As fast as I carefully can
What do ancient Romans and Navy SEALs have in common?
Our environment biases us towards instant gratification. We are better off optimizing for the long term.
But is there such a thing as waiting too much?
The pioneering research of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman has proven that Richard Feynman was right: it is the easiest to fool ourselves. Though our intuition can trick us, evolution equipped us with System 1 (intuition) and System 2 (conscious thinking) for a reason. Instead of defaulting to the simple black and white thinking, why not think of it as a spectrum? Indeed, this is what excellent people have done throughout history.
The Latin phrase festina lente means to make haste slowly. Navy SEALs use a similar mantra, “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” These mantras pinpoint that slowing down can accelerate progress. They imply finding a balance: you should only slow down if you are too fast given the circumstances.
Let's use an analogy from driving a car, called situational blindness. It means despite having perfect eyesight, you drive as if being blind. For example, if you drive so fast that you cannot break to avoid an accident. This can happen even within the speed limit, e.g., when you don't know the neighborhood.
Thus, you can go fast, but only as fast as you carefully can (a phrase borrowed from Andrew Huberman). You need to evaluate the downside and upside of speeding up or slowing down. If you wait too long, others might get ahead of you. If you are too fast, you can build a house of cards.
I agree with Shane Parrish that a lack of patience changes the outcome. For me, the questions are “by how much” and “in which direction"? It might not be what you expect. If you are too cautious, maybe you should speed up; if you are too fast, use the breaks more.
An issue that I think has value not only in professional life (and specifically in the research or creation of new things) but also in personal life choices and how we perceive what we are doing. Sometimes we need to speed up and feel like we're going too slow, but maybe it's because we're actually behind the pace we could be under. Others, however, as in the case of the car you mentioned, need to decelerate. But the point of the issue that struck me the most concerns the question: in which direction? I often hear from people who are in new experiences or projects without understanding where it will take them or even a simple idea of where they would like to go. This is very important. Thanks for sharing Patrik.