Steve Jobs once described the difference between good work and great work with a simple image:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

That idea has always stuck with me. It captures something deeply unintuitive about how exceptional quality is created.

We tend to assume that effort and results go hand in hand. That more energy input reliably produces higher quality output. That the relationship between energy and output quality is linear, stable, and fixed.

But here’s the truth: It isn’t.

In my own experience—and my observed experience through others—the relationship follows a very unique shape.

I call it the Energy-Output Curve (which is visualized below):

At the beginning of any project, there’s an initial surge. The activation input of energy is rewarded disproportionately. You get a huge gain in output quality for a relatively small investment of energy. This is the activation phase. It’s exciting. It creates momentum, because the rewards to additional energy feel obvious. Progress is easy. Fast.

Then comes the long, slow, grinding middle. The valley phase. A stretch of increasingly diminishing returns, where each additional unit of energy input produces smaller and less noticeable output quality improvements. The work becomes less stimulating. The dopamine drip starts to run dry.

Most people endure the valley for a little while, but stop somewhere in it.

Not because they lack ambition, but because they’re too focused on the outcomes. The extrinsic rewards for their efforts have become less compelling. The effort starts to feel unjustified. It becomes easy to conclude that you’ve reached the ceiling. That anything more would be inefficient or unnecessary.

But that conclusion is wrong—because the curve doesn’t end there.

With that final 5% energy input, something remarkable happens. Output quality breaks from the diminishing trend and surges again. The willingness to lean in when others pull away, to invest that “unreasonable” final 5%, is rewarded.

The final 5% is where good work becomes great work.

And here’s where we confront an interesting paradox:

You won’t achieve those top quality outcomes by focusing on the outcomes. The people who reach them are always focused on the inputs.

To them, putting in that final 5% feels as obvious as the first 5%.

Paraphrasing Steve Jobs, for them to sleep well at night, the work has to be carried all the way through.

And that fact is more than conjecture:

In a ​2022 meta-analysis​ analyzing the impact of goal-setting on performance, researchers found that outcome-focused goals had a negligible effect, while process-focused goals had a profound effect.

In simple terms, those who consistently focused on the inputs performed better than those who focused on the outcomes.

When you focus on the craft itself, you see it through long after the external rewards fade. You keep showing up.

Great work isn’t unlocked by wanting greatness more. It’s unlocked by placing an unreasonable amount of care into the work itself.

The universe rewards those who are willing to step into the arena and shut the door behind them.

And it doesn't take talent or intelligence to do that. Just courage. Just focus. Just care.

Be a last 5 percenter.