Could the ticket to greatness be in the need of a well established personal system?

date
Dec 28, 2024
slug
greatness-routine
status
Published
tags
essay
questions
planning
summary
Essay about greatness, and a possible way towards it.
type
Post
I got the question from my friend, Zsolt Haskó.
Could the ticket to greatness be in the need of a well established personal system? (routine/beliefs/etc.)
In this essay I want to examine my personal relation to greatness, and how a routine can cause uncorrelated success in achieving it.
 

On greatness

Personally, I have a big fight in with myself recent years about greatness. The pure form of being best, and meanwhile good is the ideal state in my mind, when talking about where do I want to be at the end of my life.
It has two problems with it. One is that I don’t feel enough. Second is that my focus is not on actually achieving it, but dreaming about the state where it’s all done.
I think the whole thing is mostly counter intuitive. One wants to be big, and powerful while the way which it takes is to get to that state is weird for him/her.
 

Routine as a Tool, or how to get shit done?

I used to be a professional dancer, and from day zero we had on equation in our head. If someone wants to became a champion the following factors needs to be improved.
  • Amount of practice
  • Efficiency of practice
  • Time to get back on track after failure
  • Frequency of goals
Overall the experience in a field is what we want to maximize, the things someone had done. The deep understanding of structures and the velocity of building new things.
A routine is a protocol what we do according to certain situations. How do we decide when decisions need to be made? How we make plans, or think about the future? How do we talk to people, mentors, customers, partners etc. ? The list can go on and on, and these are the things which someone does on a daily basis in any field.
The new wave of “smart, billionaire, successful” routines are a signal that people want to be great. They want to achieve and looking for ways to trick the system, to be more efficient, and so on. The want to maximize the “How” of get shit done. This is neither good or bad, the tools which are deigned by behavior professionals are kinda superpowers when it’s aimed at something. Like a supercomputer, it can achieve great things when somebody knows how to use it.
The problem which I see as a recurring pattern is that people (also me) don’t know clearly “Why?” they do things. From it the “What?” is also blurry.
 
In conclusion, routine is great when used in a focused way.
 
 
 

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