Of course, you shouldn’t half-arse things. That goes without saying. Yet, we find ourselves in plenty of situations where half-arsed is good enough, even celebrated, if turning up is all that is required.
We can’t always know when we begin that a situation will turn out to be half-arsed, but we can recognise the symptoms:
Flicking through a book, rather than being immersed in it.
Rushing to bake a birthday cake because that’s the right thing to do, right?
Daydreaming while someone is trying to have a conversation with us.
The more we half-arse things, the less time we have for the things we really care about.
If you catch yourself half-arsing something, ask: What’s really going on here? What matters?
If it doesn’t matter, quit; if it does, well, then you know what to do. Don’t half arse it.