#236: Werner Herzog and Ecstatic Truth, Costco's culture, The Dip by Seth Godin...
“It's not the mere reading of certain books that make you a different person. Its the permanence of constantly reading.” - Werner Herzog
Hello! This week is all about Werner Herzog. Rather, as much about him as his thinking and how it’s influenced my views on life. The premium essay features Costco and Jim Sinegal, co-founder and former CEO. If you haven’t used your premium free trial I would recommend it just for this essay. I just had so much fun writing it and regretted the years I didn’t spend buying everything from Costco. It’s such a remarkable company. Then it’s a book note on Seth Godin. Book note? Review? Thought? I must say I always felt contrite writing it was a book review in the past. Maybe it’s “Thoughts on a book.” I’ll think about that. The Dip is a book about quitting and persevering. I heard the trend these days is to quit jobs so maybe thoughts from this book will help or deter the trend.
As always, feel free to pick and choose from the categories below and I hope one of the things I wrote is of some value to you.
Business & Investing
Culture & Systems
Introspection & Habits
Business & Investing
The Dip by Seth Godin
Book Notes & Rating: “Gives you things to think about when confused” / 10
This is a short book. It’s 80 pages dedicated to the topic of quitting and persevering that thing you don’t quit. It’s all around the simple and crucial idea that to the best in the world at something, you need have quit doing a lot of other things.
Remember those who became the best in the world at their chosen field were not people incapable of excelling in other areas. But to be the best, they had to focus. This doesn’t mean exploring in various elements didn’t help, I’m sure it aided them, but when the time came, they had to focus.
“Quitting creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.”
Everyone (person or business, which is a group of people) will have various periods of exploration coupled with a period of focus to execute on the exploratory data collected. Think about Charles Darwin’s period of exploring the Galapagos islands to sitting down for years to write the Origin of Species.
When you don’t quit something you aren’t aspiring to be the best at, you are admitting you are fine being mediocre or choosing to live in ignorance of it. Now, the best is subjective. What we can only hope to be is the best in manners we can control. The irony is that being the best version of ourselves—playing a game that is unfairly in our advantage—is the only way we will be world-class.
To be world-class in being ourselves sounds easy. But it’s hard. That’s because most are mediocre versions of other people. Quitting is hard because you have to admit you aren’t going to be the best. You could be better but you know you won’t be great.
Fran Lebowitz communicated this on the decision to quit playing the cello instead of practicing more as her mother implored.
“I knew what talent was because I saw the lack of it in myself...I could get better, but I’d never be good.” - Fran Lebowitz
I could’ve climbed the career ladder in accounting. I was good. Far better than most of my peers. I didn’t think I was competent as an accountant. But I was better. My bosses agreed. But I had to leave. I wasn’t going to be great there. That was something my mentors agreed with and we laughed about that years later. I would’ve eventually quit they said. It was inevitable. Better late than never and better early than late.
Such is the same for companies. Great companies have actually quit a lot of things that outsiders are not aware of. When we look at Costco, people might think “they should sell furniture or paint or whatever.” They did. They looked into it. They went deep into understanding everything they could about the industry and quit the venture before it got too costly. It wasn’t where they felt they could be the best at.
Remember that best in the world is subjective. Best is subjective to the people who consume what you create. The world is selfish. They want what fits best for them. It’s not an objective measure.
Now you can’t control what people think is the best and what categories they will use to determine best. But you can find something you are passionate about that is uniquely you…something you can do for a long time and slog through the inevitable trepidations…and there will be people who like what you are best at. That weird thing you do.
Just ask yourself: What would happen if I saw through this struggle? Do I want the end result to happen? What does it look like to win in the market I am in right now? Does it make what I'm doing worth doing?
Doing what’s worth doing is required to stop you from quitting when you hit the Dip. Though, many will because that’s how hard it is. That’s why finding something worth doing is the prerequisite.
The Dip is that bit of hardship that comes after the initial adrenaline has worn off. It’s the trough you have to get through to get to the other side.
The Dip can be 30 minutes or 10 years. You won’t know how long. Only a long-term vision and a desire to be the best will help you push through.
“If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.”
Do what’s scarce. Look at industries where there is a revolving door of people who enter and leave. The fact that lots of people enter and leave shows you many don’t last long. Success in that industry is scarce. It’s worth doing.
“If you want to be superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed.”
That’s the same for business strategy. Most will seek to do the easy thing (i.e. the lowest hanging fruit). Most will not go out to tackle hard problems. It runs contrary to the convention but that’s where—if you are the person willing to push through—you can find success.
“The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.”
Dips are the literal manifestation of moats in business. The deeper the Dip the harder it is to come through it. That’s the same for companies. Companies that are already in leading positions will make the Dip deeper, steeper, and harder to climb out for others as they compound their advantage.
Most systems are designed to make you quit. That’s what creates winners. The aspirers keep the winners in business and it’s such a hard road many quit, but not before they keep the winners up top and a few, a tiny few will join them.
“The Dip is actually your greatest ally because it makes the project worthwhile (and keeps others from competing with you.)”
Quitting in the Dip feels like stopping because it’s too painful. It’s a short term avoidance of pain. The caveat here is that the long-term outcome you desire should be worth the short-term pain. If you can’t picture that….then you should quit.
“If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.”
Don’t hedge. Don’t gather exit options. What’s the point of gathering all the options you won’t use? It’s more things to quit.
“The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.”
“If you realize you’re at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it’s a smart one. Failing, on the other hand, means that your dream is over.”
“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”
Michael Crichton graduated top of his class at Harvard Medical School. He also did a post-doc at the Salk Institute. He was all but guaranteed a lucrative career as a doctor, researcher, and professor. But he quit all of it to become an author.
Some of Crichton’s novels became hit movies and T.V shows. You might have heard of some: Jurassic Park, Westworld, ER.
Crichton realized the end results of being a doctor didn’t excite him. There are no sunk costs. Crichton knew he didn’t have to do what he didn’t enjoy just because he persevered through the Dips in med school. That was then and facts had changed.
That’s the thing. It’s fine to quit many things. It’s actually required. The book dives into how it’s smarter to just not even start something you will end up quitting. But I think it’s silly to think we won’t make mistakes and take the optimal path all the time.
We have to make mistakes. Life is about making mistakes. So yes, we should do many things that we probably shouldn’t have even done but that is what makes life interesting. They all compound over time to become something we can build on. It’s still life and it’s still experience.
There is no point in wondering if we shouldn’t do something. I’m of the opinion it’s better to start it and just do it. Do it and quit. That’s fine. Even if it is in the Dip. Just as long as you can come back from it (i.e. don’t die, go to jail). Most things in life are not so permanently damaging. If we think it is, it's just our mind playing tricks.
You need to try lots of things to learn to quit. And that’s all fine and dandy.
Remember Jeff Bezos’s “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.” Quit on the features, the products, and projects but if you’ve chosen a market or niche worth pushing through on, then don’t quit and keep at it.
It’s about constantly iterating to crack the problem and not quit. To stick around longer and longer. That’s what the market is looking for. Someone who will refine their craft to serve them.
It’s hard to influence one person. Aim to influence a market. You can make progress one step at a time and, like climbing a hill, it gets easier over time.
Look at your job as a tactic. You aren’t giving up on a higher vision. The job is just one tactic, project, a strategy that didn’t work.
“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”
Last Week’s Premium Newsletter
Costco: Where Culture is Everything
“Culture is not the most important thing in the world. It's the only thing.” - Jim Sinegal
Culture & Systems
Werner Herzog. My Primer
The Bavarian is a world-renowned filmmaker, writer, and actor. I must admit, however, I didn’t know of his cultural influence. My interest was piqued by his role in the Mandalorian.
I watched the Mandalorian for that scene alone. See, it’s not that I wish to ignore Herzog’s accomplishments. But the superficial reason for loving his voice—much like why I listen to Neil Gaiman interviews—was the primer to start the dive.
Like the mind can’t think of anything but pink elephants when you tell yourself not to picture a pink elephant, I started hearing Herzog’s name everywhere. From Dan Harmon to Maria Popova I was hearing about Herzog’s genius.
Yet, to me, he was still the man who delivered a great explanation of male culture on Rick & Morty.
I started with one interview, then a few more until I went on a marathon to hear the Bavarian’s tale and philosophy on filmmaking, the arts, and life. To say he’s a fascinating human being would be an understatement. I can’t fit him into an essay, there are a few books that’ll do that for you—I will be reading them too—so I’m going to riff off a few things I’m writing to remember for my own journey.
Herzog spent his childhood hidden in the mountains of Bavaria as his family fled the war. He grew up without a T.V. for most of his youth. I guess you don’t need one to be want to become a filmmaker.
He made his first movie with funds earned while working at a steel factory. I should add he was 18 and worked in the factory while attending high school—very Ron Swanson for you Parks & Rec fans out there.
He loves walking. He walked from Munich to Paris to see his friend who was dying of cancer. He told her to wait for him and don’t die beforehand. It took him three weeks. He got to her in time and she outlived the expected timeline.
Filmmaking is about seeing the world and there is no better way than to walk. His film school requires students find him by traveling on foot—remember that Herzog didn’t attend film school. I heard the interview process requires them to tell him what they saw on the journey there.
"If you really want to understand the real world and also conceptually where we are standing as human beings, travel on foot and read.” - Werner Herzog
His students learn how to forge documents and break the rules for the sake of filming. Herzog himself forged film permits in Peru. A Peruvian military colonel actually accepted Herzog’s forged documents—it had a fake presidential seal and everything.
It’s all part of a system that puts the act of executing above any bureaucratic red tape. Herzog has written screenplays in a matter of weeks. The same can be said for filming and editing. His matter-of-fact attitude to how simple it all is makes me understand it’s just that he’s fast but everyone else is taking much longer.
He rarely watches T.V. or movies. Film is how he captures humanity to show truth to the audience. That doesn’t mean he needs to be watching T.V. all day. He reads a ton though.
"It isn't about reading ten books but reading two thousand.” - Werner Herzog
His movies are real. There is no CG. Him and his team went to an active volcano. They actually carried a ship through the jungle instead of using models. One of the crewmen smashed his hand going down the rapids in the jungle. Some were hit with arrows (one through the throat and a few were hit in the abdomen) by native tribes and emergency surgery was performed in some jungle cabin.
It’s not that he purposely puts people in harm’s way. Rather, it’s a fascinating degree with trust that his film crew continues to partake on journeys with him. Maybe it’s because he is part of each journey. He will walk out to the frozen lake before he tells actors to go out. He ate live maggots before he told Christian Bale to. He earned the trust of North Korean officers to let him keep his film on his word alone.
When Herzog wished to use Bruno S in one of his films some 30 film executives objected. It was everyone except the cinematographer. Herzog told them all to leave because they were taking valuable seats for future financiers of the movie. They didn’t leave. Herzog used Bruno S for his film.
Bruno S. was the actor who played Kaspar Hauser in the movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. He wished to remain anonymous for the role where he was portraying a man who lived trapped in a dungeon for 17 years before being freed into the world.
Bruno himself had spent ~23 of his 26 years trapped in mental asylums after beatings from his mother had left him unable to speak and she threw him into a mental hospital. Naturally, he wasn’t the typical actor film executives wanted to see. But Herzog chose to film people for the truth they could show on screen. When he filmed a movie in a town in the American mid-west (the name escapes me) he used the townspeople in the movie instead of going out to hire actors.
The advice he gives to every aspiring filmmaker, and every human being who wants to do something of value in life, is to read. As he says: read, read, read, read. Start now and never stop.
“It's not the mere reading of certain books that make you a different person. Its the permanence of constantly reading.” - Werner Herzog
"If you really want to become someone of significance, read.” - Werner Herzog
Read and travel by foot. It appears to be a great starting point for most in lading an interesting life.
The interviews I listened to are here, here, here, here, here, here, here. I didn’t care what he was talking about or who interviewed him, except Roger Ebert. I specifically chose the one with Ebert.
Introspection & Habits
Ecstatic Truth & Relative Truth
Per Werner Herzog, there are two types of truths. There is ecstatic truth and the accountant’s truth.
The accountant’s truth is:
“….merely skirting the surface of what constitutes a deeper form of truth in cinema, reaching only the most banal level of understanding.”
Ecstatic truth is the elusive kind that lies in the deeper Strat of cinema:
“It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
Though Herzog referenced the two truths in context of filmmaking, it is applicable to any creative outlet. That is, if you are of the belief that every creative outlet is a manifestation of the human attempt to understand humanity at the deepest and purest level.
There could not be a more blasphemous set of quotes to a person who lived in the world of analysis, data, and the scientific approach—at least at the superficial glance— than "Facts do not equal truth.” But that’s what Herzog is referring to when talking about the ecstatic truth.
"I change facts to such a degree they resemble truth more than reality." - Werner Herzog
Facts are true until they are disproven as we earn more as a civilization. Then there is truth and reality.
"Mathematicians don't know truth, only deeply religious people do." - Werner Herzog
I admit I was quite uncomfortable thinking about what Herzog said. My bias was to just accept whatever my heroes said as truth. But his statement gave me pause and primed the shovel to think deeper.
Having been raised Catholic until high school, I decided to reject religion once I left high school. Religious freedom was a deal I made with my parents back then. Each family has its way, this was ours.
Over time, I’ve come to consider religion to be something greater than a mere belief in a deity. If one considered Buddhism to be a religion then the concept of “god” becomes null as Buddhism is closer to a way of life with many teachings stemming from a historic individual.
Then doesn’t religion become nothing short of the mere act of worship? Worship doesn’t have to be limited to deities. As David Foster Wallace pointed out:
"There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. If you worship money and things, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings."
We can worship anything. It’s whatever besoms the primary pursuit of life and in many ways the purpose of what drives our action. Many worship money, fame, or power for one. Some worship their parents or real-life heroes.
It can be said that those who know they worship something are closer to their humanity than those who live in denial of what they are worshipping. Though I rejected Catholicism, I knew some Catholics who worshipped because they considered the religion and its teachings to be their lighthouse. It guided them through the storm of life and that’s why some chose to believe. I can understand that.
Worship is personal and the soundness of the logic only matters to the worshipper in question. It doesn’t matter if I don’t agree. No one is right. Even Pascal, a mathematician, said the logical answer was to believe in god (look up Pascal’s wager). We can only hope to understand each other and ourselves.
That means the truth we see is relative. That’s because the reality for an individual is relative to each other. Isn’t that what truth is? Isn’t reality what we collectively decide to be truth based on a collective belief? Some go ahead and say something different and that could be their truth but it becomes reality and truth for us all when we all decide to agree with the trailblazers who were once labeled as misfits.
It’s something deeper than what we see through actions. There is more to the actions. Why are the actions committed? What is the intent or belief? The creative can communicate this reality.
It’s a truth that isn’t clear until we dig into it. It requires context. It requires understanding. Much like how we can’t really understand a person in a 30-minute conversation, it takes time to understand the subjective reality people live in.
“In moments where you know that you are not alone anymore. And that’s the ultimate I can reach. If there is anyone later after seeing [any of his movies] has a feeling ‘I’m not alone anymore’ then I have achieved everything I’ve wanted in my life.” - Werner Herzog
You know when the truth is truth when you can deliver a visceral reaction. The kind when I feel someone out there understands exactly what I’m thinking about or going through. Is that not truth? Not what “they” say. But when I see myself in that reality constructed for me because that construction is the reality formed by my experiences.