The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well

254 Pages·2013·3.34 MB·English

by  Camille Sweeney

A PLUME BOOK
THE ART OF DOING
CAMILLE SWEENEY has known she wanted to be a writer since she was five years
old. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and other publications.
As a project editor for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, she worked on
numerous special issues and features and won a New York Times Publishers
Award. She is a MacDowell Arts Colony Fellow and in her spare time writes
fiction.
JOSH GOSFIELD has worked on farms and as a carpenter and cartoonist. He was the
art director of New York Magazine. He has won numerous awards for
illustrations and photographs he produced for major magazines, record
companies and book publishers. He has had several one-man shows of paintings
in New York and Los Angeles and has art directed music videos and written and
directed short films. For his latest fine-art project, GIGI, the Black Flower,
Gosfield was both author and creator of a critically acclaimed, multi-media
archive of a fictional celebrity.

PLUME
Published by Penguin Group
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100020, China Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First
published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, February 2013
Copyright © Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, 2013
All rights reserved.
Excerpt from “Express Yourself,” words and music by Charles W. Wright. Copyright © 1970 (Renewed)
Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI) and Music Power (BMI). All rights administered by Warner-
Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Photograph credits appear here.
Sweeney, Camille.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADALIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
The art of doing : how superachievers do what they do and how they do it so well / Camille Sweeney and
Josh Gosfield.
p. cm.
“A Plume book.”
ISBN 978-0-452-29817-0 (pbk).
1. Success—Case studies. 2. Success in business—Case studies. 3. Achievement motivation—Case studies.
4. Successful people—Case studies. I. Gosfield, Josh. II. Title.
BF637.S8S837 2013
650.1—dc23 2012032177
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for
changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not
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To Roxie
Contents
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Who’s Who in The Art of Doing
Epigraph
Authors’ Note: How This Book Came to Be
Introduction: What Superachievers Have in Common
Chapter 1: How to Act
LAURA LINNEY
How the daughter of a playwright became one of the most respected actors on TV, stage and
screen by learning to love the story.
Chapter 2: How to Be a Diva
ANNA NETREBKO
How a Russian soprano from a provincial town went from mopping floors to being an opera
diva and an international superstar.
Chapter 3: How to Be a Dog Whisperer
CESAR MILLAN
How a boy who loved the dogs on his grandfather’s farm in Mexico became known to
hundreds of millions around the world as the Dog Whisperer.
Chapter 4: How to Be a Game Show Champion
KEN JENNINGS
How a young boy’s obsession with the game show Jeopardy! not only led him to become the
all-time winningest game show champion but taught him that he could change his life and do
something that he loved every day.
Chapter 5: How to Be a Major Leaguer
YOGI BERRA
How an Italian-American kid from an immigrant neighborhood in St. Louis creatively
mangled the English language while winning more World Series titles than any other
baseball player in history.
Chapter 6: How to Be a Tennis Champion
MARTINA NAVRATILOVA
How a tennis player totally revamped every aspect of her game in her quest to go from good
to great.
Chapter 7: How to Be Funny (on TV)
ALEC BALDWIN AND ROBERT CARLOCK
How an actor and a writer work together like a “singer and a songwriter” to help create
one of the funniest shows on TV.
Chapter 8: How to Be the Most Fabulous You
SIMON DOONAN
How an English lad parlayed his notoriety as the world’s most famous window dresser into a
role as a cultural critic who dispenses his advice to the masses on finding their most
fabulous selves.
Chapter 9: How to Build a Beautiful Baseball Park
JOSEPH SPEAR
How an architect who stumbled into sports architecture revolutionized the design of Major
League Baseball parks.
Chapter 10: How to Create a Great Company Culture
TONY HSIEH
How a onetime college pizza server turned Zappos online shoe store into a $1 billion
business where employees love to come to work.
Chapter 11: How to Create a Mind-Bending Crossword Puzzle
WILL SHORTZ
How a boy who loved puzzles came to be the New York Times crossword puzzle editor,
Puzzle Master on NPR’s Weekend Edition, author of a hundred bestselling puzzle books and
the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary.
Chapter 12: How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs
MARK FRAUENFELDER
How a tech head who quit his job to publish a zine about his off-the-wall interests founded
one of the world’s most popular blogs.
Chapter 13: How to Cultivate an Exceptional Wine
RANDALL GRAHM
How a visionary vintner plans to do something with an American wine that has never been
done before.
Chapter 14: How to Fight for Justice
CONSTANCE RICE
How a civil rights lawyer who won case after case had to learn to change herself before she
could change Los Angeles.
Chapter 15: How to Find Extraterrestrial Life
JILL TARTER
How a girl who used to look up at the stars at night came to run the world’s preeminent
institute dedicated to answering the ultimate question: “Is anyone out there?”
Chapter 16: How to Find Love Online
OKCUPID FOUNDERS
How four math nerds from Harvard and their algorithm created one of the hippest online
dating sites by making their matches more simpatico.
Chapter 17: How to Get the Funk
GEORGE CLINTON
How a hairstylist who never played a musical instrument became one of the funkiest people
on the planet.
Chapter 18: How to Get the Inside Scoop
BARRY LEVINE
How the hard-driving news director of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer keeps the
enquiring minds of the celebrity-starved masses entertained.
Chapter 19: How to Grow Killer Weed
ED ROSENTHAL
How a boy from the Bronx became the “Guru of Ganja.”
Chapter 20: How to Hunt Big Game
CHAD SCHEARER
How a fifth-generation hunter who goes hunting with his wife and young boys bags a bull by
“playing the wind” and “taking the temperature of the animal.”
Chapter 21: How to Inspire a Student
ERIN GRUWELL
How an idealistic teacher inspired her class of remedial students to write a bestselling book
and become citizens of the world.
Chapter 22: How to Live Life on the High Wire
PHILIPPE PETIT
How a French teenager got the idea to walk across the void between the 110-story World
Trade Center towers—and did it!
Chapter 23: How to Live Life on the Road
RAY BENSON
How the six-foot-seven front man of the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel has lived
the good life on the road for over 40 years, 10,000 gigs and 3,000,000 miles.
Chapter 24: How to Make Erotica That Turns Women On
CANDIDA ROYALLE
How a bankable porn star turned her back on the business to become the trailblazing
founder of the first adult film company devoted to women’s erotica.
Chapter 25: How to Make It as a Rock Band in the Digital Era
OK GO
How a rock band posted a video online that became the first intentionally viral video and
changed their career forever.
Chapter 26: How to Negotiate a Hostage Crisis
GARY NOESNER
How an FBI agent developed the emotional skills to negotiate hundreds of volatile, life-and-
death hostage crises.
Chapter 27: How to Open a Great Restaurant (and Stay in Business)
DAVID CHANG
How a hotheaded owner of a tiny noodle shop turned his business around and became an
international restaurateur.
Chapter 28: How to Optimize Your Brain
RICHARD RESTAK
How a neuropsychiatrist synthesizes the history of the human mind from Socrates and
Salvador Dali to the most recent revolutionary brain research in his 18 books (and counting)