UCR "Motivation and Fitness"

Illinois - 97.26%
Maine - 96.31%
Indiana - 92.37%
Alabama - 91.83%
Kentucky - 89.84%

I love tennis. More correctly, I love watching world-class tennis.

I also have a tendency to root for the underdog.

Last weekend, at a "world-class" tennis tournament in Indian Wells, California, a journeyman 31-year-old tennis player named Ivan Ljubicic - who was not even ranked in the world's top 20 players - beat America's best player, Andy Roddick, to win the tournament. Roddick is ranked 7th in the world. In order to get to the Roddick match, Ljubicic had to beat Rafael Nadal, the #2 player in the world. In order to get to the Nadal match, Ljubicic had to beat Novak Djokovic, the #3 player in the world.

When they interviewed Ljubicic after the match, they asked him how an "old guy" like him could beat all these young, top-notched guys in the same week. He answered, essentially, that it was not about age, but motivation. He said he has been spending 5 hours a day for the past few months working not on his tennis, but on his body because, to paraphrase Ljubicic, "in order to beat all of those guys in a a week, you have to be fit! The tennis comes naturally."

Since I love analogies, I got to thinking about UCR motivation and fitness. The higher we set the bar for our state, the more motivated and "fit" we have to be to get there. The approach that gets a state to 70% is probably not the approach that will get that same state to 80%. Same with 80% to 90%. And a state generally needs an "enhanced" approach to get from 90% to 95%.

Along the way, we decide - whether by design or default - what level is "good enough" for us.

I'm guessing that "good enough" is rarely a matter of "not enough people". It's more than likely a matter of motivation and fitness.