You’ve Gotta Find It Within Yourself To Say… The entrepreneur Mark Cuban is frequently approached by people who are stuck. “They’re stuck in a job they don’t like. They’re stuck working for a boss they don’t like. They’re stuck on a team they don’t like,” he explained. “I just tell them, ‘Be great.’” “The reality of […]| Billy Oppenheimer
Where’s Your Follow-Up? In the 1970s, the comedian Chris Rock grew up in a Brooklyn neighborhood surrounded by gangs, violence, and crime. He was asked how he avoided falling in with a bad crowd—”how did you avoid the trapping of gangs and gang activity?” “I don’t think it’s about ‘avoiding,’” Rock said. “It’s about, where’s your […] The post SIX at 6: The Follow-Up, Staying With It, A Striking Lack of Talent, A Certain Kind of Personality, A Proud Failure, and Th...| Billy Oppenheimer
Things Don’t Have Signs On Them That Say, “This Is A Big Thing” At sixteen, Mike Nichols’s girlfriend’s parents gave him tickets to a Broadway play that turned out to redirect the course of his life. In college, a chance interaction with a cafeteria busboy led to him attending weekly improv workshops, where he soaked […] The post SIX at 6: The Deceptive Nature of Things, An Unusual Asset, What You Don’t See, What’s Impossible To Know, The Things That Change Your Life, and Nonc...| Billy Oppenheimer
The Third Chair Years after he’d last been there, Henrik Karlsson stopped by the public library where he used to spend countless hours alone, struggling to write, wrestling with the seemingly impossible dream of becoming a writer. Approaching the chair he used to sit in, Karlsson writes, “The sensation that he, my previous self, was still […]| Billy Oppenheimer
It’s A Series Of Really Simple Instructions In 1983, Apple introduced the Lisa, the first personal computer with a graphical user interface, marking the moment when computers began to look and feel the way we think of them today: a desktop of icons, files, and windows, navigated with a mouse or trackpad. This innovation transformed […] The post SIX at 6: The Reality of What Appears Magical, Solving The Problem Too Fast, How Dylan’s Songs Got Here, Glacial Processes, Whispering, and The ...| Billy Oppenheimer
Excellence Is A Qualitative Phenomenon In the early 1980’s, the sociologist Daniel Chambliss spent five years studying swimmers at every level of ability. He visited learn-to-swim programs, coached a regional swim team, and traveled with the U.S. Olympic Team. He was interested in what separated the good from the great—the habits, training regimens, mindsets, physical […]| Billy Oppenheimer
You Should Have Seen It When He Was In Charge Jerry Seinfeld said the following is one of his favorite jokes, the one that “would encapsulate my worldview.” A gardener was out tending to his beautiful, magnificent, thriving garden when another man walked by and stopped to admire it. “Boy,” the man said, marveling at the blooming […] The post SIX at 6: Some Of God’s Best Work, Making Your Own Turn, The Roy Kent Part, What’s Missing, An Abnormal Brain, and F. Scott Fitzgerald ap...| Billy Oppenheimer
Know Your Dodges The screenwriter Meg LeFauve was once hired to help another writer punch-up a script based on his son with special needs. Executives felt the script wasn’t reaching the story’s full emotional potential. They brought in LeFauve not just because she’s known for her resonant storytelling in movies like the Pixar hit Inside Out, but […]| Billy Oppenheimer
Unpacking I was recently traveling with my girlfriend to Vienna, flying out of Dallas with a layover in Frankfurt. In Dallas, for some reason, we could access a mobile boarding pass for the Dallas-to-Frankfurt leg, but not the Frankfurt-to-Vienna connection. At the airline counter, the agent couldn’t print them either, saying it was because the […] The post SIX at 6: Unpacking, The Coffee Beans Procedure, Making Vs. Collecting, A Writing Profession, A Big Imagination, and The Real Life Of...| Billy Oppenheimer
The Forms of Capital In economic contexts, “capital” refers to accumulated wealth—money, property, or other financial assets—that can be invested or used to potentially generate more wealth. In his essay The Forms of Capital, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu expanded the meaning of the term: “Capital is accumulated labor…It is what makes the games of society—not […] The post SIX at 6: Forms of Capital, Making Tea, A Missed Guess, A Cinderella Story, What Fortune Favors,...| Billy Oppenheimer
What Does The Guy Habitually Do? The playwright and filmmaker David Mamet was asked how his research process changes, if at all, when developing a biographical script about a real person versus developing a fictional script about an invented character. Regardless of the genre, Mamet said, “the question is always, ‘What do you throw away? What […]| Billy Oppenheimer
A Certain Kind of Personality At some point in grade school, Greta Gerwig began to think that she might want to be a movie director. But as she became aware of a certain mythology associated with directors—rebellious, forceful personalities, singularly obsessed with movies from an early age—Gerwig began to doubt whether she had the personality. […]| Billy Oppenheimer
Time On The Job In the 1980s, the sociologist Robert N. Bellah introduced the concept of three distinct “work orientations”—three distinct ways people relate to their work: as a Job (work as a means to pay the bills), a Career (work as a path to advancement, achievement, and status), or a Calling (work as a […]| Billy Oppenheimer