The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Greatest Climber Alive: I Shouldn't Have Attempted That Climb!

February 19, 2026

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  • Alex Honnold believes in choosing smart, calculated risks because everyone will eventually die, suggesting it is better to die happy doing what you love than to avoid all risks and die with regrets. 
  • Honnold's apparent lack of fear is not neurological, but rather the result of over 20 years of consistent exposure and practice, demonstrating that mastery changes one's response to fear. 
  • The path to mastery, as seen in Honnold's career graph, often involves a long, unglamorous period of dedication (ages 18-30) before achieving significant mainstream success or financial reward. 
  • Focusing energy on being the best at a valuable activity, rather than immediately figuring out monetization, often leads to success as value creation precedes economics. 
  • True mastery and significant achievements often result from a long period of consistent grinding and compounding effort, rather than immediate linear progression. 
  • Intentional risk-taking, where the risks are clearly chosen and mitigated, is fundamentally different from unintentionally taking risks inherent in everyday life, such as driving while impaired. 
  • Alex Honnold's Honnold Foundation has distributed over $13 million to more than 100 partners globally, focusing on community solar projects that provide energy access, protect biodiversity, and empower local communities. 
  • Honnold covers the majority of the foundation's overhead costs by donating roughly one-third of his annual earnings, ensuring that direct donor contributions go straight to the projects. 
  • While Honnold views his climbing achievements as fun but ultimately not world-changing, he believes the inspiration derived from his feats, like climbing Taipei 101, can motivate millions to overcome their own life obstacles, complementing the direct, tangible impact of his foundation's work. 

Segments

Risk Perception and Mortality
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(00:00:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Many people take risks they do not choose (like unhealthy lifestyles), whereas Honnold chooses calculated risks aligned with his desires, arguing for dying happy over living cautiously.
  • Summary: Honnold criticizes the common perception that he is uniquely crazy for taking risks, contrasting his chosen, calculated risks with the unintentional risks sedentary people take regarding health. He posits that since death is inevitable, one should pursue what they want and die happy doing it. This perspective was reinforced by the unexpected death of his father at 55, highlighting the arbitrary nature of mortality.
Upbringing and Perfectionism
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(00:03:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Honnold’s high-performing, perfectionist mother instilled a philosophy of ‘almost doesn’t count,’ which he actively counteracts by valuing ‘good enough’ and failing quickly to keep moving forward.
  • Summary: Honnold’s childhood home was tense due to his parents’ fraught relationship, and his mother was highly accomplished in arts and languages. He developed a counter-philosophy to his mother’s perfectionism, believing it is better to try and fail quickly than to be paralyzed by the fear of not doing something perfectly. His upbringing was largely unemotional, though he had strong connections with extended family.
Early Career and Ascetic Lifestyle
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(00:07:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Honnold lived in a van for ten years (ages 20-30) on a minimal budget, prioritizing climbing over conventional career paths, which he viewed as the best period of his life.
  • Summary: After his father’s death, Honnold used his inheritance to live off about $300 a month, living in a van for a decade. He did not face significant external pressure to get a ‘real job’ because his early climbing success provided enough external validation for his family. He views this period of optimizing for climbing challenges, rather than wealth, as amazing, not an endurance test.
Personality Traits and Fear Response
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(00:16:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Honnold scores low on neuroticism and high on perseverance, suggesting a natural disposition toward action and low internal anxiety, which complements his dedication to climbing.
  • Summary: Honnold’s personality profile shows high thrill-seeking and urgency, coupled with low neuroticism (general anxiety). He believes the biggest difference between him and others is his limitless capacity and love for climbing, which makes the physical discomfort feel like enjoyment rather than a grind. He advises his children to find the thing they love so much that the hard work involved doesn’t feel like work.
Mastery Through Exposure Therapy
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(00:22:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Climbing is fundamentally scary, and true fear management comes not from a ‘hack’ but from years of consistent exposure, conditioning the brain to respond differently to danger.
  • Summary: Honnold confirms he is scared all the time while climbing, even with a rope, because consequences always exist. The brain scan showing a lower fear response was misinterpreted; it only showed he reacted less to static, safe images after years of real-world conditioning. The most effective way to overcome fear is through prolonged exposure until the activity no longer triggers intense panic.
Deconstructing Major Challenges
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(00:38:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Challenging goals, like climbing Taipei 101, must be broken down into individual, manageable pieces, as the overall scale can initially appear impossible.
  • Summary: Honnold scouts major climbs by treating each segment—each corner, balcony, or transition—as a distinct, solvable problem, which makes the massive undertaking feel reasonable. For the Taipei 101 climb, he checked every piece with ropes beforehand, noting that the challenge was stamina over extreme difficulty, as he intentionally chose a visually appealing route over the technically hardest, shaded route for filming.
Compensation vs. Risk Perception
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(00:46:18)
  • Key Takeaway: Public perception often overestimates the immediate risk of death in highly skilled, chosen activities like climbing compared to less visible risks in other professions.
  • Summary: Alex Honnold noted that payments for his climbs, even for Taipei 101, seemed small compared to sports like boxing, but he was happy to do it for free. He believes the public overestimates the 50/50 chance of death in his climbs because they lack context on his preparation. He felt very confident, close to 100%, that he would not fall during the building climb.
Value Creation Precedes Economics
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(00:48:07)
  • Key Takeaway: Consistent delivery of value through work done for passion, even unpaid initially, creates career inflection points and future economic opportunities.
  • Summary: Honnold has done significant work for free over his career, which led to later opportunities like a National Geographic cover and a 60 Minutes profile. The advice given is not to get hung up on the immediate day rate but to focus on doing ‘freaking rad’ things, as the economics tend to sort themselves out later. This pattern has played out over 15 years of his life.
Focusing on Mastery Over Monetization
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(00:50:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Focusing energy on being the best at the core activity, like climbing (‘sending’), naturally precedes and drives monetization, defying linear economic models.
  • Summary: Steven Bartlett noted that giving value precedes economics, citing Jevon’s paradox where efficiency can increase demand, as seen with Uber. Honnold stated his life focus has always been on ‘sending’—doing the hard thing in climbing—and everything else follows. This principle applies to podcasting, where initial low CPMs are overcome by focusing on quality content.
Mortality as Liberation and Focus
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(00:53:44)
  • Key Takeaway: Regularly acknowledging one’s mortality liberates individuals from sunk cost bias and worry over inconsequential matters, encouraging risk-taking.
  • Summary: Realizing one will die prevents loss aversion, which narrows life by stopping challenges and risks. Awareness of death also liberates one from worrying about cosmically inconsequential issues, as even famous people’s trends fade quickly. The world moves on, allowing one to return to what truly matters, like family.
Love Languages and Emotional Availability
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(00:55:10)
  • Key Takeaway: Individuals with low emotional expressiveness often show love through acts of service, which can cause friction with partners who prioritize verbal affirmation.
  • Summary: Honnold’s wife, Sarni, noted he is less expressive and emotionally available, though she sees his love through his actions and commitment to family and work balance. Honnold admitted to struggling with verbal expression, believing ‘action speak louder than the words,’ leading to arguments about differing love languages. Building a rich life involves partnering with people who fill one’s blind spots, like a more emotionally intelligent spouse.
Perseverance and Compounding Interest
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(01:02:24)
  • Key Takeaway: Greatness is achieved through compounding interest applied to consistent, long-term perseverance, often requiring an unusual amount of time.
  • Summary: Mastery requires persistence, similar to Warren Buffett’s wealth accumulation, where initial growth is slow before exponential returns occur. To out-persist others, one must focus on work that feels expansive and energizing, rather than draining corporate tasks. Honnold’s love for climbing naturally created the conditions for this long-term grind.
Connecting Dots Looking Backwards
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(01:17:09)
  • Key Takeaway: Clarity on life direction is a reward gained after taking action, not a prerequisite for starting, necessitating trust that future opportunities will connect past efforts.
  • Summary: Steve Jobs’ quote emphasizes that one can only connect life’s dots looking backward, meaning action must precede clarity. Honnold noted there was no single moment he decided to be a professional climber; it was years of doing the thing until it looked like an amazing arc in retrospect. Society’s pressure to have a forward plan causes procrastination when answers are unavailable.
Appropriate Goal Sizing and Neuroplasticity
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(01:13:42)
  • Key Takeaway: Goals must be appropriately sized for one’s current life phase, and neuroplasticity confirms that even small, consistent actions can rewire the brain away from inertia.
  • Summary: For someone highly demotivated, a massive goal like El Capitan is inappropriate; they need small, achievable steps (Type A4) to build success and strengthen the willpower muscle (anterior mid-cingular cortex). A psychologist used the example of cleaning a room by only bringing the vacuum in on day one to overcome the shame of small starts. Decisions made at any age change the brain, proving one is never stuck.
Intentional Risk Selection
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(01:27:25)
  • Key Takeaway: Intentional, well-prepared risks, like free soloing, are superior to unintentionally taken risks common in daily life, such as driving while impaired.
  • Summary: Honnold argues that while everyone takes risks (e.g., sedentary life leading to heart disease), climbers choose their risks intentionally and mitigate them carefully. Unchosen risks, like driving buzzed or being vulnerable while intoxicated, are often taken without clear-eyed assessment. The framework for intentional living is to choose what you care about, prepare thoroughly, and execute well, rather than letting fate roll the dice.
Future Goals and Foundation Work
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(01:32:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Beyond climbing, Honnold’s primary life goals involve being a good father and ensuring the success of his foundation supporting community solar projects globally.
  • Summary: Honnold’s non-climbing goals center on raising healthy children and expanding his foundation, which focuses on energy access via small-scale community solar projects worldwide. He has committed roughly one-third of his annual income since 2012 to cover the foundation’s overhead, ensuring donor contributions go directly to projects. These projects have secondary benefits, such as empowering local communities to protect their land.
Honnold Foundation Impact Metrics
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(01:33:28)
  • Key Takeaway: The Honnold Foundation has funded over 130 community solar projects across 30 countries, impacting 650,000 people and protecting 15 million acres of biodiverse forest.
  • Summary: The foundation has distributed over $13 million to more than 100 partners, primarily supporting small-scale community solar projects that grant people access to energy for essential needs like light, refrigeration, and water pumping. Secondary benefits include empowering local communities, which leads to better land stewardship and protection against illegal logging and mining. This work simultaneously improves human well-being and aids environmental preservation.
Foundation Funding Structure
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(01:34:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Alex Honnold personally covers all staffing and overhead for the Honnold Foundation by donating roughly one-third of his annual income since 2012.
  • Summary: Honnold gives away approximately one-third of his yearly earnings to cover the foundation’s overhead, ensuring that all external donations go directly to the projects themselves. The easiest way for interested parties to contribute is by visiting Hanofoundation.org, where they can view current projects and donate.
Climbing Inspiration vs. Tangible Aid
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(01:35:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Honnold views his foundation work as materially improving human well-being, contrasting it with rock climbing, which he considers fun but ultimately not world-changing.
  • Summary: Steven Bartlett argues that Honnold’s climbing achievements serve as an expansive, memorable visual that inspires millions to confront their own obstacles and strive more intentionally. Honnold hopes for this ripple effect but emphasizes that the foundation’s work provides immediate, direct material impact, such as enabling a person to read after dark for the first time.