The Ordinary Behind Excellence

Good, great, and the quiet work that sits in between

The action in itself is nothing special, the care and consistency with which it is made is special.

—Daniel Chambliss

The greatest trick Hollywood ever pulled was convincing us that brilliance arrives in a flash. We like to believe greatness is all inspiration and talent, but most of it hides in the unglamorous work you never see.

The long, lonely hours hunched over the wooden desk.

The tedious work of washing vegetables, preparing marinades, and letting raw ingredients settle.

The quiet hours spent shaping something until it looks effortless.

Strip away the polish and you’ll find the same truth everywhere: what looks simple is just complexity, tamed. You can’t spell lesson without less, after all.

Daniel Chambliss captured this beautifully in his essay The Mundanity of Excellence:

Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.

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When thinking about this essay, I couldn’t get the legendary line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding out of my head (pun intended):

“The man is the head, but the woman is the neck—and she can turn the head any way she wants.” There is tremendous wisdom in these words in more ways than one.

For our purposes, it shows how success is less about the spotlight and more about the subtle steering, the quiet influence behind the scenes.

Greatness is that kind of leverage; moving things one notch, one degree at a time, until the shift feels inevitable. To wit:

• Good writing is just great editing.

• Good cooking is just great seasoning.

• Good style is just great tailoring.

• Good conversation is just great listening.

• Good work is just great follow-through.

• Good luck is just great positioning.

• Good health is just great habits.

• Good humor is just great timing.

• Good friendship is just great recall.

• Good taste is just great restraint.

• Good ideas are just great (well-hidden) thefts.

• Good art is just great subtraction.

• Good music is just great coordination.

• Good prayer is just great silence.

In the end, unless you’re Ben Franklin, it’s never the lightning strike—it’s the slow turn of the screw. The patient, invisible nudges that, over time, make the head swivel, the page sing, the soup taste just right. One degree at a time, until everyone swears it was always facing that way.

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Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom