My Best is Not My All
“What if I thought giving my all was giving my best?”
I hear this question a lot. And it resonates. Because this was me a few years ago.
When I was trying to save my business, this was my approach – Try everything. Leave no stone unturned. As long as I know that I have tried every possible option to save the company and it fails then I at least know there was no other way of saving it.
When I closed, I did have peace of mind. I also had a burnout so intense that I couldn’t complete daily functions and it took 2 years to recover– so the price was still very heavy.
I don’t know that that peace of mind was worth it.
This plays into how I go about achieving things in general. I thought life was a simple math problem – give your all (and maybe a little more) and things work out. That’s how you get them to work out. Excellence is doing good things at your highest possible level – right?
My math was wrong.
If you’ve been a high performer, you have probably been rewarded for effort time and again. I know I was. “You worked so hard!” “You gave it everything!” No one really gets praised for “That was so strategic!” Or “Good use of your energy!”
And so we push. We stretch. We reach. We overextend.
But effort and achievement are not the same thing.
Adam Grant has discussed this at length. You need effort and hard work to get to success, but true success is measured by skill and mastery. He says, “You don’t get an A for effort. You earn it for excellence.”
Effort often feels like we’re doing something important – but it doesn’t always mean we are being our most rational. In fact, an overabundance of effort is a key driver in competitive arousal. And this level of competitiveness more often hurts us than helps us.
When negotiators get hit with competitive arousal, they are up to twice as likely to overbid on whatever deal they are trying to get. What surprises a lot of these negotiators is that they think they are doing great in the moment. They are convinced that leaning in and leaning in harder is the right the thing to do – it feels good… but then they pay too much and cost their organization enough to ultimately result in a loss.
So, the feeling of giving everything (aka effort) - as good as it may feel - is a bad measurement for actual achievement.
But if effort is how I’ve always measured my best, how do I find another measurement?
Here are three ways you can more accurately assess your level of excellence:
1 – Check the quality
As you look at the work you are producing, check to see that it feels intentional and clean – not just frantic. Did you have time to sit with it before sending it out? You don’t need to be able to sit with it too long – just enough to feel confident in what you are sending because you’ve had time to review it with fresh eyes.
2 – Check your energy
Just like a good workout, you should be tired after completing something big -but you shouldn’t be completely wrecked. If you wouldn’t want to push again at this same level tomorrow, you’re on the path to injury. Burnout is just an overuse injury. If you never want to see that project again, you definitely were giving your all – not your best. Work at a pace that lets you still love what you are doing.
3 – Check your integrity
When to-do’s feel urgent, they can take over everything. If you’ve sacrificed other important priorities to make your task list happen, it will chip away at your ability to show up as your best for those who matter most to you. We often do this from a place of good intent. We don’t want to let others down. We don’t want to be seen as a leech. If you’re giving your all to prove you are valuable – you are treating yourself as the enemy to be defeated… and there’s no winner in that game. Instead, be proud of what you can sustainably contribute and trust that those who matter most will see the value in that.
Thank you for reading with me today. I hope you build a little more confidence in your best this week. Your health and your sanity are worth it.
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/opinion/school-grades-a-quantity-quality.html
https://store.hbr.org/product/when-winning-is-everything/R0805E
