The Importance of Unnecessary Excellence

The things people may never notice are worthy of your best

There is an episode of The West Wing with a plot line that is so minor it doesn’t show up in any summaries of the episode. I had to track down an actual script of the episode to verify it even happened and that I didn’t invent it in my own mind. It’s in episode eight of the first season and it has to do with a birthday note.

Actually, excuse me, it’s a “birthday message” as the characters keep insisting. Sam Seaborn, the White House’s Communications Director, is tasked with writing a birthday message from the President to the Assistant Transportation Secretary for his 50th birthday.

Obviously, this is the sort of thing that would normally go to a low-level staffer and Sam asks, “Are you sure he doesn't want someone who, you know, isn't staggeringly overqualified for the job?” He reluctantly accepts and spends the rest of the episode becoming more and more determined to “nail this thing.”

I really like this little plot because I completely understand, from a writer’s perspective, getting drawn into making a small thing the best you can, because you are giving it a part of yourself. I also understand because, like Sam’s note, much of what I write doesn’t have my name on it.

Maybe some people would be motivated to excellence because of the name that is going on it (in Sam’s case, that would be the President of the United States) but that isn’t why I care. It isn’t why Sam cares either. He cares because he has been given something to do and he wants to create something that is as good as it can possibly be, even when it is a minor piece of writing that won’t bear his name for a small group of relatively unimportant people.

Everyone understands the idea of doing excellent work when it is meant to be seen - but what about work that may never be seen or appreciated?

Here’s another example, albeit one with a much more specific audience (it’s ok to skip it, Boomers). In the 2020 video game Final Fantasy VII Remake, there’s a track that plays only once in the entire game, in single hallway in one area. You only have to come here once or twice, and if you just run to the end of the hallway without stopping you’ll miss it. But it’s one of the best tracks in the entire game:

It’s a theme for a hallway! Be honest: if YOU had to walk down a hallway with theme music, this track is the one you want. There is no reason for this song to go that hard, but it does. Composer Mitsudo Suzuki could have just phoned this one in and no one would have noticed. Instead, he created something excellent that also happens to take my Spotify running playlist up several notches.

In Colossians 3:23-24, Paul writes:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Too many people think that for their work to matter it has to be “meaningful,” whatever that means. So, they discount the work that feels like drudgery and focus their time and energy on the part of what they do that “matters.”

To be sure, every job includes drudgery. But I think God has a different view than we do of what matters. Don’t be so quick to dismiss the parts of your work that bore you. Stop racing to get through them. What if you treated the small, insignificant assignments as though each one was the big break you’d been waiting for?

I think that opportunities for excellence are everywhere and the people I want to work with are those who take advantage of them. Everyone wants to write a speech that will become immortal; everyone wants to create a 100-year company. Be the person who wants to spend an entire evening writing a birthday note to the least important person in your company. Be the person who is assigned a theme for a hallway and composes something that makes the player wish that hallway was much longer.