We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

All artists have to do that at a certain point. This shift that has to happen between the initial moment of creation and then the consideration of what has been created.

I should point out that I have a picture of Asbel Kiprop as the screensaver on my phone. Is that embarrassing?

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon.

An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That's one of the little-known facts.

The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.