There was a little old lady walking through the crowd very slowly. People were buzzing around and jumping out of the way to avoid her. But she was walking steadily in a straight line directly through the crowd.
Some people move fast and some move slow. When a person moves fast through a crowd he has to avoid collisions with other people. The ones who move fast have to go around those who move slow. So if a person is moving fast from Point A to Point B he will end up going a further distance because he is avoiding collisions by going around groups of people and objects.
A little old lady moving very slowly in a crowd moves in a straight line directly from Point A to Point B because everyone moves out of her way. Therefore she expends less energy over time.
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Abraham Lincoln had a famous quote:
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.If I take more time to decide on something I will eventually know exactly what it takes to get from Point A to Point B, and will expend less energy than if I hastily jump right in. It doesn't always pay to move quickly. Over time, the greatest payoff is to know where you want to go, how to get there, and then walk in a straight line from Point A to Point B.
Some people are quick to reply to email. It's nice to get an immediate response. But it's only worthwhile if the response is useful. Sometimes it would be better not to reply quickly if when they do, the information is accurate and useful. Otherwise they will expend more energy over time by making multiple replies to compensate for misinformation or lack of information.
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Mark Zuckerburg has the adage:
Move fast and break things.Get the product out into the world as fast as possible and then fix things along the way. This seems contradictory to the idea of sharpening an ax for four hours. But Zuckerburg is in a fast growing business where products have to move fast to keep pace with demand. The most important thing for him is to make sure he's moving generally in the right direction.
Sometimes it's necessary to move quickly. It's ok to run through crowds just make sure to run in the right direction. It's ok to reply quickly to emails just make sure the answers are useful and accurate.
It's about timing. Timing is critical with decision making. It has to do with the amount of time a person has to make a decision.
Imagine the little old lady in a burning train station. If there is a fire, she's in trouble because she can't move fast. She has to do everything she can to run from the fire. But the best thing she can probably do is to take a few seconds to pivot and look for the nearest exit. And then move toward that exit (in a straight line from Point A to Point B.)
We can still use Lincoln's premise:
Give me 6 seconds to run from a burning train station and I'll spend 4 seconds looking for the closest exit.
Give me 6 minutes to cut down a tree and I'll spend 4 minutes sharpening my ax.
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Over-prepare and go with the flow.Is a quote I stole from someone smarter than myself. But it summarizes the idea.
Sometimes we move fast and things break and we have to turn back. It's two steps forward, one step back. It would be better to move slower and not make mistakes. It's easy to think ... "well I'd rather take two slower steps forward and no steps back." But that isn't how life works. There will always be steps back, things will always break.
It's better to take ten steps generally in the right direction and then one or two steps back ... or something along those lines. First make sure to walk generally in the right direction. So maybe it's zero steps forward, contemplate; ten steps forward; one or two steps back.
The point is not to be afraid of the fact that things will break. Things break, when they do, fix them.
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I was once criticized by a boss for moving too slowly. We needed batteries for a ticket scanner. There was a long line and the show had started. But people couldn't enter the theater unless their tickets were scanned. So I walked to the store to buy batteries. My boss didn't like the fact that I walked, she wanted me to run. There were hundreds of people in line. She said I was "aloof". I said to her, "I'm not the one who forgot batteries. When I do something I do it right."
This obviously wasn't the right thing to say, or the correct attitude. What I should have realized was that a million things happened that day. The theater was new and we were moving fast. This was a small step back.