212 Degree F

In any endeavour, as in any pursuit of excellence, the difference that separates a champion and the rest is just one tiny ounce of penultimate drive. It is that little bit of extra effort, drawn from the adrenaline that makes a champion.

A lot of time, we are oblivious to the daily phenomena that's right before our eyes. We could have properly harnessed it to make our lives more discerning, and enriching. I refer to water and steam. Both are highly visible, but are so much apart in level of energy.

When we boil water, we see layers and layers of steam being let loose. Take the fire away, and we see less and less steam. Add in more fire, and we see lots and lots of steam emerging, until the speed of its generation is so quick, the sound so intense, that we start to feel its power - the power that drives a locomotive.

Like steam that's let loose, time and again we reach an energy plateau, because the fire has been removed, prematurely. We want to go further, but we simply could not summon that extra ounce of energy, that extra 1 degree F of power, to reach our goal. We give up, feeling defeated, not by the seemingly un-reachable goal, but by lamenting our own lack of will.

Is 1 deg F all that difficult to grasp?

If one were to super-boil it, the water would have so much more energy that it would make the locomotive run faster, and further. Now this is certainly food for thought for any enterprise manager. In short, take your position so far ahead that others simply cannot touch you, even with a 10 feet pole. Your competitors can wallow themselves in their own statistics, but that would be no where near yours.