Easier to go from Zero to Great than from Good to Great!

After a very jam-packed week, I took the chance to rest up today in an effort to knock the edge of a couple of injuries sustained over the past four or five days. I rarely ‘completely rest’, as there are always e-mails and other admin duties to attend to; but it was a pretty easy day, nevertheless. I video-chatted my friend Dave Meyer in the states, who has also been under the pump of late. We were discussing work and time management issues and he made an interesting comment. He told me that I had offered up this idea some time ago – but I cannot recall doing so, and suspect it’s a Dave Meyer original.
The idea is that it is harder to go from Good to Great than it is to go from Zero to Great. And the reason is simple: when things are going along nicely, our lives tend to become ‘full’ – full of good things and good work, good friends, etc. This though, comes with it’s own set of problems – we then become loathe to ‘give up’ any of these ‘good things’, and without doing so, leave little room left to bring the truly ‘great things’ into our lives. Conversely, when we are at ‘zero’, we have nothing but time and opportunity before us, and can try new things, take new chances, etc.
It’s like being on a rock-climb and finding a perfect hold – it’s nice to have that hold, it makes us feel strong and secure – but along with it comes the problem of not wanting to give it up to make further progress.
This is an interesting thought – and may explain hwy so many of us reach a place where inertia seems to take over. We lose that ‘eye of the tiger’ – so desperate we are to hold onto the good things we have.
In my personal situation, I have on occasion missed out on potentially great opportunities because the ‘good’ opportunities wer consuming so much of my time. I wanted to share this with my readership as I suspect that I am not the only victim of this subtle trap. It makes for an interesting thought for the day – at the least ….
JBW