A girl had three race horses. She loved each of them.
One day she called all of her family and friends to come see her horses race around a track. There was only one problem: she was the only one that could ride the horses.
The time for the race began and the girl had to pick only one horse to ride. She jumped on and the race began. The first horse was fast and she made it about a third of the way around the track when she stopped, looked back, and saw her other horses. She tied up the first horse and went back to ride another horse.
This horse was fast, too, but not as fast as the first. She raced down the track until she was just short of the first horse. She looked back again and saw her third horse. She dismounted and ran back to get on the other horse, who was very beautiful, but quite slow.
She raced until this horse caught up to the spot of the other two horses. Then she panicked. Her fastest horse had wandered off the track. The second horse was disinterested in the race, too.
She looked at the crowds of family and friends with an awkward smile. They were very bored. Some of them looked confused by all of her running and racing back and forth. They had better things to do, so they started to leave the racetrack.
The girl paused and thought about what to do. Then she made a decision. She walked the first horse back to the track and mounted it again. She raced the horse with great speed through the track all the way to the finish. The crowd that remained cheered. It was a great race.
Then the girl walked the finished horse up to the second horse. She changed horses and raced the second horse to the finish line. The crowd cheered again and she repeated the process for the third horse as well.
After the third horse finished race, she walked over to the crowd. They were all congratulating her and thanking her for some good racing. They asked her why she didn’t finish the races the first time.
She said, “I loved each of the horses and I wanted to ride all of them, but then I realized that finishing one race is better than starting three races.”
About the Story
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by work?
I wrote this little fable to remind myself of an simple, yet important lesson:
Work on one project at a time.
I have a tendency to try to work on too many projects at once. There are so many opportunities! Like the girl in the story, I have a lot of racehorses and they all would be great to ride.
The challenge in any creative work is focusing on one project from start to finish. It takes discipline. It takes hard work.
A finished project is better than three unfinished ones.
