The Best Way to Improve Your Results
Raise your floor, not your ceiling.
When people discuss their performance, they typically refer to their best as their ceiling. This is a famous metaphor that is applied across sports, life, and business. The usual advice is to improve some attribute of yourself that will help to raise the ceiling which should help you become the best “you” you can be.
But this story is not about being the best; it is about being better than you are now.
My performance ceiling is in the atmosphere. When I’m at my strongest, I am inspired, and I relentlessly pursue ambitious goals. There are days when I accomplish a week’s worth of work and make measurable progress against every target.
But what about my bad days? Or even my regular days? I’m not quite as good.
If I'm honest, my floor is underground. I get nothing done and spend more time scrolling my phone than I’d care to admit. As you might imagine, my best days are much less frequent than my not-so-best days.
My great days are minimal, usually only a few a month. What would be the advantage of improving my performance in those days? I would argue that effort would be better spent improving the other 28 days of the month: My floor days. We can’t be our best selves every day. Real success comes…
