The Importance of Pace

I am starting to recognize the importance of pace. Growing up we’ve all heard the story of the tortise and the hare - short bursts vs. slow but continual effort. This reconition of pace dosen’t live on either of the extremes, but is rather somewhere in the middle.

Over the last two weeks I have been working on building a backyard shed, something that I have been planning for and anticipating for a long time. I started with the foundation, prepping that, adding pest prevention, ensuring stability for longevity but I was only able to work for an hour or two at a time. Today I unexpectedly had some flexibility with work and was able to get a solid 4 hours at one time to make some major headway. This evening after dinner and putting Shae down, I headed out to maximize the last hour of sunlight.

As I wrapped up the last of the ceiling rafters, I had to make a decision about what was next. I still had some daylight and could get started on adding the sheathing or I could start cleaning up and head in for the night. Adding the sheathing requried me to hammer numerous nails and I felt like my neighbors wouldn’t love the banging that was requried so I decided to wrap it up and start to put my tools away.

Normally I work up until the last possible second and am left with little to no time to clean up. The garage becomes a mess, I am running late to whatever is next, and it is all sort of frantic. Because I decided to (forced might be a better word) stop when I did, I still had time to spare. Time to put away my tools in an orderly manner, time to get my tool batteries plugged into the charger, and I even had time to take care of the “work site” to sort lumber for the next phase and stack some bricks that have been laying about for months now.

This extra time really stood out to me. It really wasn’t “extra” time, but instead time that I was able to better allocate for the project and my evening as a whole. I prepped things for the next time I got working, I took care of some cleanup that was hanging over my head (and causing more stress than I realized) and I was able to walk in the house with a sense of accomplishment and no frantic energy.

My guess is that pacing myself better will not only pay dividends on building a shed, but it many other areas of life. I was forced to end early tonight but I will now be on the lookout for more opportunities in the future to pace myself better.