Do The Verb To Be The Noun

January 4th, 2024

I stumbled upon this phrase yesterday in Nathan Barry’s newsletter. He cited Austin Kleon who once said the same thing and also the podcast episode of The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish. In this episode, Shane talks with Todd Herman, the coach behind Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Mentality. This morning as I listened to the podcast, I found it packed with great insights. It’s definitely worth a listen. He explains this concept in a sports context initially. Herman points out that the great names in sport master the basics of that sport in a way that they don’t get bored doing the same basic things over and over again. This relentless focus on fundamentals is what sets them apart: “It’s for them to attack the boring things with an intention of understanding that that’s what will separate them from everybody else”. That was striking for me when I first heard it. Now, when I read it, it’s like “Duh”, but we mostly fail to execute it during the normal flow of life. I started solving data structures and algorithms problems to prepare for technical interviews. And I am shocked every day at how I get stuck at simple things during coding. Every day, we see successful people on social media, and think their lives are just the snippets we see. This wrong perspective can lead us to believe that we can achieve similar success without putting in significant effort. However, the reality is that these successful individuals, whether in sports or business, consistently execute the basics. They do their routine, day in and day out. “But that’s boring stuff,” some might say. For the successful, the concept of ‘boring’ doesn’t exist. They simply do. They do the “verb” to be the “noun”. They write to be a writer, they run to be a runner, they code to be a programmer, they play to be a player…