The Rabbit Won. The Tortoise Kept Going! What If the Rabbit Had Won?

When was the last time you heard someone say, "Take your time"?

In most workplaces, speed gets rewarded, praised, and promoted. Which made me wonder about a story many of us grew up with. Remember the story of Rabbit and Tortoise Race? 

We've all heard the story.

The rabbit was fast.
The tortoise was slow.
The rabbit got overconfident.
The tortoise kept moving.
The tortoise won.

And generations of us grew up believing that consistency beats speed. But lately I've been wondering… What if the rabbit had won?

What if he had stayed focused, run at full speed, crossed the finish line first, and gone home with the trophy?

The moral would probably have been simple: "Move faster." "Speed wins." "The quickest person succeeds."

And honestly, that sounds a lot like many workplaces today. The fastest learner gets noticed. The quickest contributor gets praised. The person who reaches milestones first becomes the benchmark for everyone else. Without realizing it, we start believing that speed is the same thing as success.

The Problem With Measuring Everyone Against the Rabbit

The workplace loves rabbits. And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with being one.

Fast learners create momentum. Quick thinkers solve problems. High performers push teams forward.

But problems begin when speed becomes the only thing we value. Because not everyone is built the same way. Not everyone learns at the same pace. Not everyone gains confidence at the same pace. Not everyone reaches the finish line at the same pace.

Yet we often compare journeys as if everyone started from the same place.

My Experience as the Tortoise

This idea has felt personal to me for a long time. For most of my life, I've felt like everyone else was somehow ahead of me. While some people seem to learn something in one attempt, I often feel like it takes me several.

If a task feels like a 1x effort for someone else, it can sometimes feel like a 5x effort for me.

Not because I don't want it enough. Not because I'm not trying. Just because that's how my journey has often felt.

When I started learning Salesforce, I carried that fear with me. The fear that I would be slower than everyone else. In fact, I carried a deeper fear: whether I would even be able to understand it at all. The fear that others would move ahead while I was still trying to understand the basics.

And honestly? That happened.

There were times when people called me slow. There were moments when I felt behind. There were days when I questioned whether I belonged on the same path as everyone else.

I rarely said anything back. But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. It did. More than people probably realized.

Showing Up Anyway

What kept me going wasn't confidence. It wasn't certainty either. And it definitely wasn't the belief that I would suddenly become the fastest person in the room.

What kept me going was something much simpler. I kept showing up. I studied when progress felt invisible. I continued learning when comparisons felt unavoidable. I reminded myself that my pace didn't have to look like someone else's pace to be valid.

Every certification, every lesson learned, every small step forward happened because I chose not to quit. Not because I was the fastest. But because I stayed in the race.

The Tortoise's Real Lesson

The remarkable thing about the tortoise was never that he won. It was that he continued despite knowing he wasn't the fastest participant. He didn't know the rabbit would make a mistake. He didn't know the story would end in his favor. He simply kept moving because that was all he could control.

That's a lesson we don't talk about enough.

Sometimes success isn't about being the quickest. Sometimes it's about having the courage to continue when everyone around you appears to be moving faster.

I Don't Know Where I'll Reach

Today, I still don't know exactly where this journey will take me. I don't know how far I'll go. I don't know how many more milestones are waiting ahead. But I do know one thing:

As long as I keep moving, I'll reach somewhere. Maybe not as quickly as the rabbits. Maybe not as dramatically. But every step is taking me closer to a destination that standing still never could. And perhaps that's why we're still talking about the tortoise.

Not because he won. But because he refused to stop.

So no, in my story the rabbit doesn't actually win. The rabbit is simply a thought experiment. A way of questioning our workplace obsession with speed. Because the lesson I walked away with wasn't:

"Slow and steady wins the race." And it certainly wasn't: "Speed wins."

It was something else entirely.

“The race is not between you and the rabbit. The race is between you and the version of yourself that wants to quit”.

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