Live Hard

Homework up front today: listen to this speech from Eric The Hip-Hop Preacher. You can watch the video as well for extra credit – it’s a highlight reel of Nick Diaz wrecking shop in MMA – but it isn’t strictly necessary. If you haven’t got six minutes to watch the video – or you’re at work, or something – I’ll summarise: it’s about a guy who meets a guru who promises to teach him the secrets of success, then meets him at the beach and (spoilers!) holds his head underwater until he almost drowns. The moral:

When you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe, that’s when you’ll be successful. 

That’s great, right? Lots of people think so.  Eric the hip-hop preacher tells this story much better than me, by the way, and adds in some stuff about how you should want success more than you want to party, sleep, and so on. It really is worth listening to. It’s a great story, memorable, you’d probably be able to repeat it almost word-for-word tomorrow or in a week. Eric’s built a career on this sort of thing, preaching to his ministry, and to baseball players and MMA fighters. Bear all that in mind, and then answer one question:

What the fuck does that actually mean?

I thought that little parable was amazing the first time I heard it, and the second. Then I thought about it, and realised that there’s no advice there. None at all. Needing to breathe is an inbuilt human response: it’s not something you think about. How do you get so hyped about ‘being successful’ (whatever that means) as ‘needing to breathe’? You can’t. It’s literally impossible. The moral, if there is one, is that you should probably party a bit less, and, I don’t know, read some books or something.

Here’s a secret: motivation is pretty much the last thing you need. Consider John Wooden, whose 88-game unbeaten streak in NCAA basketball puts him in consideration for being one of the greatest athletics coaches of all time. Wooden, to be fair, did some motivational speaking. But did he lead his teams to victory with a load of eye-rolling, Pacino-style speeches?

Nope. He did it with advice. Thousands and thousands of tiny chunks of advice, delivered in a constant stream. At the start of the season, he’d tell his athletes how to put their socks on – partly so they wouldn’t get blisters and have to miss practises, partly to help them understand the necessity of detail. In practise, he’d keep it short: ‘Hard, driving, quick steps.’ ‘Crisp passes, snap them.’ ‘Take the ball softly – it’s a pass, not an interception.’

The common thread? Every one of those would leave no doubt in a player’s mind about what they were supposed to do. Did they need to want to be good at basketball more than they wanted to breathe? No, they just needed to get better at basketball, through targeted advice. Listen to Greg Jackson – widely considered to be one of the best MMA coaches in history – when he’s cornering a fighter sometime. Is he yelling ‘How bad do you want this?’ No. He’s giving digestible, actionable advice: ‘Watch his right hand.’ ‘Angle off after you throw a punch.’ ‘He’s open to the double-leg.’ If you’re starting a new business, or a novel, or learning a new skill, do you need someone to yell at you? No, you need someone who can give you advice.

What motivates you isn’t always what works. Try to spot the difference.

HOMEWORK: Read Dan Coyle’s The Talent Code for a more in-depth look at how John Wooden actually worked. And this week, instead of pinning up motivational phrases, pin up an actionable thing that you’ll know whether you’ve done or not at the end of every day. It could be eating five pieces of veg, practising at codeacademy.com, or doing 100 press-ups. You don’t need to want success more than you want to breathe – you just need to do the thousands of tiny things that’ll make you successful – whether you’re motivated or not.