Take a minute to watch the above video. I think it captures something profound and inspiring.

For some reason in our culture failure is seen as this taboo that must be avoided at all costs, yet some of the the best in the world have failed many times over. There’s a classic Thomas Edison quote about inventing the light bulb:

I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps

-Edison

So it’s not really about failing, it’s more about when you give up. Maybe success is just around the corner?

The Dip

One of Seth Godin’s books is dedicated to this concept. He calls it The Dip, and it’s all about pushing through failure. As we all know, new projects are fun in the beginning, but the rewards lie for those that can push through the long hard slog at the end. Godin explains:

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

-The Dip, Seth Godin

Suck Less Everyday

I think the key is to suck less everyday. Start out knowing that you will suck and strive for 1% daily improvement. Pretty soon you’ll be amazingly good.

I remember when I first started running seriously — I really sucked. After running a couple of miles, I was winded. But I told myself that I would stick to a plan and run an increasing number of miles every week. Somehow, by the end of four months of solid training, I ran a marathon with a pretty good time.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure

One of my all-time favorite speeches is by JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series). She gave it at a Harvard Commencement and her subject was the “Fringe Benefits of Failure”. She talked about how she royally failed in the early part of her life:

So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

She was a huge failure, but she goes on to describe what she learned from that failure. It stripped away the inessential and let her focus on the only that ever mattered to her – writing. She says, that if she had been an astounding success at something else, she may never have sat down to write the novels we all know and love today.

In fact, I hear this all the time. Whenever I’m talking to people about taking time out to build a great software product they always talk about the fact that they’re making good money doing this or that and they don’t want to risk taking time out. They settle for the good rather than the great. By failing dramatically, Rowling didn’t have that option.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

“If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.”

-Seth Godin

Seth Godin has a fascinating new book out called Linchpin. If you like Godin’s other books then you’ll like this one. It’s written in his classic style of storytelling and enthusiasm. Some would argue that his books are just extended blog posts – that there’s not enough meat to actually make a book. And while I agree that his books can get repetitive the message is so good that it’s worth hearing repeatedly.

One of Godin’s past books was called Purple Cow and it talked about how to create a remarkable business that people talk about.  Linchpin is about becoming a remarkable person that people talk about. After reading through the book, I would summarize it with these five quotes and lessons:

1) Be Different

You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.

You can’t become a linchpin by doing what everyone else is doing. You have to be remarkable and to do that, you have to be different. No one will talk about you and say you have to hire this person if you are the same as everyone else. Being different almost always means going beyond the training manual because anyone can follow the manual. What matters is the person that takes initiative to take the customer experience or product to the next level.

2) Give Gifts

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

In his book, Godin gives the example of an expert sales coach that gives away all of his secrets in a free online book. Is that stupid because now everyone knows his secrets? Or is that wise because now everyone knows that this guy has knowledge to spare and if I ever need a sales coach he’d be the first one to call. Now that I’ve seen his work, I know he’s good.

3) The Web Makes it Easier to Shine

The Web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain. Mediocrity now howls in protest.

On the web, remarkable content spreads quicker than ever before. I once wrote a blog post entitled how long you can wait that talks about how delayed gratification is the key to success. On a whim I submitted it to stumbleupon and the next day I had thousands of views. The post struck a chord and traveled faster than I could have imagined.

In the world we live in, if you do something wonderful (with the help of twitter, digg, stumbleupon and facebook), news can travel like lightning.

4) There is No Map

There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.

In the book, Godin talked about his favorite negative review which said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Godin has all these great ideas but he doesn’t tell you how to do any of them”! To which Godin replied, there is no map — if I could tell you how to do it then it would be a commodity and wouldn’t be remarkable anymore.

Some people just want to be told what to do, and in fact some businesses encourage that. Godin spends a lot of time talking about the old-school factory mentality of getting people that are just cogs and replaceable parts. You give them a manual and they do the work and everyone’s happy (or are they?). Maybe the business makes money, but are they really remarkable or are they just racing to the bottom? And what about the employee, they are just interchangeable cogs.

According to Godin, a better model is one where people bring their talents and creativity to help a business race to the top rather than just following a map.

5) Work is Your Platform for Art

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in the other.

This was my biggest takeaway from the book. The idea being that “Art” is something that changes someone by making a human connection. And to be remarkable, you must bring your art to work. The greatest business people are the greatest artists. They change people and the world with their art.

Jonathon Ive, who designed the iPod and the iPhone, is an artist and he’s impacted millions with his art even if they aren’t hanging it on their walls. Not only has he impacted millions of consumers, but he’s made millions for his company.

Perhaps Ive is a little too blue sky for the average person to relate to, so Godin goes on to talk about the barista in a local coffee shop that is always smiling and welcoming. This barista goes out of his way to make sure customers are comfortable and happy. He’s the reason that people go the cafe and therefore is highly valuable to the business (ie – a linchpin). His art is his connections that he makes with people, and according to Godin everyone has some kind of art that they can bring to work.

What is Genius?

With all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming Superbowl and Peyton Manning, it’s not surprising to see articles like this one in Slate stating that Peyton Manning is a genius:

After a tenth 4,000-yard passing season, a career-best 68.8 completion percentage, and a chance to win his second Super Bowl ring this Sunday in Miami, it’s time to state the obvious: Yes, Peyton Manning is obsessive. But he’s also a genius. The two go throwing-hand in football-glove. It’s understood that extraordinary athletes like Manning and Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are freaks. But they’re respected freaks because they do something valued by society.

As well as stating that Manning is a football genius, the article goes on to point out that an interesting point. Society only calls you a genius if you are obsessed with something it finds valuable (like football). What if your “genius” was jumping the further than anyone else on a pogo stick. Would people actually call you a genius or would they call you insane?

So in order to be a genius you at least have to be great at something that society values, but what are the other common attributes of a genius? Malcolm Gladwell gave a speech in 2007 at the New Yorker Conference where he described three traits common to geniuses: Obsession, Isolation and Insight.

1) Obsession

Genuises are obsessed with the one thing that they do. Andre Agassi was hitting 2500 tennis balls a day — a million a year before he was even a teenager.
And what about Peyton Manning? Here’s how the Slate article described his obsession:

A common theme in virtually every profile of Peyton Manning is the Super Bowl quarterback’s legendary devotion to football. At age 12, he exhorted his pee-wee linemen to block harder. He started deconstructing NFL game video in high school. He arrived at college six weeks early to work out with upperclassmen. A few days after the Indianapolis Colts made him the first pick of the 1998 draft, he had the team playbook memorized. He orders rookies to meet him on the field at 8 a.m. the Monday after they are drafted. He falls asleep watching tape in the basement of his Indianapolis home

Wow! This guy is football crazy, but you gotta love his devotion. I imagine the hardest thing would be keeping up this level of interest in one thing. Agassi got to a point where he hated tennis because he played it so much. It has to be hard to maintain that level of intensity.

2) Isolation

Geniuses typically work on their craft at the expense of social connections. A biography of Warren Buffet described how his wife would have people over, but instead of visiting he would spend his time in his room reading financial reports.
It reminds me of quote from Randy Pausch, author of the bestselling Last Lecture. When asked how he got tenure early, he replied:

Call me at my office at 10 o’clock on Friday night and I’ll tell you

While geniuses may be physically isolated they typically build on the research and key discoveries of others in reaching their key insight.

3) Insight

Usually, after years of toil, the genius comes to a key insight that garners him long-lasting recognition. The canonical example of the flash of insight is the story of Newton sitting under an apple tree. While sitting there an apple dropped on his head and in a flash of insight he had the theory of gravity.

While this story sounds great, there are many who doubt its authenticity, including Scott Berkin who wrote an excellent book on the Myths of Innovation:

Now my point here is not to say epiphanies never happen. Most creative people have them now and then, and I do too (but I argue they are overrated and do not eliminate the hard work and risk that follows them. Newton worked for a decade to complete his theory on gravity that he became famous for). I’m also not questioning Newton’s genius – he was one. But reasonable doubt about this legend is warranted given the extremely thin evidence we have.

So for you future geniuses out there it’s time to start getting obsessed, isolating yourself and focusing on an insight. Don’t worry, it should only take roughly 10 years of focused study.

I’ve long been a big proponent of picking one thing to focus on and doing it every day, but recently I met someone who really exemplifies this technique.

A Photo a Day

Trey Ratcliff runs Stuck in Customs which is the #1 travel photography blog on the web. I’m sure there are a ton of photography blogs, so how does someone get to be #1? Because he provides a gorgeous photograph every day — including weekends and holidays. Here’s what he has to say about this:

My promise to you: one photo every day. This is very hard… to produce 365 photos that I think are worthy every year. I will probably break this promise about 10 times during the year, so it’s really not much of a promise.

He jokes that he won’t get to it every day, but from a quick look at his blog, he’s been posting a daily photo since roughly 2005 and he hasn’t skipped many days. And I’m not talking about quick photos of your kids or the dogs. I’m talking about true pieces of art worthy of framing in your house. For example, see the photo at the top of this post and imagine creating something like that every single day. It’s no wonder that his site is popular.

Everyday is Easier than Every Other

Gretchen Rubin of the The Happiness Project thinks that it’s actually easier to do something everyday than every few days:

A few days ago, I observed that it’s often easier for me to do something every day than to do it some days. I post to my blog six days a week. I take notes every day. I write in my one-sentence journal every day. Many people have told me that they find it easier to exercise when they exercise every day.

If I try to do something four days a week, I spend a lot of time arguing with myself about whether today is the day, or tomorrow, or the next day; did the week start on Sunday or Monday; etc

I have to agree with her. There’s something powerful about doing your one thing every day. You just can’t help get better at it and there’s no internal debate about whether today is the day you should be doing it.

The Best Street Sweeper

But what if your one thing isn’t that glamorous or you can’t get paid to do it? What if you love to run or draw? Can you still do it everyday and will it matter? I think you can create great art in whatever you do as long as it is a daily ritual and you do it with love. Martin Luther King jr. said it best (as usual):

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

As for myself, I’m trying to do a little bit of writing or programming every day in an attempt to improve my craft. How about you?

It’s a generally agreed upon fact that too much screen time is bad for kids. There are lots of studies on this, but let’s look at what the American Academy of Pediatrics says:

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming.

The first 2 years of life are considered a critical time for brain development. TV and other electronic media can get in the way of exploring, playing, and interacting with parents and others, which encourages learning and healthy physical and social development.

As kids get older, too much screen time can interfere with activities such as being physically active, reading, doing homework, playing with friends, and spending time with family.

And while many parents agree that too much screen time is bad, they often have a hard time riding herd on their kids in order to limit it. I’d definitely put our busy family in this category. We would often say that the kids would have a certain amount of time on the TV or computer and then we’d get busy doing something else and forget to kick them off.

Wouldn’t it be nice if their was a timer of some kind that could be the bad guy and efficiently enforce the rules? With that in mind, I began the look for a TV Timer that might be able to help us. After doing some research, I narrowed it down to two products: BOB and Time Machine.

What About Bob?

BOB is the most sophisticated of the TV timers that I looked at and also the most costly. I have no idea why it’s called “BOB” but for about $60 you get the following features:

• 6 Unique Accounts: Each family member gets their own account and private 4-digit pin. Time is set by the parents for each account, and the time limits can be daily or weekly.
• Works for all TV devices: BOB works by shutting off power to the TV once the child has reached their daily or weekly time limit. So it will work with any device that is connected to the TV (TiVo, Wii, DVD, VHS, Xbox, etc).
• Safe for electronics: Because BOB just shuts off power to the TV rather than to the devices it doesn’t do any harm to the auxiliary devices which might not appreciate an immediate power cut off.

Overall, I liked BOB, but it seemed a little pricey. If there were not other cheaper options that fit my needs though I probably would have bought it.

The Time Machine

The Time Machine TV Timer is similar to BOB, but follows a different model of relying on tokens rather than individual accounts. The Time Machine is less than half the cost of BOB at around $25 and has the following features:

• Token-Operated: Instead of using pin codes and individual accounts, the Time Machine is token-operated like the arcades of yesteryear. It comes with 30 tokens and each token provides 30 minutes of TV time.
• RCA & Cable Connected: The Time Machine works by cutting off the connection from the TV to your device. It allows a cable and RCA device to be connected to it. This could be a limiting factor if you don’t use RCA cables to connect to your TV or if you have a large number of devices you’d like to control.
• Set Times of Operation: Similar to BOB, you can put in the times that you want the device to be active. So for the Time Machine, you can say kids can only watch TV starting at 6am and ending at 8pm. It will restrict them to those times, even if they try to add a token.

Conclusion

Ultimately we decided on the Time Machine due to its cost and token-based approach. We liked the idea that the kids could earn more tokens each day for good behavior and it could be a tangible reward or punishment.

After a few months of use, it has definitely reduced the amount of TV our kids watch though I don’t think we’re quite at AAP-recommended levels yet…

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching? 

-Nicholas Johnson

So many gurus of time management tell us that the best way to be effective is to rigorously schedule every minute of every day. Not only should we schedule our work activities but we also need to schedule our personal activities. Each week we should revisit that schedule to ensure we’re making progress on those activities.

Don’t forget to schedule those big rocks first!

And for each commitment that we put on the schedule, we need to be sure and keep it. At face value this makes a lot of sense. But it really won’t work if you have too many activities scheduled. Thomas Edison’s plan was much simpler:

I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.

 

It’s called relentless focus or working in sprints. In other words, you don’t worry about scheduling a ton of activities and then watching the clock to ensure you are doing the right activity at the right time. His secret to time management: Just focus on ONE activity. Then there is nothing to schedule because you always know what you should be doing.

For Edison this “one activity” was his work. He was legendary for working 16 hour days and given that he has 1500+ patents, I would say that it was pretty effective for him.

Now, there can be a dark side to this. In Edison’s case he truly neglected his family to the point where one of his daughters said she didn’t even know he was her father because she barely saw him.  So, there is a balance. I like what Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of Public Speaker, has to say:

When someone tells me they have a wish, or a new years resolution, I ask what are you taking off of your plate to make room in your life for this new thing?

You can’t do everything. Period. So pick what’s important and focus on that relentlessly. And maybe, just maybe, stop staring at the clock in your office…

What happens after we die? It’s the question that I think everyone has pondered at one time or another. Yet, it’s a tough one to answer. It’s not like you can easily gather evidence. There isn’t exactly a steady stream of people that we can ask about life after death and it’s not anything you want to try out.

We can look to our churches and holy texts to see what they have to say. Most would say that there is some kind of afterlife, and that there is a spirit that lives on in some form or another, but they are pretty light on the details.

Luckily, as medical technology has advanced, doctors are beginning to bring more and more people back from death’s door. Some of them are actually “clinically” dead (ie – without a steady heartbeat) before being brought back. What would they say from their experience being nearly-dead and would their stories match?

That’s the question that Dr. Raymond Moody set out to study in his now classic book Life After Life. He collected the stories of hundreds of Near Death Experience (NDE) survivors and published them in a book along with his analysis. What he found is that even though the people and the cause of their near-death varied, their actual experiences while “dead” were surprisingly similar. 

Stages

Almost all of the people he studied went through a variation of the following “stages” in their NDE roughly in this order:

• Hearing the News – Many report hearing doctors or accident spectators pronounce them dead and later (after being resuscitated) are able to repeat the exact words back.
• Feeling Peaceful – Even though many of the stories he collected were gruesome car accidents or war wounds, the people who experienced them described their first feeling as that of peace and comfort.
• The Noise – After dying, many report hearing a noise that’s most often described as a ringing or buzzing. Sometimes it takes the form of bells or something more musical.
• The Dark Tunnel – After hearing the noise, many recall being pulled through into a dark tunnel.
• Out of Body – Throughout the experience, they describe being out of their body and seeing it on the operating table or still behind the wheel of the crashed car.
• Meeting Others – Many report seeing other people such as departed family members or old deceased friends.
• Being of Light – They recall meeting a “being of light” that takes many forms (depending on a person’s religious background) and who communicates with them in a non-verbal way usually asking them to say what they had done with their life and if they were ready to die.
• The Review – After seeing the being of light, they report seeing something akin to a slideshow of their lives starting from when they were young to the present.
• Effect on Lives – After coming back to life, many report being forever changed and seeing life as deeper and more precious. They also emphasize trying to be as loving as possible to the people they interact with.

The most startling aspect of these stages is how similar they are across individuals regardless of race, geography, ethnicity or religious belief. According to the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS):

No significant correlation has been found between religious beliefs and the likelihood or depth of the near-death experience. No significant correlation has been found between age, race, sexual orientation, economic status and the likelihood, content or depth of the near-death experience.

So NDEs know no cultural boundaries though some stories are more fantastic than others.

Maria’s Shoe

One classic NDE story that adds validity to the out of body stage is that of “Maria’s Shoe” as described by the IANDS:

Kimberly Clark Sharp (1995) was a social worker in Harborview Hospital in Seattle when Maria was brought in unconscious from cardiac arrest. Sharp visited her the following day in a hospital room, at which point Maria described leaving her body and floating above the hospital. Desperate to prove that she  had in fact left her body and was not crazy, she described seeing a worn dark blue tennis shoe on the ledge outside a window on the far side of the hospital. Not believing her but wanting to help, Sharp checked the ledge by pressing her face against the sealed windows and found a shoe that perfectly matched the details Maria had related

Conclusions

So what can we learn from Dr. Moody’s research? The first is that even though it was published over 25 years ago it has yet to be shot down by newer research. If nothing else, further research from groups like the IANDS has helped support it.

That said, there are competing theories, such as a neurological one which states that a dying brain starved of oxygen will formulate a tunnel, show beings of light, and life reviews as coping mechanisms. The problem with this theory is that it does not explain how people report NDE’s even when their brain’s are healthy such as during childbirth and some accidents.

For those looking for some evidence of what happens after we die, this book is a great place to start. For those who have recently lost a loved one or fear death themselves, the stories of NDEs provide a measure of comfort.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place    
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish    
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down    
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings,    
The powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good,     
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,    
All in one mighty sepulchre.

-William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis

There is a tendency when reading about the achievements of others to try and follow their path. To say that they made it through life in a specific way, why can’t I just follow their path? But this is a mistake. There are things you can learn from the lives of others, but you can also get stuck down dead-ends trying the follow someone else’s path.

Follow Your Bent

Why is this?

It really boils down to skills and environment. Everyone is bent in a specific way. And for the most part, you can’t change that. Even though I like and admire the achievements of Teddy Roosevelt, I have to realize that my personality is nothing like his. So the path that he took in his life is not a path that I could take. I’m not going to bowl people over with my enthusiasm like he did.

Well why not try and become more enthusiastic? It can’t be that hard…right? Most of the research today suggests that you’re much better building on your strengths rather than trying to improve your weaknesses. At the end of the day, your success comes from your strengths in spite of your weaknesses. No one remembers what Lance Armstrong was poor at, only what he was really, really good at.

There’s a great quote from Lincoln during the civil war where someone asks why he doesn’t get rid Grant because he is a hopeless alcoholic. After recently going through a string of generals who never pressed their advantage against the enemy, Lincoln replied

I cannot spare this man. He fights!

In other words, it didn’t matter that Grant was a drunkard. What mattered was that he had the courage to take the fight to the enemy. In the end, Lincoln was wise to overlook Grant’s faults and focus on his strengths. We all need to do the same with ourselves. We can’t follow someone else because we have our own strengths that may not be the same.

Find Your Roy

Not only are we bent in different ways than others, but our environment is different. We are surrounded by different people.

A while back I was reading the autobiography of Phil Vischer called Me, Myself &  Bob. In his book, he describes the rise and fall of Veggie Tales (the animated series based on 3-D generated vegetables and positive messages). He talks about how he built his empire in his basement when everyone thought he was crazy. But after he became hugely successful, he began to think that he could be the next Walt Disney. He was always amazed by what Disney had accomplished. Now here was his chance to do the same.

His company was highly successful with producing half-hour episodes so the next step was to move into feature films just like Walt did. But there was a problem. How should his studio finance the incredible expense of a feature film? At the time, they were flush with cash and all of the 5-year projections looked great so they chose to self-finance the feature film. The only problem was the film cost way more than anyone expected and 5-year projections were horribly inaccurate. By the end, his studio went bankrupt.

After much reflection, Vischer summarizes what happened:

In hindsight, perhaps the simplest explanation for the failure of Big Idea Productions is this: I never found my Roy. I never found the person who could look rationally at my ideas and then, in love, say no. There were numerous people ready to say no to me, but we didn’t have the sort of relationship Walt and Roy had, so I was always hesitant to trust them. As a result, I didn’t trust their “no’s.” So I barreled ahead, on my own, clutching my ideas like a child clutching a prized stuffed animal in a roomful of strangers whose motives he can’t discern.

Phil could not follow Walt because he did not have Roy. His environment was different. He would have been better off focusing on what he could do with the people he had rather than trying to following the pattern set out by Walt. At the end of the book, Vischer finally comes to grips with the fact that he cannot be Walt and he even makes amends at Walt’s statue in Disneyland.

That’s a lesson we all need to learn because at the end of the day we can only be ourselves. 

That big red line sailing upwards pretty much says it all.

At a time when retail sales have been flat or even declining, e-commerce–and Amazon specifically–has been experiencing tremendous growth. In the less than a decade we entered a world where you no longer have to leave your home to do all your holiday shopping. Think about that.

Not only do you not have to leave your home, I would argue that the online shopping experience is actually far better for the following reasons:

• Consumer Reviews: When you are at a retail store looking at five different coffee makers, it’s very difficult to determine which is the best. Can you really trust the marketing on the box? But online it’s different. You see reviews of people who have actually purchased that coffee maker and what there experience was
• Price: I’m not sure how they do it, but Amazon is consistently 20-30% cheaper than the same item in a retail store. And the site makes it extremely convenient to price shop across different sellers of a given product. You can even sort by lowest to highest price. And with Amazon there is often no shipping or tax.
• Availability: When you get to retail store you never know if they will have an item in stock. Or sometimes they say they have it in stock but then can’t find it on the shelf. These problems don’t exist with Amazon. Not only do they tell you if they have an item in stock, but when they get low they tell you how many they have left.
• Speed: I can comfortably purchase an item on Amazon much faster than the amount of time it takes to get out to a retail store, dig through the aisles, and then wait at checkout. Now granted I will not have the item immediately from Amazon, but their 2-day shipping (through Amazon Prime) is usually fast enough for most items. My main concern is that it saves me time.

Amazon has truly changed the way we shop. This year I’m doing all my holiday shopping online and loving it!

I recently finished Andre Agassi’s autobiography entitled Open. I’ve read many biographies and many books about tennis. This one ranks with the best of them. And it’s because of what the title implies. In his book, Agassi is remarkably open. He talks about his struggles, his failures, and most pointedly how he hates tennis.

That’s right. Agassi, one of the greatest tennis players ever, hated the game passionately. In some ways it almost makes sense. He was forced to play tennis from a very young age by his overbearing father (a former champion Iranian boxer). He never had a choice in the matter and he explains that if he did, he would not have chosen tennis. He preferred team sports where all the pressure was not on one person.

His dad, more focused on tennis than Andre, picked a house where he could build a tennis court in back and force the young boy to hit 2500 balls per day. As his dad said, anyone who hits 2500 balls per day will hit a million per year and anyone who hits a million balls per year can’t help but be number 1. It makes sense from a cruel mathematical perspective. The more you play the better you will get.  But what if you’re that kid forced to do what you hate for 2 hours a day? It’s no wonder that he started to loathe tennis.

All that said, it did give him a wild ride of a career which is expertly chronicled in his new book. After reading it in its entirety, the following lessons stand out to me:

• Surround Yourself with the Best: A common thread throughout the book are the people around Agassi and how they helped him to achieve greatness. Until he started working with Brad Gilbert he had not won any slams. Gilbert analyzed his game and helped teach him that he didn’t need to hit every shot perfectly. Even more important than Gilbert was Agassi’s relationship with Gil Reyes. Reyes was his personal trainer and is largely credited with extending Agassi’s career until the ripe age of 36. Reyes acted as a much-needed father figure to Agassi whose real father never knew how to show affection. These people along with a cast of others supported Agassi through the whirlwind of life as a tennis pro and helped him to really grow into himself.
• Everyone Thinks About Quitting: I was shocked to hear how many times Agassi thought about quitting throughout his long career. The first was when he had just turned pro and had not accomplished much. He had a tough loss, but if he would’ve quit at that time we wouldn’t be talking about him today. It makes me wonder how many quit when they are right on the cusp of accomplishing something great.
• Practice as Much as Possible: Agassi’s dad had him practicing as soon as he could walk. Sometimes he would have him skip school so that he could practice tennis. After doing this for many years, his dad sent him to the Bollettieri Academy where he spent a large part of every day practicing tennis. I’m reminded of books like Outliers and Talent is Overrated which state that the key to success is how much you can practice. Both mention the need for 10,000 hours of practice to become an true expert. Agassi certainly hit that mark at a young age.
• Success Does not Equal Happiness: There was a point in Agassi’s career where he was the #1 tennis player in the world and married to Brooke Shields. Sounds like a pretty good life, but Agassi was miserable. Being #1 was never a goal for him, but a goal his father had set for him. And being married to Brooke Shields was something he more and less stumbled into only to discover that they had very different interests and groups of friends. The lesson is that you can’t be happy following other people’s dreams and happiness does not equal outward success.
• Ignore the Critics: Throughout his life critics were perpetually putting Agassi into boxes. First it was that he was all show and no substance. As one of his commercials stated – Image is Everything! He hated that phrase and felt that it didn’t really describe him, but the shoe fit so that’s what the critics wrote. It didn’t help that he had not won a grand slam. Finally, after winning many grand slams and silencing the Image is Everything moniker they started to suggest that he should retire. While the critics wrote that he should be quitting, he was out winning tournaments.
• Commit to Something Greater: Agassi didn’t seem to find himself until he found something greater to commit to than himself and tennis. He states in the book that he always felt tennis was kind of meaningless. What’s the point of being the best at hitting a fuzzy little ball around? But when he helped a friend send his kid to college that just felt right and created a spark in Agassi. He realized that his tennis skills, money and famous name could be used to benefit a greater cause – specifically underprivileged kids living in Las Vegas. In order to help give them the best education possible, he set up the Agassi Academy College Prep Academy. Only once he realized this goal did he seem to be truly happy.

Tennis was always sort of a - a learning. It was a vehicle for me to discover a lot about myself. And the things that I sort of discovered at times I not only didn’t want to see it for myself but I certainly didn’t want millions of people to see it.

-Andre Agassi