Universal Excellence – Pursue excellence in everything you choose to do

"Choose wisely. Act fully."

There are two parts to pursuing a life of excellence:

1. Carefully choose where you will invest your life.
2. Invest in those areas to the best of your ability.

That's what I call Universal Excellence.

Minimalism's focus on what's essential

I really like minimalism, and I have two favorite books on the topic:

• Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki
• Minimalism by Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Another related book, Essentialism by Greg Mckeown, has a motto "less, but better."

What's great about minimalism and these books is that they're a practical guide for helping us focus to do things well.

Minimalism books often focus on what to remove: stuff, shopping habits, superfluous. But it's clear that these removals are a means to an end: they are about what's left.

The goal of removing is making space for what matters. Removing is a tactical way of adding the important things in life: time, freedom, health, growth, so on.

I'm not a minimalist, or at least I don't think I am because I have too much stuff. Definitely too many books.

But what I do have is this focus on removing what's unnecessary.

It starts with clearly understanding what I choose: health, family, work, friends, music, philosophy, writing.

The clarity of what I choose helps identify the unnecessary things outside my focus areas.

But minimalism says little about what to do in those essential areas. It tells you more about what not to do, "don't have unnecessary stuff," than it does about what to do afterward, the "focus on what you really care about" part.

Quite different from minimalism, though, there's this other type of focus on what matters, which I'll call the top performer's philosophy: the philosophy of the elite athlete, top executive, outstanding expert, artist, or scientist.

These outstanding people tend to remove everything that's not their chosen area, a focus that borders on obsession with the relentless optimization of their area of choice.

Which often leads to the neglect of core areas of their lives.

Top performers' frequent neglect of core areas of life

Books, particularly biographies, are a great way to explore the life of unique individuals: Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Van Gogh..

What's interesting about their life is not only their unique focus on their area of choice, but rather their extraordinary failure in core areas of life.

Be it health, family, friends, contribution, finances, morality, you name it: it's often the case that top performers in a chosen area, people we'll idolize and want to emulate, will also willfully neglect core parts of their lives.

They are possessed by a passion that borders on obsession, and the exclusion of other areas happens not like in minimalism where one is removing non-essentials, but rather as casualties of their focus.

"I don't have time to exercise," "I don't have time to visit my mom," "I can't focus on my kids after dinner," "I have no time to cook a healthy meal." These are all stories top performers tell themselves when obsessed with results in a particular area at the neglect of others.

It's impossible to be perfect at everything we do. In fact, it's impossible to be perfect at anything we do.

But the top performers' focus will often pursue perfection in an area, often their professional field, at the expense of everything else, areas which will often receive nowhere near that level of attention.

An excellent life can't be lived so narrowly, fortunate or unfortunately. We're all bound to different areas of life that must be nurtured holistically to live a full life.

This involves choosing what we do carefully, like in minimalism, and then doing our best at all of them, as in the top performer philosophy.

Be as good as you can

"Is that the best you can do?"

There's an old joke where the boss asks an employee for a report, and once the employee asks what he thinks of it, the boss says, "Is that the best you can do?" The employee apologizes and improves it, only to be faced with the same question after delivering it a second time.

Eventually, when the boss asks, "Is that the best you can do?" the employee says, "Yes, that's the very best I can do.", to which the boss replies, "OK, I'll give it a read."

Of course, this story is hyperbolic, and unless the employee's only job is to write reports, these iterations are a waste of time.

But the story embraces an important concept: doing your best once you choose to do it.

The best you can do is not the very best in the world, the best in your company, or even the best in your family. It's about fulfilling your own potential.

The gaps in our lives are filled between our current state and our potential.

Some people will be able to lift very heavy weights, others slightly lower weights. Some will become highly educated, others less so. Some will read many books, others fewer books.

Being as good as you can is about understanding your personal line of potential and then doing the work to get there.

Importantly, you can't just choose one area and neglect all others.

You have to be the best you can at everything you choose to do.

Choose wisely. Act fully.

Choosing wisely is vital because a scattered focus hinders progress. Like in minimalism, you remove the unessential and enable your ability to nurture the few core areas of life.

Acting fully is then required to ensure all areas chosen are optimally nurtured. Instead of starving or undernourishing areas, you invest in each to your maximum potential.

That is Universal Excellence: Carefully choosing the areas of life to invest in, and then doing your very best at them.

Tying it together for you

Universal Excellence is an approach to pursuing a life of excellence in which you carefully choose the areas of life and then nurture them to the best of your ability.

1. Choose wisely

Reflect on the areas of your life and decide which are core to a life well lived for you.

Be specific about each area you value. For example:

• Family: Spending quality time with your family daily
• Art: Supporting the local art scene
• Work: Working with people who are smarter than you
• Health: Riding your bike

Choose a few areas, not too many: 5 to 10. There is no need to be too systematic; there's no absolute limit, but choose wisely.

I'm a fan of choosing positively instead of negatively: rather than focus on what you shouldn't do, focus on what you should do and let that push the unessential away.

Once you define the core areas of your life, you must commit to doing the best you can in them.

2. Act fully

"I can't hear what you're saying because your actions are so loud."

This saying often comes to mind when I mentor or talk to others about living to our full potential.

It's not atypical for me to see one saying, "I really care about my kids," "Of course my health is important," and "I want to be out of debt," and not see the actions to back those words up.

Doing your best doesn't mean being the best in the world. I play the guitar, practice jiu-jitsu, and write, and I am not nearly the best in the world at them.

But I'm doing the best I can, reaching my own potential. That's what I want you to do too.

So define what your best is in each of these areas: What do you have the potential to do?

For example:

• Family: Go out for date night every week, read for kids 3x a week
• Art: Donate $10,000, help put together a new theater show
• Work: Overachieve on your yearly goals, mentor 2 people into achieving their goals
• Health: Ride your bike enough to complete a 15-mile ride.

These don't necessarily have to be goals. It's about setting your own high standards. It's about what you can do and whether you're doing it.

In particular, it's about not neglecting core areas of life in exchange for others, about not making excuses:

• I can't focus on family because work is busy
• Can't focus on health because the kids are killing me
• Can't focus on money because there's so much going on

It's only OK for you to say those things if you're doing your very best in every life area you chose.

Are you?