Winning Through Attrition
Writing about the major wars that shaped the course of history, the strategist and historian B.H. Liddell Hart found that in only 2% of campaigns “did a decisive result follow a plan of direct strategic approach to the main army of the enemy.” The vast majority of campaigns, Hart explains, were won through what military strategists refer to as “winning through attrition”—by having staying power, outlasting the opponent, playing the long game. The consistently successful armies of history, Hart writes, all had the “power of endurance to last.”
Winning through attrition, having staying power, outlasting the opponent, playing the long game—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
The Evolution Of “The Great Wave”
Late in life, the Japanese painter and printmaker Hokusai was asked to sum up his work as an artist. “From the age of five,” Hokusai wrote, “I had a penchant for copying the form of things. From about fifty, my pictures were frequently published. Yet of all I drew prior to the age of seventy, truly nothing that I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-two, I finally understood something of the quality of birds, animals, insects, fish, and the nature of grass and trees. Therefore at eighty, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to penetrate even further into the underlying meanings of things. At one hundred years I will have achieved a truly marvelous state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, each dot and every line will surely possess a life of its own.” This philosophy, this lifelong pursuit of progress, is perhaps best reflected in the evolution of Hokusai’s ability to depict water, a theme he stayed with for decades, culminating with The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1831), one of the most iconic and widely reproduced works of art in history:
You Just Have To Find A Way To Prevail
Before he was Han Solo or Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford was a carpenter. In 1964, Ford moved to Hollywood to become an actor. “But I arrived on a metaphoric bus full of people who had the same ambition,” he said. So he came up with this plan to prevail over the competition. As Ford spent time around the other aspiring actors on that metaphoric bus, he became aware of something: Most of them were in a hurry. They were in a hurry to “make it” or to make lots of money or to prove something to someone. Whatever the reason, most were on a tight timeline. So Ford’s plan was to do the opposite: to lengthen his timeline. To do so, Ford said, “I had to have another source of income. So I became a carpenter.” He chose carpentry for three reasons. First…when he first moved to Hollywood, he taught himself the basic carpentry skills needed to fix up his dilapidated house. He was immediately attracted to the process of fixing things, calling it “a form of meditation.” Second…he thought—since Hollywood is an everybody-knows-everybody kind of town—a carpentry job could lead to an acting job. Indeed. Ford became known as the “carpenter to the stars.” His roster of clients included Francis Ford Coppola, James Caan, Richard Dreyfuss, and Joan Didion. Most famously, in the early 1970s, Ford was building “an elaborate portico entrance” at Coppola’s offices where Coppola’s friend, George Lucas, was leading casting meetings for Star Wars. One day, Ford said, “I was asked by George if I would read with the other actors. There was no indication that I might be considered for a part in the film.” “I read with about 300 actors and weeks later, they asked me if I wanted to play Han Solo.” And third…“By doing carpentry,” he explained, “I was able to wait it out. And as the years went by, the attrition rate eliminated many of those people from the competition pool until finally, there were only a few of us left on the bus from that entering class. I always saw life that way—you just have to find a way to stick it out, to prevail.”
Taking A Long-Term View
When Kobe Bryant was 12, he played a 25-game basketball season without scoring a single point. Not a free throw, not a lucky bounce, not a breakaway layup—nothing. “I was terrible,” he said. “Awful.” Asked if that season was when he began to develop his legendary work ethic, Kobe said, “No. I think that’s when the idea of taking a long-term view became important.” “I wasn’t the most athletic,” he explained. “So I had to look long term. Because I wasn’t going to give up on the game, I said, ‘Ok, this year I’m going to get better at this. Next year, that.’ And so forth and so on. And patiently, I got better…It was piece by piece. It was the consistency of the work: Monday, get better. Tuesday, get better. Wednesday, get better. You do that over a long period of time—three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years—you get to where you want to go.”
Stay On The Bus
The photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen once gave a speech to the New England School of Photography. In Helsinki, Finland—where Minkkinen was born and raised—there is a bus station. It’s in the heart of Helsinki and has some twenty-four platforms. The buses make the same first few stops on the way out of the city. “Let’s say,” Minkkinen said, “metaphorically speaking, that each bus stop represents one year in the life of a photographer.” The third stop is the Museum of Fine Arts, metaphorically speaking, and you present the best of your three years of photographic activity. The curator suggests you check out the work of the great Irving Penn. The great Irving Penn took off from the platform you took off from, only years earlier. Realizing that what you’ve been doing has already been done, Minkkinen says, “you hop off the bus, grab a cab, and head straight back to the bus station looking for another platform.” You spend another three years working on a new style. You go back to the Museum of Fine Arts. The curator takes one look and asks, haven’t you seen the work of the great Sally Mann? You get off the bus, grab a cab, and head back to the bus station looking for another platform. But this time, Minkkinen himself is there waiting with some advice: “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.” Just as the buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line for a little while, Minkkinen says, you can’t help but be partially derivative for a little while. Stay with it for months and years, “and soon your differences will begin to appear with clarity and intelligence, your originality will become visible, and even the works from those very first years of trepidation when everything you did seemed to have been done before [will] all with the stamp of your unique vision. Why? Because you stayed on the bus.” (As Miles Davis said, “Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”)
The Secret Is There Is No Secret
When asked about the secret to his success, Jerry Seinfeld quoted what the swimmer Katie Ledecky said after winning 4 gold medals at the Rio Olympics: “The secret is there is no secret.” “There’s nothing you have to know,” Seinfeld elaborated. “You just have to work.” You just have to have staying power. You just have to find a way to stick it out, to prevail, to stay on the bus, to be able to do the mundane, boring, torturous work, day after day. You do that over a long period of time—three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years—you’ll get to where you want to go.