How to be exceptional.

1. Almost anything is easy to accomplish on respectable average level. The challenge is to accomplish it on the par with the best practitioners in the field.

2. Since self-improvement invariably brings mixed results, striving to be the best in any chosen field is usually fruitless. There is always someone, who seems “natural” and is better at it.

3. The energies, therefore, should be concentrated on the selection of the right field of application rather than one’s progress in the field.

4. If you have any exceptional talents, the choice of the field should be easy and in time rewarding.

5. If you do not have any exceptional talents, choose a field that appears to lack exceptional practitioners, i.e. avoid music or sports, and concentrate on dry cleaning or politics.

6. In the absence of the best practitioners the criteria for excellence is unclear. Define criteria the best suited to your own qualities.

7. Direct all energies into popularizing these criteria in the field.

8. Only when the criteria are universally accepted in the field, it will become suddenly apparent to all the practitioners that you are indeed the most successful practitioner.

9. This suddenness will help the stunned field to avoid the inevitable resentment, which builds up as one of the practitioners laboriously moves to the top.

10. Upon reaching the top, immediately begin to increase the complexity of the criteria. The goal is to reach the level of arcane complexity that will discourage the imitators.