Have you ever wondered why the speedy hare decided to take a nap in the middle of the famous race with the tortoise? By all accounts he was a smart, agile, able hare, used to navigating the fast track. How could he have lost to the patient plodding tortoise?
This may sound like an oxymoron, but you sometimes can reach where you want to be if you slow down. The tortoise and the hare story is built on the premise of slow and study wins the race, but the common complaint these days is that we are running all the time and yet the coveted trophy is out of reach. The gains are rarely proportional to the speed at which we seem to rush about. A USA today survey found that people stated that every consecutive year after 1987 was busier than the previous year.
There is enough body of evidence to suggest that we can actually do more by being slower, adopting a more deliberate approach. When you do less, you tend to notice more and the details that you might have missed out on might be clearer. For those who have watched the movie ‘Matrix’, remember how Keanu Reeves seemed to deal with the bullets as they slow down? Seeing details help you optimise. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman points out in his article in the Harvard Business Review hurried decision making is, more often than not, bad decision making, as it can have all sorts of biases. In the case of the hare, his decision to take a short nap in the middle of the race, based on the idea that he would hurry and catch up, cost him the race and his name for posterity.
There is enough body of evidence to suggest that we can actually do more by being slower. When you do less, you tend to notice more and the details that you might have missed out on might be clearer
Experts often suggest ‘sleeping on it’ before taking important decisions. An article on CBS news Money-Watch cites research from Radboud University Nijmegen, and ‘suggests that more focus or a clear head can be just the problem. What you really need is to get the subconscious involved-and sleep is a great way to do that...’ it says. Sometimes, the problem solves itself, or that slight distance gives you better perspective. Clearly the numbers, the odds and facts gave the hare reason to take that nap. Had he slowed down and postponed that decision and run on, he would have won.
As to why he slept at all, according to doctors when you are caught up in the ‘hurry worry curry syndrome’ (too rushed to eat healthy and worried about it all the time) you are unlikely to take the most balanced decisions. Maybe if the hare had not hurried off the starting block and slowed down a bit the hurry, worry, curry sins would not have caught up with him. So the next time you want to get ahead, slow down, take stock and you will get where you want to be much faster. Think Tortoise and not Hare!
By Suchismita Pai
