Why halfway is better than nothing

Anything worth doing is worth doing right. ~Hunter S. Thompson

You’ve no doubt heard this before. But how about this:

Anything worth doing is worth doing even if it is done poorly. ~ GK Chesterton paraphrase

This probably affected you as much as it did me. Then I realized what it meant. It’s better to do something halfway than to do it at all. For example, if I don’t have time to swim three quarters of a mile, it’s better to swim half a mile than not swim at all.

I think this should apply to marriages. Giving your wife half the time she needs to be with you is better than giving her no time at all. Washing some dishes is better than washing none at all.

The danger here, of course, is to develop a habit of doing things halfway. Doing more with less is never the best, it’s just better than doing nothing. If you can’t do everything but you can do it, that’s great. If you can do everything but you don’t do it, that’s terrible.