For you, a day where you couldn’t make a big dent in your project or failed to get your kids to school on time might feel like a bad outcome. But actually, a lot needs to go right for you to even be able to make those “mistakes.”
How many processes have to function in your body for you to even have the chance of doing four to six hours of work on a given day? Thousands? Millions? If you can get out of bed when your alarm rings and arrive at a desk not too long thereafter, you’ve already won. I know it doesn’t feel like it, and it’ll still take many of those “lucky” days to add up to a big accomplishment, but actually, even in average, even in failure, what’s working still outweighs what’s not—and that’s just you.
Every day the Brooklyn Bridge stands is another day the original planners from 1869 got it right. No one walking across it will know any of their names, but they’ll still benefit from that performance—each pencil stroke a play being made, successfully, to this day.
What if what you believe to be the norm is actually the gravy? Don’t worry about a perfect score. Look for what’s already going right.