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.
Richard Hammond · TV presenter
Say the worry out loud and you are halfway to solving it.
A knee wrecked in a supercar crash has not stopped the runs. Richard Hammond on exercise as mental maintenance, working himself as hard as his team, and why blokes need to talk.
Asked when he first linked exercise to his mental health:
So I have always done exercise – not because I want to achieve the body beautiful; I am middle-aged, that is never going to happen – but because I am a firm believer in exercising for mental health. I am very aware of that. This is a physiological thing. Your mental health is resulting from physical effects, from what is happening is your brain and mind chemically. So it is about maintaining your physical and, as a byproduct of that, your mental health.
Asked what else he gets from exercise:
I have always believed in the benefits to your mind, but also to everything else in your life, that comes from basic fitness. And I don’t mean about looking physically good but in terms of self-discipline. [...] I would sometimes really beat myself up on a hard run because it is important to work hard. I tend to work pretty hard and I run a production company, and I work the team around me pretty hard. And there is no point doing that unless I am prepared to work myself hard. And sometimes developing that work ethic involves shouting at myself to run up a big hill.
Asked whether men are getting better at talking about mental health:
Yes, and it should all be out there and we should discuss it. And I think mental health is a fluid thing: you can be mentally healthy one day and not so well the other day. It is real and not imagined. So there is no need to be awkward about it. I talk about constantly. Once it’s talked about, you might find you have solved the issue, or if you haven’t at least you have identified the issue and you can then set about solving it. That is why blokes need to learn to be better at that.