Do you ever wonder if you are asking too much, digging too deep or simply have expectations that others seldom seem to meet?<\/p>\n
The drive for excellence, not equating excellence with perfection here, is an awesome journey for those that are on that path. The challenge comes when we meet people who simply are not that jazzed up about running down the details as we would be or as we expect them to be. When we run across folks that are comfortable with, \u201cit\u2019s good enough,” it simply does not compute for us.<\/p>\n
Having a non-judgmental mind-set is something I have to work on continuously. I am not talking about homophobia, racism, sexism or any of that, I am talking about the judgement that rears its ugly head and asks, \u201cWhat do you mean that’s good enough?”<\/p>\n
I’d likely need a ton of counseling to ever truly understand a circumstance in which less than 100%, running it to ground, beating it to death until I am tired kind of detail digging would not be the order of the day.<\/p>\n
Looking at this from the other direction though, I must assume that people think the same, or at least equally judgmental, thoughts about people like me. It only seems fair to think that one would say, \u201cJesus Greg, I don\u2019t think we need to get down to that degree of detail, it\u2019s only a concept\u201d or something similar.<\/p>\n
As I type this, I think about this question: Is this a generational thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously, it is not.<\/p>\n I know 80-year old folks, 52-year-old men, that would be me, as well as a cadre of younger people who strive for the seemingly same level of excellence that I do.<\/p>\n But excellence is hard to measure, as everyone has their own notion of what it truly is. What may be excellent to me may be graded as \u201cgood\u201d by others. Defining it raises questions: How much is enough? Why is \u201cthis\u201d good enough for this week\u2019s work and last week a bit less was judged to be excellent?<\/p>\n