Every week I build a slide deck for a presentation.
Where the team is at, what’s working and what requires attention. It eats a big chunk of my weekend—finding and collating the data, building the slides, thoughtfully arranging things, then sitting with the information long enough to understand what story the numbers are telling me.
This week, a coworker offered to get it done ahead of time.
We sat down. Collected the necessary data, and then thirty minutes later it was done.
I thought I’d got my weekend back.
I was wrong.
Half-baked
Friday night I arrived home.
Just before bed, I opened the slides to see the amazing work that was done and to marvel at the amount of time I had just reclaimed.
The slides were done, but not done right.
Massive chunks were missing; some slides had wrong information and an incorrect layout, and overall the design was poor and lacked polish.
They were finished.
But not to my standard.
While I analysed the gaps, I started to think about the time that I now had to find to get them right. I also started thinking about the concepts underlying this moment.
Valuing yourself
Making yourself proud
How much is too much effort
What it means to do good work
Doing the right thing because it’s right
All these ideas are inherently rooted in Stoic commitment to doing good, simply because it is good.
No posturing or pandering. Just good work.
The reward being the quality and the satisfaction of not lying to yourself.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.16
It’s something I have tried to stay true to since coming to Stoicism in 2020, and it reminded me of something a good friend used to say…
Make yourself proud
She would always talk about it in relation to how she was showing up in the world and how she wanted to live her life.
I think it applies to everything we do.
Making yourself proud is not about being fast or best. It doesn’t mean you are the wealthiest or most successful.
It simply means that you did something you’re happy to be attached to.
A half-baked presentation was not something I was prepared to be attached to, and as a result, I knew that my work-free weekend would not come to fruition.
Proud over pride
Over the last few years, I have made my friend’s saying one of my mantras.
I have used it in so many situations.
Gym
Music
Career
Friendship
Relationships
Every time I have thought about cutting corners or phoning it in, I stop and ask myself:
“Are you making yourself proud?”
Making yourself proud is purely about internal validation.
Did I quit?
Did I actually try?
Do I want to be known for this?
And there are a couple of reasons why it’s make yourself proud, and not do it with pride.
The latter suggests cultivating an energy before the task.
That’s all well and good, but the question becomes: will you finish the task with the same energy and optimism?
Pride also has negative connotations.
Some people will allow their pride to get in the way of the task at hand.
They will let their assumptions and predispositions cloud their thinking and guide their actions. Pride allows the ego to take the reins, and instead of doing what’s good and right, they will do what looks good (for them).
When you make yourself proud, however, the task is complete.
You are now sitting back, observing your work and soaking in the wholehearted commitment to a result that you could now celebrate.
You emptied the tank, put it all on the line, left no stone unturned.
That’s what it means to make yourself proud.
It means the job is done.
Winning ain’t everything
Four years ago I had my first and only fight.
An amateur boxing event in which I lost after the fight was waved off late in the third round. The result did not go my way, but I had made myself proud.
Making yourself proud doesn’t always mean success.
It doesn’t mean that it all goes your way.
Throughout this boxing experience, very little went my way. I got beat up in sparring; I was broke from spending money to enter the fight and giving up work to make room for training; I eventually went on to lose the fight in front of hundreds of people, as well as friends and family who had travelled interstate.
But at no point during or since did I regret how things transpired.
I gave absolutely everything to this fight. I prepared and trained like this would be my only opportunity to step in the ring. I committed to this moment like there would not be another.
And I was right; there wasn’t.
But when the dust settled, I had an opportunity to reflect; I was able to sit back and say that I was proud of how I showed up.
Your source of truth
Your guiding light should always come from within.
Relying on external validation will leave you stranded. You might get the desired outcome once or twice, but will it be consistent?
Societies are volatile
Motivation is fleeting
Humans are emotional
Markets are unpredictable
Placing faith in any of these to understand the work you have put in and account for all of the context is a recipe for impending disaster.
You need something sustainable.
Reliable.
You need to rely on you.
Your instincts, your taste, your commitment to the work. Your effort, your assessment, iterations and progress. You need to become your own source of truth for all matters relating to how seriously your work is taken.
If you put your best foot forward and the work is not appreciated, that’s fine.
You can sleep well knowing that you made yourself proud.
Final thoughts
On Saturday, I sat down to finish the job.
Not because the help wasn’t appreciated—it was. But because the work wasn’t finished, and I’m going to have my name attached to this whether I like it or not.
That’s the whole point.
Finished is not the same as done. Speed doesn’t always mean better. Getting it off your plate isn’t the same as getting it right. And the only person who can judge the difference is you, because you’re the only one who knows what you’re capable of.
Nobody else is keeping tabs on whether you fudged it. Most of the time, nobody even cares.
But you should. You will notice.
You’ll carry it around all week, knowing you could have done better and you chose not to. That weight is far more expensive to your self-worth than the extra couple of hours it would’ve taken to get it right.
So start with the end in mind. Do the work properly.
Not for your boss, not for the crowd or the applause, not for the gratification or a particular result—none of that is guaranteed.
Do it because it matters to you.
Do it so that when the dust settles and the moment to show it off arrives, you can sit back, look at it honestly and say: yeah, I’m proud of that.
That’s the only scoreboard that doesn’t lie.
Your own.
That’s it from me this week, champs!
With gratitude,
SAV
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Every week I show up and write the truth about the work — the standards, the slog, and doing it right when no one’s watching.