#357 Haruki Murakami

**David Senra** (0:00)
The episode you're about to hear is about obsession. It takes Haruki Murakami over 30 years to find his two obsessions, which is writing novels and running. But once he finds them and dedicates his life to them, he discovers a lot of useful ideas that you and I can use in our work, and that is what his autobiography, that is what this book is about. One of my obsessions has been making this podcast so I can collect and distill the knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs. And I made a tool to make sure that I never forget these lessons, and I can pull them up on demand when I need them. That tool is Founders Notes, and you can now get access to the same tool that I use. Founders Notes lets you tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand when you need them. Since 2018, I've been putting all of my notes and highlights for all the books that I've read for the podcast into this giant searchable database that you can now use. So anytime you hear me, you're going to hear me reference a bunch of past founders on this episode, and on all the episodes I make for founders. When I talk about an idea from Jeff Bezos, or Walt Disney, or Sam Walton, or Charlie Munger, or Warren Buffett, or Jay Paul Getty, or Gordon Moore, and Bob Noyce, that ability to pull up their thoughts and ideas, that's just me searching through founders' notes and pulling up their ideas. This is really important to get across. When you subscribe to founders' notes, what you see in founders' notes, that's the tool I use. I don't have a different version. You see the exact same thing that I use.
So many subscribers of founders' notes are using it to help them think through issues that they're having in their company. From hiring and recruiting, to marketing, to leadership, to preparing for board meetings, to preparing sales presentations. If you're already running a successful company, I think it's a no-brainer to invest in this tool, and I just added a new feature that's also going to show you how I use it, and it's going to push ideas from History's Greatest Entrepreneurs directly into your brain quickly. I made a private podcast feed that comes with every single subscription to founders' notes. I call that private podcast feed Sage Advice.
I just made an episode for that feed that is about James Dyson, so I take 60 hours of reading because I've read both of his autobiographies. So you take his 40-year career, which is then distilled down into 60 hours of reading, which then I distill down even further into a 12-minute episode that is rapid-fire ideas from James Dyson on company building directly into your brain, and I found those ideas by searching through founders' notes. So the idea with these mini small episodes is I want to create another tool where if I can condense somebody's entire career, multiple books that I read about somebody into 10 minutes, into 12 minutes, you're going to be able to listen to that over and over and over again, and it will serve as a constant reminder and an easy way for you to download those ideas into your brain, so then you can use them in your career. So if you want access to the tool, that will give you the superpower to access the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs. When you need it, make sure you go and you subscribe. You go to foundersnotes.com, that is Founders with an S, just like the podcast, foundersnotes.com, and subscribe today. I hope you enjoy this episode on the obsessions of Haruki Murakami.
I'm a little hesitant about writing this book.
This is a book about running, not a treatise on how to be healthy. I'm not trying to give advice here like, okay, everybody, let's run every day to stay healthy. Instead, this is a book in which I've gathered my thoughts about what running has meant to me as a person.
Just a book in which I ponder various things and think out loud.
No matter how mundane some action might appear, if you keep at it long enough, it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.
Once, I was lying around a hotel room in Paris, reading the International Herald Tribune, when I came across a special article on the marathon. There were interviews with several famous marathon runners, and they were asked what special mantra goes through their head to keep themselves pumped up during a race. I was impressed by all the different things that these runners think about as they run 26.2 miles.