Being relentless, early career hard work, & the price of leadership

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: Tim Grover on Being Relentless

“Do. The. Work. Every day, you have to do something you don’t want to do. Every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, push past the apathy and laziness and fear. Otherwise, the next day you’re going to have two things you don’t want to do, then three and four and five, and pretty soon, you can’t even get back to the first thing. And then all you can do is beat yourself up for the mess you’ve created, and now you’ve got a mental barrier to go along with the physical barriers.”

“I don’t care how good you think you are, or how great others think you are—you can improve, and you will. Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever demand of you, knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more. You must do more. The minute your mind thinks, “Done,” your instincts say, “Next.”

“Fuck “try.” Trying is an open invitation to failure, just another way of saying, “If I fail, it’s not my fault, I tried.”

“Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.”

Source: Relentless

2: Sam Altman on Early Career Hard Work

“One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young.”

Source: How to Be Successful

3: Michael Jordan on The Price of Leadership

“Winning has a price. Leadership has a price. I pushed people when they didn’t want to be pushed. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged. But I never asked them to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.” — Michael Jordan

Source: The Last Dance

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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