The Extra Mile Is Easy
Ever feel like your hard work goes unnoticed? The secret might lie in the last five minutes.
Josie has just wrapped up a major project at work. The quarterly market analysis for Westeria is complete, the numbers check out, and her recommendations are solid. She closes her laptop with a sigh of relief.
Time for a well-deserved break. She walks to the coffee machine where she meets Taylor - who's notorious for her color-coded notes, and who has also just finished the same quarterly market analysis but for the Eastlund region.
The core requirements are identical—same data sources, same objectives, same deadline. Both regions face similar challenges and opportunities.
But while Josie had already mentally checked out and started scrolling through emails, Taylor spent just ten more minutes on her project. She added a simple visual comparing Eastlund's performance to the previous three quarters. She created a one-page executive summary highlighting the three most actionable insights. She even took a moment to send a note to the regional sales team with specific callouts relevant to their territory.
Two weeks later, during the department meeting, it's Taylor's Eastlund analysis that gets mentioned by the VP. "This is exactly the kind of work we should all strive for," he says.
Josie is puzzled. Her Westeria data was just as accurate. Her analysis was equally insightful. What made the difference?
It wasn't some innate talent or working twice as hard. It was those ten minutes of thoughtful finishing touches—the extra mile that felt almost effortless after completing the real heavy lifting.
What happens with Josie and Taylor plays out across every field and project in life, whether we're finishing a work assignment, wrapping up a home renovation, or completing a creative passion project. The biggest impact often comes from the smallest investment at the finish line.
Poached Eggs
Have you ever wondered why restaurant food often tastes better than the same dish made at home?
I recently made poached eggs for breakfast—perfectly fine eggs, cooked in water until the whites set.
Later that week, I ordered poached eggs at a café. The core product was identical, but the experience was entirely different.
The restaurant's eggs arrived on a warm plate. The bread was artisanal sourdough. A few delicate herb leaves added color. There were no drips or smudges.
The fundamental cooking process took exactly the same time. Those final one-minute flourishes justified the price difference and created a completely different experience.
Where Small Touches Create Big Impact
After that breakfast revelation, I became a bit obsessed. I started mentally cataloging examples, and it turns out it can be applied to most things in my life:
Learning guitar taught me that simply strumming the correct chords won't sound as enjoyable. Adding small variations—a hammer-on here, a palm mute there—transforms mechanical playing into music people want to hear. These tiny techniques take seconds but make the difference between sounding like a beginner and a musician.
When writing long texts, taking just three minutes to proofread elevates the entire piece. The writing might take hours, but that final quick review takes almost no time while dramatically improving how readers receive your message.
At the gym, wiping down equipment after use requires maybe 15 seconds. Yet this small gesture separates considerate gym-goers from those everyone silently judges. (If you're the person who leaves a sweat angel on the bench press, we need to talk.)
When coding, adding clear comments and organizing functions logically might add five minutes to development time. But when someone needs to understand that code later (including your future self), those five minutes save hours of frustration.
And if you have ever prepared pasta for friends, you know the difference it makes to present it nicely on clean plates with freshly cut basil. Feels like fine dining right at your dinner table.
The extra mile gets your work noticed.
Not Perfectionism, Not People-Pleasing
"But wait," you might think. "Isn't this just another form of never-ending work?"
Nope.
While perfectionism keeps you trapped in a cycle of endless revisions, driven by fear, the extra mile is a conscious choice to add specific value in a limited time.
People-pleasing exhausts you as you try to meet everyone's expanding expectations.
The extra mile is about your personal standard of quality.
What's the difference? Boundaries and intention. You decide exactly what small touches matter most and exactly how much time you'll spend on them.
The Five-Minute Mindset
I watched how the extra mile transformed my work, but the real challenge was making it consistent.
I don't have some fancy name for this approach—it's just a mental pause I've tried to build into my workflow. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't.
The beauty of the extra mile isn't in complex systems or detailed checklists. It's in the pause—that brief moment where you choose to give something just a little more care before moving on. Don't think big, usually 5 minutes is more than enough.
Not every project deserves the extra mile treatment. Sometimes good enough really is good enough. That quarterly report that nobody reads? Maybe just hit send.
The Greatest Return on Investment
What fascinates me most is how disproportionate the impact can be. Those final touches can transform entirely how people experience your work.
A small visual addition becomes the talking point in meetings. A thoughtful follow-up note leads to new opportunities. A clean, well-organized deliverable builds trust that leads to bigger projects.
The irony? The hardest part of any project is already behind you. The extra mile is the easiest distance you'll travel, yet it's where the magic happens.
Your Turn
Like Josie and Taylor, we all face the same choice countless times each day. We can declare our work complete the moment the essential elements are done. Or we can take one more small step.
The next time you're about to call something "done," pause for just a moment and see if there's anything that could make your work truly stand out.
I still haven't figured out where to draw the line between worthwhile polish and diminishing returns. Maybe that's the real skill—knowing exactly when to stop.
The extra mile is the easiest one you'll ever travel. And somehow, it's the one that takes you furthest.