The One-Skill-a-Year Plan for a More Interesting Life

Brett McKay (0:00)

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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders, tackling their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also, be sure to explore articles in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack newsletter at dyingbreed.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

We all have things we've always wanted to know how to do, but have never gotten around to learn. Speak a foreign language, play an instrument, write a book, take up surfing. Maybe you've even started one of these pursuits a few times, only to drop it after a couple of weeks. My guest calls this collection of abandoned or deferred desires your Invisible List, and is the author of a book of the same name. Today on the show, Ravi Gupta presents a plan for tackling the things in your Invisible List by picking one hobby-like activity each year and working your way to an intermediate level in it. He explains the different categories these pursuits can fall into, from the lift-off project to the mental marathon to the skill batacle, and how to pick the right one for your season of life. We also discuss how camps for grown-ups can make skill acquisition more enjoyable, why you should consider taking up an adult-appropriate sport like tennis, why Ravi decided to take the MCAT even though he doesn't plan to become a doctor, and how working on your Invisible List can give your life chapters and, over the course of a decade, turn you into a renaissance man badass.

After the show is over, check out our show notes at awm.is slash Invisible List.

All right. Ravi Gupta, welcome to the show.

Ravi Gupta (2:48)

Excited to be here.

Brett McKay (2:49)

So you got a new book out called The Invisible List. We're going to talk about what the Invisible List is today. But you start the book off with how you were going to friends' weddings who were getting married. And there's one wedding you went to in particular that you realized, I've got this Invisible List, which is like stuff I've wanted to do my entire life, passions, hobbies, but I never got around to doing. Why did these weddings get you thinking about that?

Ravi Gupta (3:16)

Well, at the time, I was running a network of schools down south, and I was 24-7 for my students, my teachers, and families. And it's such a cliché to say and to open a self-help book, to be like, I was burnt out, but there's no other way to open it because it was true. And I was gaining weight. I'm 43 now. I look back to then when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, and I look older then than I do now. But like anything else, you're not completely aware of what's going on with you. And the interesting thing about a wedding is, it's an opportunity to check in with people who haven't seen you in a while. And they notice right away. And I was going to these weddings and I was hearing all kinds of things, including my buddy Sam, who is like, hey, are you on drugs?

And I wasn't on drugs.

I was just completely hopelessly spent and not taking care of myself. And that was kind of the genesis of a lot of changes I needed to make in my life.