Concept
The arena
The arena, from Roosevelt's speech and Brown's reading of it, is where the person actually doing the thing stands, marred by dust and sweat, erring and coming short.
Brown uses the passage as a filter for criticism. When you are doing anything that matters you will be criticised, and most of it will come from people who are not doing it. The move is not to ignore all feedback but to weigh it by whether its source is in the arena: a colleague who also presents, a founder who also failed, a parent also raising a teenager. Their criticism is worth listening to because it cost them something to earn. The commentary from the seats, the relative who has never started anything, the anonymous account, the colleague who always knows how it should have been done, is cheap by definition. The frame also answers the inner critic, which is the cheapest seat of all, since it has never once done the thing it is criticising. Ben Horowitz's 'nobody cares' is the founder's version: the seats are not even watching most of the time.
A real-life example
A pharmacist who finally calls her landlord lists who was in the arena with her, her sister, who had made the same kind of call, and who was in the seats, the colleagues with opinions about how she should have handled it. Only the first list gets a vote.
How to use it
- 1When criticised, ask whether the source is in the arena, doing the thing and getting hit.
- 2Give weight to arena voices and none to the cheap seats, including the inner critic.
- 3Find people also in the arena and ask them for the feedback that costs something.