By our fixation on the clock, we leave no room for ourselves. We look at the clock and never have enough time. Stress remains ever present as it’s always a race against the clock and that stress creates friction. Friction leads to wasted time and energy.
We no longer measure life by the day but down to the very second. Everything has to be instant. Finished and producing in seconds. It’s no longer about what we accomplished but how we used the time. No longer, “all in a days work” but “I need this done in seconds.”
We measure time by the second and every second needs to be used. When looking at such a narrow time scale, the world moves extremely quickly. And being so focused on the clock, we believe we need to keep up with it which leads to moving even faster.
Life becomes a rush. Enjoyment ceases to exist as we move with so much speed that life becomes a blur.
And speed kills
There is a saying, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” That is to say that by moving slowly, you take more care and caution in your actions. As a result, they are without error. There is no friction or hiccups that cause you to have to do it over again. As a result, you complete the task much faster than someone who is trying to speed their way through it. It is much faster and easier to complete the task once rather than redo it 50 times just to complete it once.
In the short term, the near sighted view, the fixated on the clock perspective, counting the very second with speed, moving slow seems unproductive and well… slow. But the slow method doesn’t burn out nor does it waste energy and time redoing tasks. It doesn’t crash and burn leading to additional energy and time being spent cleaning up the crashes and putting out the fires. It operates with precision and flow with zero error rate.
Slow = smaller errors
Another benefit to moving slow is the errors themselves compared to speed. When you are moving slow, you have plenty of time to fix errors without them getting too bad. A small error can be fixed easily and reacted to in time.
However, at speed, the tiny mistake can cascade into a gigantic and explosive error. By the time the error is detected, it crashes into hundreds of other places leading to disaster.
The small error while moving slow is fixed with plenty of time. The small error while moving fast leads to catastrophe.
A speeding car versus a slow moving car
Take a car speeding at 240 MPH versus one going 10 MPH. The speeding car is much harder to control than the slower one. And small changes are very big with a speeding car as opposed to a slow one. Turn right for five seconds and you’ll have traveled 1,760 feet in the speeding car, and 73 feet in the slow car. If turning right was the wrong move, in the speeding car you’re 1,760 feet in error while only 73 feet in error with the slow car.
That’s 24x worse of an error while going fast as opposed to going slow.
With the speeding car, precision is also very hard. To turn around and stop a speeding car exactly at 1,760 is near impossible while maintaining that speed. As a result, with speed it becomes very easy to overshoot and cause more errors. But with slow movement, it is significantly easier to stop and turn where you need to fix the error—Precisely 73 feet backward turning at the exact point you need to. It’s easier to get back on track.
Now imagine a speed bump, a car at 240 MPH will hit the bump, go flying and come crashing down. At 10 MPH, it’ll be a small bump that could go unnoticed.
Go slow until you can go fast, smoothly
In all things, slow beats fast. In reality though, smooth is what beats fast. Slow almost always leads to smooth which is why slow is typically better. But if you can have smooth and fast, it’ll win every time.