Giving your 110% to something or the proverbial “walking the extra mile” is generally good. There is one dilemma that comes with it. If you don’t notice it, you may end up putting your energy in the wrong place.

The Wrong Question

The dilemma or the catch is in situations where you have to stretch and go beyond the call of duty. Let’s take a hypothetical situation where you are bringing your 110% into the game. Unfortunately, the situation is such that your 110% is not sufficient to make things happen. It requires a lot more from you.

One option is that you keep giving more. A lot more – may be 200% to make this happen. This comes with a heavy price as you will be probably bringing 10% of you into other part of your life – generally to relationships that you (think) can take for granted for a while.

The question is: how far should you stretch?

The Right Question

This is the time for reflection. If you started answering the question above, you will lose even if you find the right answer. Because it’s the wrong question. While it would be cool to say you have got to do what you got to do to make things happen, you should ensure that you are not breaking your other part of life to pieces to go after something. It is not worth pursuing something while building up a bag of regrets to be opened after you reach your current destination.

The right question should be:
By how much should you increase your capacity so that you don’t have to give your 110% to make this happen?

Obviously, there are stages in a project where you have to walk the extra mile and you will. But, every project should make you think about capacity expansion so that it costs less and less of your time and energy to make things happen.

All the best!