Lena and Jackson cut through the tech-bro hype to explore what real excellence looks like - from ancient monk wisdom to modern research on expertise, revealing the unglamorous truth about mastery.

Creado por exalumnos de la Universidad de Columbia en San Francisco
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Creado por exalumnos de la Universidad de Columbia en San Francisco

Lena: You know what's wild, Jackson? I was reading about excellence the other day, and apparently if you Google "how to be excellent," you get buried in this dystopian tech-bro world of "mindset" and "passion." Like, "Passionately learn to love every day!" What does that even mean?
Jackson: Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about! It's like they've turned excellence into this motivational poster nonsense. But here's what really got me thinking - there's this quote from a 7th century monk named John Climacus who said something like, "A solitary horse can often imagine itself to be at full gallop, but when it finds itself in a herd it discovers how slow it actually is."
Lena: Wait, that's fascinating! So even centuries ago, people were grappling with this question of what excellence actually looks like versus what we think it looks like?
Jackson: Exactly! And I think that's where we need to start - by questioning whether all this passion-based advice actually helps when you're dealing with, you know, tax forms or bank regulations or just the viciously mundane stuff of life.
Lena: Right! So let's dive into what excellence really means when it's not wrapped up in inspirational quotes.