What does it mean to do your best? I was recently talking to a friend about this. She’s a single mother of four and at the time of the conversation was working part time while she completed her bachelors degree. She was upset because she felt like she wasn’t doing the best she could on a particular paper. This bothered her because she’s someone who always tries to do her best.
I said she still was. Just because she could have, in isolation, written a better paper, she’s still doing her best in aggregate. That’s one of the most important things I learned in grad school: how to let some things slide while keeping the overall effort.
Despite what years of motivational talks (and a poem called “Good Enough is Neither” that was drilled into us in ninth grade) have told me, sometimes good enough is good enough. It’s all a balancing act. Part of being an adult is knowing how to strike the balance between all of the things you have and want to do.
For folks with a singular pursuit, perhaps they can focus all of their energy on doing their absolute best in a single thing. For most of us, life doesn’t work that way. Your job isn’t one thing, it’s a collection of things that you do. This is even more true for your family and friends. Sometimes you have to do less than your best at one thing in order to do well enough somewhere else.
I tend to view “doing my best” not as something that happens on a single task, but as a reflection of my effort in the aggregate. I think that’s a healthier approach.