I’m not great at drawing. I like the idea of being good at it, of drawing portraits that look like the people they’re supposed to be, or of setting up an easel in the countryside and painting a landscape that I could then proudly hang on my wall and tell people who came round “Oh yes, I did that.”

But I’m not very good at it. I drew a picture of my partner and he was unimpressed (bordering on insulted) with my rendering of him. I did a sketch of a lake and you’d be forgiven for thinking my 7-year-old niece should have signed it.

I’m not very good at drawing. But I keep doing it. Because I enjoy it.

I like looking at an object, concentrating on it and seeing it. I like to notice the colours and the shade. I like that my brain gets quieter when I focus on controlling a pencil. And though it would be nice, at the end of an hour of drawing, to have a finished piece that I was proud of, that’s not really the point of it. I like the doing, and that enjoyment doesn’t depend on a particular outcome.

I enjoy the process.

I thought about this the other day in relation to running, and how it’s important to enjoy the process of training for a race.

I spent more than 50 hours training for a half marathon last year that I dropped out of half way. Some of those runs were hard. They challenged me and made me run paces I’d never run before. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and I enjoyed it.

50 hours is a long time to be doing anything that you don’t enjoy and I’ve never really understood people who despise running but put themselves through it in pursuit of a medal or a time on the clock. I couldn’t do that if I didn’t enjoy the process.

Sometimes, like my half marathon and like that picture of a lake, the outcome at the end of all your efforts won’t be quite what you’d hoped it would be. But if you’ve enjoyed the process of getting there, if you’ve enjoyed the doing, then it hasn’t been a waste of time at all.