Practically Slow
I posted an article on rushing to failure on my business blog yesterday. Why are so few businesses able to step back and consider action before rushing forward?
Failing fast and failing often has its merits. What we call failure can be just part of a natural learning process. Slowing down lets us consider and incubate ideas. Many of us are more interested in action that can be measured. We learn to do things fast, but creativity has its own agenda with regard to time.
Failure is, of course, a judgment. It assumes there is a defined goal and there is only one right answer. It’s worth reexamining the notion of failure as a negative.
I think it was Peter Cook who said, I learned from my mistakes. I learned that I can repeat every one of them.
There are those wise people who suggest that they can learn from other people’s mistakes. But situations do have a way of being more complex than they at first seem. Oversimplification is a sort of blindness.
I recently attended the summer institute for somatic psychology in Berkeley with Stanley Keleman. I won’t go into details here, but he said that the formative approach has no failure quotient. This is useful notion for me. It is about growth.
Failure is a necessary part of learning. A child learning to walk doesn’t just give up after a few tries. In the same way, those of us who operate micro-businesses have to constantly learn. The ability to slow down, step back, and consider our situation is valuable. It gives us perspective.
I write for a living and help small businesses get clear about what they are doing. I often encounter those who are driven by anxiety and fear. This always shows up as rushing. It’s hard sometimes to get those I serve to slow down. But many do get it; and they benefit.
Doing less, slowly, seems like a joke, but it is of immense practical value. Slow may be counterintuitive but it is wonderful to work with those that, “get it.”