Video Source: World champion chess player Magnus Carlsen on the Joe Rogan Podcast (February 2025)
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Have you ever felt that gnawing suspicion that there must be a better way?
That beneath all the grinding, the pushing, the sacrificing—there's a path to extraordinary achievement and growth that doesn't require you to wage a constant war against yourself?
I spent 15 years believing the gospel of hustle, squeezing every hour from my calendar and pushing myself to exhaustion. And I achieved "success"—building a million-dollar social impact company and winning three entrepreneur of the year awards before I turned 30. The only problem was that I felt empty, drained, and wondering what was wrong with me for not enjoying the journey. Moreover, I couldn’t reconcile the two parts of my life—maximizing the productivity of every second at work and being fully present with my family and myself.
Hitting this low inspired me to become a full-time explorer.
I spent the next 10 years reading hundreds of studies while being mentored in hundreds of sessions by master coaches on the topics of:
The paradigms, habits, and methods of extraordinarily impactful achievers across arts, science, leadership, and innovation—from Einstein and Edison, to Bezos and Buffett, to Dalio and da Vinci, to Curie and Cartland, to many others.
The topics of meta-learning, psychology, motivation, neuroscience, mental models, productivity, goal setting, creativity, systems theory, network science, and much more.
Various diverse modalities of personal transformation and fulfillment (somatic therapies, NLP, psychedelics, Internal Family Systems, developmental psychology, and more).
Over time, I synthesized the dots into a new paradigm of effortless achievement that changed my life and will hopefully transform yours too.
After burning out in 2014, I transformed my entire career paradigm—from "grow as big and fast as possible" to "surf the edge of my own evolving curiosity." The results have been transformative:
I now spend 90% of my days following my curiosities, learning, reflecting, and expressing ideas
I genuinely feel like a kid in a candy store every day, spending most of my time in flow
I've built a business that scales ideas rather than employees, impacting thousands of people
I'm actually making more money and impact than when I started my day focused on it
I didn't think this lifestyle was possible until I read about Warren Buffett's schedule, via his longtime business partner Charlie Munger:
You look at his schedule sometimes and there's a haircut.
Tuesday, haircut day.
That's what created one of the world's most successful business records in history.He has a lot of time to think.
When I first read these words over 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine how the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world could spend 80% of his time reading and thinking.
But, they were enough to give me inspiration. Over the following years, I slowly reclaimed my schedule, and I can honestly now say that I have a "Buffett Schedule."
Today, I'm sharing the first chapter of my new book, INFINITE DEVOTION, which catalogues this journey. The book includes:
20+ curated video clips
80+ academic study and book citations
Insights across 10+ fields (psychology, neuroscience, creativity, AI, etc)
20+ exemplar case studies from throughout history
Become a paid subscriber to access exclusive benefits including the complete PDF, implementation guides, an assessment, and $2,500+ in bonuses that will help you apply these principles immediately in your life and work.
The book begins with a paradox embodied by the greatest chess player in history...
CHAPTER #1: THE MAGNUS PARADOX
"I'm known in the chess world for being a little bit lazy."
With these words, Magnus Carlsen—regarded as the best chess player in history—casually dismantles one of our most fundamental beliefs about greatness.
To appreciate the implications of this simple sentence, we need to go back in time.
Since Malcolm Gladwell popularized Anders Ericsson's research, the 10,000-Hour Rule has dominated our cultural understanding of mastery. The formula seems irrefutable:
Structured training regimens
Targeting weaknesses
Expert coaching
Relentless discipline
Sacrifice
Triumph of will over comfort
Think of every sports movie you've ever seen: the montage of grueling dawn workouts, the coach pushing the athlete beyond their limits, the sacrifice of normal life in pursuit of greatness.
Think of all the hustle culture memes:
As a society, we've internalized this as the only path to extraordinary achievement. As a prototypical example, Olympic champion Michael Phelps embodies this narrative perfectly:
Read his words closely:
For five or six years, I went every single day without missing a single day. I was in the water on Christmas, birthday, holidays, everything. It didn't matter.
…I swam for over 20 years and I can guarantee you there was probably a hundred days where I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to stay in the pool or stay in my, in my bed and not get out. But those were the days where you have to. You have to get up and do something because I think that's really what separates the good from the great.
This is the gospel of achievement we've all been taught. This is what your parents meant when they said "nothing worthwhile comes easy." This is what every coach, teacher, and self-help guru preaches: greatness requires suffering.
Yet here stands Carlsen directly contradicting the gospel:
I've never been the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, works six, seven hours, and plays chess like a normal job. The thing is that chess has always been a bit of a hobby for me. Once it starts to feel like work, then it's harder for me.
As a case in point, the one time his coach assigned homework, Carlsen simply replied:
I don't like homework.
Recognizing Carlsen's intrinsic motivation and stubbornness, the coach adapted. Carlsen explains what happened next on the Lex Fridman Podcast:
So what he would do instead is that at the school where I had the trainings with him, there was this massive chess library. So he was just like, yeah, ‘pick up books.’
Most interestingly, Carlsen doesn’t just view his stubbornness as a quirk. He views it as fundamental to his success:
The most important thing that I've done is that I have not really listened to people who want me to do things a certain way, because that's the way things have always been done.
According to everything we've been told about expertise, these attitudes should have guaranteed mediocrity. Yet they produced the most dominant chess champion in history.
The most obvious explanation is that Carlsen is simply a genetic anomaly whose natural talent allows him to bypass the work others must do. While innate intelligence is almost certainly part of the equation, it is also almost certainly not the full picture. Chess history is filled with child prodigies who never reached Carlsen's level of sustained dominance, suggesting something beyond raw talent is at work.
So what reconciles this contradiction? How could someone reach unprecedented heights while rejecting the very formula we've been told is essential?
The answer begins to emerge when Carlsen describes his deeper relationship with chess:
"The difference between me and the other kids is that they would go to chess practice. They would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing the game in the way that I was. I think about it all the time. I'm thinking about the game while sitting on this chair. I'm still analyzing a game that I played today. It never goes completely out of my mind."
This constant immersion reveals what conventional expertise research consistently misses.
Consider this striking anomaly: a 2014 study analyzing deliberate practice among elite chess players found that by age 23, Carlsen had accumulated just 18 years of practice compared to an average of 24.6 years among the next ten highest-rated players.
By traditional metrics, he should have been at a significant disadvantage.
Yet what these measurements fail to capture is precisely what Carlsen articulates—his perpetual engagement with chess. While researchers count only structured practice sessions, Carlsen's mind never stopped processing chess. The stopwatch of deliberate practice only runs during formal training, but Carlsen's mind continuously strengthens, analyzes, and integrates chess knowledge throughout his daily life.
This methodological measurement limitation points to a profound insight:
What if our dominant models of expertise development are measuring the wrong things?
Stated differently:
The masters we admire don't count practice hours—they dissolve the boundary between identity and craft until 'practice' disappears and only devotion remains.
This illuminates an alternative path to mastery that has been hiding in plain sight—one that operates by entirely different principles than the 10,000-Hour Rule. I call it "Infinite Devotion."
Infinite Devotion is achievement driven by internal magnetism rather than external pressure—where your work pulls you forward instead of requiring a push. It's the state where fascination dissolves the boundary between identity and activity, creating a self-sustaining cycle of mastery that feels like play. Unlike discipline-based achievement that depletes your energy, Infinite Devotion creates energy, turning "practice" into a natural expression of who you are becoming.
Infinite Devotion Goes Beyond the 10,000-Hour Rule
The distinctions between deliberate practice and Infinite Devotion are profound:
Deliberate Practice follows a schedule—defined blocks of intensely focused work targeting specific weaknesses. Infinite Devotion never clocks out—the mind remains engaged with the field continuously, processing information even during supposed downtime.
Deliberate Practice imposes structure from outside—training regimens, drills, expert coaching. Infinite Devotion grows organically from within—driven by curiosity, fascination, and the pleasure of engagement itself.
Deliberate Practice often requires pushing through resistance—forcing yourself to work when you don't want to. Infinite Devotion dissolves resistance entirely—the activity becomes so integrated with identity that stopping would feel unnatural.
"Everything has to be about enjoyment," Carlsen insists. Contrast this with Phelps who says that he didn’t want to get out of bed 99% of the time.
Said differently, Carlsen and Phelps don’t just have slightly different approaches. They have diametrically opposed ones:
Phelps: I succeed because I push myself when I don’t want to.
Carlsen: I succeed because I love what I do so much that I’m obsessed.
This stark contrast forces us to reconsider what we've been labeling as character flaws. Perhaps Carlsen's 'laziness' isn't a limitation he succeeded despite, but rather an intuitive wisdom guiding him toward his authentic path. This suggests a profound reframing:
What society calls 'laziness' may actually be the intelligence of your soul refusing to waste energy on paths that aren't truly yours.
Clearly Carlsen isn’t lazy or ineffective. Clearly, he still does hard things. He just doesn’t glamourize hard work for the sake of hard work. Rather, his experience of hard work is fundamentally transformed by his obsession. Or as famous psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi puts it:
A person who has achieved flow in his work will find that the distinction between work and leisure becomes meaningless, and hard work itself takes on a different meaning. Instead of being something one does in opposition to pleasure, it becomes a source of enjoyment.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
What we're witnessing in Carlsen's approach is more than just an alternative strategy—it represents a complete paradigm shift. His "Infinite Devotion" is a new effortless framework for achievement that is deeper, more effective, longer lasting, more enjoyable, and easier to sustain than what deliberate practice alone can achieve. Not only that, it is backed by decades of research across disciplines and by countless case studies.
But the implications of this paradigm shift extend far beyond chess. As we explore what Carlsen's approach truly represents, we uncover a fundamental challenge to our entire understanding of achievement itself - one that arrives at precisely the moment when our conventional wisdom about excellence is showing dangerous cracks.
The Choice Before Us
Let's be brutally honest about what's happening in our achievement culture.
We're witnessing a collapse of the old paradigm in real time:
Record-breaking burnout rates. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2023 report, approximately 44% of employees reported experiencing burnout "sometimes," "very often," or "always." Putting this number in context, disengaged and burned-out employees cost the world economy a staggering $8.9 trillion annually. That was nearly 9% of the 2023 global GDP!
The Great Resignation and quiet quitting phenomenon. Astonishing Gallup Research also identified that at least 50% of the U.S. workforce consists of "quiet quitters" – employees who do the minimum required while being psychologically disconnected from their work. This widespread disengagement represents a fundamental shift in how people relate to achievement and traditional career paths.
Young people rejecting traditional prestige careers. The 2023 Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey revealed that work-life balance and well-being have become primary career concerns for younger generations, outranking salary and advancement opportunities.
These aren't just statistics. They're millions of human beings waking up with knots in their stomachs, dragging themselves through days that feel like endurance tests, sacrificing their health and relationships on the altar of work—all while wondering why they don't feel the fulfillment they expected.
Most devastating of all: many believe this suffering is the unavoidable price of success or impact—that their struggle is a personal failure rather than evidence of a fundamentally flawed paradigm.
What’s the value of decades of research on expertise, peak performance, and productivity, if people either aren’t following the protocols or are feeling empty and burned out as a result?
Bottom line: Our most talented minds are breaking under the weight of a fundamentally flawed approach to excellence.
The Hustle Culture Trap: Why We Cling to What Hurts Us
If hustle culture is so demonstrably harmful—creating record-breaking burnout, mental health crises, and mass resignations—why does it maintain such a powerful grip on our collective psyche? Why do we continue to glorify an approach to achievement that's failing before our eyes?
This paradox becomes even more perplexing when we consider that many of the most revolutionary contributions throughout history came from people who rejected this paradigm entirely. The deeper you look, the more you'll find that many history's most transformative figures weren't the most disciplined workers—they were the most devoted explorers.
My theory is that several interlocking psychological mechanisms explain hustle culture's dominance despite its failures:
Effort Justification Bias: When we sacrifice tremendously for something—our health, relationships, joy—we experience unbearable cognitive dissonance if we later question whether those sacrifices were necessary. Rather than confront the possibility that our suffering was optional, we convince ourselves it was essential. This explains why those who've sacrificed the most for success often become hustle culture's most zealous evangelists—the alternative would be too painful to accept.
Survivorship Mythology: We celebrate the rare individuals who endure the punishment of hustle culture and achieve conventional success, while ignoring the vastly larger population who burn out, break down, or simply lead unfulfilled lives following the same approach. This creates a distorted picture of what actually works.
Cultural Momentum: Our educational systems, workplaces, and media have institutionalized the discipline paradigm so thoroughly that it feels like an immutable law of nature rather than a cultural choice. When something is embedded in every system we interact with, questioning it feels not just difficult but almost nonsensical—like questioning gravity.
This all explains why simple exposure to alternative approaches rarely creates change. Telling someone trapped in hustle culture that there's an easier, more enjoyable path to excellence isn't just offering information—it's threatening their entire identity and meaning-making system. It's asking them to consider that their sacrifices might have been unnecessary—a proposition too threatening for many to contemplate.
But here's where the story takes a fascinating turn. Those who break free from this paradigm often describe the transition as similar to escaping a cult—a period of disorientation followed by a profound sense of liberation. They report not just greater achievement but a reclamation of their fundamental relationship with time, meaning, and identity itself.
Infinite Devotion isn't just a more effective approach to achievement—it's freedom from a psychological prison many don't realize they inhabit.
And yet, in this moment of crisis, there’s another possibility emerging….
The Pattern Hidden in Plain Sight
Once you recognize this alternative path of Infinite Devotion, you start seeing it everywhere:
Richard Feynman revolutionizing quantum physics while following his curiosity about wobbling plates in the Cornell cafeteria.
Lin-Manuel Miranda creating Hamilton after becoming so absorbed in a biography that he began hearing songs while reading – turning a vacation book into a cultural revolution.
Jane Goodall transforming our understanding of primates by ignoring conventional scientific methods and following her intuitive fascination with chimpanzee behavior.
Steve Jobs connecting calligraphy, design, and technology because he followed what he found beautiful rather than practical.
Marie Curie spending sixteen-hour days in her laboratory not because she disciplined herself to do so, but because she couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
And dozens of other examples I will share in this book.
These aren't just inspirational anecdotes. They're evidence of an entirely different operating system for human achievement – one where excellence emerges from alignment rather than struggle.
Infinite Devotion in Everyday Excellence
While figures like Feynman and Curie represent the pinnacle of achievement, Infinite Devotion operates just as powerfully in more accessible domains. Consider these examples from everyday professional fields:
The Software Developer who followed a fascination with user interfaces while peers memorized algorithms for interviews. Colleagues viewed their side projects as inefficient, but ten years later, they lead design systems at a major tech company with frameworks used by millions—all from following natural interests rather than conventional wisdom.
The Marketing Specialist who constantly analyzed why messages resonated during commutes, dinners, and while watching ads. While peers followed marketing playbooks, their continuous pattern recognition built intuitive understanding that made them the go-to expert when standard approaches fail. What feels like work to others is simply following curiosity.
The Teacher whose students outperform those from "stricter" classrooms because they experiment with teaching methods out of genuine curiosity about how different minds learn. Their seemingly casual approach reflects deeper engagement with education's purpose than more visibly disciplined methods.
The Small Business Owner who created a thriving restaurant without formal training by building the space where they themselves would want to spend time. While competitors followed industry formulas, their decisions—from menu to music—emerged from personal aesthetic rather than market research, creating authentic experiences customers consistently return for.
These examples show Infinite Devotion transforming careers and creating extraordinary outcomes. But perhaps the most powerful aspect of this paradigm is how it can infuse even the most seemingly ordinary activities with meaning and mastery.
Infinite Devotion Can Even Exist In The ‘Mundane"‘
While we often associate devotion with grand pursuits like scientific discovery or artistic creation, this same principle operates just as powerfully in everyday activities. The parent who approaches each interaction with their child as an opportunity for connection rather than a task to manage. The gardener whose relationship with plants transcends hobby status to become a living meditation. The home cook who turns daily meal preparation into an evolving expression of care and creativity.
In each case, what transforms the mundane into the meaningful isn't external recognition or extraordinary talent—it's the quality of attention and the relationship to the activity itself. When we bring our full curiosity and presence to any task, the artificial boundary between "significant work" and "ordinary life" begins to dissolve.
Even at the most basic level of making sushi, we can find Infinite Devotion. Below is my favorite clip from the documentary 'Jiro Dreams of Sushi' that follows 85-year-old Jiro Ono who has spent his whole life mastering sushi:
What unites all of the examples above and the ones I will share isn't extraordinary talent or sacrifice. It's a fundamentally different relationship to achievement itself—one where excellence emerges from alignment rather than enforcement. These individuals aren't working less hard than their peers; they're working differently, in a way that transforms effort from depleting to generative.
Most remarkably, each would likely describe significant portions of their work as "not feeling like work at all," despite investing thousands of hours in mastering their craft. This isn't because they've avoided difficulty, but because they've aligned with a current of intrinsic motivation that carries them through challenges that would deplete someone operating from external pressure alone.
The power of this approach extends beyond career achievement to our relationships, health, creativity, and overall wellbeing. When we orient around what naturally pulls our attention and energy rather than what we believe we should care about, we unlock resources of motivation and perseverance that disciplined enforcement can never access.
The Fork in the Road
We stand at a critical juncture – both individually and collectively.
One path continues down the road of discipline-driven achievement:
Push harder
Schedule every hour
Ignore resistance
Depend on deadlines and pressure to force you
Sacrifice health and relationships
Measure progress in time invested
Treat motivation as a willpower challenge
The other embraces devotion-driven achievement:
Follow fascination
Allow natural rhythms
Listen to resistance as intelligence
Integrate life and work
Measure progress in insights generated
Treat motivation as an alignment challenge
The first path leads to incremental improvements at enormous personal cost.
The second leads to breakthrough contributions that energize rather than deplete.
Preview Of The Journey Ahead
In the chapters ahead, we'll explore:
Introduction to Infinite Devotion. Discover the fundamental principles behind this revolutionary paradigm that challenges the 10,000-Hour Rule and reveals how Magnus Carlsen's "lazy" approach to chess mastery contains profound wisdom for achievement.
The Neuroscience of Effortless Mastery. Discover how Carlsen's "lazy" approach actually optimizes multiple brain systems for learning, from continuous memory consolidation and default mode network integration to the neurochemical advantages of intrinsic motivation that transform challenges from burdens into meaningful engagement.
The 7 Paradoxes of Infinite Devotion. Explore the counterintuitive truths that explain why approaches like Magnus Carlsen's work, despite contradicting everything we've been taught about excellence.
The Hidden Operating System of Genius. Understand the eight principles behind extraordinary achievement that have guided history's most influential figures from Darwin to Einstein to Jobs.
The Connection Between Infinite Devotion, Success, Health, and Happiness. Discover the research linking intrinsically motivated work with improved income, wellbeing, vitality, and longevity.
Infinite Devotion in the Age of AI. Explore how artificial intelligence serves not merely as a productivity tool but as a powerful amplifier of human curiosity and fascination, creating unprecedented opportunities for those who approach technology from the devotion-driven paradigm rather than just the discipline-driven one.
Newsletter subscribers will get these remaining chapters every other weekday (or so) in addition to a bunch of other perks to help you apply the lessons.
But this journey isn't just about understanding a new concept. It's about fundamentally transforming your relationship with achievement itself—from a battle against resistance to a natural expression of who you are.
In the end, Extraordinary achievement isn't born from extraordinary effort—it emerges naturally from extraordinary alignment.
What Paid Subscribers Get
Interaction. Get access to the comments so you can ask questions.
Full PDF of the book with prompt. The PDF allows you to upload it to AI so you can chat with it. The prompt helps you get the most from the book.
Behind-the-scenes stats. Whether the launch is a success or a failure, I will share behind the scenes stats on the results of each email (upgrades to paid). I will share this publicly so other thought leaders can learn from my experiment of releasing a chapter via a book.
The Complete Infinite Devotion Manual — Get my full 34,000+ word comprehensive guide including all examples, case studies, and in-depth explorations of how to implement this paradigm in your life.
Detailed Bibliography with 50+ Categorized Sources — Access a meticulously organized collection of academic research with explanatory paragraphs connecting each source to the Infinite Devotion framework.
Practical Implementation Guide — Learn step-by-step approaches for transitioning from discipline-driven to devotion-driven work, with specific strategies to transform not just your productivity, but your entire experience of life. Learn how to handle necessary but unenjoyable components of mastery and work while staying in the Infinite Devotion framework.
The Infinite Devotion Assessment — Take a comprehensive self-evaluation to determine where you currently fall on the spectrum between Finite Discipline and Infinite Devotion, with personalized insights for your journey.
The Infinite Devotion Planning Framework — Access a complete system for setting direction, making decisions, and creating achievements while maintaining intrinsic motivation and avoiding burnout.
Stepping Stone Mastery Manual — Master the art of following emergent opportunities and navigating your career through curiosity rather than rigid planning.
Infinite Devotion Class — Deepen your understanding through structured learning materials that break down the concepts into applicable wisdom.
$2,500+ in other bonuses (classes, templates, prompts, books)
All these premium materials are available for just $20/month or $100/year — a small investment to transform your relationship with work, creativity, and achievement.
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