“…Magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” -Raymond Teller (of Penn & Teller)
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors, though not because any of his books are one of my favorites. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a good writer (I’d recommend checking out Mistborn if you aren’t familiar with Sanderson’s work), but that isn’t why he’s my favorite author.
There’s a myriad of reasons such as his unprecedented community engagement and free writing resources, but the main reason I continue to follow him is his work ethic. If you don’t know, he launched the most successful Kickstarter of all time last year, raising a staggering $41 Million in 30 days.
There are certainly many factors that led to this success, such as the trust and community he’s built up over the years. But his previous Kickstarter “only” raised $6 Million (obviously still a great success). What caused his sequel fundraising campaign to nearly 10x?
The “X” factor I believe was the (quite literally) unbelievable amount of work he put in. The premise of the Kickstarter campaign: he wrote 5 EXTRA full-length novels during the pandemic. I emphasize extra because the man was previously infamous as a prolific writer and wrote these novels on top of his already break-neck release schedule.
It was so audacious it felt like magic.
How did he do this? To use his own words, Brandon Sanderson writes like an accountant. He shows up, clocks in, and puts in the work. Something that is perhaps uncommon in the creative space that’s filled with “muses” and “writers’ block.” And during the pandemic when everyone was shut inside, he just did more of that accountant work than anyone reasonably would.
This is the simple truth: great things take hard work. And hard work isn’t such a mystery, it simply means putting in the time and doing the thing for an unreasonable amount of time.
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master (which is about 3 hours a day for 9 years) in his book Outliers. He found that talent was not a shortcut or a predictor and that lack of talent was not a hindrance. You just have to put in the time.
Mr. Beast, the uber-viral youtube creator, has pushed this idea further and asks himself the question, “What if I put in 100,000 hours?”
This is something I keep coming back to for myself. How can I orient my life and remove distractions so I can put in the time?
Two of my favorite proverbs sum this up for me:
“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” -Hebrew Proverb
This is (in my mind) an ancient tongue-in-cheek way to say: if you don’t put in the work your life is clean easy, but if you want to make something in this world, you gotta shovel the shit out of that manger every day.
and
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” -Chinese Proverb
If you have something you want to do in this world, someone you want to be, you have to put in the work. And to be significant it needs to be 10x more time (or more) than everyone around you. It’s a long road and the best time to start is now.
The good news/bad news is we live in a world where distraction is easy. The bad news is to orient your life in a way to avoid distraction and put in the time can be hard. The battle to stay focused is real.
The good (but unsexy) news is most people lose this battle, and if you can be the outlier who puts in the unreasonable amount of time, 10x or 100x others, you can wield magic too.
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