forward inertia and measured enthusiasm. Curiosity serves as a powerful antidote to fear: The brain's pathways for planning, exploration, and discovery compete with its threat-response pathways, so activating curiosity deactivates fear. The chapter on failure is deliberately brief: Failure hurts, it is inevitable, and the only answer is to keep going.

Community receives fuller treatment. Stulberg cites a US Air Force Academy study showing peer fitness influence was 70 percent as strong as individual baseline, and the Harvard Study of Adult Development's 75-year conclusion, summarized by director George Vaillant: "Happiness is love. Full stop" (222). Joy, Stulberg argues, is the most sustainable fuel for excellence, illustrated through ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter's 2023 triple crown of three hundred-mile mountain races in 10 weeks. He distinguishes harmonious passion, rooted in intrinsic joy, from obsessive passion, driven by external validation and linked to burnout. The final chapter argues for deliberately marking milestones, illustrated through NBA coach Gregg Popovich's team dinners with the San Antonio Spurs.

Stulberg closes by restating the book's central metaphor: We are made to move toward excellence as a tree moves toward the sun. Excellence is not perfection or winning at all costs but a process of becoming, and reclaiming it means reclaiming one's humanity.