💡Want to be the Best? Study History

I landed in Las Vegas on a scorching summer afternoon. I snagged an ashy gray 4x4 Ford-F150 for off roading and began my drive to Barstow, California. Almost 200 miles of road through the Mojave Desert stretched before me. Leaning back in my seat and gripping the sizzling steering wheel with one hand, I opened How to Take Over the World by Ben Wilson and began listening to his profile on J. Robert Oppenheimer, Father of the Atomic Bomb. Copper colored mountains lined the horizon as I journeyed deep into the Mojave Desert mirroring Oppenheimer’s own desert experience.

It’s quiet driving through the Mojave Desert. The ambient droning of the car is met by the ticking sound of a clock counting down as Ben describes Oppenheimer racing to build the first atomic bomb. The weaves narratives of Oppenheimer’s journey learning from Bohr, Planck, and Hindu scripture to assist him on the Manhattan project. 

Ben always says when you begin studying the lives of great people, you notice something interesting: They are all intensely interested in the lives of great people who came before them. Napoleon studied Charlemagne, Charlemagne studied Caesar, and Caesar studied Alexander the Great. Each leader looked into the past to build their future. 

With nearly 100 episodes worth of content covering historical figures from Walt Disney to Joan of Arc to Fredrick Douglass. Each leader brings their unique perspective and methods to add to your mental arsenal of personal development.

Here are 3 lessons I’ve gathered from Ben Wilson’s How to Take Over the World podcast so far. 

(Links to specific episodes in the headings)

• Lesson 1: Seize & Maintain Initiative

• Lesson 2: You will hit Rock Bottom

• Lesson 3: Density of Talent

Lesson 1: Seize & Maintain Initiative

“I engage. Then figure out what to do.” - Napoleon

In the first episode of the podcast, Ben does a profile on Napoleon and his strategy to fight 80+ wars outnumbered and lose only 7. Success came from forming a plan as the battle progressed, not sticking to a rigid plan. Other generals came prepared with a battle strategy while Napoleon knew the goal, he figured out how to get the ball down the field as the game continued. 

To seize and maintain the initiative is to keep yourself lean and adaptable to your environment. 

During my first year in college, I was a summer intern in a smart magnetic materials lab. The professor gave me the option of joining an existing project or taking up a new project. I signed up for the new project for the same reason I joined the lab: it was something I knew nothing about. 

My client was the university hospital who wanted to improve a medical procedure with a 1-month deadline to develop a minimally viable product. I hadn’t even taken basic engineering classes yet. For 1 week, I flailed around like a fish with no purpose, but I figured out a game plan. I created daily and weekly goals to teach me more about using magnetic materials and the problem. For 3 weeks, I crafted designs, mixed solutions, and orchestrated experiments. Each experiment failed until the last one, 2 days before the deadline. I gathered my research and presented it to the professor. She was so impressed that she gave free reign on other projects and put in the paperwork to start patent research for the design. 

I didn’t start with a plan, but instead made it up as I went. I knew my goal and I created daily and weekly goals to achieve along the way from defining the problem to conducting experiments. 

Like water flowing through a rocky creek, the best plans are the ones that adapt to the obstacles in their path.  

Lesson 2: You will hit Rock Bottom

“It is good to have a failure while you're young because it teaches you so much. For one thing, it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you've lived through the worst, you're never quite as vulnerable afterward.” – Walt Disney

On September 5, 1927, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit debuted in a series of animated shorts called Trolley Troubles. Walt Disney and his team of animators created Oswald in their longshot to earn money for Disney animation studio. Walt needed more money and decided to ask his business partner at Universal Studios, Charles Mintz, for more money. Mintz built the distribution channels to get Oswald to people and owned the IP. In Mintz’s eyes, he got Oswald in front of people, Walt’s animators did all the work, and Walt was an unnecessary middleman. Mintz negotiated a deal to cut Walt out of future Oswald animations and take animators from Disney and bring them to Universal Studios. Within 1 day, Walt lost everything: Oswald, his animators, and his money.

But Walt refused to let failure define him and began to sketch a story of a mouse building a plane to impress a lady mouse. He named the mouse Mickey. Walt lost everything in one night and bounced back stronger.

When I was a summer intern at the smart magnetic materials lab during college, I chose my own project. But I knew none of the science & engineering behind it. Even though I was in charge of the project and its direction, I hid in the shadows of PhD and postdoc students hoping they’d do some of the work. My confidence level in my technical skills was lower than a barbel made for ants. To say I made zero progress implies I had a starting point. By the end of Friday, I wasted a week. Panic flooded my veins, my hands trembling. I thought I was drowning.

Until I get a ping on my phone. 

My coworker texted me about my work over the week. And the message oozed disappointment. Each letter hammered a nail in a coffin. The text left a bitter taste in my mouth. I hated it. And I never want to feel it again. Ever. Like seismic stress crushing rock to create diamonds, I turned the disappointment into determination. 

I created a game plan with weekly and daily goals. Each day was a step forward. No matter what. I created a project journal and recorded every step and misstep. And I succeeded in my project and destroyed my professor’s expectations.

Like Walt Disney, don’t let failure smother your spirit, but instead fuel it.  

Lesson 3: Density of Talent

“Great people work best surrounded by other exceptional people.”– Ben Wilson, How to Take Over the World. 

Within 3 years, Robert Oppenheimer led a team to build the world’s first atomic weapon. The success was due charismatic and visionary leadership from Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves. Their leadership highlights the superhub of talent at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer created a location where world class scientists and engineers like Feynman, Fermi, Bohr, Teller, Von Neuman, and others would dedicate intense focus for a short time. As Ben describes in his podcast, the talent rubbed shoulders with talent.

Putting exceptional people around exceptional people with good leadership creates a supercluster of talent, expertise, and innovation. 

My work involves brushing shoulders with some of the most talented people I’ve met. Before I was hired, we helped push the frontier on “forever chemical” mitigation and developed the decontamination procedure for N-95 masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

I’m driving to the Mojave Desert to continue a 3-month experiment. Under tents and mobile homes, engineers, technicians, and leaders gather to solve problems and experiment. The first two months were overheating disasters in the 100-degree desert heat. I headed into the 3rd month with higher hopes. From my co-workers, I contracted the mindset that it’s not a matter of whether a problem will be solved, but when. 

With the right leadership, any no problem is insurmountable. 

Leaders in History learned from those before them. 

Similar to Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon, How to Take Over the World asks you who’s your hero, urges you to study their ideas, methods, and lives, and apply them. The greats learn from the greats before them. This podcast urged me to create my own mental bank of stories and methods.

As I drive through the Mojave Desert accompanied by miles of amber colored sand and Oppenheimer’s story, it’s easy to forget the centuries of work put into everything around us. From the vehicle you’re driving and its components to the road paving a safe route through the hottest place on earth. Eons of stories of people who helped set modern life as we know it, and we only hear a few of their stories. 

“How to Take Over the World” by Ben Wilson has opened my eyes to the stories of the people who made it, not the names we know, but the ones we hear in passing. 

The animators who helped Walt Disney create his studio, the unknown scientists who worked alongside the famous during the Manhattan projects, and the generals whom Napoleon consulted for advice. These are stories we may never hear yet their impact on forming the future is just as important. 

As author George Eliot says,