start again today no. 60: play the unplayable piano 🎹
Hey 👋🏽,
Yesterday, my mom shared the story of legendary jazz pianist Keith Jarrett's worst best concert.
Keith is a prolific perfectionist, the kind of guy who is used to having multiple pianos available for performances so that he can select the best one for the concert hall. Until he showed up to perform for a sold out crowd of 1,400 people at the Cologne Opera House in 1975 and he was greeted by an out of tune piano with broken pedals and sticking keys.
Perfectionist Keith walked out, refusing to play. He was unwilling to stake his reputation on a busted piano. The 17 year old concert organizer ran through the rain after him, begging him to play. By some miracle, Keith ignored his initial instincts to walk and went back into the Cologne Opera House. He performed standing to breathe life into the piano and did what the best jazz musicians do: improvised to get the most out of his instrument. Today, the Köln Concert is the best selling jazz piano album of all time.
The story gave me pause. Life has been messy lately. We're growing quickly at Animalz, trying to solve new/next level problems for our customers, team and business. My virtual cycling community that meets Sundays at 10A EST is not the overnight success I naively hoped or maybe even expected it to be. Almost 6yo has brought me deep into lego land with constant cycles of doing, undoing, redoing and call and respond chants of "I can't" / "Yes you can!"
How can you prepare yourself for messiness to build resilience? At Animalz, we prepare for things to go wrong with pre-mortems, and creating learning opportunities by reflecting on the root cause of messes. If you can anticipate the inevitable challenges along the way to achieving your goals and think about what it will take to overcome them, you're much more likely to succeed.
I'm reminded by Keith's story and little moments everyday that we don't grow when things are going as expected. We grow when we run towards problems and readily accept failure. Practice not perfection, celebrating progress at each step. Play the unplayable piano. That's where the magic happens.
I see you, I love you, let’s have a great week,
H
