The Exceptionals: How The Best Become The Best & How You Can Too by Kumar Mehta

Author:Kumar Mehta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

INCREASING COMPLEXITY IS A UNIVERSAL RULE

Researchers from England’s University of Bath studying fossils from the last 550 million years found that all organisms developed in only one direction: from simple to complex.16 They observed that evolution always results in a form with more complex structures and features than before. The move toward increasing complexity is about as close to a universal rule of evolution as possible.

In a way, this makes perfect sense. We have evolved from single-cell microbes to teeming cities and vast ecosystems. We share the planet with almost nine million other species, and each one has increased in complexity over time. The ones unable to handle the increased complexity demanded by the world have become extinct.

Increasing complexity is not limited to life forms. Complexity increases in your work, in your relationships, in business, in sport, and in just about every other area of life. The bar to being exceptional gets higher with each passing generation. Jesse Owens’s gold medal time of 10.3 seconds in the 100-meter race at the 1936 Berlin Olympics would not even qualify him for any Olympic team in the world today. For further proof, simply look at the body of output of the greatest pianists or violin or cello players from fifty years ago. You will find dozens of videos on YouTube today of children under ten playing the same instruments with a comparable level of skill.

As the bar continually gets higher, every area becomes more complex and harder to manage single-handedly. Anyone aiming for excellence needs to realize that achieving brilliance becomes less of an individual pursuit and requires increased coordination of different areas of expertise.

The World Economic Forum understands this. It has listed the ability to deal with complexity as the top skill required for employees to thrive in the coming years.17 As society progresses, the amount of knowledge we have to deal with increases. As a result, you need to understand not only the vast number of advances directly in your field but also the even more significant set of advances in related and unrelated domains that will help your cause. Very often, it is new information from other fields that makes the difference between good and great.

Before 2010, tennis ace Novak Djokovic was a very good player and competitive on the world stage, but he was not one of the all-time greats of the game. Even though he trained harder than most tennis professionals and was fanatical about his fitness, he suffered from mid-match breakdowns, where he felt a loss of strength and energy that he found difficult to overcome. Often that was just enough to cost him the match.

During the quarterfinal match at the 2010 Australian Open, Djokovic was having yet another one of his low-energy moments. During one of the breaks, he sat slumped in his chair, having trouble breathing and finding it hard to get back up and continue the match (which he eventually lost).18

It just so happened that a Serbian compatriot and nutritionist, Dr. Igor Cetojevic, was flipping channels on his TV and stumbled upon the match.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.