The following is a practice worth considering as a regular, daily exercise. The practice comes down to taking a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on the events of that day with the question: “Did I do the best I could have done today?”
At first glance the question may appear ambiguous and answering it reliably and productively may seem elusive. It’s actually pretty straight forward, and it gets easier with repetition. (Note that the following presentation will take you much longer to read than the actual practice will. This is necessary because yielding the benefits of the practice requires precision and sticking to the details. Once you understand the concepts and have the details committed to memory the rest gets pretty easy.)
Following the three steps presented below makes the exercise structured, concrete and more rewarding:
1) Answer the question
2) Verify your answer
3) Uncover the causes
Permit me to elaborate:
- Answer the question: Did I do the best I could have done?
I generally divide my day into ‘chapters’ and reflect on each one. My first chapter covers the time between waking up and leaving home. Commuting to work is my second chapter of the day. I divide my time at work, the longest chapter of my week-days, into two parts — before and after lunch. Next there’s the commute back home, and then the last chapter of the day — from the time I arrive back home to the end of the day. Obviously, not all days follow the same schedule, but the principle applies.
Go over each of the chapters (spend no more than about sixty seconds per chapter) and try to recall, in broad strokes, what transpired in each of them. Look for ‘large size’ items. The exercise does not require going through your day with a fine-tooth comb. Broad strokes will do. Replay the highlights of each chapter in your mind, and pay particular attention to the choices you made. Simply ask yourself if you made the best choice you could have made in each case.
Pay particular attention to your commitments. It is always important to check whether or not you had fulfilled what you committed (to yourself or to anyone else) to do. The confirmation that you had done what you said you were going to do is reassuring: Living by your commitments — which is no more than doing what you said you were going to do, is doing the best you can do. Discovering that you came up short of living by your commitment is, at least, a red flag signaling that a closer examination is needed. In and of itself it is not proof that you didn’t do your best: It may be that circumstances prevented you from doing what you said you were going to do; it may be that the commitment you had made was unrealistic. However, short of an acceptable explanation, reneging on a commitment suggests not doing the best one can do.
Throughout the exercise, be reasonable and pragmatic. Try to maintain a rational and business-like (rather than a vindictive, or a ‘gonna-get-you’) demeanor as you reflect on the day — it will increase the likelihood that your reflection will lead to useful insights.
Be precise and on point. The question is exactly “did I do the best I could have done?” Avoid the trap of similar sounding questions that are very different in essence. Refrain from asking “Did I do the best I wish I could have done?”, “Did I do as well as I can imagine myself doing?” “Did I do as well as would be expected of me to have done?” or “Did I do as well as _______ would have done?” {fill-in the blank with a name of anyone whom you believe would have done better than you did}. Asking any such question instead of simply “did I do the best I could have done?” will derail your practice.
Similarly, avoid forgone conclusions. Newcomers to this practice often think that “Nobody (perhaps, “especially not I”) can ever say they did the best that they could have done” or ” There is always the possibility that I could have done better”. This is simply not so. Most of us actually do just about the best we can do, most of the time. Self doubt is common, but not necessarily anchored in fact. Often the doubts are habitual rather than a product of a rational, realistic assessment. That being said, I don’t think that anyone does the best they can do all the time. On occasion, everyone falls short. It is these occasions that you want to capture.
The question “Did I do the best I could have done?” is binary: Either you did or you didn’t. Yes or no, and you must be willing to accept either one. Additionally, in either case, the answer should withstand the trial of reason. Concluding that you did your best is acceptable when you can not identify the existence of a better option (that existed within you reach at the time you made your choice). Concluding that you did not do your best requires identifying the existence of at least one better option you could have made and chose to turn down (more on this below).
When your answer is “yes, I did do the best that I could have done” in a given chapter, move on to the next one. Keep at it until you are done reviewing your whole day. If you reach the conclusion that you have done your best in a given day — since you can’t do better than your best, as much as your part in it goes, you had a good day! This is worth your noticing; it is justly satisfying to know you did your best.
The honest realization that you have done the best you could have done is rightfully rewarding. Perhaps unfortunately however, the reward may be modest. The reward for doing the best you can do certainly does not reach the magnitude of a guarantee that you will get what you want. Doing your best in a given situation equals optimizing your influence in it — unquestionably deserving recognition and satisfaction. But — it is only influence; even when optimized it doesn’t reach the level of ‘control’. Therefore there are no guarantees of an ‘outcome’. The only guaranteed reward for doing your best is the liberation from wondering about what life could have been like had you done your best. Granted, this is nowhere near a guaranteed desired outcome, but it has a value. Anyone who had experienced the gnawing rumination about what their life could have been if only they put forth their best effort at some earlier time can appreciate the liberating value that comes from knowing that you did your best.
Of course, there is always the possibility of an error, which can go in either direction — too lenient, or too harsh. If your process is routinely sloppy, or perhaps you are even habitually outright deceiving yourself (that is — you keep telling yourself that you have done your best while in reality you don’t) life will let you know you are kidding yourself. If this is your story — if you keep telling yourself that you are doing the best you can do and still, your pursuit of happiness is going frustratingly poorly, in all likelihood, you are missing important information about the (lack of) quality of your choices. If this is your story, try harder to answer the question “did I do the best I could have done” thoughtfully and honestly. The incentive to do so is obvious: If your pursuit of happiness is going poorly because you are making poor choices, correcting the problem (and thus improving your pursuit of happiness) requires an accurate exposure of your contribution to the problem.
On the other hand, there is the risk of being overly harsh. This is no less of a mistake — overshooting a target from above is just as much a miss as undershooting it. Therefore, if the answer you generate is that you did not do your best, it needs to be verified before you accept it as a fact, which brings us to the second part of the exercise:
- Verify your answer:
The verification process hinges on generating an acceptable answer to the follow-up question: “What could have I actually done that would have been better than what I did?” In other words, in order to accept that you as a matter of fact did not do the best you could have done, you have to be able to cite an alternative choice that would have been better than the one you made.
For the answer to be valid it must meet the following three criteria:
(a) The alternative choice must be indisputably a better choice than the one you made (i.e., if the alternative choice’s superior quality is debatable than it is an unacceptable answer, at least in the context of this exercise).
(b) The alternative choice must be a realistic option (that is, it may not conflict with the laws of nature {such as requiring of you to be in two places at one time}, it may not require possessing super-powers {such as a physical strength or speed beyond your actual strength and speed} and it may not depend on possessing special knowledge that you don’t have {such as knowing how to cure cancer}), and
(c) The alternative choice must have been available to you in real time. That is, nothing prevented you from choosing the better option — you simply made the lesser choice.
Since most of us are not assigned to saving the world or even small parts of it, the magnitude of the tasks that represent ‘doing our best’ is a non issue. in general, acceptable answers (to the question “what could have I done that would have been better?”) tend to be mundane. In my experience the answer is found in the neighborhood of such tasks as emptying the dishwasher, returning a phone call in a timely manner, or turning the TV off and doing (almost) anything instead.
The distinction between quality and quantity is also noteworthy here. At times you may be able to do more than what constitutes your best, but more is not necessarily better. For example, continuing to unload boxes off the truck past the point at which your back lets you know that it had enough; you may be able to unload more stuff, but if the cost is excessive, say being immobilized by back pain for the next few days, it may undermine the value your participation in the endeavor. You may have done more, but you didn’t do better.
In the pursuit of happiness, the demand to do better than one’s best is a mistake just like the permission to do less than one’s best. Both miss the target, and both come with a price. The target — doing the best you can do, no more and no less, can be elusive. It is not a clear target, and it keeps moving. Furthermore, the best one can do changes over time; sometimes from one day to the next. Be that as it may, nailing the target (i.e., actually doing the best you can do) is important, but it is of secondary importance. The primary importance is to persist in aspiring to nail it.
The exercise approaches its conclusion once you come up with the first instance in which, as matter of fact, you didn’t do the best you could have done. The purpose of the exercise is not to reveal every instance in which you didn’t do your best in a given day. Rather, it is geared to uncover one instance (per practice) and then understand what led to it, which brings us to the last step:
- Uncover the causes that led you to missing doing your best:
Once you have a (tentative) answer that meets the criteria listed above, the last step is to answer the question: “Why did I not do the best I could have done?”
Usually, the answer to this question is in one of the following three categories: (a) lack of attention, (b) ideologic attachment, and (c) intoxications.
Again, I will elaborate:
The first category is lack of attention or, more precisely — the failure to place attention where attention is needed. You may be surprised to discover how often inattentiveness is the cause of falling short of doing your best (it is difficult to overemphasize the importance of attention in the pursuit of happiness; one reason for the central role of the practice of meditation in mindfulness is because meditation is a way, possibly the way, to improve attention).
The human brain is capable of registering that somethings exist without paying attention to them. Much like when watching a play, your mind notices the actors and props on the stage, but you follow (i.e., pay attention to) the actors in the spotlight. That which receives the spotlight of attention is important. The rest is peripheral and less important.
Similarly, we are capable of noticing things peripherally (such as the dishwasher that needs to be emptied, or the garbage that needs to be taken out) without putting the spotlight on them. Without paying attention. Withholding attention gets in the way of doing our best.
Catching yourself falling short of doing the best you can do as a result of not paying attention is one possible endpoint of the exercise we are discussing. It is valuable because the realization that you didn’t do your best as a result of not paying attention increases the likelihood that you will pay attention the next time you are in the same circumstance.
The second categorical explanation for holding back from doing our best is ideologic-attachments. An ideologic-attachment happens when the mind manufactures a fictitious statement and subsequently treats it as an indisputable fact. Basically, it’s making excuses. (Note that ideological attachment should be considered as an explanation only after inattentiveness is ruled-out.)
Excuses are internal mental “broadcasts” that highlight and validate the ‘easy way out’. Our predisposition for excuse-making (i.e., the inherent appeal of ‘the easy way out’) makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The path of least resistance is the most energy conserving path. In a survival-threatening environment, in which the availability of one’s next caloric intake (i.e., next meal) is in doubt, behaviors that conserve energy (even if just by postponing the moment in which calories are used up) are advantageous. In the pursuit of happiness however, the path of least resistance tends to be more costly than it is worth.
In real-time, excuses are often accepted unquestionably (given their source — after all, what is a more reliable source than one’s own mind?) and serve as permissions to hold back from doing one’s best.
For example, the next thought following paying attention to the dishwasher that needs emptying can be “he/she will do it” or “it’s not going to make a difference if I empty the dishwasher or if I don’t”. If returning a phone call is the issue the excuse may be “if it’s important, he/she will call back” or “I have other things on my mind so I can’t make the call right now” and so on. The futility of buying into (i.e. getting attached) unfounded ideologies as a strategy in the pursuit of happiness is self explanatory.
For the most part, each of us has a finite, usually short, repertoire of excuses. As a result we tend to play, more-or-less, the same excuses repeatedly. By methodically and repeatedly reflecting on this mental phenomenon (i.e., by doing this exercise) one can become familiar with their repertoire of excuses. This increases the likelihood that the internal-broadcast of made-up ideology will be recognized in real-time for the fallacy that it actually is. This, in turn, increases the likelihood recognizing this misleading self-generated guidance and then, rejecting it in favor of a better choice. Better — again, in terms of its impact on the pursuit of happiness.
Laziness — the epitome of a choice that leads to stoping short of doing one’s best, is a specific kind of ideologic attachment. Given its universality, it deserves more detailed examination.
The list of specific excuses associated with laziness is unlimited. However, all the ‘ideologies’ behind laziness come down to the following themes:
- Glorifying a low energy status-quo (As in: I’m finally doing something {e.g. –sitting down and/or or watching the game and/or resting} and it is so precious that nothing justifies disrupting it.)
- Amplifying the magnitude of the effort that doing one’s best requires (As in: The effort required to do that {e.g. emptying the dishwasher, returning a call} is so great, it’s more than I am capable of doing right now.)
- Minimizing the reward of doing one’s best (As in: It {that which I stand to get in return} is not worth the effort.)
Laziness is a state hallmarked by a permutation of (one or more of) these three themes. Managing laziness is the same as managing any kind of ideologic attachment: It begins with developing awareness of the specific (and invalid) mental ‘broadcast’, something to achieve during the end of the day reflection exercise. This is followed by catching the ‘broadcast’ playing in real-time and then, rejecting it in favor of a choice that represents doing one’s best. I don’t mean to make it sound easy — it is not. But it is a systematic and rational approach that, with repetition, can make a significant difference in the impact of laziness on one’s life and pursuit of happiness.
Lastly, a word on procrastination — a trait associated with laziness, that quite different from it. The saying “Procrastination is not the problem, it’s the solution” (attributed to comedienne Ellen DeGeneres) is funny because it’s true. From an evolutionary perspective, i.e., when survival is at stake, expenditure of energy sooner than when it absolutely has to be spent is a mistake. When there is any doubt about the next caloric input — any question about the next meal’s arrival, calories should be held onto as long as possible. This is nature’s way by which all living things — other than humans, conduct themselves. In that sense, postponing action to the last minute — i.e., procrastinating, is a solution. However, the pursuit of happiness is governed by different rules (additionally, the pursuit of happiness is irrelevant when facing survival threats, such as a doubt about the availability of one’s next meal).
A self-reminder of the true nature of the process one is in can make a difference to the choice-making process. In other words, reminding yourself that you are pursuing happiness — where doing the best you can is the most effective strategy, can help mitigate the primitive, reflexive tendency to procrastinate (which should be recognized as self-sabotaging when survival is not at stake).
The third explanatory category for not doing the best can do is intoxications. By definition, intoxication is a state of mind that prohibits making one’s best choices.
Obviously, intoxications using the available chemicals — from alcohol to heroin, get in the way of doing the best one can otherwise do, and therefore intoxications invariably pose a threat to the pursuit of happiness (regardless of their fun-factor in the short term). This work however is more interested in internal intoxications — intoxications on emotions (which, of course, utilize chemicals as well; hence the accurate, but somewhat pedantic, distinction is between external and internal intoxications). In Buddhism the following are referred to as the intoxicating emotions: Hatred, anger, greed, lust, arrogance and jealousy (the study of these emotions and their effective management is of the utmost importance in the pursuit of happiness and is dealt with in detail elsewhere, e.g.: https://whatilearnedsofar.com/theory/anger/ and https://whatilearnedsofar.com/theory/intent-and-karma/ ).
The present exercise attempts to simply bring into focus the effect that intoxications have on the quality of the choices produced by the human brain[glossary]. The correct awareness of the impact of intoxications on the ability to do the best that one can otherwise do (together with an appreciation of how it affects the pursuit of happiness) can serve as a motivation for developing effective strategies for avoiding intoxicated states (when possible) or containing them (when it is not). Given how difficult it can be, enhancing the motivation to meet the challenge has a potential considerable value.
And that’s about it for the daily practice of cultivating your ability to do the best you can do.
In closing, I remind you that the pursuit of [glossary]happiness is not a binary affair, it’s takes place on a continuum (that unfolds over your life’s journey, rather than as a momentary event). Expecting of yourself to do the absolute best you can do all the time is unreasonable, which is consistent with the idea that complete, unwavering happiness is unattainable (with the obvious exception of the fully enlightened, who probably have better things to do than to be reading this). But, aspiring to do well enough in the pursuit of happiness so that showing up to your next day is not only not dreadful, it is something to look forward to, is well within reason (allowing for the obligatory occasional good days and bad days).
When your experience of the pursuit of happiness is unfolding reasonably well, you must be close enough to doing the best you can do to support it (and you are probably also fortunate). If your pursuit of happiness is going poorly it might be bad fortune, but an honest examination of your potential contribution to the problem is unlikely to make matters worse. Be that as it may, wherever your pursuit of happiness is on the continuum, the exercise presented here may help raise the quality of your influence on it; even the smallest improvement in your pursuit of happiness is well worth the effort.