Saturday, February 15, 2014

Be like the Tortoise!

Today morning, my daughter came to me with a book of fables…one among the 5 stories that  I retold was “The Hare and the Tortoise” …It ended with the Moral : “Slow and Steady wins the Race”. It has stuck to my mind for the reason below:

The story reminded me of Jame Clear's concept of "Average Speed". James’s  advice is to know our average speed of any activity that we need to pursue , irrespective of how fast or how slow we may be. 

Once we know our average speed , we need to do pursue it consistently with a constancy of purpose. It sound simple and straightforward … but please think if we really follow it in our daily life ? Not really…

In this modern world , We are all creatures of Urge….
·         We remember we missed the daily work-out for sometime now and so today we went all out at our “peak speed” only to end up with a sprain…
·         We remember that the savings proof submission for getting the Tax break is coming up next week and simply invest lump sum without enough research only to find later that it is a dud one…
·         We reach out to our friends, relationships and colleagues only when there is a need in it for us…

We all strive to be at our peak-speed (like the Hare) thinking that it would help reach our goals sooner…but the peak speed is not sustainable day-after-day. And with the breaks that the Peak speed requires us to take  , Average speed (like the Tortoise) turns out to be a better proposition….

Let us all Creatures of Habits …instead of Creature of Urge….Habits that will help us build :
-Physical wealth , through physical exercise day-after-day even it is for just 20 minutes per day
-Finance , in a systematic way month after month on investment propositions that makes sense
-Relationships, by making a deliberate effort to talk to a long lost acquaintance , week after week…

The elegance of Average speed lies in its simplicity…the same simplicity that you will see in the compounding effect…In this modern world, where busyness turns out be essentially another form of laziness, let us be like the Tortoise…

No comments: