There are few things in the world as personally satisfying as doing something well. Conversely there are few things in the world as disappointing as doing a job poorly, when you know you could have done better. There are a lot of factors that determine the outcome of job, many of which are out of our control, but one of the things we have total control over is our effort.

Before joining the military I was a cabinetmaker. As a journeyman, a great source of frustration arose when I saw coworkers half-ass a project just because they didn’t want to put the effort in. “That’s good enough” rapidly became one of my most despised phrases.

I’m not going to lie and say that I have never put less than 100% effort into a project, but as I’ve matured, I can say that it requires pretty special circumstances for me to…