Knowing when to quit
How do you know when to fold? If you continually do something and realize after awhile that its taking too much of your time, what would you do?
I’ve been so caught up in trying to set up a website on my own lately that I have learned a huge amount of information in such a short span of time. Which is good for me because I’m not a computer expert or software geek so any chance I get to figure out something from that world just makes me feel so triumphant.
It is like cracking a code to some complicated riddle because my knowledge and experience in those matters are practically zero! I’ve had some successes along the way and I am mighty proud of what I have done so far, but the learning process is costing me too much time. And then that light bulb moment came one snowy Sunday afternoon.
I could see my daughter was having so much fun playing and building a snowman outside on the yard. Occasionally, a snowball was thrown my way, hitting the glass wall as I sat inside with my MacBook, absorbed on following a video tutorial on how to create an FTP client account and trying to understand the jargon on the cPanel on my site host … yeah, am lost too. Easy stuff for the web developer or designer but these are big words to me. And I’ve been hung up on these the entire week.
“Mama! Come!” she squealed gleefully.
Thud! A snowball hit the glass. I gave up!
We have been taught since we were small to “try and try until you succeed”. They should have added: only when it’s a matter of life and death! For everything else, there’s always a go-to person. Its time to quit pounding ourselves for the things we cannot do.
If the cake you bake for your child’s birthday party doesn’t turn out perfectly, there’s the baker.
If you know you can never be proficient in HTML and the widget you’ve been trying to install in your sidebar for the umpteenth time just doesn’t show up and you feel like screaming your head off already, call a web developer.
If you want to hang a chandelier but you know that working with hammers, nails and screws is not one of your core competencies, call a carpenter. You might just prevent the whole house from falling down on you.
Sometimes you have to make peace with the fact that you cannot be good at everything you would have wanted to be – but at least you can try to be the best at the one or two things that you are already good at.
Trying to learn something new is a very noble undertaking, however, you have to weigh the value of the exercise. Is it really worth it? Or can it be better delegated to someone who has mastery about the subject matter so you can spend your time on more worthwhile pursuits?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and play with my daughter in the snow.
