đȘ Your best effort, again.
Sunday Scoop #29 - An idea from James Clear's 3-2-1 newsletter sparked a rather interesting connection with a real-life anecdote I read from Ryan Holiday's Ego is the Enemy.
Hey friends,
Here is one of the 3 ideas from James Clearâs 3-2-1 newsletter (which you should definitely sign up to here).
"Improvement is a battle that must be fought anew each day.
Your next workout doesn't care how strong your last one was.
Your next essay doesn't care how popular your last one was.
Your next investment doesn't care how smart your last one was.
Your best effort, again."
Coming across this idea reminded me of a real-life anecdote in Ryan Holidayâs Ego is the Enemy.
In 1979, football coach and general manager Bill Walsh took the 49ers from being the worst team in football, and perhaps professional sports, to Super Bowl victory, in just three short years. It was the quickest turnaround in NFL history.
How did he manage it?
When Bill Walsh was asked this question after his teamâs meteoric rise, he refused to indulge in fantasies that he assiduously scheduled this transformation.
Instead, he insisted that the game-changer was that he implemented what he called his âStandard of Performanceâ.
That is: What should be done. When. How. At the most basic level and throughout the organization.
đŻ Standards of Performance
Walsh focused on seemingly trivial details:
Players could not sit down on the practice field.
Coaches had to wear a tie and tuck their shirts in.
Everyone had to give maximum effort and commitment.
Sportsmanship was essential.
The locker room must be neat and clean.
There would be no smoking, no fighting, no profanity.
Quarterbacks were told where and how to hold the ball.
Linemen were drilled on thirty separate critical drills.
Passing routes were monitored and graded down to the inch.
Practices were scheduled to the minute.
These Standards of Performance were almost similar to the 10 Commandments. But it would be a mistake to think that any of this was about control.
The Standard of Performance was about instilling excellence. These were seemingly simple and deceptively small things but Walsh knew that these exacting standards mattered more than some grand vision or power trip.
In his eyes, if the players take care of the details, âthe score takes care of
itself.â The winning would happen.
This is what we refer to as The Mundanity of Excellence - it is the deceptively small things that are truly responsible for excellence.
đ The Mundanity of Excellence
His players shortly proved the magnitude of the mundanity of excellence.
Like most of us, they wanted to believe that their unlikely victory
occurred because they were special. In the two seasons after their first Super
Bowl, the team failed terriblyâpartly due to the dangerous confidence that
accompanies these kinds of victoriesâlosing 12 of 22 games. This is what
happens when the team began to slacken the effort and standards that initially fueled them.
Only when the team returned wholeheartedly to the Standard of
Performance did they win again (three more Super Bowls and nine
conference or division championships in a decade).
Thereâs nothing âspecialâ about high performers. They just have a set of habits, practices and mindsets that individually arenât particularly groundbreaking, but when added together and compounded over a long period of time, result in the phenomenon of excellence. Itâs all very mundane.
But of course, there is no secret. There is only the doing of all those little things, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit, an ordinary part of oneâs everyday life.
Closing Remarks
Intuitively, we tend to think of excellence as a quantitative phenomenon (âhe must work so much more therefore he gets better gradesâ or âshe must put in so much practice, thatâs why sheâs so goodâ). Instead, excellence (in any field, not just football) is much more about the qualitative differences - a slightly different approach to training, a different variety of techniques etc.
These small changes, when compounded, lead to excellence. Excellence isnât just a result of working harder, itâs a result of working smarter in small, very achievable ways. It has nothing to do with past achievements. It has everything to do with your best effort, again.
With that said, I hope that this idea that I pirated from James Clear that I am sharing with you today adds value to your life in some shape, way, or form.
Have a great week ahead and see you in the next issue of Sunday Scoop!
Jia Shing.
Links
3-2-1 Newsletter - One of the newsletters that I religiously read each week. It is a free, weekly email with 3 ideas from James Clear himself, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question for you. It's guaranteed to provide remarkable ideas and actionable insight â all in just 5 minutes.
đ 2020: Books In Review - In this article, I share the 18 books I read in 2020. If you're looking for some new reads for the New Year, I'd 100% recommend you check out my Top 5 Reads of 2020.Â
đ§ 2020: Podcasts In Review - In this article, I share with you my favorite podcasts of 2020. While it is not a standard category one would reflect on, its been such an integral part of my year that I decided to do a special write up on it.
đ 2020: Milestones In Review - In this article, I share with you my 2020 Bucket List, the milestones I was fortunate enough to achieve and the lessons I learnt along the way while carrying out these projects.
Challenge
Identify your Standards of Performance thatâll stack the deck for your success in this coming year.
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