Principle 3: Excellence in All Things

Even when no one is watching

Living a principled life means living life as it should be, not as someone else thinks you should be. Or is watching you live your life. A principled life is a life that is the same no matter who is looking or even if no one is looking. You are not doing things because it is expected by others; you are expecting it of yourself.

A job well done is its own reward. So when you are doing your work job, and you have an assignment to complete, it feels good when you get the job done right and on time. You get a sense of pride in doing well. In the new world of remote work, it can be tempting to goof off because no one can catch you. But that’s not entirely true. You catch yourself. So while it’s fun to slack off now and then, you know you need to get your assignments done, so the principled person cracks down and gets it done.

Any job.

Any task.

Any person.

If you are assigned to sweep the floor, don’t look down on the task as beneath you. Instead try to do a good job. Be thorough, don’t sweep under the carpet, as it were. When you are done and you look at a clean floor, that’s rewarding. You know you did well, and it feels good. You want to show someone else that clean floor.

Because the real judge is yourself. You know when you’ve done excellent work, and when you have not. If you write a beautiful paragraph full of sparkling words, you know it. But if you hack out a few banal sentences, you know that too. We don’t need others to tell us when we’ve done a good job — we knew it already, and vice-versa.

So since we judge ourselves, this is another example of how principled living does not require action from others. We do it because it is the right thing to do.

And because we like the end results of a job well done. No matter the job or the task.