The Pursuit of Excellence
I will start with a small story…
There lived 3 brothers who were highly skilled bricklayers. They lived in a small house, up in mountain with little comforts of life.
Once upon a time, the three brothers were busy working on a building.
An old man was walking by construction site. He saw the flurry of activity and got curious. As he passed them one by one, he asked each of the bricklayers what they were doing.
The eldest brother replied, “Don’t you see I am making a living?”
The middle one said, “Don’t you see I am laying bricks?”
The youngest brother excitedly said, “I am building a beautiful monument..” Hearing the youngest brother’s answer, the elder ones looked at each other and smiled, then carried on working.
Let’s pause here for a moment. The answers given by the brothers are technically correct. Now think:
- Which bricklayer you think is enjoying work more?
- Which bricklayer do you think will end up going home happy and satisfied, look forward to come back next day to finish the work?
- Who would you think would push harder and excel?
I personally picked the youngest bricklayer in all the answers. He didn’t see himself as simply stacking bricks to finish a job or to get a wage. He is taking pride in that and clearly seeing his role in the building of the monument. The work for him is an art and a self-portrait of himself. The youngest was not the most experienced among the three, but his passion and potential will help him overcome his short-comings.
Now, going back to the story —
Remember that passerby in the above story who asked the questions. The old man was impressed by the youngest bricklayer’s answer. As a twist to this story, the old man was in fact was the King of the Great Mountains.. the story continues, let’s leave the rest to imagination.
Now let’s get to point..
Rewards motivate people but only temporarily, it does not drive culture of excellence. The young bricklayer pursued excellence, everything else followed and fell in place.
Interestingly, I remember reading an article where super-star athletes were asked what motivated them to push harder, train longer and follow a strict regime — it was the pursuit of excellence. Pursue excellence they said, winning will happen automatically. The athletes derived tremendous enjoyment and motivation simply from their prowess and pushing their own boundaries.
This quote from Martin Luther King is one of my favourite:
“If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is not what you do, it’s how you do it matters.
The biggest enemy of excellence is inaction. In my opinion, people fall into the trap of inaction for two reasons. One — they accept mediocrity as a norm and fail to look beyond it. Two — they aim for perfection and get into a decision paralysis.
The key to excellence is to keep making progress even if it is painfully slow. Sometimes results are visible immediately and some seems like a failed venture with no end in sight.
Keep this in mind- The longer you struggle for results, the bigger the final breakout. Here is how I see progress (fyi, I just made up the term ‘Progressometer’):
Most often the constraints we see on our way to achieving excellence are the walls we have built ourselves. Walls give us a sense of security, but also slow us down. You will need to break down those limiting walls that hold you back OR find a way around it OR top of it OR underneath it — you get the point, whatever it takes to move ahead.
How do we even aim for excellence? Follow a simple thumb rule — start thinking beyond the possibilities of today. Just take note of the things we take for granted today. At one point in past, today’s obvious was considered as ridiculous or too difficult to achieve, isn’t it?
The list is too long, but as an example, let us think of Aeroplane and its initial concept drawings.
Leonardo da Vinci’s started his drawings on flying machines among other things in 15th-century! It would have been impossible to make it a reality then for obvious reasons. The point is Leonardo was thinking beyond the possibilities of that era.
As I was writing this, that drawing reminded me something else.. Star Wars? Millennium Falcon does have a vague similarity to Da Vinci’s flying machine, don’t you think?
Another one — the greatest mathematician Albert Einstein completed his Theory of Relativity, working as a struggling and low-paid clerk in a patent office. No one took him seriously for 4 yrs. At times his findings were ridiculed because it challenged 200yr old theory created by another great scientist Sir Isaac Newton.
Come up with something crazy and see how you can make it happen. Think of how to do common things in an uncommon way. You will be setting yourself on path to excellence by doing so.
Remember an important thing, every idea you may have, you will need to protect it. Your ideas may be ridiculed, tagged as too difficult or a complete waste of time. Don’t lose heart if things don’t turn out as planned. It is guaranteed that at the end of the day, you will learn something new — use those learnings in your next idea. I will finish my train of thoughts with a dialogue from one of my favourite movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ (yes, movie is spelled Happyness and not Happiness).
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) tells his son:
“Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it.
People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you, you can’t do it.
You want something, go get it. Period. All right?”
- Movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’
Thanks for reading!
