Rick Rubin

“Rick Rubin missed picking up his Grammy because he was working.”

“When outside observers come into the studio, they often cannot believe how clinical the process looks. They imagine a big music party, but we're constantly generating detailed notes on focus points and experiments to test. For almost everything that's said, so…”

“It is worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, I don't know if my song is as good as it can be. Doubting yourself might sound like I can't write a good song. These statements are wo…”

“Just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition.”

“The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.”

“Often the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them are from those who never learn them at all.”

“By accepting self-doubt rather than trying to eliminate or repress it, we lessen its energy and interference.”

“Fear of criticism, attachment to a commercial result, competing with past work, time and resource constraints, the aspiration of wanting to change the world, and any story beyond, I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is, are all undermining fo…”

“Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we're aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don't apply.”

“To the best of my ability, I followed my intuition to make career turns and have been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe or follow, in my case, I would change that sentence, follow your intuitio…”

“Distraction is not procrastination. Procrastination consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction is a strategy in service of the work.”

“Action produces information as you work. The work itself will reveal what you need to do next.”

“If you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it is not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artists stole your idea, but because that idea's time has come.”

“And the reason that reading a book is so important, I guess it applies to the podcast too, because it's not changing. The words on the page are the words in the episode. They don't change, but over time you do.”