“If something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well”
If something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well. There is value in this proposition. You only have a limited amount of cognitive space for decision-making and action in your days, weeks, and months. Discerning what is important and what is not worth doing is a quintessential quality to live an examined life (a life of intentional choices and tranquility).
What’s important is often hidden in the background of our minds, waiting to be addressed. What’s important sometimes feels overwhelming. It is having that overdue conversation about your most pressing elephants in the brain with your partner. It’s moving forward in that project that you consider a “dream” and for which you fear becoming conscious of failure.
All the while, we may be doing what is not worth doing, because often what is not worth doing feels soothing, easy to accomplish, and keeps our souls “busy” to avoid having to address what is worth doing but psychologically taxing. If something is not worth doing but you need to do it, for whatever reason, mindfulness can help. There is a decision you can make: do the thing haphazardly, or convincedly embrace it and do it. You can get into a meditation-like state of consciousness, drop your ego suggesting you should be doing something else instead, and do the thing with calmness and a lighthearted reminder that you will die anyway.
Once it is done, it may have been worth doing. Or maybe it remained unworthy, but you practiced mindfulness in the process of completing that task. Then you can move on to the next thing, shifting your attention like a firefighter at the sound of the alarm bell in the middle of the night. When you pay close attention to whatever it is you are doing, you can make it worth doing, in the end. But this should not be an excuse to avoid doing what’s more important.
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