I've been lucky enough to have had a few accomplishments in my studies and career, for which I've been writing and giving people advice on how to be great on various subjects since middle school. Having just turned 30 this year, however, for the first time in my life I feel reasonably confident that I can now articulate a "theory of everything" on being great (luck excluded, as much as possible). In this first of potentially several posts, I'm sharing with you the most important lessons I've learned.
The inspiration for this post, How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably, said it the best. Being great is not about getting to a destination with meticulous planning and herculean efforts. It's about being consistent in the act of being good, from which greatness emerges as a by-product.
Of course, this is a mental distinction, not a material one. You would still set goals and work hard to achieve them. But framing that as a side effect of consistently being good rather than the end result is immensely liberating and empowering! Greatness cannot be planned and few can navigate the path to get there, but most people instinctively know what goodness is or can learn that easily. Being good on one occasion is to do things that create positive changes for our lives; being good consistently is to turn that into behavior patterns that run automatically to help us go beyond goodness and toward greatness.
That's it, the single most fundamental axiom in the theory of being great. Everything else, be it an atomic habit, a decision heuristic, a focus ritual, a mental model, a productivity technique, etc, is either a tool of goodness for you to exercise, or a tool to facilitate other tools (finding them, knowing when to apply which, making them easier to hold on to, etc).
I would like to end this section with two quotes echoing the axiom:
Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence. -- The Mundanity of Excellence
Traditional self-help tends to see change in terms of lofty goals and total transformation, but research actually supports the opposite view: that small, deliberate tweaks infused with your values can make a huge difference in your life. -- Emotional Agility
Simply knowing that something can be done is incredibly powerful -- now you know nothing except yourself can stop you. Similarly, knowing that something exists and what it's called gives you the power to leverage it even before you dig into it. Vocabulary as a Meta Mental Model said it the best.
So how do you know? Intentionally and carefully curate your information sources:
On top of that, adopt a growth mindset and liminal thinking. Believe that:
Nothing like a clear understanding and strong conviction sets you up for greatness.
Whatever we do, we constantly exchange one resource (investment) with another (return). Let's assume we are investing time, arguably the most precious resource, in exchange for personal learning or business impact in our work.
Mathematically, there are three straightforward approaches to increase the return on investment:
It's a simple yet effective framework. Internalize it so you can effortlessly invoke it whenever you need to.
I've said this many times but I can't emphasize enough: write, things, down!
Writing is so inextricably linked to thinking that it might as well be equated to thinking. It organizes our thoughts and reveals what we still don't fully understand. It's one of the most effective ways to scale your ideas to audiences beyond your personal reach. And it's an indispensable tool for collecting objective truth as the human brain is a very unreliable memory storage device.
For those who find writing daunting, start small. It doesn't need to be perfect or made public right away. One of the best ways to get started is to keep a log of things you've read, decisions you had to make, and what you plan on doing next. Another great tip is to write more but shorter.
Remember that it's fundamentally an iterative process. To each his own but my process is generally to write ideas down as soon as I have them, expand and refine them over time, and compose them into posts when I feel ready. I relate a lot with Mise en Place Writing.
For those getting serious about publishing their writings, check out David Perell's The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online.
The success formula: solve your own problems and freely share the solutions. -- Naval Ravikant
As the saying goes, we often underestimate how much others can benefit from our sharings, even when we've taken this into consideration. Things we've come to take for granted are not obvious to others, vice versa.
Oftentimes, being informed is half the win. The reality is not a zero-sum game. Embrace an abundance mindset and always look for a win-win scenario.
You should especially prioritize sharing with those close to you, not just because it's an effective way to find and maintain friendships. A deeper reason is that your success is inextricably linked with the successes of people around you. To collectively achieve greater things, it's in everybody's interest to continuously shape the beliefs of those around you while also getting shaped by them. For the better.
All sorts of sharing elicit some form of reaction from its recipients. It could be inspiration, admiration, or sometimes even envy. But whatever it is, they become "nudges to revisit dreams and desires".
Thank you for reading thus far. I've covered my "theory of everything" about being great and a couple of "tools" I found most critical. I've strived for this post to be high-level and "strategic" yet still actionable (your feedback is welcome if I failed to do so). In doing so I intentionally chose not to cover some of the more "tactical" topics such as getting things done, time management, creating tight feedback loops, decision making, etc. I've written about some of these topics though (check out ) and might write more in the future.
Till next time!