8 Jan 2026 · 42m · David Senra · 23 quoted facts
David Senra argues that Rick Rubin's The Creative Act is less a how-to for making great art than a guide to how to be. Great work comes from small daily habits, close attention, trust in intuition, patience, and making things for yourself rather than for an audience. Senra backs each idea with stories from entrepreneurs he has studied, such as Steve Jobs, James Dyson and Jeff Bezos.
The main tension is between patience and speed. Rubin says to take your time, reread, step away and avoid shortcuts, yet also to start before you understand, work quickly and release the work. Senra reconciles the two as "step by step ferociously". A second tension is that creative people need obsessive focus and intuition, but can wreck themselves through self-doubt, addiction or ego.
John Wooden began practice by teaching players to put on socks and shoes without wrinkles, so blisters and untied laces never cost a game. Rubin and Senra read this as proof that one small, well-drilled habit at the top level can be the whole edge.
Rubin says action produces information and the work reveals what to do next. Senra points to James Dyson, who got to work on the problem of vacuums losing suction and ended up inventing the first cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
Rubin says ideas arrive when the mind is not overpacked. Senra describes David Ogilvy taking long walks and swims, and Jim Simons and Elon Musk lying silent in the dark for an hour or more, to solve problems they could not solve at work.
Rubin separates "I don't know if my song is as good as it can be", which can improve the work, from "I can't write a good song", which breeds hopelessness. Senra adds Jimmy Iovine's warning that talented people often wreck themselves, and that this stops them producing great work over decades.
Rubin says the audience comes last and compares making art to building a house nobody will visit. He also warns that hanging on to finished work is like rewriting the same diary entry for years. It robs you of the next works.
Rick Rubin says he set out to write about what to do to make great art, but it turned into a book on how to be. It is made up of 78 short areas of thought on habits, attention, intuition and patience, rather than a step-by-step method.
John Wooden, the most successful college basketball coach, believed that small details drive big results. Rubin says each small habit adds up to an exponential effect on performance, and one good habit can be enough to beat the competition.
Rubin says to create an empty, uncluttered mental space that draws ideas in, rather than hunting for them. Senra's examples are long walks, swims and lying silent in the dark, as Jim Simons and Elon Musk reportedly did.
He says both. Create your best work patiently without rushing the process, but also work quickly and without delay. Senra links this to Jeff Bezos's motto "step by step ferociously".
He means you should make the best thing you can by your own taste, as if for an audience of one. In his view, thoughts about criticism, commercial results or changing the world get in the way of greatness.
Stated by the speakers. Each quote matches the transcript, which shows what was said, not that it is true.
John Wooden began his first day of training by teaching players how to put on their shoes and socks properly.
“The first thing I would show players at our initial day of training was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly.”
Rick Rubin writes that John Wooden's teams won more consecutive games and championships than any other college basketball teams in history.
“His teams won more consecutive games and championships than any others in history.”
Rick Rubin writes that John Wooden often said the only person you are ever competing against is yourself.
“Wooden often said the only person you're ever competing against is yourself, the rest is out of your control.”
Napoleon is quoted as saying that great events hang by a single thread and that a clever man neglects nothing that could give him an added opportunity.
“All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity.”
Rick Rubin's The Creative Act is organized into 78 brief areas of thought, which Rubin treats as chapters.
“It is almost like a stream of Rick Rubin's thoughts and ideas on creativity, separated into what he calls seventy eight areas of thought.”
David Senra says he had read over 400 books to make the Founders podcast by the time of this episode.
“I've read over 400 books to make this podcast so far.”
David Senra made Founders episode 245 about Rick Rubin's biography about four years before this episode.
“In fact, I did an episode four years ago, it's episode 245 of Founders on Rick Rubin's biography, which I just re listened to twice.”
John Mackey told David Senra that Whole Foods was not solely his idea but an idea whose time had come, since many people across the country had the same idea for a natural foods grocery.
“He said the very early days of Whole Foods, this was not his idea. It was an idea that whose time had come”
David Senra first learned of Jim Simons's practice of lying still in a dark, quiet place to think from the biography The Man Who Solved the Market.
“The very first time I heard about that, I read it in this book called A Man Who Solved the Market, which was a biography of Jim Simons.”
David Senra says James Dyson's habit of getting straight to work led him to invent the first cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
“Action produces information, led him to invent the world's very first cyclonic vacuum cleaner.”
Rick Rubin writes that Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, a radio and a record player all playing at once.
“Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, radio, and record player all on simultaneously.”
Rick Rubin writes that Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound-absorbing cork, closed the drapes and wore earplugs when working.
“Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound absorbing cork, closed the drapes and wore earplugs.”
David Senra says Rick Rubin started working in the music industry at age eighteen.
“He started working in the music industry when he was eighteen.”
David Senra attributes to Jeff Bezos the statement that people who cannot tolerate critics should not do anything new or interesting.
“If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.”
David Senra says Jimmy Iovine has worked in the music industry for fifty years.
“And Jimmy's been in the music industry for fifty years.”
David Senra says Jimmy Iovine named four main ways talented people sabotage themselves: alcohol, pills, women and megalomania.
“And number one was alcohol, number two was pills, number three was women, and number four was megalomania.”
Rick Rubin describes introducing an artist to the Buddhist concept of Pumbancha, which he translates as a preponderance of thoughts.
“I asked if he was familiar with the Buddhist concept of Pumbancha, which translates as preponderance of thoughts.”
Rick Rubin writes that an unnamed legendary singer performed for over five decades without ever eliminating his stage fright.
“One legendary singer, despite performing for over five decades, was never able to eliminate his stage fright.”
David Senra quotes Steve Jobs as saying intuition is more powerful than intellect.
“Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”
David Senra says Rick Rubin kept tapes of 1960s radio hits and used those songs in work he made about forty years after their release.
“He had tapes full of hits that used to be played on the radio in the nineteen sixties”
David Senra says Rick Rubin hosts a podcast called Tetragrammaton, which Senra considers great.
“And I actually think Rick Rubin's podcast, Tetragramaton, is great.”
David Senra says Michael Jordan told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that success is selfish, meaning it takes time away from other people.
“There's a great interview that Michael Jordan did a long time ago with Oprah Winfrey, and he has a line in there where he says success is selfish.”
Rick Rubin writes that visitors to his studio are surprised by how clinical the process looks, because someone is constantly taking detailed notes.
“When outside observers come into the studio, they often cannot believe how clinical the process looks.”
The opening passage shows how obsessing over details like socks and shoelaces builds elite performance. Senra pairs it with a Napoleon quote about neglecting a single thing.
“it's the little details that make the big things come about”
Rubin says ideas come when the mind is uncluttered. Senra adds examples of rest and darkness from Ogilvy, Jim Simons and Elon Musk.
“How do we pick up on a signal? The answer is to not look for it.”
The theme is to start without overanalyzing. The James Dyson vacuum example shows how noticing what no one else sees leads to a new product.
“Look what you notice, but no one else sees.”
Rubin argues that exposure to greatness calibrates your taste, and that intuition should outrank well-meaning advice. Senra calls this the heart of the book.
“calibrate our internal meter for greatness”
Rubin separates doubting the work from doubting yourself. Senra brings in Jimmy Iovine's view on how talented people destroy their own careers.
“You can doubt your way to excellence.”
Rubin says rules lead to average work and real listening means dropping preconceptions. Senra ties patience to his own refusal to take shortcuts.
“Impatience is an argument with reality.”
Rubin's paradox is to be patient and fast at once. Hoarding finished work costs you the next work.
“The reward for great work is just more work.”
The closing sections say greatness means pleasing your own taste and focusing on what you contribute. Rubin also describes an unusually clinical note-taking process.
“We are performing for an audience of one.”
The first thing I would show players at our initial day of training was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly. The most important part of your equipment is your shoes and socks. You play on a hard floor, so you must have shoes that fit right, and you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe, where you generally get blisters, or around the heels. I showed my players how I wanted them to do it.
Hold up the sock, work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good, then hold up the sock while you put the shoe on, and the shoe must be spread apart, not just pulled on the top laces. You tighten it up snugly by each eyelet, then you tie it, then you double tie it so it won't come undone. Because I don't want shoes coming untied during practice or during the game.
I don't want that to happen. That's just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of, because it's the little details that make the big things come about. Now, Rick Rubin comments on this passage. The sentiments above are John Wooden's, the most successful coach in the history of college basketball. His teams won more consecutive games and championships than any others in history. It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach, only to hear him say, Today, we will learn how to tie our shoes.
The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits down to the smallest detail is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. I'm going to interrupt Rick Rubin for a second and quote Napoleon, because when Rick Rubin just said this sentence, one of my favorite sentences of this entire section, just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition.
This is what Napoleon said, it's very similar. Napoleon said, All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity. The less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. Back to Rick Rubin, just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. Wooden considered every aspect of the game where an issue might arise and trained his players for each one repeatedly until they became habits.
The goal was immaculate performance. Wooden often said the only person you're ever competing against is yourself, the rest is out of your control. This way of thinking applies to the creative life just as well. For both the artist and the athlete, the details matter, whether the players recognize their importance or not. Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care.
The goal is to live your life in the service of art. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Creative Act, A Way of Being, and it was written by Rick Rubin. I want to read to you what Rick Rubin said about the creation of this book. He says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art.
Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So a few things to know before we jump into the book. This is a very unusual book. I've read over 400 books to make this podcast so far. I can't think of a single other book that I've read for the podcast that's like this. It is almost like a stream of Rick Rubin's thoughts and ideas on creativity, separated into what he calls seventy eight areas of thought.
And these seventy eight chapters are very brief and to the point. So this book, even though it's, you know, over 400 pages, it's very easy to read. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to move through the book in chronological order and share some of the highlights. I probably made a hundred highlights while reading this book. The last thing to know before I jump into the book is I'm an unabashed Rick Rubin fan.
I've been watching his interviews, listening to his podcasts, reading books about him, I've been making podcasts about him. In fact, I did an episode four years ago, it's episode 245 of Founders on Rick Rubin's biography, which I just re listened to twice. I am very interested in people with singular careers, people that are hard to categorize and people for which there are no substitutes. And Rick Rubin is definitely one of those people. So I'm gonna jump right into the book.
He starts by telling us a very useful preface or guide for reading the book. Nothing in this book is known to be true. It is a reflection of what I've noticed, not facts so much as thoughts. Some ideas may resonate, others may not. A few may awaken an inner knowing you forgot you had. Use what's helpful, let go of the rest. Each of these moments is an invitation to further inquiry, looking deeper, zooming out, or zooming in, opening possibilities for a new way of being.
And so one of the reoccurring themes and something he repeats throughout the book is the importance of paying attention, of developing a practice of paying attention. Not only to paying attention to what's around you, but what's going on inside of you, the thoughts that you have. He has a very interesting idea that I've seen pop up over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. It's in this section called tuning in. He says, if you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it is not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker.
This isn't because the other artist stole your idea, but because that idea's time has come. I just released a new episode of my new show where I had a conversation, a multi hour conversation with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. If you haven't listened to it, make sure you search whatever podcast app you're listening to this on, just search my name, David Senra, and you'll see my other podcast feed where I'm having these long form conversations with the living entrepreneurs now, not just studying the dead entrepreneurs, which I normally do.
But in that conversation, he literally said the exact same thing. He said the very early days of Whole Foods, this was not his idea. It was an idea that whose time had come, that you needed a healthier alternative to all the processed food people were eating, and you should have a grocery store dedicated to natural foods. He just happened to be there at the very birth of the natural foods industry, but he said there was all these other people all across the country that had the exact same idea.
And so one thing that Rick Rubin will repeat throughout the book, which really speaks to me, and again, another thing that just reappears over and over again in these biographies that you and I talk about every week together, is giving yourself space and time away from work to actually get all the ideas from your subconscious mind. And so David Ogilvy talked about this over and over again. He was a workaholic. So is Rick Rubin, and yet he would need to take time away.
He said he would go for long walks, go for a bike ride, go for a swim, sit in his garden and read fiction. And all of the sudden, these ideas that he couldn't tap in during his workday because he wasn't giving his mind rest would start flooding in. And so Rick is going to talk about this as picking up on a signal. How do we pick up on a signal? The answer is to not look for it.
We need to create an open space that allows it, a space so free of the normal, overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum, drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available. There's two people that you and I have spoke about in the past that I think have found unique ways to do this. Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, and Elon Musk. And both of them, what they would do is when they needed time to think, they would find a quiet place, usually in the dark, and they would lay on their back flat.
They can't see anything, they couldn't hear anything, and they would usually stay there for sometimes an hour or more. And because there's visual input or no audio input, you're just hearing your mind. The very first time I heard about that, I read it in this book called A Man Who Solved the Market, which was a biography of Jim Simons. I use this idea all the time. It's amazing how it can help you solve problems that you couldn't solve during your workday, or really just the way you feel after this.
You feel energized, you feel refreshed. So I like that idea a space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum drawing down ideas that the universe is making available And I think Rick gives a great summary of why this is so important The ability to look deeply is the root of creativity to see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible And so if you go back to Rick Rubin's description of his own book, where he says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art.
Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So much of this book, and the reason I started from the chapter called habits, is about developing good habits and developing your mind in a way that helps you make and create great work. Another main theme of the book is not overanalyzing, it's not overthinking, it's just starting. Action produces information as you work, the work itself will reveal what you need to do next. So he says, faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it.
He has great advice for figuring out what to work on. Look for what you notice, but no one else sees. Now it's highly likely when he wrote that line, he wasn't going to think that somebody else is going to read it and think about vacuum cleaners. But when I read it, I thought about James Dyson. And he has built this phenomenal empire, one of the most valuable privately held businesses in the world from that simple sentence.
He looked at a vacuum cleaner, something people used forever, millions of people for decades, and could not understand why people put up with immediate loss of suction and said, This is stupid, I could do it a better way. Then, because he got right to work and the work will reveal what you need to do next. Action produces information, led him to invent the world's very first cyclonic vacuum cleaner. Look what you notice, but no one else sees.
One sentence, ten words, but if you actually sit there and think about it and then actually apply it, it's unbelievably powerful. Now, this next part is excellent. He says, submerge yourself in the great works. This book is trying to be a useful tool on how to make something great. That is all that Rick Rubin cares about. And so he says, consider submerging yourself in the canon of great works. Read the finest literature, watch the masterpieces of cinema, get up close to the most influential paintings, visit architectural landmarks.
Exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward and opens doors of possibility. If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period, you'll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. This applies to every choice we make, not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on.
All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what's worthy of our time and attention. This line is so great because there's an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve. We might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness, so we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.
Submerging yourself in the great works is exactly what you and I are doing every week together. That is the perfect lead in to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I spent a lot of time with the founders of Ramp. I observe how they build their business, and I think there's a lesson in the way that they're building their business that is applicable to anyone who is trying to make something great in the world.
And that's exactly what the way I would think about Rick Rubin and this book. He wants to help other people make great things and then give those great things to the world. And one of the ways that the founders of Ramp make great work is they take an idea from Steve Jobs. You always bet on talent. To Steve Jobs, this was mandatory. Steve said you must find the extraordinary people. A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players, and so you must build a team that pursues the A players.
And that is exactly what Ramp did. There is a reason Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast. They are chasing excellence, just like Rick Rubin, they are only interested in making great work. And to do so, Ramp has assembled the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible. In the last year, Ramp hired only 0.23% of the people that applied. This means when you're using Ramp, you now have top tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers working on your behalf twenty four seven to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations, and they do this on a single platform.
Ramp gives your business fully programmable corporate credit cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, bill payments, accounting, and more, all in one place. This means the longer you use Ramp, the more efficient your company becomes. This is important because as Sam Walton said in his autobiography, you can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.
Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. I run my business on ramp, and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs I know. Make sure you go to ramp dot com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. That is ramp dot com. Now, one of the ideas that Rick Rubin repeats that resonates deeply with me is investing a lot of patience and time into the work, sitting with it longer, taking a break, revisiting that same work.
One area of thought or chapter that he has is nothing is static. There's a few sentences in here that I want to share with you. One of them is really important because I do this over and over again. He says, reread the same book over and over, and you'll likely find new themes, undercurrents, details, and connections. I do this for podcasts, too. It's amazing how many times I'll listen to the same episode of a podcast, and there's an idea that I just missed the first two or three times.
Same thing with the book. And the reason that reading a book is so important, I guess it applies to the podcast too, because it's not changing. The words on the page or the words in the episode, they don't change, but over time you do. And so Rick Rubin talks about this. He says, the person who makes something today isn't the same person who returns to the work tomorrow. And then he goes back to this idea of making sure you create an environment, creating these habits where you can tap into the wisdom of your subconscious.
There's an abundant reservoir of high quality information in our subconscious, and finding ways to access it can spark new material to draw from. And so one way you do this is by affecting the setting in which you work. He says we're affected by our surroundings and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. And so one of the benefits of reading this book is Rick has this historical database in his head of all these great artists and creators and architects and musicians and writers, and he's constantly referencing them.
And so he talks about, you know, here's some other ideas of other people trying to figure out the best environment and for that is necessary to create their best work. And so he says, Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, radio, and record player all on simultaneously. For Eminem, the noise of a single TV set is his preferred backdrop for writing. Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound absorbing cork, closed the drapes and wore earplugs.
Kafka, too, took his need for silence to an extreme, not like a hermit, he once said, but like a dead man. There is no wrong way, there's only your way. And the very next paragraph is so good. It's not always easy to follow the subtle, energetic information the universe broadcasts, especially when your friends, family, coworkers, or those with a business interest in your creativity are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing. To the best of my ability, I've followed my intuition to make career turns and been recommended against doing so every time.
It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe than those around you. That part is so important and so hard to actually apply. My all time favorite quote about the power of intuition actually comes from Steve Jobs. This is what he said. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work. And I think now having read this book and re reread my highlights, I don't know, five, six, seven times before I sat down to talk to you about it.
The way I would characterize Rick Rubin's view of the world is that it is magic and that we make up stories that greatly exaggerate how much of the world we actually understand. This is going to sound really weird, but I think Rick Rubin would agree with Thomas Edison's famous quote, where he says, we don't know one one thousandth percent of anything. And so if you think about what's happening in that paragraph, he's like, you know, your friends are giving you advice, your family, your coworkers.
A lot of these people probably care about you. Then there's other people that just have a business interest in your creativity that want you to do what's best for them and not best for you. It's like, how do you parse all this incomplete information? And what's very clear is he thinks that intuition is a higher form of knowledge or wisdom than even the rational or storytelling part of your mind. And keep in mind, again, one of the reasons I admire him so much, because, you know, I have this obsession with people that do things for a long period of time.
He started working in the music industry when he was eighteen. He's in his sixties now, still doing it. And listen to what he said about that. To the best of my ability, I've followed my intuition to make career turns and have been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe or follow, in my case, I would change that sentence. Follow your intuition than those around you. This is a very unique book.
I really do hope you buy it because, again, you don't even have to. You want to know how I started reading it? There's a smoothie place that I like going to, and they take usually a really long time to make them, and they have, like, a bookshelf. So, of course, me being the giant nerd that I am, I go over to the bookshelf. And Rick Rubin's book was on that bookshelf. And so I'd go to the smoothie place all the time.
And I'm reading chunks of this book in like the five or ten minutes I'm waiting for the smoothie. I think that's actually a great way to read the book. Each chapter you could probably read in a minute, two minutes, three minutes. But if you just sit with the actual ideas, it's very, very powerful. So let's go to this chapter on self-doubt. There are singers considered among the best in the world who can't bring themselves to listen to their own voice.
And these are not rare exceptions. If a creator is so afraid of judgment that they're unable to move forward, it might be that the desire to share the work isn't as strong as the desire to protect themselves. Perhaps art isn't their role. Their temperament might serve a different pursuit. This path is not for everyone. Adversity is part of the process. I read that, I think of what Jeff Bezos said. If you absolutely, this is a great quote from Jeff Bezos.
If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting. Some successful artists are deeply insecure, self-sabotaging, struggling with addiction or facing other obstacles to making and sharing their work. An unhealthy self-image or a hardship in life can fuel great art, creating a deep well of insight and emotion for an artist to draw from. They can also get in the way of the artist being able to make things over a long period of time.
Again, go back to what he said this book is. It is a book on how to be, how to be, how to develop the great habits, how to build the best environment for you to do the best work. Why? Because that's the only way you're going to be able to do great things over a long period of time, which is the goal. So he says, people who are particularly challenged in this sense generally can't produce creative work over and over again.
This isn't because they're not artistically capable, but because they were only able to break through their own issues one or two times and share great work. They'd never figure it out how to be. And in many cases, they sabotage themselves. So I actually got to go to uh, I'm a huge fan of Jimmy Iovine. I made an episode of Founders on him, which I'm really, really proud of. After that episode came out, I was actually invited to go to his house and I spent several hours with him.
And Jimmy's been in the music industry for fifty years. If you don't know who Jimmy is, listen to the episode I made on him, but also watch this documentary called The Defiant Ones, which is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. And Jimmy's got this like hard-earned practical wisdom that only comes from, you know, succeeding for half a century. And one of the things we talked about was how many people cannot handle success. And in the music industry, because let me just finish this, I guess.
Rick Rubin's about to say one of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses is because they're using drugs to numb a very painful existence. And so Jimmy has all this wisdom, and I was trying to tap into it through in our conversation. And he was saying there's like four primary ways he saw talented, really smart, but not really wise, I would, I would, I would add, people sabotage themselves. And number one was alcohol, number two was pills, number three was women, and number four was megalomania.
They go on stage, there's 50,000 people screaming their name, and they start to believe they're not even human anymore. They're like this godlike creature. This section to me, what Jimmy's advice to me, and then this section where where Rick Rubin's telling you and I right now, this is terrifying to me. The idea that you can be good at something, but you can only do it once or twice for a very short period of time. I think there's a lot of wisdom in what Charlie Munger has said, where he's like, you know, you can just get a huge advantage.
You don't have to be brilliant, you just have to be consistently not stupid over a long period of time. And just being consistently not stupid and don't sabotage yourself over decades puts you ahead of probably 99% of the people on the planet. And so in the next chapter called Make It Up, I think Rick Rubin has some really great advice on again, going, we're trying to do things for really high level, at a really high level for a really long time.
I think Rick Rubin himself isn't a perfect example of that. So he says, we're not playing to win, we're playing to play, and ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process, to make and put out successive works with ease. One approach to overcoming insecurities is to label them. I was working with an artist who was frozen by doubts and unable to move forward.
I asked if he was familiar with the Buddhist concept of Pumbancha, which translates as preponderance of thoughts. This speaks to the mind's tendency to respond to our experiences with an avalanche of mental chatter. He responded, I know exactly what that is. That is me. Now that he had a name for what was holding him back, he was able to normalize his doubts and not take them so seriously. When they came up, we'd call them Pumbancha, notice them, and then we would move forward.
I was in a meeting with another artist who had just released a very successful album but felt afraid to do more work and listed different reasons why she didn't want to make music anymore. There are always good reasons not to continue. And so this is what Rick Rubin said to the artist. It's fine. You don't have to make music ever again. There's nothing wrong with that. Just stop if it's not making you happy. It's your choice.
As soon as I said this, her expression changed, and she realized she would be happier creating than not creating. Gratitude can also help. Realizing you are fortunate to be in a position that allows you to create, and in some cases, get paid to do what you love might tip the balance in favor of the work. Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it. Even for some of the greatest artists, that fear never goes away.
One legendary singer, despite performing for over five decades, was never able to eliminate his stage fright. Despite a terror so strong it made him sick to his stomach, he still stepped into the spotlight each night and performed a spellbinding show. By accepting self-doubt rather than trying to eliminate or repress it, we lessen its energy and interference. It is worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, I don't know if my song is as good as it can be.
Doubting yourself might sound like I can't write a good song. These statements are worlds apart, both in accuracy and in impact on your nervous system. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. However, doubting the quality of your work might at times help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. And then he goes back to this idea about how valuable temporary distraction can be.
When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear. Distraction is not procrastination. Procrastination consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction is a strategy in service of the work. So I want to go back into Rick Rubin's idea about submerging yourself into the great works. Really, it reminds me of Charlie Munger's idea that learning from history is a form of leverage.
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I will leave a link down below, but make sure you go to collateral dot com and improve the way your company tells its own story. So in the section on collaboration, Rick Rubin makes a great point that everything we're doing today is a act of collaboration with the things that came before us. He says nothing begins with us. The more we pay attention, the more we begin to realize that all the work we ever do is a collaboration.
It is a collaboration with the art that has come before you and the art that will come after you. There's a great story in his biography that is a demonstration of this collaboration, a demonstration that he is constantly submerging himself in the great works. He had tapes full of hits that used to be played on the radio in the nineteen sixties, and he was using those songs and those tapes in the creation of work that he was doing forty years after their initial release.
And so then he has a section all about rules, knowing the rules and then breaking the rules. But really, when I'm reading through this, I really think the advice he's giving is the importance of making sure that what you're creating is differentiated. You're not on this planet to be average, to be mediocre. And he says, rules direct us to average behaviors. If we're aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don't apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.
The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it's to amplify your differences. Instead of sounding like others, value your own voice, develop it, and then cherish it. As soon as a convention is established, the most interesting work would likely be the one that doesn't follow it. Communicate your singular perspective. That sounds a lot like James Dyson's mantra of difference for the sake of it. The artists who define each generation are generally the ones who live outside of these boundaries.
It is a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our own chosen medium are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned, and he states why doing so is such a big problem. The world isn't waiting for more of the same. Often the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them, or from those who never learn them at all.
Holding every rule as breakable is a healthy way to live as an artist. It loosens constraints that promote a predictable sameness in our working methods. Beware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done it before. Another idea that reoccurs throughout this book and is also present in his biography as well is the importance of listening and not assuming you know what the outcome is going to be.
I'm a huge fan of podcasts, obviously, I'm obsessed with them. And even though there's like millions in the podcast directory, there's only a handful that are actually really great. And I actually think Rick Rubin's podcast, Tetragramaton, is great. And one of the things that I describe it, one way I describe it to other people is what makes it so great. He's like, he's a professional listener, and he's been cultivating this skill over his career for decades.
And so he has a lot of opinions on this. He says, formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response or defending our position or attacking another's. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all. Listening is suspending disbelief. We are openly receiving, paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what's being expressed and allowing it to be what it is.
Listening is then not just awareness. It is freedom from accepted limitations, and that directly leads into his thoughts on patience. This is one of my favorite parts of the book. There are no shortcuts. The artist actively works to experience life slowly and then to re-experience the same thing anew, to read slowly and to read again and again and again. I might read a paragraph that inspires a thought, and while my eyes continue moving across the page in the physical act of reading, my mind may still be lost in the previous idea.
I'm not taking in information anymore. When I realize this, I return to the last paragraph I can recall and start reading from there again. Sometimes, that's three or four pages back. Anybody that reads a lot has experienced that happens to me all the time. Rereading, even a well-understood paragraph or page can be revelatory. New meanings, deeper understandings, inspirations, and nuances arise and come into focus. So often we sleepwalk through our lives. Again, I think the patience section and the listening section are related.
We're not actually paying attention. We are rushing through life. So often we sleepwalk through our lives. Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. The note I left myself when I got to that sentence, our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply was amen. I am not trying to rush through the creation of these podcasts or the creation of this work. I think the hard way is the right way. So many times people give me advice that I should be outsourcing X or I should be outsourcing Y.
And when I try to explain to them, what makes this special is the compounding of this over ten years. It's because I didn't take shortcuts. It's because I read and reread books over and over again, past highlights over and over again. I go back and r listen to past episodes over and over again. I listen to, I just told you, I listened to the Rick Rubin one I did four years ago, twice to prepare for this one.
Why is that important? Because the next sentence that Rick has in the book, it's through deliberate action and repetition that we gain deeper insight. Patience is required for the nuanced development of your craft. That sounds so much like Steve Jobs. What does Steve Jobs say? To make it really great, all it takes is a little more time and a willingness to persevere until it's really great. It takes more time. Patience is required for crafting a work that resonates and contains all that we have to offer.
Impatience is an argument with reality. Even the masterpieces that have been produced on tight timelines are the sum of decades spent patiently laboring on other works. If there is a rule to creativity that's less breakable than the others, it's that the need for patience is ever present. Moving on, we see another reoccurring theme that you and I have discussed. This pops up in almost every single biography. The people that are usually really great that create the greatest companies, the greatest inventions, the greatest technology, they're usually very obsessive, and it causes them to discount other parts of their life.
He says the great artists throughout history are the ones that are able to maintain a childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally, just as an infant is selfish. There's a great interview that Michael Jordan did a long time ago with Oprah Winfrey, and he has a line in there where he says success is selfish. And then he's talking about the fact that he's spending time away from people in his life to pursue his craft or his work. Now, the outcome of that work is not selfish, it's actually a gift to the rest of humanity.
Think about the tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people that were inspired by Michael Jordan's encore performance and his story and what he accomplished. But to do that, the time away from other people that may have wanted his time in his life, it was selfish. Success is selfish. Great quote from Michael Jordan. Rick Rubin's saying, just as an infant is selfish, they're protective of their art in a way, the great artists of history, that is, they're protective of their art in a way that's not always cooperative.
Their needs as a creator comes first, often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. This story he's about to tell of a singer songwriter has been told to me verbatim by one of the greatest living entrepreneurs, and I'll get there in one second. He says, for one of the most loved singer songwriters of all time. If inspiration comes through, it takes precedence over all other obligations. His friends and family understand that in the middle of a meal, conversation, or event, if a song calls, he'll exit the scene and tend to it without explanation.
I literally have had one of the greatest living entrepreneurs tell me that directly, that his friends and family know they could be in the middle of a dinner. If there's an idea or something, some kind of form of inspiration comes to him related to his work, he will just get up and exit. You have likely used this person's products. And Rick Rubin's point is this is a form of inspiration. He says, when flowing, keep going. Our schedules are set aside when these fleeting moments of illumination come.
Summon your strength and commit yourself on behalf of this offering, even when it arises at an inopportune time. This is the serious artist's obligation. And one of the reasons this is so important because he has this great this great line that he repeats, or he doesn't repeat the line verbatim, but the idea behind the line that the work reveals itself as you go, which goes back to the dangers of overthinking, overanalyzing, just get started. Action produces information, the work reveals itself as you go.
And then he talks about this paradox, because he keeps talking about patience, but he also talks about the importance of finishing your work, releasing it, and then moving on to the next thing. The reward for great work is just more work. And so he says, this is a paradox. To create our best work, we are patient and avoid rushing the process, while at the same time, we work quickly and without delay. That's a very Jeff Bezos like statement.
The motto for one of Jeff's company is step by step ferociously. We're going to avoid rushing the process while at the same time we're going to work quickly and without delay. And again, I'm skipping ahead many pages, and you see these ideas reappear over and over again in different forms. And he just said, the work reveals itself as you go. Why is that so important? Because he compares it to finishing a puzzle. If all the puzzle is complete except for that one piece, then you know exactly where it goes.
The same is generally true for art. The more of the work that you can see, the easier it becomes to gracefully place the final details clearly where they belong. So then he has advice as we get closer and closer to the completion of the work, and a lot of this is when you're collaborating with other people, you're going to start to get feedback. And he talks about how some of this, when viewed as a challenge and separated from, you know, the critique of the person, just critiquing the work, is very beneficial to the overall project.
Sometimes a challenge allows us to focus on an aspect of the work and realize it's more important than we previously thought. In the process, we access deeper wells of understanding into the work and ourselves. As you collect feedback, the solutions offered may not always seem helpful, but before discarding them, take a moment to see if they're pointing to an underlying problem you had not noticed. And he talks about it's so hard for people to say, hey, the work is finally done.
It's so tempting to just keep working on it, keep working on it, keep working on it forever. Says, when is the work done? There's no formula or method for finding this answer. It is an intuition, and that intuition is the answer to the work is done when you feel it is. And he has one of the greatest ways to think about why it's important to be patient, but also to work as fast as you can and to actually put what you're making out into the world.
Hanging on to your work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary. Okay, I understand that. The next sentence is so important. The next two sentences are so important. Moments and opportunities are lost. The next works are robbed of being brought to life. And then something I haven't touched on yet, but I should because it's central to Rick Rubin. All he cares about is making things that he is proud of and that he wants to see in the world.
He says, when making art, the audience comes last. I get interviewed a lot, and a lot of people ask me the questions like, okay, what does success for you look like in five years? And my answer is whether it's today, next year, five years from now, it's always the same. I define success the same way that Steve Jobs did. Did I make something that I'm proud of? Rick Rubin just wants to make great things, and he's done so for decade after decade after decade.
And that starts with doing it for the right reason. So he's got a section titled Greatness. This is excellent. Imagine you're building a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you'll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows, all magnificent, curated to your taste. This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version. We do the best as we see the best, with our own taste, no one else's.
We are performing for an audience of one. Fear of criticism, attachment to a commercial result, competing with past work, time and resource constraints, the aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is, are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. I need to read that last sentence twice. And any story beyond I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is, are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness.
Instead of focusing on what this art will bring you, focus on what you contribute to this art to make it the best it could possibly be. With the objective of simply doing great work, a ripple effect occurs. A bar is set for everything you do, which may not only lift your work to new heights, but raise the vibration of your entire life. It may even inspire others to do their best work. Greatness begets greatness. It's infectious.
Damn, that's good. Greatness begets greatness. It's infectious. Our calling is to make beautiful works to the best of our ability. And he's got another great way to think about this. Being made happy by someone else's best work and then letting it inspire you to rise to the occasion is not competition, it's collaboration. And then this next part really speaks to, I feel a fundamental lesson from studying Rick Rubin, being comfortable with ambiguity, being comfortable with uncertainty, and the importance of refining and then following your intuition.
We live in a mysterious world full of uncertainties, and we regularly make assumptions to explain them. Generally, our explanations are guesses. These vague hypotheticals become fixed in our minds as fact. We are interpretation machines, and this process of labeling and detaching is efficient, but not accurate. We are the unreliable narrators of our own experience. It is helpful to remember that there are forces at work beyond our comprehension. We are dealing in a magic realm. Nobody knows why or how it works.
Again, it goes back to that subconscious, to the intuition. Now we're many, many pages ahead of where I just was. And yet he repeats this idea. He says it differently, but he repeats this idea. It is a form of intelligence. It's a form of wisdom, and he says this intelligence is beyond our understanding. And so another thing I love about Rick Rubin is like he has these combination of these ideas that you think might even be in conflict with one another.
Like he's very comfortable with following the magic, very comfortable letting the work lead to where he needs to go, but he also takes his work unbelievably seriously. And so I love this idea about how to never lose a valuable idea. You may worry that a great idea could get lost or overlooked in the spontaneity of a moment. To guard against that, when I'm working with an artist, I make an endless amount of notes. When outside observers come into the studio, they often cannot believe how clinical the process looks.
They imagine a big music party, but we're constantly generating detailed notes on focus points and experiments to test. For almost everything that's said, someone is writing it down. Two weeks later, there will come a time when someone will ask a question like, what was that lyric we loved? What was that previous version of this element like? Which take was the best for the fill going on in the second chorus? And we go back to the notes.
Faithful note taking by a connected observer helps prevent special moments from getting lost in the churn of excitement. And finally, the last idea I think is a great summary of what this is all about, what you and I are trying to do, and frames our work as an act of service to other people, which I think, again, one of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship comes from Henry Ford, where he says money comes naturally as a result of service.
Focus on service. To hone your craft is to honor creation. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet.