52 WEEKS
Week 8— Getting By With Less
My favorite of Aesop’s Fables is The Tortoise and the Hare. Or as I like to call it, the turtle and the rabbit.
When I was a kid, I fancied myself a rabbit.
I thought I was real smart.
And some of the early school stuff came easy to me. So I decided, pretty early on, that I could get by with less.
GETTING BY WITH LESS
In the fable, the rabbit makes fun of the turtle, and the turtle challenges him to a race. And at the starting line, the rabbit just takes off!
And the turtle plods along.
The rabbit gets so far ahead, that he decides to take a break. So he sits down by a tree, and takes a nap. But by the time he wakes up, the turtle has passed him by, and crosses the finish line.
I have spent my entire life watching everybody pass me by.
One after the other.
First the turtles, then all the other rabbits.
And I stayed at that tree for a long time, mostly thinking, what the hell did I do with my life? I had such potential. And every opportunity.
I traced my failure all the way back to grade school. Which is probably where most things can be traced. The teachers were like, why aren’t you getting good grades? You’re not even trying. And I’m like, I know I can get good grades, so why bother doing it? I’ll buckle down when I get to high school, when it really counts.
And then I got to high school, and discovered more fun than I had ever had in my life!
Partying. Girls. They even had video games back then.
Suddenly, that history book didn’t have the same intoxicating allure.
I also got real good at skipping out. Y’know, if there’s one thing in this life you do NOT want to get good at, it’s skipping out, or not showing up.
They say showing up is 80% of life and they’re damn right. You can’t even get by with less if you don’t show up!
I was having so much fun in high school, I didn’t care about getting A’s, or even trying. I remember thinking, I’m not going to Harvard, so I don’t need Harvard grades. I’m going to UW-Milwaukee. As long as I don’t stab the interviewer in the eye, I’m gonna get in.
And then I GOT into college, and they didn’t even take attendance back then.
So that was the end of that.
Eventually, I just dropped out and never got my degree.
Which I guess I had been training for my whole life.
All of this is a good example of how bad habits are formed, and how much damage they can do.
Getting by with less makes us less.
Certainly less than we would have been if we didn’t have that nasty habit!
I know for some people, the idea of getting by with less than their best effort never occurs to them. I envy those people. I was never one of them, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to learn from them.
And what I learned was, the best way to fix the problem of getting by with less, is to start taking pride in everything we do. Whether it’s an assignment at school or work, or it’s a job delivering pizza or being a waitress. Whatever it is, if you’re doing it, take pride in it.
Do as good of a job as you can.
Give yourself value!
If we fail because we can’t do something, fine. We find something else to do. But we should never fail because we didn’t show up, or when we did, we did a half-assed job.
It doesn’t take that much more effort to try and be good at something as it does to just phone it in. In the end, it takes even less effort, because we’ll get ahead faster.
(that’s not why we do it, but people are gonna notice, and we’ll benefit because of it)
So if your 3rd grader wants to know why it’s sooooo important that he or she does their social studies homework, you tell them it’s because what they’re doing now is setting up HABITS they are going to have and follow, maybe for the rest of their life!
And finally:
Even if you’re a tall, dark, handsome man, or a beautiful woman, or a great salesperson, or you’re fast or strong or smart, or you play a mean guitar.
Whatever you’re good at. Even when you can get by with less… DON’T.
Let your advantage be your advantage.
And then nobody will pass you by.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
— You ever hear of the stereotype of the dumb blonde? SHE can get by with less and she knows it. Lots of people can. A tall, dark, handsome man can get by with less. A great salesperson can sell a crappy product. An NFL player with off-the-charts measurables can get by with less. All of them can just phone it in and still be better than most.
The real question is: do they?
— The opportunity to get by with less is always there, whispering in our ears. Phone it in. Phone it in. Don’t work so hard. What’s the difference? Call in sick.
Let’s face it, it’s always easier to do nothing.