I stood in the hallway in disbelief. One of my kids had just handed me a test with one of the lowest grades he’d ever received. After giving it to me, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “I did my best,” as he walked away.
Had he done his best? Or was he lying to himself?
Increasingly, doing your best seems to be a means to absolve yourself of responsibility. Then it hit me. For his whole life I’d been telling him to do ‘do it best’ but I never defined what doing your best looks like.
It was time we talked about what it means to do your best.
Easy Mode or Hard Mode
Later that night, after the emotions had dissipated, I asked him how to put himself in a good position to succeed on a test. In short, what are all the things he controls that improve the odds of success? Without missing a beat, he said sleeping well, eating a healthy breakfast, avoiding arguments with his brother, and studying effectively.
How many of those things did he do before his test? Zero.
Often, when people say they did their best, they mean they did their best in the moment, with little regard for the factors within their control beforehand. My son gave his best during the test, but by not preparing, he inadvertently chose to play on hard mode.
Hard mode is when we make things more difficult for ourselves by not doing the things within our control that position us for success. Imagine trying to run a marathon without training or interviewing for a promotion without knowing anything about the position. Sure, you might be able to do these things, but you’ve made it harder than it needs to be.
Easy mode is setting ourselves up for success by doing the necessary preparation.
If you’re giving a presentation at work, hard mode is staying up late the night before, skipping your morning coffee and breakfast while rushing to the office, and showing up just in time to wing it. You might pull it off, but you made it more complicated than it should have been. You didn’t practice. You’re in a rush. You underslept. In short, you didn’t prepare. In contrast, you could have put yourself on easy mode by rehearsing your presentation, getting a good sleep, having a nutritious breakfast, and arriving early to set up and test the equipment.
Doing your best means positioning yourself for success. It means identifying and acting on the variables within your control that influence the outcome. It’s about creating the conditions to perform at your best rather than just hoping for the best in the moment. Easy mode doesn’t ensure victory, but it certainly makes it a lot easier.
Every choice you make moves you one step closer to easy mode or one step closer to hard mode.
It’s difficult to appreciate that there are no bonus points for doing things the hard way. Hard mode decreases the odds of success. Easy mode, on the other hand, reduces the difficulty of reaching your goal and, therefore, dramatically improves the odds of success.
The concept is surprisingly useful in almost any context. A close friend of mine just had their second baby, and he and his wife spent a lot of time talking about what easy mode as parents looks like. This question led them to a bunch of counterintuitive conclusions that have made things far easier and simpler. As a result, everyone is less stressed and happier.
Ultimately, so much of success in life comes down to putting yourself in the right position.
What looks like talent is often nothing more than good preparation.