I was jogging up a steep slope on one of Mexico’s volcanoes when a man ran past me like the hill wasn’t there.
My lungs were burning. My legs were heavy. He looked effortless, like he was out for a stroll.
I was a professional runner. That was my identity. And this guy made me feel like a beginner. Who is that? How is that even possible? I do this for a living.
I couldn’t let it go. After the session I found him in the parking lot, getting dressed to leave. If I didn’t say something now, he would be gone. I was still gasping for air. I felt ridiculous. I walked over anyway and said hi.
It was Juan Luis Barrios. He had just finished sixth in the 10,000 meters at the Beijing Olympics. A national hero, known as the fastest 10K runner outside of Africa.
I was intimidated. He turned out to be incredibly accessible and humble. Nothing like what I expected.
From that day on I followed his every move. His methods, his nutrition, his mentality. It was a game changer. He was an infinite fountain of knowledge, and there was no price tag on that friendship.
After that day, I measured every run against him.
When it gets real
Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison has advice for people in their twenties. On Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast he put it like this:
“Figure out where can you learn the highest standards, where are the highest standards embodied, and where can you go and experience that first hand.”
It is the story he hears most often from people in other fields. They worked with some person or some organization, and:
“They learned what great actually is. And that just permanently changed their sense for their own standard.”
You can read about great. It doesn’t stick until it passes you on a hill.
And you don’t need an Olympian. You need the person in your building who is clearly the best at something, and a reason to work next to them. That is the real case for your next job. Not the title. The standard you get to stand next to.
Worth your time
Read Apprentice to Genius by Robert Kanigel, the book Collison points to when he makes this argument. It follows a chain of scientists at the NIH and Johns Hopkins, each trained by the one before, who kept producing Nobel and Lasker winning work for more than forty years. It is proof you can inherit a standard you were not born near. That is good news for anyone who wasn’t.
Final thoughts
Before Barrios shared a single method with me, he showed me what the standard looked like. Everything I learned from him later started there. I couldn’t unsee it. It ruined me for anything less, and I’m grateful for that.
Who is the best person you have ever stood next to, and what did you do with what you saw?
Thanks for reading.