#161 What I Learned from Paul Rabil
What I learned from reading "The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward“ by Paul Rabil.
Today’s Chapter is based on the book “The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward“ by Paul Rabil.
Paul Rabil is an American sports executive, retired professional lacrosse player, and entrepreneur, widely nicknamed “the LeBron of lacrosse” for his dominance in the sport. He starred at Johns Hopkins University, became a multi-time MVP and champion professionally, then co-founded the Premier Lacrosse League in 2018 and now serves in a leadership role growing the league and the sport globally.
Here’s what I learned:
Consistency
“The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
— Charlie Munger
A core reason for Paul Rabil’s success in becoming the greatest lacrosse player of all time is the simple but brutal truth that mastery is built through one small action at a time. Tony Seaman, a lacrosse coaching legend once addressed a room of aspiring young players with a winning formula for earning a full Division I scholarship. He said, “There’s one thing you have to do. From this day forward, through your senior year of high school,” Seaman told us, “you have to shoot a hundred shots a day. That’s it. You shoot a hundred shots a day from now through your senior year of high school, I guarantee you will get a full scholarship to the Division 1 college of your choice.”
But there’s a catch, Seaman mentions that “You can’t miss a day. Not a holiday. You can’t miss when it’s pouring down rain. You can’t miss because you had a game the night before—or the day of. You can’t miss a day because you’re on vacation. And if you can’t find a goal, make one up. You have to find a way.” The lesson from Seaman is clear. Consistency is the key to success. This mindset separates those who dream from those who deliver. Missing one day may feel inconsequential, but it breaks the rhythm and erodes the identity of someone who shows up no matter what. Rabil’s own career, and the careers of countless champions he studies, prove that sustained daily effort is the foundation of extraordinary results. Whether you are writing code, building a business, or refining a craft, the discipline of never skipping a day creates momentum that eventually becomes unstoppable.
“It doesn’t matter how ambitious or speculative the goal, you get there by taking one small step after one small step. Thirty minutes a day. One hundred shots on net, two hundred words on the page, three hundred push-ups, conditioning. Whatever reps are in your sport, in your business, in your chosen field, you do them. One after another until you hit the magic number. And there is only one caveat: You can’t miss a day.”
— Paul Rabil
As a matter of fact, Rabil understands that his success comes from compounding. He borrows this term from Warren Buffett when he mentions that his “life has been a product of compound interest.” He believes that it is simple math: experts refers to the fact that often thousands of hours of practice are required for mastery and you can only get there little by little. Rabil writes, “Work hard. Take care of your body—nutrition, sleep, training, recovery, and so forth. Pay attention to the details—the little things that will add up to make a big difference. Show up every day—whether it’s a Sunday game day, a Wednesday practice day, or a Tuesday in the offseason. Fall in love with what you do.”
Furthermore, Rabil argues that true success never comes suddenly but is a lagging indicator of a thousand of invisible choices we have made without others knowing. It is the accumulation of hours of practice. Rabil emphasizes that that the difference between good and great often lies in the details that others deem irrelevant. It is easy to work hard when the stadium is packed or when the boss is watching, but the champion’s character is forged in solitude. As Coach Pietramala once told him, “character is what you do when nobody is watching.” The ability to be consistent in making the “grunt work” is primordial. In fact, Rabil mentions that this obsession with detail provides a competitive advantage in a world where most people are looking for shortcuts. Rabil notes that many people are talented, but few are willing to endure the boredom of consistency. The little things are the mathematical variables that, when compounded over time, create the massive separation between the elite and the average.
“The professional knows that the work doesn’t stop with success. They know that success is a by-product of the work. So they keep doing the work. They don’t miss a day.”
— Paul Rabil
This reminds me of what we have learned from Michael Jordan who mentioned that people rarely pay attention to the effort that it took for people successful. Success comes from all the little efforts that were made to improve one step at the time, and people tend to forget that. When he moved to the world of business, he realised that great companies have a lot in common with basketball teams. Through reverse engineering, he figured out that players who practice hard when no one is paying attention are the ones that will play well when everyone is watching. He mentions, “They don’t understand the foundation I had to create to support everything that came afterward. They don’t know about lifting weights at 7 A.M., practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle in a bucket of ice, or hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don’t know anything about those things.”
Furthermore, the most challenging thing about keeping a good work ethic is to do it for a long period of time. As Jordan would say, “commitment cannot be compromised by rewards.” In fact, while it is challenging to not give up and to persist with our good habits and efforts when things go wrong, it is even more mentally difficult to be consistent once we have a taste of success. Jordan writes, “Excellence isn’t a one-week or one-year ideal. It’s a constant. There will be days when you don’t feel on top of your game, meetings in which you aren’t at your best, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises.”
In Jordan’s opinion, this sense of commitment can be seen with just about anyone achieving at a high level; he gives the example of Tiger Woods who was back in the gym by 6:30 to work out the morning after he beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005.
Focus
“The thing you do obsessively between age 13 and 18, that’s the thing you have the most chance of being world class at.”
— Bill Gates
The second lesson we can learn from Paul Rabil’s success is the ability to “putting on your blinkers”, a metaphor he uses to encourage us to block out everything that does not serve the mission you are trying to achieve. As he explains, “In the pursuit of becoming a champion, there exists a profound yet often overlooked skill: the ability to give your undivided attention. We live in an age of constant distraction, making focus a rare gem—one that will separate you from the ordinary.”
In fact, in an age of infinite distraction, the ability to focus is a superpower. We are constantly bombarded with social media notifications, opinions and distractions, but we need to ignore the noise and focus on what we can control: practice, practice, practice. And yet, even in terms of practices, Rabil believes in being focused in what we calls deliberate practice. It is not enough to simply show up and go through the motions. Many people spend hours in the gym or the office without actually improving because they are not mentally engaged. They are present in body but absent in spirit. Rabil distinguishes between “practice” and “smart practice.” Smart practice involves a level of intensity and specificity that mimics the pressure of the actual game. It also requires stripping away the ego and working on the things we are bad at, rather than just showing off the things we are good at. A perfect example of someone who practices smartly is Stephen Curry.
“Watch a Steph Curry shooting workout. After he’s done in the paint, he doesn’t set up beside a rack of basketballs and shoot from one spot on the floor. No. He runs off a pick, catches a pass, and shoots. He dribbles, drives, passes, runs to the corner, gets the ball back, and shoots. He dribbles between the legs, around the back, head fake, step back, and shoots. This wasn’t always the way he practiced, Steph told me. “I practice smart now,” he said. “I’m not just in the gym just to be in there. There’s a particular approach and mentality when I’m in the gym that I have to have every time. And that’s a game speed mentality. Every hour, every minute I’m on the floor, I approach practice with that game speed mentality.””
— Paul Rabil
Furthermore, Rabils mentions the importance of narrowing our focus on factors in which we can influence. He recounts the lessons from John Wooden who learned “at a young age, he recognized the importance of distinguishing between two categories: “things over which I had no control” and “things over which I had some control.” On the latter category, Wooden devoted immense intensity and effort. He dedicated himself to improving his conditioning, ball handling, and shooting skills.”
Finally, Rabil mentions that the premise of focus also means saying “no”. He mentions that the “MIT Sloane’s Neurological Science Department demonstrated that the human brain is incapable of focusing on two things at once. Multitasking is a myth. Walking and chewing gum isn’t in the same stratosphere as having the desire to become a champion in sport and in business.” He also cites the wisdom of Jony Ive and Steve Jobs to highlight that focus is fundamentally an act of exclusion.
““What focus means,” Ive says, “is saying no to something that you—with every bone in your body—think is a phenomenal idea, and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.” It’s about sacrifice. When Ive first started working at Apple, Steve Jobs told him, “Jony, you have to understand: there are measures of focus, and one of them is how often you say no.” Routinely, Jobs would ask, “Jony, how many things have you said no to today?” This kind of focus, Ive admits, “takes so much effort . . . But all of the good things we’ve done have required that sort of focus.””
— Paul Rabil
This reminds me of what we have previously learned from Harvey Firestone, who was also keen on focusing on what was important in business: thinking. As a matter of fact, he explains that it is quite difficult in business to have some time to yourself to think as numerous things come up every day that will need your attention. However, Firestone mentions that it is important to set aside some time to think as thinking is primordial in making good decisions and to run a successful business in the long run. He provides the example of Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Corporation. While Ford is known for making business decisions quickly, but in reality, “He reaches his decisions slowly and alone; he does not jump at anything, and so, when the time comes for execution, everything moves with marvelous rapidity because everything has been previously thought through and planned.“
As a matter of fact, Ford was a master of delegating executive duties to others and made sure to have enough time on his own to think, and to plan and to watch. He would make sure to never assign any executive duties to himself and to have no social obligations. Hence the importance of being able to say no. It is often mentioned that the difference between average results and exceptional results is what you avoid. In fact, there is an exact amount of hours per week and saying yes consumes time while saying no saves time. The famous Daniel Kahneman has a rule that he never says yes on the phone and will only reply later by email after thinking about it, which he rarely does. By saying no, you are able to save more time to spend thinking or to focus on better opportunities.
“He has had the time to do this thinking and planning because he has used his time himself instead of permitting others to use it for him. And he is certain that plans will be executed for him, because he knows how to let men go when they grow too rich and lazy to execute.”
— Harvey Firestone
Make Mistakes
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
— Michael Jordan
Fear of failure is a perhaps one of the greatest inhibitor of human potential. We are often terrified of looking stupid, of wasting time, or of confirming our own insecurities. We tend to view failure as a verdict on our worth. If we try and fail, we tell ourselves that we are failures. Paul Rabil challenges this narrative aggressively. Throughout his journey, he learned that failure is not the opposite of success but a necessary ingredient of it. He once said, “The path to success, the path you are on—it’s going to be riddled with failures and rejections and mistakes and losses and bad games and bad seasons. All the greats—athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, all of them—have their own long list of failures.”
In fact, he argues that a champion does not avoid failure, but embraces it. Champions use failures as data as they are valuable feedbacks that can be used to improve. Rabil points to the Stoic philosophy and the mindset of elite coaches to illustrate that dwelling on a mistake is actually more damaging than the mistake itself. If you are stuck thinking about the error you made ten seconds ago, you are not present for the opportunity happening right now.
“If we can’t admit to our mistake, we can’t learn. If we can’t learn, we can’t forget. And if we can’t forget, we can’t make the next best play.”
— Paul Rabil
This concept of the “next best play” is crucial. It acknowledges that the past cannot be changed. You cannot un-throw an interception or un-say a regretful comment. However, you have the power to control what happens next. This requires a level of emotional detachment that allows high performers to separate the fruit of their effort from the outcome. They do not take a loss personally but rather professionally. Rabil explains, “A dividing line between success and failure is simply the ability to bounce back quickly. To accept that failure is part of this process. And never mope just because you messed up, never take a week off. Because it’s really two.”
Rabil illustrates this with the concept of the “pendulum.” Life moves in swings. Highs are followed by lows, and lows are followed by highs. The mistake many people make is believing that the low point is permanent. They stop swinging. They retreat. But the champion understands the physics of success: the downward swing provides the kinetic energy necessary to rise again. Rabil writes, “When you are at an extreme—when things are going well or unwell—remind yourself that the swing in the other direction is just a matter of time. That you can’t have the swing up without the swing down. And you can’t swing back up without experiencing the pain of the downswing. Just commit to the experience and trust that you’ll come around.”
This perspective transforms how we should view adversity. Rabil shares stories from legends like Bill Belichick and Michael Jordan, noting that their resumes are filled with important losses along with their success. Yet, they are defined by their wins because they refused to let the losses define them. They understood that losing is simply a by-product of being in the arena. As Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
“This is both a philosophical point and simple math: To win a lot, you have to risk losing a lot. If you stick around, those losses are going to add up—that can’t scare or scar you. Losing is a by-product of being good enough and not quitting.”
— Paul Rabil
This reminds me of Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary manager of Manchester United, whose family motto is “Dulcius ex asperis”, meaning “Sweeter after difficulties”. A saying that marked his 39 years in football management. As a matter of fact, Ferguson mentions that the recovery after losses is an important part of Manchester United’s success.
The famous Class of ‘92, a group of young players that would end up bringing major success to the Club such as David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, came up after a series of defeats. Notably, Ferguson mentions that “I lost three FA Cup finals, to Everton, Arsenal and Chelsea. I lost League Cup finals to Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa and Liverpool. And two European Cup finals to Barcelona. (…) When we lost the FA Cup final to Everton in 1995 I said: ‘That’s it, I’m making changes here.’ And we made them.“
Ferguson mentions that after a loss, his first thought was always to “think quickly about what you should be doing.” Rather than being upset about the defeat, his mind would go straight into thinking about improvement and recovery.
“Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality. Even in your lowest periods you are showing strength. There was a great saying: It’s just another day in the history of Manchester United. In other words fighting back was part of our existence. If you are lackadaisical about defeats you can be sure there will be more to come.”
— Alex Ferguson
Similarly, Ferguson realised that this ability to face adversity can also applied in finding potential players for Manchester United. He explains that while he was examining successful people, he realised that “a modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance.” In fact, he explains that many of his greatest players excelled partly due to their working-class background.
This is extremely helpful, especially for Manchester United players who are playing in front of fans with high demands and with short patience span. As a matter of fact, the main thing Ferguson looks for in players is temperance. He would ask himself the following “Would they grow or shrink in a United shirt?”
Ferguson mentions that he has coached only one player who was totally unaffected by his mistakes, and that was David Beckham:
“You had to admire that. In a way it was a great quality. No matter how many mistakes he would make (in my eyes, not his), he would always want the ball. His confidence never suffered. Otherwise, dips of that kind are innate to all footballers, and plenty of managers. Public scrutiny penetrates the body armour, whether from the public, press or fans.”
— Alex Ferguson on David Beckham
Generally, even the best players can lose confidence. And, it is the manager’s responsibility to create an environment where players can thrive under external pressure and through success and adversity. Ferguson believes in building a culture around the training ground so that players can fall back on in cases of adversity.
Ferguson explains that “What we did at all times, in success and adversity, was make sure the training ground was sacrosanct. The work there, the concentration, and the standards we maintained never dropped. Eventually that consistency of effort will show itself on a Saturday.”
More importantly, Ferguson had the tendency to treat his players like he would treat his family. No matter their performance, he would always have their back. Even after terrible losses, while he could criticise the performance of the team in general, he would never criticise a specific individual after the game to the media. As Warren Buffett once said, “Criticise by Category — Praise by name.”
“At my end of it, I had a formula for defeat. After saying my bit in the dressing room, always, before going through that door to face the press, to face the television, to speak to the other manager, I said to myself, ‘Forget it. The game’s gone.’ I always did that. Whenever people came to my room at the ground after a game, I always made sure there was a good atmosphere. There was no gloom, no frostiness. No blaming the referee.”
— Alex Ferguson
Furthermore, Ferguson explains that after a defeat his feeling was always: “I don’t like this, but we’ll have to meet the challenge. We’ll have to step up a mark.” In fact, he enjoyed challenge and took defeats as a motivation to improve as a team.
He mentions that “Every time those moments poked us in the eye, we accepted the invitation to regroup and advance again. Those were motivating passages. They forced me on. I’ll go further: I can’t be sure that without those provocations I would have enjoyed the job so much.”
Beyond the Book
Read "Tiny Gains. Massive Results." by Farnam Street
Read "The Focus to Say No" by Farnam Street
Watch ""One word that accounted for Bill Gates' and my success: Focus" — Warren Buffett" on YouTube
If you are interested in having conversations with the eminent dead, consider trying my AI Chatbox prompted with highlights from over 100+ biographies I have read. Try it here.
If you enjoy reading my newsletter, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll be able to keep this newsletter going! Here’s what you get when you upgrade:
Voting on polls: you’ll get to vote on who I should write about next.
Requesting biographies: you can request a biography for me to read and write about next.
Supporting my next book purchase: all payments received will be used to purchase a new biography.