Net Perspective’s Blog

The saying goes, "Nobody's perfect." Too often, this idea that perfection cannot be obtained is used as an excuse for mediocrity. In response, I ask you to consider a very recent example of perfection.

Michael Phelps is a phenom, an athlete to whom few comparisons can be made. And, at the recent Beijing Olympics, Phelps went a perfect eight-for-eight in his swimming events. Eight races. Eight gold medals. Perfect. Well, sort of.

Constraint

Michael Phelps cannot hit a major league fastball. He can't hang on the track with Usain Bolt or tap out Anderson Silva. Michael Phelps is not the world's strongest man and he cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound. I bet he can't even put together a website. Irrelevant.

We don't care about these caveats because no one has ever suggested that he be anything other than a swimmer. Phelps stuck to the pool. He might have chosen other paths and become a good swimmer and a decent professional cheese grater, but then he wouldn't be selling mobile devices on national TV. He'd be grating cheese. We wouldn't be talking about him.

To be perfect you have to pick something to be perfect at. You must have constraint.

This is difficult for two reasons:

1. You want to do a lot. You want to make websites and multi-function dry-erase boards. You want to be a rancher and drive an Aston Martin. You want to be a star and have a private life. It's not a problem to have multifaceted interests but honestly, perfection takes an extreme level of commitment. If it didn't, I'd have more examples to use.
2. You don't always know at the start what you will be good at or even enjoy doing. This is an important point. Few people have the constitution to put perfection-level effort into something they don't derive some sort of pleasure from.

Effort

Effort is easy … to explain. Effort is what you give. It is what you sacrifice towards whatever perfection you are chasing. Phelps gave most of his life. He gives so much in training that he eats a 14,000 calorie a day diet and is still skinny. He gave most of his Olympic experience; for the first week, he did almost nothing but eat, sleep, swim, and interview.

Effort is hard to maintain for any number of reasons: distraction, boredom, disaster, monetary incentive. Anything that diverts focus is an enemy to perfection and since achievement takes so much effort you're going to face many enemies along the way.

Luck

Luck is the polar opposite of effort. Luck is effort's evil stepbrother or fairy godmother depending on what side of it you are on. Luck is what you get for free whether you want it or not.

Michael Phelps got the anatomically perfect swimmer's body. A too-big torso and too-short legs. Over-sized hands and feet and widely articulating shoulder and ankle joints. I'm not a swimming expert, but they say if you were going to build a swimmer this is what you would ask for. Yes, his level of effort is extraordinary, but his natural advantages put him over the top.

Of course, luck is often a matter of perspective. If Phelps had decided to pursue a career as a professional curler his physical proportions would be of little help to him. If you have been paying attention, you realize that we just made our way back to constraint which leads me to this overly simple conclusion:
Intelligent Constraint = Managed Luck.

Definition

The final yellow brick on our road to perfection is the most ethereal. You might say it's a cop-out or you might say it's intrinsic to our discussion. I'm saying it's going to come up.

I don't know the man, but I suspect he doesn't consider himself perfect. I doubt he thinks his Olympic performance was perfect. In fact, he looked disgusted after winning the 200 meter butterfly during which his goggles filled up with water. He said afterward (paraphrasing), "I think I can go faster." To the rest of the world, however, his Olympics were perfect and that is because the rest of us defined perfection differently.

Definition is the goal we are striving for. It is the metric we are going to test our accomplishments against and if you're doing this thing right you'll never achieve your own definition. That doesn't matter really. Putting all that effort into a properly constrained goal means you can achieve perfection in the eyes of others, if you're lucky.