My friend Jeremy and I recently had this conversation about a quote by Thelonious Monk. A genius is the one most like himself. And we explored this idea about what it means to find your zone of genius and why being authentically yourself might be the key to your greatest work.
There's a couple other things related to the comfort zone that are interesting. I heard a friend talk about it this way. When you're expanding your comfort zone, it's kind of like you have a log fire in the middle of the forest. And so you're kind of like sitting around that the light only goes so far out, but you're running out of wood and maybe you'd like to build a bigger fire. So you got to kind of like venture out that circle of light outside of that, expand your comfort zone a little, go find some wood and you bring it back, you put on the fire.
And now you've ventured outside, nothing bad happened, you brought back the wood. The the ring of light is now a little bit wider. And so you've kind of expanded your comfort zone by venturing outside of it. And the more you do that, you actually become much more competent and much more comfortable with anything that can get thrown at you over time. Yeah.
And so I think that that's, you know, part of this expanding your comfort zone. But there's this other angle that I think a lot of times, you know, there's a lot of advice you hear about like, do you build up your weaknesses or do you double down on strengths? There was a speaker, his name was Ozan Varol, and he wrote a book called Awaken Your Genius, and his talk was on this idea of genius. And he had this quote that has just stuck with me for years now. It was something like, a genius is he who is most himself.
And that just like struck a chord with me where sometimes we want to get outside of our comfort zone in ways that it holds us back. But I think a lot of times people who are not successful are trying to emulate somebody else in a way that like is never going to work for them. And I think that when you look at the truly exceptional creators, I think of somebody like Tim Urban, like nobody can emulate him. He is a one and only like, his blog, Wait But Why, was one of the biggest blogs, maybe the biggest blog in the world for a long time. So many people have emulated him, but you can't.
Like, he is truly in alignment with himself. He is doing this because this is what he wants to do, and it is not trying to do something that is successful or emulating someone else. And this is something that I've certainly felt that when sometimes you need somebody else to reflect back to you, what is it about you that's interesting or that you do well? And I've had this a number of times where somebody unlocks something for me and specifically with creative work where I'm like, oh, I do do do that. My brain does work in that way and I never really thought about this before.
And as I've gotten those nudges, I've started to embrace those things more and kind of go more naturally with my own, like, mental and creative rhythms. And it's like, oh, the work gets better. It gets easier for me to create. It resonates more with other people because it's like no longer a filtered signal coming through. It's like pure pure Jeremy. I'm not like trying to it's only like 60% me and then, you know, 40% trying to be someone else.
Sorry. What's the quote again? It's a genius is
A genius is he who is most himself.
Yeah. It's like Conan O'Brien. Like Yeah. Completely himself in a way that was different than David Letterman, than that was different than Jay Leno. These people that embody the spirit of, Wow, they are really themselves, and it's noticeable.
Like, we can keep thinking of creators that kind of embody the spirit. And some of this, I think, does need to get reflected back to us. This is why having friends and family and a partner because often we don't see this in ourselves. even just going to therapy can help with this. Like, and asking this question, like, you can go into a therapy session and say, Listen, I'm just trying to figure out where am I most myself?
Like, can you help me figure that out? And therapists are often equipped to do this. And you know, for most of my life I was incredibly shy. And it took me a while to figure out that I was shy, but that I had this natural desire to be outgoing and to be performing for an audience. And realizing that, it was like, oh, my shyness is not actually a characteristic that feels like me.
I need to overcome that because I need to be this person that I feel like and sometimes it's just like the person you desire to be. You might not even be that You know, a lot of people who are like working on getting more fit kind of feel like this. I don't feel like myself. There's actually another version of myself that I want to be. There is this person that I have this natural desire to be where I feel like, oh, if I could be like that, I would just feel like myself.
That I was operating fully in my Okay. How am I going to get there? What's holding me back? Well, now, my shyness is holding me back. You know, know podcasters that have had a stutter their whole life. And it's like, I don't see myself as a person with a stutter. I see myself as a person who can speak fluently and eloquently and with confidence. Okay. Well, I've got to overcome this other thing because I want to be that person. That's the genius version of myself that I see.
And this is a process. It's going to involve your own self reflection. It's going to involve, like we said, mirroring from other people, other people noticing things about you. You know, that's a great gift when people can accurately observe something in you that really is your zone of genius and say, meh, wow, this is just something where you clearly excel. Like, I can't believe you have this. This thing is amazing. You know?
Yeah.
That you wanna put yourself in rooms where you have friends and other people that can can can give you those kinds of gifts.
Yeah. You know, it makes me think there's almost there's these two sides that I see. People who are able to get exceptional results. There is this kind of, like, narcissistic, arrogant, oblivious kind of person who can just bulldoze their way in and shamelessly talk about their stuff. And to some people, there is something that can be attractive about that.
I think it it can work for some people. That is a small sliver of society, I think. But then I think there's the opposite side where the other types of creators who I know who are successful are extremely self aware Mhmm. And self reflective. And I think that this is an important part of understanding your zone of genius, what you can do really well, but also understanding how it fits into the environment.
You can't have one without the other. I think you need both of those. And so part of this is kind of being able to read the room. People who understand like what they can bring to the space, the mood of the space right and how they can fit into that with their kind of unique genius. And I think those people, it's kind of like their minds are just always working on the problems of like, yeah, what am I doing here?
Why why does this resonate now? What will resonate now? Why is this other person's thing resonating now? And trying to like pick it apart for themselves rather than relying on other people to tell them, hey. This tactic is working now. You should do this. They're just trying to figure it out for themselves and make sense of it, and that then translates through the work into something that often does.
Yeah. There's a lot of other people out there that I could get jealous about or that could distract me, or I could wonder how come the luck keeps going to them and not to me. And the crazy thing about getting older is that you can start to look back on decades, and you can see all these people that you're like, man, I wish I could be more like them. I wish I wasn't me. I wish I could be just more like that person.
And then you just realize like, oh, man, I'm so glad I wasn't that person. The band, is it the Roots that plays for Jimmy Fallon?
Think
Questlove. I I just saw an interview with him where he said
Who are you jealous of?
In '96, when the Fugees are having their moment.
Oh, yeah.
You know? Huge. I I might have sat in a bathtub, like, fully clothed, like, looking at their Rolling Stone cover with my darts. You know? And then mean, it happens with every cycle. Like, '98 when I only came out, okay, it's about us. Then the Outkast is like, nope. Hang on. Hang on. My But I will also tell you thirty two years and 17 albums later, looking in the rearview mirror
Yeah.
Of what's happened to everyone, this was absolutely, positively the best storybook ending ever.
It's like, he was just like so appreciative of his journey. This is what we need to be doing too. I'm on my journey. I'm trying to accomplish this. I'm not trying to accomplish Tim Ferriss fame. I'm working on my craft. I want to have a good life. I want to make good work. I want to make a living. I want to connect with interesting people.
Like, you define your own values and what you're after, and then you just get to be on your own journey, one step in front of the other every single day. Personally, I've realized that my career has just had a lot of line drives. I'm a line drive kind of guy. I don't hit very many home runs.
Yep.
But I score a lot of points because I'm just always getting on base. Nothing dramatic. Nothing crazy. Just working around the bases. Run from first to second, second to third, third to home. And I'm just trying to score runs that way. And maybe one day I'll get a big home run. And maybe that home will actually end up being the worst thing that ever happened to me. Right? So I'm just thankful to be a base hitter.
I think if you can have that attitude, I think it'll be helpful for you as you embark on this creative journey, this ten year project.
You know, we're talking about some of these things of like, okay, being more yourself, you look at Conan and Tim Ferriss. Like, is clearly survivorship bias here where there are countless people who were themselves, who did all these things and who did not succeed. But it's harder to achieve that kind of success by trying to emulate somebody else. It's like the people who do breakthrough, those are the ones who do all the right things and they increase their surface area of luck. And so I think that to me, that just goes back to this, this idea of like, want to enjoy what I do every day.
I don't care if any one project is successful. It's like, want to have a craft that I care about, whether that's writing or podcasting or building products or, you know, marketing or whatever it is, and probably a bunch of other interests in life. And it's like, if I can be satisfied with never having a big hit, I think kind of very similar to you. It's like, hey, life will have been worth living regardless. And so I think that that is the first mindset to take with all creative work is like, I'm doing it because I want to do it and anything that comes out of it, I might have hopes and aspirations and dreams, but that's like the cherry on top.
And I'm gonna give it everything that I have, but I'm still gonna be satisfied and happy and fulfilled if it doesn't work out.
Yeah. Yeah. That makes me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I have no discipline. It's just who you are. No. I'm addicted.
Oh, you're
addicted. It's an addiction. It's kind of like I cannot even imagine the mornings without riding down to the gym with the bike and then working out. So it's it's like it's an addiction. I have to go to the gym in order to feel good.
It wasn't as hard for him to get to the gym because he's like, I gotta get to the gym. It was there was already something internal to him that was pushing him to the gym. Where did the discipline show up? Once he got to the gym, he was, like, willing to put in the work, willing to work on his technique, willing to level up every single day. Like, there was discipline there, but it it didn't take him discipline to get to the gym.
That was just internal. And I think that's kind of marries everything we've been talking about. Like, okay, I've got something driving me. Where am I gonna where's that energy gonna take me? Am I going to ignore that energy? Am I gonna try to recreate someone else's energy? Or am I just gonna like take what is already motivating me and pushing me? And, you know, for Arnold, if he never made it big, he'd still have an incredible physique. He had other benefits. It made him feel good.
And then even think Arnold is funny, too. Initially, his goal was to become Mr. Universe, right? Like in bodybuilding. But then somehow, he got into acting. It carried him somewhere else. And so, kind of operating in your zone of genius and showing up and being true to whatever is kind of driving you, it can lead other places. The way to think about this is I'm gonna go to the gym because I freaking love it. Worst case scenario, I get a great body. Yeah.
And then best case scenario, I win Mr. Universe. And then even better after that, maybe it leads to something else. Maybe I become governor. Wouldn't that be crazy? I think this is the kind of thing we want to be cultivating in our own lives. It's just like, Okay. I'm going to write every day because I love it. And maybe one day I get a base hit and I sell 2,000 copies and that helps us do a kitchen renovation. Like, think in those And then, like, what's the benefit of that?
Well, if I die one day, I'll be happy that I had written all those books.
Yeah. Yeah. It almost makes me think that as we're talking about this, like, time horizons and showing up and doing the work, The image in my mind is this graph where the longer your time horizon, it's like as as the closer it stretches to infinity, the more inevitable the likelihood of like success or, you know, exceptional output becomes. Whereas when you're operating within a one day period, there is it's it's it's essentially impossible. Whereas if you stretch that out over ten years or twenty years or an entire career or lifetime, if you show up and do the work regularly, it's almost hard not to arrive at that at some point.
Yeah. And as a callback, if you want to increase your time horizon, you want to increase your runway, your biggest risk is that you're going to burn out or go broke. And so this idea of like, I'm just going to quit my job, buy the equipment, and let go, maybe that's the right answer for you. But I think for most people, it's like, no, how can I do this sustainably? I'm going to show up and I'm going to do this craft every day, but I'm going do it in a way that doesn't make me burn out or go broke.
And that will enable me to have this ten year period. And it might mean, in addition to learning the craft of podcasting, I'm also going to go to trade school and become a carpenter because Mhmm. The world always needs more carpenters. And I could be a carpenter during the day and podcast at night, and that would be a happy life for me.