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Are you doing your best?

May 28th, 2015

Audio version of this post

We all feel busy and often times have a lot on our plate. This rings even more true for freelancers and makers, who find ourselves wearing many hats and performing tasks outside of just the skill set we are advertising or product we are offering.

This busyness tricks us many times into thinking that we are giving our best effort. Realistically though, how many of us can say we are giving our absolute best?

Don’t let productive procrastination fool you into thinking that you are. Set your ego to the side and be honest with yourself. If you are, I think for most of us, the answer is no. No, we are not doing the best that we can.

Let me be clear here though, this isn’t a bad thing. In fact it is a tremendous first step in making positive changes to how you work and the quality you put out. Realizing that you are not doing your honest to god best does not mean you need to pull more all-nighters, drink more Red Bull, or kill yourself for your work and wear it as some kind of badge of honor. It simply puts you in the proper mindset to make positive changes that will impact your life and work. The goal is not to work more, but to increase the quality of your output.

My constant cycle

For me, I always try to keep things simple and when I need to get my butt in gear I do the following:

  1. Realize you are not at your best
  2. Make calculated changes to improve the way you work
  3. Continue to improve and reanalyze

Why is this important?

I give thought all the time to the idea there are vast amounts of people in the world that do exactly what I do, and aspire to what I aspire to. At my core I have made a decision that I want to be the best and excel. If I truly believe that then I need to put my money where my mouth is.

Look at your heroes, the people that inspire you to do what it is you do. Don’t doubt for a second that they worked their ass off to get to where they are.

You are capable of rising to a higher level, but you need to constantly be asking yourself ”Am I doing my best?”, and if the answer is no it’s time to refocus and push yourself.