07 May 2022
There are days in which doing even the tiniest thing that helps you moving towards your goals are too much. On those days, today is one of them, I am trying to let good habits take over and minimize effort to function properly. Writing this down is already a win.
In the Podcast “The Science of Success”, Greg McKeown speaks of two expeditions to the South Pole. Two ships sent out at the same time and had the same weather conditions. However, their experiences were totally different: one captain made his crew work exceptionally hard on days with good weather and do nothing on stormy days. The other captain tried to moderate his crew on good days, but made them also sail a few kilometers on bad days. This way, they were not exhausted on either good or bad days, and were able to reach the South Pole and back. The first ship made it to the South Pole, but never made it back…
What this tells us is how important the work balance is. We shouldn’t exhaust ourselves on good days, so there is something left in the tank for bad days.
A quote that I read this morning from Stefan Zweig’s autobiografie, “The World of Yesterday” stuck with me. Stefan Zweig about Rudolf Steiner: “Because of his fantastic and at the same time profound knowledge, I came to the realization that the true universality, which we thought we already possessed with the arrogance of the grammarian, cannot be conquered by cursory reading and discussion, but only by years of fanatical effort.”
Of course this phrase doesn’t mention any moderation, but does speak of consistency over a long time, like the story of the turtle and the hare.
In practicing any musical instrument, it is common knowledge, that it is better to practice every day for 5 minutes, than once a week for an hour. This knowledge is applicable to almost any area of life and yet often hard to see. Let’s strive to see the value in gradual change over sudden epiphanies!
There are days in which doing even the tiniest thing that helps you moving towards your goals are too much. On those days, today is one of them, I am trying to let good habits take over and minimize effort to function properly. Writing this down is already a win.
In this post I’d like to set out how I started changing habits and how it’s currently going.
Here is a poem by Charles Baudelaire that seems very appropriate:
In a world in which we are surrounded by devices that distract us, it is very difficult to know what we want, why we want it and how to achieve our goals.