Make Excellent Small Choices and Be Excellent at the Right Time

The choices we make today determine our tomorrow. No matter what our circumstances, we can strive today to position ourselves to be in an even better place tomorrow. What choices are you making today that will change your tomorrow? Are strengthening habits that are positive, healthy, and support the future you want? These small, daily choices may not seem to matter. But over a lifetime, they do.

Heidi: I have to force myself to exercise daily. It’s so easy to say, “I’ll do it tomorrow, missing one day doesn’t matter.” But I know that my choices add up. And every once in awhile, I get a boost. For example, finally, I have exercised often enough in the past month, that exercising is starting to give me energy, not take it away. I don’t want to lose that momentum. So that keeps me motivated!

Sam: Our book, “TheSmartestWay to Save” tells the story of a small choice of investing only $100 early in my career that resulted in a return of $100,000 later on. My greatest successes have often been the result of small choices.

So…do your small choices matter?

Some people say we need to exhibit excellence 100% of the time. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” is another way to say it. But sometimes, we need to prioritize which tasks deserve the best of our efforts. Do you know when you need to produce excellence?

Heidi: I tend to be a perfectionist. I create a lot of stress for myself. To mellow out, I sometimes tell myself, “75% is better than nothing.” I would love to give 100% to everything I do, but I’ve learned over time that I can’t uphold an unrealistically high standard all the time.

Sam: Striving for perfection is all right is you realize there has to be a time to stop and finish the project. There will always be some errors and the world is waiting. For example, it took fifteen months and five rewrites to complete our book, “TheSmartestWay to Save.” If we insisted on perfection, it would never have gone to print. Being excellent doesn’t mean being perfect. Excellence is the best we can be in the time allotted. No one is ever perfect.

So…when do you have to be excellent?

(Written by Samuel K. Freshman and Heidi Clingen, authors of TheSmartestWay™ to Succeed Series and TheSmartestWay™ to Save—Why You Can’t Hang on to Money and What to Do About It.)