Perfect or good…Success, repetition and…

Perfect or good…a tricky choice?

Striving for perfection is always a good thing. If we were in hospital prepping for heart surgery, we’d sure agree that we’d want the surgeon fixing that wonky heart valve to be thinking that way!

While aiming to achieve perfection – even in the everyday is laudable, if it’s seen as the only option, the result can be less than good, or simply no accomplishment at all.

Insisting on it as the only acceptable outcome – especially in less critical business matters isn’t a good (or productive) idea. As the saying goes, “Perfect is the enemy of good”.

Of course there are obvious situations where perfection really is the only reasonable goal – like when we’re forced to deal with a live electrical connection. There good isn’t likely to be the best option.

While balancing good and perfect to achieve success is necessary, let’s not lose sight of the fact that targeting to achieve perfection is a positive. As an aspiration it’s always our best choice. We just don’t want to allow that mindset to hobble our ability to accomplish those “good” goals.

Success, repetition and…that secret sauce

Despite the promises proffered by those inspirational speakers who love to say that hard work absolutely guarantees success, we know it doesn’t. Shocker, right?

Yep, most of us know that’s largely untrue, but we also realize there’s an unfailingly true fact about hard work.

It’s this: Hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but it absolutely improves chances of achieving it!

The reason goes beyond the obvious point that the more efforts we make, the better our chances of succeeding. It’s also that doing that hard work creates a positive mental attitude. That optimistic mindset insulates us from much of the discomfort that those occasionally failed efforts bring.

We realize that the more at bats we have, the more strike outs we’ll have to endure, but we also know that we’ll hit more home runs!

That wisdom is our secret sauce and to the extent we remind ourselves that hard work will pave the way to success, the more often we’ll find it.