But let’s be honest: when cleaning the house stretches into three hours or answering an email turns into an hour-long marathon, no to-do lists or Eisenhower matrices will help. The root cause of slowness usually isn’t how we organize tasks—it’s how we execute them.
Today we’ll cover four secrets that help you overcome slowness and speed up any work you do.
- Secret #1. Speed Is a Choice
- Secret #2. Speed Is a Habit
- Secret #3. Speed Is the Right Motivation
- Secret #4. Speed Is Focusing on Results
- Conclusion: What Else Matters
Secret #1. Speed Is a Choice
Let’s run a mental experiment. Imagine you need to hand-wash a stack of dirty dishes (if you have a dishwasher, pretend it’s broken).
You probably have a comfortable pace for this task—say, two plates per minute. That’s your default speed, your comfortable cruising altitude.
Now think: could you wash dishes slower? Of course! You could easily drop to one plate per minute, or even one plate every two minutes.
What about speeding up? No problem there either. You could kick into “I’m running late” mode and knock out three or even four plates per minute (just don’t break anything).
Here’s how it looks schematically:
This applies to any process—from writing reports to running errands. Task completion speed can vary within a certain range, and most importantly, we control it.
Our productivity is like a treadmill with adjustable speed. We usually don’t notice ourselves choosing one mode or another. Slow people unconsciously set the dial to minimum, even when they could go faster. Fast people calibrate their pace slightly above normal (but not so much that quality suffers).
The takeaway:
You don’t need to rush around or set world records—just work a bit faster than you’re used to.
Secret #2. Speed Is a Habit
When I got my first computer (a Commodore 64), I immediately wanted to type something. I chose the opening lines of “The Great Gatsby.” I was typing for the first time in my life, so I hunted and pecked for each letter on the keyboard. Pecking out those first four sentences with one finger took about 10 minutes.
Now, years later, I typed the same passage in 13 seconds.
What changed? Obviously, I’ve long since mastered touch typing—my fingers know where the keys are without looking.
But something else matters more: for all these years, I’ve consciously maintained a high typing speed, and it became habitual. I can’t type slowly anymore—it feels unnatural.
This applies to any task. If you regularly do something at a fast pace, that pace becomes your new normal. Conversely, by performing a task slowly, you’re reinforcing slowness at the reflex level.
This applies not only to your overall work pace but to individual tasks. Almost everyone has their own “kryptonite tasks” that eat up unreasonable amounts of time. These should be identified and addressed separately.
A natural question arises: where does the habit of working slowly come from in the first place? Let’s dig into that.
Secret #3. Speed Is the Right Motivation
Every action we take has a motive behind it. We wash dishes so the kitchen stays clean, and we go to work for self-fulfillment (or, you know, the paycheck).
Task completion speed also depends on motivation. If there’s an incentive to work faster, we speed up; if not, we slow down. For example, we might clean the house at a leisurely pace under normal circumstances, but if guests are arriving any minute, we switch into turbo mode.
At first glance, it seems like working at high speed is always beneficial. Finish the task faster—reach your goal faster, earn more, feel like a pro, etc. If you already think this way—fantastic.
However, in practice, most people are driven by the opposite motivation: an impulse to work slower. And there are several reasons for this.
The first reason for slowness is what I call “performance optics.” Imagine: you finish a task in 30 minutes that normally takes two hours. What do you get as a reward? Most often—another task from your list.
Companies rarely reward speed with bonuses but happily pile on additional responsibilities. It’s no surprise that your brain unconsciously follows the principle “if they can’t see me struggling, they’ll think it was easy.” It’s safer that way.
The second reason for slowness is the habit of equating time spent with value created. A task completed in two hours is perceived as more serious and significant than a task completed in 15 minutes. Examples:
Under the influence of these factors, people develop a persistent tendency to drag things out. To accomplish this, their brain uses not just reduced speed but other tricks: distractions, performative busyness, unjustified perfectionism, etc. As a result, people get used to a slow pace and perceive it as the only possible way to work.
We already know that speed is a habit (Secret #2) that can be developed consciously (Secret #1). But to completely eliminate slowness from your work, you need to create the right motivation and “reprogram” your brain from dragging things out to focusing on results. Let’s look at how to do that.
Secret #4. Speed Is Focusing on Results
Over the years, I’ve tried many techniques to help overcome slowness. The most effective turned out to be the “mini-plans” technique (or “mini-results”). After implementing it, my task completion speed increased by more than double (!).
The technique has two steps:
Step 1. At the start of each work hour (or “pomodoro,” if you use that method), formulate a concrete result you want to achieve in that time. In the first few months, it’s better to write mini-plans down—on paper or in a planner. Example entries:
- Edit section #3 — 1 pomodoro
- Complete household tasks — by 12:00
- Write report — 2 pomodoros
Step 2. Evaluate each hour (or “pomodoro”) by this principle: result achieved or not. To track progress, you can use a table like this:
If you achieved the result and have time left (more than 5 minutes), you need to do something else useful. Otherwise, the hour can’t be considered productive—most likely, you just set the bar too low.
If less than 5 minutes remain before the hour ends, feel free to take a break—you’ve earned it. These standards can naturally be adjusted to fit your needs.
The main advantage of this technique is that it “rewires” your brain very quickly. You stop orienting yourself around time (“I need to sit here for another hour”) and start focusing on achieving results (“I need to finish this task”).
The technique helps eliminate not just slowness. Along the way, all typical self-discipline problems disappear on their own: distractions, procrastination, perfectionism, performative work, etc. All of these prevent you from reaching your goal, and now your brain is wired specifically for achieving it.
After a few months of practice, the habit becomes so ingrained that you don’t need to write anything down anymore. You simply mentally set a result at the start of the hour, then work to achieve it.
And one more important point: any work should end with rest (a break, evening leisure, weekends). Your brain needs solid confidence that if it “gets the job done,” it can “have some fun.” Without this confidence, it starts dragging things out, and no techniques will help.
Conclusion: What Else Matters
What we’ve covered in this article is the basic playbook for overcoming slowness. However, there are other important factors you can’t ignore.
The first is health and well-being. Sometimes the cause of slowness lies in simple fatigue or sleep deprivation. In such cases, you need to forget about productivity and urgently focus on restoring your sleep and rest schedule.
If your work speed drops suddenly and without apparent cause, that’s a reason to see a doctor. Slowness can be a symptom of serious health problems.
The second factor is workflow organization. Even the fastest person will work slowly if they use inefficient methods. For example, if someone manually numbers rows in Excel instead of using autofill, no amount of physical speed-up will help.
Finally, I’ve prepared a short checklist with the main workflow optimization techniques. I recommend using it to analyze your regular tasks—you might find ways to complete them faster and more efficiently.
