On the Value of Slowness

There is a certain pressure, ambient and relentless, to move faster. To ship, to iterate, to optimise. Speed is treated as synonymous with competence.

But speed without direction is just noise with momentum.

The tyranny of velocity

The fastest path to the wrong destination is still the wrong path. Most of what we call productivity is really the efficient execution of someone else's priorities. We get better and better at doing things we should not be doing at all.

Slowness, by contrast, creates the conditions for noticing. You cannot notice what you cannot see. You cannot see what you are moving past at eighty miles an hour.

What slowness actually looks like

It is not idleness. It is not absence of effort. Slowness is the willingness to stay with a problem long enough for the right question to surface—before rushing toward an answer.

The carpenter who measures twice cuts once. The writer who reads a sentence aloud before publishing it hears what the eye skips.

A practice, not a tempo

Slowness is not a constant pace. It is a deliberate one. It means knowing when to accelerate and when to stop entirely. It means resisting the reflex to fill silence with activity.

The most durable things—ideas, relationships, work—tend to have been made slowly, even when they appear to have arrived suddenly.