Whatever your life’s work is, do it well! A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Excellence is a duty, not an option. It’s using what you have as best you can. The job is irrelevant, it should be done as best you can because the other option – to do it as most humans would, as if a clock is being punched or time is counting down – is unbefitting of a human who knows that time is, indeed, counting down, and that other people have sacrificed and slaved and hustled to give us the opportunities we have whether we acknowledge them as such or not. (Read This: Are You Wasting Their Sacrifice?)
A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
Think about that. Fuck. Even writing this article and reading that quote would require that I edit as if I was aspiring for the Pulitzer, or when I work in the yard, to work as if I was tending to the Vatican gardens.
Whatever your life’s work, be it author or garbage man or stock broker or banker or carpenter, do it better than anyone could ever hope to do it. Make it so that they can’t match your attention to detail nor the quantity of your output.
We spend so much time dreaming about our ideal job but we’re not giving our current career the respect it deserves. You are your work. The quality and the attention you give to your job is a reflection of the quality of your life.
Think about the effort you give, is it enough? Is it your best? Why not give only your best, day in and day out if it only takes a little more effort?
Be the man who takes pride in all and live the life as the man you have the potential and the capacity to become, but instead of waiting to become him, be him today, tomorrow, and always.
