zone of genius

you need one thing to win at this life. one.

and thats the beauty of the modern world.
it handed us something every generation before us would've killed for: the chance to dig deep. to pick one specific thing and dial in on it for the rest of your life.

one thing is all it takes.
one specific thing you're insanely insanely good at. whatever that shit is.
a single craft. a single blade.

be the GOAT at your zone of genius, then trade,
ignore everything else.
thats it..

best in the world

imagine you're in a hospital and you need surgery.
or worse. its your mom on that table. maybe your father.
everything depends on one decision: who's holding the knife.
so you get careful about choosing the doctor.
you want the best in the world. or the best in the country. at the very least, the best in your town.

now answer me this.
does that surgeon need to be good at driving?
would you even care if he's a terrible driver?
is "best driver in the world" anywhere on your list?
no. fuck no.

you only care about one thing: that he's the best surgeon you can find.
his cooking? or if he beats his wife?? irrelevant. the jokes, the golf swing, the taste in music, the politics? bullshit, all of it.
what matters is whether he's the GOAT at the one specific thing you need him to do.
everything else, you forgive.
and you pay him tons of money for it. happily. you'd sell the car to pay him.

now flip it around.
you're the surgeon.
that's how the world sees you when you're the GOAT at your zone of genius.
it stops caring what else you can or can't do.
the only question left is: can you do the one thing better than anyone else?
if the answer's yes, they line up, they pay TONS, and they forget everything else about you.

and the surgeon who can't drive?
one hour in the operating room pays for a driver, a mechanic, a cook, and a cleaner for the whole month.
thats what being insanely good at one thing buys you: the ability to be useless at everything else.

the surgeon who opened my father
had hands so steady
you could balance a coin on the knuckles.
little guy, bald, ugly as a toad,
breath of a garbage truck,
probably a bastard to his wife.
didn't matter.
for six hours he was god
with a scalpel,
and my old man's chest was his cathedral.
afterward I found him in the stairwell
smoking a marlboro, shaking a little.
"thirty years" he said,
"and it still scares the shit out of me"
i gave him one of my cigars.
we stood there in the stink of disinfectant,
two strangers, two craftsmen,
one who cuts hearts open
and one who just writes about them.
there's a brotherhood of the competent.
you can't buy your way in.
the only pass is blood and hours,
thousands of them,
and the willingness to stay scared
while keeping your hands still anyway.
i went back upstairs.
pop was awake, cursing at the nurse,
asking for adobo.
that fucking surgeon, that toad-faced little genius
gave me ten more years of his mouth.

the thousand days

knocking starts at nine on a sunday.
kid in the hall, manuscript under his arm, eyes full of hunger.
twenty something.
"i had to meet you" he says.
"you changed my life"

poor bastard.
i let him in because the wine was open.

he reads me eleven poems about loneliness in a coffee shop
and one about his grandmother, which was almost good.
then he sets the pages down.
"duhbid, how the fuck do i get as good as you?
im a writer too.
what makes you so different from me?"

i pour him a glass.
"tomorrow we'll both wake up heartbroken or hungover.
you'll skip a day, then a week, then a month,
and one morning you'll be gone.
me? i'll still be at the table, stapled to the chair. writing.
whatever it takes. i don't give a fuck"

he blinks. "but what's the secret?"

so i tell him:
sit down, shut up, put the words there.
when it goes badly, get drunk, sleep, do it again tomorrow.
one hour a day. a thousand days straight.
after ten years you'll know whether you have it,
though the knowing itself changes very little.

he writes all of that down in a leather journal,
wrong fucking response bruv.
i wanted him to argue, throw the glass, call me
an old fraud living off a legend.
disciples make lousy writers. bastards make good ones.

the secret is simple. living it is what breaks people.
talented people quit every day.
smarter men than me, men with more gifts than i'll ever have,
boredom takes some of them. heartbreak takes others.
a depression, a breakup, a bad month, and they're gone.
the field empties out on its own.
all you have to do is be the last one still at the table.
the guaranteed win.
simple, and brutal, and most days it feels shitty.
you sit down anyway.

he left at midnight, thanking me, floating,
and i sat there with the cork in my hand
feeling ancient and fraudulent and oddly moved,
hoping the world takes a hammer to him to fuck him up properly.
heartbreak, hangovers, a dead dog, a sam walking out, buried in debt.
i hope he's still at the table when it lands,
because the ones it misses never write a line worth keeping.

here’s my challenge for you

challenge: 1000 days on your zone of genius

take your zone of genius, your sword, whatever you want to call it, and dedicate at least 45 minutes to sharpening it every single day.
thats it.
45 minutes.
do it for 1,000 days straight.
keep track of it.

the important thing is that you establish a daily practice and stick to it.

most people know they need to identify their mistakes, seek feedback, study the fundamentals, experiment with different techniques, and find ways to improve their performance.

of course, all of those things matter.

but there’s one fundamental problem.

they simply don’t do it consistently.

i learned this from someone a long time ago. my mentor back then.

we grew up playing billiards, and there was something he taught me about becoming good at pool.

the secret was ridiculously simple.

play every day.

you don’t need to spend five, six, or eight hours at the pool table until your body is exhausted or learn some extraordinary technique or discover some hidden secret that nobody knows about.

you just need to play every single day.

set aside an hour. practice your shots. run the nine balls. work on your positioning. correct your mistakes.

then come back tomorrow.

and do it again.

thats it.

and i think this is one of the most overlooked principles of mastery.

people underestimate what daily practice can do to their abilities.

there’s a concept in neuroscience called neuroplasticity. its your brain’s ability to reorganize and adapt through experience and learning.

when you repeatedly engage in a particular activity, your brain gradually adapts to the demands of that activity. neural connections involved in performing that skill can become stronger and more efficient.

think about it.

the first time you play pool, you struggle with your positioning, your aim, stroke, and your control over the cue ball.

but after hundreds of practice sessions, you begin recognizing patterns. your movements become more coordinated. you develop a better understanding of angles, positioning, and shot selection.

things that once required considerable conscious effort become increasingly natural.

and its the same principle i’d apply to anything i wanted to become exceptionally good at.

don’t obsess over how many hours you can practice in one sitting. obsess over how many consecutive days you can return to your craft.

here’s something i want you to think about.

the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old. you’ve existed for a tiny fraction of that time. before you were born, billions of years passed without you. and after you die, billions more will pass without you.

in between those two infinities, you get this little window of consciousness. a few decades, if you’re fortunate, to experience existence.

and somehow, you’ve been given a brain capable of learning, adapting, creating, understanding, and developing abilities that would have seemed almost impossible to your ancestors.

think about what that means.

you can take something you’re terrible at today and, through years of deliberate practice, transform yourself into someone extraordinarily capable of doing it.

you can turn ignorance into understanding, weakness into strength.

there is something profoundly human about that process.

the ancient greeks called it arete…… excellence, or the fulfillment of one’s potential through the development of virtue and ability.

aristotle believed that human flourishing, or eudaimonia, comes through living and acting in accordance with our highest capacities.

and i think there’s something worth taking from that.

you have a responsibility to take your own existence seriously. to explore what you’re capable of. to develop your faculties. to find something worth dedicating yourself to and see how far you can take it.

you don’t get unlimited attempts at this.

your time is running out, whether you acknowledge it or not.

a thousand days will pass regardless of what you do with them.

you can spend them distracted, entertained, and perpetually searching for something meaningful.

or you can spend them building something.

one craft. one ability. one thousand days of deliberate practice.

who knows what you’ll become?

the point is to find out.

go sharpen your sword.

the fucking rooster

the rooster next door starts screaming at 5 am.
every single morning, christmas included.
for two years i wanted to strangle him,
pluck him, fry him in garlic,
eat him with rice and a cold coke
and sleep till noon on his grave.
then one morning, lying there with a hard-on and a headache,
listening to that feathered maniac lose his mind,
i understood.
he's an artist.
a tiny brain and one gigantic job:
scream at the sun until it shows up.
and the sun always shows up.
that cocky little bastard thinks he's the reason.
maybe he is.
who the hell knows.
point is, he's never once skipped.
rain, typhoon, bird flu scares, the neighbor's cat stalking him,
he climbs that fence post and lets it rip.
i respect him now.
we're colleagues.
he screams, i get up,
we both do our ugly little art in the dark
while the city sleeps off its sins.
someday he'll end up in somebody's soup.
me too, eventually, metaphorically.
until then, cock-a-doodle-fuck-you, world.
the poems are coming.