The title of this article probably sounds like I’m simply stating the obvious here but this may not be as obvious to everyone as one may think. You can’t improve if you don’t acknowledge your flaws. The greatest people are those who accept that they are not the best at what they do because this pushes them to keep learning and improving. Find mentors and partners, people with similar interests but different skills. Everyone has something to teach you and in an ideal world we would all harness the power of learning from each other. The things you learn from your peers will always stick with you more than knowledge imparted by a teacher, whom you probably don’t even like, in a classroom, under very restricted conditions. The journey to greatness is long and tedious but if you’re passionate about what you’re doing then everyday is a learning experience. Every obstacle you encounter and overcome will serve to teach you something and if you love learning then your path to greatness will be an enjoyable one because even those who think they’ve reached mastery of their respective disciplines will always have something to learn. No one man can know everything and claiming to do so is doing yourself a disservice as well as depriving yourself of the opportunity to continue to accumulate knowledge. Imagine a life long journey of learning more and more about something that you’re truly passionate about. Surely it doesn’t get better than that.

Someone told me that it takes at least 10,000 hours to reach a level of total mastery of any discipline. At first I thought this was just a a random number but as I take this journey as a writer I’m learning that this number may in fact be a lower bound for what is truly needed. The greatest of all time dedicate their lives to mastering whatever their passion is. Now if you want to be the best you cannot simply be content with putting in average hours. You have to live and breathe what you do and you can’t do that if you don’t love what you do. The thought of spending hours upon hours doing what you love and learning new things about your passion should excite you. That’s the only way to become truly great. Greatness comes from learning.