Excellence

One of my employer's organizational values is 'Excellence'. I've never thought much about it until recently, but I've realized it's a very important value to me personally. I have been expressing the concept to myself as: 'if I'm going to spend my time and energy doing something, I might as well do it well ... or at least give it my best.' If I'm going to go to work 40 or so hours a week, that's a significant investment of my time, and I might as well do the best I can during the time that I'm there. If I don't, what the heck am I doing there? If I'm going to be a husband and father, going to all that work to build a relationship with a wonderful woman and working hard to create and nurture new life with her, I might as well do the best I can with those relationships and, during the time I'm with them, give my best to them. If I'm going to participate in church, community, school, or other volunteer activities, I might as well do the best I can in planning, organizing, executing, and enjoying those activities. When I don't give these and other areas of my life the best I can offer, what is the point in investing my time and energy in them? If I do less than my best, those activities tend to become empty and meaningless and I would be better off dropping them from my life altogether.

So, here's one of the things that's been near the front of my mind for several years now - especially since many of those years have been so crowded with responsibilities. If we divide our time and energy among too many activities, we won't have enough invested in any of them to make any of them successful. We won't have achieved 'critical mass' in any area to make sparks fly and make magic happen. If that happens, we're in danger of having a totally meaningless existence since we can't do our best in any of the areas with which we engage. Once again, we're better off dropping a few things and investing enough in the remaining activities to make most or all of them successful. Otherwise, what the heck are we doing playing around with them in the first place?

On the flip side, if we focus all our energies on very few tasks, we may do them exceptionally well, to the point of being obsessed with perfection, and waste our resources when they could have had a broader impact. I've experienced both of these extremes and I have to say I am much happier and feel more fulfilled when I can find that balance of 'excellence' between the extremes of spreading myself so thin that I fail and focusing so narrowly that I become obsessed with perfection.