The Price of Becoming

Todd Henry [00:00:00]:

In the spring of 1852, the British Post Office sent a mid level surveyor out to the Channel Islands to solve a mail problem. Letters left the islands on packet boats and the packet boats sailed with the tides, which meant nobody in Jersey ever quite knew when to hand in their mail. It was a small, unglamorous logistical headache. No one knew when to mail things. In order to get them where they needed to be on time. The surveyor came back with a recommendation. He had seen something on the continent that he thought might work. A cast iron pillar with a slot in it standing on a street corner where people could drop a letter anytime they pleased.

Todd Henry [00:00:37]:

The first four went up in the town of St. Helier that November. Within a year, the idea jumped to the British mainland. Today there are more than 100,000 of them across the United Kingdom painted that famous red, so beloved that there's an actual society devoted to cataloging every single one. But the mailbox is not why I'm telling you about this man. That surveyor's name was Anthony Trollope. And while he was riding around inspecting postal routes and quietly giving Britain one of its most iconic objects, he was also becoming one of the most prolific novelists who ever lived. Here's how he did it.

Todd Henry [00:01:14]:

Trollope paid his groom five pounds a year extra to wake him up with coffee before dawn. He was at his desk by 5:30am and every morning he set his pocket watch in front of him and required himself to write 250 words every 15 minutes. Three hours a day. Every day. Finished before he dressed for breakfast and left for the office. He kept a diary of his daily pages, so if he ever slipped into idleness, the blank pages would stare back at him and demand more. And if he happened to finish a novel in the middle of a morning session, he didn't celebrate. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started the next one.

Todd Henry [00:01:49]:

47 novels plus travel books, short stories and essays, much of it written while he held down a day job. After Trollope died, his autobiography was published. And in it he told the plain truth about how that work actually got made. The word counts, the morning coffee. No muse, no lightning bolt, no tortured genius pacing the floor at midnight. Just a man showing up before dawn and keeping score. And his reputation paid for that honesty. For decades after the autobiography appeared, critics wrote him off and many historians traced the decline directly to that confession.

Todd Henry [00:02:25]:

People wanted to believe that great work descends from the chosen few, like weather. They didn't want to hear that it's assembled 250 words at a time. By somebody ordinary enough to need a wake up call. It took the better part of a century for readers to come back around and admit that Trollope had been right all along. He knew exactly what he was claiming. He wrote that a small daily task, if it really is daily, will beat the labors of anyone trying to be Hercules and do everything all at once. Well, my guest today wrote his newest book precisely that same way. 100 words every morning before his family woke up.

Todd Henry [00:03:03]:

No misses on travel days, no misses on hard days, even on a cruise ship with his brother. And the book that came out of those mornings is about exactly this. The daily, unglamorous compounding price of becoming who you're capable of being. Ryan Hawk is the host of the Learning Leader show, which he's been making for more than 11 years and which now sits among the most listened to business podcasts in the world with more than 650 deep conversations behind it. His new book, which we're going to talk about today, is the Price of Becoming. And it starts with a question that Ryan borrowed from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. If compounding can turn boring, consistent deposits into extraordinary wealth, what happens when you apply the same math to your life? This is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we've served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused and brilliant every day.

Todd Henry [00:03:55]:

My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the show.

Ryan Hawk [00:04:03]:

I would say two of the people I'm the biggest fans of are Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I read all the stuff they've written. Anytime they give a speech, Charlie Munger's speech at usc that commencement. One noticing that Warren Buffett's made the bulk of his money after the age of 60. Where does that come from? What's that all about? Where it's really they are a story of the power of compounding. Now that's in relation to business or money. I think that is a portable lesson that you could apply to your life if you care to, I think, make a positive dent in the world. Not everybody does.

Ryan Hawk [00:04:40]:

Some people are okay just to exist and go about their life and hopefully it's comfortable and fun. I'm trying. I think I've been given quite a bit. Born to two amazing parents. I have two great brothers, very supportive and so when you're given a lot, I think you should give even more. I want to be a surplus value human. I wanted to study what is it that those people who leave a positive dent in the world, what do they do? How could I implement it into my life? And then hopefully impact others in a positive way. And so that's really, as a writer, books, at least for me, I wonder, I'd be curious to hear if you agree with this.

Ryan Hawk [00:05:15]:

They start as a project for myself to, to really learn and to grow and to know something better. And then hopefully they help other people.

Todd Henry [00:05:25]:

I think to your point about books, every book I've written has been. The seeds of that book have been found in the previous book where there's like an unanswered question that is really obvious in the previous book. And it's really obvious. I'm circling the airport and I'm like, okay, that's going to be the next book. You're scratching your own itch in that. When you talk about the price, what is the price of growth? What is the price of becoming? By the way, I love that as well, that word because it implies like infinity. This is not. There's no end point.

Todd Henry [00:05:54]:

Right. You're always becoming. So what is the price?

Ryan Hawk [00:05:56]:

Yeah, so I'm a prompt driven thinker, prompt driven writer, prompt driven speaker. And so part of the price is I like to have these prompts at the end of the day. One of them stems from Charlie Munger that your goal should be to go to bed a little bit wiser than you were when you woke up. What am I doing today? To go to bed a little bit better than I was when I woke up. What habits, routines, rituals that can I implement can I actually do to go to bed a little bit better? And I think if you stack day after day, consistency is really hard. However, it has massive payoffs over the course of, of a long period of time. Just if you dollar cost average your money into the markets every month over the course of many years, you'll be left with lots of money towards the end, like the Munger Buffett stuff. So I think the same is true.

Ryan Hawk [00:06:48]:

And again, a series of prompts is really what that price is. And an answer in the affirmative. I did, I spoke with Todd Henry today. I'm going to be wiser going to bed than I was when I woke up. Because I scheduled this because we did it and I learned this and this. And so I think it's like a simple practice of what did you do to go to bed a little bit better than you were when you woke up in the morning. And then how can I consistently stack those days? I think the difference between the people who are in this always becoming state who leave a positive dent in the world is that they are able to consistently do it day after day after day for years, versus the ones who are not, who are inconsistent. And that's when they break the chain and are not able to keep getting better, keep making that positive dent in the world like I'm trying to do.

Todd Henry [00:07:38]:

So there's a framework in the book that you use that follows a three part movement. You talk about the importance of learning, talk about the importance of execution, which most books focus on those two. Right. And there's a third part which is to teach. So could you talk us through each of those three? Why each? You found each to be important. And then specifically, I would love to hear more about the teaching part because I think this is the one that was a little bit of a head turn for me. Oh, that's really. I've never heard somebody talk about the importance of that before, but it's so true.

Ryan Hawk [00:08:07]:

It's funny. I was, I was asked the question in a Q and A forever ago, I feel like seven or eight years ago, about what's your framework to. To ensure you are improving? And I kind of made something up on the fly, but it's kind of like this flywheel I was really big on Jim. I still am, but was really thinking about the flywheel. And so that's. If you look at it, it's actually shaped as a flywheel. So the first part of that flywheel for me, of what maps a perfect day of going to bed wiser than I was when I woke up, is fueling the intake engine every day. What am I doing specifically to fuel the intake engine? Read books, have conversation with mentors, record podcasts, listen to podcasts.

Ryan Hawk [00:08:47]:

Right. Fueling the engine. The learning part, chasing down your curiosity with great rigor.

Todd Henry [00:08:52]:

Right.

Ryan Hawk [00:08:52]:

That part's important. Second, though, if it just stays a theory, but doesn't move to practice, doesn't move to action, is kind of worthless. I guess there's some value, but not a ton. So you have to actually run experiments based on something you learn from fueling your intake engine. So what do you act? It can be small, it can be tiny. But what are you actually doing? Let's say I met with a mentor, and that mentor gave me feedback on how to run a meeting better, whatever, or a specific way to open a meeting, close a meeting, whatever it may be. Okay, then let's run that experiment. The third stage, which I.

Ryan Hawk [00:09:24]:

Which is not necessarily in that flywheel, but it's in my mind, is pausing, reflecting, doing an after action review. What went well, what didn't? What should I keep doing? What should I stop Doing what should I do? That's new. That learned. That goes because you learn. We learn who we are in practice, not in theory. That Herminia Abara quote. You probably had her on your show. I've had her, had her on a while ago when we had that conversation.

Ryan Hawk [00:09:46]:

But then the fourth, which you hinted at, that I think is probably most important for learning is teaching, is when I have conversations with college professors. They're so wise. Why are they so wise? They're constantly doing research and then they're constantly sharing what they've learned with others. And in the process of putting that together, you got to do so much prep. If you want to be good, you do just like for a keynote, you do so much prep that to get ready for the thing, you learn a ton. Then you do it and you learn a ton, whether it's writing a book or sharing from stage, teaching a client, whatever it may be. And then you get feedback after you've taught something where they say, oh, Todd, that part was really helpful. And you go, oh, okay, let me write that down.

Ryan Hawk [00:10:28]:

That part was helpful. I wasn't really sure what was going to resonate, but that does. Hey, that part, I don't know if that's right. Are you sure? And then you got to rethink that and then you iterate and fix it or whatever. So the teaching part is so critical for learning. And I think teaching comes in many forms. Writing, writing a book, writing an essay, publishing that others can read it, can judge, can say if it's good or helpful or not. Right.

Ryan Hawk [00:10:50]:

Having a one on one conversation with a mentee, I think mentoring is big. And then one of the things that I demand of every leader I work with, the question they know they're going to get asked every time we talk is when is the next training you're leading? And they look at me, they go, what do you mean, dude, I'm the CEO or I'm the president of this company, I don't do trainings. And I go, no, if we work together, you're going to do trainings. I don't care what you train on, whatever you want. You need to regularly put yourself in the position to be a teacher. I think all great leaders are teaching a lot and they're preparing to teach and then they're teaching and then they're getting feedback on how that teaching went and how it resonated. Yeah. To me, the teaching part is a critical element of leadership.

Ryan Hawk [00:11:32]:

If you want to be effective, if you want to continually get better, I want you Regularly signing up to guest lecture at your local university to train your team to write, whatever it may be. I think the teaching part's critical. If you really want to cement your learning, if you want to get clear on what you believe, which is very important to be a good leader, then I think you regularly need to be teaching other people.

Todd Henry [00:11:53]:

I heard Dan Pink saying it wasn't original to him, but that writing is thinking. And if you want to know what you think, you need to get really good at writing because writing helps you become a better thinker. I believe that's true. But the principle that you're teaching there, I think is really important as well. I think teaching is thinking, and I think that sometimes we assume things without realizing we have those assumptions until we try to teach it, and then we realize, oh, I think I'm making some assumptions here that aren't real. And I was simultaneously encouraged and convicted by your book because I do have a set of dailies I've followed for years. One of them is, am I ingesting? So am I studying every day? Am I putting more into the engine, as you call it? Right. And one of them is, am I encouraging someone? So did I encourage someone today? But.

Todd Henry [00:12:45]:

And also there's a qualitative one that is, did I spend time thinking today? So not just ingesting, not just taking things in, but did I spend time stopping and thinking and writing and journaling and trying to process what's going on in my brain? Do I know what's on my mind? But I've not had, until now, teaching as one of them. I had content that produced content, but that's not the same thing as teaching. Right. So I think I'm going to add that to my dailies as a practice. Did I teach something today? Maybe. Of all the things I learned, all the things today that I read, what's the one thing I'm going to share with one of my sons or my daughter or with my wife or with a friend or whatever? What is something I learned today that I'm going to share with someone else? Because you're right, that is how we internalize it. That's how it becomes part of how we see the world, the fabric of our existence.

Ryan Hawk [00:13:35]:

I love it. Love it. Yeah. And I would love to be on the other end of that, too, by the way, if you want to add me to that list. Because like I said, I feel like I've taken so much from the stuff you've shared and said I talk about the graveyard all the time, too. Like, we're the most valuable land in the world. I want to die. I just said that on a podcast, like, yesterday.

Ryan Hawk [00:13:54]:

I was like, I want to die empty. And I was with my mom for Mother's Day, and we're talking about this idea of dying empty, of giving it everything I got. And so that you run into that thing and it's like, anyway, I could go on and on from all your stuff, but I am curious. Can I ask you just real quick, before I'm not going to hijack this, but this is one question. Books, especially when you get the book deal, you write the proposal and maybe some sample chapters in the marketing plan and all that stuff, Right. What's your process like then? From, like, how much? Maybe it's different by book. So answer, however, is useful for you, but how much of are you like, oh, my God, I thought I knew my stuff here. But now that I'm contracted to actually write the whole book, beyond the sample chapters and the overall idea and the marketing plan and all that, I'm actually learning a ton from that initial sale to then the publication of the book.

Ryan Hawk [00:14:42]:

What's it like for you?

Todd Henry [00:14:45]:

Varies, but I would say that is it's a significant journey to write a book. And it's varied by book from book to book. There are some books where I knew a little more going in. There's a little more of a structure. I kind of knew more of what it was going to be. And there are some where I went in with an idea and a framework based upon research. And then I very quickly realized this framework doesn't hold. It holds up.

Todd Henry [00:15:06]:

It's accurate, but it's not true. And I think those are different things. So you can be accurate without having a depth of truth and reality that acknowledges the complexity of the situation. And I think some of the. Some of the best books are the ones that are deeply true, not just accurate. So I can share a framework. That framework's accurate? Yeah, that. Okay.

Todd Henry [00:15:35]:

That's reflective of what people. Okay, yeah, sure. I can use that as a framework. Categories line up everything, whatever. There's a difference between that and speaking truth to someone. Truth is something you have to wrestle with. Truth is something you may hear and not know. If you agree initially, you may have to wrestle with it and apply it, and it's nuanced, and it addresses the complexity of reality.

Todd Henry [00:16:00]:

So my goal is always to write what's true, not what's convenient. I want to write what's true, not what's accurate. And so that's why Sometimes my research takes me to places I didn't want to go because it's inconvenient for me as well to have to write what's true. It's much easier just to write what people want to hear.

Ryan Hawk [00:16:18]:

There's so much learning, though, isn't there? From that. For that process, isn't there so much. Ah, that part's sometimes inconvenient, sometimes a pain, but also, in a weird way, it's fun.

Todd Henry [00:16:30]:

I don't know.

Ryan Hawk [00:16:31]:

Do you feel that way?

Todd Henry [00:16:31]:

It is, yeah. Yeah, it is fun. It's. The process is fun. The process is not fun. The learning is fun. Writing a book is like pulling teeth. Like it.

Todd Henry [00:16:42]:

And everybody's, I want to write a book. And I'm always like, why are you

Ryan Hawk [00:16:46]:

in the middle of one right now?

Todd Henry [00:16:47]:

I am working on one right now. Yeah, but it's. But I will say this. Sorry, this is not. I'm interviewing you, Right? See, this is it. You turn the tables, man. You're such a good podcast host because it's like, I feel like I'm with you.

Ryan Hawk [00:16:59]:

I can't help it, though. You understand this. Like, with you, it's hard. I'll try to stop, but I just. There's a lot to learn, and so I get this opportunity. It's hard for me to pass it up. So anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Todd Henry [00:17:10]:

We will set up a time to do this outside of when we're on one of their shows. But I would say that book writing and what I've resonated, what really resonated with me about your Buffett Munger analogy as you talk about the price of becoming, is it really. It's 100% true. That compound interest over time. The compounding effect of writing 500 words a day over time. Nobody writes a book. Nobody does. You and I, we've never written books.

Todd Henry [00:17:40]:

We have sat down and written sections or paragraphs that become. Or sentences that become paragraphs that become sections that become chapters. But we do that 500 words at a time, right? It's a choice every single day. Similarly, dollar cost averaging, if I sit down every day and I write 500 words, some of them are going to be really good and some of them are going to be not so good. But over time, the trend line is going to be up if I write consistently. And so that's what it is. Most people want to write a book, but they don't want to write a section. They want to write a book, but they don't want to write a sentence.

Todd Henry [00:18:15]:

Right? And the only way you write a book is by sitting down to write a sentence every day. The only way you end up wealthy is by dollar cost averaging. By putting away, start with 10 bucks a week and then you work it up to 50 bucks a week. Then you work up to a couple hundred. Pretty soon you're putting money away. And that dollar cost averaging, sometimes it's going to go up, sometimes it's going to go down, but over time you're going to end up with wealth. It's the same thing with knowledge, same thing with writing. It's the little.

Todd Henry [00:18:41]:

It's not the big acts of the will, it's the small acts of the will done consistently that lead to compounding effects. And that's, I think, to turn the tables again. I think that's what you're talking about when you talk about the price of becoming right. You're talking about the price that we pay every single day to become great at what we do.

Ryan Hawk [00:18:58]:

That's exactly it. It's even funny with the how this book got written. I was struggling at the beginning with the proposal. Got help from a friend who later went on to become my book agent, Dave Maldaware, you probably know Dave. And we got a little bit clear and it was just weird. One day we're having a conversation. He can be hard on you at times in a loving way. And I said, all right, I'm just going to make the commitment.

Ryan Hawk [00:19:22]:

This is Dan Pinkish, but I'm just going to get up. And it's the first thing I'm going to do when I get up, well, before my family gets up, is I'm going to write a hundred words in the morning. Now, when you commit and prom, make a promise to yourself to write a hundred words a day every day. No excuses, no Mrs. Travel, whatever, hotel. I was on a cruise ship with my brother. For some of those words, whatever it may be, you get up and make that commitment seven days a week, I'm writing 100 words. What happens is once you get going, there are days when it was a battle to get to 100, don't get me wrong.

Ryan Hawk [00:19:53]:

But there are days when I got over a thousand because you just go, you know what I'm saying? So, like you're. It was just a commitment that I'm going to get to 100. Okay. And there are. I got. I wrote over a hundred thousand words for this book. The final book has roughly like 54, 55,000, I think is what it is.

Todd Henry [00:20:09]:

Yeah.

Ryan Hawk [00:20:10]:

So there's so of those 100 word A days that I did for roughly 9ish months. There's a lot of garbage in there, man. There's like a ton of it. I was like, oh, I go back and I saved all of it. I have it all. Like, it's in a Google Doc. It. And it is messy and it's not good, but every once in a while, some of it was good.

Ryan Hawk [00:20:30]:

And then you double down and work on that maybe a little bit more later in the day or the next day. And so, yeah, I just made like a commitment. This is the price. And it was hard. It was a grind. Some of those days I was tired or we went out the night before. Like I said, we were traveling. But it was, hey, this is part of.

Ryan Hawk [00:20:46]:

It's very meta. This is the. I knew the title of the book. I'm gonna actually do the thing myself be. And this is the payoff is now this finished artifact that I hope helps other people. Yeah, it's. I think what happens is a lot of us, we make this, like, proclamation or declaration, I'm gonna do this. But then you get like day 13 and it sucks.

Ryan Hawk [00:21:09]:

And you're not. And you're. The last three days, you didn't write anything good. And so you're like, all right, maybe I'll just try something different. And I'm not going to stay to that. I was like, no, I got to stay committed to this thing. So ultimately, the actual doing of it was very much like the message in the whole book. So it's weird how that worked out.

Todd Henry [00:21:29]:

You talk about the hundred in the book, you talk about the 100 shots a day metaphor, right? And in some ways, that's what you're describing, right? It's not a short game thing, it's a long game thing. And in a culture that celebrates overnight success, viral success, whatever, consistency matters much more. Can you share an example or a story? I know you just shared your own example, but what? Was there a specific story that resonated with you, that caused you to think

Ryan Hawk [00:21:53]:

about the one you brought up? The Paul Rabel, 100 shots a day. So he's a seventh, eighth grader. He goes to a lacrosse camp, and there's this legendary coach who speaks to all of the middle school kids and he says, who wants a college scholarship? Who wants one? And everyone raises their hand and he goes, I have a way to guarantee that you get a college scholarship to play lacrosse. And they're like, what? They're all like, perking up.

Todd Henry [00:22:15]:

What?

Ryan Hawk [00:22:15]:

And he goes, take 100 shots a day every day now until you graduate high school. And they're all like, what do you mean? That doesn't sound so bad. I can go out and shoot 100 times against the wall or find a net or whatever. That doesn't sound so bad. And the guy goes, here's a catch. No misses. None. 0 misses.

Ryan Hawk [00:22:32]:

It snows. It's Christmas. You're on the road and can't find any place to do it. No misses. You gotta find a way, every single day, 100 shots. And that's what Paul Rabel did in this case. And yes, now it's a metaphor for other things in his life. And he went on to be one of the greatest.

Ryan Hawk [00:22:49]:

They called him the LeBron James of lacrosse. He started a new lacrosse league. He's taken that ethos, that hunter shots a day mentality to everything, and I think that's helped him become a really good entrepreneur in addition to becoming one of the greatest lacrosse players of all time. Of this just willingness to get up and pound the pavement, do the work every single day, no excuses, no misses. My friend Garen Stokes says, because this is the part that's a little hardcore, is any excuse softens the character. And that thought of my character softening just hurts. I don't want to soften my character. I can't make any excuses.

Ryan Hawk [00:23:27]:

I think that's in the hardcore ethos of some of this stuff, is this is the price. This is what it takes. Most people, they'll do the 100 shots for a while, and then something will happen and they'll stop, and then maybe they'll do it the next day or maybe not, and then they'll get back on the horse for a little bit, and then they'll stop, and then they'll do it, and then they eventually just kind of quit. And that's how most of us. That's how most humans are. And I forget which podcast guys actually said this to me, because he goes, look, I may not be brilliant, I may not be born with this brilliance, but I am born with the ability to endure. And I was like, I think I identify with that. I'm not going to be brilliant, but I can be consistent.

Ryan Hawk [00:24:06]:

I can show up and do the work. It's not always fun. The words used to describe me would be, like, reliable, dependable, consistent, like the least sexy attributes ever of a person, but pretty effective if you stick to it. And so that's what I try to push the people, because I can't help you if you weren't born brilliant. But I could probably Help you if you're willing to endure. And so that's what I'm trying to share and in the work and with what I do, how I try to live as well. And hopefully that resonates with people.

Todd Henry [00:24:39]:

It definitely does. I had a similar experience. Not to go back to the sports thing again, but I had a similar experience in high school. I was a basketball player. My dad was a college basketball player and a great shooter, and he wanted to teach me how to be a good shooter. And so we would shoot free throws, and he would say, we're going to shoot free throws until you shoot ten in a row. Without. I.

Todd Henry [00:24:56]:

This is willingly. He didn't make me do it right. Willingly. I was like, I want to be a good shooter. Great. We're going to shoot free throws until you make ten in a row without hitting the rim. So Nothing but net 10 in a row. Right? So at first, obviously, I would barely make five free throws or whatever out of 10.

Todd Henry [00:25:11]:

But then eventually I got pretty good. And we would be out there and we would do it, we would do it, we would do it. And I would do it on my own. Sometimes he would come out, he would be with me, we would do it. And I just remember I get so frustrated because I would get to nine and then you would graze the back of the rim and go in. Ah, okay, start over, whatever. And one time I got so frustrated that I hit the rim on one of my shots. And he was like, todd, you're losing sight of the big picture here.

Todd Henry [00:25:37]:

Do you realize you just made 121 free throws in a row? He's. I think you're losing perspective here. But it was because he was giving me a goal, right? And I lost sight of what I was trying to do with the goal. The goal isn't to not hit the rim in a game. The goal is to make the free throw. But not hitting the rim was the mechanism by which you got better at what you do. That was an everyday practice, was trying to get 10 in a row without hitting the rim. And I think sometimes it's easy for us in our daily practice to do the same thing.

Todd Henry [00:26:08]:

We think the goal is to study. The goal isn't to study. The goal is to study so that you can go out and teach other people, so that you can be more effective at what you do do. And again, back to your book, the Price of Becoming. I think we forget that if we want to be effective, if we want to have a platform, if we want to be an influential leader, the price of that is we have to sit down and keep studying until we shoot 10 free throws in a row without hitting the rip. We have to become better at studying and ingesting it, processing it, thinking, that's not the point. The point is we can then take that and go use it in a game, or we'll shoot 90% from the free throw line.

Ryan Hawk [00:26:47]:

Todd. The funny thing, this actually reminds me of when we work with leadership, the development clients, and they go, okay, because we always start with foundational is leading yourself. And it's got to start with you before we even think about leading anybody else. So when we go through the curriculum, we're walking through, okay, we're gonna do here and then here and here, and it's all about leading yourself stuff. And they go, okay, when do we do. When do we stop with the leading yourself stuff and just focus on leading others? And I said, that's the fun part. The leading yourself stuff never ends. Ever.

Ryan Hawk [00:27:15]:

Yes, we are going to add some things when it comes to leading others, but the. The fun part about leadership is you never, ever get to stop working on leading yourself, and you're never, ever going to arrive. You're just not. That's not how it works. If you care, if you want to be really great, if you want to be impactful, if you want to make a difference, you want to care for people, if you want to achieve things, it never, ever ends. And I think you almost have to embrace and love. That's the way it is to. I do.

Ryan Hawk [00:27:44]:

I think it's cool that it's always hopefully going to be evolving and growing and opening my mind and learning and changing my mind. And when better evidence presents itself, I'm, oh, and those are fun days. Those are interesting times when you talk with somebody or you read something and listen to a podcast and it tweaks your mind a little bit. It makes you think, ah, so, yeah, anyway, I think that the same way with the free throw analogy, 100 shots making without hitting the by the way, is super impressive. I don't know if I could ever do that. That's so good. But I think. But I think that idea of it never ends, working on yourself.

Ryan Hawk [00:28:17]:

And that's fun. That that is. To me, that's a feature, not a bug. And I hope we can. I don't inspire people to think that way.

Todd Henry [00:28:26]:

Ryan Hawk's new book, the Price of Becoming, is available now wherever books are sold. So go back to Anthony Trollope, the story from the beginning for just a moment. The critics of his era looked at the watch, the word counts, and decided that a person with a system couldn't possibly be an artist. In the Accidental Creative, I wrote that brilliance at a moment's notice is never an accident. It's the byproduct of rhythm, of practices you keep, whether or not you feel like it, so that when the moment arrives, you have something to give. We love to talk about breakthrough moments, but the breakthrough is. Is just the place where years of invisible, daily compounding work finally crack the surface. Trollope knew it.

Todd Henry [00:29:04]:

Ryan and I talked about it today. And the version of you that you're hoping to meet someday is waiting on the other side of it. So here's my challenge for you this week. Define your hundred. Like Ryan talked about one small daily act tied directly to who you were trying to become. Small enough that you can do it even on your worst day. It could be A hundred words, 20 minutes of study, a sketch, a cold call, one page of something, write it down, then do it every day for the next 30 days. No Mrs.

Todd Henry [00:29:31]:

Because, as Ryan reminded us, every excuse softens the character. And the whole point of this is to build one. And second, borrow the question that Ryan asks himself every night, the one he learned from Charlie Munger. Right before you go to sleep, ask, did I go to bed a little wiser than I woke up? Trollope's little pillar boxes are still standing on street corners all over Britain a hundred 170 years later. Not because of one heroic act, but because a man did his unremarkable daily work so faithfully that the remarkable became inevitable. Your hundred is waiting. Go take the first shot. Hey, thanks so much for listening.

Todd Henry [00:30:10]:

If you'd like all of our interviews in full, you can get them@dailycreativeplus.com it's absolutely free. Just go there, enter your name and email address. We'll send you a private feed where you can listen to the full version of every interview. My name is Todd Henry. If you want info about my speaking event and my books, you can find that@toddhenry.com until next time, may you be brave, focused, and brilliant. We'll see you then.