4,030.
That’s the number of pull ups David Goggins completed in 17 hours to break the Guiness World Record in 2013. To put this feat in perspective, this translates to doing, on average, four pull ups every minute for 1,020 minutes straight…
About every six months or so, when I feel I’ve grown complacent, I re-listen to Goggins’ first podcast with Joe Rogan, episode #1080 (link). If you haven’t listened to it before, you should. Goggins’ life story of enduring domestic abuse, racism, and repeated failure yet going on to become a Navy SEAL, army ranger, and decorated ultramarathoner is one unlike any other.
What fascinates me most about Goggins is the depth of his understanding of the human mind’s limitations (or lack thereof).
In psychology, there’s this concept called the “anchoring effect”, which describes a cognitive bias whereby a reference point (or “anchor”) influences an individual’s thinking.
Some weird findings have come out of researching “anchoring”.
In a 2003 study by Ariely, Lowenstein, and Prelec, experiment participants were shown an assortment of items - luxury chocolates, books, and computer accessories, for example. After introducing the products, students were asked if they would buy each good for a dollar figure equal to the last two digits of their Social Security Number (SSN). So, if their last two digits were 9 and 6, they would be asked if they would be willing to pay $96. After this accept/reject response, participants were asked to write down their maximum willingness to pay for the product.
Despite the seeming irrelevance of the ending SSN numbers, researchers found that participants with above-median SSN digits were willing to pay, 56 to 107 percent more than participants with below-median SSN digits. For some reason, these arbitrary SSN figures had a massive influence on the participants’ willingness to pay. It’s completely unintuitive.
I sometimes think about how certain “anchoring effects” might be adversely impacting me in ways I don’t realize or how I might be able to hack into “anchoring effects” to attain a desired outcome.
David Goggins’ 40% Rule is a great example of this.
The 40% Rule is a psychological reframing technique, and the idea is simple: when your mind and body tell you you're ready to quit, realize that you’re only 40% done. The rule is much easier explained than it is practiced, but when seriously applied the results are spectacular.
Case in point: In 2015, American entrepreneur Jesse Itzler released his book “Living With a Seal: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet”. In it, he writes about his experience living with David Goggins for a month.
On his first day with Goggins, Itzler was asked to do as many pull ups as he could. On his first set, he completed eight (just barely getting over the bar on his last rep). Thirty seconds later, Goggins told him to do another set. Struggling, he was able to do six more. Another thirty seconds later, Goggins told him to go again. With Itzler’s biceps and forearms burning, he found a way to squeeze in another 3 or 4.
Then, Goggins told Itzler that they wouldn’t leave the gym until he completed another 100 pull ups…
This is what the 40% rule looks like in practice - finding a way to fundamentally break down any preconceived notions of your limitations.
This is Goggins on Rogan’s podcast explaining his insight:
I started realizing through this process that the fucking mind is what you create and I started opening different doors that I didn’t think were even there - that I didn’t think even existed. The more doors I started to open up the more I realized that my potential is damn near endless...
The logic behind the 40% rule is that the mind has implicit reference points (or “anchors”) that it’s learned over time. These reference points, which seem relevant, are actually poor indicators of our true limitations and end up holding us back in ways we don’t realize.
It’s hard not to be seriously introspective when you learn about people like David Goggins. Because regardless of your objective, life’s too short to be confined by self-imposed barriers.
