self-improvement

Cutting corners

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

If you cut corners in one area of your life, it is much easier to justify cutting corners in other areas as well. Don’t give yourself permission to cheat in anything, no matter how trivial, otherwise it may lead you down a slippery slope to cheat on big things later. Even if you do something that isn’t considered cheating, is it reflecting your best work? Is there a cleaner, better, or more effective way of doing something and you just don’t want to put in the effort to do it correctly?

Practice doing things the “right way.” (Note: there are several correct ways to do things, you have to try to be objective in determining what is the best way to do something.) Don’t give into the temptation of doing what is easy, or if cutting corners when nobody is looking. Because if you do that, eventually it will erode you’re standards in everything you do. Remember, how you do one thing is how you do everything. Choose your actions wisely.

Whether things are going well or going poorly, reflect as to what you could have done differently and how that might have improved your situation.

You can always improve. It’s up to you to decide how much you want to put into something and if it’s worth the effort, time, energy, money, etc.

Whatever your decision is, it’s not necessarily right for everyone. It just has to be right for you. Your situation is different from theirs. Don’t judge how others live their lives – just focus on what you can do to improve yours.

Opportunity cost and the Kaizen method

There are trade-offs in everything you do. It’s called opportunity cost. Because you are spending your time, energy, or money on one thing, that means that you cannot spend that same time, energy, or money on something else. You do not have an infinite supply, therefore your actions are costing you the opportunity to do something else. You must choose what your priority is and focus on that. Take this into account when making daily decisions. You don’t always have to make the most efficient or effective choice, but if you regularly decide to practice inefficiency and ineffectiveness, it will eventually catch up to you.

One process to combat this is called the Kaizen method. Kaizen focuses on applying small, daily changes that result in major improvements over time. Thought about in another way, if you can improve yourself even fractionally (.5%, for example) each day, imagine how much better you’ll be in 5, 10, or 15 years.

The opposite is also true. If you get just a little worse each day, you won’t be able to tell at first. But after getting fractionally worse over a period of 10 years, you’re going to look in the mirror and wonder what happened to yourself.

Don’t be the person who peaked in high school. Understand that there are trade-offs in every decision you make and try to improve in something each day.