On Doing Your Best
“Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” This adage, attributed to Og Mandino, isn’t just a quaint piece of wisdom; it’s a strategic blueprint for personal and professional success, and let’s dissect it through the unfiltered lens of modern reality.
Let’s break it down: “Always do your best.” Sounds simple, right? But in a world saturated with distractions, where your attention is the currency of empires built in Silicon Valley, doing your best becomes less about mere effort and more about focused, strategic engagement. The titans of tech have mastered the art of seduction, pulling your gaze, your time, and ultimately, your performance away from what truly matters. To combat this, you need to arm yourself with discipline, a word that’s lost its sheen in our instant gratification culture but is fundamental to achieving anything worthwhile.
Now, onto “What you plant now, you will harvest later.” This is where the long game comes into play. We live in a society obsessed with the immediate — immediate results, immediate rewards, immediate satisfaction. However, the most profound achievements, the kind that leave a legacy, are often the result of slow, painstaking work, invisible to the onlooker, accumulating value over time. This is true whether we’re talking about building a career, nurturing relationships, or investing in the market. Compounding isn’t just a financial principle; it’s a universal law of success.
Consider Jeff Bezos, who started Amazon in a garage, selling books. The immediate payoff? Negligible. The long-term outcome? A transformation of the global retail landscape and, not incidentally, him becoming one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. Bezos understood Mandino’s principle before we even had the language to discuss it in terms of digital marketplaces and global logistics.
But let’s not get lost in the macro. This philosophy applies equally to the micro — to individuals striving to make their mark. It speaks to the entrepreneur laboring over a startup, the student burning the midnight oil, the artist pouring their soul into a canvas. The “planting” is that relentless pursuit of excellence, the refusal to cut corners, and the commitment to a vision that’s not yet visible on the horizon.
The “harvest” is where patience comes into play. Patience, in an era of relentless urgency, is almost revolutionary. It’s the understanding that real growth, whether personal, professional, or societal, takes time. That the seeds you plant through your actions, choices, and investments will bear fruit, but not always on your preferred schedule.
Mandino’s quote isn’t just a call to action; it’s a call to thoughtfulness, resilience, and foresight. In a culture that too often rewards the superficial and the immediate, it’s a reminder that the most valuable outcomes are the result of a commitment to doing your best, consistently, over time. And in this, there is both a challenge and a promise: the challenge to rise above the ephemeral and the promise of a harvest worth reaping. Remember, it’s not just about the hours you put in, but about what you put into the hours. As we look towards the future, let’s not just be participants in this digital age, but thoughtful architects of our own destiny.
Brian Fink is the author of Talk Tech To Me. He takes on the stress and strain of complex technology concepts and simplifies them for the modern recruiter. Fink’s impassioned wit and humor tackle the highs and lows of technical recruiting with a unique perspective — a perspective intended to help you find, engage, and partner with professionals.
