Sixat6

The Three Layers of Motivation

When I look closely at why people do the work they do, I find three layers of motivation. Layer 1 is intrinsic: the person simply likes doing what they do. Layer 2 is locally extrinsic: the people immediately around the person (family, friends, teammates, coaches, bosses, etc.) give them positive feedback. Layer 3 is broadly extrinsic: the broader world gives the person positive feedback. And when I look closely at people who are unhappy with their work, people who struggle with motivation, or people who aren’t performing to their fullest potential—it’s often because they are lacking one or more of those three layers. That’s the theme of this SIX at 6.

Our Boy Is In His Head

Last December, Trea Turner signed an 11-year $300 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. He proceeded to play some of the worst baseball of his career. He started the season batting second and incrementally dropped to the bottom of the lineup. As his performance plummeted, the Philly fanbase’s support of him did too. I was at a game on July 24th against the Orioles, and every time Turner came up to bat, he got booed. Eight games later, Turner went 0-5, dropped his batting average to a career-low, and in the bottom of the 12th inning, he made a fielding error that cost the Phillies the game. Two days later, a fan known as “The Philly Captain” posted a video. “Let’s not boo Trea Turner,” he said. “Let’s give him a standing ovation every time he comes to bat. Our boy is in his head, and he needs some love.” The next night, every time Turner went to bat, Phillies fans gave him a standing ovation. With a boost from Layer 3, in his third at-bat, Turner hit an RBI single. The next night, he hit a game-winning home run. Since the ovations, Turner has played some of the best baseball of his career. Since the ovations, he has led the MLB in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, and RBIs. Turner bought billboards around the city that said, “Thank You, Philly.”

A Really Fundamental Idea

Josh Waitzkin was a chess prodigy, but he quit playing chess around the age of 18. “I was a naturally creative, aggressive chess player,” Waitzkin explained. “My style was to create chaos on the chessboard, and my strength lay in finding hidden harmonies.” With this style, Waitzkin won the U.S. Junior Chess Championship at the age of 11 and became an International Master at age 16. Then, Waitzkin got a coach who forced him to play like the world champions, Anatoly Karpov and Tigran Petrosian—“the most positional, conservative chess players.” When he was forced to play a style that didn’t align with his natural proclivities, Waitzkin said, “I lost my love for the game.” When he lost Layer 1, Waitzkin quit playing chess. Shortly after, he took up martial arts. He trained for just two years before he won his first national championship in martial arts. Asked if he took anything from chess into the martial arts, Waitzkin said he leaned into his unique physical and mental traits. “And in my observation of competitors in any discipline, this a really fundamental idea,” he said. “Those who succeed at the highest level, I think, basically manifest their unique character through their discipline.”

It Can’t Fill You Up

If you had to part with one of the three layers, Layer 3. Many people talk about chasing Layer 3 metrics (recognition, celebrity, awards, etc.), getting it, and realizing that it didn’t feel like they thought it would. In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay (“Good Will Hunting”). After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, and looked at the award. As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought: “I remember very clearly looking at that award and thinking, ‘Imagine chasing that, not getting it, and then getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life.’ It can’t fill you up. If that’s a hole that you have, that won’t fill it.” “My heart broke,” Damon said. “I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, ‘oh my god, Where did my life go? What have I done?’ And then it’s over.”

I Fundamentally Don’t Like That Question

The comedian Hasan Minhaj performed stand-up comedy for 10 years, one month, and nine days before his parents saw him perform stand-up comedy. Hasan is the son of Muslim Indian immigrants. His parents left their homes, their parents, their siblings, their friends—everything and everyone they knew—to immigrate to the United States to give their children a better chance at a better future. From their perspective, Hasan’s pursuit of a career in comedy meant that they had sacrificed so much for so little. They didn’t see comedy as a sophisticated art form. They saw it as a dive bar sideshow, cheap entertainment for drunks and lowlifes. “My parents felt like they invested so much in me,” Hasan said, “and now I’m performing in basements for drunks. To them, it was like, ‘You’re so much better than this.’” Hasan was a smart kid. He got good grades. He excelled on his high school’s Speech and Debate team. His potential seemed unlimited. “We’ve seen you put your mind to academics,” Hasan’s parents would say to him, “and you do so well. Why are you doing this? Why are you throwing it all away for comedy?” So, Hasan says, “for my first decade as a comedian, it was real rough between me and my parents. We didn’t talk a lot.” For his first decade as a comedian, Hasan didn’t have Layer 2. He didn’t need it because he had a strong first Layer. Before he became a big-time comedian, Hasan was asked if he thought he was going to become a big-time comedian. “I don’t like that question,” he said. “I fundamentally don’t like that question.” Because that question implies that he is only doing comedy as a means to some end (money, fame, Layer 2 or Layer 3 validation, etc.). “No, no, no,” he said, “The set I get to do tonight at 7:20 PM is the win. I get to do comedy—I won. It being predicated on doing X or being bigger than Y—no, no, no. To me, it’s always just been about the work.” Ten years, one month, and nine days into doing stand-up, in 2014, Hasan was hired as a correspondent on The Daily Show. The host at the time was Jon Stewart. His parents, Hasan said, “held Jon in the same esteem that they held [the journalist] Dan Rather. Jon is a guy who’s actually doing something good for society. He doesn’t just tell jokes to drunk people in a basement at 2 o’clock in the morning.” After Hasan was hired, he told Jon, “my parents know you.” “Jon didn’t understand the magnitude of what that meant,” Hasan later said. “It was a huge deal. I had been doing stand-up for 10 years, one month, and nine days. And to finally have something where your parents know what it is,” to finally have Layer 2, “it was just — it meant everything to me.”

The Work Is The Win

Ryan Holiday once told me, “The work has to be the win.” You control Layer 1, not Layers 2 and 3. “So ultimately, you have to love doing the work. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”

The Mundanity of Excellence

In the early 1980’s, the sociologist Daniel Chambliss spent five years studying swimmers at every level of ability. He visited learn-to-swim programs, coached a regional swim team, and traveled with the U.S. Olympic Team. Then in 1989, he published his research in a paper titled, “The Mundanity of Excellence.” Essentially, Chambliss found that Olympic champions don’t train more than the average swimmer. Instead, they train differently. In particular, they do “what others see as boring.” Chambliss tells the story of a group of coaches from around the world visiting a U.S. Olympic Team practice. “The visiting coaches were excited at first…then soon they grew bored, walking back and forth, glancing down at their watches, wondering, after the long flight out to California, when something dramatic was going to happen.” “They all have to come to see what we do,” the U.S. Olympic Team coach said. “They think we have some big secret.” There is no secret. There is only the doing of the mundane, boring work, day after day. That’s the theme of this SIX at 6.

Find The Torture You’re Comfortable With

Thirty-eight years into being a stand-up comedian, Jerry Seinfeld was asked how his writing process has evolved over the years. “It’s the exact same,” he said. “I do the exact same now as I did when I was 21 in 1975.” He sits with a yellow legal pad, he says, and “my writing technique is just: You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else.” That’s your day? the interviewer asks. That’s what you’ve done every day for thirty-eight years? That, to me, sounds torturous. “It is,” Seinfeld admits. “But you know what? Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with…Find the torture you’re comfortable with, and you’ll do well.”

A Dividing Line

On December 11, 2021, I picked Robert Greene up from the airport, and we drove forty-five minutes to Bastrop, TX. At one point, Robert told me he’s had more than 20 research assistants since Ryan Holiday and none have been any good. Why weren’t they any good? I asked. He said, “Some didn’t grasp the spirit of the material I look for. Some couldn’t discern what’s interesting from what isn’t. Some melted like an ice cube in the sun at the first piece of constructive criticism. Some…” He paused here to think. As he was thinking, I understood the implication was that those first three reasons didn’t really cut to the core of his troubles with research assistants. “Without exception,” Robert realized, “they weren’t interested in boredom. It’s a dividing line between people who are successful and people who are not.” Mastery, Robert said, requires boredom and tedium. It requires doing the same mundane things over and over and over. It requires sitting with the frustration of putting in work that doesn’t immediately pay off. It requires sitting with the torture of, am I going to spend sixteen hours reading this biography only to discover there’s nothing in it I can use? You have to be able to sit with boredom, Robert said.

The Reality of Creativity

In another conversation, Robert told me he believes one of the reasons people struggle to sit with boredom is that they have a false idea about the word “creativity.” “People have all sorts of illusions about the word that aren’t the reality,” he said. “The reality is that creativity is a function of the previous work you put in. If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you…It comes to you, but only after hours and hours of tedious work.” Creativity is not some mysterious form of magic. It’s something that is rewarded to those who put in hours and hours of mundane, boring, tedious work.

Where Ideas Come From

Charles Schulz was the creator of two of the best-known cartoon characters in history: Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Over nearly 50 years, Schulz drew and published 17,897 Peanuts strips. “I’m often asked where I get my ideas,” Schulz writes in My Life With Charlie Brown. “They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.” (File next to: The prolific Neil Gaiman’s answer when asked where he gets all his ideas—“From daydreaming…You get ideas from being bored.”) There is no secret. There is only the doing of the mundane, boring work, day after day.

When You Like What Others Find Tedious

“One sign that you’re suited for some kind of work,” Paul Graham writes, “is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious.” Find the mundane, boring, tedious, torturous work you like, and you’ll do well.

Shaping The Conversation

In his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, the author and poet David Whyte writes about “the everyday conversational essence” of the word destiny. It’s not some future we can’t control. It’s not some future influenced “by some fated, unseen force…a greater hand than our own, working at the edges,” Whyte writes. It’s “our future influenced by the very way we hold the conversation…by the very way we shape and hold the everyday conversations of life.” Therefore, Whyte writes, “a different way of shaping the conversation will result in a different outcome.” Shaping the conversation in a different way and getting a different outcome—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6.

I Completely Forgot To Be In A Panic Attack

Usually, Judd Apatow dreads going to the Oscars. “Usually I’m really nervous,” he said. “I get a lot of anxiety because it’s too many people and something about is that I’m very bad with names, so it’s a night full of awkward conversations and worrying, ‘do I tell them that I don’t know who they are?’ And I’m also afraid that I’m going to drink a little too much, be a little obnoxious, or try a little too hard to be and funny and then the next feel stupid. And so he whole night is scary for me.” But a few weeks before the 2023 Oscars, Judd watched an interview where Rick Rubin suggested to the host that they close their eyes for a couple minutes and set the intention of really being present with each other for the duration of the interview. Judd saw that and thought, ‘I’m going to try that before the Oscars.’ “I set the intention of, it’s corny but, ‘I’m just going to think that I’m so lucky I get to talk to these people and that there’s a night where they’re all together.’ Instead of making it all about me and whether or not people are going to like me or think I’m funny, I made it about my appreciation for them and what they do.” Holding this conversation in his head throughout the night, Judd said, “actually worked. It really worked. It really affected me the whole night. As the night was almost ending, I thought, ‘Oh, I completely forgot to be in a panic attack tonight.’ It was the least anxious I’ve been at an event like that.”

A Little Mental Jiu-Jitsu

On May 2, 1972, Bruce Springsteen auditioned for the record producer John Hammond. Hammond had signed icons like Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin—two of Springsteen’s heroes. “I would’ve been in a state of complete panic,” Springsteen writes, “except on the way up in the elevator, I performed a little mental jiu-jitsu on myself.” “I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing, so I’ve got nothing to lose…If nothing happens, I’m going to walk out of here the same person as when I walked in.’” Because he shaped the conversation in that way, Springsteen said, instead of panicking, he walked into the audition feeling confident. He performed his song, It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City. “When I was done I looked up,” Springsteen writes, “and I heard him say, ‘You’ve got to be on Columbia Records…That was wonderful.’” Springsteen signed a ten-album deal and would go on to record with Hammond and Columbia Records for the next fifty years.

A Valid Way To Do Really Interesting Things

In 1954, at his local library, Jim Henson checked out 2 books on puppetry. Soon after he read them, he started making puppets, performing puppetry, and considering a career as a puppeteer. Then one day at school, Jim was holding one of his puppets when a teacher said to him, “You [are] wasting your time with those puppets.” Jim began to think that she might right, and from that point on, he said, “I didn’t take puppetry seriously…It didn’t seem to be the sort of thing a grown man works at for a living.” With the conversation shaped in that way, he said, “I decided to chuck it all.” Not long after he chucked the dream of being a puppeteer, Jim “wandered over to Europe” without a plan. It turned out to be a turning point in his life. To Jim’s surprise, in Europe, puppetry was a highly regarded art form. “That was the first time I’d ever met any other puppeteers,” Jim said. “They were very serious about their work. It was at that point I realized the puppetry was an art form, a valid way to do really interesting things.” After being in a different place where there was a different conversation about puppetry, Jim said, “I came back from that trip all fired up to do wonderful puppetry.” And for the rest of his life, Jim did wonderful puppetry, performing with his classic characters: Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and on and on.

This Is A Country Of Second Opinions

The Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger has son, Johnny, who was born with athetoid cerebral palsy. Johnny struggled to talk, to put his own clothes on, to hold a fork, to feed himself with a spoon. The first doctor Dr. Eger took him to told her that Johnny might not make it to high school, and that he definitely needed to be in a school for special needs children. Refusing to be shaped by that conversation, Dr. Eger said, “That’s when I asked, ‘Where do I get a second opinion?’” She flew to Baltimore and at Johns Hopkins, she met a neurologist, Dr. Clark. Johnny stayed with Dr. Clark for a week. After that week, Eger writes in The Choice: Embrace the Possible, Dr. Clark told her, “Your son will be whatever you make of him. John’s going to do everything everyone else does, but it’s going to take him longer to get there. You can push him too hard, and that will backfire, but it will also be a mistake not to push him hard enough. You need to push him to the level of his potential.” After that conversation, Dr. Eger dropped out of graduate school, and everyday, she took Johnny to speech therapy appointments and occupational therapy appointments and any and every other specialist she could find that might help in some way. Around the age of 10, Johnny was physically and academically stable. And in 1978, he graduated from the University of Texas, top ten in his class. “This is a country of second opinions,” Eger said. This is a country of second conversations. A different way of shaping the conversation will result in a different outcome.

In The Way You Craft Your Narrative…

“If you listen to people,” Michael Lewis said, “if you just sit around and listen, you’ll find there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.” Some people are always the victim. Some people always get unlucky. Some people are always in the middle of some impossible project. Some people are always having the worst day. Some people are always the obnoxious, un-funny guy at the Oscars. “There are lots of versions of this,” Lewis says, “and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—crafting your character.” You are—in the way you shape your thoughts and your conversations—shaping your destiny.

Lead Measures Vs. Lag Measures

In the field of strategic management, there is a distinction made between “lead measures” and “lag measures.” “A lag measure,” the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) write, “Is a measurement of a result you are trying to achieve.” “Lead measures are the leveraged actions most connected to achieving the lag measures.” Publishing a newsletter once a week, for instance, is one of my lag measures. And making a few notecards everyday—one of my lead measures. The key to achieving any result, the 4DX authors write, “is to apply a disproportionate energy to the lead measures.” Focusing on lead measures—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6.

The Things You Can Control

The core characteristics of a lead measure, the 4DX authors write, is that “a lead measure is influenceable; it can be directly influenced by you.” Apply a disproportionate energy, they write, to the things you can directly influence. In his first conference call with the media after he was selected by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, Tom Brady was asked: “Are you aware that [along with starting quarterback, Drew Bledsoe] there’s another quarterback here that they drafted last year—Michael Bishop from Kansas State?” Brady said he was aware of that. He said he had seen Bishop play many times. “And I know he’s a heck of a player,” Brady said. “But I’ve always really concerned myself just with the things I can control. And I don’t put a lot of thinking into the other guys because I know I’m not really at my best when I’m not just thinking about playing as well as I possibly can.”

That’s What It’s About

After the final episode of “Seinfeld” in 1998, Jerry Seinfeld didn’t know what to do next with his life. With the success of the show, he had options. “What do I do?” he asked a friend. “Well what’s been the best experience you’ve had so far?” the friend asked. Seinfeld said two things. First, writing—“I just see something and I write it down—I like a big, yellow legal pad—and once I get that pad open, I can’t stop…the next thing I know, the day is gone.” Second, performing stand-up—“I just love the life of it,” Jerry said. “I love the joy of hearing laughs and making jokes.” So, despite the cool and lucrative opportunities to further an acting or screenwriting career in Hollywood, Seinfeld moved back to New York City where he returned to writing jokes by day and performing in comedy clubs by night. In 2002, in the back of one of those comedy clubs, he was approached by a comedian who said he’d been struggling and sacrificing for about 10 years to “make it” as a comedian. Approaching his 30s, he was worried he’d taken the wrong path. “I see my friends,” the struggling comedian says to Seinfeld, “and they’re making a lot of money. They’re married. They have big houses. They’re moving up.” “They’re moving up?” Seinfeld asks. “Are you out of your mind?” He points in the direction of the stage—“this is such a special thing. This has nothing to do with ‘making it.’” One of the differences between Seinfeld and the struggling comedian is what they are focused on. The struggling comedian is focused on lag measures: money, celebrity, a big house, “making it.” Seinfeld is focused on lead measures: writing in his yellow legal pad every day and getting up on stage to hone his material every night—“that’s what it’s about,” Seinfeld tells the struggling comedian.

A Gift To The Art of Reading

In 1954, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey investigated a lag measure that parents around the country were increasingly worried about. “Parents,” Hersey writes, “[are] in dismay that their children can not read.” For 2 years, Hersey read children’s books, met with experts, and attended schools to observe how reading was taught. “It became obvious,” Hersey writes, what the problem was: Children’s books were terribly boring. “Reading troubles,” Hersey writes, “come from a failure to help children to want to read.” Remember, Hersey points out, “reading has to compete for the interest of children with television, radio, movies, comic books, magazines, and sports.” So to be able to compete and to help children to want to read, Hersey says, children’s books need to be more interesting and entertaining. (File next to: The Dance Between Intelligence and Interest). Hersey’s article was a call to redirect the focus from a lag measure to a lead measure. The call was answered by an editor at the publishing house Houghton Mifflin, who, after reading the article, called the illustrator Dr. Seuss and challenged him: “write me a story that first graders can’t put down.” In this book for first graders, Dr. Seuss had to use a vocabulary list of 300 “accepted” words. Dr. Seuss played around with the list of 300 words, and said, “If I find two words that rhyme and make sense to me, that’s the title.” As Dr. Seuss scanned the list, two words caught his attention: Cat and Hat. A little over a year later, on April 19, 1957, Houghton Mifflin released Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat. Using just 236 unique words, Dr. Seuss wrote a blockbuster. The book was called “the biggest event in children’s reading for centuries.” John Hersey said the book was a “masterpiece…a gift to the art of reading.” “It’s the book I’m proudest of,” Dr. Seuss said, “because [it] proved to a number of million kids that reading is not a disagreeable task.”

Musn’t Think Of Its Largeness

John Steinbeck wrote in a journal every morning before he wrote what became The Grapes of Wrath. “There are so many things to go into this book,” he writes in one entry. “An astonishing number of things. This is a huge job.” But then he catches himself, “Musn’t think of its largeness but only of the little picture.” Musn’t think of the lag measures but only of the lead measures: “just a stint every day does it.” Over and over, Steinbeck repeats: “Just a matter of doing the daily stint.” “Just a stint every day does it.” “Just worry about the day’s work.” Just worry about the lead measures.

Like Gold

Robert Greene once told me: “Above all else, focus on acquiring knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills are like gold—a currency you will transform into something more valuable than you can imagine.” With knowledge and skills, Robert said, you become a magnet for opportunities. Focus on lead measures, Robert was saying, on the things you can control, on the influenceable leveraged actions most connected to achieving the lag measures.

“Survival Of The Fittest”

In 1879, Herbert Spencer wrote, “How often misused words generate misleading thoughts!” Fittingly, it is one of Spencer’s most famous quotes that is one of the most misused. After reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, in 1864, Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” as a shorthand for Darwin’s theory of evolution. The phrase has been the misused mantra of justification for corporate takeovers, wars, genocides, and ruthless struggles for power in the workplace and on the playground. What Spencer meant, James Suzman writes in Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, “was not that the strongest, the smartest, and the hardest working were destined to succeed, but rather that those organisms that are best adapted [to] ‘fit’ into any particular environmental niche will thrive.” More than strength, intelligence, or work ethic—surviving and thriving requires the ability to adapt, to “fit” to your external environment and circumstances. That’s the theme of this SIX at 6.

The Forrest Gump Kid

During the filming of Forrest Gump, director Bob Zemeckis realized he had a problem: The kid cast to play the young Forrest sounded nothing like the way Tom Hanks was portraying the adult Forrest. One day on set, Zemeckis told Hanks, “We got a problem here, you have to teach this kid how to talk the way you talk.” One of the hottest actors in Hollywood, Hanks could have demanded they find another kid or that the kid figure out how to sound like Hanks. Instead, Hanks asked to meet the kid. The kid was from Mississippi and had a thick Southern accent, and after a brief conversation, Hanks said, “I thought, ‘Why don’t I just talk the way he talks?’” The iconic Forrest Gump accent and mannerisms were simply a result of Tom Hanks adapting and fitting to the kid’s speech and mannerisms.

Messi’s Muscular Typology

Lionel Messi walks more than any other soccer player. Some speculate that it’s to strategically conserve energy. Others say that part of his genius is his ability to recognize the most opportune times to pounce. If those things are true, they are merely byproducts of the core reason. When Messi was a kid, he was so small that everyone called him “the Flea.” When he was 11 years old, he was diagnosed with Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD). It’s a rare disease caused by the missing of the gland that produces growth hormones in the body. With medical intervention, Messi eventually grew, but he developed a “Muscular typology with a very high-energy consumption,” his former personal physical trainer Juanjo Brau explains. “He can’t be up and down all the time because his muscular typology is not suited to such physical demands.” Essentially, Messi’s muscles empty of energy at an abnormally high rate. So, adapting and fitting to his unusual muscular typology, Messi walks an unusual amount. (File next to: Play To Your Anatomical Strengths).

Tainted Lamb In Tunisia

In “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Indiana Jones clashes with a master swordsman in the Cairo marketplace. In the script, it was meant to be a lengthy duel. But instead of his iconic whip, Indy famously takes out a gun and shoots the guy. “The whole reason it happened,” director Steven Spielberg explains, “was because Harrison Ford [Indiana Jones] had some tainted lamb the night before. We were shooting in Kairouan, Tunisia, and he had some tainted lamb, and he had a case of what we call the turistas [”traveler’s diarrhea”].” Harrison said he “found it inconvenient to be out of my trailer for more than 10 minutes at a time.” At the rate of 10 minutes at a time, they realized it would take 3 days to shoot the duel. “I was puzzling how to get out of this 3 days of shooting,” Harrison said. Fitting to his bowel movements, “I proposed to Steven that we just shoot the son a bitch and Steve said, ‘I was thinking that as well.’” The scene took about 5 minutes to shoot, “and then I went back to my trailer.”

Put The Gates Anywhere You Want

Around the time Jerry Seinfeld was starting out in comedy, many broadcast television companies and radio networks began formally banning the use of curse words. Some comedians were outraged. They refused to adapt and fit their material to the new rules, Seinfeld said, so they didn’t survive. “But the rest of us went, ‘Ok. I still wanna play—I’ll play by the new rules…I’ll get around that.’” It’s like slalom skiing, Seinfeld continues: “I always say, ‘If I’m Lindsey Vonn, I don’t care where you put the gates on the mountain. Put ‘em anywhere you want. I’m going to make the gates.’” Since “culture is a liquid—it’s always changing, always moving, always taking a slightly different shape,” he continues, “you have to feel it and work with it…That’s the job.”

Don’t Fight The Future

Similar to Seinfeld, when the musician John Mayer was starting out, the music landscape was shifting. People were starting to consume music differently. Many artists complained about “the way things were going,” Mayer said. “You’re not gonna hear me complain because my complaining isn’t gonna change anything…An artist has to accept that this is a constantly changing environment. The people who have the hardest time are the people who are fighting the future.” Don’t fight the future, the kid’s accent, the typology, the turistas, the new rules or the changing environment. Fit to it.