I have a good friend who I can depend very much. I trust him with my life.
Let’s call him Jack. Jack is about 7 years older than me. He is about 6 foot and 200 lbs. He walks very slowly and speaks with a deep and moderately slow tone of voice.
I, on the other hand, walk fast. I speak fast and move around quickly. I’m about half of Jack’s size and move twice as fast as he does.
When Jack and I work together, the interesting thing you’ll see me running around, hustling and moving at the speed of light. Jack is moving slow like a turtle. He takes his time doing his thing and moving from one side to the other side of the room slowly.
Everyone can see the difference in the intensity when we are near each other.
One big important detail is that by the end of the day, Jack has done about as much as I’ve done.
How?
It seems like a mystery to everyone, but it was pretty obvious to me right away.
First, Jack is very efficient and effective. He doesn’t have to be moving vigorously. He is moving at his optimal pace. He thinks thoroughly and is in full concentration. He studies his tasks at every angle, decides what he needs and plans out his actions.
That means that… if he needs any tools, he knows every tools he needs from the start and gets all of them at one time. He doesn’t waste time going back and forth to get something he missed.
Second, he works at a pace where no mistake is allowed. He does step 1 correctly, then does step 2 correctly, and so on… until completion. He doesn’t go too fast where he can drop something or make an error and end up re-doing that step.
Third, he already knows pretty much all the steps (that he will need to do) to complete his tasks… so he plans the most effective and efficient ways from the beginning. Instead of doing step 1, then stop and analyze to see what to do in step 2… he stops after step 1 to make sure he can continue to step 2 — since he already has everything well analyzed, he just needs to evaluate if he is on the right track and continue to the next step.
Finally, he completes his tasks so well that there are nearly no errors. He doesn’t have to go back to re-do much or re-touch anything.
I’m not saying that doing things slowly is the factor. It’s one of the many factors to achieve your goal and complete your tasks. You should aim to work at a comfortable pace where you can be the most efficient and effective.
If you are making too many mistakes, you should slow your pace. If you are doing very well, you can try to pick up your pace a little more to see if you can still work well at the new and faster pace.
The main point is, as you get better achieving your goals, you can optimize your pace and methods. In result, you will be achieving more goals in less time. And, you will look like a well oiled successful machine.