You knew I wasn’t going a full month without one… I’m back with another installment of Why Fiction Teaches More About Life Than Self-Help, inspired by a quote from Lee Child:

“You can learn much more from fiction than non-fiction.”

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn has been that going slower often gets me where I want to go faster.

That sounds backwards.

We're taught that speed wins.

Move quickly. Respond immediately. Make decisions fast. Stay busy. Stay productive.

Sports have drilled into us that we need to be aggressive. Attack. Push the pace. Make something happen.

We’re given the impression that the opposite of all that aggression is passivity.

But often, the opposite of aggression isn’t passivity.

It’s patience.

Knowing when not to attack. When not to push the pace. When to wait, watch, and understand before you act.

Reacher is really good at this.

When he walks into a room, he doesn't immediately start talking.

He observes.

He notices.

He lets people reveal themselves.

He's rarely the first person to move, but he's often the first person to understand what's really happening.

Our corporate culture has its own version of the same mistake.

We tend to value motion because motion is visible.

Schedule the meeting. Send the email. Create the plan. Make the decision. Do something.

Taking an afternoon to think about a problem can look like you're doing nothing.

So we start solving problems before we understand them.

We create a plan before we're sure where we're trying to go.

And then we spend twice as much time fixing what we did too quickly.

I've noticed the same thing in my own life.

The times I've made my biggest mistakes were usually the times I felt like I couldn't afford to slow down.

I answered before I understood.

I interrupted before someone finished explaining.

I rushed through a conversation because I was already thinking about the next thing.

I tried to solve a problem before I fully understood what the problem actually was.

Ironically, all that speed usually created more work.

More misunderstandings.

More apologies.

More time spent fixing something that probably wouldn't have needed fixing if I'd taken another thirty seconds in the first place.

That's the strange thing about patience.

It can look slow from the outside while actually being the fastest route to where you're trying to go.

The same thing is true at home.

When your wife or child is talking to you, don’t rush to respond before you’ve really heard what they’re saying.

When you're facing an important decision, resist the urge to make it just because making a decision feels productive.

Sometimes the fastest way to the right answer is to spend a little more time with the question.

Slow isn't the opposite of progress.

Sometimes slow is how you avoid having to do everything twice.

Reacher doesn’t need to fill every moment to believe the moment has value…maybe you don’t either.

Reacher is walking across Colorado when he passes through two neighboring towns, aptly named Hope and Despair.

Known for its similarities to First Blood, the book that inspired the first Rambo movie, you can probably guess what happens after Reacher is told he’s not welcome in Despair.

But knowing where it’s headed doesn’t make getting there any less fun. It’s still totally worth the read.

Until next time—
🔥Keep the fires burning,
— Clay

P.S. I’d rather grow Campfire Gentleman through real connections than algorithms.
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