The Fundamental recipe for Success

Self-Improvement is common to all people across all cultures. In the West, traditionally people aspire to having more. In the East, traditionally people aspire to being more. I firmly believe that there is little difference between the two - a subject for another post. However, to improve in any area of life there are two undeniable determinants of success. The first is time, the second is practice.

Success = (Time) AND (Practice)

Time
Tiger Woods started playing golf at age three. Mozart started composing at age three. The Williams sisters started playing tennis as toddlers. These apparent "child prodigies" only appear to be so because they started so early that by the time they were teens they already had at least a decade of experience.

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"I want to be exceptional but I'm too old."
"I am too inexperienced to be great."
"I do not have any natural gifts."

Does that sound like you? Stop whining, your cries are falling on deaf ears and blind eyes. If you are 65 and live in a country with modern medicine you can live to be 85. That means you can spend 20 years becoming great. Give it a go, you have everything to gain.

To my peers, University students blessed with youthful energy, amazing opportunities, and fast brains - you have scores of years ahead of you. The time half of the success formula is all but guaranteed for you.

Practice
You watch TV for an hour a day. You read the news an hours day. You Facebook an hour a day. Bad.

You work ten hours a day. You go for a run an hour a day. You clean your apartment or house an hour a day. Possibly worse.

The first three habits are almost universally known to be time wasters. These are activities you bitch to your friends about. They bitch back. Your parents tell you to quit.

The latter three habits are things you bitch about. You friends bitch back. Your parents tell you to keep up the good work.

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To practice is to perform an activity regularly and repeatedly in order to maintain or improve your ability. Memorize that sentence, think carefully on it, then apply it. Determine one activity that you consistently do and get better at it day after day for one month. Practice is not always fun; practice is not always enjoyable. Practice is necessary for improvement and success.



Why and What Next


For me, this post is a practice in writing. It reminds me how much work remains on my path towards great writing and how much I have already accomplished. I will be writing posts and editing and improving them in the future.

As my amazing high school German teacher always said, "I know where I am going, I just don't know who is coming with me."