Greatness and the Different Timescales
By: Nicolas Rault
Tags: Self, Craft, Self Improvement, Progress, Life

As a project comes to an end also arrives the time of evaluation. Sometimes, our work is automatically judged by a relevant panel, such as it is the case with academic papers, art exhibition or a book. Other times, your work collects dust in your garage or on Medium. Yet, perfection, or even good quality, remain desired goals. Just like the expectations rise as the efforts put increase.

Greatness, proficiency, and expertise must be the end goal when one decides to refine his skills in a particular field. I understand this as subjective assessment of one’s capabilities according to fixed goals. For example, a definition of mastery in guitar would be to play all the songs one like without any attempt to compose. Meanwhile, all the efforts put in the process tends towards this ultimate goal.

Nonetheless, having such a proficiency-oriented opinion of life’s every aspect is not only counterproductive but off the point. Life, as a whole, is not about expertise but about balance and both mental and physical sustainability. Reaching for perfection all the time will not only overlook other fundamental parts of life but also will reveal to be unsustainable. However, focusing on one or two aspects, depending on one’s likings, bring the benefits of hard work while maintaining a well-balanced lifestyle.

Continuous hard, focused work is an essential, but not the only, aspect of a meaningful life. Yet, depending on the timescale chosen to reach greatness, this process which was supposed to bring meaning can destroy an existing interest or even passion.

Progress instead of Greatness

Trying to reach greatness with every work necessarily involves a mindset of improvement. On the short term, this approach mainly focuses on the current project without noticing the broader picture. Indeed, skills are tools which cannot be honed rapidly. In other words, you won’t achieve greatness with this project only because the tools at your disposal, your skills, are yet too rough to sculpt with finesse. In my case, no matter how much time is spent thinking, editing, refining, this essay won’t be excellent because of my tools. And given that they cannot substantially improve on the short term, the probability of attaining greatness is null.

Yet, expanding the timescale appropriately will change the whole approach. Postponing the attainment of greatness to the end point of a potentially life-long process, each work will become a step making you closer. Progress makes your journey more pragmatic for it shifts the focus from the yet unreachable to the achievable. Surpassing yesterday’s achievement evaluate the worth of your work. Instead of looking up at a 10’000 hours high mountain (the time it apparently takes to reach mastery), the vision focuses on the next step. As the famous quote of Laozi says:

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Moreover, aiming for progress will permit to enjoy the process rather than succumbing to the despair of perfection’s unreachability. Chances are I might not reach greatness in my chosen field. But given that I genuinely enjoy the process, if I fail, it will only be an apparent failure because of the pleasure felt and the skills acquired.

Now comes the question of how to evaluate progress. Indeed, having someone reviewing our work regularly is a rare opportunity. It is then necessary to fix relevant standards.

Focus on your sphere of influence

When it comes to choosing through which lenses to evaluate progress, you must avoid external standards, meaning standards you cannot directly influence. The typical example is the number of upvotes. To directly influence the reception your project would imply, for example, improving the visibility of your work, posting a link on every trendy essay and so on. Self-marketing tends to be despised even if it remains a crucial aspect of every creator (in a broad sense). However, self-marketing will improve social skills but won’t affect the quality of your work which is my objective.

You should then choose internal standards located in your sphere of influence. Concerning writing, readability, clarity, the emotions involved, or the examined subject all are parameters which lie in your sphere of influence.

Finally, critically reviewing past projects, emphasizing the limitations or errors is crucial to progress. It takes time but given our limited mental resources, you should spend them on improving the weak points of your tools. And this requires reviewing. Moreover, the rewarding part of the laborious process is when you automatically consider others’ methods and pick what fits you.