Honoring a Slower Pace: The Value of Slow When Tackling Big Things
In a world that values fast over slow, what are we missing out on? Can we learn anything from taking it slow in an effort to produce better work?
Risotto is a simple dish, but it takes practice and patience to make well. If you try to rush the process, you end up with a bowl of mushy or hard rice.
3/4 cups of warm chicken broth is added to the pot of rice and stirred gently and often. Once the rice absorbs the broth, you add a little more. This process takes anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour.
The end result is a simple yet elegant dish suited for a romantic dinner or impressing your family and friends.
What if we took the same approach to tackling projects and goals? By setting goals with intention and tackling projects and initiatives slowly, how would it make us feel? And how would it impact the end result?
During the first 10 years of my career, I worked in startups (companies less than five years old), and what I learned is that fast was always a value.
If anyone has ever worked in a startup, you know that the pace of work is often fast and chaotic. There is rarely time for strategy and to work through challenges more intentionally.
That's not to say that I haven't had experience working for companies that valued the time it took to strategize and plan. And when this has been the case, I felt more accomplished and motivated.
I always knew that working fast wasn't the right pace for me and wondered if there was a better way. But I internalized these feelings and chalked it up to not being smart enough to "think fast." But what I've come to learn is, in most cases, working fast also means working harder.
Maybe at times, yes, fast is better than slow, such as high-speed internet, but there are a gazillion and one things that are better slow than fast — who wants to rush a beautiful sunset over the ocean, or the brewing process that makes a pour-over coffee a morning delight?
And when it comes to setting impactful goals, whether personal or professional — you have to take the time to really give your goals some thought before diving in.
When COVID hit, it was an opportunity to stop internalizing the feelings of being inadequate and instead dabble in developing a business — slowly.
The time I spent building a small business during a pandemic was a test run for me: an experiment, maybe even an act of rebellion. I wanted to see what it was like building something slowly with more time to think and strategize, and how that approach impacted execution.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”
Abraham Lincoln
The Lincoln quote might seem trite, but I'm reminded of it every time I’m dealing with rushed deadlines, fragmented planning, and messy execution.
A more modern example of what Lincoln was getting at is from Dalia Ganza, SVP of Digital Marketing at Warner Records who said: "Invest your time in strategy and the rest of a campaign will flow easily."
In my experience, going fast often leads to sloppy work. When you try to rush through execution by skipping important steps (like planning and breaking down a roadmap into microsteps), you miss out on:
Identifying potential roadblocks
Asking clarifying questions
Getting feedback early on
Avoiding common mistakes
Considering different approaches that could have saved time or cost
I once had a high school government teacher that said to the class, "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to redo it?"
If you value getting it done fast, then there is no time to go back and redo something because most likely, you’ll be on to the next thing. And what you’re left with is a series of projects that could have gone better if feedback was given and mistakes were caught early on.
One of my first experiences writing web content was for a technology company. My client, the VP of Marketing, made an effort to have the team sit in a feedback call with one of their biggest customers, Home Depot. The feedback provided was hard to hear because it meant more work, but we all felt more confident moving forward.
As I finalized the web content, I kept the end user in mind by referring back to the feedback that was provided, and it allowed me to write for a specific audience without guessing what they cared about.
"I think about the state of work right now and where do we see breakdowns. A lot of it that I'm seeing is ... leaders want organizations to do everything all at once as fast as you can. It's poor prioritization and problem definition, and unfortunately the people most impacted by all of that are cascaded down throughout the organization."
Andy Hagerman, co-founder of The Design Gym, as a guest on the podcast Inside Job, Episode #179: How Design Thinking Informs the Inside Job with Andy Hagerman Part 1.
While I was drafting this newsletter, one of my favorite writers, Tara McMullin, published an article similar to this topic and asked the question, "How does work change when we give ourselves the necessary time instead of treating everything like an emergency?"
In my experience, taking the time needed to plan helps to identify a single priority — What am I (or we) trying to achieve? It gives space for clarity and allows you to make decisions on what is truly worth your time.
I've seen it often that when a company identifies priorities instead of focusing on a priority (singular form), everything slows down — projects, people, organizations. When there are multiple priorities, let's face it, nothing gets done.
When we take the time to think, strategize, and consider roadblocks or feedback, we’re more focused and execution is smoother and therefore, faster.
Many of my readers identify with having a highly sensitive temperament. This approach to how we work tends to be much better for us. It allows time for processing before taking action.
But no matter what your temperament is, diving in head first for the sake of going fast is overwhelming and anxiety-driven, and, more often than not, it leads to discouragement, frustration, and burnout.
As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, I'm trying to take slower steps. It's been interesting to see what comes out of this slower approach. So far, I have felt more confident in what I'm building.
What are your feelings about working fast versus working slow? Share your experience, whether it's work-related or you’re working on a personal project, by leaving a comment below.
Wow, I feel like you read my mind with this article. Lately, I have been beating myself thinking I take way too long to accomplish things than the average person but then I keep reminding myself that there is intention in my work and I need to go through this process to get a good end result. I have to keep reminding myself to think back to what the top priority as so I can actually make progress. I think this is a good reminder that slower isn’t a bad thing. Especially, as a project manager I definitely value planning upfront as it actually saves time down the road. This is something my organization is realizing and starting to value. It’s just about knowing what the right level of planning is for your project because there also is a scenario where you could be in analysis paralysis which is also paralyzing. I love that you used the Lincoln quote. I use that too to remind everyone of the importance of planning. One other aspect I think is important is that in the fast paced environment we don’t always take the time to step back and learn from the actions we took. If we give ourselves more time we can do things with more intent which leads to better outcomes, less stress and frustration, and more time to reflect on the process we took to get there so we can improve next time.
Thanks Sharon. I tried to live in a world where I had to work fast, but I burnt out over and over again. But I thought that was just how work was, and I needed to improve, so I just kept pushing. Now I've stopped (about five years ago) and I feel a lot better. My finances are questionable, but at least my mental health has improved, and it has given me the space I needed to work on myself instead.