It Always Begins Before It Begins: What A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer, An Academy Award-Winning Animated Film, And The Founder Of Judo Know About Progress And Learning
The 3-Word Quote: ‘Options Require Openness’
1.
Robert Caro is a biographer.
As a biographer, Caro's books are centered around politicians' lives, but his real goal for all his writing is to 'cast light on political power in the twentieth century.'
He wants to show how political decisions impact everyday people.
Over his decades-long career, he has published 5,000 pages focusing on two people - New York politician Robert Moses and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
But to call Caro a biographer is likely doing him a disservice.
One article profiling Caro called him a 'genius,' saying 'his body of work is as great as that of any biographer- or maybe any nonfiction writer, or maybe even any writer - now alive.'
High praise.
Comedian Conan O'Brien describes Caro's epic and dense biographies as 'Harry Potter for adults.'
And his books are epics - in every sense of the word.
His first book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, weighs in at 1,296 pages.
1,296 pages.
The Power Booker would have been 300 pages longer, but his publisher made him cut 300 pages.
Why?
Because 1,296 pages was the physical limit of the number of pages that their printer could bind together.
The book literally couldn't have contained any more information.
Caro writes long books.
Not only are his books long, but he takes a long time to write them - often taking a decade between publications.
But the reason he takes up to a decade to write his books is something we can apply to most of our projects.
2.
If you have kids or are a movie fan, you've likely seen many animated films over the years.
You've watched the Disney movies and made Pixar films must see events.
Many are works of art requiring hundreds of artists and thousands of hours to create just to produce that ninety-minute film that you see in theatres.
One of my favorite animated films is Coco.
Released in 2017, this Pixar film follows a twelve-year-old boy, Miguel, as he travels to the Land of the Dead to search for his great-great-grandfather.
The film, centered around the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos), explores family dynamics, music, dreams, and traditions.
Co-director Adrian Molina and animation manager Jesus Martinez created a film that some have called a love letter to Mexico.
Coco won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2018, a Critic's Choice Award, and A Golden Globe award, among many others.
But before the movie racked up multiple honors, the creators were prepared to tell a completely different story than what Coco became.
An entirely different script had been written and approved.
But the filmmakers felt they were not telling the story they wanted to tell.
So they scrapped the script.
The new story took time - lots of time.
And something else, too.
3.
Gun ownership and gun violence is incredibly rare in Japan, but Japanese police officers have been carrying guns since 1949.
As a precaution to prevent police guns from falling into the wrong hands, Japanese officers have their weapons tethered to their holsters.
Their guns are attached to a 'leash.' That leash is connected to the gun's handle at one end and the holster belt at the other.
The leash makes it nearly impossible for a police gun to be taken or misplaced.
The number of shootings in Japan each year is often in the single digits.
But like any country, there is crime, and police must deal with it.
Japanese police are likely never to use their guns, but they do train to deal with violent offenders.
Most Japanese police train in martial arts.
And for many officers, the martial art of choice is Judo.
Jigoro Kano was a Tokyo teacher and Jujutsu expert.
Kano took many Jujutsu techniques and movements, adapted them, and created Judo.
Kano added 'elements of mental discipline' and named his new style Judo in 1882.
Despite Japanese police learning Judo to subdue criminals, the name Judo translates to 'gentle way' as it did not emphasize weapon training as other martial arts did.
Judo quickly spread around the police departments and the world - becoming an Olympic sport in 1948.
Kano became the Director of Education for Japan's Ministry of Education, founded a high school in Kobe, and was heavily involved with the International Olympic Committee.
He was a passionate teacher and life-long educator.
Kano said, 'Nothing under the sun is greater than education. By educating one person and sending him into society of his own generation, we make a contribution extending a hundred generations to come.'
He spent his life teaching.
But it may have been death where he taught his most important lesson.
The Takeaway:
So what do a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, an Academy Award-winning movie team, and the inventor of Judo all have in common?
They all understood and applied the phrase 'it begins before it begins.' In other words, they all valued and emphasized a 'beginner's mindset' when approaching projects.
Let's take a look.
Robert Caro takes years between books - often, a decade passes between the publication of his biographies.
Fans wish he would publish more often.
Most other nonfiction writers turn out several books in the time it takes Caro to write one.
While Caro's books focus on politicians and look to define power, he tells the stories of 'regular folks' and how politician's choices impacted them.
And this takes time because Caro approaches each story with a beginner's mindset - he looks at things multiple times from several different angles in hopes of genuinely describing what events were like.
Caro is the foremost expert on President Johnson. Still, that knowledge can be a curse when trying to write and explain it to someone with little understanding of the subject.
So he approaches his subjects with extreme curiosity.
Caro reads.
He plows through thousands of pages.
He interviews hundreds of people.
As one profiler said Caro, 'researches the hell out of his subject.'
At this point, Caro often already knows much of what he finds in the papers he reads and interviews he conducts.
However, he tried to treat each paper and each interview as if he were new to the subject.
Caro says, 'There is no other way.'
But many good biographers do similar work - they read many books and interview scores of people.
But Caro's approach is different.
His approach stems from his 'beginner's approach' - his beginner's mindset.
He scours for information and anecdotes that others might miss.
Beginners aren't afraid to ask questions and are curious - Caro is obsessive about both.
Beginners ask questions that experts might be afraid or embarrassed to ask.
Caro assumes nothing and will do anything to secure a story or an anecdote.
'Truth takes time,' Caro says.
At one point, he struggled to describe where Lyndon Baines Johnson was from.
Many researchers might travel to the area to gain insight, read about the area, and talk to people.
Caro did these things, but he still felt like he wasn't telling the stories of people from the area.
So Caro moved.
He packed his belongings, told his wife they were leaving, and set off for Texas.
He moved to Johnson City, Texas - for three years.
Why?
Because he wanted to build trust with the people of the area.
He wanted to live where LBJ was from because he felt he would gain more insight and hear better stories.
The move made him look at things from a new perspective. He approached this time of his research and writing as a beginner because, well, he was a beginner.
Everything was new.
He literally put himself in a 'beginner's mindset' because everything was foreign to him when he moved.
Some call him obsessive; others say he is compulsive about researching.
But this time of 'obsessive' researching takes discipline - the reading, chasing down leads, interviewing, and even moving to a new city to tell a better story.
An editor early in his career once gave him the following advice about researching: 'Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page.'
But his editor wasn't just telling Caro to read carefully. He was telling Caro to check everything, assume nothing, follow all leads, and approach everything like you know nothing.
In other words, the editor reminded Caro to always have a 'beginner' mindset.'
And Caro never forgot it.
But his writing and stories don't start when he sits down at a desk to write.
They start before he begins to write.
They start with that mindset shift.
They start by thinking clearly, asking elementary questions, being insanely curious, and listening without judgment.
Caro's way of writing is to start by acting like a beginner.
A final example included in one profile has Caro wondering why LBJ had mentioned he often came into the Capitol Building 'out of breath.'
Others described Johnson, a congressional aide at the time, as always jogging or running into his office.
It seemed like a small detail, but Caro wondered why Johnson often ran into his office.
So Caro went to Washington, DC, to try to retrace Johnson's steps to work during that time.
So Caro flew to the nation's capital and walked Johnson's exact route several times but couldn't figure out why the future president would be running up the stairs and into the building.
It was frustrating for the author not to have an answer.
But when Caro decided to walk Johnson's exact steps at the exact time Johnson would show up for work, the author finally had his answer.
Caro says, 'At 5:30 in the morning the sun is just coming up over the horizon in the east. It (the Capitol) is lit up like a movie set. The whole facade - 750 feet long - it's white, of course, white marble, and marble just blazes out at you as the sun hits.'
And at 5:30 AM, Caro found his answer.
The future president was jogging up the steps - because he was hot. Johnson wanted to get out of the sun quickly.
This tiny detail puts the reader in the moment and humanizes Johnson.
And Caro found it (and hundreds of other moments like it) because 'he turned every goddamn page' and took on a beginner's mindset.
Because, as he says, 'There is no other way.'
***
If you've seen the movie Coco, you've seen a triumph of technology and storytelling.
But you also saw a movie that was much different than originally planned.
The original version was abandoned. The directors ditched the script.
Because the filmmakers knew the story wasn't right. They knew many viewers would be coming into the film with little knowledge of the Mexican holiday and little understanding of Mexican culture.
So the producers started over.
Like Robert Caro, they took on a beginner's mindset and asked questions.
They took on the role of the uninformed viewer and rethought what should be included in the 'new' story.
One article about the film discussed co-director Lee Unkrich's seven years of research.
Seven years.
And like Caro, the Pixar team interviewed scores of people (the grandmother is based on a real person found during the interviews) and made dozens of trips to Mexico.
The movie team had to experience the country firsthand to understand the land and its people better.
They knew the initial story didn't get the story or culture correct -and it didn't deliver on plot or emotion.
As one of the screenwriters said, 'Sometimes we imagine we can get there more quickly by running through those early scenes, trying to get the 'bones' on the page, rather than doing the real work - the research - of writing.'
We often get things out of order and start before we are ready.
This approach is like that of an airline pilot who greets the passengers farewell before she has actually landed the plane.
Things are out of order.
The movie Coco didn't begin when the screenwriters put pen to paper. It started long before with ideas and hopes.
But the story was improved with research - and lots of questions that are free of preconceptions.
Knowledge is wonderful, but it can also get in the way of creativity - sometimes, putting that knowledge aside and acting as a novice can jumpstart creative ideas.
We think the biography begins with interviewing or researching the subject.
We think the film begins when scribbles on paper become a script.
Perhaps those are the 'official' beginnings, but like most creative projects, they begin before they begin.
Author Kevin Kelly writes about a 90% rule. His rule states that the final 10% of a project takes another 90% of the time and effort. I call it the 90/90 rule.
But this rule is often true at the beginning of a project.
The work before the work takes time.
And this early work is often invisible - it doesn't look like progress is being made. The invisible work is the thinking, the questioning, the wondering - all things critical in a beginner's mindset.
This work can also look like procrastination, but it is not. It is work that is critical to get something right.
We might not be 'genius' biographers. We likely cannot go years between projects obsessing over every detail. And we likely aren't taking multiple trips to get the details correct.
But we can use some of the techniques that Caro and Pixar uses - the extreme curiosity, the quality questions, and the ability to think and look at things like they are new.
And have a willingness to wonder.
Things always begin before you think they begin.
***
And what of the founder of Judo?
Jigoro Kano spent his life educating others - as a teacher, instructor, and inventor.
He wanted everyone to value education and continue learning.
Even as an expert - and the inventor of Judo - he was always refining his techniques and asking questions about how to get better as a practitioner.
He knew that to learn new things, you had to assume the role of a beginner or a novice.
The beginner doesn't expect immediate perfection. The beginner isn't embarrassed to not understand something. The beginner is willing to try new ways of doing things.
Jigoro Kano knew and lived these ideas.
And in death, he taught and demonstrated them once again.
When he was near death, Kano made his students promise to do one thing for him when he died.
He asked the students to be sure not to bury him with all his awards, medals, and symbols of achievement.
Nor did he want to be buried with his black belts, signifying his mastery of the Judo.
He wanted to be buried wearing his white belt, the symbol of a beginner.
He wanted to show others that even at the end of his life, he was always an eager student ready to learn.
***
Now is the time of year when many of us are vowing to learn new skills and aspiring to create new habits.
It is the season of change and a time of possibility.
But regardless of new resolutions - whether you're embarking on an exercise program, learning pottery, starting to write that book or any other new skill - remember, you are a beginner.
Put on that symbolic white belt and wear it with pride.
Change starts with different thinking, and progress always takes time.
***
3 things before you go:
watch: especially if this time of year can be tough because of grief
listen: an older one but a good one (especially this month)
listen: This is the year- a perfect song for the new year
Thank you for reading. See you in 2025!
-Jeff