Welcome to the Action Digest, where you’ll find more drive than a Formula 1 race track.

A glimpse at the action we’re bringing you this week:

• 💭 The creative process behind one of America’s most quoted writers (and why she wants to wrestle critics to the ground!).

• 💥 The unique approach that the best creators take towards their work to achieve breakthrough success.

• 🔎 One question you must ask in order to take your projects to the next level.

P.s., you can check out editions 1-32 here in case you missed them, including insights such as the mindset that helped an entrepreneur build seven different billion-dollar companies, how Steve Jobs cultivated great creative taste, and why success might be much closer than we thought possible.

Seriously, there are some gems you’ll appreciate in these earlier editions ;-)

1. Excellence is the war you wage until every trace of the struggle disappears

Maya Angelou has penned some of the most quoted prose in history.

For example: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Angelou was once asked how she tackles a day’s work as a writer. 

“Nathaniel Hawthorne says, ‘Easy reading is damn hard writing,’” Angelou muses, “I try to pull the language in to such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics—New York critics as a rule—who say, well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good… but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.” 

Angelou elaborates that it can take as long as three weeks to describe a single scene and that she discards over half of the pages she writes. 

“I must have such control of my tools, of words” Angelou continues, “that I can make this sentence leap off the page. I have to have my writing so polished that it doesn’t look polished at all. I want a reader, especially an editor, to be a half-hour into my book before he realizes it’s reading he’s doing.” 

Angelou’s struggle reveals the nature of excellence: it is the war you wage upon your work until every trace of the struggle disappears. You know you’ve won when the critics chalk your results up to mere talent. 

And in the war for excellence, the best creators take every opportunity to pick a fight…

2. Excellence is an exercise, take every opportunity to develop it 

Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, was referred to by critics as “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.”

Bernstein began to study his craft as an undergraduate student alongside a number of mentors. But there was one tutor in particular who Bernstein “never tired of proclaiming” to have been “the strongest influence on his life.”

That tutor was Serge Koussevitzky, and as one of Bernstein’s biographers explains, “to Koussevitzky, every performance was the performance, which required a conductor's total devotion and care.” “He insisted that a performer uncover and convey the "central line" of a work: the single idea that embodies its essence.” 

Bernstein took the approach to heart, claiming in a 1977 interview that, "In a sense, I suppose, I am always writing the same piece, as all composers do. But each time it is a new attempt in other terms to write this piece, to have the piece achieve new dimensions, or even acquire a new vocabulary. The work I have been writing all my life is about the struggle that is born of our century, a crisis of faith."

Bernstein “never performed without wearing a pair of cufflinks Koussevitzky gave him, ritually kissing them as his final gesture before walking out on stage.” 

The best creators seize every opportunity to practice the exercise of excellence. Every performance is the performance. This act of constant refinement can be uncomfortable and tiring, especially at first, yet something powerful happens if you stick with it…

3. It will seem unconscionable to work any other way

Stanley Kubrick is famed for directing iconic films including The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Almost as famous as Kubrick’s movies is the process he used to make them: he would sometimes shoot over 100 takes of a single shot until he was satisfied with it. 

“Stanley has always done many many takes,” Douglas Milsome, one of Kubrick’s cinematographers confirms, “but in fact the many takes are not just repetitions of the same thing, they are often building upon a theme or idea that can mature and develop into something quite extraordinary. The whole structure of the scene can actually change during the operation of filming it. Also Stanley gets a lot more out of his actors after he works with them a lot longer. It’s especially valuable in bringing out something in the actors who may not be up to the part, but Stanley works on them jolly hard until they produce the goods, that’s why he’s so good with actors. In the end, he’ll rehearse and rehearse them until they’re word perfect and when they’ve got the words perfect then the rest has to happen, they then have to act. The large number of takers are used mainly to get something out of the actors that they’re not willing to provide right away.” 

Many actors found this approach challenging at times, including Arliss Howard in Full Metal Jacket. On the last day of filming, Kubrick approach Arliss and said “you know, you’re gonna miss me.” And Arliss said “yeah, I will, I’ll miss you.” And Kubrick said, “no, you’re gonna really miss me, when you’re working on a set and the director calls cut, we got it, let’s move on, and you’re gonna know you don’t have it, and that we shouldn’t move on, you’re gonna miss me because you know that I would never say cut and say let’s move on unless I knew we had it. And you’re gonna miss me.”

Sure enough, the first time Arliss went to work on another film and a guy said, “cut, we got it, move on,” Arliss said: “I really missed Stanley.” 

Holding yourself to a higher standard than what’s comfortable is naturally tiring. But if you fight through the discomfort long enough to see your hard work pay off, it will seem unconscionable to work any other way. 

Here’s a question to help you get started…

4. What would it look like if we took this to the next (next, next, next, next) level?

The founding team of Airbnb credit a large part of the company’s success to the startup accelerator they joined in 2009, Y Combinator. 

“So [on] the first day of Y Combinator,” CEO, Brian Chesky recalls, “they give you this T-shirt. And on this T-shirt it says ‘make something people want.’ And we thought—what if we went even further? What if we make something people love?” 

This sounds like a nice idea on paper, but as Airbnb scaled to thousands of employees and millions of users, Chesky needed a way to put his pursuit of excellence into practice on a massive scale. So he came up with an exercise…

“We’ve now done these exercises,” Chesky reveals, “so the moment of truth in Airbnb is when you check in, right? You’re like—is this gonna be what I think it is? And there’s a really bad version of check-in: like the host didn’t show up, and there’s kind of a good version of a check-in: they showed up. But we want to think to ourselves: what would make the experience something people love? And so we created this exercise. We thought—when you go on Airbnb, this is also true at Uber, a 5-star mostly means nothing bad happened. And we thought—well what if there was a 6-star? What would that be when you check into your Airbnb? And the 6-star is… you get to your Airbnb, and there’s, you know, like a bottle of wine waiting on the table, and there’s like some fruit and they have like a handwritten note to you. And like okay that’s really nice. And then I thought well—what would a 7-star experience be? A 7-star experience is they get a limo, they pick you up at the airport, and there’s this whole curated experience… you get to the house, and they know you like surfing, and there’s a surfboard there waiting for you, and all that stuff. So then I thought—what would an 8-star experience be like? An 8-star experience… you get to the airport, there’s a giant elephant, and you get on the elephant, and there’s a parade in your honor, and you go to your Airbnb. So what would a 9-star experience be? The 9-star experience is the Beatles check-in. You land and there’s 5000 teenagers cheering your name. And you get to your Airbnb and you have to do a press conference on the front lawn. So what’s a 10-star experience? A 10-star experience is you show up and Elon Musk says ‘we’re going to space. And you do get back eventually. And the point of this story is that you maybe can’t design an 8, 9, or 10-star experience, but most people try to design something that’s just good enough. But if you can add that sixth or seventh star, if you can design something really amazing, and you use the part of your brain, the handcrafted part of your brain to make that perfect experience, then you can reverse engineer how to industrialize this millions of times over. And what happens is people love your product and they tell everyone else about your product. And what ended up happening in our business is—Hilton was started in 1919, over 100 years ago, and we were able to have the entire growth of Hilton in 10 years.”

To discover the true bounds of excellence, ask yourself: what would it look like if we took this to the next level?

Then dare to keep asking that question over and over again.

Oh, and see how Chesky just referred to two different parts of the creative brain? Well…

5. Dozens of high-performers have these two things in common

We’ve now studied the creative process of dozens of people at the top of their field together. 

Actors, musicians, writers, architects, leaders, athletes, scientists—you name it. 

What do they all have in common? 

A lot! 

But two things stand out: 

1. They think deeply - they explore many more ideas and possibilities on average before taking action.
   

2. They act boldly - when they’re done thinking, they organize their ideas, become crystal clear on their next move, and act fast. 

The tricky part is that these two “modes” of creativity are naturally oppositional. 

It can be tough switching back and forth between them efficiently. 

That’s where the Action Book comes in handy. 

It’s designed to mirror the way high-performers think and streamline the both sides of the creative process. 

How?

By separating them. 

• On the left, a space for deep, unfiltered exploration. Sketch, doodle, mind map, or jot down every thought that comes to you. No rules. No constraints. Just a place to let your ideas breathe.

• On the right, a place to focus. To consolidate. Here’s where you bring clarity to your vision. Break down your next steps into clear, actionable tasks. Check them off one by one and watch your ideas come to life.

It gives you the freedom to think without limits—and the structure to turn those thoughts into bold action.

Elevate your creativity and order a fresh copy today. .

We’ll leave you with this…

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