The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #306: Brian Koppelman - Follow Your Curiosity And Obsessions With Rigor Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Sustaining excellence: Ability to focus on the work Preparedness Ability to collaborate "Being responsible enough to show up on time is surprisingly effective and important" "People that follow their curiosity, obsessions, and passions" -- They truly love what they're doing and work with incredible rigor.  If you love what you're doing, it doesn't feel like a job.  It's work that's enriching you at the same time. "What we're really trying to do as leaders is get people to perform at their highest level and to do it together, because what we do is highly collaborative."  "I was the kind of person that would read a book and if I liked it, I would stay up all night reading it.  And I would learn the words from that book.  I would look them up.  I loved the way words sounded and I loved the idea of communicating with great efficiency and humor." "Where this passion really landed for me, it made sense to do this work.  Working with great rigor is a lot easier when you're borderline obsessed with something and when you're curious." "Curiosity keeps you diving deeper." "I was a frustrated and blocked writer and I was starting to feel that I had made mistakes.  But those two hours every morning... Writing. Made me feel alive." "And he (my boss) said to me, 'Look, you know you're a writer and that's what you want to do.'" "Dude.  You do have a half hour a day."  You have to make time to do the work. "We finished the screenplay.  We sent it out and it got rejected by every single agency in Hollywood.  I'm not exaggerating." "I  wrote down what every person said... And then it sold the next week, and every agency called us back trying to sign us.  Nothing was different on the page.  I read them all back what they had said and they would all lie back to me.  I had them written down on a big yellow legal pad.  I read them out loud on a speaker phone.  These guys all lied back to us. Nobody just said, 'well I guess I was wrong,' but then they all wanted to sign us.  It taught me a great lesson about gatekeepers in the world.  They don't always know." "It means don't blindly accept negative feedback from gatekeepers." Feedback -- "We have friends/peers in place to give feedback to each other."  John Hamburg (Meet The Fockers; I Love You, Man; Along Came Polly). "You want feedback, you need feedback. But you don't want feedback from that jealous old friend who you know secretly doesn't want you to be successful." "I don't have people in my life who don't want the best for me.  We root for each other... Hard." Comfort in your own skin: "It's a lifetime pursuit.  It's so hard." "The battle is to accept who you are while not giving up on improving yourself.  To continue to try to become the perfected version of you which you can never be.  And to accept your own frailties and faults." "One simple place this comes from is to avoid lying.  My wife and I don't lie to each other.  We've never lied to each other. When you have that to start, it helps with the rest because you're not fronting." "I do morning pages every day, I meditate, I take long walks and think." "When you do all of those things and you live with intention, you start to become more comfortable with who you are." "But each time you stretch and grow and you're rewarded, it encourages you to stretch and grow." "Never Fake The Funk" -- "It's about pretending.  It's about lying to yourself.  Don't pretend, don't lie to yourself.  It's really easy to get swept along by other peoples conception of who you are. And by other people's ideas of what success is.  Defining success for yourself is crucial." "Any interaction I have, I view as an opportunity for growth. For me and the other person." Feedback is fuel... Hearing that you've helped someone is the fuel that drives this machine Having successful parents