Why Doing Your Best Is Not Good Enough

If you are a high performer and you are not progressing at the rate you want to despite doing your best, you’re in the right place. As a society, we are taught to do our best. To give it our all and be happy, knowing that if it works out, it was meant to be. If it doesn’t work out, well, it wasn’t. And we should be happy and content with that.

But for Type A personalities who do things right and want a result from it, it can be very frustrating. When you’re ‘doing your best’, and it’s not working or not working fast enough, it can be demotivating and may derail you from what you really want. You watch other people in the same role, doing what you’re doing, yet progressing more quickly than you or seeing a better outcome.

How about those who are Directors by the age of 28 (in a large organisation, not a start-up or the like), or those who are making six figures a few years into their career? What is different about them that you can learn from? What is going wrong with what you are doing? What is going right with what they are doing?

The only thing that is equitable for everyone, irrespective of race, gender, social class, experience etc., is time. Everyone has 24 hours in a day; the sun rises and sets at the same time for everyone. So, what is different about people who succeed?

Well, it is about how well they use their time by doing how the task needs to be done. It is not just about doing your best, but doing the best in the time that you have in the best way that task is required to be done. Too much? Let’s break this down.

1. Doing your best

This is rather simple. You use your knowledge and skillset to the best of your ability. This is a doing phase where you draw on what you know already or learn what you don’t know and then take action.

2. Doing the best in the time that you have

This is about giving it your best in the specific time frame that you have. So, if you have 8 hours to do something, you will go at it and be as productive as possible and leave the rest to the universe. You are still drawing on ‘doing your best’ + in the time frame that you have.

3. Doing the best way the task is required to be done

This is about focusing on what needs to happen and how it can be best achieved in the time that you have, drawing on what you know or learning what you don’t. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem very different if you combine points 1 and 2. However, if you look closer, what this means is you focus on the task first. Instead of going in and doing your best based on what you know, asking yourself what needs to happen and how you should approach tackling the task to get the outcome that you want.

So, it’s a task-first approach rather than knowledge or skill-based approach. This approach ensures you maximise the resources, i.e. time, focus, skills and knowledge, and use it in a way that task requires you to do rather than what you know how to do. This brings in focus and clarity. I’ll repeat it again – it brings focus and clarity. This is how you maximise your time with the proper direction and attention.

This is how those who succeed at a faster pace utilise their time. They are focused less on doing more and more on doing right in the best way they can. Instead of a check box exercise where you feel good about how much you have accomplished, they focus on the outcome: is the outcome of the quality they want it to be and how they can improve next time, so the output is more efficient, more significant, etc. etc.

So, in essence, it’s not about how best you can do the task but rather how best the task can be done. When you shift the focus from you to what needs to happen, you don’t focus so much on what your strengths are or what you already know, but rather what strengths and knowledge this task requires and how best I can execute it or get the support needed to get it done.

So, how will you approach your day, tasks, goals, and dreams from now onwards? What will you do differently such that it gives you the best outcome possible?

I love hearing back from you. Do share your thoughts and stories, as it really inspires me to read them.

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Categories: : Growth, Leadership, Productivity