Thresholds and Margins

As I go through life, I find that the concepts of thresholds and margins are crucial to my effectiveness. What do I mean by this?

Take school, for example. Let's say there are three students: X, Y, and Z, all of equal intelligence and ability. X gets slightly ahead in class and is already a couple lessons ahead for each exam. Y keeps even with class, while Z is about a week behind. When each assignment or exam comes due, X does the best, Y average, and Z fails. At the end of the course, all three may have learned the same amount of material. But staying ahead of the thresholds by giving oneself a time-margin made the difference between success and failure.

The same holds for financial management. Some households seems able to pay all of their bills on time while others struggle to find creative ways of juggling their expenses around. And both may have the same income. The successful household has built up a margin of safety with its finances that enables it to be in the black even at those times that expenses are the greatest. The idea is to first build up a financial margin, or buffer.

In sports, thresholds and margins figure heavily. In baseball, for example, one team can outplay the other, but in order to win, they have to pass a specific threshold (home plate) more than the other. In football, a team can be slow with their offense, but still manage to march downfield for a score as long as they can continually pass the threshold of ten-yard net gains per four downs. Golf, instead of being one extremely long course, is divided into eighteen holes, each one a threshold to cross. In all of these scenarios, thresholds tend to serve as an equalizing force between two unequal sides. I remember the 1960 World Series between the heavily favored New York Yankees and the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates. In one game, the Yankees would blow out the Pirates 16-3 and the next they'd lose a very close one. The final game was won by Pittsburgh 10-9. They won despite being a weaker team (NY outscored Pittsburgh by a two-to-one ratio in the series) because they were able to win the threshold battle. So how does this apply to me?

If I look upon my life as a sort of continual game, I'll find that each year, month, week, day, and even hour can serve as a type of threshold standard that I can use to determine success or failure. The idea is to get SOMETHING accomplished in a goal-area during each predetermined time period. So I should set aside a few minutes for piano, a set time for running, another period for foreign language study, and so on. By doing this, I can eke out productivity from small bits of available time over the course of a day. And the cumulative effect of this over time can be staggering!

Yes, I find that it's often the marginal, "extra" little things here and there that can ultimately make the big difference between success and failure in endeavors. Have I done this well in my own life? Not anywhere as much as I would have liked. But as the saying goes, each day is a new beginning. And it starts with doing things marginally better!