The Rise

1. The Propulsive Power of the Near Win

Mastery is not merely a commitment to a goal, but to a curved-line, constant pursuit.

Near wins propel us. Success is often seen as an event-based victory, a peak moment in time. However, the "near win"—coming close but not quite hitting the mark—can be a powerful engine for ongoing quest and improvement. This constant auto-correction on a curved path is fundamental to mastery.

Instant feedback drives change. Sports like archery provide instantaneous, precise feedback, constantly ranking athletes against their seconds-younger selves. This immediate dealing with the "near win" pushes athletes to prove they can hit the mark seconds later. The frustration of just missing, like silver medalists feeling "if only," is a stronger motivator for future change than finishing further down, like bronze medalists who are often just thankful they medaled.

Manufactured motivation. High-level performers, when the path seems too level, sometimes manufacture challenges or embrace "humble pie" to create the necessary pressure and drive. This deliberate creation of a "not quite" scenario, as seen in the difficulty of NFL teams "three-peating," provides the thrust forward that the incomplete offers, preventing complacency and fueling continued excellence.

2. Mastery Lies in Embracing the Unfinished

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

Masterpieces are often incomplete. Many iconic works of art and invention were considered unfinished by their creators, riddled with perceived difficulties and flaws. Figures like Cézanne, who identified with Balzac's character Frenhofer, or Michelangelo, whose "non finito" sculptures became a style, demonstrate that the pursuit of mastery is an "ever onward almost."

The leading edge. We thrive when we stay on our own leading edge, constantly desiring more than we can accomplish. This inherent incompletion comes with greater proficiency; the more skilled we become, the more clearly we recognize the possibilities of our limitations, a concept related to the Dunning-Kruger effect. As James Baldwin noted, knowledge reveals how little you know.

Purpose in incompletion. The deliberate incomplete has been central to creation myths, like the Navajo "spirit line" in textiles, giving the weaver's spirit a way out and a reason to continue. This sense of having more to do provides purpose. Like Duke Ellington, whose favorite song was always the next one, true masters realize there isn't a conceptual end to their pursuit.

3. Blankness and Setbacks as Generative Gifts

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Blankness as potential. The word "failure" is imperfect; once transformed, it ceases to be failure. A nineteenth-century synonym, "blankness," better captures the wiping clean and limitlessness that can follow setbacks. This dynamic is fleeting and often invisible, but it is a vital, constant truth that just when it looks like winter, it is spring.

The gap between vision and work. Artists and innovators often face a gap between their ambitious intentions and their current work. This crevasse, described by Leonardo da Vinci, can be an engine for practice, pushing creators like August Wilson (writing on napkins) or Ezra Pound (turning to poetry) to find new forms when existing ones fall short. This internal process is like unconsciously living out the Zeigarnik Effect, where the mind nags us to resolve incomplete endeavors.

Safe havens for innovation. Coping with the "blank review"—criticism or indifference—requires knowing when to ignore critique and when to engage. Private domains, whether physical studios or mental spaces like Umberto Eco's "empty spaces," provide amnesty from premature judgment. This is crucial because innovative ideas are often counterintuitive and can initially look like failure, requiring a safe space to extract gains from attempts and misses.

4. Surrender to Difficulty Reveals Inner Strength

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.

Accepting negative drift. Exploration, like Ben Saunders's Arctic journeys, involves surrendering to forces beyond control, such as negative ice drift. When faced with seemingly impossible conditions, breaking down the goal into the smallest possible steps and accepting the environment's rhythms becomes essential for endurance. This is not giving up, but giving over to another mode of being.

Power in nonresistance. The martial art of aikido embodies strategic nonresistance; instead of fighting force with force, it teaches blending and absorbing energy. This practice of relaxing when threatened, counter to primitive survival reflexes, allows access to internal resources. Surrendering to pain, as in chronic pain management or facing grief, can be more powerful than fighting it, allowing for self-organization and healing.

Finding strength in vulnerability. Surrendering to difficult circumstances, even the fact of death, can grant license to live more fully and see life differently. As Martin Luther King Jr. found peace after making peace with death, accepting vulnerability can shore us up with the knowledge that nothing else can truly harm us. This counterintuitive act, sometimes aided by guides like Jerry Colonna, allows us to feel the full weight of a situation and move with it.

5. Aesthetic Force Ignites Vision and Justice

Over the long run of human history, the constant presence of beauty helps call us to the work of repairing injuries in the realm of injustice.

Pictures inspire imagination. Frederick Douglass argued that the human capacity for "picture making"—conjuring mental or material images—is key to progress and justice. Aesthetic encounters allow us to see the chasm between "the picture of life contrasted with the fact of life," igniting an inner vision of life as it could be and enabling criticism of injustice.

Beyond reason and logic. Aesthetic force has a double-barreled power: conveying reality and inspiring imaginative visions. It can transport us beyond rational persuasion, altering vision and helping us accept when the ground has shifted. Like Robert Legato's cinematic moments or the awe inspired by Earthrise, astonishment can change what we see and remember, leading to self-correction and reconciliation.

Catalysts for change. Many social movements began with aesthetic encounters that indelibly changed perceptions. The print of the slave ship Brookes galvanized the abolitionist movement, and images of Yosemite led to the National Park Service. This force, often dismissed as mere luxury, permeates everyday life and can spark inner alteration, reminding us that justice comes not just from critique but from wrestling with perceived failure and the gulf between what is and what should be.

6. Overcoming Blind Spots Reveals Hidden Potential

A rise often falls into the blind spot of vision, and so we tell the stories that I have in this book because we are hardwired not to be able to glimpse them.

Hidden things can be huge. We are hardwired to miss certain things, especially those that don't fit our expectations or fall into our "blind spot." The High Line, a massive disused railway track in Manhattan, was seen as blight by most, but a photographer's images revealed its hidden beauty and potential, transforming public sentiment. This "beautiful refuse" showed how a rise can start on an outworn, maligned foundation.

Perceptual errors. Like a type II error in statistics (a false negative), these improbable rises are often perceptual misses. We tell these stories through repetition, like creating a Danish hygge around a campfire, to make visible what is often overlooked. Events like Muhammad Ali's "Rumble in the Jungle," where his apparent struggle was actually a strategy, show how it's hard to perceive the difference between being beaten and being strengthened in the moment.

Challenging conventional wisdom. Institutions like FailCon in Silicon Valley or Engineers Without Borders' Failure Reports create spaces to openly discuss setbacks, challenging the blind spot created by success and the pressure to conform. Franklin Leonard's Black List, by anonymously polling executives on their favorite unproduced screenplays, bypassed the Asch experiment effect in Hollywood, revealing hidden gems and demonstrating that value isn't solely in formulaic, pre-sold properties but in quality writing.

7. The Deliberate Amateur Finds Innovation Through Play

To know and then how not to know is the greatest puzzle of all . . . So much preparation for a few moments of innocence—of desperate play. To learn how to unlearn.

Pretending to be a beginner. Breakthroughs often occur when experts temporarily abandon their expertise and approach a problem with a beginner's mind. Physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, Nobel laureates for isolating graphene, exemplify this with their "Friday Night Experiments"—devoting time to outlandish, unfunded research that allows them to question assumptions and enter unfamiliar territory.

Play as a state of mind. While often seen as the opposite of serious work, play is a critical state of mind for innovation. It allows for risk-taking, curiosity, and the ability to see possibilities that experts might miss due to the Einstellung effect (the bias from past success). Examples like Bogotá's mayor using mimes for traffic control or Ivy Ross's "Project Platypus" at Mattel show how playfulness can lead to creative solutions and enhanced productivity.

The hand and the brain. Play is deeply connected to our cognitive and physical development. It links the "mind in the hand," allowing for dexterous thinking and problem-solving. Suppressing play, as seen in studies on play deprivation or the decline in creativity scores alongside rising IQs, can hinder our ability to find novel approaches and withstand ambiguity. Embracing the spirit of the deliberate amateur, driven by curiosity and adventure, is essential for navigating the unknown.

8. Supple Grit Knows When to Persist and When to Pivot

Effective building—of bridges, of concepts, and ideas—comes from a more supple form of grit that knows when development needs to give way to discovery.

Beyond sheer persistence. Grit is not just rugged persistence; it's a focused endurance that allows you to stay in uncomfortable places and work hard, even without positive reinforcement. However, it's a supple form of grit that matters—knowing when to commit to higher-level goals by shifting lower-level tactics. Dysfunctional persistence, often born from the comfort of past success, can lead to repeating errors, like the thirty-year cycle of bridge collapses.

Grit is portable. Grit is not tied to a single domain but is a portable skill that can be expressed across varied interests. Samuel F. B. Morse, after decades of perceived failure as a painter, applied his tenacity and reframing skills to invent the telegraph. His ability to see the potential in abandoned canvas stretcher bars for his first model demonstrates how creative practice teaches the spry movement of perspective shifts needed for nimble endurance.

Learning from critique. Environments like art school crits, or Morse's critiques with Washington Allston, teach artists to withstand ambiguity and sort out feedback, discerning what to ignore and what is crucial. This process, centered on closing the gap between intention and effect, cultivates the agency needed for supple grit—the ability to discern when to pursue a problem and when to quit and reassess, reframing projects as problems to solve and finding new paths.

Last updated: June 26, 2025