Why I Never Do My Best
I want to tell on myself: I never do my best. My theory is that you don’t do your best either.
Before you proceed, I invite you to notice what thoughts are coming up for you as you process the two sentences above. It might even benefit you to write these thoughts down. OK. Ready? Here’s why I never do my best.
Best is vague. How many times have you heard people say things like:
“I’ll give my best effort on this essay.”
“I’ll do my best to get that to you by Friday.”
“I’ll try my best to fit you into my schedule.”
If you asked the people in the examples above a simple follow up question,“Great! How precisely will you know that you have truly given your best?” my guess is that things would get real awkward, real fast. This is because most people use the word ‘best’ as a catch-all phrase to avoid the responsibility of getting really specific about what outcomes they will create.
Notice the difference between “I’ll give my best effort on this essay” and “I will work at least 30 minutes a day on this essay during weekdays for the next two weeks. I will write a rough draft by Thursday of the first week. On that same day, I will request to receive feedback on my essay from three different people. I will ask them to send me their edits by Monday so that I can incorporate the edits during the second week. I will meet with my writing tutor on Thursday for one final in-person editing session before I turn in my essay on Friday morning.”
Without ever using the word ‘best,’ the second speaker’s language is much more likely to improve performance. And notice, this may not be the second speaker’s best. It occurs to me that there are lots of other ways to create a process that would deliver an even better essay.
Why do I never do my best? Because I don’t know what my best is. What I do know is that when I make specific commitments with concrete deadlines these act as a mirror against which I can measure my performance. ‘Best’ is a cloudy and distorted mirror in which I can’t see my performance clearly. And even when I have made specific commitments with concrete deadlines, I don’t want to set an artificial cap on my performance. Rather than do my best, I choose to orbit around the question of, “What might I be capable of?”
This week, I invite you to examine your language around performance:
With what frequency and in what contexts do you use the word ‘best?’ What would change for you if you used more specific language around the results you are committed to? What would change for you if instead of asking yourself, “How can I do my best?” you asked, “What am I capable of?”
God bless,
Dan
PS- This article was inspired by the concept of Meta-Performance, one of the core tools behind the work of Novus Global. You can read more about Meta-Performance in this short article.
