Do your best

If doing your best means minimising mistakes, when do we learn from mistakes or try new ideas? How do we improve if we don’t try anything new and stick to what we know? When we do our best we are performing. This is different from learning when mistakes don’t matter so much. If we are always doing our best, we can’t improve. If we deliberately practise something new, we can improve our best. We are also likely to make mistakes. We need to do this when the consequences of failing are minor. Ideally, anyone seeing you try new activities will know that you are practising and be supportive. There is a time for performing and a time for learning and rehearsing. Most high performers take time offline to practise new skills. Even Roger Federer took time off to improve his backhand when he was at his peak. Make sure you spend at least as much time practising as you do performing or doing your best. This way, your best keeps improving.