🏴 On hunger, world-building, and multitasking. Ten Bullets.

To the obsessed,

Here are your weekly Ten Bullets.

Ten ideas to help you build companies, make art, and fuel your obsession.

1. On where to live:

If you're ultra-ambitious- you should live in New York. That, or the middle of nowhere. Go for extreme serendipity or extreme focus. The in-between will trap you.

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And the best often do both- living where everything’s happening- but escaping, often, to where nothing is.

2. On living as art:

When your story is the marketing, all you have to do is live. The best artists and entrepreneurs figure this out, and essentially hack the universe. They look like they're doing a million things, but really they’re doing one. They're making art, and living inside their work. They never turn off, because there’s nowhere else to go.

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One great example of this- Jocko Willink.

3. On Jocko Willink’s world:

Jocko's world-building is second to none.

His business/content portfolio is closest to how I want to build mine around Obsession.

In terms of- you can buy everything you want inside the world of Jocko / Discipline = Freedom.

He has brands/products in nearly every category for his audience:

• Best-selling books (Extreme Ownership, Discipline Equals Freedom, many more)

• Top ranked business/leadership/miitary podcast (Jocko Podcast)

• Leadership training/courses/events (Echelon Front)

• Supplements (Jocko Fuel)

• American-made apparel (Origin USA)

• Jocko merch

• Live events/workouts

• Kids books

• Publishing

• Many more companies/projects likely not on this list

He has to be one of the best examples of building a following 'on social media' and creating a world around it.

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PS- for a great look at how Jocko’s ‘life’ is art- watch this day in the life video.

4. On hunger:

"You going to make it- and when you make it- keep the same perspective. Keep the same hunger. That hunger is to always be- ‘I feel something, I need to go put it down.' As long as you keep that, the conduit between those two places clear, for that energy to come through, you're going to always be ill for the rest of your life. Once they tell you you hot, still doubt yourself."

— Pharrell’s advice to Kanye West (2004)

5. On running and obsession:

"You get obsessed. And literally no one cares but you. But you persevere anyway. You keep running. You don't quit. You die trying. Because when you add up all those stupid meaningless obsessions and accomplishments, what they equal, what they add up to, is your life."

— Casey Neistat, Sisyphus and the Impossible Dream

This incredible video by Casey captures the beauty and agony of running, and what it means to play in decades.

He's a huge reason I fell in love with the sport last year- and these 12 minutes capture why.

PS- guess who that is at at 0:23.

6. On obsession:

“Cameron had been a diver for years, and in an interview with Playboy in 2009, he shared that the Titanic was ‘the Mount Everest of shipwrecks’, and as a diver, he wanted to visit it and do it right. Cameron admitted in that same interview that he made Titanic mostly because he wanted to dive to the shipwreck and ‘not because I particularly wanted to make the movie’, and after learning about other crews who had dived to the Titanic to ‘make an IMAX movie, he decided to make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition.’”

— Adrienne Tyler, The Real Reason James Cameron Made Titanic

Obsession is done for obsession itself.

Titanic- the film- would never have existed if Cameron wasn’t following his obsession of diving.

7. On simplicity:

“Sophisticated minds adopt simplified lifestyles; simplistic minds are drawn to overly sophisticated lifestyles.”

In other words I'd rather do a strenuous hike in a spot like the one below, get thirsty, drink fresh water (no better drink than water when one is thirsty), etc. ... than go into space in a big complicated machine.”

— Nassim Taleb (h/t Dylan Jardon)

8. On multitasking:

“Highly creative people very often have multiple projects in progress at the same time. And they’re also far more likely than most of us to have serious hobbies.

Creativity often comes when you take an idea from its original context and you move it somewhere else.

It's easier to think outside the box if you spend your time clambering from one box into another.”

— Tim Harford, A powerful way to unleash your natural creativity (TED Talk) (h/t Hunter Weiss)

9. On note-taking:

Had to share this. Pure obsessioncore.

I’ve been taking more notes (handwriting), and am enjoying it.

10. On The Line:

There is a line.

Between peace and pain.
Between ease and effort.
Between flow and friction.

The first page when you sit down to write.
The first hard mile when you're halfway through a run.
The first words of a conversation that you need to have.

That line is where magic happens.
The gap between The Dark Place and The Light.

The best can feel when that line is there. They know when they're floating, and when they should push.

You can't live in The Dark Place. But you have to recognize when you need it. The truly obsessed can tap into that zone instantly, at will, and turn the world off.

Eventually- understanding the line becomes a sixth sense. You can feel the resistance wake up along your spine. And when you do, you know The Dark Place is calling.

You know it's time to obsess.

And then, life becomes very simple.

Get to work. Embrace the tension. And that line becomes an incredible home of ecstasy, effort, and flow.

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