I’m sure that you’ve heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. The rabbit is fast but he messes around and doesn’t end up winning the race. The turtle is much slower than the rabbit, but he makes slow consistent progress and wins the race.
What lesson do you take from this old story?
What lesson are you supposed to take from it?
When I was a child and read this story, the lesson I took from it was that the rabbit was stupid. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just hurry up and finish the race, get the win, and then take a nap.
I have a friend who’s encouraging me to change the way I think about things. But I’ve come to a different appreciation for this old story over the years. I’m going to share some of this with you in this post.
What if you forgot about the rabbit and focused only the turtle?
Is there a valuable lesson or two that you might have missed?
I read a quote that said something like never stop someone who’s making consistent progress, no matter how slow. This makes a lot of sense to me, as I’ve experienced both sides of this in my life.
I’ve jumped into some things with major progress and then stopped making any progress. When this happens I almost never end up achieving what I hoped.
On the other hand, I’ve also done a few things where I never made big progress at any one time, but stuck with it at a slow and steady pace and achieved what I set out to do eventually.
I’ve even had a couple times when I started strong, made consistent progress, and finished strong. I don’t think that it’s a big surprise that the few times this has happened have been some of the best accomplishments of my life.
It’s easy to get excited about doing something and start with a lot of energy. But what are you going to do when the initial energy is gone and the end is nowhere in sight? Is there ever a time when slow and steady doesn’t win the race?
The only time when slow and steady doesn’t win is when you’re competing against fast and steady. And the truth is that you’re usually only competing against yourself. When you compete against yourself, the only way to lose is to quit.
This is the lesson I think that’s the most important from the rabbit and the turtle. The best combination is steadiness and speed, but if you have to pick one or the other, take steady every single time.
The next question is how to use this in real life. I think you can use it in many different areas. But I think every area where you can use it has one thing in common. You have to know where you’re going or what you want to accomplish.
This post isn’t about goals, but you have to have a goal. If you don’t have a goal, how can you hope to make any type of progress toward it? The only way to make consistent progress is to have something to make consistent progress toward.
If you want to make some area of your life better in some way, decide exactly what better looks like. If you want a better job, what job do you want to get? If you want to lose weight, how much weight do you want to lose?
Once you know exactly what you want you can define what progress is. If you want to lose weight you track your progress by the pound. But there has to be a process that you follow to lose pounds. And the process is where consistent progress comes into play.
If you burn more calories than you take in consistently, you lose weight. This means that consistent progress is burning more calories than you eat every day. If you do this every day, the weight loss is automatic. In fact, you don’t ever have to think about losing weight again if you make consistent progress on the process.
In the end, I think the most valuable lesson is from the turtle. I still wonder why the rabbit didn’t wait until after winning the race to take a nap, but I guess that answer isn’t important.
Be like the turtle and make consistent progress no matter how slow it ends up being. Of course, if you can figure out how to make consistent progress faster, you’re on the path to figuring out what most people never do.
