Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

Life’s fast pace can make living a bit complicated. Work, family, and “life happenings” can be challenging.

Going slow changes everything. It dissolves anxiety. It reduces error. It makes life livable.

How many times do we stop to look at things happening all around us? To take a minute? To pause. From the flight of a bird to the sounds in a busy street to the smells coming out of a bakery.

Going slow can make things manageable and reduce stress. They can also achieve more. This is the part where it gets fun. This is the “smooth is fast” bit of the quote.

If you want to build a house in one week, the overall urgency you will feel will be different than if you had, say, three months.

Remember Parkinson’s law? “Work expands to the time allotted to it.” Now, there is a balancing act to be discovered here. You can build the house in one week, but you have little room to balance life, human error, and resources. The house might not be structurally sound.

And you will end up exhausted.

Mentally.

Physically.

And emotionally.

What if we considered going slower? Taking time to look at the details and correcting for unexpected events with plenty of time? You are going slow after all.

If you are pragmatic, think of it this way: the house built in three months will be structurally sound, pass audits, and -most importantly- sell.

Would you rather have thirteen bad houses for the sake of “quantity is a quality”? Or would you like to have one that gets results?

The first approach looks a lot like ego. It is fluff and it does not achieve anything.

The second approach is grounded, composed, and easy.

Now, pause.

Go slow.

Live.