… excellence is not a law of physics. Excellence is a moral act.
~ Huch MacLeod
You create excellence by deciding to do so, nothing more. It doesn’t matter if you went to the wrong school, or were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or working the wrong job.
You go into the situation and you go the extra mile. Your decision. You own it. You own the potential downsides as well.
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And when you’re distracted? See what’s distracting you and choose, mindfully, what’s most important in that moment. Maybe what’s distracting you is worth your time after all.
~ Hugh MacCleod from https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2017/06/27/how-to-stay-focused-at-work/
But where your energy goes is where you’re going.
Slowly I changed how I interact with waiters, how I reply to email, how I use my phone (note particularly that I use it and it never uses me,) how I chop wood, how I show up for video calls, how I walk, and so on, and so forth…
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This is why “culture” in business matters. Because it allows people to see whether or not they’re allowed to cut the metaphorical knot.
~ Hugh MacCleod, from https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2019/08/28/gordian-knot-culture/
I was recently asked, “What’s the hardest part, for you, about podcasting?”
Staying out of the way.
I’ve spent so much of my life diving in and fixing things, that it has become my first instinct. To rush in and grab the controls. To attach a sense of artificial urgency to everything. To become frustrated that others aren’t immediately taking action now that a solution or idea has been found.
Certainly, an important step is to first cultivate a team who can do great work. But once that’s done enough, the hard part for me is staying out of their way.
Many people would say that I value action over thought. This is absolutely not the case. I am driven to find evidence, to investigate, to look for previous examples of similar solutions and ideas, to gather data, to analyze, to sort, to organize, to imagine… and then I act— often frenetically.
It is right before that last step that I’m learning to self-intervene.
Ready!
Aim!
Get out of the way.
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