This summer a collection of my sons banded together to start a lawn business. For some of them, it was a steep learning curve. On the first few jobs my husband served as the lawn inspector, to make sure they did good work. He had to call them back a few times; they were inexperienced and were learning something new.
The experience gave my husband and me an opportunity to discuss with them the importance of doing good work, especially when someone else is paying you to do it. Do your best, I told them before they’d walk to the yard in need of mowing. Make it excellent.
Excellence is one of my values, so I may have stressed that point a little more than necessary.
Steve Jobs once said, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is good work.”
Most of us spend the majority of our lives working—at something. Some of us get to do what we love. Some of us do the work we have to. Regardless of which it is, we can feel satisfied—and learn to love the work we do—if we do good work. Excellent work, maybe.
Satisfaction is tied to excellence. When we haven’t done our best, we usually feel it in our guts. And it doesn’t feel good.
So how can we make sure we’re pursuing excellence in our work?
Here are my suggestions:
1. Don’t be in a hurry.
Good work—excellent work—takes time. Nothing comes out excellent on the first try. I tell this to the students I visit at schools. Because often, especially when we’re young and new at what we’re doing, we just want to be there. Done. An excellent writer producing excellent work.
The mower in my sons’ business group rushed one of the yards he worked on. It was hot. The lawn mower was heavy. It was nearly time for lunch. When my husband inspected the yard, there were tiny blades of grass in patches everywhere. He had to go back and do it again. He could’ve saved himself some time by doing it right the first time.
When it comes to writing, we can save ourselves time (and disappointment) in the long run if we first take the time to make our work excellent—because an agent or editor won’t take less than that. And we usually only get one shot. We should make sure it’s an excellent one.
2. Never stop growing.
I’ve written about this before, and maybe you’re getting tired of hearing me say it…but in order to be excellent at anything, we have to keep growing. Challenging ourselves. Learning.
That might mean pursuing different forms of writing or different genres of writing, or it might mean telling a story from a different point of view or starting a story in the middle instead of working beginning-to-end. Change things up so you don’t get too comfortable. That’s a way to grow.
It could also mean collaborating with someone or surrounding yourself with mentors and soaking up everything you can from them or pursuing a deeper understanding of craft and writing techniques.
It definitely means practice, practice, practice.
One of the ways I’ve been trying to grow this year is by improving my pitches. I don’t like writing pitches. But they’re necessary at pretty much every step of the process—for my poetry, for my essays, for my short stories, and for my novels. So I’ve been studying and practicing relentlessly.
The other day I sent some story pitches to my agent. She sent me a message back that said, “Your pitches are excellent.” Talk about satisfaction! I beamed it!
3. Accept where you are now and know it’s enough
In pursuing excellence, we can often slide into the pit of perfectionism, which can lead to frustration and disappointment. Maybe even discouragement.
One of the hardest things to do is accept where you are—especially when you want to be farther up the excellence scale. But it’s better to accept where you are today and know that when you commit to learning and growing and you take your time, you will get there.
Everyone wants to be satisfied with their work. So let’s commit to excellence and see how our satisfaction grows.
