5 December 2025 · 2 min
The one constant that I have observed in my professional life is that people underestimate the need to move fast.
Of course, doing good work takes time. I once spent six months writing a URL parser. But the fact that it took so long is not a feature, it is not a positive, it is a negative.
If everything is slow-moving around you, it is likely not going to be good. To fully make use of your brain, you need to move as close as possible to the speed of your thought.
If I give you two PhD students, one who completed their thesis in two years and one who took eight years… you can be almost certain that the two-year thesis will be much better.
Moving fast does not mean that you complete your projects quickly. Projects have many parts, and getting everything right may take a long time.
Nevertheless, you should move as fast as you can.
For multiple reasons:
1. A common mistake is to spend a lot of time—too much time—on a component of your project that does not matter. I once spent a lot of time building a podcast-like version of a course… only to find out later that students had no interest in the podcast format.
2. You learn by making mistakes. The faster you make mistakes, the faster you learn.
3. Your work degrades, becomes less relevant with time. And if you work slowly, you will be more likely to stick with your slightly obsolete work. You know that professor who spent seven years preparing lecture notes twenty years ago? He is not going to throw them away and start again, as that would be a new seven-year project. So he will keep teaching using aging lecture notes until he retires and someone finally updates the course.
What if you are doing open-heart surgery? Don’t you want someone who spends days preparing and who works slowly? No. You almost surely want the surgeon who does many, many open-heart surgeries. They are very likely to be the best one.
Now stop being so slow. Move!
Daniel Lemire, "Why speed matters," in Daniel Lemire's blog, December 5, 2025, https://lemire.me/blog/2025/12/05/why-speed-matters/.
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Agree – but I would say that one needs to be aware of the right steps: Moving fast does not always mean that something must be quickly published. Good things may need time to be ready for publication – but they always need constant and early feedback and reflection. This is what many people misunderstand about „moving fast“.
It sounds to me like it’s less “moving fast” and more “shrink the feedback loop”. “Move fast” may be misconstrued by management/product level people in a negative sense.
I definitely don’t want a heart surgeon who moves fast and makes mistakes.
The speed of doing a task is directly related to the consequences of getting it wrong. You don’t bang out code as fast as you can when the safe control of the car depends on near 100% reliability.
Frankly I think there’s too much rushing for no good reason. Why are we forced to be in a hurry? Answer slowly. After adequate consideration. Our haste, in our economics is the whole reason the planet is (for human viability) descending into such shit.
Increasing operative time was associated with increased odds of complications and, therefore, it appears that speed may matter
Jackson, T. D., Wannares, J. J., Lancaster, R. T., Rattner, D. W., & Hutter, M. M. (2011). Does speed matter? The impact of operative time on outcome in laparoscopic surgery. Surgical endoscopy, 25(7), 2288-2295.
I think your graphic at the topic is truncated.
Sorry. My bad. It was my browser.
Too fast
Dear Professor, I’ve been following your blog for nearly a decade. You speak the truth even when it goes against the interests of the academic establishment! I’m truly grateful for all that you’ve written.
The military has a saying “ Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” which translates to: don’t move too quickly or haphazardly where you may make a mistake that will get you or your teammates killed.
In other words: value accuracy, consistency, and a controlled pace when executing tasks.
This isn’t a contradicting statement to your main message. Just a macro vs micro perspective.
> “Moving fast does not mean that you complete your projects quickly.”
That is what you seem to mean when you write — “But the fact that it took so long is not a feature, it is not a positive, it is a negative.”
> “You learn by making mistakes. The faster you make mistakes, the faster you learn.”
You may not know they were mistakes. The faster you make those mistakes, the faster you learn to do the wrong things.
A little add to the discussion why speed matters in science and in business:
https://ugpl.net/blog/post/why-speed-matters.html
I hope this helps 😉
Thanks.