📝 LIB: A-Players, Taylor Swift & Fishing

For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Apple co-founder [Steve Wozniak] was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. 

People said they wouldn’t get along, they’d hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn’t like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple that’s what I decided to do.

[…] My role model was J. Robert Oppenheimer. I read about the type of people he sought for the atom bomb project. I wasn’t nearly as good as he was, but that’s what I aspired to do."

This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives.

Fans in Argentina pitched tents outside the venue for months to get prime spots, with some quitting their jobs to commit to fandom full time. Across the U.S., others lined up for days, while those who didn’t get in “Taylor-gated” in nearby parking lots so they could pick up the sound.

Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”

Leo on not giving up: "I remember going to different agents when I was 9 or 10. I was rejected twice and I just kept asking and asking and asking. I remember my dad saying, 'Just stick with it. Someday you'll have your day.'"  

Leo would make his film debut in Critters 3 in 1991, a film he says he'd "rather forget because it was so bad". He'd then do small TV parts for a year until he was hand-picked out of 400 kids in an audition by Robert de Niro to star in A Boy's Life in 1992.

This was Leo's first breakout role. The rest is history.

While Leo may seem larger than life, he's just a normal dude with big dreams who stuck with it.

The same is true for many wealthy entrepreneurs.

They seem like they've got the perfect life, but behind a billion-dollar company is 100 failures.

I used to love planning. But this story of two men learning to fish changed my life:

The first fisherman starts reading up on everything there is to know about fishing.

He watches hours of videos about different fishing techniques.

He custom-orders a top-of-the-range rod.

He buys a fancy boat.

After a few months, he finally feels ready to fish.

So he heads out to the lake with his top-of-the-range rod on his fancy boat with his months of fishing insights under his belt.

Six hours in, not even a bite.

What went wrong?

The second fisherman had completely exhausted the lake's fish supply.

On day one, the second fisherman grabbed a shitty rod and started fishing.

The first day, no success. Nor on the second. Nor the third.

A full week passed, still without results.

But on the eighth day, he finally got a small bite.

And each day after, he refined his approach.

Soon enough, he was catching hundreds of fish each day.

Next, he hired a small team to help, opened a restaurant to sell his catch and started a fishing school to teach others.

Whilst the first fishermen felt productive, there was one thing missing: feedback.

The second fisherman tried and tested different ideas, improving his strategy every day.