There’s a difference between doing a thing and doing a thing well.

“Well” measured against whatever it is you hope to achieve by performing a given activity.

There have been times, for instance, in which my daily meditation habit has shifted off-course and I’ve realized weeks later that even if I’ve technically been sitting down and spending the time on that activity each day, I haven’t been shifting my mind and attention the way I generally prefer when meditating.

I checked the box and technically, sort of, did the thing.

But I didn’t achieve the intended outcome of the thing.

I’ve caught myself doing this with many things over the years, and every time I realize what I’m doing—usually a fair spell after meandering off-course from my hoped-for destination—I’ve felt like a bit of a rube: tricked by my own lazy subconscious into feeling accomplished while mostly just performatively maintaining the habits I told myself I was benefitting from.

It could be argued that this isn’t always such a horrible thing.

Maybe a hollowed-out version of an activity is better than nothing, at times, because it serves as a placeholder for when we get around to bringing the real-deal endeavor back into proper practice.

For me, personally, this hasn’t tended to be the case: I almost always have to break the original habit in order to reintroduce it. The placeholder performance with its ersatz output keeps me from noticing that I’ve allowed it to shift off-course and become a hollowed-out version of what I perceive it to be.

That said, staying on top of everything all the time is not a practical or reasonable expectation with which to burden ourselves. Box-checking will tend to happen, even if we’re careful and conscientious.

Armed with this knowledge, it can be beneficial to periodically check in on the habits and routines and rituals we so assiduously maintain to ensure they’re doing what they’re meant to do; to confirm that they’re still oriented toward the outcomes we want to see, whatever those outcomes might be.

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