How David Goggins Studies & Learns | David Goggins & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | Well, most people just look at me as the guy that runs and yells as he's running.
00:00:07.520 | And while I do that, you know, to motivate people, but people don't understand that my
00:00:13.320 | day is broken up into segments.
00:00:16.320 | I work out, I eat, I sleep, but I spend most of my time studying.
00:00:21.240 | So like I'm in the medical world, I'm a paramedic in Canada, but I spend a lot of my time trying
00:00:28.200 | to nuke every single thing about it, because I'm not trying to just be a paramedic, learn
00:00:34.320 | about veins and arteries and how the heart pumps and stuff like that.
00:00:37.840 | I'm trying to learn to the point where I can save someone's life.
00:00:40.880 | And even though paramedics are doing that all over the world, I'm trying to be that
00:00:44.800 | paramedic that can really dissect exactly what's going on and figure out, you know,
00:00:49.200 | what medication goes where, just trying to, you know, just trying to learn, you know,
00:00:53.120 | the algorithm of what's going on, man.
00:00:55.360 | So I spend a lot of time with it.
00:00:56.840 | I love the word algorithm, because when I teach biology or try and learn anything that's
00:01:02.240 | related to biology, especially the human body, I need to know the nouns, but it's the verbs
00:01:07.440 | that matter.
00:01:08.440 | And that's really what you're talking about.
00:01:09.440 | Like, like just saying that, that sits there, that brain part there doesn't tell you how
00:01:13.600 | it all works together.
00:01:15.400 | So what is your process for studying look like?
00:01:17.880 | Like if we dropped a camera in the room, but a microphone into that, into your inner dialogue,
00:01:25.800 | right?
00:01:26.800 | Gosh, wouldn't, wouldn't we all love that.
00:01:28.240 | But if we dropped a microphone into your inner dialogue, are you waking up looking at the
00:01:31.480 | books and going, yeah, fresh day, let's learn, or is some of the same resistance that you've
00:01:37.800 | talked about coming up around physical work?
00:01:40.880 | Is that coming up from time to time?
00:01:42.520 | You know what?
00:01:43.520 | I was nervous at first.
00:01:44.520 | I'm gonna keep the mother, I'm gonna keep it real, I'm gonna keep it real.
00:01:48.320 | So I'm not a real smart guy.
00:01:50.920 | And what I mean by that is I was born with ADD, ADHD, like my brain cannot retain information.
00:01:58.680 | I'm not some genetic freak when it comes to running, when it comes to lifting weights,
00:02:01.960 | I am absolutely the bottom of the barrel.
00:02:04.840 | And people will never believe me.
00:02:08.000 | And they can just, you know, whatever, believe what you want to believe.
00:02:11.480 | So when you asked me this question about what does studying look like for me, I have to
00:02:17.400 | go over the same page over and over and over and over again.
00:02:23.320 | While Jennifer can look at that page while she's, you know, quizzing me, she'll learn
00:02:28.200 | it right then as she's chilling on anything about it.
00:02:31.020 | She will quiz herself or quiz me and learn it as she's quizzing me.
00:02:35.720 | It's the most frustrating thing in the world how my brain works.
00:02:39.000 | So what I do is I literally sit there with a pen and paper, and I have my books, and
00:02:45.280 | I go through and have to write everything down every single day.
00:02:51.040 | I will study the same page until it's photographic memory from writing the same thing down.
00:02:58.360 | And then from there, I'll go back through and relearn again.
00:03:01.500 | So I'll learn the bulk of it, but then I'll go through and learn the small things within
00:03:09.640 | that.
00:03:10.640 | So if it's a medication, I'll learn what the medication does.
00:03:14.880 | Sometimes I'll learn how to even say the medication, because these medications aren't like, you
00:03:19.360 | know, like albuterol.
00:03:20.960 | No, it's very big words.
00:03:23.600 | So I'll go through and learn how to say the name, and I'll go through, learn what the
00:03:27.360 | dose is.
00:03:28.360 | Then I'll go through, and this is like every single day, it's not like, "Oh, I got it.
00:03:33.600 | Let's just go through."
00:03:34.600 | No, nothing is, "I got it."
00:03:36.480 | Every single thing, so I can't wait to get in this conversation because everything I
00:03:41.080 | do in life, it sucks.
00:03:44.800 | Everything I do in life, it sucks.
00:03:46.680 | That's why when I was 300 pounds and 24 years old, it wasn't like I had some big epiphany
00:03:51.800 | of, "Let's just go be a Navy SEAL and let's lose some weight."
00:03:56.600 | No, I knew my entire life was going to be a struggle, which is why I just ignored it.
00:04:03.400 | And I said, "I'm not even trying to jump off into this shit and learn how to read, how
00:04:09.800 | to write, how to memorize, how to become something I am not."
00:04:14.680 | But through that process, something happened to me, and I realized, this is why I feel
00:04:19.960 | sorry for no one.
00:04:22.200 | In this podcast, they're going to really not like me because people are going to think
00:04:28.000 | that I am maybe lying or maybe fibbing or exaggerating.
00:04:34.120 | No, I am literally, I was the lowest form on earth, no talent, no ability to learn,
00:04:42.640 | and I literally know what it is to be rock bottom and to build that up.
00:04:46.880 | So that question about learning, it's a pain in my ass, and I don't have to do it.
00:04:51.280 | So think about it, I'm 49 years old and I'm a multimillionaire.
00:04:55.560 | I don't have to do anything.
00:04:57.940 | So all I thought about when I was growing up is, "Man, I can't wait to one day get to
00:05:03.680 | the point where I no longer have to do this stuff."
00:05:07.320 | But what happens, I got older, it became a way of living.
00:05:11.240 | So how I do every day is how I do every day.
00:05:14.600 | It's a discipline.
00:05:15.600 | It's a regimen.
00:05:17.360 | It was a choice I made.
00:05:19.800 | And the choice I made was, what are you willing to sacrifice, and what are you willing to
00:05:25.620 | give up to find every bit of who you are as a human being?
00:05:29.960 | And I was willing to give up everything to do that.
00:05:32.120 | So studying is no joke.
00:05:34.600 | - I love that you're studying.
00:05:35.600 | And I recall a few years ago, I heard some interview or podcast with you, and you just
00:05:40.920 | threw out like, "I don't know what I'll do next.
00:05:43.320 | Maybe I'll be a scientist."
00:05:44.760 | And I went, "Yeah."
00:05:45.760 | I was like, 'cause I knew, 'cause I know you a bit, and I see your work out there, but
00:05:50.760 | we'd met before, that if you decided that, you were gonna do it.
00:05:55.640 | And learning medicine, which is what you're doing, learning human physiology is so detailed.
00:06:02.520 | And people out there have to understand, when you look at a textbook and you see the veins
00:06:06.720 | and the capillaries, different colors, when the body's open, they're not different colors.
00:06:13.200 | So I mean, some things have different color contrast, but it's not like it's all labeled
00:06:17.060 | when you pop it open.
00:06:18.780 | And so the process of writing things down by hand is important for you.
00:06:23.280 | So you go back and read those notes.
00:06:24.760 | Do you think about that stuff on your runs too?
00:06:26.760 | Are you segmenting your day?
00:06:27.880 | Like when you're done studying, are you heading out for a run and thinking about other things,
00:06:32.960 | or are you still rehearsing the material in your head?
00:06:36.440 | So when I write it down, I write it down and I'm able to, I'm actually looking down at
00:06:42.240 | this table right now, 'cause I'm back to writing.
00:06:45.000 | So I'm actually there right now as I'm speaking to you.
00:06:47.160 | I write it down in a way that I'm memorizing page 69.
00:06:52.320 | So I'm writing it down, so then writing it down in that page synced together in my brain.
00:06:58.260 | So I'm looking at the book in my brain right now.
00:07:01.880 | So that's just how it works for me, and I have to do it over and over again.
00:07:06.320 | So that page is stuck in my mind.
00:07:08.600 | So I'm literally flipping through pages as I'm taking these tests, and I'm taking these
00:07:13.240 | national tests to become a paramedic or become a advanced EMT or whatever.
00:07:17.360 | I'm literally, as I'm taking that test, I'm going through and I'm flipping pages in my
00:07:25.440 | head of where that page was, and how I do that is just from how I write it and how it's
00:07:30.280 | on the page.
00:07:31.280 | When I run, I can't recall any of it.
00:07:35.960 | I cannot bring any of that because I'm running.
00:07:40.640 | How my mind is wired now is that everything I do is what I do, because the focus it takes
00:07:46.920 | for me to, like right now, I'm running.
00:07:49.320 | I'm not like a great runner.
00:07:51.760 | I'm not like injury-free.
00:07:53.920 | So my first 20 minutes of the run, I'm limping.
00:07:58.040 | I'm literally limping because I've had several knee surgeries, and my body was twisted, and
00:08:03.880 | so now it's untwisting.
00:08:05.600 | So people look at me, "Oh, it looks like he's limping when he runs."
00:08:09.040 | I am limping when I run.
00:08:10.920 | My body's jacked up, so I'm focusing on how to get the best out of a broken body.
00:08:16.480 | So everything I do is a total focus on what I'm doing at that point in my life.
00:08:21.760 | So it seems like you've really trained away or somehow gotten away from the ADD that you
00:08:28.360 | mentioned, because what you described is like a deep trench, like a V-shaped trench.
00:08:32.240 | I'm imagining like there's a ball bearing, and it's like, and it can only go forward
00:08:35.560 | in that trench or back, and it goes forward.
00:08:38.520 | It's not like sliding around at the concave at the bottom, like a tension.
00:08:43.960 | So it's like you've trained that up.
00:08:46.160 | Is there a similar feeling when you're in the full focus of running versus full focus
00:08:51.200 | of studying?
00:08:52.200 | Is it kind of feel like, "Oh yeah, that's the same groove, but different thing," or
00:08:56.320 | is it just completely different world?
00:08:58.320 | It's a completely different world.
00:09:00.560 | It's just both of them for me, it's suffering, but it's suffering a whole different way.
00:09:05.680 | Like when I was going through school, I'll never forget, I think I was in third grade.
00:09:11.840 | And back then, ADD, ADHD, wasn't like, "Here's this medicine or here's this thing."
00:09:18.800 | They want to put you in a special school.
00:09:21.040 | So for me, I was so far behind in learning that their big thing was, "Let's just put
00:09:26.440 | him in a special school because he'll never learn."
00:09:29.960 | And through that process of like, "I don't want to be in a special school.
00:09:34.560 | I don't want to be treated any differently."
00:09:37.520 | It really, like I never took medication, I've never taken medication for this.
00:09:42.520 | That's why right now you see me looking right in your eyes, what the hell is human saying
00:09:47.280 | right now?
00:09:48.280 | And that's why I don't feel bad for people who have ADHD, who have learning disabilities.
00:09:54.600 | And some are impossible because you just can't, but a lot of them you can.
00:10:00.880 | And but people don't want to go through the process of focus, of teaching yourself how
00:10:06.280 | to truly focus.
00:10:07.560 | This is where my message gets lost.
00:10:09.880 | It gets lost because I may say, you know, MF or F, you know, I may be because that's
00:10:14.760 | the passion that comes out of me because that's, it takes everything for me to learn a sentence.
00:10:22.400 | So when I speak about David Goggins, I can't speak about David Goggins in a way that's
00:10:26.880 | just calm and cool.
00:10:29.440 | Because when I wake up, I know the journey that it takes for me to find my greatness.
00:10:33.440 | And it's hard, every, nothing is easy.
00:10:37.680 | Nothing just like, oh, I wake up and I just do this or I do that, or it just, you know,
00:10:41.760 | I watch people every day go through life and it's so easy.
00:10:45.880 | For me to be where I'm at today, it takes every bit of me.
00:10:50.140 | So when I speak about it, and as I get going here, you'll start seeing me, the temple will
00:10:55.120 | rise, the passion will come out because I'm back there.
00:10:58.880 | I'm doing what I do every day to become a human being.
00:11:02.160 | And so nothing is easy.
00:11:04.280 | Like running is running, it sucks, but you have a choice to make.
00:11:08.920 | Do you want to sit down and go back to that guy you once were?
00:11:12.680 | No.
00:11:13.680 | So this is what it takes.
00:11:15.960 | It takes that misunderstanding of people and they'll never get it because they were never
00:11:19.600 | David Goggins.
00:11:21.520 | So that is what it takes for me to do what I do.
00:11:23.640 | It may take you something differently.
00:11:25.820 | So for me, everything has to be in the study.
00:11:27.920 | Everything has to be into this.
00:11:28.920 | It has to be in everywhere I am, it has to be there.
00:11:32.200 | Me, focus where I am.
00:11:33.200 | That's why you're my second podcast I've done since Rogan, since the book came out.
00:11:37.400 | I don't have time for that shit because if I want to be great, I'm not trying to maximize
00:11:42.800 | money or maximize people knowing me.
00:11:45.680 | I do these things because maybe someone out there will understand me and get it and say,
00:11:51.800 | I can grow from this guy and others just won't.
00:11:55.000 | [Music]