This world is addicted to victory.
From media, you get things on how to be the sexiest or richest. From school and work, you’re awarded for coming in the earliest and being the hardest working. You go out with friends, and you compare stuff like partners, cars, and experiences. Maybe even being the first at learning about a useless meme on the internet. We thrive on being the best at something.
Sadly, we usually believe in stereotypical modes of victory.
We fail to look at the big picture and realize that sometimes, quitting is actually winning.
Say you have a project that you think should take an hour or two. You’re ready to take it head on. You flex your muscles and charge into the battlefield.
But hours pass by and the finish line or even the midpoint is no where in sight. And you think to yourself that you’ve spent too much time and effort on this. You might as well go forward. You base your intent on your distance from the start and not your distance from the end. So you go off, and keep on running until you finish days after.
Now you were able to finish, but did you really win? Within those days you obsessed over that one thing, Steve got lots of other things covered while searching for a more efficient way to finish your project. While you shut yourself off, he got advice and help.
However, I do understand that there are those project which take really long to do, and are a prerequisite of everything else. When that happens, you might need a new set of eyes. Go ask around. Sometimes, you’re too close to the answer to see it. It’s those awkward times you say “right!” and laugh at how dumb probably looked.
Remember that even if victory could be important to you, there are many roads to it and many types of wins you could go for. You’re not in just one race. You’re in a round robin of many races. and sometimes, you have to let go of one to win the rest. Wasted time is time you can’t get back. But you can learn from it and use the rest of it efficiently.