In this everything-happens-in-the-blink-of-an eye technological world we live in, it is impossible to absorb and ingest the amount of information that enters our minds via our computers and smart phones each day. The biggest problem is that we try! We try to go faster and faster to keep up, but we ultimately fall further and further behind. In my position, it’s almost impossible to turn off all of my “devices” for any period of time and not fall hopelessly behind. When I get this feeling, I remind myself of one of the Ten Commandments of Road Racing (no such thing actually exists in writing, but…) that I picked up along the way to learning to drive a car quickly on a race track. That is, “sometimes you have to slow down to go faster.” Think about this first, just in terms of driving a racecar. Obviously, you want to go down the straightaway’s as quickly as possible, so this can’t apply there. But, time can be gained or lost braking and accelerating out of the corners, and if you go into the corner or exit the corner too quickly, you will lose control and ultimately lose time. So, applying this lesson to our hustle-bustle lives, might it just make sense to slow down just a bit so we can ultimately be more productive? I practice this in my life by being brief in my texts and e-mails; organizing my communications so that I get my point across in as few correspondences as possible, blocking out spam that I don’t have time to even browse before I hit delete, and copying as few people as possible in my correspondences so that I get fewer replies. Try these things; because, we know from racing that you can actually go faster when you slow down….
