Today I want to share with you a Taoist inspired reflection on doing less. I once heard someone say that if you wanted to build discipline, you should focus on doing one simple thing every day, like a push-up, but you should choose the fewest number of reps you could do, because most people when they start doing push-ups what they do is they perform as many repetitions as possible, until failure, until they cannot do one more, and then they rest, to later do their maximum amount again, but that's not right, what you should do is perform a single push-up, no more. Then you would rest and the next day, you would do another one. And so you continued every day. The point here is to put all your attention on doing that one push-up. Placing the hands at the right distance. With a straight back and neck. With head looking down. Lowering to touch the chest with the ground. Going up to fully extend your arms. Full and controlled range of motion. Watching the breath. Pressing the muscles. Concentrating on this and much more, ultimately, focusing one hundred percent on doing the push-up in the correct and most perfect way possible. When you do that pushup, you are completely absorbed, directing all your attention to doing it. Synchronizing body and mind and merging them into one. Until you finish.
The man who does a single push-up trains not only the body but also the mind, uses all the muscles of his body to flex and not only the arms, does less executions than the others, and yet his results are worth more, because he does not count reps, but makes reps count.
The difference between doing a single push-up and doing many is that one way of acting is more oriented to quantity while the other is more oriented towards quality, one is based on doing more and another on doing better, because it's like they say, you can do something a lot or you can do it well, but not both. In my opinion, only one of those mindsets leads us to do things the right way while the other leads us to error.
Most of the time we tend to think that to be successful at something we must do more. I think the opposite. If you want to be successful at something and you really want to do it well, you should do as little as possible that you can do, because that way you can fully focus on doing it the right way and guarantee that that little bit that you have done is done in the best way. The less you have to do, the better you will do.
You will realize, if you act in this way that few things well done are worth more than many things poorly done.
Only after a person has mastered the perfect push-up, with excellent technique and form, then and only then should he proceed to do a second push-up. But it is not necessary to exhaust yourself doing a lot of repetitions in bad form that only cause us to do more and achieve less.
We would be surprised to find that most of the time people are actually doing more than they have to to get the desired result, many times we just do too much, and it is not necessary. If we only reduced the amount of things we do but focused on doing them well, then we would likely get better results. It is the old dispute between quality and quantity. Reduce the quantity and you will see your quality grow.
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I like your vivid example of push-ups to transport the message.
Yes, I go along with that principle. Probably the misconception that you have to do more is that people rarely allow themselves to do anything in a relaxed attitude.
To take as much time as they want and not to pass judgement on themselves when something doesn't work out. I think people in general don't turn enough to the arts, which means that actually anything can be elevated to art, no matter what, cooking, cleaning, being in conversation with each other.
But it must not be forced, it wants to be spontaneous and yet artfully accomplished. So perhaps one should remain silent or do nothing for a while if this does not want to succeed. I notice that patience plays an essential role in all my creative processes. If I sew and I make mistakes, but ignore them, botch, then the end product has actually been a waste of time and resources. But if I make a mistake and patiently unpick a failed area, devote myself to correcting it in peace, I reach my goal of creating a really good quality product. There is hardly anything more beautiful to do in life than to produce a thing of quality.
I am not there yet in my sewing school, but I am slowly but surely getting closer. The many mistakes along the way are teaching me. Interestingly, mistakes are often a source of inspiration, I have found that many a mistake can serve as an idea for a new or different way of solving a problem. Creativity is born out of it.
Yeah, right, I really like the relaxed attitude, I think it is necessary to do things well... take your time and be patient in what you do... unfortunately people often mistake it for laziness. That's one of the things that I like about Taoism, which as I said, is what inspired me during the post.
Sometimes I find myself for a long time slowly doing a simple task, what other people would call wasting time, however, I see that people live very hectic lives, so they are always in a rush to do something else.
Indeed, I also believe that everything can be elevated to art, because beauty is art, and everything that is well done is beautiful and worthy of seeing, or hearing, or perceiving in any other way.
We are quite on the same page here, spontaneity is very important, and it is also much better to do nothing than to do something wrong, that's why sometimes I prefer to remain silent.
Anyway, I will have to leave the comment until here because I am having some problems with the keyboard. It does not want to write. The latter I have had to write with the on-screen keyboard, and it is very uncomfortable.
Cheers!
Edit: Apparently I managed to fix the keyboard, but now I can't think of what I was going to tell you... :)
Doing simple tasks for a long period of time calms the mind and teaches you patience and diligence. I remember a couch table top that I painstakingly created. We used cut-off pieces of wooden slats, which I glued individually to the top. The project took several weeks, required repeated filling of the gaps with sawdust and glue, and resulted in a beautiful surface that showed the individual grains of the pieces.
In the hustle and bustle of the zeitgeist, such quiet work is a luxury. I enjoy watching people do fine work and would never consider it a waste of time. The rush to finish something quickly, it drives to inaccuracy and bungling.
It's a pity you forgot what you wanted to say. Are you using an old laptop?
So is, I agree. I imagine the table. And it must have a special value like all things you create yourself, I guess.
I like taking my time, the problem arises when I am working with other people or when what I do affects another person who is not as calm as I am. It's harder to stay calm when someone is constantly rushing you to finish, and sometimes I just give in. I don't like either being deliberately slow when I can't.
Time is money they say here and there, however, most of the people what they save in time they lose in quality. I prefer to invest my money in what I am doing then.
It wasn't exact, it was more like an idea brewing in my head just before it was expressed in words, but then I lost inspiration because I couldn't write.
No, a desktop computer that is neither old nor new, I would say. Still quite functional. Although it gave me some glitches with the keyboard and mouse mainly. Anyway, apparently they already work, so...
Greetings and happy new year!
So synchronistically, I take your wonderful article as final permission slip to do just that. I am so prone to overdoing things while always suspecting that doing less of it and thus in the ideal manner is way more helpful for what I want to achieve.
Take it as a sign... and thanks for the replies and for the reblogged. Cheers!