Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Overachievers

No one is an overachiever. How can you rise above your level of competency? We’re all underachievers to different degrees. You may hear someone say that a certain individual “gave 110 percent.” How can that be? You can only give what you have, and you have only 100 percent.

I preferred to judge individuals on the basis of how close they came to giving 100 percent, knowing they would never reach perfection, and they would certainly never reach 110 percent of perfection, but perhaps they would operate near their level of competency when their greatest skill was needed.