Doing things excellently is hard. You should do excellent work, in part because it is hard, to become stronger. Why excellent? Because perfect is the enemy of good.

I have taken to using expressions in the manner of “we should strive for excellent results” as a shorthand for the pretty entangled concept of - doing things actually well.

So let’s untangle the concept, what does excellent mean here?

Vibes:

Significantly better than the “bare minimum”
But less rigid than “perfect”
Aiming for the correct success criteria - see hard mode. No Goodhearting, when taking shortcuts being mindful what the compromises are.
- TODO: The hard mode form example (number VI?) is relevant here: I think > (quote) is looking at the right direction, but taking into account forgiveness over permission, usually the correct habit to cultivate is being mindful of what information is relevant and filling that in honestly and correctly and with proper diligence.
An excellent work output is tangibly and noticeably excellent when observed.

Examples:

Creating an excellent dish: drawing from either experience or a reasonably chosen recipe, paying attention into your estimates of the tastes of the target audience (be it you, someone else, or the internet), making reasonable price - quality tradeoffs in ingredient selection, and cooking this into something great.
How to differentiate between a good vs. excellent blog post?
- A good post has to: Have reasonable text quality, say something, say it understandably,
- An excellent post has to: Have all of the above, and go through editing rounds,