Tortoise Energy: Bringing Slow Consistency to 2026

It would be helpful to be familiar with The Tortoise and the Hare for this particular post.

It’s that golden week between Christmas and New Year’s where I feel a bit lost- no work on the schedule, often not too many things on the agenda, and mostly bleak weather surrounding the inevitable extra drinks and sweets this week brings.

I found myself at the gym yesterday.  Treadmill set to 3.5ish for 30ish minutes. Nothing crazy… But something.

As I was walking, I was thinking about the power of slow movement that keeps moving. It’s different from the person who shows up on the treadmill next to me to sprint for a mile and then leaves. Or the person who will be at the gym for 2 hours but won’t be back for another week or so.

Slow movement that keeps at it.

The drip leak that keeps dripping- one droplet at a time, but every three seconds a new drop.

One foot in front of the other on a treadmill.

One word in front of the other in a Google doc.

One finger after another in a new scale.

One line after another in learning a new piece.

I find a lot of us bring Hare Energy to our lives. We show up FAST and are ready to GET THE THING DONE. But it is so much easier to lose interest intensely (to take a nap on our goals as the hare did) when our interest was so fast to begin with.

What about cultivating moderate interest that stays consistent? Slow burn instead of burn out? Tortoise energy.

One of my goals for 2026 is to keep moving things forward in a slow but reliable way, much like the tortoise who does eventually cross that finish line ahead of the hare. I don’t think it takes that much. 

Maybe just one step at a time.