When I was growing up “going through the motions” wasn’t acceptable.
If you didn’t do it right then you shouldn’t do it at all.
This was from all coaches and teachers that dealt with me.
There is definitely a place for this mindset depending on the task.
I’m not sure it has a place in things that we do every day….
I was working out the other day during the 6pm.
I didn’t want to, I hadn’t worked out in 5 days, it wasn’t fun, my fitness was lacking and the clock stopped at 20 mins and I wasn’t done……
I just kept moving.
I finished and I was very happy that I did it. It was productive and I moved the needle because the alternative was to do nothing.
There is a concept in the book “Outliers” about mastery. 10,000 hours is the number of hours it takes to master something or achieve greatness.
Some people have doubled down on this to suggest that those 10,000 hours are only the quality hours.
I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but this changes the number from 10K to probably 20K+.
I probably shot well over 10K shots(I actually know I did because I know it took me 8 mins to shoot 100 shots and I did that drill countless times)
I can tell you with absolute certainty that not all of those shots were perfect with my full concentration and attention to technique.
A massive amount of them were for sure just me playing around in the drive way.
All this to say don’t let “great” be the enemy of “good”. And don’t let “good” be the enemy of “done”.
We all have bad days.
We all have bad workouts.
We all have days we just go through the motions
That is real life and and it is 100% better than doing nothing.
“Well If I can’t do it to my fullest potential then I’m not gonna do it”
Sorry but that is an excuse. It’s an excuse to avoid failure.
It’s a facade to place ourselves as someone who only exudes excellence.
What’s better is to go through the motions on the days you don’t want to.
Sandbag the workout, use it as a moving day, maybe don’t even finish the whole training set.
But go through the motions anyway.
Something is better than nothing no matter how you want to think about it.
If you want to be good at anything there are some days you are going to have to just go through the motions.
Fern
