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.
Tony Crabbe · Business psychologist, author
Do less, wander more, and let the thinking happen.
Tony Crabbe advises founders and corporate giants on how they work. His finding is simple: high achievers are good at doing more and bad at doing nothing at all.
Asked why so many people never get to the work that matters:
Our psychology tends to make us choose for the easy over the hard at any given moment. We tend to choose relatively mindless activity rather than stuff that’s going to propel us and create meaning. Meaningful activities are almost always hard. The problem is that we have very little self-awareness. [...] We actually start wrapping ourselves up in this veil of helplessness. Telling ourselves that we haven’t got any choice, because that tells us that it’s OK we’re not pursuing the stuff that matters to us. Whereas what I find is that people have more choice than they actually believe. It’s just they're making bad choices in the moment.
Asked why working like a machine fails the brain:
Well, your brain works best on pulses of intense activity followed by recovery time. It doesn’t really work on this steady, staid pattern of efficiency that machines operate on. It’s a bit like going to the gym; we can do bursts of activity, but then we need to catch our breath. It’s the same with the brain, but because we've taken this machine metaphor to business, people almost feel guilty for taking breaks. You get people bragging about working through breaks.
Asked whether he needs a meditation retreat to switch off:
You don’t need to meditate to trigger the default network, you just have to do very low-level activity – driving a car with no radio on, and just allowing your head to wander; standing in an airport security queue without reading. If I’ve been working for two or three hours on a book I’ll often just do a 40 minute walk up the hill and back. I’ve almost primed my brain with a whole pile of interesting thoughts and ideas, and then I just switch off and go for the walk; the number of times that insights occur to me on that walk unprompted!