Category Archives: Success Strategies

Philippe Petit On Why Doing the Dirty Work Matters

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dirty-workIn prehistoric times almost everyone did what we now consider the “dirty work.” But ever since the Sumerians developed an agricultural system (circa 5000 BC)—which created a stable supply of food allowing the population to grow, settle down and develop a division of labor that included skilled and unskilled work—most people have been angling to get out of doing the most menial, repetitive, mindless grunt work.

But is there an advantage to doing the thankless and lowly task?

In an intervew for our book, Philippe Petit, the greatest living high wire master (whose spectacular feats include his walk between the World Trade Center Towers 110 stories in the air) proselytizes for dirty work: Continue reading →

Dont’ Get Mad—Get Innovative

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It may be human nature to bitch and moan about what’s wrong with the world, but many successful innovators when faced with life’s aggravations don’t just complain. Instead, they take personal responsibility and marshal all their resources to figure out how to improve what’s wrong.

When we interviewed Bill Gross for our book “The Art of Doing, How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well,” Gross, founder and CEO of Idealab, a business incubator that has fostered the creation of nearly 100 businesses told us, “My ideas arise from an internal need, something I want that I can’t get. When I use a product or drive in traffic and experience something that irks me I want to fix it.” Continue reading →

When Failure Is Not An Option,
Typical Career Advice Does Not Apply
[Philippe Petit Part 2]

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“Art happens when you work millions of hours not to make it look hard but to make it look effortless,” says famed World Trade Center high-wire walker Philippe Petit. Read on for more insight that applies to entrepreneurs as well as daredevils.

In 1974, Philippe Petit committed the “artistic crime of the century” when he wire-walked across the void between the two world trade center towers. Since then, Petit has gone on to perform many other spectacular wire walks, authored over half a dozen books and singlehandedly built a barn using eighteenth-century tools and design. But, for all of his meticulous preparation, Petit bristles at any attempt to systematize his methods. Asked to explain his artistic process, he says, “It can be boiled down to a few words–from chaos to total control to perfection.”

We found Petit’s philosophy of how he lives his entire life as if he’s on the high wire could be applied to anyone’s work or personal life. Continue reading →

How to Live Life on the High Wire with Philippe Petit [Part 1]

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Photo: Flickr user Carolina Pastrana

On a summer day in 1974, a 24-year-old Frenchman stepped onto the world stage with one of the most astonishing performances in modern history–walking back and forth on a wire illegally rigged across the void between New York’s World Trade Center Towers, three quarters of a mile above spellbound onlookers. It all began six years earlier when the young Philippe Petit was inspired by a rendering of the not-yet-constructed towers he saw in a magazine. He spent the following years refining his wire walking skills and making countless visits to the towers to plot how to surreptitiously enter the buildings and solve the complicated logistics of rigging his wire between the swaying towers. Petit has gone on to perform many other spectacular wire walks, authored over half a dozen books, was the subject of the acclaimed documentary Man on Wire, and singlehandedly built a barn using eighteenth-century tools and design. Whether on the high wire or not, Petit’s philosophy is epitomized in his response to reporters shouting “Why?” after his dramatic Twin Towers crossing. Petit’s answer: “The beauty of it is, there is no ‘why.’” Continue reading →

How to Grow Killer Weed with Ed Rosenthal

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It was the Sixties, and Ed Rosenthal, who listed his future career as “plant geneticist” in his high school yearbook, had discovered pot. After college, living in an oversize apartment in the Bronx, Rosenthal decided to grow his own. The rest is marijuana history as Rosenthal went on to become “The Guru of Ganja” and a godsend to both the home growing hobbyist and the commercial grower. He has authored a dozen books on marijuana cultivation and his popular grower’s advice column Ask Ed ran in High Times for two decades and is syndicated internationally.

Here are Rosenthal’s 10 tips on “How to Grow Killer Weed,” excerpted from our book, “The Art of Doing.”

1. Know the consequences. Face it, pot isn’t legal in most places yet. There are almost a million marijuana arrests in America every year, so know your local laws, both state and county. If you get busted in Oklahoma for growing a single plant you can get two years to life. In some states a medical doctor can lose his license for cultivation. A student can lose rights to scholarships. You can even lose your driver’s license or right to vote. Ask yourself: “Is growing worth it?” The police blotter is full of stories of people who didn’t think it through. Continue reading →

If You Want to Find Love Online, Get Real

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We interviewed the founders of OkCupid, one of the most successful online dating sites, for a chapter on “How to Find Love Online” in our book. Although the founders claim no lothario-like superpowers—based on their teeming mass of statistical data and observational evidence they can advise us on how to find someone online who will love us for who we really are. Continue reading →

How to Create One of the World’s Most Succesful Blogs

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Mark Frauenfelder

This is from a chapter in our book, “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It so Well,” based on our interview with Mark Frauenfelder, founder and coeditor of BoingBoing, one of the most popular blogs for the last decade. This chapter was excerpted in Fast Company.

At the dawn of blogging in 1995, Mark Frauenfelder moved his ‘zine Boing Boing online. Boing Boing—whose mission was to explore “the coolest, wackiest stuff”—became and remains one of the Internet’s most popular blogs. Defying the corporatization of the blogosphere, BoingBoing has remained a curio of oddities, tech news, gadget tips and real-life marvels with 2.5 million unique visitors a month. Now, Frauenfelder shares daily blogging duties with a troika of other passionate editors Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz and Xeni Jardin. “The recipe for an excellent blog is to be so deeply obsessed with something that you need to communicate it to others,” says Frauenfelder. “If BoingBoing stopped making money tomorrow, I’d still need to do it.” Continue reading →

Alec Baldwin and Robert Carlock on What Made “30 Rock” So Funny

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Alec Baldwin and Robert Carlock on the set of "30 Rock" on "How to Be Funny on TV" for the book, "The Art of Doing"

Alec Baldwin and Robert Carlock on the set of “30 Rock”

We went to Silvercup Studios to interview Alec Baldwin and Robert Carlock (show runner and co-head writer) of the recently deceased and already acutely mourned “30 Rock” for a chapter in our book on “How to be Funny (on TV).”

Alec Baldwin, who plays Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock,” described his relationship with the show’s writers as a “singer songwriter thing.” He told us:

“[The '30 Rock' writers] have ruined me. When someone who wants me to host a show pitches me with, ‘Soooo…you’re a Cub Scout Master and you get stuck in…’ I want to tell them, ‘I work with the funniest people in the business, and you guys don’t know what funny is.’”

And Robert Carlock told us about what it was like to write for actors like Baldwin:

“Comedy is musical, the timing and the pitch. And you’ve got people like Alec Baldwin doing the acting, you can only blame yourself when it doesn’t work.”

Read our exclusive interview with Baldwin and Carlock excerpted from our book, “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well,” on The Daily Beast here.

 

 

Our NYTimes Story: The Secret Ingredient for Success

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Secret Ingredient of Success the art of doing

What does self-awareness have to do with a restaurant empire? A tennis championship? Or a rock star’s dream?

David Chang’s experience is instructive.

Mr. Chang is an internationally renowned, award-winning Korean-American chef, restaurateur and owner of the Momofuku restaurant group with eight restaurants from Toronto to Sydney, and other thriving enterprises, including bakeries and bars, a PBS TV show, guest spots on HBO’s “Treme” and a foodie magazine, Lucky Peach. He says he worked himself to the bone to realize his dream — to own a humble noodle bar.

He spent years cooking in some of New York City’s best restaurants, apprenticed in different noodle shops in Japan and then, finally, worked 18-hour days in his tiny restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar.

Mr. Chang could barely pay himself a salary. He had trouble keeping staff. And he was miserably stressed. Continue reading →

How To Be A Super-Achiever: The 10 Qualities That Matter

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Reporter Jenna Goudreau of Forbes created this video and a feature artilce based on her interview with us.

What do actor Alec Baldwin game-show champion Ken Jennings and baseball icon Yogi Berra have in common? That’s what husband-and-wife duo Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield set out to discover. For their upcoming book The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well, they interviewed 36 star performers that climbed to the tops of their various fields.

The full article is here:

Order the book here: