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.
Craig Pickering · Former sprinter and bobsleigher
The same workout never builds the same body.
Craig Pickering sprinted to a world championship bronze, then pushed a bobsleigh. Now he studies how genes shape the way a body answers training.
Asked how his own sprint training went wrong:
I was a sprinter and I used to just train sets of three times eight, or three times ten. As I got quicker I thought I’d have to train more specific, so I switched to doing sets of one or two reps. And it just didn’t work for me. Eventually, when I started to do bobsleigh I went back to the higher rep ranges and rediscovered a bit of form. I’m 65% endurance [in the genetic testing]. Had I had that information then, it would have given me more confidence to say: “The normal training for sprinters doesn’t work for me, and part of the reason I’m not responding is because of my genetic makeup. Let me try and train this way instead.” It might have reduced two years of trying things and not seeing the results that I wanted.
Asked how to know when to change a programme:
When most people start they’re very motivated to lose weight and build those muscles, and that’s great. Then four weeks later, when they haven’t seen the results that they want, start scrabbling around in the dark and thinking: “Oh, whatever I’m doing now doesn’t work for me.” We know that it takes 8-12 weeks to see results, but most people change their training programme before 8-12 weeks are up.
Asked what mistake he sees in the gym every day:
Most people just go to the gym. They have exactly the same routine, which will be three times ten, or various exercises. Even without genetics, we know that you want to have variation, because every time you have a new stimulus in there, your body responds to that very differently. You don’t want too many stimuli over time because you have to adapt to a set amount of workload, but you still want to keep things interesting, and that increases your motivation as well.