What is it that separates?

Lights out Alice!

I often ask myself what separates the great from the average. What is it that makes them better? Is it that they have obscene amount of talent, a gap that can never be surmounted? Yes and No. No, because it is not insurmountable. Yes, because they do have an edge. No, because the race and the pace is different for different people at different points in time. Life is so varied that it would be difficult to ever give an accurate synopsis from a snapshot taken at any point in time. Yes, because they have gotten a taste, a taste of what it feels like to get rewarded for their efforts and succeed. As the saying goes, success is the best motivator. The view from the top is not something you readily forget.

There might be a lot of factors, intangibles and down right luck that needs to come together for something to happen, but if you just look at the things one can control or work upon, the equation can be broken down into simple factors:

• Discipline, for motivation wavers more than a speck of dust dancing in the sunshine.

• Separating the important and relevant things from ones that are not, for in this age of over-information and too many distractions, a person can become easily inundated by factors which do not provide adequate incremental value or overall cumulative representation to the larger pie. The previous sentence emphasizes my point. It could be simply written as being able to de-clutter and prioritize.

• Creating a SOP and framework for learning and growing in the field. This needs further explanation. It is very easy to get lost in such a vast corporate world. There are so many peers of ours who could step in and do our jobs any day required. Experience will lead to some amount of growth in the corporate ladder regardless. But to take a finance reference, this rate of growth is somewhat like inflation, it will happen regardless. There is a certain amount of stagnation that will happen every year (due to non-revision, changing priorities or just growing irreverence). If the rate of learning is just limited to the inflation rate (aka the growth achieved when you just do your job well), you are decaying faster than your are growing YoY and in the end you are just getting dumber and fish-eyed in your understanding.

• Being able to step back and do an honest evaluation - what am I doing wrong, what are my bad habits, what are others doing better that I can inculcate (think Natu's visualizing skills, Yasho's warmth, Harshil's humility, Dhy's people skills, Manish PS's way of making everyone feel included)
• Being able to step back and holding fire on reacting to any situation. Very little of what we do requires an immediate reaction or an emotional outburst. The world has become wired to react immediately and urgently, quicker ideas, quicker boredom, quicker actions. This has come at the cost that coming up with a response has become more important than coming up with relevant solutions.

• Being able to drill deeper in any situation to look at root cause rather than surface symptom. Are there any underlying variables that you are missing? Do you have all the data you need to properly analyse the situation? What are the extraneous variables that have crept into your analysis? What is the SOP that you have put in place to get feedback on the same? What is the iteration methodology you will follow? Are you jumping to conclusions too soon? Are you getting too absorbed into the nitty-gritties?

Additionally, I do pause to reflect on the fact that everything I mentioned above is just my point of view and the factors that are notable for me because they are the major areas where I lack in. Procrastination is my biggest Achilles heel, mainly because I am impatient and haven't been able to commit properly to a goal for long durations. I need everyday reminders and I forget and stumble every morning and evening. If I wanted to counter my own POV, I would say that people for whom sitting for longer hours on a particular thing is not a big deal are able to do more, but might struggle with other factors (what those are I do not know with confidence) such as inertia and being able to move out of their comfort zone. The advantage of being ADHD and restless is that I always am able to refresh and get another take. I would like to think that this second take comes without any prejudice, but we all know that it is not true.

This is far from an exhaustive analysis, but it is a start Alice!