How to write, building a team, & studying greatness

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: How to Write With Rhythm

Those who can think, write, and communicate are simply more powerful than those who cannot.

“If you can think, and speak, and write, you are absolutely deadly.” — Jordan B. Peterson

Source: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing

2: Steve Jobs on Building A Team of “A Players”

“I observed something fairly early on at Apple, which I didn’t know how to explain then, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. Most things in life have a dynamic range in which [the ratio of] “average” to “best” is at most 2:1.

If you go to New York City and get an average taxi cab driver, versus the best taxi cab driver, you’ll probably get to your destination with the best taxi driver 30% faster. And an automobile; what’s the difference between the average and the best? Maybe 20%? The best CD player versus the average CD player? Maybe 20%? So 2:1 is a big dynamic range for most things in life.

Now, in software, and it used to be the case in hardware too, the difference between the average software developer and the best is 50:1'; maybe even 100:1. Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life doing is like this. I’ve built a lot of my success on finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for “B” and “C” players, but really going for the “A” players.

And I found something… I found that when you get enough “A” players together when you go through the incredible work to find these “A” players, they really like working with each other. Because most have never had the chance to do that before. And they don’t work with “B” and “C” players, so it’s self-policing. They only want to hire “A” players. So you build these pockets of “A” players and it just propagates.” — Steve Jobs

Source: The Importance of Working With “A” Players

3: Kobe Bryant on Studying Greatness

“No matter what discipline you are in, there’s a common denominator in how we approach our craft. The attention to detail. The level of commitment. Those things are the same across the board. That is my message: Don’t look at WHAT I did but HOW I did it. The how. And then you can transfer that over to any profession and any discipline.” — Kobe Bryant

Source: Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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