The 99% Completion Effect: A Job Almost Well Done

If the internet age has taught us anything, it is the lesson that 99% download is not good enough. The other day I was reading a book by Wale Adenuga titled ‘Here’s My Two Cents’ and it struck a chord with me. There in front of me was another reminder that 99% is never enough. He likened aborted success to having your internet download fail at 99%. This is a feeling we all know too well.

Trust me, it happens to the best of us. This  hit me hard again the other day when I was in the slum of Mokola neighbourhood in Ibadan, at the ‘office’ of a printer at the dead of the night (11:00PM to be precise) as I said all the prayers I know for his printer not to pack up in the middle of our print job.

I had come in from Lagos with about ninety-something percent of the prints I needed. But hey, that is not 100%. So of course, I had to get 100% for the training the next morning. As I sat in the makeshift office/storeroom/shop/messy-place, all I could think about was the power of the last 1% that brought me out there that night. Trust me, if the final 1% means anything to you, it has the power to make you survive the worst possible situations.

After all I had done earlier in the day, the last 1% held me to ransom. I forgot all the victories of my ninety-something percent (to be honest it is not really a victory until the file is downloaded and in some cases, until the software is successfully installed).

If you do not complete the task up to 100% in day light at your beautiful office on the 10^th floor with a nice view of the city, it will drag you out in the dead of the night to a slum with strangers you are not sure if you can trust. Otherwise you would have failed (99% regardless).

Life is a 100% affair. True life I mean; real life! The life where you are determined to succeed and where you really can’t spell ‘fliaure’. That kind of life! If you want the life where you show up at the training and your training manual does not go round and you apologise for the inconvenience and have a great training that ‘almost’ went perfect, by all means do not venture into Mokola by midnight.

But then again, if you are interested in living in a world alien to excuses and stories then you would have to reconsider. Don’t get caught in the euphoria of ‘the 99% completion effect’.

Lesson learnt, bitter lesson learnt. So the next time you allow yourself to rest too quickly at the whiff a job ‘almost’ well done, just remember my Ibadan experience, and remember the last time your download failed at 99%.