Practice excellence

What is excellence?

By definition excellence is the quality of being exceptionally good of its kind. We do something in order to get some results. The result might have a measure of quality (grades at school for example). Excellence is a habit of putting enough effort in order to achieve the best possible results. That means that:

1. you should know what results do you want,
2. you should know how to measure the quality of results,
3. you should know what is necessary to obtain the best possible results.


Usually, you already know everything that you need to know. In that case, just make a mental note about those parameters and use it when needed. In case you don't know anything about those parameters, learn as much as possible. Some topics will require more time (learning) than other topics, but don't stop with work. After all, it is usually better to have a bad result than no result.

Is excellence important to me?

You already know that the answer is yes. To be honest, excellence is not important if you wish to live a mediocre life. Even without excellence you should have a life that is not that unpleasant. However if you want to be promoted, achieve more, be a better parent or spouse, you should practice excellence. Having reputation of excellence in some area of your life will result with respect and better opportunities. Look at the carelessness, the opposite of excellence, and you will find how the lack of excellence can lead to deterioration of your career and/or other areas of your life. Do you think that careless surgeon will have successful career? What about singer who don't like to learn lyrics? What about spouse who doesn't care about important dates?

What are the benefits of excellence?

You have probably noticed admiration of other people when they notice an act of excellence. That is very motivational and makes you feel great. Even if an act of excellence appears to be unnoticed, you will have a strong feeling of pride. If you are an average Joe (or Jane), you have experienced this feeling a few times in your life time. Imagine that you have that sense of pride every week! Such feelings build your self esteem and self confidence.

Another benefit of excellence is that it creates the good habits that might be useful in other areas of your life. Also, presence of excellence will eventually wipe out the bad habits that slow down your progress.

What are the enemies of excellence?

There is a saying: "The best is the enemy of the good". That means that we might be satisfied with the current result and stop searching for a better one. Reasons for stopping search is of psychological nature. Let's list some of them.

* fear of failure - you will do it the way you know, and it will prevent you from being creative (using experiments). Resolution is to tell yourself that there is no failure, only a feedback. If you don't get the result you want immediately, gather information about the achieved result. Almost always you can find something that can be used to improve your performance. Focus on the process, not on the result.
* lack of time - you will say I don't have time right now, let's just do it somehow. Resolution is to select the tasks that you want to complete. You can achieve anything but you cannot achieve everything. Always work on the most important task. The other tasks are less important. When you finish with the current task properly work on the other tasks.
* doing unimportant things - there is always something more important to do. If you wash the dishes and your house is on fire, of course that you should extinguish the fire first, but this is quite rare. Remember that if you start doing something, that must be the best use of your time.
* boredom - if something is boring, you will tend to get rid of that task, therefore quality of your work is on the line. Resolution is to think of: reasons for which the task should be completed, pride when you complete the task, interesting aspects of those tasks and negative consequences if you don't do the task properly, ways to do the task in a properly.
* interruptions - interrupting doesn't mean that your task is the only thing that is interrupted. Your mindset is also interrupted. After dealing with interruption it is necessary to create your mindset again. Resolution is: "Don't get interrupted!". If that is not possible, try to allocate certain period of time (for example 8:00-10:00am) when you lock doors and windows and don't check mail, answer phones, IM, ...
* bad habits - sloppiness, carelessness are bad habits that will result with the lower quality of work. The bad thing about bad habits is that they are created easily. Resolution is to create good habits in order to replace the bad ones.


How to achieve excellence?

Excellence is task related meaning that you might achieve excellence in doing one type of tasks, while doing other tasks not that well. It is unlikely that you achieve excellence in all areas of your life. Also, some tasks are not important and it is only necessary to do it somehow. What you should do?

* List all tasks that you do frequently (for example more than one hour per week),
* Ask yourself about the results, the quality measure and the ways to ensure and improve quality of the most frequent task,
* Use that answers in order to achieve excellence for that task,
* After you achieve excellence go to the next most frequent task and repeat the procedure until you process all tasks,
* Revisit this list weekly in order to find better ways to improve quality of your work.



Tips for achieving excellence

* raise a general awareness about the things you do every day,
* define the quality of excellence for each task,
* be proud when you achieve the desired quality,
* choose one thing that you do at least once a day and practice on it,
* whenever you start doing that thing ask yourself what is the best possible result of this action,
* whenever you start doing that thing say to yourself "I will do this the best possible way",
* Remember your thoughts (note down if possible) when doing something. Think about those thoughts, are they good or bad for you? You will find a lot about yourself during this process.


Quotes:

"It isn't what you do, but how you do it." - John Wooden

"The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before." - Steve Young

"Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." - Source Unknown

"True greatness consists in being great in little things." - Charles Simmons

"Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude." - Ralph Marston

“If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.” - Buddha

Sharpen your tools

Proper tools can save you a lot of time. For example, chopping some wood with a blunt axe might take 2 hours while chopping with a sharp axe might take one hour. Chopping wood with a knife could take 20 hours, and chopping with your karate kicks could take several days.

All of this might look obvious, why should I spend 20 hours when I could do it in one hour? Usually we don't make such great mistakes in our tool selection. However, chopping with a blunt axe and chopping with a sharp axe are quite similar psychologically. In this area lies usual time wasters. Why we don't sharpen our axe? Here are some possible reasons.

- Laziness
We tend to live a life using as little energy as possible. Our mind thinks that sharpening and chopping is to complicated and it is simpler if we just go straight to chopping. That line of reasoning is OK when you have a sharp axe.

- Lack of "good" habits
A good habit is to check your tools before start doing anything. Train yourself to check tools you are about to use.

- Lack of information
You might have a habit to check your tools, but do you know how to that. For example, how do you know if you axe is sharp?

- Lack of skills
You should be able to prepare your tools for work. For example, you might know that your axe is blunt, but if you don't know how to sharpen it, you will have to use it as it is.

- Complete ignorance
It is possible that you are a complete novice in a certain area. In that case, you might use a knife instead of an axe.

What you should do?

1. Get information
If you don't know anything about chopping, find someone who knows. Ask what tools should you use, how to know if an axe is blunt, how to sharpen an axe, ...

2. Master sharpening skills
Mastering sharpening skills might take some time, but if you have to do it everyday it will pay out.

3. Develop a habit to check tools
Train yourself to check tools before starting any job. If necessary sharpen anything that is blunt.

Now, make a self inventory and find the tools you use, and if this could apply to your life.

Example: Carol works on computers and she waits for the response of her PC about 30 minutes per working day. With a new PC she would wait 15 minutes per working day. Upgrade costs 100$. Should she upgrade her PC or not?

Answer: Yes. Let's assume that her hourly wage is 10$. Saving 15 minutes per day will result with about 50 extra hours per day, meaning that investing 100$ will result with saving 500$ in working hours.

Three methods for prioritizing your tasks

After creating a task list, the next step is to prioritize tasks in some way. That means that you should determine if a task is more important then other tasks. How to manage such list? There are several methods to do that.

A-B-C-D-E method

• Make a list of all tasks
• Mark a task with 'A' if the task is very important
• Mark a task with 'B' if the task is important
• Mark a task with 'C' if it would be nice to complete the task
• Mark a task with 'D' if it possible to delegate the task to someone
• Mark a task with 'E' if the task should not be completed at all (complete waste of time)

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with A, then with B, ... Never work on tasks that are labeled with B if you can work on task labeled with A.

Order the task list by priority

• Make a list of all tasks
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important (imagine that you are going to some trip and you have time to do just one task, which one should you execute)
• Label that task with number one
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important among the unlabeled tasks
• Label that task with number two
• ...
• Repeat the process until you label all tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with number one, then with two, ... Always work on tasks with the lowest label that are unfinished. Never work on task labeled with 4 when you have unfinished task labeled with 2.

Order the task list using important and urgent marks

• Make a list of all tasks
• Label all tasks that are both urgent and important with IU
• Label all tasks that are urgent but not important with U
• Label all tasks that are important but not urgent with I
• Don't do anything with unimportant and non urgent tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with IU, then with U, then with I. Don't do anything with unlabeled tasks.

Order the task list using the price per hour

• Make a list of all tasks
• Determine for each task how much time it requires (in hours)
  
• Determine the worth for each task
  
• For each task calculate price per hour (estimated worth/required time)

When you start to work, first finish the task that have the highest price per hour. Let's look at the example:

• Task A, required time 0.5 hrs, value 5$, price per hour 5/0.5=10$
  
• Task B, required time 0.25 hrs, value 3$, price per hour 3/0.25=12$
• Task C, required time 1.5 hrs, value 12$, price per hour 12/1.5=8$

The order of task execution should be:

1. Task B
2. Task A
3. Task C

Declutter your time

After finding out where do you spend (waste) your time, you can start with blocking this wasting. Usually the biggest time wasters are TV and the Internet. Are those things necessary? Of course not. Remember the days when you were on some exciting trip (Hawaii, Paris, ...)? You probably didn't need the TV or the Net for being fully excited. So the idea is to throw away useless behavior and invest that time into something better (kissing your spouse, playing basketball with your kids, going to yoga, etc.).

You probably wander "What if I miss something?". You will not miss anything, believe me, and if you don't you can try to isolate your self from the TV and the Net for a week (or a day if a week is too long for you). There is always some catastrophe somewhere in the world. There is always some people doing something odd or crazy. The movies and series are no better than the evening news. There are some people killing other people, or chasing them with cars or something like that. I know that it might look like fun, but it is far better to find your own thrill in doing something than to watch some other people doing interesting things. Of course, if your profession requires from you to watch TV, that is another topic.

How to escape from TV?

This is quite simple. Sell it, give it away, burn it (just kidding). Unplug it, remove antenna, put remote controller somewhere far away. Do anything that makes difficult to start watching TV. That will remind you that you should something else.

How to escape from the Internet?

Find out where do you spend your net time. Probably it is either news, pornography, blogs or socializing over the net. It likely that all of those is obsolete. It is better to hang out with real people than to socializing with some virtual people. If you are using Firefox for all of that, you could install FoxFilter addon and block all unwanted behavior on the net. I did a couple of weeks ago and it works and it is quite simple. Also, many firewall program has options for blocking certain sites.

What to do with all that time?

You will have to find out for yourself.