"Now is the Most Important Time"
Jensen Huang, Cillian Murphy, Michael Jordan, Jerry Seinfeld and Oprah Winfrey on the power of being present.
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Today, we will talk about “being present” (a theme I picked up recently reading about Jensen Huang, Michael Jordan and Cillian Murphy).
Also this week:
Robert Downey Jr.’s ~$450m Role
Why is everyone betting so much?
…and them fire memes (including Bitcoin)
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote a profile on NVIDIA, the semiconductor giant that sells chips powering the AI revolution. I am a fan of solid introduction paragraphs and this article delivered a banger:
Jensen Huang likes to say he doesn’t have long-term plans. He doesn’t wear a watch, he says, because “now is the most important time."
After finishing the article, I posted this random tweet on X.
I actually had no idea that Jensen Huang didn’t wear a watch but sometimes you gotta throw some bait out there to get engagement (yes, my internet brain is sick).
Sure enough, there were hot takes: the response mix was 50% positive and along the lines of “what a great mindset” while the other 50% picked up on the randomness of the quote — it seems like there is more to his reply that was left out — and roasted me for sounding amazed at such a straightforward idea.
Here is a sampling of the replies:
“This is so shallow.”
“This is a next-level excuse to not wear a watch.”
“Too bad watches don’t tell you what time it currently is.”
“Billionaires can say what they want without looking corny, just like hot people.”
“When you’re rich and conventionally successful, everything thing you say seems deep to someone.”
“I can't wait to see ‘I don't wear a watch because now is the most important time’ in bold font from a LinkedIn Influencer with 100 followers.”
“Only billionaires can get away with these personality quirks and philosophical quips. In case you’re wondering, I don’t wear a watch because they cost money.”
My takeaway from these responses to “now is the most important time" is twofold.
First: Huang’s answer does sound generic and has been uttered by countless business gurus, pop psychology authors and your Hot Yoga instructor this morning.
Second: the 61-year old is an absolute beast of an entrepreneur and has spent 31 years building NVIDIA into what is now the 3rd largest company in the world ($2.2T). No matter how generic the quote might be, it is worth understanding his mindset.
In the same week that I posted Huang’s quote, I also read a profile of Cillian Murphy and listened to a podcast about Michael Jordan.
What do you think Huang, the Oppenheimer actor and the GOAT basketball player have in common?
They all believe in living in the “present” and focussing on “right now”.
Murphy — who just won the Academy Award for Best Actor — spoke to GQ about his acting mindset:
“I really am kind of, like, pathologically unsentimental about things,” he said. “I just move forward very quickly.”
The past wasn’t a problem because he couldn’t remember it—or wouldn’t romanticize it. The future wasn’t a concern because he didn’t like to plan too far out. And so: the one film on the horizon; the one song on the radio or the one painting on the wall. He was, in this way, an authentic presentist. Or, less abstractly, just a good listener, a good see-er, a good scene partner, a good person to have dinner with.
Michael Jordan was also unsentimental about his craft. In a recent episode of the Founders podcast, my buddy David Senra read a book written by Jordan’s trainer Tim Grover and shared this insight:
[Grover says that] if one thing separates Michael from every other player, it was his stunning ability to block out everything and everyone else. He was able to shut out everything except his mission.
[The ESPN documentary about Jordan] The Last Dance…talks about this. It says most people struggle to be present. Most people live in fear because we project the past into the future. Michael is a mystic. He was never anywhere else. His gift was that he was able to be completely present. The big downfall of otherwise gifted players is thinking about failure.
He would say, “why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet?”
And you see this even after they win the 6th and final championship in Chicago. They're having this big celebration. Michael is in his hotel room with a bunch of reporters. He's playing the piano. He's smoking a cigar. He's having a good time. And then somebody asked him, "Hey, you got another one in you."
And Jordan just stops. He goes, "It's the moment man, it's the moment. It's that Zen Buddhism shit [from Coach Phil Jackson]. Get in the moment and stay there. Just stay in the moment until next October, and then we'll know where the hell we are."
And so, this idea of controlling your mind, controlling your emotions, not panicking, not letting the emotions blur judgment and staying in the present moment is repeated throughout [Grover’s book].”
Here are two more related quotes I have saved in my Notes App.
Jerry Seinfeld said “We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.”
Oprah Winfrey said “Whatever has happened to you in your past has no power over this present moment, because life is now.”
Just like the responses to my tweet, I’m sure half of you are nodding in agreement while the other half is thinking “Dude, this is the most generic advice ever.”
I get it: “be present” or “now is the most important time” is not a new insight.
Buddha dropped this gem around 450 BC: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
The advice feels obvious in the same way that “get 8 hours of sleep” or “eat healthy and stay hydrated” feels obvious.
However, while the advice is obvious it is not always easy to implement.
I have tried the various offerings from the “be present” industrial complex. I did weekly yoga for a while. I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching” and Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”. I have been using Sam Harris’ Waking Up app for years. I did a bunch of Buddhist meditation practices.
I fully buy into the power of being present. In an increasingly digitally-distracted world, we need to calm the mind and focus on the task at hand. I know how important it is but I am a very distracted person who regularly ruminates on the past, worries about the future and thinks about what fresh new notifications are buzzing on the iPhone.
Some part of me probably wanted to post Huang’s quote as a reminder to stay in the now.
Marcus Aurelius — the Roman Emperor, stoic philosopher and OG Thinkboi — wrote this about being present:
Don’t panic before the picture of your entire life. Don’t dwell on all the troubles you’ve faced or have yet to face, but instead ask yourself as each trouble comes: What is so unbearable or unmanageable in this? Your reply will embarrass you. Then remind yourself that it’s not the future or the past that bears down on you, but only the present, always the present, which becomes an even smaller thing when isolated in this way and when the mind that cannot bear up under so slender an object is chastened.
Challenges, projects and tasks can only be completed by focusing on the “smaller thing” that can be done today and right now. This doesn’t mean you cannot plan for the long term. It means that any long-term plan will have small and achievable tasks that should be done with laser focus when they are meant to be done (on a related note: I checked Twitter/X at least 7x since I started writing this paragraph).
Everyone I mentioned — Huang, Murphy, MJ, Seinfeld, Oprah — built their careers by accomplishing “smaller things” one day at a time. To do so, it sounds like they really minimized how much they ruminated about the past or worried about the future. The more time spent on the task at hand, the more it compounds. Ruminating and worrying takes away time from that compounding.
Huang spoke at his alma-mater Stanford last week and the interviewer asked him about how he handles wild stock swings (including NVIDIA’s multiple 80% drawdowns). The answer gives more color around Huang’s quote that “now is the most important time” (bold mine):
When you drop 80% — don’t get me wrong — it’s a little embarrassing…you don’t want to get out of bed or leave your house. All of that is true.
But then you get back to doing your job. Wake up at the same time. Prioritize my day in the same way [as when the stock is doing well].
Then I go back to the core belief and go back to work. I go back to “what do I believe?”. You gotta always gut-check back to the core. What do you believe? What are the most important things? […]
Keep the company focussed on the core belief. Do you still believe in it? The stock price changed, but did anything else change? Did physics change? Did gravity change? Did all the things that we assumed that we believed that led to our decision stay the same?
Because if those things change, you’ve gotta change everything. But if none of those things change, you change nothing and keep going.
That’s how you do it.
I want to clarify that this “present”-ness isn’t some guarantor of happiness or a “good life” (it can certainly help with both). I’m focusing on the idea as a vehicle to help people achieve their chosen goals.
Whether you’re playing with your kids, planning for a vacation, crafting the dumbest meme humanly possible, writing a memo for work, practicing for the NBA Finals or building a $2T company, it is literally true that “now is the most important time” in accomplishing that goal.
So yeah, Huang’s quote is awesome and it is a reply I will now be using if anyone asks me why I’m not wearing a watch (the real reason: I’m too lazy to charge my Apple Watch every night).
ADDENDUM: Check out Huang’s Stanford chat where he dropped even more gems including:
“Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered.”
“One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations. People with very high expectations have very low resilience…Unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.”
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Links and Memes
Robert Downey Jr.’s ~$450m Role: The 57-year old icon just capped a multi-decade comeback by winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in Oppenheimer.
Many people forget that prior to 2008’s Iron Man, Downey Jr. had a very disappointing acting career. In the late-1980s, he was one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood and received a Best Actor nomination for his lead role in 1992’s Charlie Chaplin. He was only 27 years old but the next decade was brutal as he dealt with drug addiction, arrests and stints in California state prison. Total unfulfilled potential.
However, Downey Jr. went clean in 2003 and has stayed sober for over two decades. Slowly, he re-built his acting career.
Around the same time, Marvel — which was still a public company — started turning its bounty of comic book IP into films but only as a licensee. In 1996, Marvel was coming off of bankruptcy and had sold the film rights to its best characters including Spider-Man (to Sony) as well as X-Men and Fantastic 4 (to Fox).
Between 2000-2007, films based on those characters grossed nearly $4B at the box office (but Marvel’s take was only 2-4%). While Downey Jr. resuscitated his career, Marvel bet everything to produce its own content. In 2005, they signed an 8-year/$525m financing deal with Merrill Lynch to create films featuring Marvel's remaining "B-list" characters using the IP as collateral for Merrill (Ant-Man, The Avengers, Black Panther, Captain America, Cloak & Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, Power Pack, Shang-Chi).
Marvel had plans for a full Avengers film, but needed a first win. They wanted to feature a character that had never been in a live-action film, and ultimately chose Iron Man. However, they couldn't use Merrill’s cash to fund it due to New Line Cinema owning the rights. These only reverted back after the Merrill deal was finalized.
In 2006, Downey Jr. caught a break with the comedy The Shaggy Dog. Though the film kinda sucked, Disney still agreed to insure him. For years, film studios refused to work with Downey Jr. because of his destructive behavior, making it nearly impossible to secure insurance for his films. This proved to be a turning point for his career.
A year later, Marvel went all in to create its own Iron Man film. When reading press coverage of the time, it is obvious that Iron Man was a secondary character (it’s actually crazy how the Marvel Cinematic Universe — aka MCU — made hay out of Hawkeye and Black Widow, who are both such mid characters). Either way, Marvel agreed on a budget of $140m (for reference: their operating cash flow in 2006 was $158m).
Tony Stark was not a traditional muscle-bound superhero and needed a specific type of actor to convey both swagger and vulnerability. Downey Jr. had acting chops but wasn't an action lead.
Director Jon Favreau wanted him and producer Kevin Feige backed it, calling the decision the "biggest risk" that the MCU ever took. Crucially, Downey Jr. bet on himself: he took a low base ($500k) in exchange for a percentage of the box office.
He ended up starring in 9 films as Tony Stark and there was a lot of contractual maneuvering involved as the MCU got bigger and bigger, per Comic Book Resources (CBR):
Iron Man (2008): It was a smash hit and took in $585m globally. Downey Jr. was perfect in the role and made $2m with backend points (side note: Downey Jr. also starred in Tropic Thunder in 2008; in the hilarious comedy, he plays a method actor who does a surgical procedure to become “black” to take on a role as a GI in Vietnam…Downey Jr. was nominated by the Academy for an Best Supporting Actor and honestly should have won).
Iron Man 2 (2010): Marvel's ability to make its own smash film attracted a major fish: Disney bought the company for $4B in August 2009 and Iron Man 2 was released a few months later. With the success of the first film, Downey Jr. negotiated himself a huge pay raise: $10m base + backend. The film earned $623m at the box office and Downey Jr's total haul was ~$12m.
The Avengers (2012): This film is when Downey Jr.'s pay started getting absurd. Marvel had released films for Hulk, Thor and Captain America in the lead-up to this film. The ensemble project made $1.5B. Downey Jr's bet on himself paid off: he made $50m ($10m base + $40m backend).
Iron Man 3 (2013): The 3rd Iron Man film was the most lucrative. It grossed $1.2B and Downey Jr. made another $50m ($10m base + $40m backend). Downey Jr had so much negotiating leverage that Disney never made another Iron Man film and reduced his screen time in future ensemble films.
Avengers 2 (2015): The film made $1.4B and Downey Jr. notched $60m. In the lead-up to its release, Marvel made a new Thor and Captain America flick as well as Guardians of the Galaxy. By raising the star of the other actors, Marvel was hoping to gain back some negotiating leverage with Downey Jr.
Captain America: Civil War (2016): Prior to this film, Chris Evans (Captain America) said he might quit MCU to pursue a directing career. The threat of losing a leading man put Downey Jr. back in driver seat. Civil War made $1.2B and — even in a reduced role — he made $64m ($50m + $14m).
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): This was the first Spidey flick that Sony co-produced with Disney. To do it right, the studio brought in Iron Man for a cameo. While Downey Jr's screen time commitment was low, it was pricey: he made ~$1m per minute of screen time ($10m total). I repeat, $10m for 10 minutes!!!!!
Infinity War (2018) + End Game (2019): The final two Avengers were the 19th and 22nd MCU films. The finale was more than a decade in the making. Infinity Wars made $2B and End Game made $2.8B. Downey Jr's total haul from these films was $75m and $130m, respectively!
Across 9 films, Robert Downey Jr. has earned an estimated $453m from playing Iron Man. For Marvel, he has been worth every penny. Without Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, there is no Disney deal. There's no MCU. And there aren't 33 MCU films that earned $30B+. What a comeback.
Why is everyone betting so much? Travis Kling runs a crypto hedge fund and wrote a very interesting piece titled “Financial Nihilism”. In the past few years, there has been a clear uptick in retail stock participation, online gambling, sports betting and all manner of crypto shenanigans (DeFi, NFTs and now MemeCoins).
Kling writes on the phenomenon including this blurb:
There is a palpable component of financial nihilism here – the idea that cost of living is strangling most Americans; that upward mobility opportunity is out of reach for increasingly more people; that median home prices divided by median income is at a completely untenable level. All of that is true, so you need to really swing for the fences.
Why not put $500 into a memecoin that could 50x, knowing that you could likely lose most or all of it? It’s not like the $500 is enough to make any difference anyways. Neither is $1k or $5k.
That mindset, which is becoming pervasive in America, is financial nihilism. This is the zeitgeist for young Americans, you’re naïve to think otherwise. And it’s a huge driver of shitcoining.
***
And some other baller links:
MrBeast warped YouTube in his image. The super-creator cracked the algorithm but now the video platform is re-prioritizing more authentic videos (read: lower production value) and MrBeast is ahead of that curve, too. (Polygon)
"The first AI software engineer": Cognition Labs just announced a $21m Series A funding round and launched Devin, an impressive software tool that allows users to make complex software using natural language. Watch here to see Devin: 1) learn how to use unfamiliar technologies; 2) build and deploy apps end to end; and 3) autonomously find and fix bugs in codebases.
My uneducated guess is that tools like this will make software engineers who learn to use them much more productive. So much of coding is maintaining and fixing existing code, which is probably easier to do with humans that have full context (augmented by these tools).Rivian’s Tesla Moment: The EV maker — which Amazon has a 17% stake in — released an affordable SUV priced at $45k, a very important price point to reach volume. Rivian still loses money on each car sold but the gross loss has declined by $81k per vehicle but it really needs this new car to sell to turn a profit…similar to how Tesla’s Model 3 was a key turning point for the carmaker. (Car Dealership Guy)
…and them fire X/Twitter posts:
The wildest meme frenzy last week involved Kate Middleton and the British Royal Family. Quick recap: Kate Middleton has made very few public appearances since the start of the year and it has led to wild speculation. Is there beef with King Charles? Is she having health issues? Did she get a Brazilian Butt Lift (which takes weeks to recover from)? Is Prince William having an affair?
Instead of addressing the rumors straight on, the Royal Family has been randomly dripping things out. One of these drips was a photo that Kate posted on Instagram to show that everything was cool. People were skeptical of the image because it had major Photoshop vibes. A reporter from the Daily Mirror did solid amateur sleuthing and showed Kate’s face was pasted in from a previous Vogue magazine cover.
Middleton apologized for the fake but didn’t really explain anything else…which only deepened the mystery. I tried sharing a tasteful joke about it (see below). But my gag broke out of business Twitter and made its way into the corner of the app full of Kate Middleton fans…which led to hilarious quote re-posts talking about the “power of #TheKateEffect” and how she could “move markets”.
Anyways, if you’re Prince Harry or Prince William and your reading this, hit me up for some off-the-record banter.
