On a “humid Monday night in the summer of 1965,” long before he was a successful Hollywood actor and comedian, Steve Martin was scheduled to perform a comedy show at the Coffee And Confusion club in San Francisco.

Martin was booked for a whole week of standup comedy, although, he wasn’t expecting much. He was desperately trying to break into the industry at the time and had agreed to perform for free—yet what he encountered at the club was somehow even worse than his lowered expectations.

“It’s time to start,” the bartender informed Martin. 

“‘But,’ I said as I waved my hand to indicate the stone-empty club, ‘there’s nobody here.’ He pointed to the large window that looked onto the sidewalk, and explained that my job was to be onstage so passersby could see a show going on and be lured in. I said that I wasn’t a singer, I was a comedian, and doing comedy for absolutely no one posed a problem. So? He implied. So I went onstage and started talking. Talking to no one.”

Occasionally, a few people did wander in.

Eventually, some of them even stuck around long enough to hear a joke rather than just immediately turning on their heels and walking out.

There was still a problem though.

“I was contracted to be onstage for twenty-five minutes,” Martin explains. “I had a solid ten minutes, and the rest of my material was unreliable. If I got some laughs, I could almost make it, but if the audience was dead, my twenty-five minute show would shrink to about twelve. Afraid of falling short, I ad-libbed, wandered around the audience, talked to patrons, joked with waitresses, and took note of anything unusual that was happening in the crowd and addressed it for laughs, in the hope of keeping my written material in reserve so I could fill my time quota.” 

At first, the ad hoc improvisation was painfully awkward. But over time Martin found that the pressure-induced spontaneity, the 25 minute forcing function, was actually the beginning of an entirely new era of comedy.

“The format stuck,” Martin marvels. “Years later, it was this pastiche element that made my performances seem unstructured and modern.”

Without the pressure to fill those painstaking 25 minutes, Martin might never have honed in on the style that would one day bring him global recognition. It’s surprising how often people credit their success to their most uncomfortable constraints.

Martin’s experience at Coffee And Confusion reveals the counterintuitive principle at the heart of today’s edition: high performance will often only emerge once push comes to shove.

So for today’s edition, the pressure, as they say, is on…

P.s. More action awaits you in our archives, including how Steve Jobs cultivated great taste, the personality trait shared by 1381 millionaires, and 40 principles relied on by the world’s greatest creatives. 

Step Into The Spotlight Of Accountability

On June 11th 2023, a gasoline tanker caught fire in Philadelphia. A burning tank of fuel is never a welcome sight, yet this incident was made all the worse on account of its location—right underneath a busy stretch of the I‑95 highway. With over 100 million motorists frequenting its lanes, the I-95 is one of America’s busiest and most critical thoroughfares. 

So when the blaze caused the I-95 overpass above it to collapse just eight minutes before firefighters arrived, the hearts of millions dropped right along with it. The complete rebuild will take “a number of months," Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro initially lamented, echoing what most people were thinking. Infrastructure projects, after all, are notorious for their glacial pace. 

But then, in a 280 character flash of inspiration, Shapiro did something so smart that even he couldn’t possibly have predicted the impact it would have.

He setup a 24/7 livestream of the construction site and then announced it on Twitter:

The tweet quickly racked up millions of impressions and the live feed became a Philadelphia phenomenon:

• Senator Bob Casey tweeted that he was watching. 

• Xfinity Live!, the popular sports bar near the city's stadiums, offered $0.95 wings while showing the livestream alongside the US Open and Phillies game. 

• The Phillies themselves displayed the construction feed on the Phanavision at Citizens Bank Park. 

• Local businesses rallied to support the workers—Wawa dropped off hoagies, Starr Restaurants provided catering, and the Pocono Raceway lent their jet dryer to keep the site dry during rain so paving could continue. 

With the eyes of the city (nay—the nation!) upon them, how could the construction workers possibly fail? They worked around the clock with unbridled energy as millions tuned in to watch their progress. 

The I-95 reopened, not several months later, but just 12 days after the collapse, many days ahead of an already ambitious schedule. All of those responsible for the rebuild were celebrated as heroes.

“We all came together and proved that we can do big things again in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro tweeted triumphantly. “We showed the world that when times get hard, Pennsylvanians show up for one another. We work together — and we get s[***] done.”

By casting a 24/7 spotlight on the rebuild, Shapiro not only upped the stakes, he galvanized support behind the crew—highlighting how visible accountability can drive us to work with greater ingenuity and effort. 

Of course, constant surveillance can do more harm than good in many contexts, but keep this principle in your back pocket for when you need a well-timed performance boost:

Under the gaze of accountability, ordinary work can be transformed into exceptional achievement.

And it turns out that you can take advantage of this effect even if you have stage fright. The watcher can be just as invigorated by pressure as the watched…

Maintain A High-Bar Orbit

Ever heard the saying, ‘you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with’?

Turns out that a similar principle applies to anyone who enters the orbit of your workspace—where the right work neighbors could mean millions in profit, and the wrong ones cost you just as much.

That’s what researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Toronto found when they tracked over 2,400 employees at a large tech company over two years. 

They kicked off their study by creating a detailed map of the office that showed where every desk was located along with records of who sat at each desk at different times. 

This allowed them to precisely determine where each person was sitting and, crucially, who was seated nearby. 

Then they measured each worker’s job performance. By looking at both the seating information and the performance data, they could see how the work of nearby employees affected an individual’s own performance. And what they found was that sitting near high performers creates an immediate performance boost! 

Specifically, speed for surrounding workers goes up by about 8%, effectiveness by nearly 16%, and work quality climbs by a smaller but still welcome boost of 3%.

Surrounding ourselves with high performers is another form of positive pressure that can encourage us to step up our own game. 

Unfortunately, this cuts both ways. 

Just as positive neighbors give you a boost, being surrounded by toxic workers can hurt you—fast. In fact, the researchers behind this study have found that if you end up sitting near someone whose actions are so harmful that it leads to their firing, your own risk of engaging in unacceptable behavior increases dramatically.

What’s even more startling is the reach of that negativity. While the positive effects from high performers tend to be felt mostly within a 25-foot radius, the destructive influence of a toxic worker can spread across an entire office floor.

Clearly we need to hold a high bar for those who wish to work alongside us.

The researchers believe that there is much to be gained from applying this principle. "Physical space appears to be a resource that can be used to design higher-performing organizations," they conclude. 

By strategically pairing complementary worker types—like matching "Productive" workers (high speed, lower quality) with "Quality" workers (high quality, lower speed)—companies could boost organizational performance by up to 15%, and, for the firm studied, this "symbiotic spatial management" could potentially add an estimated $1 million annually in profit. Ker-ching.

So far we’ve seen how putting yourself on the hook, working in the spotlight, and surrounding yourself by high performers can yield performance enhancing pressure. But we saved the biggest pressure tactic for last…

An Option to Come Back Has Negative Value

At 36 years old, Jim Collins, author of renowned business book classics like Good to Great and Built To Last, made a decision that would transform his career path. 

While teaching entrepreneurship at Stanford, Collins found himself challenged by his own students. "They say, 'Well what are you doing that's entrepreneurial? This doesn't look like a very entrepreneurial thing — teaching these classes and being here,'" he recalls. 

The question struck a chord. Collins realized he was telling his students to forge their own paths while following a conventional one himself. This led to a profound insight: “Well gee, if you don’t have to be at IBM to be in business, why do I have to be at a university to be a professor?” So I said to Joanne [Collins’ wife], I said, ‘You know I think I have this idea of—I’d like to be a self-employed professor, to endow my own chair, and to grant myself tenure.’” “The idea was to try to pursue really big questions that wouldn’t be constrained by things you could do in only a year.”

When contemplating this leap, Collins sought advice from his mentor Irv Grousbeck at Stanford. "Do you think I should keep enough capital alive here at Stanford that, if this doesn't work out, I could come back?" Collins asked. 

Grousbeck's response was unexpected: 

"An option to come back has negative value." 

When Collins expressed confusion, noting that options typically have positive value, Grousbeck clarified, "No. Not on a creative path. If you have the option to come back, it will change your behavior," Grousbeck explained. "You're doing a low odds game, which means you have to put all in, 100 percent, full cannonball, go off that cliff. Otherwise, you're going to hold something in reserve."

There comes a time on many creative journeys where the best thing you can do for yourself is to stare fate right in the eyes, don your gravelliest voice, and say, “hold my juice box, I’m going all-in.”

(And then obviously you press your juice box into fate’s chest and saunter into the distance)

Burning your boats like Collins is risky but many swear that they never would’ve made it to the shores of success if it wasn’t for the pressure of having no life raft. 

Once you’ve built up enough confidence in a creative path and taken enough risk off the table, it could be time to embrace the pressure of going full cannonball.

Tying it all together

Today’s case studies are a tiny fraction of the examples out there of high performers testifying to the positive impact that pressure has unlocked for their work.

The concept of positive pressure is a principle so fundamental that we even see it in nature. 

When a tree is subjected to strong winds, it develops “reaction wood” which is denser and stronger than normal wood and it builds a deeper root system.

The wind is what allows a tree to grow strong and bend without breaking.

This is similar to the pressure we face in our lives.

You don’t want the wind to be so strong that you become uprooted and get blown away. But you don’t want such little wind that your structural integrity becomes weak. You want to find the sweet spot in the middle where you subject yourself to enough positive pressure to bring out your strongest self.

Pressure can reinvent industries, repair highways at lightning speed, transform workplace productivity, catalyze transformative career moves, and ultimately bring out the best in us.

Until next time…

*saunters into distance*

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