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And ever since, I’ve made a policy of trying to hire people who are smarter than I am. The obvious payoffs of exceptional people are that they innovate, excel, and generally make your company—and, by extension, you—look good. But there is another, less obvious, payoff that only occurred to me in retrospect. The act of hiring Alvy changed me as a manager: By ignoring my fear, I learned that the fear was groundless. Over the years, I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were the lesser for it. By hiring Alvy, I had taken a risk, and that risk yielded the highest reward—a brilliant, committed teammate.
Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
I washed up in New York a couple of decades ago, making twenty bucks a night driving a cab and running away full-time from doing my work. One night, alone in my $110-a-month sublet, I hit bottom in terms of having diverted myself into so many phony channels so many times that I couldn't rationalize it for one more evening. I dragged out my ancient Smith-Corona, dreading the experience as pointless, fruitless, meaningless, not to say the most painful exercise I could think of. For two hours I made myself sit there, torturing out some trash that I chucked immediately into the shitcan. That was enough. I put the machine away. I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat ten days of dishes. For some reason I had enough excess energy that I decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in the drying rack. To my amazement I realized I was whistling. It hit me that I had turned a corner. I was okay. I would be okay from here on. Do you understand? I hadn't written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn't matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work. Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against true healing. We all need it. But it has nothing to do with doing our work and it can be a colossal exercise in Resistance. Resistance loves "healing." Resistance knows that the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have to do our work.
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield
The bending and extending motion of the wrist when shooting a basketball is called the wrist snap. In 1996, Roger Miller and Stuart Bartlett conducted the study Contributions to Ball Speed on a Free Throw. In this experiment, their subjects were 15- to 19-year-old boys. They analyzed the amount of force each body part contributed to a free throw. According to their study, 59% of the force to the ball came from the wrist snap.12 Contrary to popular belief, the arms and shoulders contributed more than the legs (81% upper body compared to 19% lower body). Your wrist snap should bring your control fingers to the center of the ball at release for a straight shot every time. It also should be natural. Why? Because it will increase your range. You will be generating more power with your wrist. A natural wrist snap puts your wrist in its strongest position. Furthermore, it will provide more consistency. A natural wrist snap is a universal trait among great shooters.
Straight Shooter
Bob Fisher
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