Is this all there is to Life?

The following is a great passage from John O'Keeffe's book, Business Beyond the Box - Applying your mind for breakthrough results.

It takes as much effort and energy to work at a boring, mundane improvement to any part of our work and lives – which any one of a hundred people could have done – as it does to deploy our minds and talent trying to do something substantially more meaningful. The problem is that we never take five minutes out to realize this.

How often do we become involved in relatively petty arguments about realtively petty things? Why not put all that energy and commitment into going after something worthwhile?

How often do we just get stuck in a rut, without realizing it, believing that a minor improvement on where we are is a cause for celebration?

How often do we, almost subconsciously, accept the status quo and happily work within it?

Are we living or are we dying? Will there be anything to write on our gravestone that makes us anymore distinctive, memorable or contributing more than millions of others living this very minute? Are we destined simply to come into the world, perhaps mate with another and spend our lives going through the humdrum activity of producing and raising two new humans to replace the two mates? Talk about going round in circles.

At work, are we simply to live out a commmonplace existence, going for mediocre improvements, just like millions of others in hundreds of other corporations, all in their own little boxes just like us, earning a wage to keep us alive until we're dead?

Next month, even if it is March, starts a new year. March to next February. Is there any real point in us living that year or might we just as well go into a coma? Are we merely going to aim for this year being a little bit better than last year – and accept it if it's not? Will the world be any different for us having lived his year? Wil we ourselves be any different, for the better, after the year is over?

How about next month, or next week? Are we really aiming to make a big difference – or are we just continuing to exist as before, perhaps a little better, stuck in the box of incrementalism, imprisoned by old habits and routines, without knowing it, concentrated on the scraps of work and life?

If we were seen from Mars, wouldn't we be just like one ant in a colony of ants at our feet in a wood – focused on things that to us are minutia and trivia? You lie in a box called a house – is it really so different from all the other boxes? You travel in a box on wheels – is it really so different from all the other boxes? You go to an office block to work in a cubbyhole – is it really so different from all the other blocks? And when we make minor improvements to our boxes, we're still in the box of incrementalism.

Are you dressed in a box called a suit, perhaps the same color as all the other boxes, with perhaps an incremental difference of a wider stripe, or perhaps choosing a slightly different tie or a brightly colored blouse – an incremental difference that you celebrate as a major distinctiveness?

Is what you do during a work day really just existing in a box of routines and habits established by others before you or around you – celebrating incremental changes or improvements as being significant?

Are things really, in the big scheme of things, going to be that much better for you acting out your life this day, this week, this month, this year?

Do you want to stay stuck in a rut? Accepting your state in life? Accepting where you are, what you have, what you do as being “given” and looking at a modest change or improvement you make as being a cause for celebration?

Whatever job you do, whatever role you play, whatever life you lead, you can aim for step-change results within that job, that role, that life, rather than being content with just making it marginally better.