We live in a world obsessed with outcomes. Achievements, milestones, KPIs, medals, checkboxes; the language of success is often framed around what gets done, how fast, and how well. Life, it seems, is about doing stuff. And doing it efficiently, with Artificial Intelligence being the latest shiny tool to help us be more efficient, as if efficiency was the ultimate outcome. Am not sure I want “Here lies Gary, he was efficient” on my tombstone.
As someone who works in IT, I’m no stranger to the allure of systems, processes, and measurable results. There’s a certain satisfaction in ticking off tasks, optimizing workflows, and seeing progress in neat little graphs. I love a spreadsheet for keeping records of tasks complete with conditional formatting and an abundance of complex formula. Or maybe a little PowerAutomate to gather approvals and ping emails to the relevant people while also updating a master SharePoint list. And lets not even discuss having SMART KPIs and a PowerBI Dashboard or two. But lately, I’ve been thinking: maybe we’ve got it backwards. Maybe the real value isn’t in the doing itself or what we get done or achieve, but in how we feel while we’re doing it and in the experience.
Take my recent attempt to restart morning running. It’s been… messy. I used to be consistent(ish). Up early, shoes on, out the door, often before I realised what I was doing. Now? I snooze the alarm. I negotiate with myself. It looks a bit dark or a bit too cold or I don’t quite feel 100%, and then I climb back into bed. Some (read: none recently) mornings I make it out, some I don’t. And when I do, it’s not elegant. It’s slow, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s definitely not social media worthy and I do sometime feel for the poor souls who have the pleasure of encountering me on my morning run.
But here’s the thing: those runs, the imperfect, reluctant, sweaty ones, are teaching me more than the polished ones ever did, although am not sure any of my runs can ever have been described as polished. They remind me that the journey matters. That showing up, even when it’s hard, is a kind of quiet victory. That the struggle itself is part of the story. Things are messy and sometimes, rather than getting annoyed or angry with myself, I need to accept I am human and that it is par for the course. I need to step back and take a broader view on my progress over the longer time period.
We often treat mistakes, detours, and off-days as things to be minimized or hidden. But what if they’re actually the most important parts? What if the real richness of life is found not in the clean lines of achievement, but in the jagged edges of experience?
Think about it. The best stories aren’t about flawless execution. They’re about perseverance, vulnerability, growth. They’re about the days we didn’t want to, but did anyway. Or didn’t, and learned something in the process.
Efficiency has its place, of course. We need structure. We need goals. We even need the odd spreadsheet to help organise our finances or our todo list and there isn’t anything wrong with the occasional PowerBi dashboard. But if we focus only on the measurable, we risk missing the immeasurable: the joy of a sunrise on a run, the frustration of a setback, the quiet pride of trying again. These moments don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet, but they shape us in ways that matter.
So maybe life isn’t just about doing stuff. Maybe it’s about being in the stuff. Feeling it. Living it. Letting it be messy and real.
As I try to get back into running, I’m trying to learn to be gentler with myself. I need to spend less time beating myself up when I don’t manage to get out the door focusing more on how I might do better next time. I also need to remember improvement isn’t linear so setbacks, hurdles and struggles are to be expected. I need to celebrate the effort, not just the outcome, even where the effort was hard and the outcome sub-optimal. To notice how the air feels, how my body responds, how my mind resists and then relents. It’s not about pace or distance anymore. It’s about presence.
And maybe that’s the lesson we all need. That the journey, with its stumbles and surprises, is not a distraction from the goal. It is the goal.
So, here’s to the messy mornings. The half-finished plans. The imperfect efforts. They’re not signs of failure, they’re signs of life. And that, in the end, might be the most important achievement of all.
Technology and Learning