One of the most impactful things I've read was in the interview by Donald Knuth, shared here on HN some time ago:<p>"A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life."
Strongly agree. In fact, here's the key insight:<p>> “If you cannot do great things, do small things a great number of times”.<p>People want to "plan" themselves into being Great. So they go into a spiral of "I'm not good enough" and don't actually complete anything. They don't produce anything, no one sees their work, so it's much harder to improve.<p>In practice, if we produce a lot of stuff, and pay attention, the quality will increase over time. We'll become Great according to the article...<p>... I'd call it "Good Enough". Producing and analyzing and getting better takes time, energy, and focus. It's not fun. Once our result is Good Enough we move on and focus on another thing we want to produce.<p>Source: writing a book on (Developer) Feedback Loops
You know what would be good? No longer repeating:<p>> “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein<p>Does anyone writing that really think Einstein said that? Apart from it being completely apocryphal, it’s a terribly shallow appeal to authority.
I used to be concerned with stuff like this, and then I almost died several times and it all seems so inane. Interestingly, now that I care less about what I should do and a lot more about what I want to do, those good achievements come a lot more often and with much less effort.
The premise doesn't hold up when you think about it. If to be great is to be good repeatably, then what does it mean to be great repeatably? Is that also great or do we need a new word?<p>Producing good work consistently means you are good overall. Being great means you produce great work consistently.<p>One of the linked articles in the piece contradicts the notion that consistently being good would lead to greatness. (Well a link to a tweet of images of the article -- <a href="https://autotranslucence.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://autotranslucence.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/</a>). That author argued that while they were consistently very good at body painting (top 5 in the world championships), they were not able to conceive how the 2016 winner produced the work they did in the same amount of time (6 hours). Even though they were improving incrementally, they were so far behind the winner's work that they couldn't wrap their head around what sorts of improvements they would need to add in order to reach the same level of competency. So it was not just a matter of being consistent. Their mental model was off.<p>That seems to fit reality and greatness more than the original article. A good mathematician does not simply reach the level of Terence Tao by being consistently good over time.
Hard agree on this. In my career and life in general I see so many people and organizations delude themselves that they have to be the best of the best or find gimmicky ways to stand out or whatever.<p>Like, no. In 99% of contexts, you literally just have to do the basics well, and you will already be beating AT LEAST half of your competition, probably closer to 80% of your competition.
One of my favorite quotes, but I have no idea who said it.<p>"A series of small steps, faithfully completed, does great things".<p>It's influenced so much of my life. Especially in the small, quiet hours when I think about cutting corners.
I wonder if “great” has other dependencies including the factor of luck, whereas “excellence” is more purely a function of the showing up part that this article deals with.<p>I was just talking with my spouse about this in the last couple of days. She’s editor of the main journal in her academic field and junior colleagues ask her how she ended up there. Her answer: by doing my reviews on-time every time.
This is the similar mindset in sport athletes. On a good day, a strong driver could beat Verstappen, or a chess player could beat Carlsen. Over the course of a tournament, or a season, then Verstappen and Carlsen are unbeatable. They get to the top, and go on great length to stay there.
> Remember: great is just good, but repeatable.<p>Great advice. I wish it was listened to more in tech - there's a lot of effort spent trying to jump up to the next big level in commercial performance, at the cost of not just improving things continuously and benefiting from compounding returns.
It's strange how often this article gets posted to hn. I have no idea what the appeal is but neither did I get it the last 6 or so times it was posted.
Articles like this are not worthwhile, because there's no real definition of what "good" or "great" are, except that great is better than good.<p>So in that sense, someone who is good very often is "more good" than someone who is good less often. But in my own personal opinion that doesn't make them great.