This was the reward for reading through.
I think I generally identify with what the article is saying - but I think it's more about responsiveness and predictability than pure speed. I've always been a pretty quick worker, but more importantly I've been responsive. It's better to reply back in 5 seconds with an "I don't know; you might want to talk to Susan about this instead" than to spend an hour researching on your own and give them the answer yourself. You can even say "If Susie is too busy, I can look into it myself, but it might take an hour or two".
Communicate, communicate, communicate.
(Like the author, of course, I'm massively hypocritical in this regard).
Like riding a bike, you start slow with training wheels (or a helicopter parent) and work your way up to Yolo no-hander off that kicker ramp at 40 kph.
I suppose you can somewhat metaphorically replace speed with numbers there. In that juggling four balls is a lot like three, but faster. Getting the initial three going, though... Grrr.
4? My brain revolts.
You need not limit yourself to a single gravitational constant.
I look forward to video clips of Elon juggling on Mars!
I have no pithy summary of how this applies to the world of business or software development. It just reminded me of that.
It comes when you already know what you’re doing. Which, if you’re an engineer, you should know what you’re doing according to Hamming.
But then you may not be tackling innovative or interesting problems. Much of software development is research: understanding customers, patterns, systems and so on. You do not know what you are doing, it’s more akin to science.
Then in order to go fast you must sacrifice something. Most people lose the ability to spot details or consider edge cases. They make fast and loose assumptions. And these trade offs blow up much later when the system experiences pressure.
It’s good to iterate and throw out bad ideas quickly for sure. You just have to know what area you’re in. Are you at the stage where you’re an engineer or are you doing more science related work?
I wage a constant battle of motivating myself because my neurology craves novel sources of dopamine but my job is doing the needful 90% of the time.
Sometimes, you might really know better, and it doesn't matter. You build the thing with the wrong tools, with a crummy framework, with a product at the end that will probably not succeed. But that is okay, hopefully you learn something and your team and your org learn something.
And if not, that is okay, sometimes its just a job and you need a paycheck and a place to be from 9 to 5.
Quality of new builds is not that great (at least in the UK) because the speed is the main focus.
When you practice your instrument you get better att doing the exact same things the sloppy player is doing, but you do it in time and in tune.
When you get faster at building software by (ostensibly) focusing on quality you do not do the same thing as someone that focuses on quick results.
Now I'm not arguing for biological determinism, but atleast some of the working style individuals have comes down to individual bio-psycho-social factors. Many people here have ADHD or other neurodivergence and will struggle with any kind of prescriptive - 'just work faster outputting higher quality work'. If only it were that easy.
- Producing organisms with capable, healthy mitochondria requires mitonuclear compatibility (mitochondrial genome is from mother, nuclear genome is from both parents, energetic capacity and regulation requires both genomes to coordinate) and evidence is that organisms select highly for offspring that have higher mitonuclear compatibility and more capable mitochondria. Offspring that don't have capable enough mitochondria don't make it to term. For example, mammals are more permissive about mitonuclear compatibility than birds (who have extremely high energetic requirements) so mammals are more fecund, but we're also more likely to get cancer from inefficient mitochondria throwing off reactive oxygen species.
- Chris Palmer, a Harvard medical school MD psychiatrist, put out a book a few years ago hypothesizing most mental disorders as brain metabolic disorders — brain mitochondria problems. I've seen mixed reviews on the hypothesis (which I like) but it sure is interesting.
Taken together these imply: 1) some people get more energy than others at a biological level, 2) that impacts mental health, 3) there are interventions that can improve the energy baseline we each were given (as discussed in Palmer's book/talks).
I’ve explained a few times that the idea is to practice deliberately, slowly, and take time to learn things, so when you do it next, you can do it smoothly and become faster.
That saying about ducks gliding across the water in perfect calm, while beneath the surface, their feet work furiously, unseen. Yesterday, I stumbled upon the terminology, in Italian, Sprezzatura.[2] Do difficult things while making it appear effortless, the art of making something difficult look easy, or maintaining a nonchalant demeanor while performing complex tasks.
To do Sprezzatura, one has to Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/slow-is-smooth-smooth-is-fast/
An alternative solution is to grossly underestimate the amount of work
> What if laziness is just a habit of thinking about the work instead of the payoff?
To paraphrase, you have to be a little bit delusional to think you will succeed, otherwise you won't get started. You won't make the big risky decisions that bring you to success.
Which I relate to a second thought of my own which is, what will I regret if I hadn't at least tried?
Which together, help motivate me to continue game development. There is just so much work to be done, and you have to just assume you'll be good and succeed at half a dozen different disciplines to bring it all together.
But the screenshot says the md file was created in 2009, so that would be 16 years?
lordkrandel•3d ago
xtajv•8h ago
dexwiz•8h ago
Speed is important but going fast doesn't mean going as fast as possible. It's about going fast sustainably. Work speed isn't binary. You can be fast without being the fastest.
atomicnumber3•4h ago
4er_transform•6h ago
If we’re all just particles and fields, we might as well be as thermodynamically productive as possible