Slow down to speed up

I have a friend who is a financial adviser. When I first met him he was working in the “wealth management” side of a large international bank, helping wealthy clients figure out how to invest their money. Now he runs an investment fund and manages hundreds of millions of dollars. One time, back when I was still a high school teacher, I thought I’d ask if he had any reading recommendations for my students. None of them were looking for investment strategies for their millions…at least not yet. But financial literacy is a really important skill for people of almost any age, so I thought he might know some good books that taught the basics that I could pass along. He would only give me one answer:

“The Tortoise and the Hare.”

Right, I said, I get the idea. Go for the slow, steady, wise approach, not the get-rich-quick schemes. But what can you recommend that translates that to money and financial literacy? “C’mon, help me out, don’t be so clever,” I thought (but didn’t say aloud). “No, The Tortoise and the Hare. I’m serious. Internalize that, and then you can learn the details when you’re ready.” So that was the advice. Read and learn that short fable, and then some day you might be ready to manage your own money. Got it.

Strangely, it was years before I made the connection between The Tortoise and the Hare and a phrase I’ve learned from chefs: Slow Down to Speed Up. “Slow down to speed up” is a lot like “slow and steady wins the race,” except in restaurants there is no finish line—it’s the daily grind of getting good food out to customers.

Slow Down to Speed Up has to do with keeping up with the crazy pace of a kitchen by slowing down first to perfect your skills. If you’re falling behind because you’re not chopping vegetables well or you keep forgetting ingredients because you’re in a rush, then speeding up the bad preparation doesn’t make anything better. You have to slow down and do it right until doing it right becomes automatic. Then, and only then, can you start to really stay caught up.

Slow Down to Speed Up is such an integral part of chef training that Dan Charnas devotes a chapter to it in his book Everything In Its Place: The Power of Mise-en-place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind. Here’s how Charnas puts it:

Chefs don’t panic. The basic concept is this: The natural human tendency in the face of imminent deadline is to rush or panic. Don’t rush; when you rush, your movements become sloppy. Don’t panic; when you panic, you forget things. When you find yourself rushing or panicking or both, just stop. Breathe. If your anxiety compels you to move, then clean. The act of cleaning…will force you to take some breaths. Look around you. Think about where you are and where you need to be. Think of the next step to get you there and take that step, slowly.

Though I’ve only known it in the kitchen context, it turns out that Slow Down to Speed Up is a concept taught in business and management, also. Here are short articles from McKinsey & Company, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review extolling the virtues of slowing down at key moments to do better in fast-paced business.

So financial planners, chefs, and business managers agree that you should slow down to speed up. What does Slow Down to Speed Up look like for busy high school students? How can you win your college admission race by slowing down?

First, focus on skills, not achievements. Chefs slow down to make sure they’re cutting vegetables right, keeping their station clean, cooking their proteins to the best temperature. When they’re in the kitchen getting orders ready, they’re not thinking about getting great reviews or awards. Rewards only come later as a result of the skills. As a student, take time to think about the skills you’re learning and the skills you should have already learned. Think more about skills and material, less about grades and rewards. Don’t use tricks and shortcuts to get an A in Biology—learn the Biology. Don’t spend 45 minutes trying to hide that you didn’t do the History reading—spend an hour doing the History reading. Make your audition monologue the best you can, without worrying about if you’ll get the starring role in the play. Practice your passing and raise your endurance without thinking about going to the soccer playoffs. Your skills will be rewarded sooner or later, but only if you focus on the skills. The more you slow down to focus on skills, the more substantial the reward, even if it’s a little later.

Do less, practice more. Students and parents often ask me what else they should be doing to help with college applications. What other activities should they add to their resume? How can they “round out” their application? Unless they’re doing absolutely nothing (and they never are), my answer is always not to do more. Go for quality, not quantity. Do fewer things, and practice them much more intensely. A student who plays one sport and is in one club, but participates with intention and experiences growth, will always be more appealing than a student who superficially participates in three sports and five clubs. This isn’t about “finding your passion.” If you have a passion, great. Spend more time practicing it. But if you don’t have a passion yet, that’s fine. Choose a few things that are good and worthwhile, and practice them with care and attention. It’s not about the passion, it’s about the practice.

Study a little more, cram a lot less. Set up a regular time to study and do homework. Ideally it’s daily, but that’s not always realistic. Then, use that time to study and do homework, all the time, even if there’s nothing big coming up. If there truly is nothing you need to do during that study time, use it anyway. Be in your study space and do something productive. Read ahead in a textbook, or read something for pleasure. The better you get about spreading your preparation for projects and exams out over time, the less panic you experience right before the big due dates.

Procrastinate better. Maybe I’m supposed to tell you not to procrastinate, but that would be naive. People procrastinate. But you can do it better.

There’s a good chance you’re like me: when I’m overwhelmed with too much to do or anxious because I’m not sure what to do next, I soothe myself by doing something low-stress and of low importance. Ironically, the more I have on my to-do list, the more likely I am to waste time. It’s a self-soothing mechanism. So if I really need to get back to a client, and I’m behind on writing a blog post, and I need to return some email, and there’s laundry piling up, and my kids are insisting on eating dinner (they seem to want dinner every night!), I find myself looking for a time waster. Twitter, Instagram, online shopping, re-organizing the bookshelves, things like that. It temporarily helps with the stress, but it makes the problem worse. The next time you catch yourself procrastinating, ask yourself if maybe you’re doing it because you’re anxious about what all you have to do and being unsure what to do next. Just understanding why you procrastinate is a major step.

The trick is to procrastinate with finite distractions, not open-ended distractions. Cleaning is a good distraction, because it makes it easier to feel in control. But clean something small; clean your desk, or make your bed. Don’t reorganize all the files in your computer or decide to overhaul your bedroom. When you’re in a procrastinating mood, stay away from the internet. Play a short and simple game, not one that takes hours. If you can procrastinate with something that’s time-limited and healthy, even better. Take a walk around the block. Do 25 push-ups. Stretch. Do a 10-minute guided meditation. Then, after a short procrastination break, take a breath, “think about where you are and where you need to be. Think of the next step to get you there and take that step, slowly.”

Sleep. It’s hard to get enough sleep as a busy teenager. It’s hard to get enough sleep as a busy adult. It’s a paradoxical circle, where you need to get sleep so you can be organized, calm, healthy, and happy. And you also need to finish all the things that an organized, calm, healthy, happy person does before you can get enough sleep. So I’m not going to get preachy or judge about sleep. I will recommend, however, choosing one night a week to become your regular “sleep night.” Choose one night a week—it doesn’t even have to be the same night each week—where you do everything within your power to get one hour of sleep more than you usually get. Maybe that will be a struggle. Maybe that will feel good. And maybe it will be so good that you’re able to increase it to three, four, or five nights a week. If that’s the case, reverse it and have a single designated “stay up late to catch up” night.

Slowing down to speed up is tough, especially at first. When you’re panicked about having too much to do, being in a chaotic state, and having pressures build up around you, stopping is one of the hardest things to do. But just like the chefs, just like the business gurus and fund managers, just like the tortoise—you have to slow down and plod along. Slow and steady is how you win the race, and it’s how you prepare yourself for college.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   Study in the quiet places

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Making new year resolutions? Focus on the How, not the What

You’re probably familiar with the Marshmallow Test. In the 1970s, psychologists put little kids in a room with a marshmallow. The test administrators left the room for about 15 minutes, telling the kids that if they didn’t eat the marshmallow sitting in front of them, they could have two marshmallows when the administrator returned. Some children were able to resist the temptation sitting in front of them to get the bigger prize, but many were unable to wait. Decades later, the psychologists met back up with many of the kids from the experiment, and they noticed that the ones who were able to resist as children had much better outcomes adults—better grades in school, higher paying jobs, more general happiness. The experiment seemed to show that children who have the inner power to delay gratification tend to have more successful adult lives. It proved, at least maybe, that will power is a real and powerful thing.

The experiment has been replicated, studied, and challenged many times. It turns out that the correlation between resisting the treat and better outcomes later stands up fairly well, but there are many factors that explain the results other than innate will power. Not surprisingly, if you grow up in a financially secure household and feel you can trust authorities, then it’s easier to have will power.

Here’s what stands out to me about the experiment: kids with a strategy did better. They didn’t just sit there, staring at the marshmallow in front of them, deciding over and over again not to eat it. They did something else to make it easier. Some of the successful kids did this on their own, by sitting on their hands, turning around, singing a song, or otherwise distracting themselves. Sometimes the strategy was built into the experiment: when the psychologists helped out by putting a cover over the marshmallow or providing the kids toys to play with, the kids did better at holding off and getting the bigger prize. Delayed Gratification is a how, not just a what.

If you’re making near year resolutions—or setting goals any time—keep this in mind. Most goal setting and self discipline are about delayed gratification, so remember the lesson: how, not just what. A large goal, any large goal, is essentially a Marshmallow Test. Can I resist the temptation to give in to easy treats in order to get a larger reward later? Can I resist the urge to check my social media feeds in order to do better homework and have higher quality studying? Can I avoid the temptation of…everything else…in order to keep an established weekly time for my college search? They’re all marshmallows. More abstract and more important marshmallows, but essentially marshmallows.

Setting a goal is good, but it’s unlikely to work. Most of us can’t simply decide to avoid eating the marshmallow. We can’t simply decide to be better students, better family members, have healthier bodies, have clearer minds.

Setting a goal and having a method for enacting the change is better. You’re deciding what you want to achieve, and you’re also deciding how you’re going to achieve it. You’re adding a how to your what.

And here’s the trick: setting a goal and having at least two layers of methods for enacting the change is even better.

The most common methods for achieving goals include routine, accountability, measurability, and help from others.

Here’s a personal example. I have made it a goal many, many times to exercise five times a week. I know that I should exercise to help out my blood pressure and weight. I know that I should improve my flexibility. I have frequent back pain, and exercise is the primary method for dealing with that. Despite making this sensible, achievable goal, I have never exercised five times a week. I’ve not been able to delay the gratification of doing other, less difficult things to get the reward of a healthier body. Simply deciding I’m going to exercise five times a week has never worked.

But here’s the thing: I always exercise at least twice a week. It’s not because I have a little bit of will power. It’s not because I try hard but not too hard to remember my goal. It’s because I have a method: I work out with a personal trainer on a set schedule twice a week. The routine and accountability make all the difference. Because those workouts with my trainer are always on my calendar, I never schedule anything else at those times. If I don’t show up to work out with my trainer, I have to pay her anyway. She sends me reminders and she gives me encouragement. I have podcasts that I look forward to listening to in the car on the way to the studio.

I have a goal for five days a week, but I only set up methods for twice a week. So I exercise twice a week.

If I’m going to make it a new year resolution this year to begin exercising five times a week, I’m going to have to include methods, not just the goal. The obvious answer is to use what has been successful so far and work out with my trainer five times a week. But that’s expensive, and I don’t necessarily have time to drive to the studio five times a week. I need to do most of my workouts at home. So what I should do is pile on a number of methods to make sure it happens. I should establish routine times to exercise on the other days, and put them on my calendar. I should set out my exercise clothes as a reminder. I should ask my trainer to check up on how often I work out at home to add a little accountability. I should find a new podcast to listen to while I exercise at home. Setting the goal isn’t enough—I need multiple methods to make it happen.

Let’s think about an academic goal typical of smart, ambitious high school students: get better grades at school. Deciding that you want to improve your GPA is a good thing, but it’s unlikely to work. You need methods, multiple methods, to set you up to achieve that goal. You’ll need to establish regular homework and study times. Ideally it would be the same time each day, but that may not be possible. But for each day, there needs to be a set time you’ll do homework and study. Set up a regular alarm on your phone to remind you every day that it’s time to study. Also set your phone up to go into “do not disturb” mode for your set study time. Establish a routine place where you’ll do this homework—not your bed!—and have everything you need for homework in that place. Tell a family member or other adult you trust about your plan, and ask them to follow up with you about how regularly you follow it. Decide what would make a good reward for following your plan at least 90% of the time, and remind yourself often of what that reward will be. If you’ll do all these things, you stand a much better chance of actually raising your GPA.

If you fail, it will not be a lack of will power. If you fail it will be because of circumstances beyond your control, in which case you will need to alter your methods and try again, or because you didn’t execute the methods in the first place.

So if you’re making new year resolutions this week, remember:

Decide on methods for success, not just the goal. Decide on the methods now, not later.

The more overlapping methods, the better.

Effective methods include routine, measurability (“I will raise my GPA by seven points” is better than "I will get better grades”), and outside help/structure.

If you succeed at implementing the methods but don’t meet the goal, you’ve still succeeded. If you set up a good homework/study routine and keep at it…but don’t raise your GPA significantly, you haven’t failed. You’ve set yourself up for easier success next time. Self-discipline and delayed gratification will always pay off in the long run. Always.

Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   Study in the quiet places

   To do better at school, think of studying like bathing

   Take time to think about pleasure

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.