I remembered my school days today. Well, actually I remembered the examination days. With just about less than an hour for the examination halls to open up and the bell to go off, I would be sitting with my books trying to brush up what I had touched earlier, in an attempt to make sure that I do not forget what I had learnt, or rather to ensure that everything remains at the forefront of the brain, ready for quick access, in order to be able to give my best in the time span allocated for the examination.

There would be some others too who would be skimming through their books. But there would be more of those who would be just whiling away their time before the examination. What I would always keep wondering about them, was how they could choose to waste the precious time by playing around instead of catching up on some studies that could fetch them higher grades. What was worth noting was that the ones who I could see whiling away their time before the exams were not the ones who would usually get satisfactory grades. Some of my friends, like me, would be going through their books too. And while I would be busy flipping the pages across rapidly in an attempt to get a glimpse of some of the topics that I needed to run my eyes over before entering the examination hall, almost always there would be a question from them, “So, are you fully prepared for the exam?” And my answer would almost always be in the negative.

My friends could never understand why I would never admit that I am fully prepared for the exam. “You always say that you are not prepared, and then you always get the best grades.” they would say, and then add with a pinch of sarcasm, “If those of your kind are not prepared, then what would one say about those like us?” In my friends’ opinion, I was prepared and just not admitting it. They would think that I am not being open about it, whereas the truth of the matter is that I was just being frank regarding how I was feeling about being prepared or not. They were right in their own judgment, because they could not understand how someone could be an excellent performer consistently without ever being fully prepared. I wish I was able to explain to them then, the reason behind the differences in our opinions about preparedness for the examinations. But I guess I never gave it any serious thought myself until much later.

On a general note, it is all about perception and relativity. However, that would not be sufficient to explain the situation in a manner that is easy to understand and act upon. I like to think of it in terms of three elements – a performance scale, a performance target and the performance level.

The performance scale would be set by the field in which you set out to perform. For example, it could be the schooling system that you are a part of, or the industry that you are professionally affiliated to. In case of schooling, someone who belongs to a different schooling system, one that measures performance using different sets of grades and levels of performance, would belong to a different performance scale. Basically, the type of field of performance sets the performance scale. The performance target then, is the level you would like to hit, the level that would take you beyond self-satisfaction. And finally, the performance level would be the level you actually hit, which is most often a little lower than your target. The performance level would be the measure of how well you perform on the performance scale you associate yourself with, and this would be the measure that everyone would use to compare your performance with the others performing in the same performance scale.

Let’s go back to the earlier situation where my friends would not be able to comprehend why I would never admit that I was fully prepared for the examination. The explanation would be simply explained in terms of the three elements of measurement. The performance scale in this case would be the schooling system that I was part of, and so were my friends. That would set the ground for comparison. The performance level again was well understood, and would be based on the scores/grades of performance. The complicated part however, was the performance target. The target would differ from individual to individual, and would be based on the level of the goal one would set for oneself. Some would set their target to somehow just pass the examination, while some others would aim at getting “good/better/best” grades (in comparison to others), while some would aim at getting the perfect grades – their target would be a hundred percent. While my friends who used to question me would have been aiming for good/better/best grades, I would be targeting a cent percent, and that in my opinion would cause all the difference. Seldom would I be able to hit the cent percent mark, and thus, that would explain why I would be of the opinion that I was not fully prepared for the examinations. I would be fully prepared if, and only if I was able to cover each and every single bit of information that I would ever need to achieve my target, and not just that, but be fully confident of being able to reproduce all that information as expected by the examiner in order to be able to bag the perfect performance that I would so passionately strive for.

What I would like to highlight here though, is that although I would seldom hit my target, I would almost always be satisfied at my performance level – simply because it used to be amongst the best! At a very early stage in my childhood, I came across the saying that went something like, “Aim at the sky and you may hit an eagle, but aim at an eagle and you may hit the ground”. This was one of the most inspiring guidelines that I have come across in my life, one that I always remember in whatever I do.

It is very important that you first choose the proper performance scale that you would want to pursue in anything you would like to do. It would be far better to be good amongst the best, rather than being the best amongst the worst. Once you have chosen your performance scale, I would like to encourage you to set your performance target high enough not to seem impossible for it to be ever achieved by anyone, while at the same time, high enough to be blown out of your mind if you were to actually achieve it. The successes that will then come your way will be ones you can cherish for a long time to come, ones that would be significant not just in your own opinion, but in the eyes of many!