How You Are Not Trying Your Best And I know It

A while back, a friend of mine asked me to touch the ceiling, little that I knew is that it would have such a big influence on my productivity.

Now, If I ask you to touch the ceiling right, what would you do?

Most likely either you raised your hand and tried to reach it or did nothing, like a did on that day. Now, if you check what I said, you will see that I didn’t say “try” to touch the ceiling, I asked you to “touch” it.

So why didn’t you go for it?

Unless you got up on your chair and jumped to actually touch the ceiling, you didn’t try your best. For some reason, every time I ask that question, people react the same way.

Nobody has gotten on the chair to try harder yet…

How about if I ask you now, how would you react if I ask you to touch the ceiling? Your expectations have changed. Now you know that I’m serious about asking you to touch the ceiling, most likely you would try harder this time.

But, why didn’t you try harder from the start?

Why do you need the fail to prove that you can actually perform? Why aren’t you trying your best from the beginning?

Ok, who cares about touching the ceiling? But, the reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve seen this pattern repeat many, many, many times. From marketing campaigns to studying for exams to looking for a job, we are not trying our best from the start.

We want to do things the easy and fast way. Mediocre work has become the rule. But, if you are serious about living your dreams, then you will need to try your best. You can’t give yourself the luxury of being average.

So I ask you not to fool yourself, most times you will not get a 2nd chance to try harder. Find a way to motivate yourself from the start and strive to perform at your best in everything you do.

Screw procrastination, you don’t have time to do the task again so you better do it well the first time.

The problem with doing something the first time is that you will only know you could have done better at the end. And by then it’s already too late. You can see this

• “I wish I would have studied more” kind of thing. In life, you get constantly evaluated. Sometimes you are given feedback and supported to improve or,
• In business, you may finish the project but, lose future clients due to your poor performance and their bad word of mouth.

All this can be easily avoided by trying your best from the start.

Next time you have a task, ask yourself, can I do a better job? Am I doing the best I can? And keep in mind that sometimes, less is better. As Antoine St. Exupery said, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing else to add but, when there is nothing else to take away.”

Make trying your best into a habit. Catch yourself as you begin to slack, this will help you improve faster. Just remember we all like working with reliable, competent and professional people.

Do things right from the start and you will only have to do them once.

I believe that if you always try your best, you may not see success all the time but, for sure you will not see failure.

Let life do the rest.

Self-Improvement Task:

Find 1 thing in 3 areas of your life where you are not trying your best. 1 in your relationship or friendship, 1 at work and 1 personal and find a way to improve your performance. Please come back to the comment section below and let me know what you did differently and what kind of results did you achieved.

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Cheers!

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Originally published at skillsoflife.net on May 29, 2016.