Treat Your Craft Like an Athlete
Impose an objective metric on a subjective pursuit to force real discipline
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 62%
Most pursuits — comedy, podcasting, public speaking, building a company — have no fixed scoreboard, so a bad night can always be blamed on the crowd, the mood, or 'still working on it.' A powerlifter has no such escape: 300 kilos is 300 kilos on Tuesday and in Zambia. The method is to import that rigidity deliberately. You pick a hard number, you do the unglamorous preparation an athlete does (writing, reps, sleep, nutrition, cutting the inputs that hurt output), and when you underperform you trace it to a controllable variable rather than an excuse. The objective metric is a forcing function: it converts vague effort into accountable practice and strips away the subjective leeway that keeps most people mediocre.
Origin
Articulated by comedian Mark Normand and Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom, drawing on Kobe Bryant's work ethic, Dave Chappelle's 'take an acting class' advice, and Colin Quinn's line that comics avoid writing because writing proves you are not a genius.
Core principles
- 01You get out what you put in; there is no shortcut you can hide inside a subjective craft
- 02Objective metrics remove the get-out-of-jail-free cards that subjectivity hands you
- 03Discipline in service of a goal beats discipline for its own sake
- 04The line between preparation and performance is only messy if you refuse to measure it
- 05Preparation is the craft; the performance is just the readout
How to run it
- 1
Find the objective metric hiding in your craft
Identify the hard, un-arguable readout of your work — laughs in the room, tickets sold, miles run, weight lifted. If it's funny they laugh; if it's not they don't. Treat that signal as truth rather than something to negotiate with.
Pro tip Prefer a number you cannot talk your way around, like a step count or a sold-out room, over a feeling like 'I think they liked me.'
- 2
Move the work upstream into preparation
Do the craft before the performance, not during it. Write for hours, work a single joke for months, rehearse the act-outs. The stage is where you read the result, not where you invent it.
Pro tip Colin Quinn's tell: comics avoid writing because writing proves you are not a genius. Do the writing anyway.
Watch out Deciding you'll just 'figure it out on stage' is the exact shortcut that keeps you unaccountable.
- 3
Adopt the athlete's full stack
Copy how an athlete prepares: sleep, nutrition, hydration, reps, game tape, the people you surround yourself with, a warm-up routine. Treat your calling with the same preparedness a pro treats theirs.
Pro tip Take an acting class for a comedy career, a speaking coach for a speaking career — attack the adjacent skills that lift the core one.
- 4
Cut the inputs that measurably hurt output
Subtract the drinking, late nights, and partying that degrade tomorrow's performance. The point is not virtue; it is that a hangover costs you a show. Discipline here is instrumental, in service of the craft.
Pro tip Frame every sacrifice as 'this facilitates the performance,' not 'I'm being good' — the goal keeps you consistent where willpower alone fails.
Watch out Don't wait for the world to inject discipline via bed bugs and disaster; choose the discomfort deliberately.
- 5
Attribute failure to a controllable variable
When you underperform, run the athlete's diagnostic: was it sleep, hydration, mindset, nutrition, preparation? Refuse vague excuses. The messiness of a subjective craft is exactly where people hide, so force a specific, fixable cause.
Pro tip Ask 'what input would I change to lift the number next time?' — the answer is your next rep.
Watch out Subjective get-out-of-jail-free cards ('I'm going through a lot,' 'the crowd was off') make you less tenacious over time.
- 6
Reset the target and climb again
Once you clear a bar, set a new one — a fresh hour, a better ten minutes, a single sharper joke. The metric keeps rolling the ball up the hill so you never coast into deterioration.
Pro tip Fix your weakest skill first; when it's no longer the weak point, move to the next one.
In the wild
Williamson contrasts a powerlifter with a motivational speaker. The lifter's 300 kilos is 300 kilos on Tuesday and in Zambia — an objective pass/fail. If he lifted it in training but not on game day, he can diagnose it: sleep, hydration, mindset, nutrition. The speaker who forgets his lines can shrug it off as subjective and stayed-up-till-four excuses. The lesson is to manufacture the lifter's clarity inside a craft that doesn't hand it to you, so that failure points at a fixable input instead of a mood.
→ A subjective pursuit gains a hard scoreboard, which converts excuses into diagnosable, controllable variables.
Normand describes comics who never write, repeat the same jokes, and go on stage drunk, then say 'must be nice' about his success. His answer: he wrote for three hours that day, slaved over one joke for two years, and did three cities that weekend. He compares it to a heavy guy envying big arms while eating pasta — the curls are the price. By treating comedy like an athlete treats sport, the results stop being luck and become the visible output of measurable preparation.
→ Consistent, documented preparation produced a theater-headlining career while undisciplined peers plateaued.
Common mistakes
Hiding in the subjectivity
Treating a bad performance as unmeasurable ('the crowd was off,' 'I'm tweaking it') hands you an excuse a powerlifter never gets. The leeway feels kind but erodes tenacity.
Improvising the work instead of preparing it
Deciding to 'figure it out on stage' skips the writing and reps that are the actual craft. It is a shortcut dressed up as spontaneity.
Discipline with no goal attached
Being hard for its own sake rarely sticks — very few can do a Goggins. Tie every sacrifice to serving the craft or the metric, or it won't hold.
Is it for you?
Best for
Comedians, writers, speakers, founders and creators whose work has no built-in scoreboard.
Not ideal for
Work that already carries a hard, external metric of success and failure.
From the transcript
“you're gonna get what you put in ... yeah I wrote for three hours today I worked this out I've been slaving over this one…”
“if you are a power lifter that is 300 kilos it's always going to be 300 kilos ... so you have very objective metric of…”
“subjective things always will make you less tenacious I think because ... writing proves you're not a genius”
From the episode
How To Offend Everyone - Mark Normand - #562
Mark Normand