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.
Florence Pugh · Actor
The more she fears something, the more she has to do it.
From Lady Macbeth to a Marvel assassin, she picks the parts that frighten her, and has worked out that fear only ever lives in the future.
Asked about her habit of welcoming fear:
I have always tried to force myself to pursue not just new avenues, but uncomfortable ones. Fear plays a big part of that, of course, and fear for an actor is something that can really ground a career. I have always had the view that to really succeed, you need to push yourself further and harder than the last time, and that’s the way I go about what I do – to the extent that the more I fear something the more I have to do it. That’s just who I am.
Asked whether fear ever leaves her when the work begins:
Fear in acting is only really about the future. When you are on stage or the cameras are rolling, you don’t feel fear. I’m sure there are many careers and instances where fear is in the very moment, and it grips you, in much the same way as we pretend we are gripped by fear when we are acting. What is interesting is that as actors we are all fakers – I don’t know a single actor who is genuinely gripped by fear in the moment, even though they can portray it so well. When you learn that fear is just a perception of the future, and that in that exact moment of it being played out it is absent, it frees you to take on the very biggest challenges. All of your experiences that have gone before prove to you that the fear you had is unfounded, so why then stop going for the very biggest of projects?
Asked whether she has thought deeply about fear:
I think you have to. I think you owe it to yourself to really work out who you are, what you are capable of, and more to the point, what will hold you back. If that thing that holds you back is something out of your control, like ‘will I get cast for this movie?’, then do everything in your power to try to make the situation work for you – try all you can to give yourself the best opportunity of success. If, on the other hand, what is holding you back is in your control – like tempering or conquering fear – then it’s down to you to solve it.