Derek Thompson

It often promises that the solution can't just be worked out with good habits.

It has to be bought.

So maybe just go a little bit deeper into that.

So we've defined the enemies of excellence.

Alienation, pseudo-excellence, the grift that sometimes follows from the pseudo-excellence approach.

I think now we should probably just define excellence itself.

And I do want to set this up by saying that

I think excellence is a little bit of a peculiar word in a fun way.

There's something almost old-fashioned about it.

It's not happiness.

It's not optimization.

It's not flow.

It's not pleasure.

It's not comfort.

Your definition of excellence exists above all of these things.

So what is it?

So you could have called this idea success, right?

But success, I think, is indifferent to values.

That's why I'm so interested in the fact that you held the concept of values in your definition.

Like, if you set out to get rich by making the world a better place, but you become a billionaire by subverting the law, you're successful.