The other day I went by my church to check on somethings, when I got there my Pastors wife and another lady from the congregation were out doing some landscaping. When I completed what I had gone there to do, I began to help out with a few little things and then they asked me if I would mind giving a hand...which is what I really wanted to do. We were redoing the front flower beds: adding a few plants, laying landscapers fabric, adding edging trim and putting in new mulch. It had been so long since I had done any sort of yard work that I was feeling a bit out of place, but I enjoyed it none-the-less. Then it started to rain, and I enjoyed it a little less. Then the fabric wouldn't lay nicely and the plants were in the way and I was getting frustrated, and it was not coming out as nice as I wanted it to and I was getting muddy....I could go on, but I think we get the idea. I kept working at the job, but I was starting to not care as much about the quality of work I was doing. My friends kept working, they did not seem to mind the mud, they did not seem to mind the rain, they just did the job. When we completed as much as we could (we ran out of mulch), my friends turned to me and thanked my for helping, "It looks great, we couldn't have done it without you." All I could think about was how I could have done much better...
Completing tasks with excellence....it is always something that I tell myself that I am striving for; something that I would say I truly want to do. Yet if you look back at many of the duties and tasks that I complete on a regular basis, whether it is volunteer work for my church or my usual duties at the store, I cannot say that I am truly working my best, truly performing with excellence. I do enough to get the job done, and quite often I will do it very well, better than most some would say, but it is not truly my best; I am capable of so much more....and I lost my train of thought...
Oh yeah....so...ultimately I know I am capable of doing a much better job than what I do...so why don't I do it? I don't know. Even recently there are have been situations that require nothing less than my best, and I still do just enough to "get the job done" and it has definitely gotten me into trouble. I was even moved to a different location because I was not giving my best, which has been a wake up call, just maybe not as big of a wake up as it should be...Mind you the location I was in before really was too much for me and I should have admitted that a year ago, before it got to the point where my RVP could tell...but I didn't
I think now I am in a place where I can truly look at my performance and assess if it is my best, and if not I can see what I need to do to do my best. I think, though, that one of my hinderances to doing my best is the amount of work that I feel it will require. In my head I equate doing my best as working at a level that require all my effort to maintain, something that I would only be able to do for a while before burning out. In other words I consider that "doing my best" will require a lot of work, and I am lazy. While it is true that performing you best and completing task with excellence is work, it does not require me to burn myself out to achieve it. Upon realizing this I can now assess what work it will require for me to do my best. Perhaps my best only requires a little more effort on my part, or maybe for me to direct my efforts in a different direction. One thing I know for sure, is that I need to be more consistent. I will start a job very well. Sometimes I will finish the job with the same excellence. Other times I lose my drive and let the job fall by the wayside.
Perhaps that is the key to doing things with excellence: consistency! Yes, I need to maintain a certain level of effort in my work, but the biggest effect on my level of work is consistency, or lack of it. Upon realizing this I can now look at the tasks I take on and assess them for how consistent I work at them.