The important element of the 4th agreement is that it reminds us to keep trying our best even if our best, today, is not as good as it was yesterday. While others may be doing their best, it may still not be up to par with the expectation. It’s in those times that someone’s best may not be good enough. Even worse, someone may consider “good enough” as their best. You may work with someone like that. That colleague that always does the bare minimum, skates by, and some how still keeps their job. I used to be that guy.
Did I ever tell you about the time that I got away with murder!? Figuratively, of course. I used to be that guy that was late to work all of the time. It was a bad habit because even though I was late, I still arrived before my manager. So, I got away with it. What I did was good enough to skate by. One day, she asked someone about what time I arrived. Once I realized that she was hip to my tricks, I got my act together and started arriving on time. Why did it take the threat of consequences before I got my shit together? What was my motivation? Why didn’t I do my best without any reminders? I was intrinsically motivated to arrive on time once I began to worry that my manager would actually find out. My definition of work ethic is to make sure that the person who hired me never regrets their decision. That sort of motivation works for me. Not everyone thrives on the same type of motivation. Those that are driven by extrinsic motivators need some sort of tangible reward for small accomplishments like arriving on time. Arriving on time without any sort of stimulation for the brain’s pleasure receptors won’t highlight the benefit of arriving earlier for some people. {i.e. Arrive early for a discount. Arrive early for free donuts.}
It’s worth mentioning… I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before. “Early is on time and on time is late.” If you arrive early, you have time to chop it up with friends, put away your things, use the restroom, grab a coffee/tea/water, and get started on your shift/tasks for the day. If you walk in at the exact time you’re scheduled to begin work, you won’t actually begin working until you get settled. I grew up in a blue collar environment where employees were expected to punch in on time if they wanted to keep their jobs. Even with the Auto Worker’s Union, the employee dealt with a very real risk of losing their job if they were habitually late. That was Detroit in the 1980’s, before poor business strategies and government bailouts. That was in a time before children began receiving trophies for showing up. If you failed at something, the world told you that you performed poorly and there were consequences.
Without the possibility of repercussions, why would anyone change? There are many techniques for managing employees. Many business owners seem to only rely on two methods, the carrot or the stick. I once worked for a restaurateur that made his management give a “write-up” to every employee that didn’t follow a rule. He let it be known that after three write-ups, that employee was to be fired. The management staff was passing out several write-ups a shift. Many people had more than three. No one was fired. How long do you think it took before the staff stopped giving a fuck about those write-ups? I do believe that everyone needs incentive/motivation to step up higher than the average effort (that’s job responsibility number one as a coach). However, I don’t believe in managing/coaching by empty threats.
I believe that threats should come from healthy competition. When I talk to people about hustling or grinding, I mention my idea of overlapping ambitions. Consider a place as densely populated as New York City. Now, imagine that a job opportunity (about which you feel lukewarm) comes up. You can move slow if you want to, but someone else’s ambition will overlap yours. Imagine that a much more exciting job opportunity presents itself. Your ambition will help you to get in gear and do your best. But, if the competition is hungrier, they’ll win again. Many people want the same things that you want (overlapping ambition), once you get your foot in the door, it’s important to continue doing your best lest someone else take what you assume will always be yours. When I was a server/bartender at a shitty Tex Mex restaurant chain, we had something called “boned”. If you were late for your shift, you got boned out of your section by any server that was on premise and wanted your (often higher cash-yielding) section. HR got wind of it and, for obvious reasons, we started referring to it as something less rape-y than boned. The point is, if you got boned and made shitty money in a lame section, you were never late again. Real consequences eradicated mediocre efforts! Overlapping ambition challenged people to step up their game and redefine what it meant to do their best. Extrinsic motivators work better on some people.
It’s worth mentioning… More can be accomplished with cooperation than competition. If you’re a team leader, try to figure out ways to get departments to work together instead of pitting them against each other all of the time.
At some point, being five minutes late (for social engagements) stopped being a point of contention. It’s no big deal if I’m five minutes late to brunch, right? Then you found out that the entire group couldn’t sit down until the entire reservation arrived because that’s the policy of the house. Think it’s a stupid policy? Tough shit, your tardiness still caused your friends to miss a table and wait 30 minutes longer because you were five minutes late. Real consequences as a result of mediocre efforts! We do what others allow, that’s no secret. Let’s imagine some extreme examples of how this could stop. What if you began firing your employees for being five minutes late? Sure, give them the courtesy warning first. But, the second time yields an end to their income. How many more employees would be late after firing the first one? What if you ended friendships for blatant disrespect of your time? You know that friend that’s always 20 minutes late… for everything? What if you divorced that friend, never made plans/calls/texts again until they respected your time? They may just tell you to fuck off and the friendship may be over. They’re not your employee and they may not appreciate/respect your time (and they may be okay with that). The only reason they’re consistently late is because you allow it. What if you found a way (less extreme than a friend divorce) to no longer allow it? I had an employee that generally didn’t give a shit about her performance and often half-assed things. I asked her what she would do if the job paid a million dollar annual salary. She scoffed and reminded me that it did not. “Yes, but if you develop these habits, at minimum wage + tips, you’ll never get the million dollar job. If you get that job, you won’t keep it. Mediocre people don’t make millions of dollars.” She still laughed and didn’t care to hear my message.
It’s worth mentioning… There are plenty of mediocre millionaires. People do the bare minimum and turn it into loads of spondoolicks all of the time in this capitalist society.
Every day is an interview. You’re being interviewed right now. We’re on camera over 200 times a day [I heard that made-up statistic ten years ago. It seems feasible, considering how many cameras there are on buildings and in our pockets.] and people look at our posture, presentation, body language, tardiness, attitude, and effort. Whether I’m doing my best or not is irrelevant if my competitor’s best is better. When I was training for a marathon, the quote was something like… “when I’m sleeping in, my competitor is training and that’s who’ll pass me on the hill.” I can’t remember exactly how the quote went. But, that was the gist of the message: Don’t be mediocre. Someone else is hungrier. Always do your best.
Mediocrity is the reason businesses fail, they reap a few rewards and start doing the bare minimum to get the job done. Good enough becomes good enough. Everyone starts singing the California chill out tune, “It’s all good, dude. No big deal, man. I’m only a few minutes late. No worries.” Mediocrity is why people don’t assert themselves to improve upon skills. Mediocrity is embraced by society. Everything is cool and nothing is a big deal. Every kid gets a trophy for fear of a child feeling like a loser. (Isn’t it better to learn it young than to be disappointed later on in life?) No one wants to challenge a colleague or an employee to step their game up, even if it means that the entire team’s reputation will be tarnished. While it’s important to do your best and you are the only person that you can control, please hold others accountable and call them out when they aren’t doing their best. More importantly, let them know when what they claim is they’re best isn’t good enough for the expectation.
One day, in class during a group project, this happened… Me: *looking at the person that contributed nothing to the assignment* Do you think your name should go on this paper? Do you really think that you’ve done your share? He: I mean, it’s whatever man. Whatever you want to do. *shrugs* Me: I’m not putting your name on this.
That dude and I never became friends. But, I believe if we’re going to work on a team, you will not receive a trophy for showing up. You’ll earn it for doing your best or you can bow out early with no hard feelings.
It’s worth reiterating… That this post is about doing your best, not matching someone else’s effort, just give it your all. Even if you fail, people will recognize/respect your efforts.
As an entertainer and coach, I spend a lot of time in front of people that I only see once. Many of those people, I don’t even see. There’s nothing more surreal than someone recognizing/stopping me on the street and recalling a class that I taught two years prior. Sometimes, they refer to a 4-minute performance that happened a year ago. It’s always a jarring experience. I never know who’s in the audience and I love that! As long as I choose to always do my best, I never have to look back and wonder if I gave my all. Every day is an interview. Like that one time when Angela Davis was in my cycling class. I was unaware until the class was over. Questions like, “Did I do a good job?” or “I hope she liked it?” quickly dissolved once I reassured myself that I had done my best. It’s a great feeling to know that much. I’m not stating that everyday is an interview in order to scare you into being perfect at everything at all times. I’m just saying that every job I’ve ever gotten came from what people saw me doing when I could have easily embraced mediocrity and “phoned it in”. {Like that time that I was at a club and had a dance off with a dude and it turned out to be the show producer. When the dance moves ended, he said he wanted to book me for a stage performance. We interviewed on the dance floor and I was just trying to win the dance off to keep street cred.}
Fight against societal mediocrity. If you’ve lost passion for what you do and you’re doing the bare minimum, stop doing it. “Jet, I can’t just quit my job! It’s not that simple!” Actually, it is. If you’re doing the bare minimum to keep your partner from complaining, stop the relationship. “Jet, I can’t just leave my Boo! It’s complicated!” Everything has strings, cut them shits and break up if your heart’s not in it. If you’re doing the bare minimum to maintain ‘connection’ with friends, just stop. “Jet, I need Facebook to keep my FOMO from flaring up!” Staring at a screen is not connecting. Hug your friends, call (instead of text) your friends, send your friends cards in the snail mail, and find 100 other ways to connect in real life. To keep things simple, you could just keep the fourth agreement. Do your best in everything that you do, knowing that your best will change from one moment to the next. Do your best and avoid getting boned.