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.
Joe Herbert · Neuroscientist, author
A powerful chemical, and a bigger brain built to govern it.
A neuroscientist on the hormone that drives competition, risk and war, and on the human brain that keeps it on a lead.
Asked how something so powerful is kept in check:
It's still an amazingly powerful substance, it’s just that it's moderated and controlled by lots of other things. You can't let unbridled testosterone behaviour loose in society. No animal allows that. Humans have taken this fundamental, very powerful hormone – I mean without testosterone none of us would be here – and on top of that you have this secondary system of the great human brain, which regulates and controls testosterone-dependent behaviour. Not only do we have huge amounts of variety in the way we express reproductive activity, we also have huge amounts of variety in the way in which we regulate it, and there are laws and conventions, which other animals don't have.
Asked whether testosterone changes how people take risks:
When we gave testosterone to graduate students [in a study] and they played a kind of game, which mimicked financial trading, we found that when they got testosterone, they preferred riskier bets. They did that, interestingly, not because they liked taking a risk, but because they became more optimistic – they thought they would do better than they otherwise would.
Asked what surprises him most about it:
First of all how amazingly powerful this substance is and how it's shaped our destiny, our history and our individuality and our lifestyles in a way which we maybe don't want even to admit because it's a simple hormone. It's a very simple chemical. And we have taken this fundamental power and diverted it across geography and throughout history so that testosterone-regulated behaviour in the sixteenth century is quite a lot different from what it is now and testosterone hasn't changed nor has the effects on the brain changed. What has changed is the way in which we use that.