Brad Stulberg

My new book The Way of Excellence is out now. You can buy it here: wayofexcellencebook.com Writing it changed my life. I hope reading it does the same for you.

The velocity of the modern internet is untenable and trying to keep up with it—as a consumer, let alone as a producer—will fry your brain.

@aibytekat Did this really come from your therapist? I ask because it is essentially a brief summary of many of the main points covered in The Way of Excellence. amazon.com/Way-Excellence…

I told my therapist: “I feel like I’m running out of time to build the life I want.” She didn’t even ask why. She just looked at me gently and said:

@readswithravi Thanks for sharing, Ravi! For those who are interested to go deeper, here you go. This book is my best stuff. Writing it changed my life I hope reading it has an impact on yours. amazon.com/Way-Excellence…

Who we become in the process is the real reward.

@Tyler_A_Harper Agree.

This is a smart piece that rightly points out that AI friendships are simply the logical culmination of the hyper-individualistic, narcissistic model of friendship that already prevailed in the 21st century, well before the people-pleasing bots arrived. theatlantic.com/family/2026/03…

The ability to have fun while working hard is one of the greatest competitive advantages there is:

Genuine, heartfelt excellence starts to look a lot like love:

Steve Kerr is now an Oscar winner….of course he was the executive producer of the documentary "All The Empty Rooms" a seven-year project documenting the untouched bedrooms of children killed in school shootings 🙏

@AnishA_Moonka If you are interested in how to develop a deep reading practice, I wrote this for you. Committing to reading, even just a little a day, is a radical counter culture practice right now. And it's so important. x.com/BStulberg/stat…

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change. That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder. In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book. Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing. A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens. UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain. One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off. The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

@SahilBloom Good take.

On a flight and there’s a kid who’s been screaming for the last 15 minutes. Lots of passengers making faces at the parents. Before you do that, just remember, the parents are having a 100x worse time than you are. Guaranteed. Put in some headphones and relax.

@Literariium Check it out: open.substack.com/pub/bradstulbe…

The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books. The antidote for brain rot is books.

@natemechler @readswithravi Thank you!

@readswithravi Stoner - John Williams & The Way of Excellence - Brad Stulberg amazon.com/Way-Excellence…

What is the best book you’ve read this year?

The point of it all:

Price drop alert: The Way of Excellence is currently $7.00 off on Amazon. I don't control this or how long it will last. If you've been thinking about getting a copy this is a great time. The book has sold more than 20K copies in its first month. People seem to love it.

11 books that most influenced The Way of Excellence:

@drhoeflinger Thank you, Brian.

@BStulberg Well said

Excellence is not hustle-culture bullshit. It's not waking up at 4 AM to cold plunge and telling everyone about it, restrictive diets, sacrificing your soul, or bending the knee to make as much money as possible. As someone who wrote the book on excellence, it feels imperative to clear the air once and for all. People are longing for purpose and achievement. This longing has led to the rise of what I call internet excellence. At the extremes of internet excellence you get influencers who peddle steroids and other unregulated substances. Slightly less extreme are the complex protocols and fads that change every week: breathe this way, exercise that way, eat this not that, and on and on and on. Whenever you see a bunch of shallow influencers herding around a topic, it's because there's a real need to exploit. In this case, people—perhaps especially young men—feel numb and directionless. They're desperate for purpose. And right now, performative nonsense is winning. All humans have foundational psychological needs. We need to belong, participate in meaningful activities, feel competent, and have a direction to follow. In short: we need sources of mastery and mattering. In a chaotic world where people don’t know where they belong or where they are headed, they grasp onto groups and ideologies that make them feel good in the short term but backfire over the long haul. Without better alternatives, the Andrew Tates of the world fill the gap. Most influencers don’t know what they’re talking about. But they are world class at converting existential anxiety into attention and tribal loyalty. They turn someone’s genuine longing for more purpose and aliveness into a superficial feeling of being destined for greatness, even if it is built on a flimsy foundation of elaborate online kabuki. Instead of alpha, high-T, lion-mentality garbage, we need to model what true excellence actually looks like, especially for young people: - Hard, honest work - Showing up consistently - Caring deeply - Nailing the fundamentals - Staying patient - Developing focus - Practicing discipline - Building community - Failing and trying again If there is any battle, it is that of a performative excellence that benefits nobody but the grifters who are peddling it versus a more genuine and authentic version that benefits us all. Winning it will take role models stepping up at all levels: from teachers and coaches to award-winning artists and professional athletes. I’m trying to do my part. Please do your best to do yours.

Yeah, I hear you. I wrestle with this too, and it's hard. I think the biggest difference (in simple terms) is the morally bankrupt influencer has growth at the top of their pyramid. Things like integrity, truth, nuance, etc., fall below. So anything that promotes growth is a go. Whereas I absolutely have growth in my pyramid, but it falls below integrity, truth, nuance. So I do what I can to grow, but never at the cost of those other values. I think this post is a bit of an example. I included that image (which I find kind of unserious and flashy and stark) because I thought maybe it would help the post reach more people. But I'm not going to change the actual text of the post. I think I've done this pretty well, tbh. The latest book is selling a ton of copies and reaching many people. I'll never compete for attention with the likes of Bryan Johnson or whatever, but I think you can find and build a good audience, and even help people change their mind. It's often hard and thankless work, though.

@BStulberg So to defeat the nonsense influencer, you have to in fact, become the better influencer. That might mean compromises in order to get the message across, something I struggle with for almost a decade now.

@JeremiahDJohns @mattyglesias I also think this is a bit of a problem/confusion in the anti-ambition, nonchalant crowd. They don't realize how much of a dog you need to be to be great. Some people have insane talent (in sport especially) but generally, you've got to work really freaking hard.

@JeremiahDJohns @mattyglesias Yup. The secret is there is no secret. Shoot the 1000 jump shots. Write the 1000 words. Play each bar over and over. On good days when you feel hot. On bad days when you feel off. On in-between days, which are most of them. Consistency plus some natural talent is the way.

People underrate work ethic and consistency. You want to know why @mattyglesias has a huge audience? He's smart and interesting, sure. But more importantly, he's been blogging in some form for around *25 years*, and he puts out an insane amount of words every week.