It's not done, until it is...

One of the areas that both Master Achievers, and those who are working to become a Master Achiever struggle with, is the area of closure. Closure is when a task, goal, or project is completed – both in time and in the mind of the one who is performing it.  It seems like a simple concept, but has been famously said before; the devil is in the details.

There are two extremes that a Master Achiever must avoid when setting about to perform a task or a goal – the first, the lazy mans excuse: “It’s 99 percent done, that’s good enough…”

No, if the job is not done, then you have not reached your stated objective – no matter how close it is, if you know in your heart that last little bit that should be completed to give a polished, professional result is not there – then you have failed in accomplishing the thing, at least to the most important person: you.

You see if you know in your heart that you have not really completed the task, then you will carry that with you, and the next time you have a task to do, you are more likely to subconsciously accept the notion of compromise.  You are more likely to give up earlier because you have established that pattern.  You are moving away from being a Master Achiever.

On the other hand, you can be a perfectionist – never fully believing that you are done, never completing the task because you keep tweaking.  This is the perfectionist conundrum: “I just need to do one more thing…”

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The perfectionist has gone too far into thinking that a task or goal needs more features, more polish, more bits of this or that, until too much time has gone by and the task or goal is no longer meaningful.

Both extremes are deadly to the Master Achiever because we all have times where we just feel like we have worked so hard that we cannot do another thing and want to throw in the towel, or we obsess over some minor thing and cannot seem to say “IT IS TRULY DONE!”

This requires balance, and takes practice and a good partner or mentor who can tell you that you are being lazy or you are obsessing over something.  Closure is when, in our own minds and hearts we know we have done our best, given our all, and have now closed the book on some task or project so we can move on to the next one.

And now, this post is done!

David T. McKee

You made it, you eat it!

Most of you that read this have heard of “The Secret” if not, it is a book ( and later a movie) that purported to tell a story about how those few human beings that achieve great things in this life have a carefully guarded “secret” to their success – a secret of such a profound and mysterious nature that some even have killed to keep it a secret…

Wooo! That sounds so mystical-magical.  That sounds like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and I half expect to be digging in an old musty tomb to find the ancient book about “the Secret”…. Hmmm, not so much.

As fun as it may be to imagine that there is some special secret to achievement and success, I have to defer to the “Pit-bull of Personal Development” Larry Wingate, who (and I quote) says “The Secret is a Total Load of Crap”:

“People love that book and the whole concept behind it because it promises you that you can achieve the results you have always dreamed of simply by focusing on what you want. Yeah right. Most people can’t turn the television off long enough to focus on their health, their work, their finances or their own children. Focus is not a strong suit for most people. Besides, I think it takes a whole lot more than “focus” to change your life and results. So I’m not buying it.”

The problem with The Secret, as Larry has so succinctly pointed out, is that just holding a concept or idea strongly in your mind is not enough.  While I do think there is some value in the ideas presented in The Secret, there are far too many people who stop at that point, or delude themselves into thinking that “focus” is all that is required.  It’s not.

Focus helps us see opportunity, it programs our own mental “filters” to tap us on the shoulder when something we need for our particular brand of success becomes available. But, and this is the crux of the issue, it will not substitute for action.

We will have to work for our success – and it will be hard work, make no mistake about that.

So –what do I mean when I say, “Success is only a sandwich away”?  Simple.  What do you do when you decide you are going to make a sandwich?  Do you focus on the sandwich?  Does that work for you?  It may make you more hungry to think about  the sandwich, but if that is all you do, you are going to starve.

No, you don’t think about it – it is like what “Yoda” the buddha-like character from “Star Wars” says to the young Luke Skywalker when he is trying to use the force to lift his ship from the swamp:

“But Master, I am trying!”

“Not try.  Do…or do not.”

In other words what Yoda was saying to Luke was: “Make a sandwich”.  “Just do it!”  You and I don’t think about such things as making a sandwich, we just get up, get the bread and the fillings, and make a sandwich.  I we come across problems such as dropping the bread, mayonnaise side down onto the floor, we clean up the mess and get another piece of bread and continue on.  We don’t whine about the fact that bread falls too easily on to the floor, or that spreading mayonnaise is just too much work, we don’t “try” to make a sandwich, we just do.

That is how we need to approach our own personal achievement.  Do.  Or do not. Make a sandwich – decide what you are going to do, hold it in your mind so that you notice opportunity, but just get busy getting the work done.  If a problem or issue gets in your path, you treat it like bread on the floor – just do the next thing that needs to be done.

That is the true path to achievement – do the tasks that have to be done.

David T. McKee