Good vs. Great

What is the difference between amateurs and professionals? What separates good leaders from greats?

While the tactics differ in each industry or profession, they share some commonalities. I've been reading a lot of great articles around this topic and it finally hit home for me.

I'm hoping to get better, and writing these pieces is helpful for me to lay out my thoughts on paper.

Compounding is the eighth wonder of the world.

"Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world." is a quote by Einstein. While he's talking about finance and wealth building, I believe this core concept of "compounding" can also be applied to many other areas.

What separates the great from the good seems to lie in this concept of compounding learnings.

Summary of some takeaways:

• Improving 1% per day equals 37x better by the end of a year. James Clear talks about the power of marginal improvements compounded over a long period of time.

• Great operators consistently execute on the little things. E.g. performance management, weekly meetings, monthly retros, quarterly reviews. The good does it here and there, the great do it every single time like clockwork.

• Amateurs set goals, one after another. Professionals build systems. Scott Adams talks about building systems instead of goals. Rain or shine, you can continuously improve your system and get better. It might not succeed this time — but if your system is sound, you'll eventually succeed.

• Professionals think in bets, amateurs think about winning. Annie Duke talks about the concept of "resulting", linking winning = right decision. Instead, we should continue to sharpen our judgment on what was the right decision. E.g. if you hold pocket aces, you should not fold even if you lost previous hands with those cards.

• When things get hard, can you double down? Chamath Palihapitiya talks about how the professional athlete goes into overdrive when the average person gives up during a hard workout. When things get tough, can you push through the pain?

These are seemingly different lessons, but if you listen to all these in a row, you start to form a bit of a common thread. It comes down to building systems, continuously improving, and not giving up when things get hard.

In summary:

Build the system that allows you to keep compounding and improving even when things gets hard.

How? Start building a system that consistently allows you to improve

How do you build such a system that allows you to keep learning and improving? This comes from the idea of creating "maker time" and "deep work", which ties a bit into productivity. Productivity opens up the time for you to have focused working sessions and room to be creative.

There are quite a few different takes on the best tactic to creating these routines in your life:

• Atomic Habits

• GTD

• Maker's schedule

• Whitespace time

• Deep Work

They all point to this same concept of building a structured routine that allows you to free up time. It's these blocks of time that is what opens up your schedule to be creative, build, learn. Now, you have to also do this consistently. Compound this over a long stretch of time... is going to be what helps you achieve greatness in whichever field or profession you choose.

How can you continuously make time to build, do deep work and compound those learnings? How can you build a system that helps you double down and push through when you hit a wall and things get tough?

I do not yet have an answer that works for me. I'm still in the early phases of discovering the schedule and cadence that works best. Hopefully, I can report back and confirm in a few months!

Till next time,

Charlie