David Epstein On Why Constraints Drive Creativity, The Myth Of Productive Freedom, & How Limits Make Us Better

Because everything's competing for your attention now, if you're not structuring your attention, then algorithms are going to structure it for you. David Epstein is a New York Times best-selling author, examining the factors that enable people to excel in sports, the arts, business, science, his TED talks on performance science have been viewed more than 11 million times. You're somebody who thinks a lot about how we can be better. I have now almost 20 years of experience in in embedding studies.

If I think there's some misperception out there, I'm kind of obsessive about wanting to to change the narrative. You may think that your brain is made for thinking, but it's actually made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible. We spend the most time and energy on the least important decisions because we're having trouble telling the difference between the options. What we often need to do is clarify our priorities.

For our productivity, for our sense of well-being, we have to have constraints and boundaries. And that's hard, but more important in this kind of information overload, infinite choice world that we're living in now. David, so great to see you. So excited to have you back on the show. It's been a handful of years.

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