In his book Seize the Day, author Danny Cox writes, “The high-performance person won’t accept 99.9 percent as ‘good enough.’” He then lists the effect of applying the 99.9% standard to a variety of efforts.

Two million documents would be lost this year by the IRS.

811,000 faulty rolls of 35mm film would be loaded into cameras this year.

22,000 checks would be deducted from the wrong bank account in the next 60 minutes.

12 babies would be given to the wrong parents each day.

268,500 defective tires would be shipped this year.

2,488,200 books would be shipped this year with the wrong covers.

Two airliner landings each day at O’Hare Airport would be unsafe.

3,056 copies of tomorrow’s edition of The Wall Street Journal would be missing three sections.

18,322 pieces of mail would be mishandled in the next hour.

291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year.

 

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