Are you speeding past the signs?

Sign warning cyclists to slow down on a steep descent

Have you ever been in such a rush to get somewhere, you miss your exit and make yourself late? A client said he was speeding to get his family to dinner on time. He missed his exit and added half an hour of rumbling bellies and recriminations to their journey. At least he didn’t—as I once did—try to make an exit at the last second only to end up stranded on a grass verge.

We cannot pay attention to the signs when we’re speeding. But most people wake up in the morning and jump right into the metaphor of a fast car, speeding through the day, minds in overdrive. They miss the signs that something’s not right with a colleague. They overlook some nagging pain in their bodies. They make faulty assumptions and ignore inconvenient truths. They turn off compassion and even breach their integrity for the sake of getting somewhere faster. The more they speed, the more signs they miss. 

Can you think of anything you’ve missed because you were in a rush? 

Any regrets?

One of my favorite studies about the consequences of being in a rush is the brilliant 1973 Princeton experiment, From Jerusalem to Jericho (1). Researchers wanted to see which had a greater effect on people’s willingness to help a stranger in distress: their character, the message, or the particular situation. All the participants were seminarians whose task was to prepare a talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. After meeting in one building, they were told to deliver their talk in another building. Situated on the path between the buildings, slumped against the wall, was a person in visible distress. A perfect opportunity to be the proverbial Good Samaritan! The seminarians were divided into three groups. One group was given plenty of time to walk over to submit their talk. A second group was told they should deliver it urgently, but could take a few minutes to walk over. The third group was told they were already late for their assignment and better hurry. 

Can you guess what happened? 90% of the seminarians in the third, most hurried group ignored the person in distress. All of them had to step over him to keep going. More than half of the slightly hurried group also ignored him. Only in the unhurried group did a majority stop to see if the person needed help.

Notably the seminarians who ignored the person in distress were agitated when they submitted their talks—a tell-tale sign of the distress that’s generated in us when we breach our integrity.

Being in a rush is really about being scared. What we see in our coaching work is that rather than acknowledge their fear, people speed up to avoid it. They might be scared of being late, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, and fixate on not being late. They might be scared they are not being productive enough, and fixate on doing more things, whether they’re the right things or not. They might be scared that people will judge them to be slow-witted if they take their time on a task, so they scramble to look competent rather than ask for help.

There is nothing wrong with being scared. It’s an important sign to acknowledge. But most people—especially impatient executives—maintain their self esteem by rushing to prevent whatever it is they fear from happening, blind to everything they might see otherwise.

Regardless of the specific fear, you always have the option to slow down. And the more you feel the urgency to speed up, the more important it is to slow down.

This is not advice to literally slow your movements (although that might help). Slowing down is about paying more attention to what is happening now. When you do that, you benefit from being an agent of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. You can act with more precision and effectiveness, which makes slowing down faster in the long run of life. Remember the Aesop fable of the Tortoise and the Hare? 

So here’s the simple phrase that has become a bit of a mantra for our clients. A phrase that invites you to pay more attention to the signs in your life:

Slow down

When you feel the urge to speed up. Slow down.

When you get scared, slow down.

When you feel frustrated, slow down. 

When you feel impatient, slow down.

When you doubt yourself, slow down. 

When you think everything is going so well, slow down.

To seeing the signs,

Tom and team

(1)  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1973, Vol. 27, No. J, 100-108, Darley and Batson

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash