You cannot rush growth- Part 2

The best creations unfold when growth is not forced

This essay is a continuation of Part 1, I urge you to go through that short piece to get a real feel of this essay.

Taylor Swift was asked about her writing process and she gave an example of her song- Blank Space.

She said: “It was one of those things where I would be writing lines years before I ended up constructing the song. I’ll be going about my daily life and I’ll think of like, ‘Wow, so you only have two real options in relationships, like it’s going to be forever or it’s going to go down in flames.’ I’ll jot that down in my notes.”

It’s an intriguing song because it is a beautiful rendition of various parts of her life that came together as a song over many years. She was not worried about a release date for the song.

If you have heard the song you have observed the pauses between the sentences:

“You Got That James Dean. Day Dream. Look in your eye. And I got the red lip classic thing that you like”

She kept taking notes during different parts of her life, and over the years, it came together to make the song what it is today.

And people wonder why she is one of the most successful artists of all time.

I coincidentally came across this beautiful example of the Florence Door, which took 40 years to make. The beauty of this door lies in the fact that its creation was not rushed. David Perell mentioned it on his podcast, which brought the visual image to mind, and after a decent bit of Googling, I found it to be nothing short of his enthusiastic explanation.

This magnificent door would not have been possible if the “launch date” had been rushed.

The remaining examples for this essay will be purely from Ryan Holiday’s book, The Perennial Seller, a book I have just finished rereading for the third time.

James Cameron thought of the idea for Avatar in 1994, but he waited almost a decade before starting work on it because the technology was not ready. He did not want to get sucked into the mania of releasing a fantasy action film prematurely. He began working on the film in 2005 and released it in December 2009 when the technology was fully ready.

The film went on to become one of the most successful films of all time, raking in billions.

One can equate this with valuations in public market investing; sometimes it can take years to dip your hands in the best investment and you must be willing to be as patient as you can.

Construction of the La Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona started in 1882, yet its completion is set for 2026. It is one of the most magnificent creations in human history and is still not complete.

I visited this magnificent place in 2015 with my friends. Unfortunately, it was shut for maintenance work, but even from the outside, it looked like everything they said it would.

Art can’t be hurried as Ryan Holiday mentions.

It must be allowed to run its course.

It is not a sprint that can be checked off as a form of a to-do list.

He also mentions how this phenomenon occurs not only in art but also in business.

Many businesses that started just before the dot-com bubble burst in euphoria, or during other times of irrational exuberance, such as the 2020 COVID lockdown period of zero interest rates, ended up going down in this chase for growth.

At the time, these ideas seemed irresistible, and it is natural for the media to follow trends to increase the limelight on these ideas.

Peter Thiel, the early investor in Facebook, warns that these are precisely the opportunities to avoid.

“First, there is too much competition.

Second, the hype obscures whether there is real long-term potential worth pursuing.

If you focus on near-term growth above everything else, you miss asking the most important question: ‘Will this business still be around a decade from now?’”

Legendary music producer Rick Rubin urges his artists not to think about what’s currently on the airwaves:

“If you listen to the greatest music ever made, that would be a better way” “to find your own voice to matter today than listening to what’s on the radio and thinking: “I want to compete with this”

He urges his artists to step back and look at the bigger picture and says:

“You might be better off finding inspiration from the world’s greatest museums than the billboards.”

After Adele finished preparing and writing the demos for the follow-up album to her record-breaking 21, she thought she was ready to begin the final step of recording and went to Rubin. He listened to it quietly and simply said “I don’t believe you” As Adele later told Rolling Stone magazine, “When he said it, I couldn’t work out if I was like devastated, going to cry my eyes out. And then I just said, “I don’t really believe myself right now, so I’m not surprised you fucking said that.”

Adele went back to the drawing board for two years of additional work. The tribute to that work played out in two places:

1. The title changed to 25 instead of 27, even though Adele had planned to name the album after her age when it was released. 

2. The fans paid the ultimate compliment where 3.4 Million copies sold in the first week alone followed by being awarded multiple Grammies 

Adele effectively scrapped the first version of her 25-song album based on Rick’s feedback. She went back to the drawing board and the new and improved song became the best-selling album of 2015.

Similar to James Cameron's story mentioned earlier in the essay, Frank Darabont was offered 2.5 Million $ to sell the rights of Shawshank Redemption so that Harrison Ford & Tom Cruise could be cast in it by the producer.

He wanted to wait & do "something really great" with a cast & screenplay of his choosing because he had visualized the cast and it would be wrong to just go ahead with a star cast to bring glamour to the film.

He did not want to rush it, and the rest, as you know, is history. For those who haven’t seen Shawshank Redemption, I urge you to do so.

Ryan Holiday further goes on to provide some beautiful renditions for taking art at your own pace with the analogies below:

“A good wine must be aged; we must let the meat marinate for hours in spices and sauce, and an idea must be given space to develop. Rushing into things eliminates that space.

A book takes many months and years to write and then more time to market.

A movie production takes months and months.

Just before we jump underwater, we must grab some air before we chase the next pursuit.”

A book should be an article before it is a book and a dinner conversation before it is an article”

I would say this is exactly how my book came to be—a result of serendipity by doing the work for the joy of it and not rushing to get something out there.

Conclusion

The conclusion for this piece is a copy and paste from the first piece because there is nothing new in the process that was documented in this piece, just used different examples to make the same point.

“And that’s how the best work, the best relationships, and the best kind of growth happens—by not rushing it beyond its capacity and accepting that some things take time.”