Posted on by Lydia du Bois

Worth doing badly

Is an excellent life achieved through an accumulation of many excellent acts? Or are some things worth doing badly?

A flow chart/decision tree to work out whether a task is worth doing, whether it's worth doing well, or whether it's worth doing badly.
Exhibit A: Was this image worth posting? Yes! Was it worth doing a great job with it? No! (My scanner wasn’t working – I might update the image with a better one later. Impatience vanquished any commitment to excellence.)

Is it worth doing at all?

The universe is vast and contains such wonders as cubic wombat feces and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the brief, bright whisper of a single life, what is really worth doing?

Ovid and wombat
A vain flower and a marsupial. In a world so strange and beautiful, does your spice rack need to be organized alphabetically?

Is it worth doing well?

When you finally turn your attention from the care of an infant, when you set aside a chapter or a stanza, when the meeting ends, will you celebrate parenthood or literature, music or community by giving your best to everything else? You can be exhausted, wrung dry. Is the appearance of excellence more important than dedication to your true values?

Mind map of potentially worthwhile activities.
You might be on the fence regarding the harp, so come up with your own examples.

Is it worth doing badly?

Some tasks demand doing. How many of those are fertile ground for mediocrity and indulgent, chop-smacking incompetence? Satisfaction can be found in completing menial tasks well, but doing them badly can be delightful.

A strange chart encouraging you to aim for mediocrity.
A bounty of lame attempts and lumbering blunders.

Invite reproach

You may feel a compulsion to be beyond reproach. You brandish your sword of excellence, fearless in the face of regret. Perhaps you will miss out on indulgence and adventure, but all in the service of a first-class life where no moment caught you in a state of mediocrity. But time is very large. It sits on our feet like a friendly Bernese Mountain Dog and it doesn’t acknowledge reproach. So maybe invite reproach, be scatty, be sloppy, and be discerning. Not everything is worth the best of you.