A while back I heard someone on the radio say that doing a great show once a month was easy, while doing a truly good show every day was hard.

That applies to advertising, too. We use the word "genius" a lot. Creatives are geniuses. Their campaigns are brilliant. And that's as it should be.

Yet lightning flashes of brilliance are, by definition, rare. On life's superhighway they're the occasional, exhilarating scenic detour. But you wouldn't want to live there. Just look at Nietzsche.

This may sound like a complacent, suburban surrender to the ordinary. Actually, performing consistently, even predictably well every day is a breathtaking challenge.

It means never standing down or sitting on laurels. And, ironically, it's what we all expect of others. Consistent service is why we choose this restaurant over that one. Consistent batting makes a single baseball card worth more than all the others put together. And always striving to perform well is one of the surest ways to find those scenic detours of greatness, too.