It’s Like A Meteor Heading Towards Earth
For 20 years, Hugh Howey dreamed of writing a novel. But he had a full-time job, other hobbies, family, friends, and, eventually, a feeling that it was too late to chase his dream. “Often,” Hugh said, “the feeling that we can’t break our stasis and launch our lives in a different direction is really due to the feeling that we should have done it five or ten or twenty years ago.” When Hugh got the advice that finally broke his stasis, he began writing in his spare time. Every day, “I wrote in the morning before work and on my lunch break.” It was a small change, but “it’s like a meteor heading towards the Earth,” Hugh said. “You don’t need to blow it up. You just need to send a rocket up there to slightly nudge it in a different direction.” Over time, a tiny change in trajectory accumulates, causing the meteor to miss Earth and sail through space. Similarly, Hugh continues, “If you consistently maintain even just a little bit of energy in one direction, it’s incredible what you can deflect over time.” Writing just a little bit during his spare time, “I accumulated a lot of words, and in a five or six year period, I wrote about 15 novels,” which sold well over time that “I now have the luxury of writing full-time.” A slight nudge, a tiny change, a little bit of energy in one direction—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
There’s Is Only One Caveat
During a talk at a summer lacrosse camp, the legendary coach Tony Seaman asked the kids, “Who here wants to play at a Division 1 school?” Every kid in the packed auditorium raised their hand. “I’ll tell you how to do it,” he said. “And on top of it, I’ll tell you how to get a full scholarship to play at a college of your choice. Who here wants a full ride?” Everyone. “It’s a simple formula,” he said. “From this day forward…you have to shoot a hundred shots a day. That’s it. You shoot a hundred shots a day from now through your senior year of high school, I guarantee you will get a full scholarship to the Division 1 college of your choice.” It takes just thirty minutes to take a hundred shots, Seaman added. “But here’s the caveat…You can’t miss a day.” Even if it’s a holiday, the weather is bad, or you’re on vacation—you can’t miss a day. “I don’t know about the other kids,” Paul Rabil writes in The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward, “but I walked out of that auditorium and did what Coach Seaman said. Every single day, rain or shine, I practiced. Everywhere I went, I would find a wall to throw against. A goal to shoot on. From my home state of Maryland to New York, California, and Washington, to England, Italy, Spain, Israel, and France—me, a stick, and a ball. For twenty years. And he was right. I was offered a full scholarship to over a dozen universities…It doesn’t matter how ambitious or speculative the goal, you get there by taking one small step after one small step.” By consistently maintaining a little bit of energy in one direction. Thirty minutes a day. One hundred shots on net. Two hundred lines of code on your commute. Three hundred words on your lunch break. “Whatever the reps are in your sport, in your business, in your chosen field, you do them,” Rabil writes. “And there is only one caveat: You can’t miss a day.”
The Race to the Last Place on Earth
Before 1911, the many attempts to reach the South Pole had all ended in tragic, fatal failure. The extreme cold, treacherous terrain, and unpredictable weather had claimed the lives of hundreds of brave explorers when Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott set out in a race to be the first to reach the South Pole. They had distinctly different strategies. Scott pushed his crew to their limits when the weather was good. When the weather was bad, he and his team bunkered down in their tents. Amundsen, on the other hand, maintained a steady pace of 15 miles per day regardless of the weather conditions. **On December 12, 1911, he and his team were within forty-five miles of the South Pole. “Going and surface as good as ever,” Amundsen journaled. “Weather splendid—calm with sunshine.” They could have made it to the Pole that day, but “Amundsen would not allow the daily fifteen miles to be exceeded,” Roland Huntford writes in The Last Place on Earth. So on December 14, Amundsen’s team arrived at the Pole. Scott’s team arrived 34 days later. On the return trip, Scott, still insisting on a level of “inhuman exertion,” and the rest of his team got frostbite and froze to death. Amundsen’s crew completed the 1400-mile trip home without issue, maintaining their 15-miles-per-day pace.
Naturally, I Lost 140 Pounds
Rick Rubin weighed 318 pounds. After reading a book about a guy who ran 1,000 miles in 11 days, Rubin thought, wow, I can barely walk down the block. The book mentioned a doctor named Phil Maffetone. Rubin emailed Dr. Maffetone and asked to become a patient. A few weeks later, Rubin travelled across the country to meet Dr. Maffetone in Florida. After learning about Rubin’s lifestyle—what he ate, if he exercised, when he slept, and so on—Dr. Maffetone made his first suggestion. “From now on,” Dr. Maffetone told Rubin, “when you wake up, I want you to go outside as soon as you wake up and be in the sun for 20 minutes.” Rubin was surprised. Did he travel a long ways for nothing? It seemed like a trivial change. But he tried it—20 minutes of sunshine every morning. “Dr. Maffetone knew,” Rubin said, “if I immediately went in the sun, naturally, my body would start wanting to go to sleep and wake up earlier.” Then his body wanted to eat better. Then it wanted to move more. Then, because he consistently maintained them, these little changes accumulated, and over time, Rubin said, “I lost between 135 and 140 pounds.”
It’s All About It Not Working Until It Does
At the beginning of his acting career, Bradley Cooper had to take whatever jobs he could get. Jobs that seemed to be small and insignificant. Jobs that seemed to hardly alter his career trajectory. Still, he showed up to those jobs and worked with “an insane amount of energy, focus, hard work, and gratitude,” as longtime Hollywood insider Krista Smith put it in a conversation with Cooper. “I don’t know any career that’s just like that [makes a motion of a fast upward trajectory],” Cooper replied. But if you consistently maintain energy, focus, hard work, and gratitude, “no matter how small the role or whatever,” you get to where you want to go. “It’s all about it not working until it does,” Cooper said, “and people looking past you until they don’t.” It’s all about jobs, changes, habits, and reps seeming insignificant until they aren’t.
Sail To The Horizon Over and Over Again
One of Hugh Howey’s other hobbies is sailing. Once he had the luxury of writing full-time, he sailed around the world. “You can’t get to where you want to be in one day,” he says, “just like you don’t sail around the world in a day. You just look at the horizon and say, ‘I can sail that far.’ Sailing around the world is just sailing to the horizon over and over again. Writing a novel is just writing a paragraph over and over again.” Getting to the South Pole is just covering 15 miles a day over and over again. Getting a scholarship, getting in shape, getting a meteor to miss Earth, a career to take off or, a life to where you want it to be—it’s all about consistently maintaining a little bit of energy in one direction. The only caveat: you can’t miss a day.