A few lessons I learned from reading Steven Spielberg’s biography:

1. Whatever is there, he makes it work.

2. He would visualize himself winning an Oscar and thanking the Academy. He was twelve.

3. He aimed straight at the top from the very beginning:

"He said, 'I want to be a director.'

And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.'

He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.'

And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."

4. He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.

5. He believed setbacks are inevitable and can be overcome with positive, forward motion.

6.He once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring: “I am the audience."

7.He cares about one thing: making films.

8.He made over $250 million from Jurassic Park.

9.He was making $500,000 a day from his movie E.T

10. He signed a deal that gives him 2% of the ticket revenue from every Universal Studios theme park. This deal is rumored to pay him more than $50 million every year. In perpetuity.

11. He invested in cutting edge technology his entire career.

12. He would study the history of films and use what he learned in his own movies.

There are exact scenes from movies filmed in the 1930s and 1940s in Spielberg’s films.

13. He didn’t have a degree. No one cared. They were only interested in what he could put up on screen.

14. His career stalled at a number of occasions. Success is never a straight line.

15. He maintained positive, forward motion even when he was suffering.

16. He had to shoot a shark movie with no shark. It was the most successful movie in history.

17.The financial success of Jaws bought him freedom for the rest of his career.

18. He is comfortable with his own complexities and contradictions.

19. He was part of a group of young crazy people who were all obsessed with movies. (George Lucas, Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola)

They were all struggling to make it.

The whole group became successful and dominated the movie business.

20. He worked with the same people for decades. He said his career would not have been possible without doing so.

21. Two of his most successful projects —Jurassic Park and Schindler’s list— seem obvious now.

But at the time they were not:

CGI dinosaurs and a 3 hour black-and-white film about the Holocaust?

22. He rewatches great films over and over again. He sees Lawrence of Arabia every year.

That movie came out in 1962.

23. He didn’t believe there was any going back:

“This was going to be what I was going to do or I was going to die trying. This was going to be the rest of my life.”

I made a podcast about Spielberg’s life and work. I hope you listen to it!

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/32hClG…

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fou…