What’s the best thing you did this week?

It’s a question I asked myself this week as I was travelling   . . . A bit of self-reflection is no bad thing from time to time . . .

What’s the best thing I did this week?

• That had the most positive impact on my team?
• That had the most positive impact on our business?
• That had the most positive impact on me?
• That I am most proud of?
• That resulted in learning something new?
• That was the result of exercising my curiosity?
• That resolved a big current challenge or progressed it with better understanding?

I found it quite therapeutic . .

Sometimes (usually) the best thing I did was a small thing. But you got to celebrate any wins. 😉

No reason to be disappointed in that, the “silver bullet” is an illusion. 

We are constantly fed this “hero mythology” about great, earth-moving achievements. But the real world isn’t like that.

I’m reminded of the “aggregation of marginal gains”.

The idea of focusing on, and achieving, small, incremental improvements, that when combined create a massive, exponential improvement in overall performance.

Famously popularized by Dave Brailsford, the former performance director of the British Cycling Team. Worked pretty well for them. It’s a common psychology in elite sports.

If it works for them, it can work for me, even if at a smaller scale.

The quote I keep coming back to, partly because he was a surgeon (THAT’s a real job!), is from Atul Gawande in his book, “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” . .

“We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right — one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.”

There are no “Quick Fixes” or Easy Hacks whatever social media might tell us . . .

Hope is not a strategy – or is it?

What’s the best thing YOU did this week?

You can probably ask the same for your own personal life too, but that’s therapy, and probably beyond the scope of this note 😉

Thanks for reading . . .