One of the many tenets of industrial thinking is the idea that faster is always better.
When it comes to designing computer chips, okay, faster makes sense. But not when it comes to creating personal presence. Most of us want the doctor to spend more time with us, not less. There are no Grammy Awards for playing Beethoven’s 5th faster than anyone else.
I sometimes see advertising for self-improvement or coaching that emphasizes speed. It is offered in “five easy lessons,” or you will “get results in just 48 hours.”
Sorry, I just don’t buy it. That’s like saying “Learn to sculpt like Michaelangelo in just one weekend.” Good instruction might take you from zero to competent generic amateur in a short space of time, but is that your goal in life, to be barely competent, always getting the most out for the least in? That is a recipe for feeling unfulfilled. It certainly does not inspire or gain respect.
Now it is true, I have had mentors say things (in the space of two seconds) that totally altered my consciousness on the spot. But even in those instances, it typically took me 3 months to a couple of years to truly manifest the concept that they had released in my head. Some, I am still working on decades later.
So at the risk of repeating myself, there is a great cultural divide presented to us each day: a desire to be human, and the pressure to act like a machine. Computers and machines can be fixed and upgraded almost immediately, but people are living beings, and real growth takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. A model T Ford took 93 minutes to build, a Steinway piano takes 11 months.
The Beatles were a local garage band for 8 years, and if they had not gone through that process, they would not have been ready for, or capable of, doing what they did globally when the time came.
There is tremendous cultural pressure on us all to achieve change instantly. If you want to make real change in yourself, you should take a cue from Toyota Lean, and give yourself the right to “pull the cord,” i.e., stop the entire factory culture around you in order to solve a pressing problem. And that problem could be the necessity for you to stop trying to get a “quick fix” and instead grow to your full power state at your own living human pace.
At times, in the overwhelming clock-watching industrial expectations of our culture, that process is just inexcusably slow. But oddly enough, if efficiency is truly the goal, I have discovered that doing things slowly, carefully, and the best you are capable of doing them is, in the long run, far more efficient, and ultimately requires far less effort or daily maintenance, than any collection of quick patches or gimmicks.
© Justin Locke
