Michael Jordan (The Life)

06/30/23 • 99 min

2 Listeners

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.

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(5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.
(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.

(6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

(14:06) At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.
(16:10) Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that got me going again.

(19:29) Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't.

(59:53) The Jordan Rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became textbook for guarding athletic scorers. The scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped in the long run, by forcing Jordan to find an answer. "I think that 'Jordan Rules' defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan," Tex Winter said.

(1:16:35) Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

(1:19:56) I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel like you missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. I've always been a practice player. I believe in it.
(1:29:47) Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent.

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Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.

---

(5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.
(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.

(6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

(19:29) Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't.

(1:16:35) Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

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Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Previous Episode

#309 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Before He Was Successful)

What I learned from reading Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak by Barbara Outland Baker.

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(6:30) He forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right angles. They had to keep their elbows to their waists. If the boys did not obey, the back of his hand was quick to strike their cheeks.

(7:30) His life began to flourish through the art and science of bodybuilding.

Arnold ate it, slept it, worked it, imagined it, thought it, believed it, and trusted it.

Bodybuilding became his existence.

(8:10) He had no time to waste on naysayers. He aligned only with those who shared his passion.

(8:15) He knew that to succeed according to his manic standards he needed to master an individual sport.

(8:30) His intelligence did not show on his report cards yet he mastered his goals like a wizard. (If you do everything you will win)

(8:50) His singular concentration provided a rock solid belief in his potential.

(9:30) Not even his peers could understand the enormity of his lifetime dreams.

(11:00) Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193)

(11:15) Gradually a conflict grew up in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She had thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off.

But that's a concept that has no place in my thinking.

For me, life is continuously being hungry.

The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

(13:40) If you do everything you will win.

(13:45) And I then saw very clearly what I could achieve, and that gave me a tremendous amount of motivation.

(13:55) Instead of training two hours a day like most kids did, I would train twice a day, two hours.

Totally abnormal.

Sometimes three times a day and sometimes four times a day. I would go home during my lunch time, and then do, for an hour straight, just sit-ups to get that extra hour that no one else has gotten in, just to be ahead of everyone else.

(16:20) Arnold was not a man of many surprises. He was clear in his focus, firm in his decisions, and egocentric at all costs.

(17:55) Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. — The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. (Founders #106)

(21:20) He made it clear that his world was huge and I must learn to accept that other people and activities demanded his attention.

(23:30) His family foundation was instrumental in setting up his intense motivation to succeed.

This negative motivation pushes him to achieve the maximum potential in every activity.

(27:30) No one could restrain his mutinous energy.

(27:55) Arnold always felt self-confident, no matter the disparity in sophistication, income or status.

(29:30) Francis could sell ice to the Eskimos, Lucas said later. He has charisma beyond logic. I can see now what kind of men the great Caesars of history were, their magnetism. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)

(31:30) I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213)

(22:40) Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. — Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)

(33:10) Optimism is a moral duty. — Edwin Land A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. (Founders #134)

(33:50) A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune. — The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #283)

(35:30) Stay public. You gotta promote, promote, promote, or it all dies. You just gotta be out there all the time. — Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. (Founders #219)

(37:00) He maintained his rigorous training schedule.

(38:30) He craved the interaction with each new expert and remembered every tip.

Arnold already recognized that he had the ability to learn any content he chose.

(38:45) The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creati...

Next Episode

#310 Walt Disney and Picasso

1 Recommendations

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.

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(3:30) Disney made use of the new technologies throughout his creative life.

(4:45) Lists of Paul Johnson books and episodes:

Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.(Founders #226)

Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252)

(5:55) Picasso was essentially self-taught, self-directed, self-promoted, emotionally educated in the teeming brothels of the city, a small but powerfully built monster of assured egoism.

(7:30) Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both killer and poet, you get rich. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #306)

(10:00) Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat. — Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab. (Founders #105)

(11:30) Picasso averaged one new piece of artwork every day of his life from age 20 until his death at age 91. He created something new every day for 71 years.

(15:30) Power doesn't always corrupt. But what power always does is reveal. — Working by Robert Caro (Founders #305)

(17:30) Many people find it hard to accept that a great writer, painter, or musician can be evil. But the historical evidence shows, again and again, that evil and creative genius can exist side by side in the same person. In my judgment his monumental selfishness and malignity were inextricably linked to his achievement.

He was all-powerful as an originator and aesthetic entrepreneur precisely because he was so passionately devoted to what he was doing, to the exclusion of any other feelings whatever.

He had no sense of duty except to himself, and this gave him his overwhelming self-promoting energy. Equally, his egoism enabled him to turn away from nature and into himself with a concentration which is awe-inspiring.

(21:30) It shows painfully how even vast creative achievement and unparalleled worldly success can fail to bring happiness.

(24:00) Walt Disney (at age 18) wanted to run his own business and be his own master. He had the American entrepreneurial spirit to an unusual degree.

(27:00) Recurring theme: Knowing what you want to do but not knowing how to do it—yet.

(26:20) All creative individuals build on the works of their predecessors. No one creates in vacuum.

(28:30) Why Walt Disney moved to Hollywood: The early 1920s, full of hope and daring, were a classic period for American free enterprise, and for anyone interested in the arts—Hollywood was a rapidly expanding focus of innovation.

(28:00) Filmaker episodes:

Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)

George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)

(30:10) The relentless resourcefulness of a young Walt Disney!

(34:30) This is wild: It is significant that Mickey Mouse, in the year of his greatest popularity, 1933, received over 800,000 fan letters, the largest ever recorded in show business, at any time in any century.

(36:00) Something that Disney does his entire career —he has this in common with other great filmmakers— he is always jumping on the new technology of his day.

(37:00) Lack of resources is actually a feature. It’s the benefit. — Kevin Kelly on Invest Like the Best #334

(38:45) Imagination rules the world. — The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(41:15) Disney put excellence before any other consideration.

(41:45) Disney hired the best artists he could get and gave them tasks to the limits of their capacities.

(47:45) Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #158)

(49:30) I Had Lunch With Sam Zell (Founders #298)

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