“Make haste slowly,” says the Alchemist or festina lente in Latin.
How much of the time do we spend trying to finish or get to the end faster, whether it’s a project, a race like a marathon or the next stage of our personal growth?
There’s value in slowing down while moving forward. When learning new skills (as George Leonard talks about in his book Mastery), we learn new patterns of sensing, moving and thinking to replace old patterns. Note that most of the time is spent on the plateaus where progress appears minimal or non-existent while our bodies learn and integrate the new patterns. Make haste and enjoy the plateaus.