This is Stevea Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

My boss, Len, gave me a t-shirt my first day on the job. It read,

My standards are simple. I want it perfect. He thought he was giving me a subtle message about the quality of work he expected from me.

Little did he realize that my standards for him were just as I. We were working on a new curriculum for

Harvard Business School. One of our goals was that each incoming student meet as many other

students as possible, so that it would form a really strong community bond. You've seen a puppy pile?

We'll imagine a puppy pile made up of 250 investment

banker wannabes, and you'll have some idea of what we were trying for. I, being a perfectionist,

created an Excel spreadsheet, a very, very large Excel spreadsheet. All we had to do was paste

the student names into column B and click print. The spreadsheet would compute a personalized schedule for each

and every student, no two schedules alike, that ensured that each student would meet as many

others as feasible without alcohol. That's very important. Harvard MBAs aren't very pretty

when they're drunk. Not only were the schedules unique, but they were beautiful.

At my review, I asked Len how I was doing.

He gave me the highest compliment I had ever received.

You are producing work at the 97% quality level.

That's absolutely amazing.

I felt great.

Then he said, of course, you spend 90% of your time getting the quality level from 83% to 97%. If you had simply settled for 83%, you could have gone home at night and eaten something other than gruel.

My heart sank a bit, as I fantasized about how other people lived and realized that I could live just like them.

But Len wasn't finished. He delivered the coup de grace, which is French for a psychological mixed martial arts move. Of course,

the students and faculty would have been perfectly happy with a 60% level. In fact, pretty

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