Having an Attitude that Seeks Perfection as a Habit

Being organized is an essential ingredient of productivity.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m not a very organized person”? A good response might be, “Why not?” Being unorganized is hardly something to be proud of. If you are unorganized, don’t tell anyone. Hide it. And start doing something about it. Get organized.

Being organized doesn’t mean that you necessarily make your bed every morning, hang up all your clothes every night, and never have anything on your desk. You don’t have to be a neat freak to be organized. Put away your bias against organization and consider the benefits.

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Being organized is an essential ingredient of productivity. If you want to maximize your time and be as effective as possible, you have to be organized. You probably know people who have to search for their car keys every time they want to drive their car. This may seem like a tiny thing but it usually carries over into many other aspects of life. Taking a five minute trip in the car often takes twenty minutes if you count the time spent searching for keys. Put the keys in the same place the moment you walk in the door, and guess what? That’s where they’ll be when you need them. The same goes for clothes, for pencils and paper and stamps and envelopes and anything else you need, in your daily life or from time to time.

A certain satisfaction comes from efficiency, to say nothing of the savings in time. It’s hard to imagine that you are really trying to maximize your abilities if you aren’t attentive to being personally organized. Almost every successful athlete is extremely busy. You have school, family responsibilities, and skill development in your sport, plus social life, possibly a job, and other individual considerations.

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This whole section boils down to one simple fact. If you are really trying to be a champion— to improve in your spot and increase your physical and mental condition, and develop your skills, and get practice playing your sport, and work on your strength and agility—you have a lot to do and you simply must maximize your time.

The only way to do that is by getting yourself well organized in all phases of your life. Keep evaluating the way you do things and think about how you can do them better and more efficiently.

So now let’s go back to the beginning. Does getting organized mean you have to have a clean room? Should you make your bed? I said those things didn’t necessarily matter. But give this some thought.

Once, a contingent of Japanese executives who produced machinery were all set to tour a factory; the factory owners hoped to sign a contract to supply the Japanese with parts. Before the tour began one of the Japanese executives used the restroom where he noticed a cracked window. When he came out he asked his tour guides about the crack and received a lackadaisical answer.

The Japanese executive couldn’t imagine that the owners of the factory had the kind of attitude it would take to meet their exacting standards for making parts if no one had gotten around to replacing something as simple as a window. The Japanese didn’t sign a contract that day. They went looking for another company, one that had the attitude of a champion, one that had pride in doing everything as well as possible.

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We’re all human. We all make mistakes. We can’t be perfect at everything. But we can have an attitude that seeks perfection as a habit. The story is as instructive in the sports world as it was in the business world. Do you want that contract with a major company, do you want that scholarship or that championship?

Better make a habit of doing everything as well as you can.

Better make that bed after all.

—Excerpted from the book, “Think the Game”

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