Best Effort

Anytime an opportunity presents itself, we want to give it out best effort. It could be a task, a conversation, or a challenging problem to solve. Deep down, we want to give it our all, and those on the other end of it assume that we will. This could be our boss asking us to complete a certain job, a partner who is talking to us, or a regimen we selected for ourselves that we now have to see through. Everything is done with the intention that we will give everything our all until it is complete before we carry on to the next item. We tend to think we’ll be able to dedicate such attention ourselves. But this is seldom the case.

Often, if we have a lot of things on the go, we can become overwhelmed by our to-do list, causing either inaction or simply going through the motions when performing a task. We are not able to dedicate our best effort. Or, we give that which is in front of us our full concentration, but other tasks slip by the wayside. The result is inconsistent results in our work, scrambling to finish forgotten tasks, or waking up in the middle of the night thinking about all that is still undone. Such instances are impediments to giving our best going forward. Thus, it is not enough to simply give something our all, but we must have a system in place that allows us to stop an activity, pick-up where we left off, and move forward with that which is in front of us.

This is because our brains are wired to perform only one function at a time. So, before we begin any new undertaking, we require closure on that which is already on our plate. It does not mean we have to fully complete all other tasks before moving on to the next one, but we do need to close off, what David Allen calls, “open loops” in our brain. We can close those loops by creating a system that takes note of what we’ve done on something, what still needs to be done, and when we need to do it. This provides us with a clear picture of what our plate actually looks like. Then, when the time comes to tackle something, we can do so, knowing that all the other things on our to-do list will get taken care of.

Systems of this nature take away the need to figure out what we’re going to do in the moment, or how we’re going to divide our attention. Decisions must still be made around what takes priority, but they can be done at a time when we’re not caught up in the happenings of the day. We can look at our task list objectively, decide where to focus our efforts, and then get to work. The result, is our best effort in all that we do.