The productivity trap
I used to pride myself on speed. How fast can I ship? How many features can I build this week? But I kept running into the same problem: I'd build things fast, then spend twice as long fixing them.
Speed without direction is just motion. And motion isn't progress.
What slowing down actually means
Slowing down doesn't mean working less. It means:
- Taking time to understand the problem before solving it
- Thinking through edge cases before writing code
- Sleeping on decisions that feel urgent but aren't
- Saying no to things that don't matter
The compounding effect
When you slow down at the beginning, you speed up everywhere else. Good foundations make everything faster. Clear thinking prevents rewrites. Careful decisions avoid costly pivots.
It's counterintuitive, but the fastest path forward is often the one that starts slow.
A practical framework
Before starting any significant work, I now ask:
- What problem am I really solving?
- What's the simplest solution that could work?
- What will I wish I had thought about?
These three questions have saved me countless hours of wasted effort.
The meta lesson
The hardest part isn't knowing this. It's remembering it when you're in the thick of things, when the pressure is on, when shipping feels urgent.
That's why I write these notes. To remind future me what current me keeps forgetting.