The Pursuit of Quality and Success
"How you do anything is how you do everything."
A simple statement and yet a powerful truth if adopted as a principle in both life and work. I’ve spent many years closely examining and musing over what defines those who are successful in life versus those who just wander through.
The Hidden Driver of Success
Often when you look under the hood of success even where enormous wealth and riches have been achieved there’s something more that drives a person to achieve at the highest level in their field and in life.
Some of us work to satisfy the need for remuneration in order to live a happy life, support our families, go on holidays and have all the things that make for a comfortable life. It may not always reach the level of material riches you dreamt of as a child but it’s a comfortable life, nonetheless.
We all know others though where there’s something more to it than that.
Work isn’t simply the means to an end of getting paid or filling the hours from 9am Monday to 5pm Friday. Something drives them both over and above these hours but also makes them strive to continually seek more.
It's what pushes them past just delivering what’s asked for and instead delivering what they consider to be true value and quality. It’s the relentless attention to detail; the pursuit of what at times seems like ever illusive perfection just for the moment where they can step back and say ‘I’m proud of this’
Appreciating True Quality
Over the years my curiosity has taken me down many learning and literary paths, yet this particular subject often has me finding my way back to Robert Pirsig and his book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ I can’t even recall now what it was that introduced me to the book. I think it was mentioned in some metaphysical discussion on a podcast and as I often do, I ordered it on Amazon to see what it was all about.
The book is a fictional autobiography that through the analogy to motorcycle maintenance takes us on a philosophical journey into the concept of Quality. It looks at Quality not as a subjective nor entirely objective thing yet as something else, a type of intrinsic value present in our actions and their outcomes. It takes us down the path of exploring what true attentive care, focus and genuine effort in a task can result in and the Quality it can produce.
As you give yourself to the story, you find yourself considering what it means to truly throw yourself into a task, activity or job. To love the act of the work you do, the focus on mastering your craft and creating a quality service or product. Focus on the Quality not because of the Remuneration we’ll receive but because through attention to every element and detail we want to create a whole that we’re proud of. In the moment it can seem like the attention to the small things is of little value yet compounded over time the results become consistent excellence that starts to set you apart from the crowd.
Think about the work you do every day versus doing something you love. If you work only for monetary gain you know the difference in feel, output, and Quality between the work you ‘have to do’ versus what you enjoy.
From both examining famous, successful people both present and from history as well as from people I’ve come across in my own life you can see the difference in those who pursue doing good work to create valuable products and services compared to those just ‘doing a job’.
I’ve realised of late that many times I’ve found that frustration in my professional life is because I’ve been working with a person or people who just don’t care enough about the work we’re doing. It’s a means to an end or delivering something ‘just good enough’. It’s often lead me to feeling frustrated and questioning if it’s the work I dislike or something deeper.
The truth is though that I love the work I do. I love the things that I focus my time on when left to my own desires. Writing, thinking over new topics, creating and developing new ideas or products, being attentive to my loved ones and friends, trying to be in the moment and take in life’s experiences instead of just capturing them on a camera. I love it all and, in every experience, everything has its elements of chasing the Quality in outcome that has become a prevailing habit developed over the past two decades.
Finding Your Ikigai
The Japanese have a concept known as Ikigai which refers to what an individual considers the meaning of their life. It can be broken down into four parts; finding what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid for.
I’ve been fortunate through both good luck but also hard work to create a life that has the intersection of these four things. I get paid for what I’m good at and love whilst developing greater skills and capabilities that I incorporate into my work through things I also love such as learning, reading, developing my body and mind.
I have no finish time for working and when I’m not with family or friends I get work done not because I’m told I have to but because I love doing it. If I have a client meeting where the options are to turn up or to prepare diligently including any pre-read material, then I’ll do the latter. It doesn’t pay in the moment, but it does pay over time from developing the reputation for delivering consistency, excellence and Quality.
True masters in their field, which isn’t something I can attest to having obtained even if I continue to strive for it, understand the long-term benefits from maintaining a high standard of quality in all they do.
Incremental Steps to Excellence
Small, incremental improvements, practiced consistently over time ultimately result in rewards, achievement and remuneration. What doesn’t necessarily start as the pursuit of money and riches creates it as a byproduct merely by creating products, services and experience that people and the world value.
I don’t know if or to what degree of financial riches I may ever attain in life but I do know the older I’ve got the greater my focus has been on the Quality of my work and less on the Remuneration. As a result, my Remuneration has gone up simply by getting more consistent at delivering quality output and outcomes. Along the way this has bled into my personal life through fitness, training and rich, fulfilling relationships as the pursuit of quality and sweating the small things has become engrained in all I do.
Robert Pirsig can take you on a far deeper exploration of this topic than I can and for anybody looking for a metaphysical voyage into the topic of the subjective and objective experience it’s definitely worth your time to read. As far as I’m aware the full version isn’t available as an audiobook so this will be a sit-down physical read for you but then maybe that’s by design. As you flip each page you can dwell on the Quality of the content and take the time to truly think deeply over the ideas.
If Pirsig isn’t for you then at the very least maybe this has given you some food for thought to reflect on your own work, life, routine, habits and focus on the Quality of all that you do.