I absolutely love high-performance and taking things to the next level. My favorite thing to do in my free time is read on the subject, and I try to bring my highest performance levels to whatever I happen to be doing.
I want to bring more value than the average person into my tasks, and the problem with this is that it takes more effort, which can lead to failure. I've found myself in several situations where I went in wanting to bring my all, and I fall short of it; not only that, I do less work than the average person would in that scenario. It's the case of too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
I would often overbook my time and not leave any room for 'life' to happen. So when 'life' inevitably happened, my plans would fall apart. Thus, I came up with "Before going the extra mile, make sure you can do the first" basically, instead of figuring out what the extra bit you want to give, think first about the actual task, and do that well first foremost. Then, formulate what you can do to bring a bit more value than expected. I love the 80/20 rule for this; a lot of times, there are some small efforts we can do that aren't apart of what we need to do that can make big impacts. Doing those small things that get you really far.
An example of going that extra mile in my own work is cleaning the office up when I'm finished. Restocking products even when it can wait until the morrow. This creates a clean and open working environment where I come to the next day with a clear head and can laser focus on the tasks that need completing.
1) Don't go the extra mile until you know you can go the first
3) Consider first how you will do your job and get that down as the priority
3) Use the 80/20 rule when trying to figure out what to do, like the "extra mile."