A short podcast episode (Brian Johnson) reflecting on Greg Harden's lesson to give 100% effort, 100% of the time. Johnson summarizes Harden’s story of being a porter who resolved to be the best at his job, links the habit of constant full effort to accelerated growth and resilience, and frames the concept with the Greek ideal ‘arete’ — closing the gap between potential and performance.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last plus one we talked about the 1/10 of a second Greg Harden gives us to whine before we flip the switch and get back to showing up as our best, most creative and heroic self. Start your stopwatch. Stop at point one one ten of a second. You get your stopwatch out and time yourself. The last time you allowed a gap to show up between who you're capable of being and who you are actually being. 1/10 of a second. Note, that goes fast. Today I want to continue our exploration of some of my favorite big ideas from Greg's great book, Stay Sane in an Insane World. Let's get straight to work. Greg tells us, and I quote, as Martin Luther King Jr. Said, if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music. He says, I was just a porter, but I never forgot that job was not who I was, it was simply what I was given to do. I made the deliberate and intentional decision to be the absolute best at doing this job. No one would ever be a better porter, period. And no one would study the day to day operations of a health club better than I from my unique vantage point of seeing it from the ground up. Within six months I was the club's assistant manager. He says your commitment to consistently perform at the highest level possible, to project a positive attitude will support your quest to climb to the top of any industry. It's one of the most productive habits you can ever develop. One of the most important things that I'm going to say to you in this book, practice train and rehearse giving 100%, 100% of the time. End quote. Now this is one of my favorite ideas from the book. Imagine your life if you were able to get yourself to focus 100% of your energy on what's most important. Now, 100% of the time I got goosebumps typing that. You activate your soul force like that all day, every day and there's literally pretty much nothing you can't do. Greg continues by telling us, and I quote him again, the greatest competition you're ever going to face is yourself. If you can take yourself on and be better than you were yesterday, you can take on anybody. So imagine this for me. If you train yourself to give a hundred percent, 100% of the time to the stuff you hate, how phenomenal are you going to be when you get to the stuff you love? He continues by saying, this is where I'm trying to take you. And as I said earlier, it's one of the most important things I'm going to say to you in this entire book. If you make it your mindset, your vision of who you are, that you're going to make it a habit to give 100%, 100% of the time in everything you do. If you make that your norm, your base level, your default mode, then on your absolutely worst day, even when you slip, you're still going to be better than the average person on their best day. That's today's plus one. Remember, it's all about giving 100%, 100% of the time. And know this, if we needed to summarize that sentence in a single word, it would be yet again, arete. Close the gap. Give us all you've got, moment to moment to moment, all day, every day, especially today.
