Do think doing your best is important? Do you believe people give only half-hearted effort—maybe you’ve even done that at some time?

So what happens if we don’t do the best we can? There is no perfection—but there is mastery. Think about what happens if these people or groups gave only a 99.9% effort. This is just for the US. Think about what it would be if it was the world.

– 14 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
– 123,600 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped yearly.
– 19,732 pieces of mail will be mishandled hourly.
– 2,300,000 documents will be lost by the IRS this year.
– 2.9 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers.
– Two planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport will be unsafe every day.
– 343 entries in Webster’s Dictionary will be misspelled.
– 29,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year.
– 1.2 million credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strip.
– 109,630 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year.
– 7.1 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat.
– 341 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly.
– 4362 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.
– A typical day would be 24 hours long (give or take 86.4 seconds)

None of us are 100% perfect, or without error. But there is no excuse for not doing the best we can. Go for it!