In this solo Heroic Plus One episode, Brian Johnson reflects on recent milestones achieved by his children—Jake’s four home runs in a week earning minor‑league Player of the Week honors, and Emerson’s 2600 blitz rating on Chess.com, placing him in the 99.98th percentile worldwide. Using these personal anecdotes, Brian illustrates a model of mastery characterized by three phases: a diminution (a dip in performance), a plateau of latent potential, and a sudden burst of rapid improvement. He shares visual graphs that map these phases, emphasizing that growth is rarely a straight line and that true masters accept setbacks as part of the journey. The episode closes with a motivational call to embrace goals, train through plateaus, and seize upcoming bursts, while also promoting Heroic’s library of resources, coaching, and training programs for personal optimization.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic Plus One. In our last Plus One, we chatted about the joy I get in celebrating my kids with Sean and Brandon and celebrating their kids with them as well. As we discussed, Sean's son Jake crushed it— 4 homers in a week, which earned him Player of the Week honors in the minor leagues. Let's go! And as it turns out, I had a chance to celebrate Emerson a couple days later. He hit 2600 on Chess.com for both blitz and bullet, which are time speeds you can play a chess game. Now, that means nothing to normal humans, but here's how ChatGPT summarizes it. It said Emerson is 2604 blitz on Chess.com, ranked number 5110 globally, with an estimated 25 to 35 million active ranked blitz players, that puts him at roughly the 99.98th percentile, about the top 150 to 200 players out of every million. Now, proud dad. When I shared that in an image of his growth trajectory with the boys, Brandon said, amazing. That is a nice steady trajectory for my man E. And he said, that 5,110 sounds so insane. When put against possible 35 million people. To which I said, thank you. Then I added, the best parts in the little graph I shared, which you can check out in the note, are the diminutions in performance and then the plateau of latent potential. Little down, plateau, then explosive growth. It's textbook mastery. Goosebumps. That was my text. So check out the graphs and take a peek at those plateaus, the diminutions, and then the bursts. It's incredible as a map of what mastery looks like. That is today's plus one. Let's joyfully go for our goals and remember that growth does not exist on a straight up and to the right arc. There will always be painful plateaus and even a few steps back and a diminution in our performance. The master knows that and keeps training, knowing the next burst in improvement is just around the corner. That's right. Around the corner. So let's know what we want, go all in, embrace the journey, and focus on making today a masterpiece. Little PS, we celebrated Emerson's big milestone with a trip to one of his favorite restaurants for lunch, then to see The Odyssey, then we went back for dinner. As we enjoyed our second meal there, I realized we went to the same restaurant and sat 15 15 feet away from the same table 4 years ago after his very first chess tournament. Look at the pictures and check out how much he's grown. It is so humbling and so inspiring. And I also added a picture of him with his state championship trophy, which is almost bigger than him, from 3 and a half years ago, and a more recent pic with the same tournament director to capture how big he is getting as well. My goodness, time flies. But savor all the precious moments. Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you Optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go.
