#409 The Creative Genius of Rick Rubin

0:00The first thing I would show players at our initial day of training was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly. The most important part of your equipment is your shoes and socks. You play on a hard floor. So you must have shoes that fit right. And you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe where you generally get blisters or around the heels. I showed my players how I wanted them to do it. Hold up the sock. Work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good. Then hold up the sock while you put the shoe on.

0:35And the shoe must be spread apart, not just pulled on the top laces. You tighten it up snugly by each eyelet. Then you tie it. Then you double tie it so it won't come undone. Because I don't want shoes coming untied during practice or during the game. I don't want that to happen. That's just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of. Because it's the little details that make the big things come about. Now, Rick Rubin comments on this passage. The sentiments above are John Wooden's, the most successful coach in the history of college basketball. His teams won more consecutive games and championships than any others in history.

1:15It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach, only to hear him say, today we will learn how to tie our shoes. The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits down to the smallest detail is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. I'm going to interrupt Rick Rubin for a second and quote Napoleon because when Rick Rubin just said this sentence, one of my favorite sentences of this entire section, just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition.

2:05This is what Napoleon said. It's very similar. Napoleon said, all great events hang by a single threat. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity. The less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. Back to Rick Rubin, just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. Wooden considered every aspect of the game where an issue might arise and trained his players for each one, repeatedly, until they became habits. The goal was immaculate performance. Wooden often said the only person you're ever competing against is yourself.

2:45The rest is out of your control. This way of thinking applies to the creative life just as well. For both the artist and the athlete, the details matter. Whether the players recognize their importance or not, good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art. That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Creative Act, A Way of Being, and it was written by Rick Rubin. I want to read to you what Rick Rubin said about the creation of this book.

3:25He says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So a few things to know before we jump into the book. This is a very unusual book. I've read over 400 books to make this podcast so far. I can't think of a single other book that I've read for the podcast that's like this. It is almost like a stream of Rick Rubin's thoughts and ideas on creativity separated into what he calls 78 areas of thought. And these 78 chapters are very brief and to the point. So this book, even though it's over 400 pages, it's very easy to read.

3:59So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to move through the book in chronological order and share some of the highlights. I probably made 100 highlights while reading this book. The last thing to know before I jump into the book is I'm an unabashed Rick Rubin fan. I've been watching his interviews, listening to his podcast, reading books about him. I've been making podcasts about him. In fact, I did an episode four years ago. It's episode 245 of Founders on Rick Rubin's biography, which I just re-listened to twice. I am very interested in people with singular careers, people that are hard to categorize, and people for which there are no substitutes.

4:31And Rick Rubin is definitely one of those people. So I'm going to jump right into the book. He starts by telling us a very useful preface or guide for reading the book. Nothing in this book is known to be true. It is a reflection of what I've noticed, not facts so much as thoughts. Some ideas may resonate, others may not. A few may awaken an inner knowing you forgot you had. Use what's helpful, let go of the rest. Each of these moments is an invitation to further inquiry, looking deeper, zooming out, or zooming in, opening possibilities for a new way of being. And so one of the reoccurring themes and something he repeats throughout the book is the importance of paying attention, of developing a practice of paying attention, not only to paying attention to what's around you, but what's going on inside of you, the thoughts that you have.

5:17He has a very interesting idea that I've seen pop up over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. It's in this section called tuning in. He says, if you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it is not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artists stole your idea, but because that idea's time has come. I just released a new episode of my new show where I had a conversation, a multi-hour conversation with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. If you haven't listened to it, make sure you search whatever podcast app you're listening to this on.

5:51Just search my name, David Senra, and you'll see my other podcast feed where I'm having these long form conversations with the living entrepreneurs now, not just setting the dead entrepreneurs, which I normally do. But in that conversation, he literally said the exact same thing. He said that the very early days of Whole Foods, this was not his idea. It was an idea that whose time had come that you needed a healthier alternative to all the processed food people were eating and you should have a grocery store dedicated to natural foods. He just happened to be there at the very birth of the natural foods industry.

6:19But he said there was all these other people all across the country that had the exact same idea. And so one thing that Rick Rubin will repeat throughout the book, which really speaks to me, and again, another thing that just reappears over and over again in these biographies that you and I talk about every week together, is giving yourself space and time away from work to actually get all the ideas from your subconscious mind. And so David Ogilvie, we talked about this over and over again. He was a workaholic. So is Rick Rubin. And yet he would need to take time away. He said he would go for long walks, go for a bike ride, go for a swim, sit in his garden and read fiction.

6:51And all of the sudden, these ideas that he couldn't tap in during his workday because he wasn't giving his mind rest would start flooding in. And so Rick is going to talk about this as picking up on a signal. How do we pick up on a signal? The answer is to not look for it. we need to create an open space that allows it a space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available there's two people that you and i have spoke about in the past that i think i found unique ways to do this jim simons the founder of renaissance technologies and elon musk and both of them what they would do is when they needed time to think they would find a quiet place usually in the dark and they would lay on their back flat.

7:37They can't see anything. They couldn't hear anything. And they would usually stay there for sometimes an hour or more. And because there's visual input or no audio input, you're just hearing your mind. The very first time I heard about that, I read it in this book called A Man Who Solved the Market, which was a biography of Jim Simons. I use this idea all the time. It's amazing how it can help you solve problems that you couldn't solve during your workday or really just the way you feel after this. You feel energized. You feel refreshed. So I like that idea. space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum, drawing down ideas that the universe is making available.

8:09And I think Rick gives a great summary of why this is so important. The ability to look deeply is the root of creativity, to see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible. And so if you go back to Rick Rubin's description of his own book, where he says, I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be. So much of this book, and the reason I started from the chapter called Habits, is about developing good habits and developing your mind in a way that helps you make and create great work.

8:42Another main theme of the book is not overanalyzing. It's not overthinking. It's just starting. Action produces information as you work. The work itself will reveal what you need to do next. So he says, faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it. He has great advice for figuring out what to work on. Look for what you notice, but no one else sees. Now, it's highly likely when he wrote that line, he wasn't going to think that somebody else is going to read it and think about vacuum cleaners. But when I read it, I thought about James Dyson. And he has built this phenomenal empire, one of the most valuable privately held businesses in the world from that simple sentence.

9:21He looked at a vacuum cleaner, Something people used forever, millions of people for decades, and could not understand why people put up with immediate loss of suction and said, this is stupid. I could do it a better way. Then because he got right to work and the work will reveal what you need to do next, action produces information, led him to invent the world's very first cyclonic vacuum cleaner. Look what you notice, but no one else sees. One sentence, 10 words, but if you actually sit there and think about it and then actually apply it, it's unbelievably powerful. Now, this next part is excellent.

9:53He says, submerge yourself in the great works. This book is trying to be a useful tool on how to make something great. That is all that Rick Rubin cares about. And so he says, consider submerging yourself in the canon of great works. Read the finest literature. Watch the masterpieces of cinema. Get up close to the most influential paintings. Visit architectural landmarks. Exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward and opens doors of possibility. If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period, you'll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media.

10:34This applies to every choice we make, not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what's worthy of our time and attention. This line is so great. Because there's an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness so we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.

11:20Submerging yourself in the great works is exactly what you and I are doing every week together. That is the perfect lead-in to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I spend a lot of time with the founders of Ramp. I observe how they build their business, and I think there's a lesson in the way that they're building their business that is applicable to anyone who is trying to make something great in the world. And that's exactly the way I would think about Rick Rubin and this book. He wants to help other people make great things and then give those great things to the world.

11:48And one of the ways that the founders of Ramp make great work is they take an idea from Steve Jobs. You always bet on talent. To Steve Jobs, this was mandatory. Steve said you must find the extraordinary people. A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. And so you must build a team that pursues the A players. And that is exactly what Ramp did. There is a reason Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast. They are chasing excellence. Just like Rick Rubin, they are only interested in making great work. And to do so, Ramp has assembled the most talented technical team in their industry.

12:26Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible. In the last year, Ramp hired only 0.23 % of the people that applied. This means when you're using Ramp, you now have top-tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers working on your behalf 24-7 to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations, and they do this on a single platform. Ramp gives your business fully programmable corporate credit cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, bill payments, accounting, and more all in one place. This means the longer you use Ramp, the more efficient your company becomes.

12:57This is important because as Sam Walton said in his autobiography, you can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. I run my business on Ramp and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs I know. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. That is ramp.com. Now, one of the ideas that Rick Rubin repeats that resonates deeply with me is investing a lot of patience and time into the work, sitting with it longer, taking a break, revisiting that same work.

13:35One area of thought or chapter that he has is nothing is static. There's a few sentences in here that I want to share with you. One of them is really important because I do this over and over again. He says, reread the same book over and over and you'll likely find new themes, undercurrents, details, and connections. I do this for podcasts too. It's amazing how many times I'll listen to it the same episode of a podcast. And there's an idea that I just missed the first two or three times. Same thing with the book. And the reason that reading a book is so important, I guess it applies to the podcast too, because it's not changing.

14:03The words on the page are the words in the episode. They don't change, but over time you do. And so Rick Rubin talks about this. He says, the person who makes something today, isn't the same person who returns to the work tomorrow. And then he goes back to this idea of making sure you create an environment, creating these habits where you can tap into the wisdom of your subconscious. There's an abundant reservoir of high quality information in our subconscious and finding ways to access it can spark new material to draw from. And so one way you do this is by affecting the setting in which you work.

14:31He says we're affected by our surroundings and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. And so one of the benefits of reading this book is Rick has this historical database in his head of all these great artists and creators and architects and musicians and writers, and he's constantly referencing them. And so he talks about, you know, here's some other ideas of other people trying to figure out the best environment that is necessary to create their best work. And so he says Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, radio and record player all on simultaneously.

15:02For Eminem, the noise of a single TV set is his preferred backdrop for writing. Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound absorbing cork, closed the drapes and wore earplugs. Kafka, too, took his need for silence to an extreme. not like a hermit, he once said, but like a dead man. There is no wrong way. There's only your way. And the very next paragraph is so good. It's not always easy to follow the subtle, energetic information the universe broadcasts, especially when your friends, family, co-workers, or those with a business interest in your creativity are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing.

15:45To the best of my ability, I've followed my intuition to make career turns and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe than those around you. That part is so important and so hard to actually apply. My all-time favorite quote about the power of intuition actually comes from Steve Jobs. This is what he said. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. that's had a big impact on my work and i think now having read this book and re-read my highlights i don't know five six seven times before i sat down to talk to you about it the way i would characterize rick rubin's view of the world is that it is magic and that we make up stories that greatly exaggerate how much of the world we actually understand this is going to sound really weird, but I think Rick Rubin would agree with Thomas Edison's famous quote where he says, we don't know one one thousandth percent of anything.

16:50And so if you think about what's happening in that paragraph, he's like, you know, your friends are giving you advice, your family, your coworkers. A lot of these people probably care about you. Then there's other people that just have a business interest in your creativity that want you to do what's best for them and not best for you. It's like, how do you parse all this incomplete information? And what's very clear is he thinks that intuition is a higher form of knowledge or wisdom than even the rational or storytelling part of your mind. And keep in mind, again, one of the reasons I admire him so much, because you know I have this obsession with people that do things for a long period of time.

17:21He started working in the music industry when he was 18. He's in his 60s now, still doing it. And listen to what he said about that. To the best of my ability, I followed my intuition to make career turns and have been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe or follow, in my case, I would change that sentence, follow your intuition than those around you. This is a very unique book. I really do hope you buy it because again, you don't even have to, you want to know how I started reading it. There's a smoothie place that I like going to, and they take usually a really long time to make them.

17:55And they have like a bookshelf. So of course, me being the giant nerd that I am, I go over to the bookshelf and Rick Rubin's book was on that bookshelf. And so I'd go to the smoothie place all the time. And I'm reading chunks of this book in like the five or 10 minutes I'm waiting for the smoothie. I think that's actually a great way to read the book. Each chapter you could probably read in a minute, two minutes, three minutes. But if you just sit with the actual ideas, it's very, very powerful. So let's go to this chapter on self-doubt. There are singers considered among the best in the world who can't bring themselves to listen to their own voice.

18:25And these are not rare exceptions. If a creator is so afraid of judgment that they're unable to move forward, it might be that the desire to share the work isn't as strong as a desire to protect themselves. Perhaps art isn't their role. Their temperament might serve a different pursuit. This path is not for everyone. Adversity is part of the process. I read that. I think of what Jeff Bezos said. If you absolutely, this is a great quote from Jeff Bezos. If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting. Some successful artists are deeply insecure, self-sabotaging, struggling with addiction, or facing other obstacles to making and sharing their work.

19:08An unhealthy self-image or a hardship in life can fuel great art, creating a deep well of insight and emotion for an artist to draw from. They can also get in the way of the artist being able to make things over a long period of time. Again, go back to what he said this book is. It is a book on how to be. How to be, how to develop the great habits, how to build the best environment for you to do the best work. Why? Because that's the only way you're going to be able to do great things over a long period of time, which is the goal. So he says, people who are particularly challenged in this sense generally can't produce creative work over and over again.

19:44This isn't because they're not artistically capable, but because they were only able to break through their own issues one or two times and share great work. They'd never figured out how to be. and in many cases, they sabotage themselves. So I actually got to go to, I'm a huge fan of Jimmy Iovine. I made an episode of Founders on him, which I'm really, really proud of. After that episode came out, I was actually invited to go to his house and I spent several hours with him. And Jimmy's been in the music industry for 50 years. If you don't know who Jimmy is, listen to the episode I made on him, but also watch this documentary called The Defiant Ones, which is one of my favorite documentaries of all time.

20:17And Jimmy's got this like hard-earned, practical wisdom that only comes from, you know, succeeding for half a century. And one of the things we talked about was how many people cannot handle success. And in the music industry, because let me just finish this, I guess. Rick Rubin's about to say one of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses is because they're using drugs to numb a very painful existence. And so Jimmy has all this wisdom, and I was trying to tap into it in our conversation. And he was saying there's like four primary ways he saw talented, really smart, but not really wise, I would add, people sabotage themselves.

20:54And number one was alcohol. Number two was pills. Number three was women. And number four was megalomania. They go on stage. There's 50 ,000 people screaming their name. And they start to believe they're not even human anymore. They're like this godlike creature. This section to me, what Jimmy's advice to me, and then this section where Rick Rubin's telling you and I right now, this is terrifying to me. The idea that you can be good at something, but you can only do it once or twice for a very short period of time. I think there's a lot of wisdom in what Charlie Munger has said, where he's like, you know, you can just get a huge advantage.

21:30You don't have to be brilliant. You just have to be consistently not stupid over a long period of time. and just being consistently not stupid and don't sabotage yourself over decades puts you ahead of probably 99 % of the people on the planet. And so in the next chapter called Make It Up, I think Rick Rubin has some really great advice on, again, we're trying to do things for really high level, at a really high level for a really long time. I think Rick Rubin himself isn't a perfect example of that. So he says, we're not playing to win, we're playing to play. And ultimately playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun.

22:05A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process, to make and put out successive works with ease. One approach to overcoming insecurities is to label them. I was working with an artist who was frozen by doubts and unable to move forward. I asked if he was familiar with the Buddhist concept of Pampancha, which translates as preponderance of thoughts. This speaks to the mind's tendency to respond to our experiences with an avalanche of mental chatter. He responded, I know exactly what that is. That is me. Now that he had a name for what was holding him back, he was able to normalize his doubts and not take them so seriously.

22:43When they came up, we'd call them Pampancha, notice them, and then we would move forward. I was in a meeting with another artist who had just released a very successful album, but felt afraid to do more work and listed different reasons why she didn't want to make music anymore. There are always good reasons not to continue. And so this is what Rick Rubin said to the artist. It's fine. You don't have to make music ever again. There's nothing wrong with that. Just stop if it's not making you happy. It's your choice. As soon as I said this, her expression changed and she realized she would be happier creating than not creating.

23:21Gratitude can also help. Realizing you are fortunate to be in a position that allows you to create and in some cases get paid to do what you love might tip the balance in favor of the work. Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it. Even for some of the greatest artists, that fear never goes away. One legendary singer, despite performing for over five decades, was never able to eliminate his stage fright. Despite a terror so strong it made him sick to his stomach, he still stepped into the spotlight each night and performed a spellbinding show. By accepting self-doubt rather than trying to eliminate or repress it, we lessen its energy and interference.

24:05It is worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, I don't know if my song is as good as it can be. Doubting yourself might sound like I can't write a good song. These statements are worlds apart, both in accuracy and in impact on your nervous system. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. However, doubting the quality of your work might at times help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. And then he goes back to this idea about how valuable temporary distraction can be.