Rome wasn’t built in a day. Or so the saying goes. So what makes me think I can build it in a day or two or twenty? Those of us born under the curse of overachievement, or who at least act as though we were, labor under the arrogant misconception that we have to build Rome in a day, know how to solve the world’s problems in timely and efficient ways, while all the time wondering how anyone ever got along without us. We think we must be good at everything, that whatever we set our hands to do must be done well and that, for the most part, we cannot ask for help lest that somehow make us look (or more likely feel) unconfident, incapable, like we might not have it as fully together as we’d like to appear. What a trap!
The clock starts ticking the moment we get hired or promoted, elected, appointed, nominated, etc. We feel we must make an immediate impact, begin pulling our weight, proving our abilities and our worthiness to be entrusted with the work we’ve been tasked to do. We champ at the bit to get things done and are impatient when it doesn’t seem we’re making the progress we want to be making in a timely enough way. Presidents talk about what they’ve accomplished toward their agenda in the first 100 days. 100 days? That’s essentially three months. What of any significance can be fully accomplished in three months? Started, perhaps, but not accomplished. And yet, depending on the role and the responsibilities we have we believe we should accomplish a great deal in a short period of time.
We carefully craft emails, rehearse conversations in our heads before they happen, then replay and deconstruct our words and actions afterward. The drive toward accomplishment can be a good thing propelling us to devise creative solutions, invent new products, propose sweeping new ideas, develop alternative activities. Oh yes, it can be a very good thing. But as with everything else we have to balance the drive toward achievement with some of the practicalities, hidden traps and pitfalls, obvious barriers and obstacles, that often affect the timeliness with which we are actually able to accomplish some of the often unrealistic goals we set for ourselves.
I am grateful this evening for my growing awareness of this trap in which I so often ensnare myself. In the often hurried pace of the American workforce, the fire, aim, ready in which we are so often forced to operate it is easy to forget that those things that are worth doing are worth doing well, even if that occasionally means it’s going to take a little longer. It’s a definite balancing act and sometimes I manage it better than others, but at least I’m paying better attention now. I am grateful that I have the freedom to think and be as well as act and do. I still have a lot to learn in terms of knowing how to walk that careful line, but I am moving along as best I can and figuring it out as I go. And in the end, that is perhaps the best we can do, our best not necessarily the best.
