[wayfarer2s]

The premise doesn't hold up when you think about it. If to be great is to be good repeatably, then what does it mean to be great repeatably? Is that also great or do we need a new word?

Producing good work consistently means you are good overall. Being great means you produce great work consistently.

One of the linked articles in the piece contradicts the notion that consistently being good would lead to greatness. (Well a link to a tweet of images of the article -- https://autotranslucence.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/). That author argued that while they were consistently very good at body painting (top 5 in the world championships), they were not able to conceive how the 2016 winner produced the work they did in the same amount of time (6 hours). Even though they were improving incrementally, they were so far behind the winner's work that they couldn't wrap their head around what sorts of improvements they would need to add in order to reach the same level of competency. So it was not just a matter of being consistent. Their mental model was off.

That seems to fit reality and greatness more than the original article. A good mathematician does not simply reach the level of Terence Tao by being consistently good over time.

[rakejake]

The word "Great" has to be qualified here. Reading the article, I don't believe the author means to say you can "work" your way to actual greatness - say being the best in the world at something, or one of the world's leading experts in a tough field.

Rather greatness here is simply being close to one's true potential. Whether you are Lebron James or a random bench-warmer, the trick is to show up everyday and consistently improve. LeBron is great because his floor is higher than most other player's ceilings. There are many players who can give a brilliant performance on their day, but can't do much on others. If you've watched any sport, the great players are very very good even on their worst days. On their best days, they are unbeatable.

If you can identify the area where you can achieve the same and put in the work, then you're on the path to greatness (at your level).

[from-nibly]

The article is arguing just that. There is no great consistently and yes you do achieve whatever level Terence Tao is at by being good and improving consistently.

Software is a particularly good form of this. You can't really just vomit out a codebase that's perfect immediately. If we could do that then there wouldn't be so many versions of even the most mundane tools on your computer.

Even though when you look at a great piece of spftware you can just look ay the whole completed thing, it didn't just pop into existence that way. It was honed over time.

[lelanthran]

> That author argued that while they were consistently very good at body painting (top 5 in the world championships), they were not able to conceive how the 2016 winner produced the work they did in the same amount of time (6 hours). Even though they were improving incrementally, they were so far behind the winner's work that they couldn't wrap their head around what sorts of improvements they would need to add in order to reach the same level of competency. So it was not just a matter of being consistent. Their mental model was off.

I think that that author would be able to improve her article by many orders of magnitudes simply by incorporating the images she is referring to (his own, and the winner's).

That she is incapable of understanding how poor a written comparison of pictures is when making a point of comparison tells me that she might have difficulty understanding things in general, not just the visual art she is, ironically, only able to talk about and not show.