Greatness isn't Grandiose
A simple reminder that success is a series of small things.
“The great arises out of small things that are honoured and cared for. Everybody’s life really consists of small things.” — Eckhart Tolle
There’s an aesthetic gap between what success looks like and what it actually is. It appears glitzy and grandiose when it’s actually modest and mundane.
From the third-person perspective we only see the tip of the iceberg. We see the attractive, surface-level features of success and overlook the rather prosaic processes behind it. Success looks like a dramatic event or an otherworldly state of being. It seems glorious, enviable and out of reach.
We see the body-builder’s chiselled physique and overlook the 8 years of training and conscious eating it took him to build it. We read about a serial entrepreneur’s 3rd successful venture, but don’t see the stream of small decisions she makes every day to defend her attention. We forget that grandiose results are the product of mundane efforts sustained across time.
It’s easy to over-glamourize greatness. It’s fun to read about uncommon productivity hacks, extreme diets, and theatrical morning routines. We reward the most embellished content while we search for shiny silver bullets.
“Solve all your problems with this one weird trick!”
To the extent that we do this, we are participating in a destructive cultural delusion: that we need more knowledge, life-hacks and productivity tips to become the people we want to be. We conclude that our dreams are on the other side of more information and the information-dealers deliver.
At scale, this delusion creates a positive feedback loop. Quasi-religious movements around personal development, productivity and achievement emerge. The demand for ‘transformative knowledge’ drives an overwhelming supply. Self-help books become sacred texts. Productivity gurus and podcasters become priests.
This spectacle distracts us from the real truth: our dreams have always been on the other side of more action — mundane action sustained across time. We already know enough to start the adventure but we’re stuck replaying the tutorial level of our video-game.
If you resonate with this diagnosis I urge you to take a deep breath right now and stop. Don’t continue reading. Trust your instincts. Get off the information train and do the thing you’re avoiding.
When it comes to information consumption, it’s hard to tell that you’ve crossed the point of diminishing returns. If you’ve read this far you definitely have.
“A small daily task, if it really be daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” — Anthony Throllope
Apart from information addiction, there are many reasons why we forget and resist simple truths.
For one, our salience landscapes are continually being altered by supernormal stimuli. We watch too many hyper-dramatized success stories packed into 90 minute movies. There’s more drama in the average Netflix episode than most of us experience in our entire lives. How can we maintain our commitments to boring truths when the entertaining falsehoods are so alluring?
We also witness a disproportionate amount of overnight social media stardom. Although rapid internet virality is possible, it’s a foolish strategy. We fail to acknowledge the survivorship bias in these stories. We can’t see the millions of losers for every winner.
Finally there’s a debilitating sunk-cost in believing that greatness is grandiose. If all along you thought that great results come from a few great acts, it’s demoralizing to accept that they come from thousands of tiny acts.
It means it isn’t “one big move” away. It means if you start now, you probably have a long way to go.
The key is to get comfortable.
Don’t wait for that million dollar idea. Don’t try and craft that one viral blogpost. Don’t expect one big career move to land your dream job and give you your “Purpose.” Instead eat your elephants one bite at a time.
Instead develop eyes for the mundane.
“Modern man can't see God because he doesn't look low enough.” ― Carl Jung
Humility is a competitive advantage. The most powerful truths are those that our hyper-stimulated egoic societies have discarded. The most effective people are those that can develop a profound relationship with what others deem boring.
- Daniel