Finish with Quality
It matters how we finish. The end of a task. The end of a meeting. The end of a conversation. The end of the day—before we disengage from our work and turn our attention to our family and friends. Before we release our work into our unconscious until tomorrow.
Josh Waitzkin, whose singular accomplishments we’ve talked about before, once had a conversation about top performance with Olympic skier Billy Kid. Billy asked Josh: what do you think are the most important turns of a ski run?
How would you answer that question?
Is it the first few turns down the mountain, because they set the trend and start your run well?
Or are the middle turns the ones to focus on, because they are the most technical and require the most skill?
Most people say that the middle turns are the most important, because of their difficulty. But Billy had a different answer.
Billy says that it’s the last three turns of the run—the turns you make just before you get back on the ski lift—that are the most important.
"And if you are skiers,” Waitzkin explains, “you know that that's when the slope is leveled off and there's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy when they're taking them. They're taking the weight off the muscles they've been using. They have bad form. Most people are very sloppy then.”
As creators, we too can be sloppy as we approach the “last three turns” of our own runs—in other words, the end of a work session. We break off of one task, breathlessly skipping to the next.
But there’s a problem with that.
Waitzkin goes on: “The problem is that on the lift ride up, unconsciously, you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing on the lift ride up is precision.”
And the answer is simple and unintrusive. For your next work session, stop “working” five minutes earlier than you planned and bring quality to the end of your session. Tidy up, put away the brushes or the books, and reflect on your most important question.
It matters what quality we bring to finishing because we internalize that quality until the next time we pick up that brush, play that instrument, or write the next sentence.