A simple workout reminded me of a truth: slow is better than undone. It’s a truth we struggle to remember.
My Stupid Treadmill and Slow Prayers
The other day I was on my stupid treadmill*. I was doing my daily exercise and my prayers. As I worked out I became discouraged at how far behind in my prayers I was. I have many people I pray for each day. The consistency gives me a sense of timing.
Only on this day, I was way behind. Where I should have been praying for friends, I was still praying for family. The couple minutes would delay my next task which would delay the next one and so on and so forth.
As ridiculous as this sounds, I know we all have our crazy, irrational things. This just happens to be mine.
But it didn’t take long until I saw just how ridiculous it was, and that’s when I realized that slow is better than undone.
This Is the Part Where I Explain How Ridiculous it Was
As I sat there beating myself up, I realized something: on that day I got into my workout at the normal time. The day before I didn’t start exercising until two hours later in the day. In comparison with yesterday, I was not only ahead, I was on fire! The crazy, irrational part of me was not only crazy and irrational: it was a million miles off base.
That’s when I wrapped my joy around a truth: slow is better than undone. Regardless of whether I was behind in tasks or not, I was doing them. Even the day before when I started two hours later, I still got them done.
It doesn’t matter if you do paperwork like the sloths in Zootopia, doing it slowly is better than not doing it at all.
Slow Is Better than Undone
Sometimes it’s better to focus on doing than on accomplishment. Sometimes it’s better to think about momentum over clocks.
We should have a focus on what we want to accomplish and we should shoot for a reasonable timeline, but if we worry so much about meeting our timeline that we just stop, we’re not making things better; we’re making them worse.
If you want to make progress, move forward. It’s better to get something done than nothing at all. Chances are, once you start gaining momentum, you will find things start to fall together. After all, you can’t make things happen if the work never gets done.
Whatever you’re doing, have a plan, be open to better approaches, but focus on momentum. Slow is better than undone, because eventually, no matter the pace, it will eventually become done.
* Okay, it’s an elliptical, and I enjoy it, but a) it makes for a more interesting sentence and b) it matches the story that I previously posted.
