To be a great person

For clarification: Greatness is not instantaneous. Greatness is earned. First step is recognizing that you're likely not already great. Being “great” is not about being better than someone else. It is about being dependable and disciplined. The best way to “success” is through consistency.

If you cannot do great things, do small things a great number of times

On your journey to greatness, you need to fall in love with the process which includes many local minima and maxima. Staying consistent and pushing through both of these continuously is what will truly differentiate you from those that are simply “good” and isolate you as one of the few that are “great". Inputs → Outputs.

Understand that in order to achieve the things you want in life, you’ll need to establish a habit of progression. You literally need to become good at being decent. This habit of progression must come with the right inputs. Being consistent with something leading you in the wrong direction, will unsurprisingly lead you in the wrong direction. If you’re struggling to identify the right path, create more nodes of optimization. For example: if you’re making changes every year, you only have maybe 80 in your entire life to make. Instead, try testing things intentionally every month or even every week. If I were to continue this everyday for the next year, would I be in a better place?” If the answer is yes, you have a path towards “good”.

While you’re moving towards “greatness”, keep in mind that it will likely happen slowly and that’s okay. Try to remind yourself as you’re iterating, that there are new levels that you can’t even conceptualize right now. Regardless of how far along you are, know that these new levels of success will appear as you work towards the next one or two.

Remember, there is no “magic moment” when you become great, so if you are looking for your path towards greatness, stop looking for “greatness” and consider that your most probable path there is just to focus on what’s good.

If you have an understanding of what inputs equal favourable outputs then continue moving in that direction. As you move past the local minima and maxima, you’ll soon be beating out the 50% that quit at X time, the 75% that quit at Y time, and the 90% that quit at Z time. Soon enough, you’ll be the great one that was once just “good” among the rest, but stuck with it and learned something along the way.

Remember, great is just good, but repeatable.