Tuesday Email: No Finish Line

Read time: ~3.00 minutes

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

Perfection is not about the outcome but rather the forever pursuit of perfection.

Perfect is impossible.

A perfect life, a perfect outcome, a perfect relationship—these are stories we tell ourselves, not realities. True perfection lies in the realization that growth has no finish line.

The most successful, innovative, and valuable individuals understand this. They don’t strive to attain perfection; they commit to the impossible pursuit, driven by curiosity and a willingness to grow daily.

As a high school varsity baseball player, I was searching for my place. I worked harder than most, but my skills didn’t match theirs. My opportunity lay in becoming a good catcher, but stopping base stealers felt impossible—like a grown-up stealing candy from a baby.

Determined to improve, I worked tirelessly with a coach, perfecting my throwing motion. Day after day, I practiced, convinced that this was my path to playing time and acceptance. I thought I was nailing it—until my coach broke the news. What I thought was perfect looked, in his words, like “a praying mantis impersonation.”

I was crushed.

Ultimately, my pursuit of perfection didn’t lead to the perfect outcome on the baseball diamond. Instead, it led to a perfect realization that stands with me today. Perfect isn’t possible, but the pursuit is transformative.

Learning is the fuel for growth. As a child, I loved long division.

Solving problems and seeing my effort lead to results was exhilarating. Decades later, I feel the same rush when I learn something new and put it into action. It’s a learner’s high—an endless loop driven by curiosity.

Curiosity, like a treat in dog training, triggers our brain’s dopamine response, sparking a desire to learn more. But ego is curiosity’s greatest enemy. We’ve all been there—young and convinced we knew it all. Only later do we realize how much we didn’t know and how much more there is to learn.

Knowledge is like an iceberg. Beginners focus on the tip, believing they see it all. Experts know the enormity that lies beneath—and they keep diving deeper.

In the 1900s, knowledge doubled every century. By 2020, it was doubling every 12 hours. Every hour we don’t learn something new, we fall behind. Yet, it’s not the big leaps in knowledge that define us—it’s the small, consistent moments of growth.

Warren Buffet spends 80% of his day reading. His success wasn’t built on one piece of knowledge but on aggregating thousands of small insights compounded over time. Big moments make headlines, but small moments, repeated, create legacies.

The world we live in today will not be the world our grandchildren inherit. We can’t change the past or predict the future. But we can control one thing: our commitment to learning today.

Learning is the only investment that protects us from the unknown of tomorrow. It’s how we grow, adapt, and stay relevant in an ever-changing world. Perfect isn’t possible, but the pursuit of learning—and the growth it brings—is the closest we’ll ever get.

The best is ahead!

-Matt