The last couple of weeks I have this thought, over and over. I don’t understand the concept of ‘doing my best.’
I understand the phrase and what it means, but I don’t understand this stretch some people mean when they say it. In the context of ‘do your best’ referring to e.g. a particular job.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been enjoying my potential career development at 37signals, which I partially covered in my Idealistic Résumé story. I’ve been thinking over what would I do improve my chances as a potential candidate. Funny thing, I found the best thing I could do is to be myself. There’s nothing more I can actually do.
For me, doing my best isn’t some change of the usual process. It’s the usual process! Doing my best is just being the best version of myself. That means, I sleep well, have my headspace, uninterrupted work, no deadlines (meaning reasonable time frame to complete the job). There’s nothing I can do to suddenly make an extra effort and produce something of an outstanding quality.
I aim at producing an outstanding quality in everything I do, if that’s not too energy consuming. If it is, I’m seeking ways to improve the system, the process, for the thing to become much easier to do.
I’m fighting against the perfectionist inside too, otherwise he blocks all the initiatives from completing, producing an endless cycle.
E.g. I use a proper typography in all my texts, no exception. Many texts are typographed automatically,
e.g. iPhone would substitude the quote marks, from ' to ’
Hugo (my website builder) does the same, so I have to issue a special
\symbol to do that non-curly ' mark.same goes for mdashes —, ndashes –, ellipses … and other elements too.
I write using capital letters and proper grammar in general.
- you too may know these people, they give you the impression that have their Shift key is broken.
I wonder how they do that with their iPhones. Did they turn off the auto-capitalisation? Seems so weird to me!
I end my sentences with dots, even in chats.
I fix the mistakes even when there’s no need for that, purely out of habit.
Oftentimes, it’s not visible, but I issue proper quotes and other symbols even in my markdown files, when there’s no reason in that, they’ll get rendered correctly anyway. But it’s just how I type. I see no reason to type differently for different occasions. Especially, if I write correctly.
It’s very easy on macOS and Linux, all the symbols are alt + key away. That’s why I don’t use Windows generally, as it needs some external apps to be installed to just type mdashes, curly quotes, ellipses, etc.
Writing is just the simplest example I could invent.
There’s not much I can do in terms of doing my best job today as of compared to yesterday. I can help my tomorrow, by doing some things today. E.g. I can get a proper sleep, eat healthy, invest in self-education. But all that gives results mostly long-term, within months at best, if not years or decades.
Hence, there’s no possible stretch of willpower I can do to improve things significantly. I’m doing my best already. To have better results delivered, I need to focus on improving my everyday things.
I’d love to publish this thought to my primary blog, but I think I’d like to find a better way of formulating this.