Permission to Be Picky About Your Time - Granted
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
When I was in school, aiming for 100% (or more) on every assignment and test was the standard. Absolute perfection was what we were encouraged to strive for, and I was pretty good at being that kind of student. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve encountered and seen the beauty in different mindsets as well.
When I worked in finance, my colleagues had different industry series tests that they needed to take and pass in order to work in their positions. One of my directors had a piece of advice that was pretty novel and eye opening for me. He would tell people, if you’re taking your practice tests and getting more than 75% right, then you’re studying too much. He was making the argument that you only need to pass the tests, so studying until you get perfect practice test scores is a waste of your life. He encouraged people to be pickier with their time.
In Laura Mae Martin’s book Uptime, she tells the story of a Google manager who traveled a lot – about 30 weeks a year. He habitually cut it close getting to the airport for his flights. He advised that if you’re not missing 5% of your flights, then you’re spending too much of your life in an airport. He valued what he could do outside of an airport far more than he did just waiting in an airport, and he decided that missing some of his flights in order to have more productive time away from the airport was worth it.
Obviously, not everyone would agree with either of these mindsets. I personally would probably have a heart attack missing a flight and having to pay more money and more time to rebook it. But I find value in these alternative ways of thinking about being pickier with our time. I have moved through my life with a perfectionist mindset. And in a lot of ways that mindset has served me, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive for excellence. But I don’t think every aspect of our lives deserves excellence and the time that excellence requires. Sometimes passing or getting by and even occasionally failing is fine because there are better alternatives for our time.
I’m pretty sure exposure to anti-perfectionist, “picky with time” mindsets has made me a better parent. If I still thought perfection is the only way to go through life, then I probably would have been a parent who makes my child study for tests excessively and pay attention to all of his grades and freak out about any mistakes. But I know that my child wants to do well, but he doesn’t feel compelled to be perfect. He values play more than scholastic perfection, and I don’t feel the need to fight him on that preference. He can be picky about his time and spend it the way he chooses, as we all can.
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Sincerely Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team