🏴 On the zone, world-building, and vision. Ten Bullets.

To the obsessed,

Here are your weekly Ten Bullets.

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

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1. On ‘The Snap’:

There comes a moment when you have to snap.

One thought clicks. And you're never the same again.

You can’t predict what this thought is, or when it comes. It could be a break up. Or a bad day. Or a night like any other night, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if you're on the right path.

Then it hits you. Out of nowhere. You're tied down while 1000 trains of unrelenting truth run over you. You can't hide. You can't run away. The lies you've told yourself stare you directly in the face.

But then, those trains stop. And something new appears.

A truth. About who you really are. About where you need to go. About what you- and you alone- are meant to do. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

After you snap, things change. You know exactly what you have to do. You cut off distractions. You cut off negativity. You stop wasting time. You stop wasting energy.

You stop living by the script you're on. And you hunt down your goals relentlessly.

The old you is gone. They fall behind your eyes, watching the 'new you' do everything they quietly dreamed of. They're proud. But you don't need them anymore.

Then, life becomes simple. Every decision is made through the lens of your- now crystal clear- ambition. Obsession races through your blood. You wake up and every day, and can't wait to attack. You become happier. Healthier. Hungrier. And, eventually, even your most delusional goals, become real.

— Zach Pogrob [Instagram]

2. On world-building:

“You have to create an entire world that people can step into, familiarize themselves with, and spend time getting to know. Initially you’ll have to walk them around and show them what’s in your world, but your goal is to familiarize them with your world sufficiently, and motivate them to participate, to the point that they can spend time in your world and build stuff in it without you having to be there all the time. 

The world will include many things, but it needs one in particular: purpose. Inside the world, it needs to be really obvious what our goals are, and why we want our push our system into a new state.”

— Alex Danco, World Building [Blog]

3. On the zone:

“The Zone is a place that’s highly recognized by your favorite athletes, and business owners. And according to a study back in 1989, the single happiest place a human can be. It’s that feeling you get when you’re lost in something. You’re so deep in the task at hand, that the outside world ceases to exist.”

— How to unf*ck your brain [Youtube]

4. On Prefontaine’s talent:

“His talent was not that he had great style,” McClure assesses. “He didn’t. It got better I think. We worked probably harder on that than we did on anything. He’d like to slump over, and we’d keep hollering at him. No, his talent was his control of his fatigue and his pain. His threshold was different than most of us, whether it was inborn or he developed it himself.”

— Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend, Tom Jordan

5. On obsession:

— @hunter_weiss

A great description of obsession- which often comes at night- when you turn on- and the world turns off.

6. On creating a vision:

“You start missing important steps on the road map. Having a broad vision gives you an easy, more accessible place to start from when it comes to figuring out where and how to zoom in.

That doesn't mean you get narrower with your vision, just more specific.

The picture gets sharper. It's like zooming in on a map of the world when you're trying to build an itinerary for a trip. The world is made up of continents. Inside continents are countries, inside countries are states or provinces, inside those are counties, and inside those are cities and towns. And the thing is, you can keep going like this. Inside towns are neighborhoods, inside neighborhoods are blocks. Blocks are stitched together by streets. If you're a tourist and you just want to see the world, you can hop from country to country or city to city and it doesn't matter. You don't have to pay close attention. But if you really want to know a place and get the absolute most out of your experience, if you might even want to call that place home someday, well then, you better hit the streets, talk to locals, explore every back alley, learn the customs, and try new things. That is when the itinerary you're trying to create or the plan you're trying to build to achieve your vision-really starts to take shape.”

— Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, Arnold Schwarzenegger

7. On endings:

8. On walking:

9. On obsession:

"Hasn't good come of your obsessions?"

"At first, but I followed them too long. I am their slave. And one day, they will choose to destroy me."

"If you understand an obsession, then you know you won't change my mind."

— The Prestige (2006)

A great obsessioncore movie. Some more for your weekend research:

10. On what to do with your life:

“If nobody would know what you did with the rest of your life, what would you do? If your life wasn’t the slightest bit performative—if there was nothing you could get from doing something other than just the act of doing it, how would you spend your time? What would you be interested in doing? What would energize you?”

— 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, Brianna Wiest

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