The Tortoise Always Wins

One reason I stopped writing this blog was because I was telling myself the lie that I didn’t have time to do it.

While it’s true that I have more on my plate than some, being a single mom who works two jobs and is single-handedly raising a multitude of children (two teenagers + Susie counts as a ‘multitude’), it’s also true that people have managed to accomplish some things in a very limited amount of time each day.

This was driven home to me recently by an influential person in my life.

I was whining to my chiropractor/friend, Dr. Hubert, about not having time to work out or meal prep, and he reprimanded me harshly about how LITTLE time it takes to actually do those things, and how MUCH you can get done in a mere 20 minutes a day. And every single person can find 20 minutes a day, he said.

He went on to lecture me sternly about priorities and consistency and how you’re even moving toward a goal or moving away from it. There is no standing still. It’s easy to spend five minutes a day moving toward your goal, and it’s also easy not to.

A client of his wrote a book in five minutes a day. Literally, set a timer for five minutes, wrote until a timer went off, then put the pen down. Two years later, a book was published. That spoke to me, man.

I tend to think if I can’t do something perfectly, I don’t want to do it at all. I’ll wait until I CAN do it exactly right. I won’t get started until I can carve out a perfect three-hour block of quiet time in which to ponder, and then churn out a stellar blog post that will, of course, go viral, because it resonates with everyone who reads it.

I mean, what are the odds of a single mom of three who works two jobs, finding a quiet three-hour block of time? Maybe between 2-5am, sometime in September 2037… 

The tortoise always wins, Dr. Hubert said.

Studies have been done.

It’s been proven.

More can be accomplished in small efforts, repeated consistently over time, than can be done in a one large crash-blast of activity.

That convicted me. Since that come-to-Jesus meeting with Dr. Hubert, ‘consistency‘ has become the goal for me, whether it’s exercise, healthy eating, building my business, or… writing this blog.

My new goal is to write for fifteen minutes a day. That’s it. My alarm will go off at the same time each day, and I will type out some words on this blog, and quit after fifteen minutes.

I will hit ‘publish’ when a post is done, whether that post takes one day or 172. The struggle for me will be in just going with it… typing what comes to mind, and restraining the urge to edit it into ‘perfection.’ No editing or deleting after I hit ‘publish.’ Yikes.

Even if nobody likes it. Yeah, I said that.

Even if nobody likes it, Melissa.

It will make me a better writer.

So there you have it… my first fifteen-minute blog post. Turns out, it can be done.