Complete Your Task

Today was a busy day. I had two great training sessions, a 3-hour class, did my weekly shopping and errands, and even did some interval training on my new Schwinn Spin Bike(thanks Marc and Tania!). Then I carted Jasmine off to Aurora for a bachelorette party, and I decided to spend a few hours visiting my buddy down in Plainfield and to get my car worked on(thanks Scotty!). Among other issues, I knew my brakes haven't been touched in almost 3 years. Though I use a lot of downshifting with my braking, I had a feeling it was about that time. And through a friendly barter agreement, I'll be helping Scotty train at home in return for his auto consulting and repair work. So Scotty began with the brakes since it was definitely the activity that would take the longest. Wow did it ever...the rotors were basically fused to the piece they were mounted to, so it was a painstaking effort to get each one off. Scotty even had to drill through 2 screws on each hub, and that wasn't exactly a quick thing. After a few hours and a couple brews with some of his friends, we were on the fourth and final wheel.

His buddy brought a tool that he said could help out with the removal of the two problem screws, so we decided to give it a shot. Sadly, during the attempt, the bit to this tool actually broke off in the screw hole. Scotty tried several times to drill through it, but he couldn't budge the hardened steel piece. We then tried everything else to see if it would still loosen up. No dice. He worked and worked to get it off, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen. We even recognized the fact we tried a special tool as a "shortcut" and it turned out to extend the time it would have taken. I am usually all about fighting through, but it had been a while, and not only did I not want Scotty to kill himself over it, but I was going to have to get home soon, too. He told me he wanted to try one last thing. He found a small mini-grinder tool, plugged it in, and got to work. The sparks flew, and let me tell you--this grinder was tiny. He worked and worked, and after a while, he actually was able to get this thing loose! He did it! He told me that he "wasn't going to let me leave unless he know the job was done right." (may have paraphrased there, Scotty) Immediately I recognized that he was right and he was actually playing out the classic analogy.

Folks, we all have times that we feel we've tried everything or simply found yourself exhausted while trying to complete something. How many times have you quit? How many times have you finished? How did you feel? We need to fight through and do ourselves right by staying on task and completing it. Please share a time in the comments when you did this and it payed off. Thanks for reading!