Working in a fast-paced environment, especially in a hyper-growth startup, often feels like we need to constantly be reactive and move very fast.
The urge for instantaneity.
When everything is pressing, we take shortcuts and cut corners, we go for a quick fix over laying down scalable foundations and we borrow from future resources which builds debt into our functions (c.f. technical debt, people debt). As a result, we unwillingly sacrifice long-term success for short-term ease. It’s fine to move fast 85% of the time, but some topics require some stepping back or what is known in the British Army as taking a "Condor" moment or exercising courageous restraint.
At a personal level, we realise we can’t stop thinking about work at night and during the weekend, we lose our creativity, we skip lunch or breaks on a regular, and we feel tired but seemingly unable to take time off or get proper rest.
Working too fast for too long is the perfect recipe for burn-out and oversight, and makes it easy to mistake efficient with busy, and important with urgent.
When it’s relevant, welcome the opportunity to dig deeper. Do not jump on the first idea without hearing diverse points of view. Take more time with things that matter most. Slowing down allows for deeper thinking and for a more comprehensive analysis of a topic. And it’s just what you want for high impact decisions.