Convenience vs. Struggle
I've been thinking lately about convenience and the balance there needs to be between convenience and struggle.
Too easy and we get complacent and lazy.
Too hard and we get discouraged and quit.
Some struggle and we grow stronger and thrive.
Some convenience and we have a chance to relax and recover.
Having spent a chunk of my formative years with limited resources, I have a tendency to think frugally and to shun convenience. As a result, I may choose a makeshift solution that it cheaper than a faster or even better solution which costs more. I don't always like the makeshift solution, however. It rarely looks as nice and sometimes doesn't work as well even if it meets the minimum performance requirements. Whether I would have liked the more costly and complete solution is unknown, but it's not hard to assume that the other solution path would have had a better end result.
Sometimes I discover that my makeshift solution is incomplete which results in the project or activity stopping before it's done. I have a tendency to just stop the activity at that point, rather than obtaining the missing components and completing the project. The detritus from the activity may lay around for some time before I jam it into a box and stuff it in the closet, hoping to forget about it. This is decidedly unsatisfactory and definitely wasteful of resources, leading to negative self-talk and guilt over wasting time and resources to accomplish nothing.
Too easy and we get complacent and lazy.
Too hard and we get discouraged and quit.
Some struggle and we grow stronger and thrive.
Some convenience and we have a chance to relax and recover.
Having spent a chunk of my formative years with limited resources, I have a tendency to think frugally and to shun convenience. As a result, I may choose a makeshift solution that it cheaper than a faster or even better solution which costs more. I don't always like the makeshift solution, however. It rarely looks as nice and sometimes doesn't work as well even if it meets the minimum performance requirements. Whether I would have liked the more costly and complete solution is unknown, but it's not hard to assume that the other solution path would have had a better end result.
Sometimes I discover that my makeshift solution is incomplete which results in the project or activity stopping before it's done. I have a tendency to just stop the activity at that point, rather than obtaining the missing components and completing the project. The detritus from the activity may lay around for some time before I jam it into a box and stuff it in the closet, hoping to forget about it. This is decidedly unsatisfactory and definitely wasteful of resources, leading to negative self-talk and guilt over wasting time and resources to accomplish nothing.
Time to shift my mindset away from just a fiscal cost-benefit analysis.
Comments