When you’re working your way to the top, it’s vital be ambitious, to make an investment in your education, to be expanding your skill set and challenging yourself to do better.

But one of the most common mistakes people make on their climb upward is becoming too focused on the next job, the one they don’t have yet, instead of doing their best in the one they’re in.

When I sat down with GE CEO Jeff Immelt (now also the newly appointed chairman of the White House Council of Jobs and Competitiveness) his advice was to first get deep and then get broad:

“My advice is do every job like you’re going to have it forever. At GE, I would always do anything asked of me with integrity,” he insisted. “I would try and do it in 80% of the time and then expand my horizon. I was constantly trying to stretch my boundaries. But it always started with meeting my responsibilities first: doing the job, doing it well and doing it with integrity.”

As Jeff says, one of the easiest ways to get derailed is to say, ‘This is beneath me, I can do more’ instead of showing how well you can do it!

“I had some jobs for one year, some for five, but I valued every step along the way and did them all like I’d have them forever.”

Watch Jeff’s advice below: