The best piece of vocational advice I ever received came to me unexpectedly by a man I had never met through a Kindle book I half-heartedly committed to reading. A fellow Disney fan recommended I read Bob Iger’s memoir The Ride of a Lifetime because it provides fascinating insight into the life of a Disney CEO, offers good advice, and above all, “spills some serious company tea.”
I have never been a fan of non-fiction books, but I like Disney, so I decided to give it a chance. By the time I finished the book, I had gained a mentor and a new perspective on life. Bob Iger’s book impacted me so profoundly, that when, shortly after I finished the book, he announced he was stepping down as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, I felt vaguely like I had just lost an old friend.
I learned many things from his book, but the advice that stuck with me the most was to never settle for mediocrity. He says one of the mottos he lives by is to “push back against the urge to say ‘There’s not enough time’, or ‘I don’t have the energy’, or ‘This requires a difficult conversation I don’t want to have’, or any of the many other ways we can convince ourselves that “good enough” is good enough” (Iger, 2019).
It is such a simple concept: just do your best, and yet it was something I needed to be reminded of. I have always had a good work ethic, which sometimes translates to me trying to accomplish as many things as I can, and in my rush to check items off my to-do list, I take shortcuts and settle for “good enough”, sacrificing quality for quantity.
I read and re-read this quote multiple times, ingraining it into my memory and adapting it to my lifestyle. The perspective I now have is that if I have not done my work to the best of my ability within the given constraints, it isn’t finished. If there is any degree of settling, it isn’t finished. If there is the opportunity for me to still do a better job, I am not finished. The caveat to this is that we do not live in a perfect world, and therefore can never hope to achieve perfection. Bob Iger says that the goal is not perfection, but to come as close to perfection as possible with the time, money, and resources that you have. My work reflects this pursuit of perfection, pursuit being the keyword here.
One area where I need this reminder the most is video editing. I recently began experimenting with Adobe Premiere Pro to edit videos for an internship I am doing. I can spend hours on one 30 second clip, aligning the audio perfectly with the video or graphics, adding text that looks effortlessly well-done. If a line of text is one centimeter off-center I fix it. After all, I have the time to do it, so why not make my work the best it can be? It is a constant fight against mediocrity.
The temptation to just give up and settle is always there of course. I mean really, who’s going to notice if the text just barely doesn’t line up or if the audio is 2 milliseconds late? Does it really matter that much? Well, yes, it does, but why?
For a company, the answer is rather simple. Create the best quality output you possibly can and in return, you’ll earn a great reputation which will bring in more customers and a growth in sales. But on an individual level, there is no bottom line to work for. Instead, my incentives for refusing to accept “good enough” are a little more abstract. It matters to me that I push towards excellence because I want to take pride in my work. There is a certain strength that comes from stepping back from your final output and knowing you came as close to perfection as you reasonably could. On a deeper level, this work ethic translates to other parts of my life, helping me to become a more self-assured person. Bob Iger said, “the way you do anything is the way you do everything.”(Iger, 2019). The attitude of not settling for “good enough” in my work can be applied to other areas of my life. No need to settle for a lame boyfriend or restrict myself to the same repertoire of meals because I know “enough” cooking. I know what I am capable of, there is no need to accept mediocrity, I can always push for better.
And so, thanks to Bob Iger, my work ethic has been altered, changing the trajectory of my career by reminding me that I can and will do better. I am looking beyond all the places I thought I could go, to more lofty goals because the rejection of “good enough” has a high payoff. I know because I’ve seen it myself.
Sources
1. Iger, Robert. Ride of a Lifetime. Random House USA, 2019.
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