In praise of being Half-assed!

In praise of being half-assed.

No body wants to be half-assed. Everyone wants to be able to finish what they start and maybe even go above and beyond. But what happens when you don't have time to give it your all? What if you are only able to get started?

 

These are thoughts I had on a run after talking to a friend recently about how to handle the feelings she has of "I don't have the time to do my full workout, so what is the point of doing any of it?"

 

This is a perfectly reasonable feeling for say, changing the oil in your car. If you can't get the oil back in the car before you have to use it again, you had better wait a day. But what about washing a load of laundry instead of waiting until you have time to wash several loads of laundry? Isn't it better to have a few items of clean clothing instead of all dirty clothes?

 

Let's think about this in a business sense. If you have a goal to make 10% profit for the month and you are only on target to make 5%, instead of saying, "Oh well. I won't make my target. Forget making a profit this month I am just going to spend extra time on this project." Wouldn't it be better to say, "Hey 5% profit is better than 0%!" You put a little deposit into the bank and you move on and look for ways to improve.

 

If you don't have the full amount of time to complete a workout you could say, " I have x amount of minutes. I can run part of my run!" or perhaps you could do some quick squats, lunges, pushups or something else. You are still making a deposit into the fitness bank. (And two bits of half-assed research  on my part to help convince that yes, a little bit of exercise is better than continuing to sit on the couch).

 

So even if you can't do a complete workout, or do a truly complete job on whatever task, doing some of it is still putting a deposit into your fitness bank (or clean laundry, etc) and the act of showing up is still building the habit of making consistent deposits.

 

So go ahead, be half-assed but only if the alternative is being no-assed.