Perfect is the Enemy

A recent post, The Tragedy of “Good,” highlights a movie about a mentor that uses highly questionable methods to push his students towards perfection. It makes a great case for wanting to be better, but is perfection the answer we’re looking for?

Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. Translation: Perfect is the enemy of good.

So there’s this thing. It’s good! Should you try and make it better?

If you think about it in context of the Pareto Principle, no. You’ll spend 20% of your effort producing 80% of the results, and the last 20% of the results will take 80% of your effort. Not to say that this 80/20 thing is a law, but it holds true that most things in life are not distributed evenly, with the last part being the most difficult.

Settling isn’t an option, and perfection should never be your goal. Somewhere in the middle you’ll always find the sweet spot.

Tips to Help Tame Perfectionism – Forbes

Why Perfect is the Enemy of the Good – Psychology Today

Change is Strange

Change is good. Change is hard. Change is inevitable.

Dan and Chip Heath have written an excellent book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard (one of my all time favorites) about creating change. Using Jonathon Haidt’s Elephant and the Rider metaphor, the Heath brothers break down the change process in a way that makes a lot of sense. This book has helped me to create a lot of positive change in my own life. It’s a must-read.

I wish I was exposed to this as a kid so that I could have mastered personal change early on. Much more to come about Switch and the Elephant and the Rider metaphor, soon.

Where To?

It’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.

~Joyce Carol Oates

Moksha

by Roger James Hamilton via Facebook

The Monk Moment – Many great entrepreneurs have had a moment when they have lost everything. Monks create this situation intentionally through “Vairagya” when they give up all money and possessions. Many entrepreneurs end up in the same situation unintentionally.

Elon Musk lost $180M and was in debt in 2008. Seven years later, he’s worth $13 billion, but he’d be ready to risk it all again. Steve Jobs lost his entire Apple fortune by 1994, betting it on NeXT and Pixar. In 1995 everything turned around, he sold NeXT to Apple, Pixar to Disney and he passed away an icon. Walt Disney mortgaged away his entire fortune in the 1950s to build Disneyland, against everyone’s advice. He too went from giving up everything to becoming a legend. Each bet everything material they had on something invisible – their purpose and vision.

Monks call the state that comes after giving up everything “Moksha” which means liberation from the illusion. We’re not alive until we know what we’d die for. I’m not saying great entrepreneurs are monks, but they do have ‘monk moments’ when they lose everything.

Many of the greatest entrepreneurs unintentionally find themselves in this state by betting everything on their dream. Maybe you’re in this place right now. It is a place of pure power. When you have nothing to lose, you have infinite potential.

That is provided you don’t focus on what you’ve lost, but on everything you have to gain. That’s when everything turns around. As Walt Disney said “I don’t make movies to make money. I make money to make movies”.

That’s the paradox of entrepreneurs having a ‘near-death’ experience where they lose it all. Steve Jobs wrote:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything-all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

What mission is so important to you, that you’d be ready to clear out the old and make way for your new?

Do Work That People Will Thank You For

Live Your Legend founder, Scott Dinsmore, provides some pointers to doing the work you love, that people will thank you for.

Notes and Quotes:

• Worst career advice: “Don’t worry about the work you’re doing. Just build up your resume.”
• “Taking jobs to build up your resume is the same as saving up sex for old age.” ~Warren Buffet
• Over 80% of people don’t enjoy their work. (Deloitte study)
• When asked, “Why are you doing the work that you’re doing?” Most answer: “Because someone told me I was supposed to.”

Three simple things that world-changers have in common. 

1. Become a self-expert and understand yourself. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you are never going to find it.
   • No one is going to do this work for us. There’s no major in passion, purpose, or career [it’s up to us to find it]. A great tool to find your unique strengths, the things that only you can contribute, that people thank us for: Strengthsfinder 2.0
   • Values – what’s your framework, hierarchy for making decisions? Is it family? Achievement? Success? Know what your soul is made of so you don’t sell it to the wrong cause.
   • Experiences – pay attention and assimilate what you learn through experiences.
     Take time to reflect, journal, and write down. Take note and build a repository of things to have a more passionate existence and bigger impact.
   • Once your framework is in place you can identify the things that make you come alive. If you have no framework a passion could hit you in the face and you may throw it aside because you don’t know what it is. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re never going to find it.
2. Do the Impossible and Push Your Limits.
   • There are two reasons why people don’t do things:
     • They tell themselves they can’t.
     • People around them tell them they can’t.
   • Most people usually never start in the first place, or give up.
   • Everything was impossible until someone did it. The four-minute mile was thought to be impossible until Roger Bannister achieved it. Within about two months sixteen other people broke the four-minute mile.
   • Start with physical fitness because progress can be seen. Achievements and milestones translate to confidence. Make incremental changes. Take little, itty, bitty steps.
3. Do things you don’t think can be done by surrounding yourself with people that are already doing them.
   • “You are the result of the five people you hang out with most.” ~Jim Rohn
   • Environment is everything, and you control it.
   • If 80% of people (in general) are unsatisfied, there’s a high chance you’re surrounded by complacency.
   • You don’t need to change your goals, you just need to change your surroundings.

• The three pillars have one thing in common: they are 100% in your control. Nobody can tell you that you can’t learn about yourself, can’t push your limits and learn what you can do, or can’t surround yourself with better people and create a better environment.
• Widespread change is starting to happen and people are waking up to possibility. Forbes posted something from the US Govt. stating that more people quit their jobs than have been laid off. And it happened for three months straight.
• Imagination is the only thing that limits possibility.
• Do something that matters to you. Make the impact that only you can make.
  “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” ~Gandhi
• Everything was impossible until somebody did it.
• You can hang around with people that tell you you can’t do it and that you’re stupid for trying, or surround yourself with people that inspire possibility.
• World change will happen when you do the things that inspire you, so that you can do the things that inspire others.
• We can’t find what inspires us unless we know what we’re looking for. To do that we have to work on ourselves.
• The only question that matters: What is the work you can’t not do?
• Discover and live it, not just for you, but for everybody around you. That is the work that changes the world.

The Tragedy of, “Good.”

Whiplash is an inspirational movie about an aspiring young jazz drummer and his questionable mentor who will stop at nothing to push his students to their full potential.

 

“So, imagine if Jones had just said, “Well, that’s okay, Charlie. That was all right. Good job.” So Charlie thinks to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That to me is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. And they wonder why jazz is dying.” ~Terence Fletcher in Whiplash, played by J.K. Simmons

Thoughts: What’s driving me to greatness? Who/where is my Terence Fletcher?

 

I am Zion

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
― Nelson Mandela