The imperfect pursuit of excellence

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
-Vince Lombardi

We live in an imperfect world when we try to align our expectation with reality, but it is important to note that the pursuit of perfection is one that leads to imperfect mastery and a process that will continually refine and learn. Mastery is never about knowing it all as that in itself is an impossibility, it is more about knowing enough that the continual drive is present in order to keep advancing. In my opinion, having the drive and the motivation is part of the knowing.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
-Vince Lombardi

Where there's a will, there's a way.

I was talking to a colleague about an hour ago about training concepts and what works and what doesn't and a lot of the training failure that comes about is that it teaches what needs to be known, not why it needs to be known. The why of a concept is vital in the understanding and it is a core of developing the mindset that provides that drive to continually learn. Without a "why" something can still be learned but very rarely will it leading to stretching for further learning past the completion of the task.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
-Vince Lombardi

Perfect practice? What does that look like if there is no such thing as perfect when it comes to human developed processes as they are all works in progress and, will all be affected by the conditions in which they operate, conditions that are always changing. For this reason, training has to factor in room to be adaptive and develop the skills necessary to call an audible when the conditions no longer suit the approach - or is it vice versa?

Because everything has an effect on everything else, as soon as an approach is applied it is going to be met with resistance that in turn is going to change its approach for a better result. We saw this happen as soon as the last Hardfork took effect that the voting behaviors adapted to the new conditions and while there was many and still are those who didn't shift, conditions still shifted for everyone.

Does it mean that everyone benefits? Definitely not and some were likely harmed considering their previous position but maintaining status quo will eventually lead to ever increasing breakdowns of conditions that will make approaches increasingly ineffectual. We can see this in the world economy now that has been designed for a narrow set of conditions that are disappearing and its slow shift to drive value to a pointy peak is gathering momentum.

It is eating itself and the tools that were effective for the task are no longer close to adequate. However, due to the gains that a few are making there is very little incentive to actually change the system because those who could change the system are the same ones who are making the gains now and they would be harmed. 15-odd years ago 20 people had as much value as the poorest 50% of the global population, now it is 8. That is an incredible shift.

What I believe we are doing now is negotiating both the tools and conditions of the past that are no longer effective and developing anew. The tools are things like crypto, blockchain and dPOS that are going to be used to manage value and distribution of it. The conditions are something that has not been available to us at any point in human history - a digital world.

While so much of our lives are currently being facilitated by digital communication, we are now entering into a phase where the environments that we are creating are not only becoming integrated with life and meaning as we create them, they are also being treated as physical resources that have value in the same way real estate or gold has. With the capabilities of the tools, these values will develop to be just as, if not more secure than their physical relatives - digital land can't be taken in the same way as physical, borders do not need protection from invaders in the same way and it is highly mobile.

Not only this, digital real estate is also a close enough to unlimited resource that in order to create value has to have scarcity built into the design, like 21,000,000 Bitcoin or an inflation pool with a highly predictable rate of growth or retraction. This creates a great deal many options for value generation that has never existed before, and none of it need be attached to the broken economic system that is currently teetering on the brink of collapse - once again.

As the value of the material world starts to get attached with the tools of the digital world, the current system will become increasingly unstable while the digital stabilizes further. This is of course very difficult to visualize for most people for as I said a little earlier, this has never existed in this way before. This means that developing the why can be a challenge as while most people feel the problems, most also do not understand the problems to the level that is required to provide the understanding to learn and take part in the practice toward perfection.

On Steem, we are obviously a long way from perfect but it is the pursuit of it that will lead us toward excellence, a position that doesn't assume perfect, but does effectively use resources to maximize possibilities for those involved. Involvement is obviously an important component and if one doesn't show up for training, they are unlikely to make the team on game day.

I see Steem as a testing ground for the future of economy, distribution and society and the coming SMTs and communities are going to become unique petrie dishes where new cultures will be grown, new innovations and eventually, new mindsets that might one day say; Why didn't we start this earlier?

We might be looking at the same tool, we might have very different ideas about what it can be used for and very different skills in how to handle it. This is the benefit of a decentralized environment as we can all do something different and see what works and on Steem, I can benefit from your successes and you can learn from my failures without either of us risking it all.

A system designed to flex and adapt with changing conditions is about as perfect as it gets. Steem is a tool, how we use it is up to us. Perfection is impossible, excellence is always within reach.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]