Excellence is a habit, not an event
š Fri 28 November 2025 at 05:37 GMT
Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and I know itās going to be a great day. The sun is shining. Iām well-rested. My inbox is clear, and Iām at peace with the world.
Itās the sort of moment that gives me the irresistible urge toā¦ wash my car.
You see, my car hasnāt been washed in almost a year. I donāt mind that much – itās really not a priority, with everything else going on in my life. But things have gotten so bad that my family is now flat-out refusing to travel with me. And the car washes around here are charging Ā£20 for 10 minutesā work… crazy!
So I spend an hour washing, waxing and vacuuming the car. It feelsā¦ surprisinglyā¦ good!
So good, actually, that I make a resolution that from now, I’ll wash the car once a week. It’s a new standard. Iām adding it to my āLife Management Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)ā. From today, I am officially a car washer.
Walking with my head held high, I tell my astonished family, “Donāt you know that I am a man of Excellence and high standards? Itās normal for my car to be washed once a week…”
Sadly, the odds are stacked so badly against my delusion that even Aristotle, almost 2,500 years ago, predicted its downfall:
“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
– Aristotle
… which has been restated in modern times1 as:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– William Durant, American philosopher (1885-1981)
Excellence events vs excellence baseline
You probably see “excellence events” – like my car washing – happening all around you. A day at work when you’re “the best version of yourself”. The team member whose work really shines on this shift, and makes you proud. The friend who goes above and beyond expectation in being supportive.
But according to Aristotle and Durant, having your “best day” is not excellence. To be excellent, you need to be excellent all the time. It needs to be part of your DNA. Excellence is about raising your baseline higher, not about higher peaks.
It’s the difference between running a marathon, and being a marathon runner: one is something you did, while the other is something you are. Excellence is an everyday habit, not a one-off event.
Which begs the question – why can’t we be excellent all the time? What is stopping us? The answer is two-fold.
Firstly, being excellent takes interest, motivation, and energy. Functioning at that level is difficult to sustain. That’s why it’s more important to raise the baseline – sustainably – than having showy flashes of excellence.
Secondly, no-one can be excellent in all the domains of their life simultaneously. Excellence in one domain inevitably means accepting something less, elsewhere.
I find the topic of “excellence” truly fascinating because it gives a candid insight not only into the best of what a person is capable of, but also their values and priorities.
When you compare the areas where someone is consistently excellent, with the areas where they’re merely adequate, you see their actual value hierarchy – not the one they claim, but the one they live.
My car doesn’t stay dirty because I can’t wash it, but because I’ve chosen to invest my limited energy in being excellent elsewhere.
The question isn’t whether you’re capable of excellence – those excellence events prove you are.
The challenge is having the clarity and courage to choose where to be excellent, and making peace with being less than excellent in other areas. The question is: where have you decided your priorities lie, and why?
And that’s A Deeper Thought.
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Previously, on A Deeper Thought
 | Air Traffic Control (ATC) Principles for Area Leads in the Emergency Department 2 Apr 2026 |
 | Is Trump Serious??? 21 Feb 2026 |
 | “A Roman, a Hellene, and an Abbasid walk into a cafĆ©…” 3 Feb 2026 |
 | Qaį¹£r: A tiny word, a big meaning, and an apology 2 Feb 2026 |
 | What My Mechanic Taught Me About Medicine 23 Dec 2025 |
 | Diagnosing a personality 8 Dec 2025 |
 | ChatGPT mistakes: a glitch in the matrix 7 Dec 2025 |
 | I label, therefore I am 6 Dec 2025 |
 | “I am not a donkey, I don’t have a field” 5 Dec 2025 |
 | Perfect is the enemy of done 4 Dec 2025 |
