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.
Hervé Stevenin · Spacewalk trainer, European Space Agency
Train for the worst underwater, then stay calm in space.
Hervé Stevenin teaches astronauts to spacewalk in a ten-metre pool. Each one logs around 150 hours underwater before leaving the airlock, because the vacuum forgives nothing.
Asked which emergencies they train for:
The worst is the incapacitated crew situation. If an astronaut in EVA is unable to move back to the airlock because they are unconscious after a malfunction in the life support system of the suit, or being still conscious but unable to move, the astronaut buddy must rescue them in less than 20 minutes. The victim is secured to the rescuer with a tether and pulled or pushed along the station structure back to the airlock. It’s a very challenging task, which is trained underwater, including at the ESA-NBF in Cologne. These emergencies have never happened so far on a spacewalk.
Asked about the most dangerous spacewalk he has seen:
I was in the control room at the European Astronaut Centre when it happened. Luca Parmitano had a leak in his suit cooling system and water started to accumulate at the back of his head. In weightlessness water adheres to surfaces by capillarity, so his head got covered with a thin layer of water, which slowly moved to his ears and eyes. The EVA was terminated by Mission Control but it even got worse for Luca when the sun set and his helmet torch light was reflected by the water, blurring his vision in the darkness. He was unable to see and unable to hear. With water reaching the suit microphone, no-one could hear him. Water was even about to cover his nose and mouth. He stayed very calm and rescued himself, returning by feel along his safety tether to the airlock.
Asked whether he remembers his first time weightless:
I will never forget my first time weightless, the first five seconds of free floating in the plane I had the feeling that “oh my god I am falling”, the instinct is to grab hold of something to feel more secure. Seconds later you realise how easy and wonderful it is to be floating in weightlessness. I love to go back to do it. You don’t realise that gravity is a permanent constraint for us, until you are freed from it for the first time. It’s so comfortable and efficient to move around when you are floating. Weightlessness is freedom.