Being the Tortoise

They say the secret to success is doing a little bit at a time every day.  "They" being experts and overall successful people.  And it is very practical advice.  I believe in that advice and I imagine it works.  The only thing is, it is so hard to put into practice. 

I saw an example of how hard this advice is to carry out in my experience with my former coworker.  She had worked for a gym and knew personal trainers, and so she knew a great deal about working out.  She was the one who got me started in going to the gym for the first time and on using the elliptical (and for an hour! I was dying!).  She even talked about making up a workout routine for us and everything.  But after only a few sessions, she stopped coming to the gym with me and our other coworker, opting instead to go out to eat.  She wasn't disciplined.  Later on, feeling guilty, she would go work out on her own for 3-6 hours, and feel really great.  But then after that, she wouldn't go work out for weeks altogether.  All she had to do was work out for a little bit at a time, and she would reap a great benefit, but she couldn't do that. 

I remembered thinking at the time that she tried too hard to do too much (she had been always wanting to do the hardest levels when she came with us, and was always pushing for more), and because of that she really didn't do much of anything.  Ironically, if she had just set out to do less a bit each day, she would have actually accomplished more in the long run, as in that old fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare."  Or in that proverb, "Less is more."  Both are true.  And I could see that she was the hare in that story.

It was interesting how I could see this trait in my coworker and chuckle at her foolhardiness, but recently since I have been experiencing the same issue, I see how easy it is to want to take on too much, to want to go too fast.  Albeit, it's on a slightly different tack because it concerns being creative, and when creativity comes into play, it's hard to be such a stickler for timeliness (or so that is my excuse). 

This was my issue:  I have been working on a project that contains approximately 100 items to deal with and decorate.  This project is due in a couple of months.  Now, I have been steadily going about completing five items a day in order to finish this project in time.  At the rate I'm going, as you can tell by the math, even if I just work on weekdays (which is what I'm planning on doing), I'll finish well before I need to finish.  But the thing is, even though I know this, and I know that this is the best way for me to finish this project without burning out, I still can't help wanting to finish this project sooner.  I just want to be done with this project as soon as possible.  And so I think about doing more than five items a day, and working on the weekend.  I know that doing such a thing would only cause me to feel burnt out and stressed and that the project was extremely hard and intense, and yet I still have a yearning to try it just to be done sooner; so I could be free of it sooner.  And though I know that doing the opposite, going the slow and steady course of the tortoise would get me to my destination and with less stress and care, making it feel quite easy when I was finally done, I still feel somehow that waiting 20 weekdays to have a finished project is torturous.  Why?  Because I want it done now!  Sigh.

But good things take time.  And so they also say, "Rome wasn't built in a day."  But wouldn't it have been cool if it was?  But no.  All those adages really hold true.  Patience is the key to success.  Patience and persistence.  If you keep on layering bricks, eventually you will build something, and it will have seemed quite easy.  Try to do too much and you run the risk of tiring yourself out, or scaring yourself so you never build anything at all. 

So here it goes.  I am going to try it the tortoise way and see how it turns out.   The hardest thing I think is waiting it out, knowing that I won't be done for a while.  I don't know why it matters since I know when I'm done, I'll no longer care so much.  I guess I feel I'll be much happier when I'm done, even though I'll suffer more getting it done faster. 

In any case, let's see how this slow and steady thing works.  Maybe it really is the key to success.