"You have to scratch and claw and it never f–king ends. And it doesn’t get better, it just gets harder. So don’t complain to me that I’m making your life hard. You don’t even know what that means." - Deborah Vance in Hacks, Episode 2
Success stories recap the fruits of labor, doing more, studying more. Success demands sacrifice. And give credit whenever possible.
Usher advises that we study our mentors' mentors. He studied James Brown and Gene Kelly. For me, that meant coaches Dean Smith and John Wooden.
Doris Kearns Goodwin explains that Abraham Lincoln walked miles to borrow a book. Scholarship is hard.
Kevin Eastman emphasizes "unrequired work."
"Be off book." Samuel L. Jackson explains the importance of knowing your lines. If you can't learn them for an audition, why should someone hire you?
Dan Pink says, "do five more." Study five more minutes. Do five more sprints. Read five more pages.
Steph Curry has a legendary work ethic to perfect his ballhandling, pickups, and long-range shooting. Would we expect anything different?
David Lynch explains that ideas require patience, like fishing. Drop your bait into the metaphorical sea of ideas and wait.
Winners do more. Here's the Anson Dorrance quote (again) about Mia Hamm, working out, alone, unnoticed.
Author James Clear (Atomic Habits) shares how a friend writes three pages a day. Every day. That translates into three books annually. Three pages = three books.
Larry Bird took 500 free throws BEFORE school. Ironically, the dustup between Isiah Thomas and Bird happened because Thomas wanted the basketball world to see that he wasn't born great but worked tireless hours on the playground to become great.
Ken Burns didn't have money to get into the documentary film industry. He moved to New Hampshire to reduce his living costs.
Bob Woodward explains that research or interviews may take two to four hours a day beyond the "normal" work day. That separates him in finding the "best available version of the truth." He submitted a story about the Mayflower Coffee Shop code violations and his editor asked "have you been there?" Woodward went to the Mayflower Hotel and asked to meet the restaurant manager. He learned they had no restaurant. Do your research.
James Cameron didn't have the budget to make epic pictures, so he learned how to do everything from storyboard art to filming. The Terminator was a low budget film that led to a franchise. The initial 6.4 million dollars spawned sequels earning hundreds of millions.
Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) was 150 pages into a novel and discarded it. The difference between good writers and bad writers is that good writers know when their writing is bad.
Sara Blakely's father asked the children at dinner, "what have you failed at this week?" He gave his children permission to fail.
One of Malcolm Gladwell's signature pieces was "10,000 hours." He believed that MOST disciplines like music, chess, law, medicine, and so forth required what Thomas Keller would say was "time and temperature."
Embrace the Deborah Vance quote. "You have to scratch and claw and it never f–king ends. And it doesn’t get better, it just gets harder. So don’t complain to me that I’m making your life hard. You don’t even know what that means."
Lagniappe. "Find a home." Most basketball is unscripted so why not practice that way?