Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

It was in the “Murff of Arabia” phase of my career when I first heard the dictum about marksmanship under pressure: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast. It’s counter-intuitive at first glance, but clear to anyone familiar with firearms. When you focus on speed, it costs you in accuracy that won’t be recouped. However, if you focus on accuracy, there is a small short-term cost in speed that is recovered quickly as speed increases with competency. It struck me, Sig Sauer P226 in hand, that the same principle applies to strategic thinking and creative problems solving.

In a world where data comes at us in a fire-hose and quick, reactive declarations are put on a pedestal, Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast may help you outwit a cyber-verse of instant answers and everyone using them. Like a gun, you do need to have an existing mental model of strategy thinking in place and know how to use it. After that, however, what you really needs is a clear sight picture: know what you’re aiming at and the context in which the target appears.

Slow is Smooth

In his brilliant and mercifully short book Hare Brian Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Thin Less, Guy Claxton writes about the importance of the deliberative mode - d-mode - in problem solving, and how it works with that much faster subconscious pattern detecting engine. When facing a puzzle the best bet is to learn what you can about it, put that picture in context, then shut the noise down. The pothole most people step into is believing that more data is always better. In my experience, context will turn relevant data into information, while allowing you to tease it out from the noise. Then slip into d-mode where you think about the problem without further input, for about ten minutes.

Honestly, this may be the hardest part for the spazzed-out modern employee. Perhaps impossible if you don’t have a door to shut. Until you get used to it, that ten minutes will last forever. You can’t wander off and expect the subconscious to do it for you because it shut down when the fire hose of data was still roaring and is still operating on auto-pilot. You have to give the puzzle some deliberate thought. Go for a walk if that helps, but stay focused. Repeated studies show that these ten minutes of thought will drastically change the way you see the puzzle. Don’t worry about writing in down yet. It is only by processing information in d-mode that you discover - and understand – what you already know about the problem. That is the smooth created by the slow.

Smooth is Fast

Now that you’ve smoothed your thinking, put pen to paper and write out the problem, the constraints, any second order effects to create that all-important “clear sight picture” of what you need to happen. At that point you are about 75% to a solution that has been turned over several times while being applied to the vast databank of models and patterns of the subconscious. The cross-referencing between the two modes is key here. Your thinking and approach will lose that cork tossed in an angry sea feel. It will become a smooth thought pattern.

“Murff, quit being right and get back to your desk.”

The Field Guide

What looks like wasting 10 or so minutes, and another five or ten writing it out, is likely to save you hours of work later on. And probably a bucket of money in the bargain. Unfortunately, if you work in an office, the hardest part of the above isn’t applying the mental model, but being allowed to execute it. I once had a manager say to me, and I quote: “Murff, quit being right and get back to your desk.” Most managers have a dangerous love of certainty preferring quick certain decisions to more creative approaches with higher aggregate payoffs that are hard to calculate.

The short answer is try not to look like this is what you’re doing, and for Pete’s sake don’t announce what you’re about to do.They will stop you. As your strategic thinking smooths out toward a definite target the frenetic noise produced by information overload is replaced by clear signals of cause and effect as it applies to the puzzle at hand. Effective strategic thinking and problem solving is in the balance between short-term gains and a sense of medium -to -long term second order effects.

The good news is that if you hit a couple of bull’s eyes with creative and innovative problem solving, then not only will you have a door, you can do any damned thing you want.

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