Sublime

“Repetition is the key to learning.”

Two Rules to Live By Marc and I are both huge fans of Steve Martin’s autobiography, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life. Marc highlighted one takeaway: “He says the key to success is, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’” TF: Marc has another guiding tenet: “Smart people should make things.” He says: “If you just have those two principles—that’s a pret

Whether you’re a computer programmer, writer, marketer, consultant, or entrepreneur, your situation has become similar to Jung trying to outwit Freud, or Jason Benn trying to hold his own in a hot start-up: To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing—a task that requires depth.

Instead of feeling obligated to stay completely focused on the chess position while my opponent thought, I began to let my mind release some of the tension. I might think about the position in a more abstract way, or I might even walk away from the board and have a drink of water or wash my face. When my opponent made his move, I would return to th

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

My response is that it is essential to have a liberating incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in a peak performance state. We must take responsibility for ourselves, and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to become the best that we can become. Great ones are willing to get burned time and again as th

What if, unlike John Winsor and Sebastian Junger, you lust after the quest to create but have not yet discovered how to lean into fear?

Deliberate practice is for everyone who dreams.