Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.
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Today’s edition:
> Stories: Serena Williams & Samsung
> High-performance: Neil Gaiman on making good art
> Insights: I wish you bad luck
> Tactical: Personal mission statement
> 1 Question: Inner obstacles
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.
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Stories of Excellence
Person: Serena Williams
Serena Williams is a tennis legend who revolutionized the sport with her powerful play and unmatched success. Born in 1981 in Compton, California, she turned pro at 14 and won her first Grand Slam title at 17. Williams has claimed 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any player in the Open Era. Her dominance extends beyond the court. She's a vocal advocate for racial and gender equality, using her platform to challenge systemic inequalities. Williams has also ventured into fashion and business, launching her own clothing line and investing in startups. In 2022, she announced her retirement from tennis, stating she was "evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me". Her impact on sports and society will endure long after her final match.
Key Lessons from Serena Williams:
On resilience: "I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall."
On character: "I've grown most not from victories, but setbacks. If winning is God's reward, then losing is how he teaches us."
On paying the price: "Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?"
Company: Samsung
Samsung was founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chul as a small trading company in Daegu, Korea. Initially selling dried fish and groceries, Lee expanded into textiles and other industries. In 1969, Samsung Electronics was established, marking the company's entry into the electronics market. The 1970s saw rapid growth as Samsung diversified into shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and semiconductors. By the 1980s, Samsung had become a global technology leader. The company's breakthrough came in the 1990s with its focus on mobile phones and semiconductors. Today, Samsung is one of the world's largest technology companies, with revenues over $250 billion and over 260,000 employees globally.
Key Lessons from Samsung:
On vertical integration: Make what you need. Samsung produces many of its own components, from screens to processors. This gives them unparalleled control over quality and supply
On market creation: Don't wait for demand. Samsung pushed into smart TVs before consumers knew they wanted them. They created the market.
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Neil Gaiman On Making Good Art
"I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, “Coraline looks like a real name…”
And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.
And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.
Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.
Make good art.
I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
Make it on the good days too."
—Neil Gaiman, English writer
Insights
John Roberts, "I wish you bad luck":
"Now commencement speakers are also expected to give some advice. They give grand advice, and they give some useful tips. The most common grand advice they give is for you to be yourself. It is an odd piece of advice to give people dressed identically, but you should—you should be yourself. But you should understand what that means. Unless you are perfect, it does not mean don’t make any changes. In a certain sense, you should not be yourself. You should try to become something better. People say ‘be yourself’ because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can’t be yourself if you don’t learn who are, and you can’t learn who you are unless you think about it.
The Greek philosopher Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ And while ‘just do it’ might be a good motto for some things, it’s not a good motto when it’s trying to figure out how to live your life that is before you. And one important clue to living a good life is to not to try to live the good life. The best way to lose the values that are central to who you are is frankly not to think about them at all."
Tactical reads
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> When crafting your personal mission statement
Andy Andrews: Personal Mission Statement (Read it here)
> When organizing your priorities effectively
Priority Management Mental Model - This is how I organize everything in my life (Read it here)
1 question
What do you believe stands between you and complete happiness?
That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a wonderful rest of week, all.
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