Slow Down to See Straight
- moniquemac9
- Mar 22
- 3 min read
"Speed doesn't always make us smarter - sometimes it just makes us dumber."
There’s a reason pilots run pre-flight checks even when they’ve flown the same plane for years. There’s a reason Novak Djokovic takes a breath before serving, and why Simone Biles stepped back to protect her clarity. The best in the world pause.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: speed narrows our vision. Pausing expands it.
We live in a culture that glorifies velocity. The faster you respond, the more important you seem. The busier your diary, the more essential you must be. Leadership gets reduced to a race: more meetings, more emails, more hustle.
But the problem is this — speed doesn’t always equal progress. Sometimes speed just makes us dumb.
The Cost of Constant Motion
High performers are especially vulnerable. We come with two gears:
Faster, and
Fakely calm, but still faster.
We convince ourselves that quick decisions prove decisiveness. That relentless action proves commitment. But the evidence says otherwise.
University of California, Irvine found it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after each interruption (Mark et al., 2005). Think of your last workday — how many interruptions did you have? Multiply it out and you see why speed is stealing clarity.
Harvard Business Review (2023) reported that toxic productivity reduces cognition, empathy, and decision quality (Madsen et al., 2023). In other words, the faster we go, the less human — and less effective — we become.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2023) found employees now spend 57% of their time communicating (emails, meetings, chats) and very little time focusing. Speed has swallowed strategy.
History carries the scars of speed too. The Challenger disaster in 1986 happened because schedule pressure overrode engineer warnings. The Boeing 737 MAX crisis (2018–19) was fuelled by rushing to beat a competitor to market. In both cases, the current was fast, and leaders let it drag them into disaster.
Pause Isn’t Weakness. It’s Leadership.
We think pausing looks like laziness. Like weakness. But in reality, pausing is the most radical leadership discipline you can practice.
Novak Djokovic breathes between points.
LeBron James slows down the game at critical moments.
Simone Biles withdrew to reset her mental clarity.
Satya Nadella pauses before he speaks, creating empathy and focus.
They don’t pause because they’re soft. They pause because they’re playing to win.
“Speed keeps you busy. Pause keeps you wise.”
The Human Cost of Speed
When speed goes up, empathy goes down.
Curiosity can’t sprint.
Compassion can’t rush.
Listening doesn’t happen at 200km/h.
That’s why low-empathy leaders might get compliance, but never commitment. They’ll get tasks done, but not ideas. They’ll get silence, not trust.
And what drops next? Engagement. Innovation. Performance.
A 2024 article in HBR on toxic productivity showed that leaders in constant high-speed mode actually lose the very sharpness they think they’re proving. They miss what’s right in front of them.
Reflections
Who have I overlooked this week because I was rushing?
What obvious risk did I miss because I was moving too fast?
Where am I confusing speed with performance?
When was the last time I paused long enough to notice what really matters?
FutureShift Phase One: Pause
This is why pause is the first phase of the FutureShift Pathway.
You can’t reflect honestly if you never stop to notice. You can’t recalibrate habits you’re blind to. You can’t reengage others if you’re disconnected from yourself.
Pause is the foundation. The most radical act of leadership in a world obsessed with speed is to stop — to create space, to notice, to see what others miss.
“If you never step out of the current, you never see where it’s sweeping you.”
Comments