I forgot to mention something in my post about a streak last week. It was that some days, hitting 10,000 steps was easy. So easy, I’d get them all in by 10am (or earlier!) and end up somewhere in the 20- or 30-something thousands for the day. Other days, I would be beyond ready for bed, but end up doing laps around the house while brushing my teeth to get to 10,000.
There are a few lessons here. Like:
Make sure the goals you set are not too easy or too challenging to attain. If I consistently got 20,000 steps a day, a 10,000-step goal would have been too low. Likewise, if I was getting my final steps in by pacing the house just before bedtime every night, the goal might have been too high. Achieving a goal should be hard enough to give you a well-earned boost of confidence, but not impossible.
Some days are easier/harder than others. This is true for so many things. For instance, this morning, it took me 10 minutes to come up with the word “superficial.” Other days, all of the words I want to use roll right off my tongue.
I wrote last week’s post a few days early and I scheduled it for the next Monday morning. In the days in between scheduling and posting, I thought of those two lessons above. “Oh, I should go back and edit my post,” I thought. But I was busy with other things. And, despite the oversight, I was happy with the post. So, I decided that the post was good enough, and I was happy with that. Which brings me to a final, sort of “meta,” lesson about the post more than the streak: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
A few years ago, I shared an article from Apartment Therapy on 6 Things Organized People Do, and Thing Number 5 was “Prioritize Not Perfect.”
“You can’t do everything. Save your limited time and energy for decisions about things that matter. Everything else will get done in a way that’s most likely just fine or certainly good enough. Few people can maintain military-style precision and perfection at home, and who would want to? Let it go.”
Great advice for beyond the home, too. Plus, there’s opportunity in “good enough:” forgetting to post some thoughts one week provides content for the next. 😉