Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
The man who paid for his own risk.
Tom Hardy put $2.5 million into Taboo knowing half the room would hate it. On why permission never arrives, and why he stopped waiting for it.
Tom Hardy · Actor
Law 18 · Become Dangerous, Then Govern It
The challenges on the mat are bigger than on set.
The director has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He says the mat is harder than any film set, because nobody can help you there.
Guy Ritchie · Director, jiu-jitsu black belt
Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
Doing things rather than dreaming about them.
DJ, actor, kickboxer, and now director. Elba on a father who died at seventy-two and the urgency that followed.
Idris Elba · Actor
The first cup is the quiet one.
A washed Colombian for the hour before the day gets its hands on you.
Red apple, panela, a long clean finish. Roasted in the UK to order and posted through the letterbox, so it is on the counter when you come down. Grind it while the kettle runs. Drink it before the phone.
Inside every bag there is a card. One of the twenty-two laws, printed on thick stock, yours to keep or pass on. The coffee is the point. The card is the gift.
250 g · Huila, Colombia · Washed · Whole bean or ground
More stories
All stories →One story a week.
Someone who earned their ground, read slowly, in your inbox on a Sunday. The coffee ships to the list first.
About the author
Shane Quigley
The people I interviewed
Actors, athletes, adventurers and founders. Tap a face to read their story.
A code · not motivation
The 22 Laws
of Growth & Freedom
Twenty-two patterns, found in the lives of people who had to earn their ground. Read them slowly. Come back to one.
A man does not rise in one heroic moment. He rises by returning to the work after comfort, failure, resentment, fear, and distraction have all invited him to stop.
One slow, painful brick at a time.
In life, everything meaningful is earned.
Rise Strong. Nothing’s Given.
A new story every week.
RSNG Coffee · No. 01
The Foundation
Washed Colombian. Red apple, panela, a long clean finish.
The first coffee in the range. A clean washed lot from Huila, roasted light to medium for clarity rather than weight, so it is as good black at six in the morning as it is with milk at ten. Roasted in the UK the week it ships, posted flat through the letterbox.
- Origin
- Huila, Colombia
- Process
- Washed
- Roast
- Light-medium
- Weight
- 250g
- Roasted
- UK · to order
- Inside
- One law card
The first roast is on its way.
Inside every bag
A card in every bag
Thick uncoated card, one colour, one of the twenty-two laws on the front and the whole of it on the back. It comes stapled to the back of the bag and tears off clean. Keep it on the fridge. Give it to someone who needs it.
Stop wishing it was. Start building.
rsng.com/laws/1
Later · the tool
Pocket will hold you
to the code.
It reaches you only when it needs you.
An agent on your phone that carries the 22 Laws as its operating code and runs one practice a day in the law's voice. It is not ready. The coffee, the laws and the proof are. Leave your email and you will hear when it is.
No blue. No streaks you did not earn. The accent appears only when something needs you.
Today
Become Hard To Threaten
You named your salary yesterday. If it stopped on Friday, what is the first thing you would do on Monday?
Practice
Do the work.
Short, plain exercises. Each one serves a law. Most take minutes a day. Pick one and start tonight.
Andy Torbet · Cave diver
Focus on the small picture, a kilometre underground.
A hundred metres down, a kilometre from the exit, alone in the dark. Torbet on the only way to think in a place like that.
Asked how he avoids panic:
You’re on your own, one kilometre from the nearest exit, 100m underwater, 400m below the surface of the earth – how do you cope with that thought? The answer is I don’t – I don’t freaking think about it, or I’d lose my shit! I concentrate on swimming the next section or checking my kit; always doing the job in front of me. I always think very ‘small picture’ because once you start letting your mind wander into: “Oh my God if something goes wrong now, I’ve got an hours’ swim to get out, or four hours decompression before I get to the surface,” that’s not the time to think that way – sat at your desk with a cup of tea is. But once you’re in the water don’t think bigger picture and don’t let your mind start to wander because once the spiral starts it’s very hard to regain your composure. In that moment you have to nip panic in the bud, so I tend to concentrate on the job that’s in front of me.
Asked how he deals with the risks:
Cave diving is a purely cerebral sport. It’s probably the most psychologically oppressive environment you can be in – you’re underwater, underground and in the dark. So there are two things that I do: I will sit at my desk going through the plan beforehand and think of everything that can possibly go wrong. I will be as paranoid as I can be. If I can’t eliminate those risks, I will assume they are going to happen and I’ll have a plan B in place. No matter what goes wrong I have pre-thought of a plan to get out of it, so there’s no: “Shit, shit this has gone wrong, what do I do?” The more paranoid you can be in the risk assessment beforehand, the calmer you can be when you hit the water. You have to become a geek to do the maths, to calculate the right gas, emergency gas and decompression schedule – deep sea and cave divers, we’re all massive geeks and we all like maths because if you don’t then you’re just going to die.
Asked how he calms himself before a dive:
Your mental state will influence your physical state. I go through all of my checks, and then just before we do a jump or a dive I will run through the whole thing in my head and ask the question: “Am I good to go? Yes I am, OK.” Then take a few nice, relaxing deep breaths and go for it. It’s not whooping and doing high fives to build up aggression – you try for the exact opposite. You sit to calm yourself down, breathe and almost force your heartbeat to settle down, just forget about everything and what you are about to do – wind down, almost, and then bang: go!