Founders - #409 The Creative Genius of Rick Rubin

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin. This episode is what I learned from reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com and learn how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes: (00:00) Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. (1:00) It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes, who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do, to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach only to hear him say, Today we will learn to tie our shoes. The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits, down to the smallest detail, is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. (8:41) Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it. (10:16) If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. This applies to every choice we make. The friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention. Because there’s an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. (14:25) We’re affected by our surroundings, and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. (27:57) Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we’re aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to. The goal is not to fit in. Communicate your singular perspective. (28:30) It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. (29:00) The world isn’t waiting for more of the same. Often, the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them or from those who never learned them at all. (38:50) Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work. Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. (42:32) To hone your craft is to honor creation. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet.

The first thing I would show players at our initial day of training was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly. The most important part of your equipment is your shoes and socks. You play on a hard floor. So you must have shoes that fit right, and you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe where you generally get blisters or around the heels. I showed my players how I wanted them to do it. Hold up the sock. Work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good. Then hold up the sock while you put the shoe on. And the shoe must be spread apart, not just pulled on the top laces. You tighten it up snugly by each islet. Then you tie it. Then you double tie it so it won't

come undone because I don't want shoes coming untie during practice or during the game. I don't want that to happen. That's just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of. Because It's the little details that make the big things come about. Now, Rick Rubin comments on this passage. The sentiments above are John Woodens, the most successful coach in the history of college basketball. His teams won more consecutive games and championships than any others in history. It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach, only to hear him say, today we will learn how to tie our shoes.

The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits down to the smallest detail is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. I'm going to interrupt Rick Rubin for a second. and quote Napoleon because when Rick Rubin just said this sentence, one of my favorite sentence of this entire section, just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. This is what Napoleon said. It's very similar. Napoleon said

all great events hang by a single threat. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity. The less clever man by neglecting one thing sometimes misses everything. Back to Rick Rubin. Just one habit at the top of any field. can be enough to give an edge over the competition. Wooden considered every aspect of the game where an issue might arise and trained his players for each one, repeatedly until they became habits.

The goal was immaculent performance. Wooden often said the only person you're ever competing against is yourself. The rest is out of your control. This way of thinking applies to the creative life just as well. For both the artist and the athlete, the details matter. whether the players recognize their importance or not good habits create good art the way we do anything is the way we do everything treat each choice you make each action you take each word you speak with skillful care the goal is to live your life in the service of art that was an excerpt from

the book i'm going to talk to about today which is the creative act a way of being and it was written by Rick Rubin. I want to read to you what Rick Rubin said about the creation of this book. He says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So a few things to know before we jump into the book. This is a very unusual book. I've read over 400 books to make this podcast so far. I can't think of a single other book that I've read for the podcast that's like this. It is almost like a stream of Rick Rubin's thoughts and ideas on creativity, separated into what he calls 78 areas of thought. And these 78 chapters are very brief and to the point.

So this book, even though it's over 400 pages, it's very easy to read. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to move through the book in chronological order and share some of the highlights. I've probably made 100 highlights while reading this book. The last thing to know before I jump into the book is I'm an unabashed Rick Rubin fan. I've been watching his interviews, listening to his podcast, reading books about him. I've been making podcasts about him. In fact, I did an episode four years ago.

It's episode 245 of founders on Rick Rubin's biography, which I just re-listened to twice. I am very interested in people with singular careers, people that are hard to categorize, and people for which there are no substitutes. And Rick Rubin is definitely one of those people. So I want to jump right into the book. He starts by telling us a very useful preface or guide for reading the book. Nothing in this book is known to be true. It is a reflection of what I've noticed, not facts so much as thoughts.

ideas may resonate, others may not. A few may awaken an inner knowing you forgot you had. Use what's helpful, let go of the rest. Each of these moments is an invitation to further inquiry, looking deeper, zooming out, or zooming in, opening possibilities for a new way of being. And so one of the reoccurring themes and something he repeats about the book is the importance of paying attention, of developing a practice of paying attention, not only paying attention to what's around you, but what's going on inside of. of you, the thoughts that you have. He has a very interesting idea that I've seen pop up over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. It's in this section called tuning in. He says, if you have an

idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it is not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artists stole your idea, but because that idea's time has come. I just released a new episode of my new show where I had a conversation, a multi-hour conversation with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. If you haven't listened to it, make sure you search whatever podcast app you're listening to this on. Just search my name, David Senra. And you'll see my other podcast feed where I'm having these long-form conversations with

the living entrepreneurs now, not just setting the dead entrepreneurs, which I normally do. But in that conversation, he literally said the exact same thing. He said that the very early days of Whole Foods, this was not his idea. It was an idea whose time had come that you needed a healthier alternative to all the processed food people were eating and you should have a grocery store dedicated to natural foods. He just happened to be there at the very birth of the natural foods industry, but he said there was all these other people all across the country that had the exact same idea. And so one thing that Rick Rubin will repeat throughout the book, which really speaks to me,

and again, another thing that just reappears over and over again, these biographies that you and I talk about every week together, is giving yourself space and time away from work to actually get all the ideas from your subconscious mind. And so David Ogby, we talked about this over and over again. He was a workaholic. So is Rick Rubin. And yet he would need to take time away. He said he would go for long walks, go for a bike ride, go for a swim, sit in his garden and read fiction.

And all of the sudden, these ideas that he couldn't tap in during his workday because he wasn't giving his mind rest would start flooding in. And so Rick is going to talk about this as picking up on a signal. How do we pick up on a signal? The answer is to not look for it. We need to create an open space that allows it, a space so free of the normal. overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available there's two people that you and i have spoke about in the past that i think i found unique ways to do this jim simons the founder of renaissance technologies

and elon musk and both of them what they would do is when they needed time to think they would find a quiet place usually in the dark and they would lay on their back flat they can't see anything, they couldn't hear anything. And they would usually stay there for sometimes an hour or more. And because there's visual input or no audio input, you're just hearing your mind. The very first time I heard about that, I read it in this book called A Man Who Solved the Market, which was a biography of Jim Simons. I use this idea all the time. It's amazing how it can help you solve problems that you couldn't solve during your workday or really just the way you feel after this. You feel energized. You feel refreshed. So I like that idea, space so free of the normal overpacked

condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum, drawing down ideas that the universe is making available. And I think Rick gives a great summary of why this is so important. The ability to look deeply is the root of creativity, to see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible. And so if you go back to Rick Rubin's description of his own book, where he says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So much of this book, and the reason I started from the chapter called habits is about developing good habits and developing your mind in a way that helps you make and create great work. Another main theme of the book is not overanalyzing. It's not overthinking.

It's just starting. Action produces information as you work. The work itself will reveal what you need to do next. So he says, faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it. He has great advice for figuring out what to work on. Look for what you notice, but no one else sees. Now, it's highly likely when he wrote that line, he wasn't going to think that somebody else is going to read it and think about vacuum cleaners. But when I read it, I thought about James Dyson. And he has built this phenomenal empire, one of the most valuable, privately held businesses in the world from that simple sentence. He looked at a vacuum cleaner, something people used forever, millions of people for decades, and could not understand why people

put up with immediate loss of suction and said, this is stupid. I could do it a better way. Then, because he got right to work and the work will reveal what you need to do next, action produces information, led him to invent the world's very first cyclonic vacuum cleaner. Look what you notice, but no one else sees. One sentence, 10 words, but if you actually sit there and think about it and then actually apply it, it's unbelievably powerful. Now, this next part is excellent. He says, submerge yourself in the great works. This book is trying to be a useful tool on how to make something great. That is all that Rick Rubin cares about. And so he says, consider submerging yourself in the canon of great works. Read the finest literature. Watch the masterpieces of cinema.

Get up close to the most influential paintings. Visit architectural landmarks. Exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward and opens doors of possibility. If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period, you'll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. This applies to every choice we make, not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what's worthy of our time and attention. This line is so great because there's an endless amount of data available to

us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work. Submerging yourself in the great works is exactly what you and I are doing every week together. That is the perfect lead in to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I spend a lot of time with the Founders Ramp. I observe how they build their business,

and I think there's a lesson in the way that they're building their business that is applicable to anyone who is trying to make something great in the world. And that's exactly the way I would think about Rick Rubin and this book. He wants to help other people make great things and then give those great things to the world. And one of the ways that the founders of Ramp make great work is they take an idea from Steve Jobs. You always bet on talent.

To Steve Jobs, this was mandatory. Steve said you must find the extraordinary people. A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. And so you must build a team that pursues the A players. And that is exactly what Ramp did. There is a reason Ramp is a presenting sponsor of this podcast. They are chasing excellence. Just like Rick Rubin, they are only interested in making great work.

And to do so, Ramp has assembled the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible. In the last year, Ramp hired only 0.23% of the people that applied. This means when you're using Ramp, you now have top-tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers working on your behalf 24-7 to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations, and they do this on a single platform. Ramp gives your business fully programmable corporate credit cards for your entire team,

automated expense reporting, bill payments, accounting, and more all in one place. This means the longer use Ramp, the more effective. efficient your company becomes. This is important because as Sam Walton said in his autobiography, you can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. I run my business on Ramp, and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs I know. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. That is ramp.com. Now, one of the ideas that Rick Rubin repeats

that resonates deeply with me, is investing a lot of patience and time into the work, sitting with it longer, taking a break, revisiting that same work. One area of thought or chapter that he has is nothing is static. There's a few sentences in here that I want to share with you. One of them is really important because I do this over and over again. He says, reread the same book over and over. And you'll likely find new themes, undercurrents, details, and connections. I do this for podcasts, too.

It's amazing how many times I'll listen to the same episode of a podcast. And there's an idea that I just missed the first. first two or three times. Same thing with the book. And the reason that reading a book is so important, I guess it applies to the podcast too because it's not changing. The words on the page are the words in the episode, they don't change, but over time you do. And so Rick Rubin talks about this. He says, the person who makes something today isn't the same person who returns to the work tomorrow. And then he goes back to this idea of making sure you create an environment, creating these habits, where you can tap into the wisdom of your subconscious. There's an

abundant reservoir of high quality information in our subconscious. And finding ways to access it can spark new material to draw from. And so one way you do this is by affecting the setting in which you work. He says, we're affected by our surroundings and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. And so one of the benefits of reading this book is Rick has this historical database in his head of all these great artists and creators and architects and musicians and writers. And he's constantly referencing them. And so he talks about, you know, here's some other ideas of other people trying to figure out the best environment that is necessary to create their best work.

And so he says Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, radio, and record player all on simultaneously. For Eminem, the noise of a single TV set is his preferred backdrop for writing. Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound-absorbing cork, closed the drapes, and wore earplugs.

Kafka, too, took his need for silence to an extreme. Not like a hermit, he once said, but like a dead man. There is no wrong way. way, there's only your way. And the very next paragraph is so good. It's not always easy to follow the subtle, energetic information in the universe broadcasts, especially when your friends, family, coworkers, or those with a business interest in your creativity, are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing. To the best of my ability, I've followed

my intuition to make career turns and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe than those around you. That part is so important and so hard to actually apply. My all-time favorite quote about the power of intuition actually comes from Steve Jobs. This is what he said. Intuition is a very powerful thing. More powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.

And I think now having read this book and reread my highlights, I don't know, five, six, seven times before I sat down to talk to you about it. The way I would characterize Rick Rubin's view of the world is that it is magic and that we make up stories that greatly exaggerate how much of the world we actually understand. This is going to sound really weird, but I think Rick Rubin would agree with Thomas Edison's famous quote where he says, we don't know one one thousandth percent of anything. And so if you think about what's happening in that paragraph, he's like, you know, your friends are giving your advice, your family, your coworkers. A lot of these people probably care about you. Then there's other people that just have a business interest in your creativity that want you to do

what's best for them and not it's best for you. It's like, how do you parse all this incomplete information? And what's very clear is he thinks that intuition is a higher form of knowledge or wisdom than even the rational or storytelling part of your mind. And keep in mind, again, one of the reasons I admire him so much because you know I have this obsession with people that do things for a long period time. He started working in the music industry when he was 18. he's in his 60s now still doing it and listen to what he said about that to the best of my ability I followed my intuition to make career turns and have been recommended against doing so every time it helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe or follow my case I would change that

sentence follow your intuition than those around you this is a very unique book I really do hope you buy it because again you don't even have to you want to know how I started reading it there's a smoothie place that I like going to and they take usually a really long time to make them and they have like a bookshelf. So of course, me being the giant nerd that I am, I go over to the bookshelf. And Rick Rubin's book was on that bookshelf. And so I'd go to the smoothie place all the time. And I'm reading chunks of this book in like the five or ten minutes. I'm waiting for the smoothie. I think that's actually a great way to read the book. Each chapter, you could probably read in a minute, two minutes, three minutes. But if you just sit

with the actual ideas, it's very, very powerful. So let's go to this chapter on self-doubt. There are singers considered among the best in the world who can't bring themselves to listen to their own voice. And these are not rare exceptions. If a creator is so afraid of judgment that they're unable to move forward, it might be that the desire to share the work isn't as strong as a desire to protect themselves. Perhaps art isn't their role. Their temperament might serve a different pursuit.

This path is not for everyone. Adversity is part of the process. I read that. I think of what Jeff Bezos said. This is a great quote from Jeff Bezos. If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting. Some successful artists are deeply insecure, self-sabotaging, struggling with addiction, or facing other obstacles to making and sharing their work.

An unhealthy self-image or a hardship in life can fuel great art, creating a deep well of insight and emotion for an artist to draw from. They can also get in the way of the art. being able to make things over a long period of time. Again, go back to what he said this book is. It is a book on how to be, how to be, how to develop the great habits, how to build the best environment for you to do the best work. Why?

Because that's the only way you're going to be able to do great things over a long period of time, which is the goal. So he says people who are particularly challenged in this sense generally can't produce creative work over and over again. This isn't because they're not artistically capable, but because they were only able to break through their own issues one or two times and share great work. They'd never figure it out how to be. And in many cases, they sabotage himself. So I actually got to go to, I'm a huge fan of Jimmy Iveen. I made an episode of founders on him, which I'm really, really proud of. After that

episode came out, I was actually invited to go to his house and I spent several hours with him. And Jimmy's been in the music industry for 50 years. If you don't know who Jimmy is, listen to the episode I made on him, but also watch this documentary called The Defiant Ones, which is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. And Jimmy's got this hard-earned practical wisdom that only comes from, you know, succeeding for half a century. And one of the things we talked about was how many people cannot handle success. And in the music industry, because let me just finish this, I guess, Rick Rubin's about to say one of the reasons so many great artists die are of overdoses is because they're using drugs to numb a very painful existence. And so Jimmy has all this wisdom and I was trying

to tap into it through in our conversation. And he was saying there's like four primary ways He saw talented, really smart, but not really wise, I would add, people sabotage themselves. And number one was alcohol. Number two was pills. Number three was women. And number four was megalomania. They go on stage. There's 50,000 people screaming in their name.

And they start to believe they're not even human anymore. They're like this godlike creature. This section to me, what Jimmy's advice to me and then this section where Rick Rubin's telling you and I, now. This is terrifying to me. The idea that you can be good at something, but you can only do it once or twice for a very short period of time. I think there's a lot of wisdom in what Charlie Munger has said, where it's like, you know, you can just get a huge advantage. You don't have to be brilliant. You just have to be consistently not stupid over a long period of time. And just being consistently not stupid and don't sabotage yourself over decades

put you ahead of probably 99% of the people on the planet. And so in the next chapter called Make It Up, I think Rick Rubin has some really great advice on, again, we're trying to do things for really high level, at a really high level for a really long time. I think Rick Rubin himself isn't a perfect example of that. So he says, we're not playing to win. We're playing to play.

And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process, to make and put out successive works with ease. One approach to overcoming insecurities is to label them. I was working with an artist who was frozen by doubts and unable to move forward. I asked if he was familiar with the Buddhist concept of Pampancha, which translates as preponderance of thoughts.

This speaks to the mind's tendency to respond to our experiences with an avalanche of mental chatter. He responded, I know exactly what that is, that is me. Now that he had a name for what was holding him back, he was able to normalize his doubts and not take them so seriously. When they came up, we'd call them Pampancha, notice them, and then we would move forward. I was in a meeting with another artist who had just released a very successful album,

but felt afraid to do more work and listed different reasons why she didn't want to make music anymore. There are always good reasons not to continue. And so this is what Rick Rubin said to the artist. It's fine. You don't have to make music ever again. There's nothing wrong with that.

Just stop if it's not making you happy. It's your choice. As soon as I said this, her expression changed and she realized she would be happier creating than not creating. Gratitude can also help, realizing you are fortunate to be in a position that allows you to create and in some cases get paid to do what you love might tip the balance in favor of the work. Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it. Even for some of the greatest artists, that fear never goes away.

One legendary singer, despite performing for over five decades, was never able to eliminate his stage fright. Despite a terror so strong it made him sick to his stomach, he still stepped into the spotlight each night and performed a spellbinding show. By accepting self-doubt rather than trying to eliminate or repress it, we lessen its energy and interference. It is worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, I don't know if my song is as good as it can be. Doubting yourself might sound like I can't write a good song. These statements are worlds apart,

both in accuracy and an impact on your nervous system. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. However, doubting the quality of your work might at times help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. And then he goes back to this idea about how valuable temporary distraction can be. When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear.

Distraction is not procrastination. Procrastination consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction is a strategy and service of the work. want to go back into Rick Rubin's idea about submerging yourself into the great works, really reminds me of Charlie Munger's idea that learning from history is a form of leverage. But before I do that, I want to tell you about two tools you should be using for your business. The very first tool is Vanta. Vanta helps your company prove you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Customer trust can make or break your business. And the more your business grows,

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section on collaboration, Rick Rubin makes a great point that everything we're doing today is a act of collaboration with the things that came before us. He says, nothing begins with us. The more we pay attention, the more we begin to realize that all the work we ever do is a collaboration. It is a collaboration with the art that has come before you and the art that will come after you. There's a great story in his biography that is a demonstration of this collaboration, a demonstration that he is constantly submerging himself into great works. He had tapes full of hits that used to be played on the radio in the 1960s. And he was using those songs and those tapes in the creation of work that he was doing

40 years after their initial release. And so then he has a section all about rules, knowing the rules and then breaking the rules. But really, when I'm reading through this, I really think the advice he's giving is the importance of making sure that what you're creating is differentiated. You're not on this planet to be average, to be mediocre. And he says, rules direct us to average behaviors. If we're aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don't apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.

The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it's to amplify your differences. Instead of sounding like others, value your own voice. Develop it and then cherish it. As soon as a convention is established, the most interesting work would likely be the one that doesn't follow it. Communicate your singular perspective. That sounds a lot. like James Dyson's mantra of difference for the sake of it.

The artists who define each generation are generally the ones who live outside of these boundaries. It is a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our own chosen medium are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned, and he states why doing so is such a big problem. The world isn't waiting for more of the same. often the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them are from those who never learn them at all holding every rule as

breakable is a healthy way to live as an artist it loosens constraints that promote a predictable sameness in our working methods beware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done it before another idea that reoccur is throughout this book and it's also present in his biography as well as the importance of listening and not assuming you know what the outcome is going to be. I'm a huge fan of podcasts. Obviously, I'm obsessed with them. And even though there's like millions in the podcast directory, there's only a handful. They're actually really great. And I actually think Rick Rubin's podcast, Tetagrammaton, is great. And one of the things that I describe it, one way I describe it to other people is what makes it so

great. He's like, he's a professional listener. And he's been cultivating this skill over his career for decades. And so he has a lot of opinions on this. He says, formulating an opinion. is not listening. Neither is preparing a response or defending our position or attacking another's. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all. Listening is suspending disbelief. We are openly receiving, paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what's being expressed and allowing it to be what it is. Listening is then not just awareness. It is freedom, from accepted limitations and that directly leads into his thoughts on patience this is one of my

favorite parts of the book there are no shortcuts the artist actively works to experience life slowly and then to re-experience the same thing anew to read slowly and to read again and again and again i might read a paragraph that inspires a thought and while my eyes continue moving across the page in the physical act of reading my mind may still be lost in the previous idea i'm not not taking in information anymore. When I realize this, I return to the last paragraph I can recall and start reading from there again. Sometimes, that's three or four pages back. Anybody that reads a lot has experienced that. Happens to me all the time. Rereading, even a well-understood paragraph or page can be revelatory. New meanings, deeper understandings, inspirations, and nuances

arise and come into focus. So often we sleepwalk through our lives. Again, I think the patience section and the listening section are related we're not actually paying attention we are rushing through life so often we sleepwalk through our lives our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply the note i left myself when i got to that sentence our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply was amen i am not trying to rush through the creation of these podcasts to the creation of this this work i think the hard way is the right way So many times people give me advice that I should be outsourcing X or I should be outsourcing Y. And when I try to explain to them as what makes this special is the compounding of this over

10 years. It's because I didn't take shortcuts. It's because I read and reread books over and over again, past highlights over and over again. I go back and relisten to past episodes over and over again. I just told you, I listened to the Rick Rubin one that I did four years ago twice to prepare for this one. Why is that important? Because the next sentence that Rick has in the book, it's through deliberate action and repetition that we gained. deeper insight. Patience is required for the nuanced development of your craft. That sounds so much like Steve Jobs. What does Steve Jobs say? To make it really great, all it takes is a little more time and a willingness to persevere until it's really great. It takes more time. Patience is required for

crafting a work that resonates and contains all that we have to offer. Impatience is an argument with reality. Even the masterpieces that have been produced on tight timelines are the sum of of decades spent patiently laboring on other works. If there is a rule to creativity that's less breakable than the others, it's that the need for patience is ever present. Moving on, we see another reoccurring thing that you and I have discussed. This pops up in almost every single biography. The people that are usually really great that create the greatest companies, the greatest inventions, the greatest technology, they're usually very obsessive and it causes them to discount other parts of their life. He says, the great artist throughout history

are the ones that are able to maintain a childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally. Just as an infant is selfish, there's a great interview that Michael Jordan did a long time ago with Oprah Winfrey, that he has a line in there where he says success is selfish. And he's talking about the fact that he's spending time away from people in his life to pursue his craft or his work. Now, the outcome of that work is not selfish. It's actually a gift to the rest of humanity. Think about the tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people that were inspired

by Michael Jordan's encore performance. and his story and what he accomplished. But to do that, the time away from other people that may have wanted his time in his life, it was selfish. Success is selfish. It's a great quote from Michael Jordan. Rick Rubin is saying,

just as an infant is selfish, they're protective of their art in a way, the great artists of history, that is, they're protective of their art in a way that's not always cooperative. Their needs as a creator comes first, often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. This story he's about to tell of a singer-songwriter,

has been told to me verbatim by one of the greatest living entrepreneurs. And I'll get there in one second. He says, for one of the most loved singer-songwriters of all time, if inspiration comes through, it takes precedence over all other obligations. His friends and family understand that in the middle of a meal, conversation or event, if a song calls, he'll exit the scene and tend to it without explanation. I literally have had one of the greatest living entrepreneurs tell me that directly,

that his friends and family know they can be in the middle of a dinner. If there's an idea or something, some kind of form of inspiration comes to him related to his work, he will just get up and exit. You have likely used this person's products. And Rick Rubin's point is this is a form of inspiration. He says when flowing, keep going. Our schedules are set aside when these fleeting moments of illumination comes. Summon your strength and commit yourself on behalf of this offering, even when it arises at an inopportune time. This is the serious artist's obligation.

And one of the reasons this is so important because he has this great line that he repeats, or he doesn't repeat the line verbatim, but the idea behind the line, that the work reveals itself as you go, which goes back to the dangers of overthinking, over analyzing, just get started, action produces information, the work reveals itself as you go. And then he talks about this paradox because he keeps talking about patience. But he also talks about the importance of finishing your work, releasing it, and then moving on to the next thing. The reward for great work is just more work.

And so he says, this is a paradox, to create our best. work, we are patient and avoid rushing the process while at the same time we work quickly and without delay. That's a very Jeff Bezos-like statement. The motto for one of Jeff's company is step-by-step ferociously. We're going to avoid rushing the process while at the same time we're going to work quickly and without delay. And again, I'm skipping ahead many pages and you see these ideas reappear over and over again in different forms. He just said the work reveals itself as you go. Why is that and so important? Because he compares it to finishing a puzzle. If all the puzzle is complete except for that one piece, then you know exactly where it goes.

The same is generally true for art. The more of the work that you can see, the easier it becomes to gracefully place the final details clearly where they belong. So then he has advice as we get closer and closer to completion of the work. And a lot of this is when you're collaborating with other people, you're going to start to get feedback. And he talks about how some of this, when viewed as a challenge

and separated from, you know, the critique of the person, just critiquing the work, is very beneficial to the overall project. sometimes a challenge allows us to focus on an aspect of the work and realize it's more important than we previously thought. In the process, we access deeper wells of understanding into the work and ourselves. As you collect feedback, the solutions offered may not always seem helpful, but before discarding them, take a moment to see if they're pointing to an underlying problem you had not noticed. And he talks about it's so hard for people to say, hey, the work is finally done.

It's so tempting to just keep working on it, keep working on it, keep working on it forever. He says, when is the work done? There's no formula or method for finding this answer. it is an intuition and that intuition is the answer to the work is done when you feel it is and he has one of the greatest ways to think about why it's important to be patient but also to work as fast as you can and to actually put what you're making out into the world hanging onto your work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary okay I understand that the next sentence is so important the next two sentences are so important moments and opportunities are lost the next works are robbed of being brought to life and then

something I haven't touched on yet, but I should because it's central to Rick Rubin. All he cares about is making things that he is proud of and that he wants to see in the world. He says when making art, the audience comes last. I get interviewed a lot. And a lot of people ask me the questions like, okay, what does success for you look like in five years? And my answer is whether it's today, next year, five years from now, it's always the same. I define success the same way that Steve Jobs did. Did I make something that I'm proud of? Rick Rubin just wants to make great things. And he's done so for decade after decade after decade. And that starts with doing it for the right reason. So he's got a section titled greatness. This is excellent. Imagine you're

building a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you'll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows, all magnificent, curated to your taste. This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version. We do the best as we see the best, with our own taste, no one else's. We are performing for an audience of one. Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work.

Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is, are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. I need to read that last sentence. and any story beyond, I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is, are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. Instead of focusing on what this art will bring you, focus on what you contribute to this

art to make it the best it could possibly be. With the objective of simply doing great work, a ripple effect occurs. A bar is set for everything you do, which may not only lift your work to new heights, but raise the vibration of your entire life. It may even inspire others to do their best work. Greatness begets greatness. It's infectious. Damn, that's good.

Greatness begets greatness. It's infectious. Our calling is to make beautiful works to the best of our ability. And he's got another great way to think about this. Being made happy by someone else's best work and then letting it inspire you to rise to the occasion is not competition. It's collaboration. And then this next part really speaks to a fundamental lesson from studying Rep Rubin, being comfortable with ambiguity, being comfortable with uncertainty,

and the importance of refining and then following your intuition. We live in a mysterious world full of uncertainties, and we regularly make assumptions to explain them. Generally, our explanations are guesses. These vague hypotheticals become fixed in our minds as fact. We are interpretation machines, and this process of labeling and detaching is efficient, but not accurate. we are the unreliable narrators of our own experience it is helpful to remember that there are forces at work beyond our comprehension we are dealing in a magic realm nobody knows why or how it works again it goes back to the subconscious to the intuition now we're many many pages ahead of where i just was and yet he repeats this idea he says it differently but he repeats this idea it is a form of intelligence it's a form of wisdom and he says this intelligence is beyond our understanding And so another thing I love about Rick Rubin is, like, he has these combination of these ideas that you think might even be in conflict with one another. Like he's very comfortable with following the magic, very comfortable letting the work lead to where he needs to go.

But he also takes his work unbelievably seriously. And so I love this idea about how to never lose a valuable idea. You may worry that a great idea could get lost or overlooked in the spontaneity of a moment. To guard against that when I'm working with an artist, I make an endless amount of notes. when outside observers come into the studio, they often cannot believe how clinical the process looks. They imagine a big music party, but we're constantly generating detailed notes

on focus points and experiments to test. For almost everything that's said, someone is writing it down. Two weeks later, there will come a time when someone will ask a question like, what was that lyric we loved? What was that previous version of this element like? Which take was the best for the fill going on in the second chorus?

And we go back to the notes. Faithful note-taking by a connected observer helps prevent special moments from getting lost in the churn of excitement. And finally, the last idea, I think is a great summary of what this is all about, what you and I are trying to do, and frames our work as an active service to other people, which I think, again, one of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship comes from Henry Ford, where he says money comes naturally as a result of service. Focus on service. To hone your craft is to honor creation. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet.