I spent much of the break between Christmas and New Year’s Day reading and researching one of my favorite authors, William George Jordan (1864-1928). He wrote several of motivational / self-improvement books (or rather booklets) in the early 1900s. One of his books, The Majesty of Calmness, has a chapter entitled, Hurry, the Scourge of America. He makes this interesting statement which I think is certainly applicable in our day-to-day activities, such as setting New Years goals.
Hurry is a counterfeit of haste. Haste has an ideal, a distinct aim to be realized by the quickest, direct methods. Haste has a single compass upon which it relies for direction and in harmony with which its course is determined. Hurry says: “I must move faster. I will get three compasses; I will have them different; I will be guided by all of them. One of them will probably be right.” Hurry never realizes that slow careful foundational work is the quickest in the end.
