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.
Jake Gyllenhaal · Actor
Stop grading everything. Find good stories and feel things for real.
On screen since he was eleven, he plays a Marvel villain one year and an art-world satire the next, and keeps the box office out of his head.
Asked which habit he would most like to change:
We are in an era of constant appraisal, and if it doesn’t come from the wider world I often find it will come from within, and that does frustrate me. I think we spend too much time trying to evaluate and judge everything in life when sometimes we shouldn't be comparing things.
Asked how he would label himself as an actor:
I’m not at all interested in becoming the kind of actor who needs to worry about his box-office performance with each film. That defeats the purpose of what you want to accomplish as an actor. Of course, you need to have some sort of standing that enables you to get cast in bigger budget films, but the main goal is to find good stories and directors who have a strong vision, and interesting sensibility.
Asked who he looks up to:
My sister. I came to acting because it was a way of wanting to feel closer and more connected to my family. I saw film sets as a way of becoming close to a kind of family, where you’re bonding with other people because of circumstances but where it still feels like a real family. My life is now very much about wanting to feel close to my family, to be close to my nieces [the children of his sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal]. I’m much closer again to my sister and my mom and it feels so good to have that feeling of closeness and being part of that. I felt strange when my parents got divorced. I was 30, and I didn’t expect that, but when my sister had her two beautiful kids I wanted to be around her and my nieces; I wanted to develop a bond with them. For me, that’s about being real and feeling real things. That’s exactly what I want to do in life. Feel things intensely and be real. That’s also the feeling I’m trying to bring to my work.