Since my freshman year in college, I have kept a personal journal. As it's been about ten years of writing now, I have several journals filled up with entries penned down during the most interesting years of my life. From the craziness of college, to meeting the man who is now my husband, to landing my first job, to moving out of state, to starting my job at entreQuest, to getting married, to all the way up to the here and now, there’s so much to read back on. And that's just what I did last week after digging into the older journals.
There was one entry that I found particularly interesting because of a single line. I don't think I meant for it to be a "quote" but it strikes me as one today, many years later. It read: “It takes the same amount of time to be great as it does to be good. It just takes more focus and effort.”
I feel as though more often than not in our personal lives and our careers, this idea stands true. To achieve something of importance in our lives, it takes the same duration of time to do it to the level of good versus to the level of great. However it's the degree of energy we put forth that makes the difference.
Take going to the gym for instance. It takes the exact same amount of time for me to have a full-out, muscle ripping, adrenaline reeling workout as it does the mediocre, half-intensity, barely breaking a sweat kind of routine that I often find myself having. To optimize my daily exercise regimen, I don't need more minutes at the gym. I just need more focus and effort while I'm there.
It's the same with our careers. Sometimes when there are critical tasks for me to complete in order for our company and our clients to reach their growth goals, I wish I had more time in the workday to set new standards of success. But then I realize that an extra hour would pale in comparison to some extra focus and effort during the time I have already allotted towards fulfilling my commitments.
Time might literally count but it's the effort that will truly make our products, our service, and the experiences we deliver to our co-workers and our clients go from good to great.
Misti Aaronson is the Vice President of Operations at entreQuest who leads both internal initiatives for the company and external engagements with clients to ensure that every experience delivered by eQ is nothing short of remarkable.
