The excellence gap is the distance between work that is merely good enough and work that has to be truly excellent. It matters because jobs with a big gap often depend on human judgment, feedback, and originality, not just repeatable steps. section 5.1
A soap opera can get by with fast, recycled writing; a high-end TV series needs careful writing, testing, and polish to stand out over time. The same split shows up in other work where “just fine” and “excellent” are very different targets. section 5.1
The treatment points to a few signs that a job has a wide excellence gap:
- It rewards thoroughness and long-term effects more than speed and low cost. section 5.1
- It leans on original work instead of rehashed prior work. section 5.1
- It includes human-touch tasks like interviewing, research, relationship-building, and feedback gathering. section 5.1
- It is hard to describe as a simple recipe of steps. section 5.1
Example contrast
Writing soap operas is presented as “just fine” work: quick, cheap, and repetitive. Writing high-end TV or a high-end newspaper opinion piece is presented as excellent work: slower, more original, and more dependent on human judgment. section 5.1
