The Best In The World Lose A Lot
One of the greatest tennis players of all time, Roger Federer won 103 singles titles in his career, the second most in the sport’s history. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments, including Wimbledon a record eight times. Between 2004 and 2008, he reigned as the world’s No. 1-ranked player for 237 consecutive weeks, a stretch of dominance unmatched in the history of professional tennis. “Now, I have a question for you,” Federer said in a 2024 Commencement speech. “What percentage of points do you think I won throughout my career?” He paused. “Only 54%,” he said. In other words, one of the most dominant athletes of all time lost nearly half of the points he played. “Whatever game you play in life,” Federer continued, “you’re going to lose—a point, a match, a season, a job…You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That is the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they know they’ll lose—again and again—and have learned how to deal with it.”
Masters at losing, failing, getting rejected, overcoming hard moments, disappointments, and setbacks—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Generating A Lot Of Crappy Rejected Ideas
Few have had more cartoons published in The New Yorker than the artist Drew Dernavich. He once posted a picture on Instagram of two piles of paper. One pile is marked “YES,” containing every idea the magazine accepted. The other pile is marked “NO”—every idea that was rejected. The “YES” pile is tiny. The “No” pile towers about a foot high. And that’s not all of them, Dernavich admits in the photo’s caption: “I’m still generating a lot of crappy rejected ideas, they’re just in digital form now!” If you only saw what got published, you might call Dernavich a creative genius. “Drew’s not a genius,” Seth Godin writes in The Practice. He’s a master at overcoming rejection. “How many cartoons would you need to have rejected before you gave up?” Godin continues. “On the other hand, how many not-very-good cartoons would you have to draw before you figured out how to make them funny? These might be related.”
If You Stay Out There Long Enough, You’re Going To Catch A Wave
The screenwriter Mike White spent some twenty-five years creating and working on television shows that failed. His HBO series “Enlightened” was cancelled after two seasons. His sitcom “Cracking Up” was pulled by the network halfway through its first season. His drama series “Pasadena” fared worst of all—only four of its thirteen episodes aired before the show was canceled. And that’s just what made it to air. There were also ideas that died in development, pilots that never went to production, and series he pitched that never got picked up at all. But he kept going, kept making things, kept overcoming failure. And in 2021, after “working in the margins for a long time,” as White put it, he created the award-winning sensation, “The White Lotus.” Asked how it feels to have a hit show after so many years of disappointment, White said, “I just feel like I’m like a surfer who’s been in the ocean for 25 years and suddenly caught a wave. And you know, if you stay out there long enough, you’re going to catch a wave.”
While They’re Deciding, Make Even More Art
In the early-1960s, Andy Warhol made hundreds of plywood box sculptures, meticulously constructed, painted, and silkscreened to exactly replicate the corrugated cardboard shipping cartons that brands used to deliver bulk goods—Heinz ketchup, Brillo soap pads, Kellogg’s corn flakes, and Campbell’s tomato juice—to grocery stores. On April 21, 1964, Warhol exhibited these box sculptures at New York City’s Stable Gallery. Across multiple rooms, he arranged hundreds of boxes to stage various steps of the supply chain: boxes were scattered like new arrivals in a warehouse, organized like inventory in a stockroom, set up like product in an end-cap display, and stacked four-high, as if waiting to be wheeled away on a dolly cart. The exhibit was a spectacular failure. Critics wrote nasty things about Warhol. Fans were baffled by the sculptures. Even longtime friends and supporters backed away, distancing themselves so as to not be thought associated with him. “Warhol refused to linger over the setback,” we’re told, “taking instead the advice he would often give to other artists: ‘Don’t think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide whether it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they’re deciding, make even more art.’”
98.5% Of The Time, It Doesn’t Work
Jerry Seinfeld started performing stand-up comedy in 1976. Since then and to this day, every day he sits with a yellow legal pad and writes jokes. Given that he’d been honing his craft for 47 years, he was asked, “How do you know a joke is going to work on stage?” Seinfeld said, “You don’t.” “You just trust yourself?” the interviewer asked. “No you don’t,” Seinfeld said. “There’s no trust. It’s excruciating—8 or 9 times out of 10, it doesn’t work.” The interviewer pushed back, noting that he had recently seen Seinfeld perform at The Beacon Theatre in New York City, where Seinfeld got nothing but laughs. “What you saw is what’s worked,” Seinfeld said. “But you only saw 1.5% of what I’ve tried.” He published a book titled with the question every comedian says to every other comedian about a new joke, Is this anything? He says there’s a follow-up question when you see that comedian later, Did it get anything? “All comedians are slightly amazed when anything works.” “It’s slightly terrorizing,” Seinfeld said of getting on stage—again and again, night after night—not knowing if his jokes are going to get anything. “A lot of people can be funny. A lot of people can write jokes. But not a lot of people can handle that daily slight terror.” The best comedians in the world are not the best because every joke they come up with is a winner. It’s because they’ve learned how to deal with the terrifying fact that 98.5% of the jokes they come up with will be losers.
Just Keep Bumbling And Failing
In his acceptance speech for a lifetime “visionary” award, billionaire VC Vinod Khosla said, “I still don’t really believe in vision.” He elaborated, “I believe in bumbling around long enough to not give up at things. And eventually, success comes your way. Because you tried to fail in every possible way, the only way that’s left is the one successful way…So, I like to say that vision is about more shots on goal, more at bats at the plate…You just keep failing and failing enough and not giving up.” You just keep staying in the game. You just keep overcoming failures and losses and rejections and setbacks and disappointments and hard moments. And eventually, inevitably, you have some successes, you catch some waves, you get some laughs, you win some points.