The Way of Excellence

Introduction

Ask yourself: when are you at your best, and what does it feel like?

Usually, we are at our best when we are:

We feel:

Throughout history, those who were constantly on the lookout for greater opportunities gained an immense survival advantage. That's why we have an innate drive for progress and growth.

When we lose this ability to pursue what matters to us, we lose a sense of who we are.

Nobody can buy excellence, it must be earned. The payoff is a deep internal satisfaction, a genuine self-respect based on effort and competence, a sense of aliveness and resonance that you won't find anywhere else.

Excellence means picking and choosing what matters most, giving those pursuits your all, and letting others go.

Excellence is not happiness. Happiness is a by-product of pursuing excellence.

Part 1: Foundations

1: The Biology of Excellence - 2: The Psychology of Excellence - 3: The Philosophy of Excellence

The power of visualization (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey). The more complex and accurate a species' ability to form conceptual ideas about the world, the better their chances of survival. This is a leading theory as to how thinking evolved.

Thinking allows us to simulate how an experience might feel. In doing so, we can appreciate its potential benefits and harms without putting ourselves at risk.

Thinking may be a significant part of what successful people do, but when they are at their best, it is their feelings that take center stage.

The better someone gets at an activity, the less they think with their head and the more they think (and feel) with their entire being.

Our feelings are indispensable to our success. It's what makes us humans.

If you can think ahead, which in turn enables you to feel ahead, you give yourself a better chance of making the right decision in the moment.

A 2024 meta-analysis found the factor showing the strongest association with conspiracy beliefs to be "social alienation". Additional research shows that boredom is also a driving force.

If people are numbed out by a lack of genuine connection, excitement, and dynamism, even disorder and mayhem start to seem enticing. They become so starved of authentic emotional resonance that they'll accept just about anything that makes them feel.

We thrive over the long haul when three core needs are met:

The more time and energy we spend on pursuits that afford us autonomy, competence, and belonging, the better.

If you are unsure of your values and don't know where to begin, think of people you respect and then ask yourself what it is about them that you admire.

True success is living a life that is in alignment with your values. If you don't define your own version of success, someone else will define it for you.

Excellence is not a destination; it is a process of becoming. The real reward is that you become a better version of yourself.

"I can't walk around with the things I bought, but the memories of all the experiences and the journey, I can carry that around with me every day."

Shitty flow is particularly common "when your days are filled with bullshit and then you're just tired, and this is the time when you should be doing something meaningful, but all you want to do is sit and doomscroll."

When you come out of them, you are left with the sobering reality that your time could have been better spent.

The stickiness of gambling addiction is less about the potential for winning money and more about the trancelike state gamblers achieve while using the machines. Slot-machine designers know precisely what they are doing--engineering addictive flow experiences. [[Feed vs free feed (TikTok restaurant analogy)]]

When you pursue something solely for the pleasure in the moment, you may achieve an intense high, but you're later left with a feeling of emptiness and longing.

Long-term satisfaction always includes short-term challenges. Almost everything worthwhile requires effort.

When you undertake demanding work or experience an acute challenge, your body produces inflammatory proteins and the hormone cortisol. "This is a significant stimulus that will require a significant response."

Stress plus rest equals growth.

Too much stress, not enough rest and the result is injury, illness, fatigue, and burnout.

Too much rest, not enough stress and the result is complacency or stagnation.

Progress and growth in nearly every domain relies upon finding the right amount of stress and following it with the right amount of rest.

Effort pointed toward a goal we find meaningful will elicit an entirely different stress response than the same effort pointed toward a goal we find meaningless. Stress is mediated by meaning.

Our response to challenge is directly related to whether or not we view a challenge as worthwhile.

You can burn out from doing too much. But you can also burn out from not doing enough of what lights you up.

Technologies like junk food, social media, gambling, porn, are designed to prey upon our primal instincts without ever truly satisfying us.

The entire business model is predicated on making us feel great for a short period of time and then leaving us wanting--so that we quickly come back for more. It's the same reason people become addicted to drugs: a powerful high combined with a short half-life creates an overwhelming hook. [[Feed vs free feed (TikTok restaurant analogy)]]

For over 99 percent of our species' history, we lived in scarcity. Abundance is a recent phenomenon.

The objects that surround us are not static; rather, they invite specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The mere sight of an object elicits brain activity associated with particular actions. The more we are around particular objects, the tighter the connection becomes.

We should do what we can to surround ourselves with objects that invite our desired thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and eliminate those that do not.

The objects among which we work become "expansions of the self..."

[[Improve your inputs to improve your outputs]]

Internet brain results from spending too much time online. It manifests as an inability to focus for long periods of time; a strong desire to "check" something even when you don't actually want to; a constant feeling of adrenaline that is somewhere between excitement and anxiety; a lack of patience for anything that is inherently slow; and a significantly harder time being present in offline life, such as constantly needing to pick up your phone.

When you value an activity, when you care deeply about it and give it your all, the space between you and whatever it is you are doing collapses. When you don't value what you are doing, when you are distracted or going through the motions, there is a separateness between you and whatever it is you are doing.

Knowing your values and using your innate capabilities to pursue them, the Greeks believed, was central to a good life. The good life was not about attaining pleasure or avoiding pain. It was about striving for excellence.

We are fed information--real, fake, somewhere in between--at such a dizzying pace it crowds out the time and space we need to think for ourselves.

When these distractions become ubiquitous, they alienate us from our lives.

Alienation is associated with a range of negative consequences, including exhaustion, apathy, languishing, burnout, and even depression. Alienation leads to existential loneliness, the feeling of losing one's center, of not being at home in oneself or the world.

Spending too much time online puts us in a hypervigilant, attention-fractured state.

Pursuing the type of excellence that leads to a good, fulfilling life means identifying what matters to us and then deliberately eliminating distractions that get between ourselves and those pursuits. Excellence requires intimacy, a sense of familiarity, respect, and attention.

Slow Down. "The more you hurry the longer things take". "When I'm in the shop, I have to slow down and think several steps ahead. It makes me do a mental reset."

What are we here to do? Each and every one us asks ourselves this question.

When we pursue excellence, we transcend our small selves--the parts of us that worry, doubt, and fear--and enter into something later, a dance with the universe.

Part 2: Mindsets, Habits, and Practice

4: Care - 5: Goals

When you talk to people who have achieve excellence, you almost always hear stories about experimenting with a variety of pursuits before narrowing in. Passion emerges over years, not seconds. "I explored all sorts of activities and found my way".

On average, those who play multiple sports before specializing have greater longevity and achieve excellence at higher rates than those who focus on one sport from the beginning.

When an activity becomes the entirety of who you are and something goes wrong, it upends your sense of self. The goal is to build an identity house with at least a few rooms, because you never know when one is going to flood and you'll need to find strength and stability in the others.

The goal is not to be "balanced". You'll inevitably give your primary pursuit significantly more of your time, energy, and attention. You just want to make sure it's not the only room in your identity house. If it is, it makes you fragile.

If you want to be really good at something, you have to be willing to fail. Being willing to fail is easier when you have a strong sense of self. Having a strong sense of self requires not fusing completely with a single activity or dimension.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines. To think about the thing. Research the thing. Talk about the thing. Perhaps even dream about the thing. But these are all just ways of protecting yourself from actually doing the thing.

Every climber desires to reach the peak of a mountain, but every climber spends 99.99 percent of their time, energy, and attention on its sides. "To live only for some future goal is shallow, it's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top."

Imagine that with artificial intelligence you could click a few buttons, and, within seconds, "compose" an award-winning-caliber piece of music. Would this bring you fulfillment? [[AI is going to make useless the worst performers in society]]

Even the best outcomes are meaningless if we don't go through the process of creating them. It is because we've got to master the difficult and overcome challenges that pursuing excellence is so powerful and satisfying.

There is no greater illusion than thinking the accomplishment of some goal will change your life. What will change your life is how you are transformed in the process. When you select what goals to pursue, you are selecting what kind of person you want to become.

Too much of a challenge, and the result is anxiety. Too little of a challenge, and the result is boredom. What we want is for the challenge to match the outer edge of our skills. As our skills increase over time, we can ramp up the challenges. [[Goldilocks zone]]

Cheap thrills come from talking and thinking about a goal. Lasting satisfaction comes from working toward it. The trap is that you become so fixated on achieving your goal that you rush the process, making poor decisions along the way. Athletes who are overly fixated on achieving their goals overtrain and get injured. In more traditional workplaces, being obsessed with accomplishing goals often leads to burnout or worse. Overemphasizing goals, particularly those based on measurable outcomes, results in reduced motivation, irrational risk-taking, and unethical behavior. Sometimes we do everything right and the outcome still doesn't go our way. All we can control is our process.

Meaningful progress does not come from intensity or heroic efforts on any given day but from consistency and discipline over months and years.

"I felt empty. It had to do with having always believed that when you win, you're transported to some new, exalted place. What I realized was that you are the same person you were before, and that if you are not content with who you are, a championship, or any accomplishment, isn't going to change that."

Fulfillment, happiness, and satisfaction are not attributes you gain from achieving a goal; they are states that arise in the process of going for one.

If you develop a mindset "If I just do this, or just accomplish that, THEN I'll arrive", you are in for a rude awakening. We never arrive. The human brain did not evolve to be satisfied. It evolved to strive. Psychologists call this the arrival fallacy. "We live under the illusion that once we make it, then we'll be happy".

"Success hasn't fundamentally changed who I am or how I want to express myself. That is something I'll always have to figure out for myself, and it will always have to come from within."

Focus on being the best at getting better. That's a commitment to mastery that lasts a lifetime.

The real reward isn't just what happens when you reach the top of the mountain. It's who you become on the sides.

6: Consistency

Injuries are most likely to occur when an athlete increase their training load too quickly.

In one study, when acute workload (the combination of the intensity and duration an athlete exerts over the course of a week) was more than twice as much as chronic workload (the average intensity and duration an athlete exerted over the prior four weeks), they were significantly more likely to get hurt.

People love the acute thrill of pushing over the edge, but they neglect its long-term impact. The saying "Go big or go home" has a nice motivational ring to it, but the truth is those who go too big, too often, almost always end up home.

Excellence does not come from intensity. It comes from consistency.

Compounding doesn't just apply to investing. It applies to everything. Keep making deposits. [[10% growth per month sounds slow, but compounding is wild]] [[Poor Charlie's Almanack]]

Regression to the mean describes the short-term tendency of a dynamic system to return to its average state. It says that we should not worry so much about outlier efforts and instead focus on becoming a better average over time.

What you do on your not-so-great days may be most critical of all. Nothing brings down an average like a zero, so you want to avoid zeros whenever you can.

[[Golf may be the ultimate test of staying consistent, responding to micro-adversities, and regulating your emotions]]

Progress is nonlinear. Viewthe work as an ongoing practice, measuring and judging your level of attention and effort, and letting progress be a by-product of that. Get comfortable with plateaus.

7: Trade-Offs

If you want to be really good, to master and thoroughly enjoy one thing, you need to say no to many others.

The times when people say they are at their best and feel most alive are also times when they are the least balanced.

It's better to do a few things well than to spread yourself thin with average results.

Imagine an older and wiser version of yourself looking back on your current self. What might they think about your priorities and how you are spending your time? What counsel might they offer?

Studies show that people who possess strong internal self-awareness make better decisions, have better personal relationships, are more creative, and have more fulfilling careers.

Sometimes people do all sorts of bizarre things to "optimize" their performance without consistently showing up and nailing the basics. They obsess over the 0.1% but not the 99.9%.

We've become obsessed with complexity, because it's a way to avoid facing the reality that what really matters for progress is simply showing up and doing the work.

Don't major in the minors. Keep the main things the main things.

8: Focus

If someone can capture our attention, even if only for a few seconds, they can earn a profit from advertisers who want to sell a product or service. It's harder than ever to focus, in large part due to attention economy incentives. [[Feed vs free feed (TikTok restaurant analogy)]]

Effective multitasking is delusional thinking.

Even in individuals who claim to be great multitaskers, fMRI scans of the brain reveal it is impossible to do two things at once with a high level of quality. What is happening when we think we are multitasking is that our brain is either constantly switching between tasks or it is dividing and conquering, allotting only a portion of our cognitive capacity to any specific activity. According to countless studies, the consequence of multitasking is that the quality and the quantity of our work suffers.

Even seemingly innocuous multitasking, such as looking over to an on-screen advertisement while reading an article, can cannibalize as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.

Persistent interruptions in our attention lead to a ten-point drop in IQ, or about twice the decrease one experiences after cannabis use ([[Negative effects of weed]]) and on par with what you'd expect after staying up all night.

Other research shows that scattering our attention also negatively impacts our emotional health. A study from Harvard found that when people are fully present for what they are doing, they are much happier and more fulfilled than when they are thinking about something else. "The more diffuse our attention, the more likely we are to feel angst, restlessness, and discontentment."[[A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind]]" conclude the researchers.

Over time, chronic multitaskers become worse at filtering out irrelevant information and slower at identifying patterns, and they experience a decline in long-term memory.

Constantly switching and fragmenting our attention exhausts and depletes us. If we fry our brain on the trivial, we cannot expect it to be fully present for the significant.

The ability to sustain focus is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage in today's world.

In a series of studies, researchers asked participants to complete difficult tasks when their smartphones were visible. Sure enough, performance was worse than in a control setting in which participants' smartphones were not visible. However, the interesting twist occurred in a third condition, where there was a smartphone present but it did not belong to any of the study participants. Still, the participants' performance declined. Even if it is not our own, the mere sight of a smartphone has come to signify everything else that could be happening in the world. Just being in its presence is a powerful source of distraction.

Ask yourself, what is coming between me and intimacy with what I'm doing, and how can I best remove those barriers and distractions?

Most people require at least a few minutes to settle into focus. Some initial friction, restlessness, and irritation is to be expected. You've got to get past the resistance for the good stuff to happen.

Focus is like a muscle: use it or lose it.

You may benefit from keeping a notebook nearby during deep-focus, so that if an unrelated thought surfaces, you can jot it down and offload it from your memory.

Walk. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said that "all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." [[Walking generates 60% more creative ideas than sitting]] - individuals who took a six-to-fifteen-minute walking break increased creative thinking by 40 to 60 percent as compared to those who remained seated at a desk.

The quality of your attention shapes the quality of your life.

9: Discipline

Discipline is: You are going to do the things you need to do, regardless of how you feel about them. "In some ways, we have given too much space to our feelings. Many people end up completely governed by feelings, and for them, life can be pretty hard."

We think we need to feel good to get going, but often the opposite is true: We need to get going to give ourselves a chance at feeling good. (Mark Manson: action leads to motivation)

"Only the disciplined ones in life are free. When you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and passions. Discipline is freedom." "When you have discipline you are free to live your dream, free to do the things you love, and then you come to love the discipline."

What constraints might support your pursuit of excellence? Too many, and the result is rigidity. Too few, and the result is instability.

If you say "Today just isn't the day", you create a self-fulfilling prophecy around that thought.

How you feel before a hard effort does not necessarily correlate with how you feel during a hard effort, so the best bet is always to get started.

If we are always beating ourselves up, we will not last. But if we never push ourselves, we won't ever attain our full potential.

10: Renewal

Stress plus rest equals growth. Our muscles get bigger not when we are training them but rather during periods of recovery.

There are three features that nearly all forms of genuine rest and renewal share:

Testosterone is associated with growth and rejuvenation. [[Testosterone lowers cortisol (aggression), increases calm]] [[Fluoride decreases testosterone by >20%]] [[Zinc nearly doubles testosterone]] [[Low alcohol increases testosterone, excessive use reduces it]] [[20-30 minutes of midday sun increases testosterone, estrogen, and biological attractiveness]] [[Pomegranate juice intake enhances salivary testosterone levels and improves mood and well being]] [[Unemployed people have the highest levels of testosterone, farmers the lowest]]

Studies have found that following stressful periods, individuals who relax with friends experience a much quicker rebound in their testosterone-to-cortisol ratio. Social connections helps to shift our nervous system into a restful state and promotes the release of biochemicals that have anti-inflammatory properties. [[Love and deep social bonds health benefits - longevity, happiness, reduced pain and inflammation. Significant reduction of mortality risks]]

It's worth prioritizing relationships and connection, the benefits of which are almost always greater than what is on offer from new technologies and bright and shiny objects.

Many of history's greats reported being inspired by nature.

In a study, participants who took their break in a natural setting outperformed those who took their break in an urban setting.

The participants who viewed pictures of nature recovered faster and performed better.

When we are immersed in natural settings, we experience significant positive changes in various biomarkers related to stress.

No form of rest is as powerful as sleep. [[Regular exercise is linked to slower biological aging - but only in people sleeping 7+ hours. People who slept under 6 hours and exercised actually aged faster.]]

During sleep, our bodies repair and grow; and our minds retain, consolidate, and connect all the information that we were exposes to throughout the day.

Prioritize sleep, but do not freak out if for some reason you can't sleep.

11: Confidence

The developmental arc is true for all of us. The more reps we put in, the more faith we gain in ourselves.

Confident people are quiet. They know they've got what it takes. Underneath confidence you'll almost always find evidence. Underneath arrogance you'll almost always find insecurity.

The ability to remain calm amid challenges if a core element of what psychologists call self-efficacy: an evidence-based belief that you are capable of showing up, working through challenges, and excelling in uncertain or highly charged circumstances.

If you are feeling unsure, the best thing you can do is pause to reflect on the evidence you've amassed. Do you have what you need to own your seat? If not, what evidence do you need before you can?

Confidence and humility run together. Once we think we know everything, we cease to keep knowing. Once we think we are the best, we cease to keep getting better.

Someone who is insecure perceives everything that challenges them or their views as a threat. Someone who is confident welcomes challenges, knowing at least some will make them better.

12: Patience

Patience is one of the greatest competitive advantages there is. Like any skill, it must be developed.

As our technologies increase the intensity of stimulation and the flow of new things, we adapt to that pace. We become less patient. When moments without stimulation arise, we start to feel panicked and don't know what to do with them, because we've trained ourselves to expect this stimulation. A likely side effect of our hyperconnected world is an "expectation for instant gratification".

In a famous study, participants were placed in empty rooms for fifteen minutes without anything to distract them. They were given two options: sit and wait out the fifteen minutes or shock themselves with a strong electrical current.

67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves, often repeatedly, rather than sit still and wait.

There's a popular saying that people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year but underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. Research backs it up.

The average age of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist when they conduct their groundbreaking work is 44 years old.

Successful entrepreneurs are more likely to be middle-aged than young, and are more likely to experience success after not one year in the game but a decade.

For the top 0.1% of the fastest-growing businesses in America, the average age of the founder when their company was first launched is 45. Middle-aged founders also have the most successful IPOs. Even founders who start their companies when they are young may not peak until later in life. These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs.

When we are working hard toward a goal and want it badly, there is a propensity to zoom in and lose perspective. Stick to the process. Focus on the work itself. You can't control what may or may not be down the road. All you can control is your effort right now.

We simply cannot know when the universe will conspire to gift us the latticework of variables that will bring out our best. All we can do is remain patient and put ourselves in a position to receive it.

If you fall in love with the process, then eventually the process loves you back. But see, here's what's crazy about that. You don't know when it is going to love you back. All you have to do is be prepared for your opportunity when it's ready to love you back.

13: Routine

Nearly everyone who attains excellence relies on routines. The best routines are like easy chairs, you settle into them. The simpler our lives, the more stringent we can be with our routines.

In the book Daily Rituals, the author details a typical day for over 50 of the world's greatest. Nearly all of them had routines, but they varied significantly.

The take-home message isn't that the majority of great performers accomplished their best work at a certain time of day or that there is an optimal hour for productivity. Rather, each individual figured out when they were most alert and focused, and did what they could to design their days accordingly.

Ever since the introduction of laptops and mobile devices, work and life more easily bleed into one another. While the ability to work from home comes with significant benefits, an overlooked cost is the disappearance of transitions between the different parts of our lives. Without transitions, one day merges into the next, time feels hazy, and we never really disconnect.

14: Gumption

Gumption is a forward inertia, a sense of progress and possibility, a strong yet measured enthusiasm. It's a feeling that no obstacle can stop you.

Explore outside your domain. Some of the most creative breakthroughs occur when an idea that works well in one domain gets grafted to another and revitalizes it.

Read across subjects and genres.

15: Curiosity

Discomfort is a natural by-product of pushing our limits--which is to say discomfort is a natural by-product of growth. What we perceive as threats may not really be threats at all.

Approach things as "we don't know what's going to happen, but it sure will be interesting to see." Become less scared about what could happen and more interested to find out.

Curiosity feels good, motivates us to keep going, and builds upon itself. When we adopt curiosity as a default attitude toward challenges, we put ourselves in a better position to meet the moment and grow.

Research shows the greats don't avoid nerves. They work with them. Elite performers feel the same jittery sensations and anxiety as everyone else; they just learn to take them along for the ride.

What the non-elites immediately perceived as fear, the elites saw as their bodies preparing to rise to the occasion. As a result, the sensations didn't bother the elites nearly as much.

Rather than trying to push away what we are feeling, we're better off remaining curious and labeling our nerves as excitement. Doing so shifts us from a threat mindset (stressed and apprehensive) to an opportunity mindset (interested and ready to go).

Instead of thinking "I feel off, something must be wrong", try thinking, "This is my nervous system rising to the occasion". The more you accept and face the nerves, the more they fade.

16: Failure

The bigger and more challenging the failure, the longer it takes for us to feel good again. What doesn't kill us usually makes us stronger, but only with time.

The things you care about break your heart. But you've got to trust the love of the pursuit is big enough to hold the hurt of failure.

Failure sucks. It is also inevitable. Keep going.

17: Community

Succeed or fail, the journey is almost always better when you have the right climbing partners.

A paradox of human nature is wanting to be unique and independent on one hand, while wanting to belong and be enmeshed in something larger on the other. One way to resolve this paradox is by striving for our own version of greatness in a community of others.

The real competitive advantage is a supportive community where everyone is dedicated to growth and lifting each other up.

Many soldiers are more satisfied at war than at home. They miss the strong sense of belonging and meaning they had at war. "Humans don't mind hardship, in fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary."

Our ability to connect, communicate, and cooperate has long been our species' greatest asset, and it still is. As such, the pursuit of excellence is best when it includes other people--especially if they are the right ones.

If someone entering the Air Force Academy is highly fit and motivated to improve but they are assigned to a squadron with someone who is not, it nearly cancels out their own ability to make progress. Just like diseases easily spread through tight-knit groups, so does performance--and it is highly contagious.

Other research shows that if you sit near a high performer in a knowledge-work settings, your performance improves by 15%. Sit near a low performer and it declines by 30%.

When someone becomes happy or sad, those feelings ripple throughout the entire community. If you are in a negative mood when you text message your partner, they are likely to pick up on it and experience a lower mood state themselves. Emotions spread like wildfire.

On the flip side, there is immense power in surrounding yourself with people who are committed to excellence. Working to build a better self almost always means working to build a better community around it.

A central factor of resilience is social support. We can rack up all the wins in the world, but if we don't have people to share them with, it's not long before the whole pursuit begins to feel empty.

Some scientists say the most important component of a long, happy, and healthy life is love. [[Love and deep social bonds health benefits - longevity, happiness, reduced pain and inflammation. Significant reduction of mortality risks]]

18: Joy

If you are always angry, you won't have much fun. And if you don't have much fun, you probably won't last long in whatever it is you do.

Relying predominantly on negative emotions for energy is akin to burning dirty fuel: it's destructive for the long-term health of the engine, and it's not sustainable. Joy, on the other hand, is a clean and renewable source of energy, which is why it might be the ultimate source of fuel.

Psychologists distinguish between two types of passion: harmonious and obsessive.

With harmonious passion, you are absorbed in an activity because you love how the activity makes you feel. With obsessive passion, you get hooked on an activity because of external rewards and recognition.

People whose passion is predominantly obsessive lose touch with the joy intrinsic to their work. Obsessive passion is linked to burnout, anxiety, depression, and unethical conduct.

One of the most common regrets you hear from masters of craft toward the end of their careers: I wish I would have stopped and enjoyed the good moments more.

Remember that the good days are the ultimate reward. In many ways, they are the point of the entire endeavor.

The best performers in the world experience deep joy in their crafts. What makes for greatness is being intense and joyful. It's the joy that makes the ferocious dedication, drive, and intensity sustainable.

19: Completion

Celebrate wins. Experience plus reflection equals growth.

Nothing is more energizing and satisfying than giving our all to the activities we care about most.

When you pursue goals that challenge you, put forth an honest effort, and endure highs, lows, and everything in between, you gain self-respect that nobody can take away.

[[Books]]