The most impressive Excel spreadsheet I’ve ever seen was built by our man Josh at Craig Frames. Prior to our involvement, with that business growing faster than it could resource, Josh essentially engineered an entire ERP in a spreadsheet, including all historical sales and pricing information, inventory positions, SKUs, you name it. Never mind that the thing took 40 minutes (really two to eight, but it felt like 40) to load, it was awesome. 

As we got to know Josh better, we understood why he did that. It’s because no matter the situation, he’s “whole ass.” What’s “whole ass” besides a delightful turn of phrase? The opposite of “half ass,” of course, which is how Josh never does anything.

That said, while it may sound ideal to be whole ass all the time, the approach can be counterproductive. Josh realized this when he found out his daughter (also whole ass on everything because she’s been indoctrinated by dad) was trying to play soccer on a broken toe (still led her team in scoring, but in hindsight perhaps not worth the risk). And we’re working to replace the whole ass spreadsheet with something that doesn’t take quite so long to load.

So if doing too much doesn’t reliably work, what about just doing less? This is half-assing it, and it doesn’t work either. And that’s despite the fact that I’m a big believer in the Pareto principle, which says that you can expect 20% of your effort to drive 80% of results (I’d even posit the real ratio is 90/10, which is to say that you can accomplish a lot by doing little).

But the reason you can’t just do the 10% is because it can be very difficult to understand in real time or even in hindsight which 10% is/was the 10%, which is as frustrating and unsatisfying as it is inefficient.

This leads me to my point, which is that effort, and particularly incremental effort, is incredibly overvalued. But, and it’s a big but, if you don’t put it in, your value can quickly go to zero. To square that circle, I think it means trying to direct more effort into things you don’t know well while reducing effort on things you do, all the while maintaining consistent sum total effort. 

In other words, try hard always but always on different things. By doing that, perhaps you’re whole ass and half.

-Tim

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