Boring is ok

This past Saturday I watched a great college football game. The University of Minnesota played Penn State. Both teams came into the matchup undefeated. Both teams needed the win to keep their momentum. Both teams wanted to win to help their odds of getting into the College Football Playoff.

From the start, the University of Minnesota came out playing tough. They were the underdog but played with a ferociousness that is often reserved for the top programs. They ultimately won the game and set off a party in Minnesota for accomplishing such a great feat.

A lot of praise came for the coach, PJ Fleck. He took over the program and transformed it into one that is getting more recognition than ever. His ability to take a program that has struggled to be relevant in today’s college football and turn it into a legitimate contender is impressive.

I recall watching a press conference with Fleck from the Big Ten media days last summer. I recall thinking how impressive he was and how confident he was in the team’s ability to win.

At one point he said, “What we’re going to be able to do is focus on being better today than we were yesterday. It sounds like a broken record and it sounds boring. But sometimes boring’s ok. And that’s what we’re looking at doing. If we can be better today than we were yesterday, then we’ll become a success.”

Most people won’t ever look back at that comment and tie it to Saturday’s win. But to me it speaks volumes.

Doing the hard work today is boring. We do the things necessary to keep getting better. We do this over and over in the hope that we can improve significantly. This will allow us the success in the future that we crave.

It isn’t until we reach a key milestone that it becomes exciting or even noticed. It isn’t exciting to work hard. It isn’t exciting to work on the fundamentals and getting better at the basics. But that is what is necessary if we want to succeed.

Instead everyone focuses on Saturday’s win and the exciting aura around this program. We gloss over the hard work. We skip over the years of hard work. We minimize all of the buildup and focus solely on the big moment, the big win.

Whatever it is in your life that you are trying to achieve, realize that you have to do the boring work of getting better every day. It isn’t going to be exciting. It is going to be boring. But if we master those boring elements and keep improving, then exciting things are bound to come next.

Check out the full press conference here. He also has some great insight into failing to be successful, the importance of simplifying, and his view of success.