Addicted to Speed

On pace, presence, and what we lose when life moves too fast

There is a difference between moving quickly and making progress.

You open your laptop to begin something that matters. Within minutes, you’ve checked messages, skimmed emails, responded to a notification, and glanced at something you don’t remember choosing. You’ve been busy. But you haven’t begun.

Somewhere along the way, pace stopped being a byproduct of work and became a measure of worth.

Fast is good.
Busy is admirable.
Full calendars signal importance.

There is even a quiet pride in it.

“I’ve been flat out.”
“It’s been non-stop.”
“I’m super-busy.”

And beneath those words, something deeper:

I belong. I’m keeping up. I matter here.

We rarely question it. Because pace is no longer just personal, it is cultural. Reinforced in organisations. Rewarded in teams. Mirrored in peers. To slow down is not simply to change behaviour, it is to risk stepping outside the rhythm of belonging. So we match the tempo… even when it costs us.

And it does cost us…

Not always dramatically. Not in ways that announce themselves loudly. But steadily:

We skim more, but understand less.
We respond faster, but think less clearly.
We start more, but complete less.

We now switch tasks every few minutes, rarely sustaining attention long enough for deeper cognitive processing. What we call multitasking is, in reality, rapid task-switching, and its efficiency is largely an illusion. Each interruption creates a re-entry cost. The longer the interruption, the harder it is to resume effectively. Part of the mind remains attached to what came before, what researchers call attention residue, reducing clarity in what comes next. The result is cognitive overload:

Reduced working memory.
Shortened attention span.
Diminished emotional control.
We make more errors.
We work more slowly (how ironic!)

Even simple tasks, like reading and comprehension, suffer measurably under interruption. We move quickly across the surface of things, rarely long enough to reach depth.

There is a paradox here:

We complain about the pace of work and life.
We feel its strain.
We speak of burnout, overload, exhaustion.
And yet we resist slowing down.

Why?

Because the pull of speed is not just practical, it is psychological.

Speed offers reassurance.
A sense of control.
A defence against stillness. 

Slowing down can feel like falling behind. Or worse…disappearing.

There is also a blind spot. We have been conditioned to equate motion with progress, responsiveness with effectiveness, speed with competence. But the faster we go, the more we rely on habit, and the less we engage with thought. We begin to substitute reflex for reflection. Motion for meaning.

Ancient traditions seemed to understand something we have forgotten. The Taoist principle of Wu Wei is often misunderstood as doing nothing. It is not. It is doing without forcing. Acting in alignment rather than strain. A form of mastery where effort becomes almost invisible, because it is so well attuned. Not laziness or apathy, but a deeper intelligence of pace.Even the body offers us this wisdom, if we are willing to notice. A marathon runner does not run marathons every single day.

They train.
They rest.
They recover. 

They allow adaptation to occur in the spaces between effort.

Without that rhythm, performance declines. And yet cognitively, many of us attempt the equivalent of running at race pace every day.

No recovery.
No integration.
No space for reflection.

The brain does not thrive under constant acceleration. It is not designed for continuous partial attention, a state of ongoing scanning, where nothing fully lands and everything competes. This creates chronic overstimulation and, over time, a reduced sense of fulfilment. So called multitasking, often worn as a badge of efficiency, is linked instead to increased stress and blood pressure. Anxiety, depression, and sleep disruption.

The brain works best in cycles:

Focus and release.
Engagement and reflection.
Effort and recovery.

Creativity, in particular, depends on something speed disrupts:

Sustained attention.
Incubation time.
Associative thinking.

Without these, ideas do not deepen, they fragment.

Perhaps this is not just a personal issue, but a collective one. We live in a time of overlapping crises, each demanding urgency, each accelerating our pace. But there is a deeper question:

Are we simply responding to complexity with the very conditions that reduce our capacity to navigate it?

Speed produces reaction.
Reaction narrows perspective.
Narrowed perspective limits the quality of decision-making.
And so, the cycle sustains itself.

There is another way to think about productivity. Reflecting on Benjamin Franklin, Cal Newport describes a deliberate shift toward becoming “the master of one’s own time” creating space for reading, thinking, experimenting, and meaningful conversation that may produce something for the common benefit of mankind.

This is not idleness.
It is intentionality.
A reclaiming of attention.
A deliberate shaping of pace.
A move from reacting to choosing.

Slowing down, then, is not about doing less. It is about removing what prevents us from doing things well. It is about creating the conditions for depth:

Where thought can fully form.
Where ideas can connect.
Where insight has time to emerge.

Because clarity cannot be rushed. It can only be interrupted.

We have increased the speed of everything around us, but not the capacity to process it. We are running an incredible and sophisticated system at the wrong tempo. And the mismatch is beginning to show. So, which is the better question:

How much can I get done?

Or:

What pace allows me to think clearly, act wisely, and remain fully present while I do it?

“It is no measure of one’s health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

If the environment itself is misaligned, then adapting to it perfectly may not be a sign of wellbeing, but of conformity.

Perhaps the most important question is not how fast we can go, but whether the pace we are living at allows us to fully experience the life we are moving through…

Depending upon your context, here are some Reflective Questions you might like to explore:

For Coaches Working with Leaders:

• How does my client relate to pace: pride, pressure, identity, belonging?
• Where is speed serving them, and where is it compensating for something unexamined?
• What is not being seen, felt, or considered because of the current pace?
• How can I support them to experience, not just understand, the value of slowing down?
• Where might the coaching itself need to resist the pull of speed and create more space?
• What becomes possible for this leader when pace is chosen, rather than assumed?
• What is your own relationship with pace and speed? How might this impact your work with your clients?

For Leaders:

• What signals do I consciously or unconsciously send about pace in my team or organisation?
• Where have I equated speed with effectiveness, and what has that cost?
• How often do I create space for thinking, rather than reacting?
• What decisions in my role actually require depth, and am I giving them the conditions they need?
• Where might slowing down improve not just wellbeing, but the quality of outcomes?
• What would it mean, in practice, to become more intentional about how I use my time?

For All of Us:

• Where in my life have I begun to equate being busy with being valuable?
• What pace am I living at, and did I consciously choose it?
• When was the last time I gave something my full, undivided attention?
• What do I avoid or lose access to when I am constantly moving?
• Where might speed be helping me, and where might it be quietly diminishing me?
• What would it feel like to slow down, not as a loss, but as a different way of engaging?
• What am I no longer noticing because I am moving too quickly?
• If I reduced the pace of my life, even slightly, what might become clearer?
• What does “enough” look like for me, beyond output, beyond activity?
• What pace allows me not just to function, but to think, feel, and live well?