going slow

The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you’ll finish more stuff per unit time. But there’s more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you’ll be inclined to do more.

The converse is true, too. If every time you write a blog post it takes you six months, and you’re sitting around... See more

The writer Ted Chiang was once asked in an interview if he ever considered publishing more frequently. Chiang, one of the greatest living fiction writers (the sci-fi film Arrival is based on one of his short stories), has only published two story collections—the first in 2002, and the next in 2019.

Here is how Chiang replied:

“There’s no one who... See more

My countervailing advice to people trying to understand something is: go slow. Read slowly, think slowly, really spend time pondering the thing. Start by thinking about the question yourself before reading a bunch of stuff about it. A week or a month of continuous pondering about a question will get you surprisingly far.

The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.” – Marshall McLuhan