There’s a film called Conspiracy.
Nazis sitting around, calmly deciding the fate of millions of Jews.
No shouting, no drama, no tense music.
Just a bunch of bureaucrats talking logistics.
And yet, out of this meeting, extraordinary evil unfolded.
Hannah Arendt called it the “banality of evil.”
Evil, not from monstrous people, but from ordinary people doing non extraordinary things.
This made me think.
We believe extraordinary results need extraordinary actions.
But that’s wrong.
Most world-changing moments aren’t cinematic—they’re boring, procedural.
We think the extraordinary must feel extraordinary.
But it doesn’t.
Extraordinary comes from doing simple things consistently, repeatedly, boringly.
Like a computer.
Computers seem magical, complex, extraordinary.
But at their core, they’re just zeroes and ones.
Billions and trillions of simple actions stacked on top of each other.
The magic is volume.
Not cinematic intensity.
People chase cinematic intensity, thinking it’s the shortcut.
It’s not.
Intensity is expensive, unsustainable.
Volume is quiet, boring, inevitable.
We avoid volume because it’s dull and slow.
We crave drama because it feels urgent and important.
But drama burns out quickly.
Consistency doesn’t.
People want dramatic transformations—intense workouts, sudden success, overnight virality.
Real transformations aren’t dramatic.
They’re just the compounded effects of ordinary actions.
Writing one masterpiece won’t change you.
Most probably no one will even see it.
Writing 100 pieces might change that.
One perfect idea doesn’t make a career.
A thousand ordinary ideas executed relentlessly will.
But humans are wired for drama, not consistency.
Our dopamine seeks immediate gratification, urgency, novelty.
Consistency doesn’t trigger dopamine.
Drama does.
This is the biology we must overcome.
Humans reject their biology often:
We reject sugar for health.
We reject fear to explore space.
We reject instinct for science and law.
Now we must reject drama for consistency.
That’s the new mastery.
But how?
Detach.
Detach from needing every action to feel important.
Detach from needing instant validation.
Detach from needing things to feel extraordinary.
Extraordinary is just compounded ordinary.
It is millions of small numbers multiplying with each other to create a grand number
Embrace simplicity, repetition, boredom.
Critics will say simplicity is silly.
They’re wrong.
They fear simplicity because it exposes their complexity as useless.
But simplicity scales.
Complexity doesn’t.
Let them mock.
Volume’s results silences critics.
So here’s the new way:
Stop chasing intensity.
Start chasing volume.
Stop chasing complexity.
Start chasing simplicity.
Stop chasing cinematic drama.
Start chasing boring consistency.
Do it quietly, repeatedly, without drama.
The extraordinary will emerge on its own.
One of the best verbal tactics is to simplify what someone else loves.
if someone is reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Call it a bird book.
In that split second, it loses its glow for them.
They can’t defend it fast enough.
Ridicule uproots their immersion.
All you did was highlight the simple parts of a complex thing and put them on display.
But funny enough, that’s also the banality of the extraordinary.
It proves the extraordinary is made up of ordinary
And when the illusion that extraordinary is made up of extraordinary breaks down
It causes the one on receiving end to stumble.
Great stories hinge on how hard someone tried.
We’ve all got a built-in bullshit meter.
One lucky break won’t cut it—anyone can stumble into that.
But slogging through a hundred attempts? That earns respect.
No drama, no magic trick, just raw volume.
That’s the real fuel of the extraordinary:
Ordinary work stacked high enough to be undeniable.
Somehow this wisdom is baked in us but doesn’t manifest in conscious
Trying and failing repeatedly makes success feel “earned.”
If you’re terrified of ridicule
If you crave the crowd’s approval
You’ll panic the moment someone strips your cherished thing to its bare bones
But if you see the banality behind it,
If you accept that everything grand is really just simple parts repeated relentlessly,
The mockery slides off.
You don’t need to defend the glow.
You just keep stacking.
Sooner or later, the pile becomes so tall no one can ignore it.
When someone simplifies your grand thing, you smile.
You know simplicity isn’t weakness—it’s strength.
You’re not chasing applause, drama, or intensity.
You’re quietly building a mountain from grains of sand.
One by one.
Until the extraordinary simply emerges
Undeniably, Inevitably, Unstoppably.