Hi!

In this episode we are going to talk about excellence and its fundamental requirement.

The book inside which I learned the idea is Jeff Goins’ “The Art of Work”.  I really enjoyed the book and if you are in any way interested in finding out what you are meant to do, I think you will enjoy the book too.

So back to our initial question.  What is the fundamental of excellence?

Answer: Painful Practice.

In Jeff Goins’words:

“In an era of human history in which we prize comfort above nearly every other virtue, we have overlooked an important truth: comfort never leads to excellence.  What it takes to become great at your craft is practice, but not just any kind of practice—the kind that hurts, that stretches and grows you.  This kind of practice, which Ericsson called ‘deliberate’ and we might consider more appropriately as ‘painful’,  is extremely, extremely difficult.  It takes place over the course of about ten years, or ten thousand hours—incidentally the average length of an apprenticeship.  But this is not where the practice ends, Goins continues… it’s just where it begins. In other words, you don’t clock in ten thousand hours and instantly become an expert. You have to do the right kind of practice, for ever actually. This addition is mine.”

So practice makes perfect? I don’t think so.

Only perfect practice makes perfect. Otherwise all of us who have been driving our cars for so many years we could have been candidates for Formula 1.

We have to deliberately practice something in order to become, excellent, experts at it.  And that practice you know is painful. It’s hard. It’s hard work.

Again we fall upon the old maxim: No pain, no gain.

It’s true. Excellence is reachable and it can welcome anyone who is willing to put in the work.  The question though is, are you willing to put in the work to reach excellence, to become a master?  This is the question.

Take care!

All my best,
Konstantinos Karypidis