Not What You Do, but How You Do It

In the 1970s, a young man took a job at Atari, the video game company. He worked on tasks that didn’t inspire him. He designed circuit boards for arcade games—hardly the creative or innovative role he dreamed of. But despite his lack of interest in video games, he gave the task his all.

One day, he was assigned a particularly difficult project. To redesign a game’s circuit board to use fewer chips, and save the company money. He didn’t complain. He didn’t cut corners. Instead, he worked tirelessly, using every ounce of his creativity and determination to solve the problem. The result? He exceeded expectations, and saved his company time and money.

At the time, this young man didn’t know where his career would lead. He didn’t have a grand vision of changing the world through this job. But he did know one thing, that no matter what he was doing, he had to do it with excellence. That approach—doing the best you can with what’s in front of you—paid off in ways he couldn’t have imagined.