Dear Lucca,
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these letters to you. So, I was determined to do so while we were here in the mountains at Christmas, with some time to reflect. This is not the letter I planned to write. That one, about our time in the Galapagos, will come soon. I promise. But I was reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book, and one chapter jumped out at me, which I had to share – Work Your Ass Off.
I hope that my actions over the first ten years of your life have demonstrated the importance of hard work. Nono did the same for me. He’s the reason I have the work ethic I have today. Like your Dad, he’s also not the best communicator. But his actions have always spoken magnitudes louder than his words, I can still remember him telling me how important “hard work” is and how “the early bird gets the worm” until I was so sick of hearing it, I'd be happy to eat that worm to make it stop! But it was watching how hard he worked every day - taking his first clients at 6AM, coming from nothing to build the life he wanted for himself and for us - that really left an impression. I hope I’ve sent that same message to you.
In case I haven’t, I thought maybe Arnold could help. Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, and dreamed of coming to the US since he was your age. He saw bodybuilding as his ticket. Like your Nono, he came to this country with nothing and spoke no English. He won the Mr. Universe title at 20 years old, then went on to win Mr. Olympia seven times before gaining fame as one of the biggest Hollywood action stars, serving as the 38th governor of California for two terms and making Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Twice. The lessons and stories below are from his book, Be Useful. That is the most important thing he learned from his Dad. I hope you've picked up a few similar lessons from yours along the way.
WORK YOUR ASS OFF
You are not the strongest, smartest, or richest person you know. You’re not the fastest or the most connected. You’re not the best-looking or the most talented. You don't have the best genetics (Dad: Although I will say they are pretty damn good). But what you do have is something a lot of other people will never have: the will to work.
If there is one unavoidable truth in this world, it's that there is no substitute for putting in the work. There is no shortcut or growth hack or magic pill that can get you around the hard work of doing your job well, of winning something you care about, or of making your dreams come true. People have tried to cut corners and skip steps in this process for as long as hard work has been hard. Eventually, those people fall behind or get left in our dust because working your ass off is the only thing that works 100% of the time for 100% of the things worth achieving.
If you don't get to experience what it feels like to push yourself, to do more than you thought you were capable of, and to know that the pain you put yourself through will lead to growth that you alone are responsible for creating, then you will never appreciate what you have the way that same thing is appreciated by someone who earned it, who worked for it. Work works. That's the bottom line. No matter what you do. No matter who you are.
My biggest concern in this world is making it too easy on you. Your Mom and Dad aren’t the strongest, smartest, or richest people you know. But we are better off than most. We don’t want you to have to struggle. We don’t want to watch you struggle. No parent does. But that struggle is what makes people who they are. Without it, without overcoming obstacles, without facing adversity, you will never appreciate the good stuff. You will never know what you are capable of if everything you have is handed to you on a silver platter. You will never appreciate what you have unless you have worked for it. Worked hard for it. Most kids these days don’t understand this (said every generation about the prior generation). I hope I’ve done enough to show you otherwise.
PUT IN THE REPS
The whole point of doing lots of reps is to give you a base that makes you stronger and more resistant to mistakes. The goal is to increase the load you're able to handle so that when it's time to do the work that matters - the stuff that people see and remember - you don't have to think about whether you can do it. You just do it. That all falls apart if you don't take the time to do things the right way. If you half-ass your reps and fail to pay attention to the details, the base you're building will be unstable and unreliable.
This phrase - "Putting in the Reps" - is one your Dad uses often at work. There are no shortcuts to mastery. There is no way to get around doing the work or putting in the reps required to be your best. You've heard your Dad explain the importance of practice over and over again. This is why. Practice makes perfect. Talent will only get you so far. And more often than not, talent becomes a crutch. Because the most talented among us assume they don't have to work for it. Which is true up to a point. Right until they watch their less talented peers blow right by them as they get outworked. This is why I will always hire for drive, for grit, for passion, and for discipline, instead of raw talent. These are the most important character traits I want to instill in you.
There's a popular theory that it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery. We can debate the exact time requirements, but the bottom line is that there are no shortcuts. It takes the same 10,000 hours for any expert in any field. Here's an example: I tell all of the young analysts who work for me that it will take a good three years for things to begin to click and make sense in our world. Let’s assume that person is working 40 hours per week (8 hours per day, five days per week). Assuming they work 50 weeks per year, that’s about 6000 hours in three years. They aren’t mastering anything at that point, but that’s enough time for things to begin to click. That’s a big commitment. But if the person next to them is working 12-hour days, 6 days a week, they will get there in about half the time. Everyone has to put in the same amount of reps. There is no way around that. But the one willing to put in the work will put in about twice as many reps as the one working 9-5 in the same amount of time.
The same was true for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant on the basketball court, Messi on the pitch, and Tiger on the green. They were able to do the “impossible” because they did the hard work when no one was watching.
This is what I want you to understand sooner than later. Because as the example above shows, the sooner you get it, the more reps you can put in, before everyone else gets it. You have to embrace the boring stuff. You have to nail the fundamentals. You have to do them right and do them often. It’s the only way to build that strong base and “muscle memory” so that performing when it counts isn't a question. It’s automatic.
PAIN IS TEMPORARY
That's the beauty of pain. It tells you whether you've begun to give enough of yourself in pursuit of your dreams. If the work of being great or achieving something special hasn't hurt or cost you anything, or at least made you uncomfortable, then you're not working hard enough. You're not sacrificing all that could be sacrificed in order to be all that you could become.
Muhammad Ali said that he didn't start counting his sit-ups until they hurt. "They're the only ones that count. That's what makes you a champion."
Get out of your comfort zone. Embrace the suck. Lean into the pain. Do something every day that scares you. These are just different ways of trying to tell you that if you want to grow, if you want to be great, it's not going to be easy. It's going to hurt a little bit.
In the selection process for Navy SEALs, instructors don't really start to test candidates until they're completely fucking miserable. They exhaust you, they scream in your face, they restrict your calories, and keep you outside or in the water until you're freezing and you can't stop shaking. And that's when they try to drown you or break your brain with little tests of fine motor skills and teamwork. But even then, they're not really testing for competence. They don't actually care whether you can complete the task. They're testing to see whether or not you'll quit when the pain gets to be too much. They're not interested in skill development or physical growth. Skill development comes later. And they know a driven candidate will take care of the physical part on their own time. They're looking for character growth.
The great Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami once wrote, "I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning." I've learned over the years that this is true: pain only needs to have meaning for it to be bearable.
Your Dad participates in a fundraiser for the SEAL Foundation in January every year. I’ll be leaving for Tampa in a couple of weeks where we’ll do a 5K swim across Tampa Bay. To be clear, I’ll be in a kayak supporting a swimmer since two easily dislocated shoulders don’t stand a very good chance making it across Tampa Bay. But it’s still one of the highlights of my year. Not because we have any ties to the SEALs. But because I appreciate and respect what they stand for. Their commitment. Their discipline. Talent alone won’t get you onto a SEAL team. Skills come later. More than 10,000 hours later. But without character, commitment, and discipline, there’s no chance. As they say, if it were easy, everyone would do it. That’s why anything worthwhile in this life requires hard work.
FOLLOW-UP FOLLOW THROUGH
Shit happens. Signals get crossed. People are lazy. Some people are just plain stupid. If you have a job to do or a goal, you're trying to achieve, or you've made a commitment to protect something or someone, and it's important to you that everything happens the way it's supposed to, it's up to you to follow through all the way.
This is how you follow through. It's about leaving no stone unturned. It's about dotting your I’s and crossing your T's. It's about closing the loop and circling back. And yet so many people are content to depend entirely on plans and systems, or to do the bare minimum asked of them, and then think to themselves, ‘This is all set, I took care of it.’ No. Don't be a lazy fuck. Do the work. The only time you are allowed to use the phrase "I took care of it" is when it is done.
I consider following through the crux of the hard work that is necessary for important things to get done because important stuff is never simple or straightforward. It almost always depends on timing, on other people, on lots of moving parts - and you can't count on any of these things.
Ironically, follow-through is usually the easiest part of the work, at least in terms of energy and resources. Yet, it's almost always the thing that we either take for granted or let slip through the cracks.
Woody Allen said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. Thomas Edison said that 90 percent of success is perspiration. Jimmy Dean nailed it. He said, "Do what you say you're going to do, and try to do it a little better than you said you would."
Follow up and follow through. Do just those two things, and it will set you apart from the pack. This may seem blatantly obvious. It may seem incredibly simple. But you will be amazed at how far this one piece of advice will take you. You will be amazed how few people get it. It’s too easy to point the finger. That’s why everyone does it. So, just taking the ball and running with it; running with it until the job is done, is the easiest way to stand out from your peers.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
We each have the same twenty-four hours in the day. The questions you need to ask yourself are: How much of that time am I wasting? How much of it do I spend thinking about how I'm going to get started instead of starting? How much of it do I flush down the toilet of social media? How much of it do I spend watching television, playing video games, drinking, and partying?
A lot of people waste a lot of time. The worst offenders are the ones with big, ambitious dreams who desperately want to change their lives but spend twenty minutes explaining how busy they are. My hope for you is that you don't waste much of your time at all.
Not surprisingly, the people who complain the most about not having enough time do the least amount of work. Busyness is bullshit. We’re all busy. We have things to do every day. If it matters, make the time.
What every person who gets shit done has in common is that they either find the time, make the time, or turn the time they do have into what it needs to be for them to accomplish the task in front of them.
There is nothing more energizing than making progress.
I was reading this as you were locked in your room for hours playing Gorilla Tag. I also played hours of video games growing up. And I guess I turned out fine. But knowing what I know now, I wish I had spent those countless hours doing something more productive. Learning a new skill. Training. Reading. It’s easy to lose hours, days, or weeks playing games. They are fun. And they can teach us skills as well. But it’s too easy to get lost. It’s much too easy today with all the devices at our fingertips.
I don’t expect you to understand or appreciate this at ten years old. But I hope you begin to grasp the trade-offs here sooner than later. Until then, we need to do a better job setting guidelines for screen time. Me and your Mom have always struggled with this. It’s so much easier to just let you do your thing, which also lets us do our thing. But one of my biggest concerns is watching you look back one day on all of those hours wasted staring at a screen, wishing you had dedicated that time to something more productive – playing the piano, learning the guitar, experimenting with science, training Muay Thai with your Dad – just about anything that will add value and meaning to your life down the road. You won’t like it today. And probably won’t like it tomorrow. But hopefully, someday, you’ll thank us for it.
Watching you grow up has been the greatest gift of my life. We are so proud of you. And we just want the best for you. I realize your definition of success may be different than your Dad's. So I often struggle with how hard I'm supposed to push you towards the things I wish I had pushed on. I struggle with how hard to push you to stay with things you don’t enjoy – you were a natural at gymnastics!! I want you to enjoy being a kid. But I also know that the most fulfilling and rewarding activities aren’t always the most enjoyable at the time. They take work. And it’s only long after we’ve put in those countless hours of work, that we can reap those rewards, and enjoy that amazing feeling of accomplishment.
Now, get to work!
Love you, bud.
Dad
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