Excellence is not a static point, perfection that you reach with a specific project or report. Business and life coach Brad Stulberg says excellence is less a destination and more an energizing process of growth and becoming, leading to our best performance and best selves.
“We are made to move towards excellence as a tree is made to move toward the sun,” he writes in his book The Way of Excellence.
But when he asked people about how they experience being at their best most indicated, in a world of chaos, distraction and burnout, it doesn’t happen as much as they would like. He urges you, however, to double down and pursue excellence because it drives purposeful attention and productive action, moving us away from shallowness to depth. It combines mastery and mattering, both yielding satisfaction. When you orient around excellence, you end up getting the best out of yourself on the things that matter to you most.
“Like a finely tuned instrument, excellence exudes an attractiveness and rightness that we know not only in our heads, but also in our hearts. It’s a big part of what makes life worth living,” he says.
Excellence, he stresses, is not perfectionism. Perfectionism can be a trap leading to stress and burnout. Excellence involves picking and choosing what matters. Excellence is also not an obsession, a deep drive that you can’t stop. Yes, excellence requires hard work, commitment and perseverance but it acknowledges the value of periods of reset and renewal. Finally, excellence is not flow, that magical state where time stops and you lose yourself in your work. Excellence is more of an elongated path than a short burst of activity.
“Excellence may include moments of flow, but it encompasses so much more – attributes such as caring, discipline, patience, prioritization, ritual, routine, rest, renewal, resilience and gumption,” he says.
You don’t think your way to excellence. You feel your way to it – feel your way to a rhythm.
“Sometimes that rhythm is acute, as in the case of a golf swing or musical note. But it can also be longer lasting, such as when you gain a feel for a larger project, a sport, a leadership role, a relationship, a line of academic inquiry or even an entire phase of life. In each of these instances, trying to think – or worse yet, force – your way into the right actions almost always backfires. You get stiff, rigid and you underperform – or even choke,” he writes.
Sociologist Richard Sennett, widely known for studying craftspeople, calls it “situated cognition” to highlight the better someone gets at an activity, the less they think with their head and the more they think and feel with their entire being. It’s sensing and responding, says Mr. Stulberg. We perform best when we feel our way forward, experiencing an intimate and involved absorption with our activity.
Another key element of excellence is caring. He argues you can possess all the knowledge and talent in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t care. Some days will be better than others, but underneath it all, at the foundation of excellence, you’ll always find a heartfelt concern, interest and reverence for your pursuit. It allows you to give something your best effort and stay on the path through ups and downs. “Caring drives everything, regardless of what it is you do,” he says.
The passion that drives this quest for excellence does not arrive in a lightning bolt moment but emerges over years, as you experiment. You must sample widely and explore until you find what is working; then you narrow in, cultivating it. He points to Roger Federer who dabbled in soccer, basketball, skiing, wrestling, swimming and skateboarding before concentrating on tennis, where he became a legendary star. We’re told to persist and not quit things but if Mr. Federer didn’t quit soccer or basketball, he would not have achieved tennis excellence.
“Another way to think about cultivating care is the interplay of quit, fit and grit,” Mr. Stulberg says.
Quick hits
- Most of us are terrible at some things, says blogger Seth Godin. We can put in the effort to become not-terrible; avoid or delegate the task; or tell others we are awful so expectations are kept low. The one option to shun is accepting tasks and making promises and then quietly doing a terrible job.
- Quit multitasking during virtual meetings by checking emails or doing other online tasks, advises productivity writer Laura Vanderkam. You are only doing two things badly. And if you find this rule a problem as you are attending too many sessions where you aren’t participating and feel you’re wasting time, get proactive about managing which meetings you attend.
- After failing to get back in time for dinner with his family after flight delays, venture capitalist Sahil Bloom wondered if lowering his expectations might be the key to a happier life. Instead, he developed this formula: Low expectations for things outside your control. High expectations for things within it.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.