“Absorb what’s useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
By 1964, Bruce Lee had started to gain a following. He had two martial arts schools in Oakland and Seattle, where he taught a modified version of wing chun, a martial art with foundations in kung fu. But he was growing skeptical of locking himself into a single martial arts discipline and weary of the loyalists who believed their style of combat was superior to everything else.
Lee started experimenting with minor changes in technique, testing new angles in his stances and movements. The changes weren’t dramatic—the classical wing chun style had been seared into his every movement since he began studying at thirteen years old in Hong Kong. But they were still changes. And the kung fu traditionalists took exception.
As Lee refined his approach, he would visit the Sun Sing Theater in San Francisco’s Chinatown, demonstrating his technique and voicing his perspective that unnecessary, performative, impractical movements hampered traditional martial arts. As Lee grew more vocal, the kung fu old guard in Chinatown grew more irritated. He was disrupting their ways, compromising the sacredness of kung fu, and someone needed to put him in his place.
Taking on the traditionalists
In the fall of 1964, Lee’s critics in San Francisco’s kung fu community issued a challenge. They proposed a fight between him and an opponent of their choosing. If their fighter won, Lee would have to stop teaching. And if Lee won, he could continue without opposition. Lee was 23 years old at the time and eager to prove them wrong.
The traditionalists selected a young, skilled kung-fu fighter, Wong Jack-Man, as their champion. In November, the delegation arrived in Oakland for the fight. The first order of business was laying down the rules. The traditionalists offered up one rule after another, but Lee pushed back. He wanted a street fight—anything goes—not a controlled, theatrical performance with an intricate scoring method. After some negotiation, the fight was on. Bruce Lee came out swinging.
After the initial exchange, Jack-Man sprinted away, attempting to exhaust Lee and leave him winded. Lee gave chase, trying to grab him from behind. The fight was a mess, a far cry from the combat routines each man had practiced in their gyms. Finally, Lee had Jack-Man on the ground. Lee stood over him, yelling in Cantonese, “Do you yield?” The fight was over in three minutes.
But after the victory, Lee didn’t feel victorious or vindicated. Something was still bothering him. In the weeks that followed, he realized that wing chun, even his modified version, hadn’t prepared him for an anything-goes scenario. Most of what he learned only prepared him for neatly defined scenarios or sparring in the gym. In the months and years that followed, Lee began to define his own martial art and philosophy—jeet kune do.
Bridging disciplines
Until this point, Lee used wing chun as his foundation and made slight adjustments. But as he developed jeet kune do, he emphasized formlessness and not getting trapped in a single style. He looked beyond standard martial arts for inspiration. From boxing, he took its footwork, jabs, bobs, weaves, and hooks; from fencing elements of range and the timing of the stop hit. He was open to anything that would prove useful in a real fight—practicality above all else.
Jeet kune do wasn’t about a specific style. The whole point was that it could take on any shape, style, or form. Techniques from seemingly disparate disciplines previously considered off-limits could be used at will. As long it was effective, kept your opponent off guard, and gave you an advantage, it was on the table. There wasn’t a single right way to fight—contrary to the teachings of many traditional martial arts practices, which forced students into a fixed pattern of movements and routines.
In the years following the fight in Oakland, Lee realized in its fullness what he had scratched the surface of. Most martial arts practices were built upon theories, clearly defined rules, and a neat set of movements. He referred to this type of performative fighting that protected both fighters as “dryland swimming.” These practices weren’t helpful in real fights and life-or-death scenarios where everything is unpredictable and self-defense matters most. The other person might fight dirty, have a weapon, or be an expert in any number of fighting styles. You won’t be able to pause the fight and enforce a neat set of rules.
Lee focused on adaptability and developing tools that applied to real-life scenarios. Forget style. Style is what had divided martial artists, restricting their growth by forcing them to adopt a “this or that” approach to combat. Lee’s approach was to use what worked and drop what didn’t. And this mindset is why many credit Lee as the father of mixed martial arts; because of his focus on using the most effective movement or technique based on the situation.
At some point in your own career, you will have to take the rules you learned, tear them up, and reimagine them. The whole point of learning frameworks is so you can break them in creative ways and create something of your own.
Questioning unwritten rules
Whatever industry we operate in has antiquated ways of doing things. Many of us become so accustomed to these unwritten rules or standard operating procedures that we stop observing them and accept them as truth. You must fight this urge to conform and preserve your ability to evaluate things from a fresh perspective. If you don’t, you’ll create work that’s derivative and halts any real progress or message you could help advance.
Purists don’t make progress because they’re removed from reality. They are so focused on how things should be that they become trapped by abstract rules, unable to perform in anything less than pristine conditions in their environments. They delude themselves into believing the best and right way has already been defined.
“This is the best method” or “this is how it has always been done” should set off your internal alarm. They’re a clear signal to question and challenge the status quo. The world doesn’t need another person playing it safe, afraid to go against the grain. The world needs you. And the best way you can put yourself across is by combining your disciplines, interests, and observations in a way that’s unique to you and speaks to a truth you’ve identified about the world. Even if it challenges deeply held conventions in your craft or society. Go ahead, piss some people off. It will be good for them.
When Jordan Peele made the jump to directing horror films after completing the fifth successful season of his comedy series Key & Peele, people were shocked. At first glance, comedy and horror seem to exist on opposite sides of the spectrum. But there are more similarities for Peele once you get beneath the surface. Both appeal to outsiders. Both are a means of facing our fears. The only difference is in tone. Comedy is an attempt to laugh off our fears. While horror is an attempt to master our fears by looking straight at them.
But Peele was frustrated with horror films. They were too formulaic, predictable, and revealed their cards too early, leaving little room to challenge audiences as the story unfolded. Just as Peele studied sketch comedy, learned the rules, then pushed the limits, he took the same approach in horror to challenge the confines of the genre. He was determined to reengineer the whole thing to add more depth, make the genre more accessible, and tell better stories.
Peele’s roots in comedy helped him to become a master at observation and right-sizing risks. He pushed audiences to stretch alongside him, working to understand something from someone else’s point of view—the ultimate power of storytelling. Horror was a similar way to provoke. And adapting the genre to his approach allowed him to create something new.
Just as Bruce Lee learned the craft, techniques, and discipline of wing chun, then created something of his own to improve and bridge the divide in martial arts. Peele learned the rules and combined his own experiences in a way that allowed him to push the threshold of what was typical of horror films.
Advancing your craft
With your own experiences and observations, you can push the dial further than you think. You just have to trust your perspective and break the rules when they no longer serve what you’re attempting to create.
Whether art, business, film, music, science, or technology, there are techniques, approaches, and mental models—things we believe to be true—that we will look back on in ten years and laugh about. To be part of progress, you must learn to break the rules and challenge what’s accepted without question—especially what people disguise as “best practices.”
If you want to advance the conversation, you have to stretch beyond what’s comfortable. Challenge yourself to combine ideas in new ways or test a new approach. Apply it to your life. Apply it to your discipline. By synthesizing ideas and personal observations in your own way and giving the world a fresh take, you create work that more strongly resonates with you and your audience.
If you intend to go through life as a consumer, forget this lesson. But if you want to create and leave your mark on the world, you must find ways to advance your craft and the conversation—no matter how small your first steps might appear. This is how you transcend from an operator to a trailblazer, inspiring others to create and see the world in a new way.