Slow It Down

I often do things quickly. When working on different tasks, I like to finish them quickly and move onto what's next, or perhaps have some extra time in between. I don't like to take much time on things.

This certainly has its advantages. At work, I am very fast at what I do. I do our day-to-day projects quicker than anyone else. I am often the go-to guy for high priority projects, because I will complete it quickly. This, however, leads to a certain problem, that affects things both at work and in other aspects of my life.

The faster you push yourself to complete a task, the more prone you are to mistakes. I have always understood this, and yet have continued to complete things as fast as possible. I have realized recently, however, that I need to change this habit and attempt to slow things down.

At work, mistakes lead to the redoing of projects, and can cost additional time. Recently, I made a couple mistakes that will cause us headaches for a few weeks, and also cost the company some revenue. I need to slow down my work and do a better job of double checking my work. I need to pay more attention to what I am doing to make sure I am doing it correctly.

Oddly enough, the other aspect of my life that I am seeing this problem is in playing games. I love gaming. I play three different collectible card games, and it is my favorite hobby. However, in those games, I often make my strategic decisions too quickly and don't allow myself to fully think through each situation. This has lead to hasty and poor decisions, and has caused me to lose many more games than I think I should have. (We have been tracking our games recently, and since we started doing so, I have a 19-40 record. Ick.)

I think I'm a pretty smart person. Not that I'm a super genius, but I think I'm fairly intelligent. However, I think I sometimes rush through decisions and strategies and make myself appear less intelligent than I really am, when the problem is really that I simply didn't stop long enough to apply myself cognitively to the problem. In gaming, I lose games due to a poorly executed maneuver or ill conceived strategy, because I didn't fully think out all the different possible results. If I would slow down and allow my mind to fully wrap itself around the situation and consider what else could happen in the game, I think I would make less bad decisions and, ultimately, win more games.

The same is true of work. If I slow myself down and fully think out each project, double checking my work and fully thinking through each step, making sure not to miss anything, I would make less mistakes, which would make me look better as an employee and would ultimately allow me to go farther within the company (and in my career).

So, I am going to try my very best to slow down and think things through more. I don't want to miss things because I was too busy speeding through everything I'm doing. Speed is good, but it is less useful if it causes you to do things twice.