The Turtle was on his way to the market. The Dog looked at him, made jokes about his speed of movement, and laughed with his friends.
Turtle never minded. He said boldly, he can beat the dog in a speed race. This made the dog laugh even harder. How could the Turtle beat him in a speed race? It’s not even possible.
So the Turtle made a bet with the Dog right there and then. Dog accepted the challenge. The loser will provide food for the winner for a year. The date for the race was set.
Race day came. All the animals in the jungle were eager to see who’s going to win the race. The dog was enthusiastic, confident in his running ability. The Turtle was focused on the goal.
Off went the whistle. They started running. The dog charged fast, running by leaps and bounds. The Turtle was slow, everyone laughed at him, but he kept on.
After a while, the dog who was far ahead smelled something delicious. He stopped, checked around, and found a thick juicy bone full of flesh. He got to it, fell on it, and started eating. This was the most delicious steak he’s ever had.
Meanwhile, Turtle was still on the way, crawling slowly, one step at a time.
The dog spent over an hour chewing and enjoying the juicy steak. Once he finished eating, he got tired and decided to sleep for a bit. After all, the Turtle was too slow to ever meet him, talk less of beating him in a race.
While in slumber, the Turtle slowly crawled past the dog and approached the finish line. Everyone was now hailing and shouting. The dog got the noises, woke up, and tried to run past the Turtle.
It was too late. The Turtle won the race. The Dog could not face the shame, so he took his family and ran away from the jungle to live with humans.
My grandmum told me this fable. And every fable has a cool lesson to teach.
While writing here on Medium I’ve come to learn the biggest lesson about succeeding on this platform is consistency.
There are two types of people; those who work in short bursts of intensity and those who work, though slowly, but do so very consistently. Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the latter every time. The consistent worker may look like they aren’t making progress. But give it time and you’ll see a massive amount of progress they’ve made.
When you start anything; writing a book or articles on Medium, training at the gym, or practicing the piano, the goal is to take it one day at a time.
- · Write one page a day or one article a day, and over time, you’ll look back at the progress you’ve made and you won’t believe it.
- · Train for one hour every day at the gym and after a year, you’ll look at your body and would not believe how many muscles you’ve built.
- · Write one song every day and after a year will have a whole catalog of songs.
- · Cold-email 10 potential clients every day after a year you will have a booming business and more clients than you can handle.
There’s are always exceptions, of course.
There are writers who will join Medium and make it big in just a few months.
There people who will gain a ton of muscles in just a few months hitting the gym.
But for the vast majority, it will take some time to see real growth.
Whenever you start on a new journey to work on a new project — writing or training or anything else, think of the little fable above. Consider yourself the turtle, you want to go slow and steady till you make it.
Because you know what?
Consistency beats intensity every. single. time.