Ooh, one of my favorites:
If you don’t have time to do it right, where will you find time to do it over? – John Wooden (apparently)
I first heard this one at work. But the original intent got a bit mangled up with the practical reality of day to day work. Through the speaking tube of an All Hands Meeting, it was eventually translated to “First time right!”. In other words, there were to be no do-overs. Well there’s a sure-fire way to stress out your neurotic overachievers. But, anyway that’s not what the original quote said. The original doesn’t go “If you don’t have time to do it right the first time …” No, it just says “do it right”. No matter how many iterations it takes. I’m sure plenty of people do know this, and they’re probably at the top of their field.
That’s a quite a leap, from doing it right to doing it right the first time. What does “the first time” even mean? You’ve seen (and definitely: been) a kid trying to walk for the first time, right? How did that go? I’m guessing something like: balance, wobble, sit back down, get up, stumble, fall, get back up again. What’s “walking for the first time” here? The first time making one step and then falling over? Two steps and then falling over? Walking from mum to dad and then falling over? What is the first walk here, exactly? The very very very first time you do something, ever, are you going to do it right straight away? I can think of so many things, from shooting a crossbow, to indoor skydiving, to sewing a dress. The first time is not an A+. So what about at work? I’ve worked at places where we regularly extended an existing API with some new fields. Sure, getting that right after having done it twenty times, no biggie. And then there’s the job where no two feature requests are ever the same. Ugh. And every time, you could ask yourself the question: Is this the first time ever that I did this? Yes and no. Yes, because every day is unique. No, because there are similarities. You can’t pinpoint “first time” all that neatly, anyway.
To me it seems that life, be it at home or in the workplace, is mostly a series of getting-it-wrongs and then figuring out along the way what doing it right would have looked like. And then you get to have another go. Iteration, repetition and doing things over is practically baked into the fabric of the universe. You think other couples don’t have the same fight over and over for a couple of years? Hah, right. Things repeat, as they should, so that we have a chance to learn our lessons, and every iteration is a fresh start and a new opportunity. Even if you think you know how to do it this time, that’s nothing more than a theory in your head. You don’t know how to do it until you’ve done it. You may know that it can be done and even that it can be done by you. But the rest, that’s a lot of falling and getting back up.
Getting back to the quote, there’s also the question of what “right” means. The saying doesn’t go “If you don’t have time to do it flawlessly…”. That suggests it’s not about flawless, or perfect, or either of those would have been used instead of “right”. Right isn’t the same as perfect. Not that perfect couldn’t be the end result or wouldn’t be desired after doing it right. But doing something right isn’t quite about the end result. It’s not the dot on the horizon that is the central idea here, you don’t focus on the prize. You have a goal, yes, but in the day to day road towards that goal you focus on the work. It’s about process, attitude and principles. The saying is explained as “If you cut corners now, you can be sure you won’t return to clean up the mess”. And as a consequence, you might not reach your goal. You want to get in shape? Then you put in the work. You set up a training schedule and stick with it. Don’t skip leg day. Commit and work at it with integrity and you’ve got the highest chance of getting the best result possible. Getting something right is about consistency and repetition. About iteration, and not letting things slide and not giving up even when they do. About getting back on the horse. It’s such a multifaceted quote.
Then there’s this bit: “If you don’t have time”. And that’s just a joy to read. “If you don’t have time”. Can’t you just imagine that being spoken by a calm fatherly figure who always has time for you and often gives very wise words of advice? After all, he doesn’t say “If I don’t have time”. No, he says “If you don’t have time”. He’s got all the time in the world. He learned his lesson years ago. Maybe it’s such a true quote because it tells you: Stop worrying so much about the amount of time you’re spending. You’ve got time. And even if you don’t, worrying about time takes it right away from you. It fills the time with the worrying instead of with the work. Not having time is a state of mind. It’s a consequence of not having your priorities sorted out. “Mine is “doing it right“, what’s yours?” he might well say. Once you set the priority, the amount of time it takes becomes unimportant. And the suggestion is that letting go of the need to save your time for a later moment might, besides the fact that it’s an impossible wish anyway, be a sensible idea. If you don’t have time to cook a nice meal, where will you find time to eat it, or savour it? If you don’t have time to iron your laundry, where will you find time to put it in the washing machine in the first place? Time, the quote implicitly says, cannot be “found”. It’s already here, all around you. There is no jar of more-time-candy, no magic wand of lengthen-the-day.
I often feel like I don’t have enough time, I tend to rush some things. Lately, I’ve been keeping track of spent time, because I want to spend my time well. I can tell you exactly how much time I spent on my side job, and the household, and writing software and creative stuff last week. I’m a bit crazy. But apparently it’s a popular type of crazy, because there are quite a few time tracking apps available. My relationship with time probably isn’t what it could be. I’m trying to let go of the desire to make up for lost time. So far, no luck. On the bright side, I’ve started properly ironing some of our clothes and dish cloths (instead of merely folding them) and it noticeably gives me a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. See, I’m learning.