If you’re not trying your best at everything you do, then you will never live up to your full potential. There is who we are, and there is who we could be, and the difference in the distance between the two correlates to the quality of our efforts.  

When I was a sushi chef, there was a time when I was working with a female chef who told me about her experiences apprenticing in San Diego. We were working behind the bar and chatting just below the hum and clatter of the restaurant. We made the rolls, dressed them up pretty and put them on plates, and Cynthia filled in the gaps with conversation. She was good at that and she had just moved back to town and was excited to tell me about her trip, and so I listened to her stories as we cut fish and rolled rice and nori.

She told me about the Japanese chef she was apprenticing under and what she learned from him. She showed me some neat tricks of the trade but it was his words that impacted me the most. One of his lessons to her became a tool that I used not only to improve the skills of my trade, but also as a way to constantly better myself.  

Make every cut better than your last. That was the rough Japanese to English translation of the lesson that wise Japanese chef taught my friend. It meant that every cut you made, every sushi roll, every sashimi was done with the intent to do it better than you did it the last time. I applied this method to my sushi, to my martial arts practice, and to everything else I did in life and saw incredible results. 

Every action at work was done with the intent to be better than I was before. Every time I practiced martial arts I tried to make each punch and kick better than the last one thrown. Every interaction I had in my relationships was an attempt to make things better than they were before. Eventually, with consistent effort, my progress in all of these areas was substantially better than it ever was.

If you apply this method to everything you do, you will eventually master the cheat code to ensure progress in every aspect of your life. Your progress and the outcome of your efforts are a reflection of repeated efforts. Are you getting unsatisfying results out of life? If so, look at the quality of your efforts. Are you consistently making an effort to be better than you were last time in everything you do? Are you making every cut better than your last?

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” – Émile Coué

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