TN50#194_Just Good Enough, Part 1_24 March_2025
Hi Team,
Take a moment and remember the feelings of accomplishment that accompany an important graduation. After weeks, months and sometime even many years working to achieve some qualification or degree and you’ve finally made it! You are an Infantryman, a Lawyer, a blue belt, a Ranger, an MD, a Ph.D., a Navy SEAL… You remember, your heart and mind overflowed with pride.
Crossing the hall (head high and shoulder back) into the arena of your chosen profession you quickly realize, “Holy shit! I thought I knew everything, and I hardly know anything.” If this sounds familiar, congratulations; you are or were “just good enough”.
Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #194, I like to think of personal performance in 3 components: physical, mental and emotional. My framework focuses on 4 Buckets: Eat, Sleep, Move and Think. This blog is my sandbox for sharing information that you might find useful for your personal performance.
Am I the only one who’s had this experience on one or many occasions? Maybe, but I’m guessing not…
I, like many of you, have been fortunate to be trained by the best of the best; a group of men (in my case), each one with 15,000 to 30,000 hours of next level, real world experience. This cadre taking the time to design, execute and iterate on a training curriculum specifically developed and organized to get me and all the students with me “just good enough”. Infantry, just good enough, Airborne School, just good enough, Ranger Indoctrination Program, just good enough, Ranger School, just good enough, LRS Leader’s Course, ok actually on this one I had been in LRS for years and was asked to attend to be a good example for our younger paratroopers so I crushed that course taking every award and breaking some course records, but you get the idea…
Imagine, trying to attain the level of “just good enough” in any field with real world consequences without the cadre and curriculum…
Take the US Army’s Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia as an example. You show up to become a paratrooper. The planes, parachutes, jump towers and sawdust pits are all there but there aren’t any black hat instructors to teach you how to jump out of the airplane. What took me 3 weeks to complete back in 1992 in a huge class, in which, no one died would have looked totally different. I’m not sure if we would have ever figured it out or if anyone would have made it out alive without the well-developed course and solid instructors.
So to end part 1, a simple question. In what part of your life, the parts with real world consequences, are you operating like the Jump School example above? Here are 3 examples: health, wealth, relationships.
Shoot me an email or message on LinkedIn with your answers and/or thoughts!
Who do you know that could use this information? I bet you can think of a couple of people before you click the next email, please share the post with your team and anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think!
Have a good one,
Alex
PS. Questions on your personal performance? Let me know at: alex@fpp.llc
PPS. If you’re new to First Principles Performance Coaching, here’s a one stop shop for my stuff.
PPPS. Ready to improve your Physical, Mental and Emotional Capacity? Email me so I can introduce you to my suite of Better Basics Performance Coaching Programs! alex@fpp.llc
