Not so long ago, someone I have been mentoring for a while made consistently the same errors and mistakes, which allowed me to spot a pattern that could cost her growth, money, and even the ability to function properly for her business.
Some of the examples were:
- I provided her a guide I wrote, and she blasted off, firing questions which were highlighted and answered in the next paragraphs of the guide
- She joined “an academy” that teaches you how to blast e-mails, or bulk outreach, using a specific e-mail software
What was the issue?
- She was speed reading through materials, which was a habit she carried from other areas, and missed context, answers that led to asking me instead of reading properly.
- She’s been taught a system for cold emailing in bulk, but she has no idea how email marketing works, including subject lines, sender reputation, or spam words that could cause her emails to land in the spam inbox.
Her lack of deep knowledge or understanding in fields she needs to learn, and the fact that errors are made because she carries a bad habit of rushing through things.
Eventually, I made her understand that working slower first will help her work faster long-term.
Here’s what I emphasized to her:
- Build a solid understanding first
- Develop critical skills
- Create better systems that work for you
- Avoiding rework
- Habit building & formation
- Endurance & load management
Build A Solid Understanding
Investing more time upfront to understand the fundamentals allows you to process better, and helps you prevent to avoid mistakes that could slow you down later.
It also contributes to identifying shortcuts or optimizations based on a deep understanding.
Developing Critical Skills
If a skill or subject can cause a major impact in your business or work, you should always approach it with a focused mindset.
There’s a difference between understanding a subject on the surface and learning a skill you’re going to apply regularly. A prime example would be musicians. They practice at a snail’s pace to perfect the art, but end up playing faster with more accuracy.
Creating Better Systems
Working slower first helps you understand the idea of creating better systems that work for you. This usually involves:
- Documenting steps taken, and pretend it’s your next Harvard course
- Learning how to organize better and how to find a better workflow with the tools available
- Learning how to organize your files, so it becomes a reflex when you create or save something
- Find a way to streamline repeatable parts, which can erase inefficiencies
Avoiding Rework
Working slowly, will help avoid you redoing mistakes that could cause:
- Errors & confusion
- The need to start over again, which costs more time
There’s no point in delivering fast when it’s leaking on all fronts, and you’re about to start over when time should be treated as a commodity.
Habit Building & Formation
Finding the right process at a slower pace can create sustainable workflows. You should be building a better muscle memory first by repeating the correct process regularly. Once your muscle memory has learned the right approach, you can work much faster with fewer mistakes.
Someone who uses a proper form of learning will outperform someone who has been developing bad habits through rushing. Unlearning bad habits is incredibly challenging.
Endurance & Load Management
I’ve seen it more than once. Those who rush through things suffer from mental fatigue, which can lead to a bad decision-making process. Bad decisions can lead to more errors, or rework, which costs more time and possibly frustration.
By working slowly first, you’re training your muscles, brain, and building up a level of tolerance that can process more work or information in the future at the same time.
Close
Know the difference between learning slowly with the intention to make you faster later, versus unproductive slowness that counts as procrastination.
The first one is an investment and is about laying a foundation for speed. This should highlight why experienced people work more efficiently, with less effort. Because they invested the time upfront to develop the right habits with slow(er) learning.
They established better systems, and are far more likely to succeed because they documented their steps, mistakes, and pivots first instead of rushing through the fundamentals.